Transcriber's Note:
A number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text.
For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document.
Col. Lane Fox tells us there are three areas of the throwing-stick:Australia, where it is simply an elongated spindle with a hook at theend; the country of the Conibos and the Purus, on the Upper Amazon,where the implement resembles that of the Australians, and thehyperborean regions of North America.
It is of this last group that we shall now speak, since the NationalMuseum possesses only two specimens from the first-named area and nonewhatever from the second.
The researches and collections of Bessels, Turner, Boas, Hall, Mintzner,Kennicott, Ray, Murdoch, Nelson, Herendeen, and Dall, to all of whom Iacknowledge my obligations, enable me to compare widely separatedregions of the hyperborean area, and to distinguish these regions by thedetails in the structure of the throwing-stick.
The method of holding the throwing-stick is indicated in Fig. 1 by adrawing of H.W. Elliott. The Eskimo is just in the act of launching thelight seal harpoon. The barbed point will fasten itself into the animal,detach itself from the ivory foreshaft, and unwind the rawhide or sinewline, which is securely tied to both ends of the light wooden shaft by amartingale device. The heavy ivory foreshaft will cause the shaft toassume an upright position in the water, and the whole will act as adrag to impede the progress of the game. The same idea of impedingprogress and of retrieving is carried out by a multitude of devices notnecessary to mention here.
The Eskimo spend much time in their skin kyaks, from which it would bedifficult to launch an arrow from a bow, or a harpoon from the unsteady,cold, and greasy hand. This device of the throwing-stick, therefore, isthe substitute for the bow or the sling, to be used in the kyak, by apeople who cannot procure the proper materials for a heavierlance-shaft, or at least whose environment is prejudicial to the use ofsuch a weapon. Just as soon as we pass Mount St. Elias going southward,the throwing-stick, plus the spear or dart of the Eskimo and the Aleut,gives place to the harpoon with a long, heavy, cedar shaft, weighing 15or 20 pounds, whose momentum from both hands of the Indian, without thethrow-stick, exceeds that of the Eskimo and Aleut darts [Pg 280]and harpoons,with the additional velocity imparted by the throwing-stick. It must notbe forgotten, also, that the kyak is a very frail, unsteady thing, andtherefore not much of the momentum of the body can be utilized, as it isby the Northwest Indians in making a lunge with a heavy shaft. Thethrowing-stick is also said by some arctic voyagers to be useful ingiving directness of aim. Perhaps no other savage device comes so nearin this respect to a gun barrel or the groove of a bow-gun. Its greatestadvantages, how