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
Fig. 26, No. 89654 [906], is from Nuwŭk. The head is an oblong, nearly
cylindrical, water-worn pebble of black quartzite, 7.1 inches long;
the haft is of reindeer antler, and the lashing of seal thong.
Fig. 27, No. 89655 [1241], from Utkiavwĭñ. The head of this maul is a
long pebble of rather coarse-grained gray syenite, and is peculiar in
having a shallow groove roughly worked out round the middle to keep
the lashing from slipping. It is 4.7 inches long and 3.1 in diameter.
The haft is of reindeer antler 4.5 inches long, and the lashing of
seal thong peculiar only in the large number of turns in the spiral
wrappings.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Stone maul. 3/8]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Stone maul. 3/8]
Fig. 28, No. 89657 [877], from Nuwŭk. This is peculiar in having the
haft fitted into a deep angular groove on one side of the head, which
is of pectolite and otherwise of the common pattern. The haft of
reindeer antler and the lashing of broad thong are evidently newer
than the head and are clumsily made and put on, the latter making
several turns about one side of the haft as well as through it and
round the head.
None of the unmounted heads, which are all of pectolite, are grooved
in this way to receive the haft, but No. 56658 [205] has two shallow,
incomplete grooves round the middle for lashings, and No. 56655 [218],
which is nearly square in section, has shallow notches on the edges
for the same purpose. One specimen of the series comes from Sidaru,
but differs in no way from specimens from the northern villages.
Stone mauls of this type have previously been seldom found among the
American Eskimo. The only specimens in the Museum from America are two
small unhafted maul heads of pectolite, one from Hotham Inlet and the
other from Cape Nome, and a roughly made maul from Norton Sound, all
collected by Mr. Nelson. The last is an oblong piece of dark-colored
jade rudely lashed to the end of a short thick stick, which has a
lateral projection round which the lashing passes instead of through a
hole in the haft. Among the “Chukches” at Pithkaj, however,
Nordenskiöld found stone mauls of precisely the same model as ours and
also used as bone crushers. He observed that the natives themselves
ate the crushed bone after boiling it with blood and water.[N190]
Lieut. Ray saw only dogs fed with it in the interior. Nordenskiöld
does not mention the kind of stone used for these tools, but the two
in the National Museum, collected by Mr. Nelson at Cape Wankarem, are
both of granite or syenite and have a groove for the lashing. (Compare
No. 89655 [1241], fig. 27.)
[Footnote N190: Vega, vol. 2, p. 113; figures on p. 112.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Bone maul. 3/8]
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