16 



MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 6. 



these people we were handicapped by difficulties in understand- 

 ing their speech and in making ourselves understood. After 

 that I had little difficulty with the language, and my native 

 companions (from Port Clarence, Alaska, and Mackenzie river) 

 still less. There wore off, too, during this period, the distrustful 

 reserve with which we were in the beginning treated as the 

 first complete strangers who had to their knowledge ever come 

 to live among them. Naturally the main part of what we 

 know about their present and past commerce consists of what 

 they have told us, and of apparently safe inferences therefrom. 

 Some things we know "of our own knowledge," however, e.g., 

 the sources of copper, kettle-stone, pyrites; certain of the land 

 and ice trade routes; methods of travel, rate of travel, etc. 



From the point of view of what an Eskimo wants and needs, 

 the most westerly of the now existing tribes, the Kanhifyuafmiut, 

 had natural resources within the limits of their annual migra- 

 tions as a tribe, which must formerly, even more than now, 

 have made them nearly or quite the most prosperous tribe of 

 the district we are considering. Their winter seat in Banks island 

 (near Nelson head) is well supplied with seals for food and 

 fuel, but so abundant are the polar bears whose meat and fat 

 they prefer to seal, that in 1910-11 over 150 of the tribe's total 

 of about 200 lived almost exclusively on bears "and so it was 

 with our forefathers too". The muskoxen, whose horns furnish 

 them material for spoons and dippers for their own use and for 

 trade, as well as for knife handles and a dozen other articles, 

 are perhaps more abundant in Banks island than anywhere else 

 in the region. Certainly the Hanefagmlut and Puiblirmiut 

 have long been purchasing muskox horns and articles made 

 of them chiefly from the Kanhiryuarrmut. Prince Albert 

 sound (Kanhiryuak) from which the tribe gets its name, supplies 

 them well with caribou in summer and autumn, and seals in the 

 spring. The three chief rivers that fall into the head of the 

 sound are all rich in fish which they spear and hook nets are 

 unknown. The south coast of the sound supplies them with 

 driftwood sufficient for arrows and other small articles, but bows, 

 sleds, pails, etc., they obtain by purchase. The mountains 

 to the northeast of the sound furnish the chief article of com- 



