FORT YUKON 145 



much more of by the Indians than by any one else 

 that they are used as a medium of exchange. All 

 these furs were brought in from the surrounding 

 districts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widely 

 distributed, among the native tribes whose repre- 

 sentatives gathered at the fort in such a miscellaneous 

 crowd that perhaps half a dozen dialects were heard in 

 a morning. 



In the crowd the busiest and most prominent were 

 the primitive Tananas, gay with feathers and painted 

 faces, looking like survivals among the local Kutchins 

 and the Kutchins of the upper river, the Birch River 

 men, and the Rat River men by whom the skins were 

 brought from the natives of the northern coast, as 

 were the messages from the Franklin search parties. 

 Indians were all of these, distinguishable by their 

 wearing the hyaqua or tooth-shell (Dentalium entails] 

 through the septum of the nose, while the Mahlemut 

 wears a bone on each side of the mouth, a practice 

 common with all the Inmiit, or Eskimo tribes, from 

 the Aliaska Peninsula to Point Barrow, unless some 

 other form of labret happens to be the local fashion. 



