PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 5 



whalers began to trade in Hudson bay, yet articles of wood still 

 form more than half the entire power-in-exchange of what the 

 trading parties bring home to Victoria island from their visits to 

 the Akilinik. Though we do not know how many centuries 

 have elapsed since these trading expeditions first began, we can 

 say definitely that their object, in so far as they were undertaken 

 by northerners, must have been then the same as it is now the 

 securing of materials for bows, arrows, lances and spears, snow 

 shovels, dishes, sleds, snow house floors, etc. 



The rapidity of trade movement is a question of interest. 

 Beginning at the west, we may trace to advantage some Siberian 

 article, such as a metal knife, that might conceivably have been 

 passed on eastward without falling on the way into the hands 

 of anyone who delayed it by owning it for use. Whether it had 

 come across Bering strait by sled in winter or boat in summer, it 

 would most likely be started on its way to the Colville from (say) 

 Kotzebue sound, through purchase at a summer trading ren- 

 dezvous on the coast, by Kuwtik or Noatak people who had 

 descended to the sea in boats. These would return up the rivers 

 to hunt the caribou, while the skins were good for clothing and 

 while the animals were fat (in August and September). Not 

 until the days lengthened in the following spring, could the knife 

 easily get to the Colville, but in March or April trading parties 

 would set out to sled over the Arctic divide and in June they 

 would descend the river to (say) the trading centre of Niflik 

 near the western edge of the Colville delta, where they might 

 trade the knife to a Barrow man going east to Barter island, or 

 they might take the knife to Barter island themselves. Here 

 it would be traded to Mackenzie River (Herschel island) Eskimo 

 in mid-summer, just a year after leaving the coact west of Alaska. 

 By open water it would reach Herschel island or might even get 

 so far east as the east edge of the Mackenzie delta. If we were 

 to suppose the knife to have reached the Barrow people from the 

 west (viz. Point Hope, say), its course would be a little more 

 devious probably, and its progress slower. 



The preceding paragraph is based on inquiries of various 

 people now resident at Cape Smythe (Point Barrow) or east of 



