PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 23 



at a single time and place. The largest camp we ever saw prob- 

 ably did not have over forty individuals and the total seen by 

 us was not far from two hundred. There were, however, parties 

 whom we never had the chance to see some had come and gone 

 before the band we were with reached Dease river (the first week 

 in August), others came and went while we were hunting west 

 and south of the main woodgathering place, which is a clump of 

 remarkably heavy trees located on an eastern (unmapped) 

 branch of the upper Dease which heads near the east end of Mc- 

 Tavish bay and flows north, northwest, west, and last southwest 

 to join the main Dease about twenty miles above its mouth. 

 This clump of trees is known to the Bear Lake Slaves as "Big 

 Stick island" and is about 25 miles, as the crow flies, from the 

 mouth of the Dease, in a direction a little north of east. 



The most westerly route from the sea to "Big Stick island" 

 leads from the mouth of Richardson river to the narrows of Dismal 

 lake. Here those parties that have kayaks ferry across while 

 those without boats approach the lake some three miles farther 

 cast, where it is fordable along the west side of a group of willow- 

 grown islands. From the narrows the road leads south about 

 eight miles to the crest of the Great Bear Lake-Coronation Gulf 

 divide and another eight miles down a small stream that runs 

 through a chain of ponds to Imaernirk lake, the source of the 

 middle branch of the Dease. The road then skirts the east 

 shore of this lake for five or six miles, passes south over another 

 small divide (between the middle and south branches of the 

 Dease) to "Big Stick island." This route is followed generally 

 by members of the Puiblifmiut, Noahdnirmmt, Ualliryumiut, 

 Pallifmlut, Nagyuktogmmt, and Kogluktogmiut. In 1910 the 

 Kogluktogmmt were the only tribe whose full strength was found 

 south of the Dease the others were represented by groups of a 

 few families. There were three families from Cape Bexley (Aku- 

 liakattagmiut). Some years the entire Kogluktogmiut tribe 

 spends the whole summer on Bloody fall of the Coppermine, 

 and portions of other tribes occasionally fish there too. In 1910 

 there were no people at all anywhere on the lower Coppermine. 



Other routes, whose minutiae are unknown to me, lead from 

 the sea to various points west of the Kent peninsula to the Cop- 



