40 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



house also and some of the old men had to be continually wiping their 

 chins. Outdoors, however, the wiping could not be done comfortably 

 and it would have been very messy to have the saliva stream down on 

 the front of the fur coat. So the real labrets were formerly worn on 

 going out; and now that the fashion has set against these ornaments, 

 inconspicuous wooden or ivory buttons are worn on going outdoors in 

 cold weather by those still living whose lips are pierced. 



It is more probable that the Eskimos got the fashion by coming in 

 contact with labret-using Indians on the southern coast of Alaska, that 

 the fashion gradually spread from those Indians northward and east- 

 ward for a thousand miles or so through the Eskimo country, and that 

 it had not had time to pass beyond Cape Bathurst. We have some 

 traditional evidence to support this view. Moreover, we know that the 

 tobacco habit was spreading similarly east along the north coast and 

 had reached the mouth of the Mackenzie about a liundred years ago. 

 Roughly seventy years ago it got to Cape Bathurst, about the same time 

 as the first white visitors. The coming of the whites accelerated the 

 eastward spread of the tobacco habit because the whites were used to it : 

 but it stopped the labret fashion because the whites were not used to it 

 and brought their influence against it. 



