i 4 2 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



more than five or six of us fishing, and counting visitors 

 we had on an average more than thirty people to feed 

 and about fifty or sixty dogs. I imagine the people ate 

 about five pounds each and the dogs two or three pounds 

 each. This meant that, although we were catching fish 

 pretty rapidly, our store of them was getting smaller 

 each day. There were several tons that had been ac- 

 cumulated in the fall, but Ovayuak said he thought we 

 would do well if we did not come to the end of it before 

 the end of March. I applied my mathematical knowledge 

 to the case and assured him that the fish would last longer 

 than that, but he replied that so they would if our family 

 did not increase in size; but he fully expected that short- 

 age of food would come upon various neighboring com- 

 munities presently and that people from these would 

 gradually gather at Tuktuyaktok. 



In this connection Ovayuak explained to me why he 

 was a chief. He was two kinds of chief. The Hudson's 

 Bay people called him chief because they had picked him 

 out as the most influential man in the community with 

 whom to deal on behalf of the rest of the Eskimos. This 

 was purely a Hudson's Bay Company's idea and Ovayuak 

 said it had at first been incomprehensible to himself and 

 the other Eskimos. I knew from the traders that they 

 were used to dealing with Indian chiefs all up the Mac- 

 kenzie valley and, indeed, all over Canada. Most of 

 these Indian chiefs have real legal power over their tribes, 

 the power having cither been inherited from the father 

 who was also a chief or else having been given by a formal 

 election to chieftainship. When the Hudson's Bay men 

 ! north to the Eskimos they took it for granted 

 the Eskimos would also have chiefs and inquired who the 

 chief was. When the Eskimos were unable to point to 



