[SKIN-WORKING.]
[Scrapers] (ikun).—
For removing bits of flesh, fat, etc., from a “green” skin, and for “breaking the grain” and removing the subcutaneous tissue from a dried skin, the women, who appear to do most if not all of this work, use a tool consisting of a blunt stone blade, mounted in a short, thick haft of wood or ivory, fitting exactly to the inside of the hand and having holes or hollows to receive the tips of the fingers and thumb. The skin is laid upon the thigh and thoroughly scraped with this tool, which is grasped firmly in the right hand and pushed from the worker. This tool is also used for softening up skins which have become stiffened from being wet and then dried. The teeth appear to be less often used for such purposes than among the eastern Eskimo.
Fig. 289.—Skin scraper.
We obtained eighteen such scrapers, some without blades, and two unmounted blades. Every woman owns one of these tools. While they are all of the same general model, they vary a good deal in details. Four different forms or subtypes have been recognized in the series collected, all modifications of the form seen in Fig. 289, No. 89313 [955], which may be called the type. The blade is of brown jasper, rather coarsely flaked, 1.1 inches long. It is wedged with pieces of skin, into a deep slot in the tip of the handle, which is of fossil ivory, slightly yellowed from handling. The left side against which the thumb rests is slightly flattened, and the right slightly excavated to receive the third and fourth fingers, which are bent round under the lobe, their tips pressing against the concave under surface of the latter. The fore and middle fingers rest upon the upper surface.
