An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 123 
‘annual economic cycle of these Eskimo. In the winter they live almost ex- 
clusively on seals, which they hunt by employing the Maupok method. They 
use dogs to find the breathing holes. Sreransson explains in a most inter- 
esting manner why the Eskimo in these districts live on the ice and con- 
stantly have to move their settlements of snow houses while extending the range 
for obtaining their wnter means of support. “In a month or so the hunter 
will have killed all the seals within the radius of about five miles; they 
must then move camp about ten miles, so that a five mile circle around 
their next camp shall be tangent to the five mile circle around their last 
one.” For a hunter who employs the Maupok method, a five mile radius is a 
suitable range. The Utok method plays only a subordinate réle, and hunting 
from the edge of the ice and cracks in the ice, if practised at all, does 
not seem to be of any importance whatever. Even before the ice breaks 
up the Eskimo withdraw to the interior, where they carry on salmon fishing 
and reindeer hunting. Here the winter sledge-dogs are used as pack dogs 
while the men themselves carry the kayaks, which are used as ferries for 
crossing rivers, and are also employed in the reindeer hunting. The sum- 
mer proper they spend chiefly at the salmon fishing stations, while the au- 
tumn is the time for the great reindeer hunt. During the great salmon fishing 
and reindeer hunts, and during autumn and early winter while the supplies 
last, is the time when large groups collect or when the tribes meet, 
whereas the time of the winter ice-hunting is a time of dispersal. 
The Mackenzie Eskimo’. 
The domain of the West Eskimo which extends along the north and west 
coasts and partly along the south coast of Alaska begins to the west of the un- 
broken stretch of coast between Coronation Gulf and Darnley Bay. Such original 
conditions as we find with most of the Central Eskimo and with some of the 
Greenland groups are not met with here, because the West Eskimo have been 
subjected to indiscriminate extortion by Russian and American whale hunters. 
The following pages will be specially concerned in re-establishing the conditions 
as they originally existed, and as the first European and American travellers 
found them. Apart from the Eskimo at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and 
the few Asiatic Eskimo, all West Eskimo are now under the rule of the United 
States of America, as in 1867 the Russians sold their American possessions. 
Even before this period American whale hunters had visited Alaskan waters. 
In 1848 the first American whale hunter passed through Bering Strait, and was 
soon followed by many others. Further and further did the whale hunters pene- 
trate towards the north and north-east. In 1889 they reached Herschel Island, 
and there found the good harbour which has since been the central winter quar- 
ters of the fleet of whalers which yearly visits the waters outside the mouth 
of the Mackenzie as far south as Banks Land. Owing to the influence of the 
1 CoLiinson; FRANKLIN; Hooper; Mc. CLure; MACKENZIE; PETITOT; RIcHARD- 
son; Simpson; Steransson; Stockton. Cf. Steenssy, I, pp. 106—111. 
