Page 67 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

arctic ioik. it is tne time tor tree telling and carpentry. Dugout
canoes are being fashioned, and the settlement echoes with the
thud of the greenstone adzes with which the boats are being hol­

lowed out. Sledges are being made or repaired, and the young
men are exercising their dog teams in the difficult art of thread­

ing the tree stems at speed. Skins are pegged out and scraped;
harpoons and chisels and axes are being fashioned from deer ant­
ler; knives, of slate or flint or wild-boar tusks, are being hafted.

There is work, and to spare, to fill the short hours of daylight.
There is little hunting, for there are good stocks of dried fish
and venison, supplemented by an occasional jack rabbit from the

snares. The men have enough to do preparing their equipment
for the following summer. Even so, they have time in the eve­
nings around the central fire to add decoration to their tools and

weapons, carving figures of animals on the bone or wooden hafts
of their spears and axes, or finishing off their knife handles with

the head of an elk or a reindeer, carved in the round. These
carvings are eagerly sought after by the plainsmen farther south,
and—who knows?—perhaps one of the elk-headed knife handles

might end up adorning a blade of copper far away in the ahnost
mythical regions south of the plains. The women are busy, too,

looking after the children and cooking food, and curing and sew­
ing furs. But now that the ground is frozen they are at least
free of potterymaking, for the clay can no longer be dug or mixed.

The pots they have now must last out the winter.
Actually, though, potterymaking is a favorite occupation.
There is time for gossip while the clay is being fashioned, coil by

coil, into round-bellied bowls and vases; and there is room for
artistic expression in the decoration, for an elaborate composition

of lines and pittings and commas, incised with whatever comes to
hand, a pointed stick or a comb or a piece of whipcord or the cut
end of a bone. And then the firing, in the constantly replenished

clay oven, is always exciting, for many a masterpiece falls to bits
in the kiln or comes out misshapen or discolored. Those that sur­
vive are eagerly compared and commented upon and shown

around to the housewives of the other tents. Now, in the winter,
the women must satisfy their artistic urges by sewing elaborate