I have already spoken of the formal children’s dances. They often also dance by themselves, beating on old tin cans for drums. One night I saw a party of children having quite an elaborate performance near our station. The snow at the time was drifted up close under the eaves of the house. On the edge of the roof sat three little boys, each beating vigorously on an empty tomato can and singing at the top of his lungs, while another boy and a little girl were dancing on the snow waving their arms and singing as usual, and at the same time trying to avoid another girl about thirteen years old, who represented a demon. She was stooping forward, and moving slowly round in time with the music, turning from side to side and rolling her eyes fiercely, while she licked the blade of an open clasp knife, drawing it slowly across her lips. They seemed intensely in earnest, and were enjoying themselves hugely. After dancing a while at the station they went over to the village, and as they told me the next day spent the whole night singing in a vacant snow-house.
They also amuse themselves in the winter by sliding on their knees down the steepest snowdrifts under the cliffs. A good deal of the time, however, they are following their parents or other grown people, catching little fish or fetching twigs for firewood or helping drive the dogs, though as a rule they are not made to do any regular work until they are pretty well grown.
[MUSIC.]
[Musical instruments.]—
The only musical instrument in use among these people is the universal drum[505] or tambourine (kĕlyau), consisting of a membrane stretched over a hoop with a handle on one side, and used from Greenland to Siberia. It is always accompanied by the voice singing or chanting. The player holds the handle in his left hand with the membrane away from him, and strikes alternately on each side of the rim with a short heavy piece of ivory, or a long slender wand, rotating the drum slightly at the same time to meet the stroke. This produces a loud, resonant, and somewhat musical note. There appears, however, to be no system of tuning these drums, the pitch of the note depending entirely on accident.
Fig. 383.—Drum.
We collected four of these drums, of which every household possesses at least one. They are all of essentially the same construction, but vary in size. No. 56741 [79], Fig. 383, has been selected as the type. The frame is a flat strip of willow 67 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.3 inch thick, bent till the two ends meet, thus making a hoop 22.2 inches long and 19 inches wide. The ends are fastened together by a strap of walrus ivory on the inside of the hoop, secured to the wood by neat stitches of black whalebone. The handle is of walrus ivory 5.2 inches long. The larger end is rather rudely carved into a human face. Back of this head and 1 inch from the large end of the handle is a square transverse notch, deep and sufficiently wide to fit over both rim and strap at the joint. It is held on by a lashing of sinew braid passing through holes in rim and strap, one on each side of the handle, and a large transverse hole in the latter, below and a little in front of the notch. The membrane, which appears to be a sheet of the peritoneum of a seal, is stretched over the other side of the hoop, which is beveled on the outside edge, and its edge is brought down to a deep groove 0.2 inch from the edge of the hoop and 0.3 inch wide, running round the hoop, where it is secured by three or four turns of sinew braid. The end of this string is crossed back and forth four or five times round the handle, where it is fitted to the hoop and then wrapped around it and finished off with a knot.