The Eskimo tailor has a wonderfully correct eye, and can so scrutinise a figure as to be able to turn out a well-fitting suit of skins without taking a single measurement, or “trying on.”
The men’s clothes are plain, without ornamentation, and the fashion of them does not vary with the season. In summer they are lined with the white skins of the baby seal, which are as soft and fleecy as lambs’ wool; in winter, with the skins of the fawn, which are very soft and warm. [[111]]
The Eskimo housewife prides herself greatly upon her store of skins. These, and the soapstone cooking utensils, and the carefully housed poles for the summer tupik, dogs, sled, and kyak, constitute the wealth of a native family. Fine sewing thread is made from the sinew of deer’s legs, scraped and dried. For stouter purposes, seal sinew is used. Eskimo stitching requires to be seen to be appreciated. It is amusing to note that the age of a child can be told at a glance by the length of the tail of its little jacket.
Apropos generally of domestic tastes, a word must be added on the women’s hairdressing. The hair is generally parted down the centre and plaited on either side of the face, the two plaits being looped under the ears (reminiscent of the early Victorian style!) and tied in a knot at the back. In some tribes the women gather their hair up and bind it all into a stiff vertical cone on the top of the head. They weave into this stubborn erection every hair which comes out, so that in time a woman’s age may be guessed by the size of her topknot. It used to be the fashion in bygone days to tattoo the face with linear designs, but this has now practically died out.
It is a common error of writers upon the Eskimo folk to assert that they oil themselves to keep out the cold, that they drink oil as a food, and revel in grease generally. Nothing of this is correct. The dirtier and the greasier a man is, the colder he is; so every effort is made—not after cleanliness exactly, as that is an impracticable standard—to keep grease from [[112]]the clothes and the person. When engaged in preparing or cleaning anything very oily, the women remove part of their dress to save it, and afterwards rub away as much of the grease as possible from their hands and arms. Seal oil and melted blubber act as strong purgatives, hence it would be impossible to use them as drink, besides they are required for the lamps.
Perhaps the next most important business of the Eskimo women, after cooking and making the clothes, is the preparation of skins for the two types of boat in use on the coast. This entails considerable labour and skill. The men are responsible for the framework.
(1) A Kayak. Fully equipped for hunting. (2) The Light Framework of (1) over which skin is stitched. (3) Model of a Umiak. The sail is made of seal intestines. (4) An Okushuk. A cooking-pot with drinking-bowl, made of soapstone.
The kyak—a creation as truly national to these intrepid coasters as the snowshoe may be to the Indian, the ski to the Norwegian, and the alpenstock to the Swiss mountaineer—is a covered canoe, graceful as a fish, for use at sea. It can be handled in the roughest weather. It consists of a light framework, formerly of whalebone, but now generally of driftwood, fastened together with thongs of sealskin. It is from eighteen to twenty feet in length, strong and elastic to a degree, and entirely covered with skins, almost resembling a torpedo in shape, with long, tapering extremities. There is a small circular opening amid-ships, where the kyaker sits, fitting closely round his body. In rough weather he wears a waterproof jacket (of seal gut), the hood fitting tightly round his face and the sleeves to his wrists. The lower edge [[113]]of this comes over the opening in the canoe and is laced round it, so that man and craft are fairly one.
The Rev. A. L. Fleming, formerly a naval architect, informed the writer that the lines of the kyak are perfect, and from the point of view of sea-going architecture could not be improved. The Baffin Land kyak is broader than the Greenland type. The latter is much narrower, and requires great skill to handle. Readers of Arctic literature will recall Nansen’s account of the extraordinary feats performed by the Eskimo on the west coast of Greenland in manœuvring these canoes. The Baffin Islanders are also very skilful. They can right themselves, if completely overturned, by a peculiar quick jerk of the paddle. The kyak cannot fill, should the waves wash right over it. It probably comes nearer the ideal of an unsinkable boat than many a more ambitious construction. It would be hard to say, as between hunting and fishing (the staple business of their lives), which is the characteristic national “sport” of the Eskimo; but certainly no one not born and bred to the handling of the kyak could acquire the native degree of ease and daring.