[18] Hœttesœl, the full-grown male of the Klapmyts (bladder-nose). It has a hood over its nose, which it can inflate enormously.
[19] When a seal is killed, each of the kaiak-men in the neighbourhood receives a piece of its blubber, which he generally devours forthwith.
[20] ‘When they have seen our dissolute sailors quarrelling and fighting, they regard such behaviour as inhuman, and say: “They do not treat each other as human beings.” In the same way, if one of the officers strikes a subordinate, they at once exclaim: “He behaves to his fellow-men as if they were dogs.”’
[21] Dalager, Grönlandske Relationer, Copenhagen, 1752, pp. 15-16.
[22] Dogs, however, must be added to the list, and, in the case of the North and East Greenlanders, dog-sledges.
[23] When several are hunting in company, there are fixed rules to determine to whom the game belongs. If two or more shoot at a reindeer, the animal belongs to him who first hit it, even if he only wounded it slightly. As to the rules for seal-hunting, Dalager says: ‘If a Greenlander strikes a seal or other marine animal with his light dart, and it is not killed, but gets away with the dart, and if another then comes and kills it with his darts, it nevertheless belongs to the first; but if he has used the ordinary harpoon, and the line breaks, and another comes and kills the animal, the first has lost his right to it. If, however, they both throw at the same time and both harpoons strike, the animal is cut lengthwise in two, and divided between them, skin and all.’ ‘If two throw at a bird simultaneously, it is divided between them.’ ‘If a dead seal is found with a harpoon fixed in it, if the owner of the harpoon is known in the neighbourhood, he gets his weapon back, but the finder keeps the seal.’ Similar rules seem also to be in force upon the east coast.
[24] The skins used, as before-mentioned (p. 45) are usually those of the saddleback seal or hood seal; but the skin of the bearded seal is also used, and occasionally that of the ringed seal or even of the mottled or common seal (Phoca vitulina).
[25] Meddelelser om Grönland, pt. 10, p. 94.
[26] It sometimes happened, too, that he got others to do this for him; but the affair must always take the form of a capture or abduction. Similar customs, as is well known, formerly prevailed in Europe, and have even, in certain places, survived down to our own day.
[27] W. A. Graah, Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, London, 1837, pp. 140-143.