[Juvenile implements.]—
We sometimes saw the children playing with little models of the implements and utensils used by their parents. Perhaps the commonest thing of this sort is the boy’s bow. As soon as a boy is able to walk his father makes him a little bow suited to his strength, with blunt arrows, with which he plays with the other boys, shooting at marks—for instance, the fetal reindeer brought home from the spring hunt—till he is old enough to shoot small birds and lemmings. We also saw children playing with little drums, and one man made his little boy an elaborate kă´moti about 4 feet long. In the collection are a number of miniature implements, spears, etc., some of which have been already described, which were perhaps intended as playthings for the children. As, however, they were all newly made, it is possible that they were merely intended to catch the fancy of the strangers.
No. 89451 [1113], from Nuwŭk, is a little snow shovel 4.5 inches long, with a blade 2.1 inches wide, rather roughly carved from a piece of walrus ivory.
No. 89695 [1280] from Utkiavwĭñ, is a similar model of a deer lance, 7 inches long, all in one piece and made of reindeer antler.
No. 89797 [1186] from Utkiavwĭñ, is a quite well made model of the drum used for accompanying singing and dancing, and is almost large enough to have been used for a plaything. The stick is entirely out of proportion, being merely a roughly whittled bit of lath, 13 inches long.
[Games and sports.]—
The men have very few sports, though I have sometimes known them to amuse themselves by shooting at a mark with their rifles, and I once heard of a number of them wrestling. As far as I could learn, they wrestle “catch-as-catch-can” without any particular system. We never heard of anything like the athletic sports mentioned by Egede[499] and Crantz[500] or the pugilism described by Schwatka among the people of King William’s Land, when two men stand up to each other and exchange buffets till one or the other gives in.[501] The women are very fond of playing “cat’s cradle” whenever they have leisure, and make a number of complicated figures with the string, many of which represent various animals. One favorite figure is a very clever representation of a reindeer, which is made by moving the fingers to run down hill from one hand to the other.[502] Another favorite amusement with the women and children is tossing three bullets or small pebbles with the right hand, after the manner of a juggler, keeping one ball constantly in the air. Some of the women are very skillful at this, keeping the balls up for a long time. This play is accompanied by a chant sung to a monotonous tune with very little air, but strongly marked time. I never succeeded in catching the words of this chant, which are uttered with considerable rapidity, and do not appear to be ordinary words. It begins “yúɐ yúɐ yuká, yúɐ yúɐ yuká;” and some of the words are certainly indelicate to judge from the unequivocal gestures by which I once saw them accompanied.
In the winter the young women and girls are often to be seen tossing a snowball with their feet. A girl wets some snow and makes a ball about as big as her two fists, which of course immediately becomes a lump of ice. This she balances on the toe of one foot and with a kick and a jump tosses it over to the other foot which catches it and tosses it back. Some women will keep this up for a number of strokes.
The young people of both sexes also sometimes play football, kicking about an old mitten or boot stuffed with rags or bits of waste skin. I never saw them set up goals and play a regular game as they did in Greenland.[503]
The little girls also play with the skipping rope. I once watched three little girls jumping. Two swung the rope and the other stood in the middle and jumped. First they swung the rope under her feet to the right, then back under her feet to the left, and then once or twice wholly round under her feet and over her head, and then began again.[504] They also play at housekeeping, laying sticks round to represent the sides of the house, or outlining the house by pressing up ridges of snow between their feet. Sometimes they mark out a complicated labyrinth on the snow in this way, and the game appears to be that one shall guard this and try to catch the others if they come in, as in many of the games of civilized children.