Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442Murdoch, John
History
Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442
Murdoch, John
Eskimos -- Alaska -- Barrow, Point, Region
Sometimes in warm, calm weather the flies are so numerous that the
deer is driven perfectly frantic, and runs along without looking where
he is going, so that, as the natives say, a hunter who places himself
in the deer’s path has no difficulty in shooting him. Flies were
unusually scarce both summers that we were at the station, so that we
never had an opportunity of seeing this done. When a deer is seen
swimming he is pursued with the kaiak and lanced in the manner already
described. In July, 1883, one man from Utkiavwĭñ made a short journey
inland, “carrying” his kaiak from lake to lake, and killed two deer in
this way without firing a shot. I believe this method of hunting is
frequently practiced by the parties who go east for trading in the
summer, and those who visit the rivers for the purpose of hunting.
The natives seemed to expect deer in summer at the lagoons, as along
the isthmus between Imê´kpûñ and Imêkpûnĭglu they had set up a range
of stakes, evidently intended to turn the deer up the beach where he
would be seen from the camp at Pernijû. Only one deer, however, came
down either summer, and he escaped without being seen. This
contrivance of setting up stakes to guide the deer in a certain
direction is very commonly used by the Eskimo. Egede gives a curious
description of the practice in Greenland in his day: They “chase them
[i.e., the reindeer] by Clap-hunting, setting upon them on all sides
and surrounding them with all their Women and Children to force them
into Defiles and Narrow Passages, where the Men armed lay in wait for
them and kill them. And when they have not People enough to surround
them, then they put up white Poles (to make up the Number that is
wanted) with Pieces of Turf to head them, which frightens the Deer and
hinders it from escaping.”[N364] Pl. 4, of the same work, is a very
curious illustration of this style of hunting.
[Footnote N364: Greenland, p. 62.]
A similar method is practiced at the Coppermine River, where the deer
are led by ranges of turf toward the spot where the archer is
hidden.[N365] Franklin also noticed between the Mackenzie and the
Colville similar ranges of driftwood stumps leading across the plain
to two cairns on a hill,[N366] and Thomas Simpson mentions a similar
range near Herschel Island,[N367] and double rows of turf to represent
men leading down to a small lake near Point Pitt, for the purpose of
driving the deer into the water where they could be speared.[N368]
This is similar to the practice described by Schwatka[N369] among the
“Netschilluk” of King William’s Land, where a line of cairns as high
as a man and 50 to 100 yards apart is built along a ridge running
obliquely to the water. When deer are seen feeding near the water the
men form a skirmish line from the last cairn to the water and advance
slowly. The deer mistake the cairns for men and take to the water,
where they are easily speared.
[Footnote N365: Franklin, 1st Exped., vol. 2, p. 181.]
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