PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 21 



A cosmopolitan gathering meets every summer on the north 

 shore of McTavish bay, Great Bear lake. This is not compara- 

 ble with the annual fairs of Barter island, the Colville delta, or 

 Kotzebue sound; a parallel is found, however, even to-day, in 

 the Akilinik River concourse the "mysterious Akilinik of the 

 Greenlanders" (Murdoch, quoted by Rink in a work not now at 

 hand). 1 The characterizing thing common to Bear lake and the 

 Akilinik river is that though there is plenty of game yet people 

 do not come primarily to hunt; and though there is much trad- 

 ing, trade is not the chief object every one who comes to either 

 place comes to get wood for his own use and for trade with others. 



In the area bounded roughly by the Coppermine on the east, 

 Dismal lake and Kendall river on the north, Dease river on 

 the west, and Great Bear lake on the south, there met, the sum- 

 mer of 1910, members of every tribe, except the Hanefigmmt, 

 of those that frequent either shore of Dolphin and Union strait 

 and Coronation gulf from Cape Bexley to the Kent peninsula, 

 while we know that other years people from even as far east as 

 Ogden bay may be found here. In other words, people who 

 usually go to the Akilinik for wood, come to Bear lake occasion- 

 ally for the same purpose. A glance at the map will show what 

 a unifying influence these two gathering regions must have had 

 on the culture of a large part of the Eskimo race. Even the 

 Greenlanders knew of the Akilinik vaguely; it would be strange 

 if careful inquiry on this head in Smith sound and Hudson strait 

 did not bring out similar or more definite knowledge. 



It may be thought that the flocking of the Eskimo to the 

 vicinity of Bear lake is a thing of recent years, the opinion being 

 based on the fact that none of the numerous travellers who have 

 visited Bear lake have informed us on the subject. That they 

 did not do so ceases to be strange when one remembers that the 

 first and last of these had Indians for guides who know about 

 where the Eskimo may be expected, who are in deadly fear of 



1 The Akilinik would not have remained so long "mysterious" (known 

 only, so far as the writer is aware, through Greenlandic folk-lore) if travellers 

 in northeastern Canada had taken the trouble to make geographic inquiries 

 and to record the native names of conspicuous natural features.. It is one 

 of the large rivers of Canada and one of the chief foci of commercial activity 

 and cultural development of Arctic America. 



