270 EXTENT OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



barter wolverine-skins, knives, gnus, and ammunition to the 

 Eskimo at Hersckel Island, for Kussian kettles, beads, &c, 

 together with whalebone and other sea-produce. These three 

 tribes, they further say, are all dressed alike, and are fierce and 

 warlike, but not cannibals like other Indians they have heard of. 

 They are, without doubt, the mountain Indians to whom Sir J. 

 Franklin makes frequent allusion in his narrative of his journey 

 westward from the Mackenzie Kiver, a tribe who have had but 

 little intercourse with the Hudson's Bay Company ; and Mr. J. 

 Simpson, travelling the same coast in 1837, also mentions them as 

 but little known. As the name Ko'-yu-kan, by which they are 

 known at Point Barrow, is the same as that given to the tribe in 

 whose treacherous attack on the Bussian post at Darabin Lieu- 

 tenant Barnard lost his life in 1851, and as some of their coasts and 

 other portions of dress offered for sale at the Plover, in 1852, were 

 of the same make and material as the suit in the possession of Mr. 

 Edward Adams of the Enterprise, the companion of Lieutenant 

 Barnard, there can be little doubt they are one and the same 

 people. If, as seems probable, they are also the same who destroyed 

 the Hudson's Bay post in 1839, in latitude 58°, they occupy a great 

 extent of country between the Colville and Mackenzie Bivers, and 

 rano-e from near Sitka to the Arctic Sea. It is at all times desirable 

 that great caution should be used in drawing inferences from mere 

 sounds in an unwritten language which is but partially known, yet 

 it seems worthy of remark, that the Eskimo word Kok, a river, 

 if prefixed to the name Yu-kon, will bear a strong resemblance to 

 the name Ko'-yu-kan, given hy them to the Indians inhabiting the 

 country through which the You-kon flows. They also know by 

 report the people of Cape Prince of Wales, Kin'g-a-meun, and the 

 Kokh-lit' en'-yu-in, Asiatics, who come to Kotzebue Sound yearly. 

 Some traditions they have besides which refer to a land named 

 Ig'-lu, far away to the north or north-east of Point Barrow. The 

 story is, that several men, who were carried away in the olden 

 time by the ice breaking under the influence of a southerly wind, 

 after many sleeps arrived at a hilly country inhabited by a people 

 like themselves who spoke the same language. They were well 

 received and had whales'-flesh given them to eat. Some of the^e 

 wanderers found their way back to Point Barrow, and told the tale 

 of their adventures. After some time, during a spring when there 

 was no movement in the sea-ice, three men set out to visit this 

 unknown country, taking provisions on their backs ; and having 

 performed their journey without mishap, brought home confirma- 

 tion of the previous accounts. Kothing further could be learned 



