Fig. 742.—Whale hunting. Innuit.
Fig. 742, copied from a walrus ivory drill-bow, from Cape Darley, Alaska (Nat. Mus. No. 44211), illustrates the mode of whale-hunting by the Innuit. The crosses over the whale and beneath the harpoon line represent aquatic birds; the three, oval objects attached to the line are floaters to support the line and to indicate its course after the downward plunge of the harpooned cetacean.
Fig. 743.—Hunting in canoe. Ojibwa.
A similar hunting scene by canoe, in which, however, the game was deer, is given in Fig. 743. The drawing is on birch bark, and was made by an old Indian named Ojibwa, now living at White Earth, Minnesota, an intimate friend and associate of the late chief Hole-in-the-Day. Ojibwa is supposed to be actor as well as depictor. He shows his lodges in a, where he resided many years ago; b is a lake; c, c, c, c represent four deer, one of which is shown only by the horns protruding above a clump of brush near the lake; e represents Ojibwa in his canoe, d, floating on the river, h, h; g is a pine torch, giving light and smoke, erected on the bow of the canoe, the light being thrown forward from a curve slice of birch bark at f, its bright inner surface acting as a reflector. The whole means that during one hunt, by night, the narrator shot four deer at the places indicated.
Fig. 744.—Record of hunting. Ojibwa.
The accompanying Fig. 744 is reproduced from a drawing also incised on birch bark by Ojibwa, and relates to a hunting expedition made by his father and two companions, all of whom are represented by three human forms near the left-hand upper line. The circle at the left is Red Cedar lake, Minnesota; a river is shown flowing northward, and another toward the east, having several indications of lakes which this river passes through or drains. The circle within the lake denotes an island upon which the party camped, as is shown by the trail leading from the human forms to the island. Around the lake are a number of short lines which signify trees, indicating a wooded shore. The first animal form to the right of the human figures is a porcupine; the next a bittern. The two shelters in the right-hand upper corner indicate another camp made by the hunters, to which one of them dragged a deer, as shown by the man in that act, just to the left of the shelter.
Another camp of the same party of three is shown in the lower left-hand corner; the bow and arrow directed to the right indicates that there they shot a raccoon, a fisher, a duck (a man lying down decoyed this bird by calling), a mink, and an otter. The line above the lower row consists of the following animals, reading from the left to right, viz, bear, owl, wolf, elk, and deer.