Fig. 300.—Scraper cups.
The ten cups in the collection are all about the same shape and size and all of walrus ivory, stained yellow with oil. The largest is 4 inches long and 2¾ wide, and the smallest, 3 by 2.1 inches. The majority are about 3½ by 2½ inches. Five of the ten have sharp edges at both ends, the rest at one only. Mr. Nelson brought home specimens of this implement from Point Hope and St. Lawrence Island, but I do not find it mentioned elsewhere.
With these tools and their knives, they do all the work of preparing skins for clothing, boat covers, etc. I had no opportunity of seeing the process in all its stages, and can therefore give only a general account of it. Deerskins are always dressed as furs, with the hair on. The skin is rough-dried in the open air, with considerable subcutaneous tissue adhering to it, and laid aside until needed. When wanted for use, a woman takes the skin and works it over carefully with a stone scraper on the flesh side, removing every scrap of subcutaneous tissue and “breaking the grain” of the skin, which leaves a surface resembling white chamois leather and very soft. This is then rubbed down with a flat piece of sandstone or gypsum, and finally with chalk, so that when finished it seems like pipeclayed leather. All furs are prepared in the same way. Small seal skins to be worn with the hair on are scraped very clean and, I think, soaked in urine, before they are spread out to dry. The black waterproof seal skin has the hair shaved off close to the skin, great care being taken to leave the epidermis intact, and also has a certain amount of tanning in urine. It is probable that a little of the blubber is left on these skins, to make them oily and waterproof.
When, however they wish to prepare the white-tanned seal skin, the skins are brought into the warm house, thawed out or dampened and then rolled up and allowed to ferment for several days, so that when they are unrolled hair and epidermis are easily scraped off together. The skin is then soaked in urine, stretched on a large hoop, and put out to dry in the sun and air. Many of these skins are prepared during the first sunny weather in the early spring. The skins of the large seal, walrus or bear when used for boat-covers or boot soles appear to be sweated in the same way, as the epidermis is always removed. We did not learn whether urine was employed on these skins, but I think from their ordinary appearance that they are simply stretched and dried in their own fat, as appears to be the case with the skin of the beluga, from which the epidermis is easily scraped without sweating.[412]
[Combs for deerskins.]—
The loosened hairs on a deerskin garment are removed by means of a comb made of a section of the beam of an antler, hollowed out and cut into teeth on the end. This instrument probably serves also to remove vermin, as its name “kúmotĭn” looks very much as if derived from kúmûk, louse. I must say, however, that the natives whom I asked if kúmotĭn had anything to do with kúmûk said it had not. When vermin get troublesome in a garment, it is taken out on the tundra, away from the houses, and beaten with rods like a carpet. Very old garments when much infested with lice are taken out back of the village, cut into small pieces, and burned. It is no uncommon sight in the spring to see an old woman sitting out on the tundra, busy with her knife cutting up old clothes.
We brought home nine of these combs, of which No. 89354 [1879], Fig. 301a, has been selected as the type. It is 4¼ inches long and has sixteen teeth about 1 inch long. The small holes near the other end are for a lanyard to hang it up by.
