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
No. 56764 [370] (Fig. 16) will serve as a type of the water bucket
(kûtau´ɐ). A thin strip of spruce 8 inches wide is bent round a
circular bottom of the same wood 10¼ inches in diameter. The edge of
the latter is slightly rounded and fits into a shallow croze
one-fourth inch from the lower edge of the strip. The ends of the
strip overlap 3½ inches and are sewed together with narrow strips of
whalebone in two vertical seams of short stitches, one seam close to
the outer end, which is steeply chamfered off and painted red, and the
other 1.6 inches from this. Both seams are countersunk in shallow
grooves on the outer part. The bucket is ornamented with a shallow
groove running round the top, and a vertical groove between the seams.
These grooves and the seam grooves are painted red. The bail is of
stout iron wire fastened on by two ears of white walrus ivory cut into
a rude outline of a whale, and secured by neat lashings of whalebone
passing through corresponding holes in the ear and the bucket. The
bucket has been some time in use.
No. 56763 [369] is a bucket with a bail, and very nearly of the same
shape and dimensions. It has, however, a bail made of rope yarns
braided together, and the ears are plain flat pieces of ivory. Buckets
of this size, with bails, are especially used for water, particularly
for bringing it from the ponds and streams. The name “kûtauɐ”
corresponds to the Greenlandic kátauaĸ, “a water-pail with which water
is brought to the house.”[N171]
[Footnote N171: Grønl. Ordbog., p. 135.]
No. 89891 [1735] (Fig. 17), which is nearly new, is a very large tub
(ilulĭ´kpûñ, which appears to mean “a capacious thing”) without a
bail, and is 11 inches high and 20 in diameter. The sides are made of
two pieces of plank of equal length, whose ends overlap alternately
and are sewed together as before. The bottom is in two pieces, one
large and one small, neatly fastened together with two dowels, and is
not only held in by having its edge chamfered to fit the croze, but is
pegged in with fourteen small treenails. The seams, edges, and two
ornamental grooves around the top are painted red as before.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Large tub. 1/12]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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