Fig. 423.—Ancient whale amulet, of wood.
To this class also probably belong the skins or pieces of animals worn as amulets, probably with a view of obtaining the powers of the particular animal, as in so many cases in the stories related in Rink’s Tales and Traditions. We frequently saw men wearing at the belt bunches of the claws of the bear or wolverine, or the metacarpal bones of the wolf.[626] The head or beak of the gull or raven[627] is also a common personal amulet, and one man wore a small dried flounder.[628]
We collected a number of these animal amulets to be worn on the person, but only succeeded in learning the special purpose of one of them, No. 89532 [1307], from Utkiavwĭñ, which was said to be intended to give good luck in deer hunting. It is a young unbranched antler of a reindeer, 6 inches long, and apparently separated from the skull at the “bur,” with the “velvet” skin still adhering, though most of the hair is worn off except at the tip. A bit of sinew is tied round the base.
No. 89522 [1573], from Utkiavwĭñ, is an amulet consisting of the last three joints of the foot of a reindeer fawn, with the skin and hoof and about 1½ inches of tendon attached behind, through a hole in the end of which is knotted about 3 inches of seal thong. No. 89525 [1314] from the same village, is a precisely similar charm. No. 89699 [779] from Utkiavwĭñ, is the subfossil incisor tooth of some ruminant with a hole drilled through the root for a string to hang it up by. It was said to be the tooth of the “ug’ru´nû,” a large animal, long extinct. As the natives said, “Here on the land are none, only the bones remain.” No. 89743 [1110], from Utkiavwĭñ, is a molar tooth of the same animal, probably, weathered and old, with a hole freshly drilled through one root and a long piece of sinew braid with the ends knotted together looped into it. There are also in the collection two very old teeth which probably were inclosed in little sacks of skin and worn as amulets.
No. 89698 [1580], from Utkiavwĭñ, is the tusk of a very young walrus, only 2½ inches long, and No. 89452 [1148] from Utkiavwĭñ, is the canine tooth of a polar bear. No. 56547 [656], from the same village, is a similar tooth.[629]
The only amulet attached to a weapon, which we collected, is the tern’s bill, already alluded to, placed under the whalebone lashing on the seal-spear, No. 89910 [1694]. Perhaps the idea of this charm is that the spear should plunge down upon the seal with as sure an aim as the tern does upon its prey.[630]
A number of amulets of this class are always carried in the whaling-umiak. I have already mentioned the wolf-skulls, stuffed ravens and eagles, fox-tails[631] and bunches of feathers used for this purpose. Most of these charms are parts of some rapacious animal or bird, but parts of other animals seem to have some virtue on these occasions.
For instance, I noticed the axis vertebra of a seal in one whaling-umiak, and we collected a rudely stuffed skin of a godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri), which, we were informed, was “for whales.” This specimen (No. 89526 [1328], Fig. 424, from Utkiavwĭñ) is soiled and ragged, and has a stick thrust through the neck to hold it out. The neck is wrapped around with a narrow strip of whalebone and some coarse thread, part of which serves to lash on a slip of wood, apparently to splice the stick inside. A bit of white man’s string is passed around the body and tied in a loop to hang it up by. This charm is perhaps to keep the boat from capsizing, since Crantz says that the Greenlanders “like to fasten to their kajak a model of it * * * or only a dead sparrow or snipe, or a bit of wood, stone, some feathers or hair, that they may not overset” (vol. 1, p. 216), and perhaps the bone of a marine animal, like the seal, is to protect the crew from drowning should the boat upset, after all.
No. 89529 [1150] from Utkiavwĭñ is a bunch of feathers to be carried in the boat. It consists of nine wing feathers of the golden eagle, four tied in a bunch with a bit of sinew round the quills, four tied up with one end of the short bit of seal thong which serves to tie the whole bundle together, one of which has all the light-colored parts of the feather stained with red ocher, and a single feather shaft carefully wrapped up in a piece of entrail and wound spirally with a piece of sinew braid.