LEARNING TO LIVE AS AN ESKIMO 65 



The Eskimos going up the Mackenzie expected to live 

 partly by fishing and partly by hunting moose, rabbits 

 and ptarmigan. Those who left their boats on the coast 

 and traveled inland by pack dog towards the mountains 

 expected to live mainly on caribou, with an occasional 

 mountain sheep in some places and ptarmigan everywhere. 

 No matter where they lived, these hunters were also going 

 to trap for the skins of various animals. In the Mac- 

 kenzie delta they would get beaver, marten, mink, lynx 

 and the various foxes — silver, cross, red, blue and white. 



Most valuable of all these skins is that of the silver 

 fox, worth at that time as much as five hundred dollars 

 even to the Eskimos and a great deal more than that to 

 the traders who dealt with them. The cross and red 

 foxes are more numerous and therefore less valuable 

 members of the same family. There may be cross, red 

 and silver foxes in one litter. But the white and blue 

 foxes are only distant cousins of the others and are little 

 more than half the size. Just as red, cross and silver 

 may belong to one litter, so the blue and white may be- 

 long to one litter. On the arctic coast there are about 

 a hundred white foxes for one blue fox. Among the dark 

 foxes, the silver are the rarest and the reds the most 

 common. There are perhaps four or five silver foxes to 

 a hundred reds. Of course, the silver foxes are of varying 

 grades, approaching more and more closely to cross fox, 

 and it may be that the ratio of perfect silver foxes (which 

 are called black foxes) to the red is not far from the 

 one to a hundred ratio which applies to blue and white. 



We were all going to trap foxes later in the year, but 

 just after Harrison left us our energies were bent on fish- 

 ing. Some years earlier caribou had been in the habit of 

 coming down to the coast frequently, but the Eskimos told 



