PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 3 



frequent sled trips from their home to the Asiatic side to buy 

 reindeer skins of the Siberian deermen. 



So far as the writer knows, it was only in Alaska and near 

 Hudson bay that the rivers played an important commercial 

 r61e. Indians and Eskimo made use of the Yukon. The several 

 rivers north of the Yukon brought the inland Eskimo to the 

 coast, where they bought wares whose ultimate source was in 

 distant Eskimo, Indian, or Siberian communities. Either by 

 boats, or by sleds carrying boats, parties then bent on trade 

 ascended the Kuwuk and Noatak rivers, carried their boats by 

 sled over to the upper Colville, and descended by boats to the 

 sea to meet the Point Barrow people near the western edge of 

 the Colville delta, or traversed one of the easterly delta channels, 

 by which routes they sometimes made their way as far east as 

 Barter island. There was some trade intercourse between the 

 Athabaskan Indians, and the Mackenzie Eskimo on that river 

 and between the Athabaskans and the Coronation Gulf Eskimo 

 on the Coppermine or near it, but in neither of these cases did 

 the waterways, as such, play an important part indeed the 

 Coppermine can hardly be called navigable and, although 

 portions of it were now and then used by Indians as canoe 

 routes, the Eskimo probably never took their kayaks farther 

 up than Bloody fall, nine miles from the sea. (They do not 

 seem ever to have had umiaks). Chesterfield inlet and the 

 rivers flowing into it were no doubt formerly, as now, ascended 

 by Hudson Bay Eskimo for purpose of trade with the Back 

 river, Arctic coast, and Victoria Island people. 



An interesting light is thrown upon the past history of the 

 Athabaskans of Great Slave lake, as well as upon that of the 

 Eskimo, by the fact that, in the early days of the fur trade, 

 these Indians made long and difficult journeys to the Hudson 

 Bay trading posts by a circuitous southern route which was 

 recommended neither by abundance of game (for they frequently 

 starved), nor by navigability of rivers, while (as David T. 

 Hanbury's explorations have shown) there existed a direct route 

 well supplied with game and consisting of readily navigable 

 rivers and lakes the Akilinik River route still so much used by 

 the Eskimo. Either the Indians did not know of this route, or 



