147 



and differing from the abodes of our people. One of our ancestors 

 when kayaking had a tunnek for his companion, who had a bird 

 spear, the points of which were made of walrus tooth." 



The Eskimo woman taken by Courtemanche, mentioned 

 previously (page 5), also spoke of a hostile, foreign people in 

 northern Labrador. She said they "were badly armed, as they 

 had only knives and axes of stone and not of iron, but were 

 feared by the Eskimo." She added the perplexing information 

 that they "used snowshoes (raquettes) which also were not in 

 use among her countrymen." 1 The Eskimo tribes of Hudson 

 bay and farther west, however, use snowshoes. 



Thalbitzer, 2 in a careful survey of the evidence concerning 

 the Tunnit, offers three possible explanations of their presence 

 in northern Labrador: (1), they may have been an Indian tribe 

 which had made its way out to the sea; (2), or possibly Norsemen 

 from Greenland; (3), or an older Eskimo tribe from the west 

 who brought with them their more primitive culture. It seems 

 to me that the first explanation is made impossible by the 

 description of the life and material culture of the Tunnit. The 

 second is very improbable. A careful survey of the ruins of 

 the east coast revealed nothing which could not be assigned to 

 the Eskimo. In Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, gathered 

 by Rink from Labrador and Greenland, a distinction is made 

 between the Kablunit (Norsemen) and the Tornit (Tunnit), 

 which would probably not have occurred if they had been re- 

 garded as one and the same people. While the Tunnit appear 

 to have an historical connexion in Labrador, they have assumed 

 a mythological character in the tales which have spread as far 

 west as Hudson bay and as far east as Greenland. It was to 

 be expected that the story would assume this form among the 

 tribes who had heard of them but with whom they had not come 

 in actual contact. (The Tunnit or Tornit (singular tuneq) must 

 not be confounded, however, with theTornait (singular Tornaq) 

 "spirits.") The third explanation, that the Tunnit were simply 

 a more primitive race of Eskimo with whom the Labrador 



1 Charlevoix (1744), p. 17. 



2 Thalbitzer, Notes on ethnographical collections from East Greenland, pp. 687-90. The 

 Ammassilik Eskimo, Copenhagen, 1914. 



11 



