ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA — COLLINS 513 



holes which had to be avoided (pi. 1, B). The sleds negotiated the 

 open leads and pools with little trouble, though for the passenger 

 sitting on top it was a rather bouncy, bumpy ride, frequently inter- 

 rupted by his having to jump off and help pull the sled over an ice 

 hummock or through a patch of soft snow. Most of the leads were 

 narrow enough for the dogs to jump over. Occasionally, however, 

 there were wider leads, half the length of the sled, which the dogs 

 would have to swim, and here it would be necessary for Eskimo driver 

 and passenger to hop off and help pull the sled across. 



At 5 a. m. on June 26th the long trip was over as the weary dogs 

 pulled the sleds up to the beach at Native Point and settled down to 

 rest. But before we could rest we had to unload the sleds and haul 

 our gear over the rocky beach to the dry level spot 100 yards away 

 that we had selected as a camp site. The wall tent was set up, we 

 brought our sleeping bags inside and went to sleep about 6 a. m. 

 Later that day we put up the other tent, got camp organized and made 

 a preliminary inspection of the ruins we were to dig. 



With the departure of our Eskimo friends next morning, we were 

 the sole inhabitants of Native Point, or indeed of the whole southeast 

 end of the island. The first day was spent looking over the sites, ex- 

 ploring the gravel ridges — old beach lines — to the east, south, and west, 

 and planning our operations for the summer. I had selected Native 

 Point for excavation largely on the basis of a manuscript report by 

 W. D. Bell, archeologist on Dr. J. Brian Bird's geographical expedi- 

 tion of 1950 (Bird, 1953). Bell had reported that this site, known 

 to have been the principal settlement of the extinct Sadlermiut, con- 

 tained the largest aggregation of old Eskimo house ruins in the Ca- 

 nadian Arctic. He had also discovered some middens containing 

 Dorset culture material on an elevated headland 1 mile away. 



Though we expected this to be a fine spot archeologically, we were 

 hardly prepared for what we found. The Sadlermiut site was tre- 

 mendous. It consisted of the ruins of about 75 semisubterranean 

 dwellings in addition to a dozen old "qarmats" or autumn houses built 

 by Aivilik Eskimos who had camped there in recent years. Some of 

 the older Sadlermiut houses appear now as only slight depressions on 

 the grass-covered surface of the old beach ridges, but most of them are 

 fairly well preserved, their sunken interiors and entrance passages 

 filled with a jumble of stones that had formed the walls and roofs 

 (pi. 2, A). Whale bones, which the Thule Eskimos and the Sadler- 

 miuts on the northern end of the island often used in house construc- 

 tion, had been rarely used for that purpose here. The walls were 

 made of stones and blocks of sod, and the floor, roof supports, and 

 sometimes even the roof itself were of stone. The ground outside the 

 houses was littered with the skulls and bones of animals eaten by the 



