ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA — COLLINS 523 



nately, however, Dr. S. A. Hall of the U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture had provided us with mosquito repellents that worked like magic. 

 With faces and hands covered with liquid repellent, we were able 

 to dig in relative comfort even on warm, calm days, despite the 

 frustrated buzzing of the clouds of mosquitoes that surrounded us. 



We were fortunate, too, in the weather we had. Though many 

 days were cold and windy and we had to wear our heaviest clothing, 

 there were many other fine clear days when we could enjoy the warm 

 sun and wish that there were more hours for digging, for exploring 

 the surrounding country, and doing the other things we wanted to do. 

 The average temperature was in the low 40's, sometimes dipping down 

 to freezing at night and then rising to 60° or more at midday. 



On July 17 Sandy Santiana and three other Eskimos from Coral 

 Harbour — Napayuk, Okerluk, and Kolugjak — arrived in the Peter- 

 head boat, Nayavak (Little Gull). They had come to deliver the 

 rest of our food supplies and take us on an exploring trip to Coats 

 Island. This island, though the second largest in Hudson Bay, is 

 still relatively little known. Few scientists have been there, and the 

 geology, botany, and animal life have not been studied. I planned to 

 collect plants, fossils, and insects, and was especially anxious to obtain 

 lemmings, which might be of a different species from those on 

 Southampton. My lemming traps, however, proved useless, for as I 

 learned from Sandy and later saw for myself, this little rodent, so 

 typical of most Arctic areas, does not live on Coats Island. Another 

 typical Arctic mammal missing there is the hare. 



Our principal purpose was to look for Eskimo ruins, as the arche- 

 ology of the island was also unknown. Some of the material utilized 

 by Dr. Diamond Jenness when he first described the Dorset culture 

 was reported to have been excavated by Eskimos on Coats Island. It 

 would appear, therefore, that Dorset sites existed somewhere on the 

 island. We also wished to locate Sadlermiut sites. The Eskimos 

 whom Capt. Lyon found at the southwest end of the island in 1824 

 were in all probability Sadlermiuts, but so far as known this was the 

 first and last time that anyone had seen living Eskimos on Coats 

 Island, except, of course, the few Okomiuts who were brought there 

 by the Hudson's Bay Company almost a hundred years later. The 

 native inhabitants of Coats Island had simply disappeared from 

 history. They may have died out or moved away soon after Lyon's 

 time, or some of them may have continued to live there, isolated from 

 other Eskimos, for some years later. From the ruins that we might 

 find on the north side of the island we hoped to determine whether 

 the Coats Island Eskimos were, in fact, Sadlermiut, and if so whether 

 they differed in any way from the main body of the tribe that had 

 lived on Southampton. 



