We brought home two specimens of this common object (nĭgawaúotĭn). No. 89887 [1411], Fig. 250, will serve as the type. The top is of spruce, 8¾ inches long and 10¾ wide. The upper surface is flat and smooth, the lower broadly beveled off on the edges and deeply excavated in the middle, so that there are three straight ridges joining the three legs, each of which stands in the middle of a slight prominence. The object of cutting away the wood in this way is to make the stool lighter, leaving it thick only at the points where the pressure comes. The large round hole in the middle, near the front, is for convenience in picking it up and hanging it on the cache frame, where it is generally kept. The three legs are set into holes at each corner, spreading out so as to stand on a base larger than the top of the stool. Where they fit into the holes they are 0.7 inch in diameter, tapered slightly to fit the hole, and then tapering down to a diameter of one-third inch at the tip. On the under side of the top they are braced with a lashing of stout seal thong. A split on the right-hand edge of the top has been mended, as usual, with a stitch of whalebone. This stool is quite old and has been actually used.
No. 89888 [1412], from the same village, is new and a little larger, but differs from the type only in having a triangular instead of a round hole in the top and no lashing. Those of our party who landed at Sidaru September 7, 1881, saw one of these stools hanging up in the then vacant village, and there is a precisely similar stool in the Museum from the Anderson region.
MacFarlane, in his manuscript notes, describes the use of these stools as follows: “Both tribes kill seals under ice; that is, they watch for them at their holes (breathing) or wherever open water appears. At the former they generally build a small snow house somewhat like a sentinel’s box, on the bottom of which they fix a portable three-cornered stool, made of wood. They stand on this and thereby escape getting cold feet, as would be the case were they to remain for any time on ice or snow in the same immovable position.” Beyond this I find no mention of the use of any such a utensil, east or west, except in Greenland, where, however, they used a sort of one-legged chair to sit on, as well as a footstool, which Egede pictures (Pl. 9) as oval, with very short legs.[355]
[Seal drags] (uksiu´tiñ.)—
Every seal hunter carries with him a line for dragging home his game, consisting of a stout thong doubled in a bight about 18 inches long, with an ivory handle or knob at the other end. The bight is looped into an incision in the seal’s lower jaw, while the knob serves for attaching a longer line or the end of a dog’s harness. The seal is dragged on his back and runs as smoothly as a sled. We collected eight of these drag lines, from which I have selected No. 56624 [44], Fig. 257a, as the type.
Fig. 257.—Seal drags and handles.
This consists of a stout thong of rawhide (the skin of the bearded seal) 0.3 inch wide and 37 inches long, and doubled in a bight so that one end is about 2½ inches the longer. These ends are fastened into a handle of walrus ivory, consisting of three pieces, namely: a pair of neatly carved mittens, respectively 1.9 and 1.8 inches long, put together wrist to wrist with the palms up; and lying across the joint above, a little seal 1¼ inches long, belly down. A hole runs through each wrist and through the belly of the seal. The mittens are ornamented on the back with a blackened incised pattern, and the seal has blue glass beads for eyes and blackened incised spots on the back. The longer end of the thong runs up through the right mitten, across through the seal, and down through the left mitten. It is then passed through a slit 1 inch from the end of the shorter part and slit itself. Through this slit is passed the bight of the thong, all drawn up taut and seized with sinew braid.
No. 89467 [755], from Utkiavwĭñ, is a similar drag, put together in much the same way, but it has the mittens doweled together with two wooden pins, and a seal’s head with round bits of wood inlaid for eyes, ears, and nostrils, in place of the seal. The longitudinal perforation in this head shows that it was originally strung lengthwise on one of these lines. The “double slit splice” of the two ends of the thong is worked into a complicated round knot, between which and the handle the two parts of the line are confined by a tube of ivory 1 inch long, ornamented with deeply incised patterns. Fig. 257b is the upper part of a line (No. 56622 [36], from Utkiavwĭñ), with a similar tube 1¾ inches long, and a handle carved from a single piece into a pair of mittens like the others.