The first mention of the Eskimo bow with sinew backing will be found in Frobisher’s account of his visit to Meta Incognita in 1577:[299] “Their bowes are of wood of a yard long, sinewed on the back with strong sinewes, not glued too, but fast girded and tyed on. Their bowe strings are likewise sinewes.”
Of the bow used at the straits of Fury and Hecla we have a most excellent figure in Parry’s Second Voyage (Pl. opposite p. 550, Fig. 22), and the most accurate description to be found in any author. It is, in fact, as exact a description as could be made from an external examination of the bow. From the figure the bow appears to have been almost of the arctic type, having an unusual number of strands (sometimes sixty, p. 511) which are not, however, twisted, but secured with a spiral wrapping, as on southern bows. The backing is stopped to the handle, but not otherwise seized. It appears to have been rather a large bow, as Parry gives the length of one of their best bows, made of a single piece of fir, as “4 feet 8 inches” (p. 510). “A bow of one piece is, however, very rare; they generally consist of from two to five pieces of bone of unequal lengths, fastened together by rivets and treenails” (p. 511). Parry also speaks of the use of wedges for tightening the backing. Schwatka[300] speaks of the Netyĭlĭk of King Williams Land as using bows of spliced pieces of musk-ox horn or driftwood, but gives no further description of them. Ellis[301] describes the bow in use at Hudson’s Strait in 1746 as follows:
Their greatest Ingenuity is shown in the Structure of their Bows, made commonly of three Pieces of Wood, each making a part of the same Arch, very nicely and exactly joined together. They are commonly of Fir or Larch, which the English there call Juniper, and as this wants Strength and Elasticity, they supply both by bracing the Back of the Bow with a kind of Thread or Line made of the Sinew of their Deer, and the Bowstring of the same material. To make them draw more stiffly, they dip them into Water, which causes both the Back of the Bow and the String to contract, and consequently gives it the greater force.[302]
Ellis’s figure (plate opposite p. 132) shows a bow of the Tatar shape, but gives no details of the backing, except that the latter appears to be twisted.
We have no published descriptions of the bows used in other regions.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the practice of backing the bow with cords of sinew is peculiar to the Eskimo, though some American Indians stiffen the bow by gluing flat pieces of sinew upon the back.
One tribe of Indians, the “Loucheux” of the Mackenzie district, however, used bows like those of the Eskimos, but Sir Alexander Mackenzie[303] expressly states that these were obtained from the Eskimo.
[Arrows.]—
With these bows were used arrows of various patterns adapted for different kinds of game. There are in the collection fifty-one arrows, which are all about the same length, 25 to 30 inches. In describing these arrows I shall employ the terms used in modern archery[304] for the parts of the arrow. The greatest variation is in the shape and size of the pile. The stele is almost always a straight cylindrical rod, almost invariably 0.4 inch in diameter, and ranging in length from 20 to 28 inches. Twenty-five inches is the commonest length, and the short steles, when not intended for a boy’s bow, are generally fitted with an unusually long pile. From the beginning of the feathering the stele is gradually flattened above and below to the nock, which is a simple notch almost always 0.2 inch wide and of the same depth. The stele is sometimes slightly widened just in front of the nock to give a better hold for the fingers. The feathering is 6 or 7 inches long, consisting of two, or less often, three feathers. (The set of sixteen arrows from Sidaru, two from Nuwŭk, and one from Utkiavwĭñ, have three feathers. The rest of the fifty-one have two.) The shaft of the feather is split and the web is cut narrow, and tapered off to a point at each end (Fig. 181). The ends of the feathers are fastened to the stele with whippings of fine sinew, the small end of the feather which, of course, comes at the nock, being often wedged into a slit in the wood (with a special tool to be described below), or else doubled back over a few turns of the whipping and lashed down with the rest. The small end of the feather is almost always twisted about one turn, evidently to make the arrow revolve in flight, like a rifle ball. Generally, if not universally, the feathering was made of the feathers of some bird of prey, falcon, eagle, or raven, probably with some notion of giving to the arrow the death-dealing quality of the bird. Out of the fifty-one arrows in the collection, only nine are feathered with gull’s feathers, and of these all but two are new, or newly feathered for sale to us.[305] Dr. Simpson[306] says that in his time “feathers for arrows and head-dresses,” probably the eagles’ feathers previously mentioned, were obtained in trade from the “Nunatañmiun.”