arrow. The older people laugh as
they relate how those standing near the man firing would place their
hands over their ears to deaden the sound, while the little girls
cried, declaring the big noise hurt their ears.

The first knives were of flint, jade and slate; the boring tools of
flint; the adze of jade; hammers were made mostly from jade and wedges
of bone; while flint was used to saw the jade, and the brown variety
was employed for tools. The women's knives were largely of slate, but
sometimes of jade, and their needles of ivory or bone.

Pots were crudely manufactured by mixing clay with heavy-spar that had
been roasted and powdered fine,--called "k[=e]tik," blood from a seal
being added and sometimes the pin-feathers from a bird. Utensils thus
made were less liable to fracture than those formed simply from clay.
Occasionally a flat stone was hollowed out to about the depth of a
frying-pan, and used for a cooking utensil, it having the advantage of
boiling more quickly than the clay vessel over the seal-oil lamp. These
lamps were simply flat stones, hollowed out with the flint instruments
so as to hold oil. A few copper kettles of Russian make found their way
into Tigara from the Diomedes about sixty years back; they were very
expensive and could be afforded by but few. The "Ongootkoots"
frequently broke up these kettles and pounded the copper into knives,
these being the first metal blades known among the Inupash.

[Illustration: AN ELEVATED GRAVE]

Wood shovels, tipped with bone, and picks made from whale jaws, were
employed in cutting sods and excavating the ground for the iglos, and
also for digging pits in the deep snow, back in the valleys, into which
the deer would fall and could then be easily captured.

The first spear heads were of bone or ivory; later on they were nicked
on the sides so as to hold more firmly. Afterward, the heads were made
movable with a line attached, having the advantage of holding crosswise
when driven well in. About one hundred miles east of the village of
Tigara, in the land of the Kivalinyas, a man once darted a beluga, but
becoming entangled in the line he was dragged off into the ocean. The
beluga was afterward killed at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, it
having towed the body considerably more than one thousand miles.

For clothing, deerskins were stretched and scraped with flint
instruments, then dressed with powdered heavy-spar, making the skin
soft and pliable. Fre