10 MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 6. 



sound and elsewhere, and began their eastward progress by one 

 of two routes along the coast by Point Hope or overland north- 

 east by the Colville route. There were also winter journeys 

 of less commercial importance from the Bering coast in the 

 vicinity of Kotzebue sound, to the Arctic coast west of Point 

 Barrow. 



The main eastward exports of the Bering communities were 

 Siberian goods, beads of native stone, stone and ivory ornaments, 

 and (to the inland tribes) blubber and oil. They received in 

 exchange caribou skins, wolverine and wolf skins (for trimming 

 their clothing), stone lamps, and stone pots. 



At Niflik in the Colville delta, the Barrow people sold 

 Siberian wares, Bering coast ornaments, articles of ivory 

 (mammoth and walrus the mammoth chiefly found along their 

 own rivers, the walrus purchased from the west), whale oil, 

 whale skin, umiaks of bearded seal, walrus or white whale 

 skin, kayaks of sealskin, sealskin waterboots, unworked seal- 

 skins and the skin of the bearded seal for boot sole material. 

 What they chiefly received for all this was caribou skins, with 

 a few wolf and wolverine skins and, in later times, commercial 

 furs fox, lynx, etc. Proceeding east to Barter island or its 

 vicinity, they traded all the same kinds of articles except oil, 

 whale skin, boats, and sealskin articles. What they chiefly 

 received were stone lamps and stone pots from the Mackenzie 

 people, wolf and wolverine skins and (latterly) other furs from 

 the Mackenzie people and the Indians from south of the moun- 

 tains towards the Yukon. Both the Barrow people and those 

 of Mackenzie river brought white whale skins to sell, though 

 the Barrow traders probab ly never had as many of these as the 

 easterners. The purchasers must have been the Athabaskan 

 Indians from the south and those Colville people who had come 

 to Barter island with Siberian and Bering Straits wares. 



It may be inferred that the farther east the trading place 

 was located the fewer Siberian and other far western wares were 

 brought to it. Dr. Richardson, if memory serves, states that, 

 in 1846, Siberian wares were not seen by him east of Point Atkin- 

 son they had not reached Cape Bathurst. Richardson had, 

 however, but limited opportunities for observation. Probably 



