Page 3 - A Visit with Jack Sam Hinkley

ISSUE : Issue 16

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1977/6/1

I ate moose meat and deer meat and there's nothing like caribou. They say it's some? thing sweet on the barren they eat that makes them taste so good. You'd clean the caribou right there. And if there was a lot of snow on you'd skin him and quarter him up and you'd dig a hole in the snow away down auid put some perhaps boughs underneath him; then you'd pack him down there and put some boughs over him and cover him with snow. Then you'd put a flag on a tree or something • so you wouldn't have trouble finding him. Sometimes you'd save the skin but it wasn't very often you would bother with them. The hide wasn't much good, to tan them. The water would go through it just like a piece of rag. No good for leather. Sometimes take one in to dry it and clean it to have in a sleigh • an odd one. For a seat of a sleigh. But the bloody hair would come out. Worse than deer. They have been gone a long while. Since 60 years the last caribou was killed that I know of. (Were caribou plentiful?) Well, I've seen myself 8 or 9 in one school. But I heard my father say he counted 40 one time, long years ago. (What would you do with the horns?) There'd be no horns on them when you'd get them. The horns would drop off of them the first frost weather comes. The horn, you know, is only in the skin--not like a cow's horn, in the head. There's no pith in the horn; right solid right through. See a cows horn there's pith in it and it's right warm, the blood is in it all the time. And the frost comes and the deer horn and the moose horn when they freeze hard enough they come right out of the skin. You didn't know that before. Moose is generally later losing the horns than the*caribou. I sup? pose because they're bigger. (What else would you hunt?) That's about all. There was no deer at that time. Not one. Not a moose or a deer. There were moose here years ago but not in our time. CONTINUED NEXT PAGE TABA(J-/aJ SL'KtH Jack Sam: Tabagin sieigh. You could carry it under your arm. There were 3 beams into it and the beams (the bunk) were on stan- dars (the posts). You'd have 3 or perhaps 4 posts. The post would have a collar so the bunk wouldn't go down. Then you'd have the reeve fit over that. The bunk has a hole in it • inch or 3/4s hole • and the top of the post had a kind of pin that goes up there thru the bunk and the reeve. The bottom part is the runner. I suppose it's 4 inches wide and where the standard would be, about an inch thick. It would thin out to about 1/2 inch between the standards, to make it light. You see, there's nothing to keep it from coming right together • pull one side back and the other ahead and it went flat. When you wanted to use it you could square it out and tie two little pieces of wood • Bernard G. Hoffman in his excellent thesis little spruce or hardwood • tie them on on the Micmac Indians, 'oes to some length across the bunk to keep it straightened. to show that there is an important difference between TQBAKUN ("sled") and TQBAKUNAS- KQQL ("sleds with broad bottoms or 'toboggans'") and what LeClerc (1691) called TABA' GANNES. Perhaps in jthe form of this light, collapsible hunting sled Jack Sam has saved not only a naine but the basic form of this tool. "A Quality Shop'Ji Purchases mailed anywhere in the world. LOCATED IN BADDECK. NOVA SCOTIA American Express, Chargex, Bank America, Master Charge Credit Caras Honoured Open Daily 9:00 a.m. tO 9.00 p.m. Phone 295-2786 Cape Breton hooked rugs- Eskimo soapstone carvings Nova Scotia pottery by the Lorenzens i Ijil''" ji"wij??iJ''??rn!Ji| ' • • ?*??~l8l Shetland sweaters liiKnTril imiiM JvJIW -'zW??___ i*! 100% wool campers jackets Tartan materials, kilt skirts and suits Rent a Car AV/S Try Our Weekend Special $9.95 from Friday Noon to Monday 9 A.M. 9' a mile 564-8341 / 564-8265 WE TRY HARDER iRO'H TROPICANA Restaurant &Lounge; RO'Iei'HA SYDNEY SmmVS MALL Prince Street, Sydney Restaurant Hours 11 AM - 10 PM Lounge Hours 11 AM - 1 AM TOP BANDS NIGHTLY

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