Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 2Parry, William Edward, Sir
History
Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 2
Parry, William Edward, Sir
Arctic regions; Northwest Passage; Parry, William Edward, Sir, 1790-1855
Their legs and feet are so well clothed, that no degree of cold can well
affect them. When a man goes on a sealing excursion, he first puts on a
pair of deerskin boots (_All~ekt=eeg~a_) with the hair inside, and
reaching to the knee, where they tie. Over these come a pair of shoes of
the same material; next a pair of dressed sealskin boots, perfectly
water-tight; and over all a corresponding pair of shoes, tying round the
instep. These last are made just like the moccasin of a North American
Indian, being neatly crimped at the toes, and having several serpentine
pieces of hide sewn across the sole to prevent wearing. The water-tight
boots and shoes are made of the skin of the small seal (_neitiek_),
except the soles, which consist of the skin of the large seal (_oguk~e_);
this last is also used for their fishing-lines. When the men are not
prepared to encounter wet, they wear an outer boot of deerskin, with the
hair outside.
The inner boot of the women, unlike that of the men, is loose round the
leg, coming as high as the knee-joint behind, and in front carried up,
by a long pointed flap, nearly to the waist, and there fastened to the
breeches. The upper boot, with the hair as usual outside, corresponds
with the other in shape, except that it is much more full, especially on
the outer side, where it bulges out so preposterously as to give the
women the most awkward, bow-legged appearance imaginable. This
superfluity of boot has probably originated in the custom, still common
among the native women of Labrador, of carrying their children in them.
We were told that these women sometimes put their children there to
sleep; but the custom must be rare among them, as we never saw it
practised. These boots, however, form their principal pockets, and
pretty capacious ones they are. Here, also, as in jackets, considerable
taste is displayed in the selection of different parts of the deerskin,
alternate strips of dark and white being placed up and down the sides
and front by way of ornament. The women also wear a moccasin
(_Itteeg~eg~a_) over all in the winter time.
To judge by the eagerness with which the women received our beads,
especially small white ones, as well as any other article of that kind,
we might suppose them very fond of personal ornament. Yet of all that
they obtained from us in this way at Winter Island, scarcely anything
ever made its appearance again during our stay there, except a ring or
two on the finger, and some bracelets of beads round the wrist; the
latter of these was probably considered as a charm of some kind or
other. We found among them, at the time of our first intercourse, a
number of black and white beads, disposed alternately on a string of
sinew, and worn in this manner. They would also sometimes hang a small
bunch of these, or a button or two, in front of their jackets and hair;
and many of them, in the course of the second winter, covered the whole
front of their jackets with the beads they received from us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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