PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 9 



antler and bits of metal) that are imitations, at last analysis, of 

 Sheffield scissors. 



Commerce of ideas must accompany commerce in articles 

 and materials. One who tries to decipher culture historical 

 records from among the mass of lore and legends of a tribe gets 

 considerable help through remembering that, though an Eskimo 

 readily adopts new ideas and beliefs, he modifies all of them so as to 

 make them assimilate readily with his previous ideas and beliefs, 

 and he will neither abandon nor greatly modify his previous 

 stock. Hence Christianity, for instance, is not replacing the 

 old beliefs in any locality known to me, but is being superim- 

 posed upon them. Certain practices, it is true, are being aban- 

 doned e. g., sorcery. This is not, however, from a lessened 

 faith in the powers of the sorcerer, but because "it is wrong to 

 practice witchcraft." There is, however, a belief (which may 

 indeed always have existed) that the sorcerers of to-day are less 

 powerful than those of the past. 



Turning now to the natural resources of each tribe and their 

 commercial intercourse with their neighbours, we will consider 

 first the region between the mouth of the Yukon and the mouth 

 of the Mackenzie. The treatment will be brief, for the reason 

 that the writer has little first hand information regarding Alaskan 

 trade intercourse that is not already in print in one language 

 or another. 



At Port Clarence, and other places whose people undertook 

 journeys to Siberia, there arrived each summer, from the south, 

 boats of the Unalit and perhaps other tribes loaded with wooden 

 platters, buckets, dishes, and dippers, which were exchanged 

 entirely for Siberian wares reindeer skins, jade and other 

 beads, metal articles and (in later times only ?) tobacco. These 

 wooden articles were kept at Port Clarence a year, for when the 

 Unalit arrived it was considered too late in the season for visiting 

 Siberia, but the next year they were taken by boat across the 

 strait. Ivory, oil, and other products of sea animals formed an 

 important part of the cargoes, and after the Russian fur trade 

 commenced in Siberia, and perhaps earlier, furs were carried 

 west also. The Siberian wares which formed the return cargoes, 

 were bartered off at the summer trading centres in Kotzebue 



