DCHP-1 Online

oomiak [< Esk. umiaq]

• n. a skin boat, 30-40 feet long, 4-5 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, having a flat bottom and narrowing at bow and stern, used for carrying freight and passengers and traditionally rowed by Eskimo women. [See picture at oomiak.]

  See also: luggage-boat  skin boat (def. 1)  woman's boat   

  • c1743  (1957)  Several Oomiaks or Women's boats filled with women and children were also alongside. . . .
  • 1578  [They haue one sort of greater boates where in they can carrie aboue twentie persons, and haue a Mast with a Sayle thereon, which Sayle is made of thinne Skinnes of bladders, sowed togither with the sinewes of fishes.]
  • 1824  The mistress of the oomiak lent him a small whalebone scoop to bale his boat out.
  • 1908  There were thirty-six of them, all women and children, piled into one of their "oomiacks," or skin boats.
  • 1963  Their umiaks were made of walrus or bearded seal skins and they also had sealskin kayaks.