• Nuglutang • Blanket Toss • Muk • Kaipsak • Eagle Carry • Dog Sledge

Inuit (Eskimo) Games from the Canadian Arctic

Nuglutang.
This used to be a very popular game of sharing played particularly during the months of darkness. In it a spindle-shaped piece of caribou antler with a hole drilled through it is hung above the players' heads so that it dangles at about shoulder height. The players stand around the target holding sharp rods, something like shortened pencils but made out of bone. Each person then tries to push the tip of his rod into the hole in the target, all at the same time. This sets the target swinging all over the place. The first person to place his rod in the target in the "winner" and puts up as a stake anything he wishes that has value, such as a harpoon head or knife, and retires from the play. The second winner assumes ownership of the first stake, but in turn replaces it with another. The game continues this way until the lone last player manages to nail the target. The game is then finished, he does not have to replace the stake. Thus the only person to "lose" anything (in our terms) was the first "winner," and the only one to win anything was the last "winner" (loser?). This game was played amid peals of laughter, and many excess goods were exchanged.
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Blanket Toss.
Originally a large durable blanket was made by sewing together several walrus hides. The blanket was about 10 to 12 feet wide. One player would sit or stand in the middle of the blanket, and a group of twenty or thirty players would spread out around the blanket and catapult the middle person high into the air. The blankets used today are large circular canvas structures with a heavy rope intertwined around the edge for a secure grip. This forms something like a very large circular trampoline, propeeled by the power of the people cooperating around the edge.
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Muk (Silence).
This game centers around laughter. Players begin by sitting in a circle. One player moves into the middle of the circle. He then chooses another player, who must say "Muk" and then remain silent and straight-faced. The person in the middle uses comical expressions and gestures to try to "break the muk." The player to break the muk is dubbed with a comical name and replaces the person in the middle.
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Kaipsak (Spinning Tops)
This was a favorite amoung Inuit children. Each child, in turn, would spin his top and then race outside the icehouse, run around it, and try to get back in before the top stopped spinning. In the wintertime children would becomes the tops themselves by sittong on a block of ice and being spun around by the other children until they became too dizzy to stay in the seat. The next "rider" would then take a turn. The children would occasionally hook up one of their dogs to a block of ice and have a whirl. Lots of fun.
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Eagle Carry.
In what used to be called the Spread Eagle Carry, now referred to as the Airplane Carry, one person lays face-down with arms stretched out straight. Three carriers pick him up, two by the wrists and one by the ankles, and carry him as far as possible before he collapses. The eagle is carried slowly, usually about a foot or two off the ground, and lowered gently as he begins to collapse. In this game, all of the birds smile before taking off, and most of them smile after landing. Crash landings can sometimes retard bird smiles but do not seem to inhibit laughter from the rest of the flock.
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Dog Sledge
When speaking of Inuit children, Samuel King Hutton, an early explorer, wrote,

For sheer merriment there is nothing to beat the sledge game without dogs, when six or seven of the boys slip the harness on their own shoulders and race away with the sledge, wheeling this way and that at the command of their driver. They enter most heartily into the fun, crossing from one place to another in the team, just as dogs do, snapping and yelping and whining and tugging to be on the move every time the driver calls a halt.