1 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
substances, and occasionally becomes their chief dependence. 
East of Point Barrow, and the nearest about fifty miles off, are 
three large rivers running into the Arctic Ocean, and to these 
the Esquimaux resort for the purpose of catching the white-fish 
and burbot with which they abound. 
Early in October, as soon as the rivers are well frozen/and 
enough snow has fallen to make sliding practicable, a number 
of families start out from both villages, with all their hunting 
and fishing gear, and proceed to these rivers, where they camp 
in tents, or build snow huts when they can find snow enough, 
and remain till the daylight gets too short for hunting, which is 
about the middle of November. Those of the men who are well 
supplied with ammunition devote themselves to hunting reindeer, 
while the others and the women attend to the fishing. The white- 
fish are caught in gill nets made of reindeer sinew, which are set 
through holes in the ice and allowed to remain, being visited 
from time to time and the fish removed. 
Three species of white-fish are caught; a small species belong- 
ing to the same group as the lake herring, which has been de- 
scribed by Dr. Bean with the name of Coregonus laurette, the large 
Coregonus kennicottt, found also in the Yukon, and another large 
species, also found in the Yukon, which Dr. Bean considers to 
be undiscribed, and which he proposes to call Coregonus nelsoni, 
The burbot, or “t/a /u, as the Esquimaux call it, is the ordinary 
species Lota maculosa,common to all our Northern waters, and is 
caught with hook and line, though one will occasionally try to 
swallow a small white-fish which is entangled in the gill net and 
become * meshed” himself in the attempt. 
They use a large bone squid, about four or five inches long, 
having either a barbless hook of iron or copper, of their own 
manufacture, or a good-sized cod hook, bought from some whale- 
ship. The bait is a large piece of white-fish, with the skin and 
scales left on, which is carefully wrapped and sewed around the 
squid, much in the same way as fishermen on our own coast 
make an eelskin drail for bluefish. With this they fish through 
a hole in the ice and take a good many fish. They consume a 
good many fish, of course, on the spot, but the rest are carefully 
stored away in a little house built of slabs of ice, and at that 
