145 



without a handle for a knife. They used a very small lamp 

 for heating purposes, which they carried about them. For 

 cooking they had a much larger lamp than the Eskimo. Until 

 trouble arose between them, the Tunnit and the Eskimo used to 

 intermarry, but after it was found that an alien wife would 

 betray her husband to her people, no more were taken. A 

 Tuneq woman, who betrayed the Eskimo of the village she lived 

 in to the Tunnit, had her arms cut off. After that no women 

 were taken on either side. (The story of this incident is given 

 following in "An Adlit Tale.") 



The Tunnit were gradually exterminated by the Eskimo, 

 until only a scattered one remained here and there in their vil- 

 lages. How these were overcome by strategems is handed down 

 in the tales of the giant at Hebron, said to be the last of the 

 Tunnit, and Adlasuq and the Giant. The giant allows himself 

 to be bound in a snow-house, and is slain by the Eskimo hunters. 

 This story has attained a mythological character in Baffin 

 island, 1 but is ascribed by the Labrador Eskimo directly to the 

 Tunnit. A story about the Tunnit, giving considerable cir- 

 cumstantial detail, was obtained from a Nachvak woman: 



"At Nachvak the Tunnit were chasing a big whale (this was 

 before the time of the present Eskimo). They were in two skin 

 boats, about twenty men and women in each boat. They had 

 the whale harpooned, and were being towed round and round the 

 bay by him. Somehow the line got tangled in one of the boats 

 and capsized. The other boat with the line still made fast to 

 the whale, went to pick up the people in the water, and was 

 capsized too. Another boat came off from the shore, and picked 

 up some of the people in the water. Most of them were drowned. 



"They were buried under a hill on a big bank near Nachvak. 

 There are some thirty graves on this bank, with pots, harpoons, 

 and knives buried by the graves. Even the remains of the boats 

 are there. The knives and pots are of stone. The harpoon 

 blades are of flint. The umiaks were much larger than the 

 present boats." My informant added that there were also 



See Boas, p. 292, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. XV. 



