PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 17 



mercial importance copper. The metal is so abundant that 

 not only do they gather in the summer enough to supply the 

 wants of all their neighbours and to pay for most of their 

 own imports, but it is found in such large, pure and easily 

 workable masses, that they are induced to make of copper 

 various articles which even among other copper gatherers 

 (e.g., the Kogluktogmmt of Bloody fall) are made of bone 

 or horn, such as the middle-piece of the seal harpoon, snow 

 testers for discovering suitable building sites in winter, "feelers" 

 for locating seal holes, etc. They find enough fire stone (pyrites) 

 for their own use, though not equal in quantity or quality to 

 that found among the Hanefagmmt. Since 1855 or thereabout 

 M'Clure's abandoned ship the "Investigator" and her caches 

 on shore in the Bay of Mercy on north Banks island have helped 

 the tribe to retain the mastery of the commercial situation 

 locally. Though their last expedition to the wreck (which 

 has long been broken up by the waves) was some fifteen or 

 twenty years ago, articles of iron are even now more abundant 

 and cheaper among them than among the more eastern groups 

 who are nearer the present source of supply Hudson bay. 



At present the Sound people trade chiefly with three tribes 

 the Hanefagmmt, Puiblifmmt, and Ekalluktogmmt. For a 

 hundred or so years ago there are to be added, to our knowledge, 

 the now extinct tribes of northwestern Victoria island and Banks 

 island and the vanished inhabitants of Cape Parry. There may 

 be copper in the district north of Minto inlet; there is almost 

 certainly none in Banks island ; there is quite certainly none on 

 the mainland near Cape Parry so far as the Eskimo have dis- 

 covered ; this whole now deserted territory they must, therefore, 

 have supplied with copper through indefinite periods of the 

 past, as they now supply both southwestern and southeastern 

 Victoria island (but not south-central Victoria island) . What the 

 western limits of the copper traffic were in early times future 

 archaeological research may show; certainly some of it got 

 beyond the Mackenzie delta. 



Next in importance to their activities as original producers 

 of copper, comes their traffic as middlemen in stone lamps and 

 stone pots. They say (and the uniformity of type and material 



