Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/662

646 "nocks" for the bowstring. Some bows were straight, and some turned up at the ends like a Tartar bow.

Now, to "back" such a bow as this they would take one piece of twine, forty or fifty yards long. This twine is made of a three-ply braid of reindeer sinew, about the size of common twine such as we use for tying parcels, and serves the Eskimos for a great variety of purposes. One end is looped round one nock of the bow, and about twenty strands are strung up and down the back of the bow, from one end to the other. Then they began to lay on strands that ran only between the weakest parts of the bow—that is, the points about half a foot from each end. Here these strands were fastened with very complicated hitches, making a sort of "whipping" round the bow. When there were enough strands put on to make a couple of cords about as big as a lead pencil, an ingenious tool was used to twist each up tight from the middle, and the whole was whipped down securely with the end of the cord. It is easy to see how drawing the bow would stretch these twisted cords and make them fly back with great force when the string was released, while all these lashings and whippings not only hold the cords tight to the bow, but also compress the fibers of the wood like the whippings on a fishing rod, and prevent cracking. The hitches and knots, besides, are put on in such a way that straining the backing draws every lashing tighter. The bowstring was also of the same plaited sinew.

The arrows were very neatly made of some light wood, and feathered with two or rarely three narrow feathers, generally made from the quill of some bird of prey, and neatly lashed on. They had four kinds of arrows. The bear arrow in old times always had a regular flint arrowhead, made by flaking, such as so many savages used, and which are found in such quantities all over the country wherever the Indians used to live. They still preserve the art of making these at Point Barrow, and made a number of beautiful arrow points for sale to us. But they never learned how to make a flint arrowhead with barbs, and so they sometimes made their bear arrows with a barbed head of bone tipped with flint. Driven by such a strong bow these arrows were very effective, and, if no bone was in the way, were sometimes driven clean through the body of a polar bear. As they came more in contact with white men, they took to tipping both kinds of bear arrows with bits of metal, brass, iron, or steel when they could get them. I brought home a couple of arrows tipped each with one blade of a pair of scissors, filed into an arrowhead.

For hunting the reindeer the arrow had a long, sharp, bayonet-shaped head made of antler, barbed on one edge and fitted loosely into the shaft. As the Eskimos told us, when they hit a deer with one of these arrows the shaft could drop out, leaving the