26 MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 6. 



The market for wooden wares extends to-day to the north 

 to the extreme limit of the inhabited districts; it may have been 

 so in the past too, when that limit was farther north Prince 

 Patrick island, Melville island, and the others where ruins 

 testify to a former population that may once have furnished the 

 Gulf with customers. To the west the limit no doubt always 

 was near Cape Bexley and to the east, as now, wares from Akilinik 

 met those from the Gulf halfway. The stoneware has and had 

 a wider field. Banks island and Victoria island almost certainly 

 never had any other source of supply and the islands north of 

 them may not have had any other; to the west Bering strait 

 even may not have been the extreme limit of stone lamps made 

 in the Gulf; to the east, however, there are competing stone- 

 workers at Back river and perhaps even nearer than that. 



The EkallQktSgmiQt, so far as our inquiries could bring 

 out, have no special commercial resources. They are, however, 

 an important link in the chain of traffic from the Akilinik to 

 Cape Parry and to Alaska a chain that has now been broken at 

 Nelson head. There are still, however, the important tribe 

 of the KanhiryuSrmmt and a remnant of the Kanhiryuatji- 

 5gmIQt who deal with Hudson bay chiefly through the Ekal- 

 iQktSgmiut. They also meet the Turnunirohifmiut of North 

 Devon and the NetjiligmlQt of King Williamsland, with whom 

 they have dealings the nature of which we did not make out. 



East of Victoria island among the islands and east of Kent 

 peninsula on the mainland, our information is unfortunately 

 as yet too scant to allow us to add anything of value to what 

 was said above in the discussion of the trade routes. 



It really follows from the preceding, but may be worth 

 definitely pointing out, that a certain tribal specialization of 

 industries and to a less extent a division of labour among indi- 

 viduals, has resulted from the differing natural resources of the 

 various districts and the attendant intertribal commerce. I 

 have found it characteristic of Eskimo generally (and especially 

 of those west of Cape Parry) that each tribe believes the arti- 

 facts made by its own members to be superior to the correspond- 

 ing articles made by ousiders. A few exceptions are known to 

 me from western Alaska few because of limited opportunities 



