PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 11 



he identifies the eastern limit of Siberian goods with the eastern 

 limits of Siberian tobacco and Chinese pipes. These had not 

 reached Cape Bathurst when Richardson passed ; thus far our own 

 inquiries confirm his opinion, but the very fact that Siberian 

 tobacco had almost reached Cape Bathurst might seem proof 

 of itself that Siberian knives had reached and passed it, just as 

 there are to-day knives from Hudson bay used in Banks island, 

 while the tobacco habit has not passed Back river, if it has 

 penetrated that far west. True, we have not found Siberian 

 goods as yet in any old remains explored east of Cape Bathurst, 

 but we have found fragments of pottery kettles 1 of the sort 

 known to have been made by the Eskimo of western Alaska and 

 supposed generally to have been made by them only. If they 



1 The pottery fragments referred to have been found at Langton bay 

 and near the mouth of a small, unnamed river in the bay behind Point Stivens 

 on the Parry peninsula. To date (July 12, 1911) several dozen pieces have 

 been dug up. They are all small, and in no case did their position make it 

 certain that any two belonged to the same pot. Only three small fragments 

 of stone pots have been found in the course of the same excavations. Two 

 of my Eskimo companions are from western Alaska Kotzebue sound and 

 Port Clarence. Both of them have watched the making of pottery by their 

 own mothers and by other women of their tribes. They say that the pieces 

 we have found are of the thickness and general appearance of western pottery, 

 that the corners of the pots are similar and the perforations in the brim for 

 swinging the pots are similarly placed. They differ, however, from the 

 pottery they have seen made in the following two particulars: ptarmigan 

 feathers were always mixed with the clay by their people while we have here 

 found no signs of feathers of any sort; a little fine sand was used in the west 

 mixed with the clay, while here fine gravel seems to have been used in some 

 cases and in others cracked rock fragments probably made by pounding a 

 friable stone with a hammer. 



Our diggings near Point Stivens are in a river-cut bank. In the course 

 of the work at a depth of four feet (sand), we found a layer of clay of unknown 

 depth. This clay is said by my companions to be similar in appearance and 

 consistency to that used by their parents for pottery in Alaska. In hunting, 

 we have seen outcrops of similar clay along the river in several places. 



At the present rate of accumulation we shall probably find half a bushel 

 of pottery fragments in a hundred cubic metres of excavation. This large 

 quantity, together with the presence of clay out of which the pots may have 

 been made, might incline one to the view that the manufacture of pottery 

 may have been carried on here, though that would be pushing east by a good 

 thousand miles the known limits of the art of pottery making among the 

 Eskimo. 



In the same diggings we have found (besides a quantity of horn, bone, 

 and stone objects of doubtless purely local origin) a lance fore-shaft of ivory 

 (imported ?), a fish hook with copper point (the hook of the western style, but 

 the copper doubtless from the east), and several knife handles which show 

 by the smallness of the socket that they must have held blades thinner than 

 any stone blades I have ever seen probably iron blades. 



