266 ESKIMO TRADING. 



say that great distrust was formerly manifested on both sides by 

 the way in which goods were snatched and concealed when a 

 bargain was made ; but in later years more women go, and they 

 have dancing and amusements, though they never remain long 

 enough to sleep there. They state that on leaving Barter Point 

 the wind is always easterly, and making sail on their boats, they 

 can go to sleep. On the first day they pick up the women and 

 children with their tents, and return to Point Berens on the second. 

 They now cross Harrison Bay in a direct line before the breeze to 

 Cape Halkett, about the 10th of August, some taking the route through 

 the rivers by which they had gone eastward, and others proceeding 

 along the sea coast. Should the previous whaling season have been 

 successful, they spend the time until September in fishing and 

 catching deer ; but should the opposite have been the case, they 

 make no delay beyond what is necessary for procuring supplies to 

 bring them back to Ku-wiik, in order to make up in the autumn 

 for the deficiency of the summer. 



The traffic, which is the main object of this yearly journey, has 

 been already alluded to, but some more details of it may not prove 

 uninteresting. At the Colville, the Nu-na-tang'-meun offered the 

 goods procured at Se-su'-a-ling on Kotzebue Sound from the 

 Asiatics, Kokh-lit' en'-yu-in, in the previous summer, consisting of 

 iron and copper kettles, women's knives (o-lu'), double-edged 

 knives (pan'-na), tobacco, beads, and tin for making pipes; and 

 from their ovvn countrymen on the Ko'-wak River, stones for 

 making labrets, and whetstones, or these ready made, arrow-heads, 

 and plumbago. Besides these are enumerated deer and fawn-skins, 

 and coats made of them, the skin, teeth, and horns of the im'-na 

 (argali ?), black fox, marten, and ermine-skins, and feathers for 

 arrows and head-dresses. In exchange for these, the Point Barrow 

 people (Nu-wung'-meun) give the goods procured to the eastward 

 the year before, and their own sea-produce, namely, whale or seal- 

 oil, whalebone, walrus-tusks, stout thong made from walrus-hide, 

 seal-skins, &c, and proceed with their new stock to Point Barter. 

 Here they offer it to the Kan'g-ma-li en'-yu-in, who may be 

 called for distinction Western Mackenzie Eskimo, and receive in 

 return, wolverine, wolf, imna, and narwhal skins (Kil-lel'-lu-a), 

 thong of deer-skin, oil-burners, English knives, small white beads, 

 and latterly guns and ammunition. In the course of the winter 

 occasional trade takes place in these with the people of Point Hope, 

 but most of the knives, beads, oil-burners, and wolverine-skins, are 

 taken to the Colville the following year, and, in the next after, 

 make their appearance at Kotzebue Sound and on the coast of Asia. 



