Fig. 301.—Combs for cleaning deerskins.
Six of these combs have teeth at one end only, the other three at both ends. These teeth are generally about fifteen in number, and 1 inch or a little over long. No. 89781 [1005], a very small comb only 2.9 inches long, which belonged to the “inland” native Ilûbw’ga, has twenty teeth 0.6 inch long. These combs are usually about 4 or 4½ inches long. No. 89556 [1017], Fig. 301b, from Utkiavwĭñ is an unusually long comb, 5.3 inches long, which is peculiar in being solid except at the end which is cut into teeth.
Fig. 301c (No. 89359 [993]), from Utkiavwĭñ is a double-ended comb, having ten teeth on one end and thirteen on the other. It is 4.1 inches long and made with considerable care, being ornamented with incised rings colored with red ocher. This is a common implement at Point Barrow, but seems unusual elsewhere. There is a single specimen from the Diomedes in Mr. Nelson’s collection.
[MANUFACTURE OF LINES OF THONG.]
No tools are used for this purpose except a knife. I have seen a small jackknife used for cutting the fine seal skin lines. The workman takes a wet skin from which the hair and epidermis have been removed and sits down cross-legged on the ground with somebody else to hold the skin stretched for him. Then holding the knife vertically up with the edge away from him, he starts at one corner of the skin and cuts a narrow strip in one continuous piece, going round and round the skin, gathering and stretching the strip with the left hand. They do this work quite rapidly and with great skill, cutting single lines upward of 90 feet long and only one-eighth inch in diameter, almost perfectly even. These fine lines of seal-skin thong, which serve a great variety of purposes, are usually made when they are in the summer camps, before the breaking up of the ice. They are dried by stretching them between stakes 6 inches or a foot high, driven into the ground.
The stout thongs of the hide of the bearded seal, walrus, or beluga are usually made in the winter and stretched to dry between posts of whales’ bones set up in the village, about breast high. While they are drying, the maker carefully trims and scrapes the edges with his knife, so as to make an almost round line.[413] The usual diameter is about 0.3 inch. These lines are not always made with such care, being often merely flat thongs. Fine deer-skin twine, or “babiche,” as it is called by the voyageurs, for making the nettings of snow shoes, is made in the same way. A deer skin is dampened, rolled up, and put up over the lamp for a day or two to remove the hair by sweating, and then cut into a single long piece of fine thong.
Fig. 302.—Double-slit splice for rawhide lines.
All the men do not appear able to do this fine work. For instance, our friend Mû´ñialu had the babiche for his new snowshoes made by his house-mate, the younger Tuñazu. When it is desired to fasten together two pieces of the stouter kinds of thong, what I have so often referred to as the “double-slit splice” is generally employed. This is made as follows: The two ends to be joined together are each slit lengthwise, and one is passed through the slit in the other. The other end of this piece is then passed through the slit in the first piece, and drawn through so that the sides of each slit interlace like the loops of a square knot (see diagrams, Fig. 302). The splice is often further secured by a seizing of sinew braid. Most writers on the Eskimo have not gone sufficiently into the details of their arts to describe their methods of splicing. One writer,[414] however, in describing some Eskimo implements from East Greenland, describes and figures several splices somewhat of this nature, and one in particular especially complicated by crossing the sides of the slits and passing the end through several times. This method of uniting thongs is probably very general among the Eskimo and is also common enough among civilized people.