MURDOCH. ] SOCIAL SURROUNDINGS—INDIAN. 51 
habit of making periodical trading excursions to the Esquimaux along the coast. 
They are a harmless, inoffensive set of Indians, ever ready and willing to render 
any assistance they can to the whites. 
Wo. Lucas Harpisty, 
Clerk in charge.’ 
Capt. Collinson evidently never dreamed of identifying this ‘‘harm- 
less, inoffensive set of Indians” with ‘‘an armed body of Indians of the 
Koyukun tribe.” It is important that his statement, quoted above, 
should be corrected lest it serve as authority for extending the range of 
the Koyukun Indians? to the Arctic Ocean. The Point Barrow people 
also know the name of the U/na-kho-tana,’ or En’akotina, as they pro- 
nounce it. Their intercourse with all these Indians appears to be rather 
slight and purely commercial. Friendly relations existed between the 
Rat Indians and the “‘ Eskimos who live somewhere near the Colville” 
as early as 1849,* while it was still *‘ war to the knife” between the Peel 
River Indians and the Kuptnmiun.’ 
The name Itkt/dlin, of which I’t-ka-lyi of Dr. Simpson appears to be 
the plural, is a generic word for an Indian, and is undoubtedly the same 
as the Greenland word erkilekK—plural erkigdlit—which means a fabu- 
lous “inlander” with a face like a dog. ‘They are martial spirits and 
inhuman foes to mankind; however, they only inhabit the east side of 
the land.”® Dr. Rink? has already pointed out that this name is in use 
as far as the Mackenzie River—for instance, the Indians are called 
“eert-kai-lee” (Parry), or ‘‘it-kagh-lie” (Lyon), at Fury and Heela Strait; 
ik-kil-lin (Gilder), at the west shore of Hudson Bay, and ‘“itkpe/le‘it ” 
(Petitot) at the Mackenzie. Petitot also gives this word as itkpe’lit in 
his vocabulary (p. 42.) These words, including the term Ingalik, or 
In-ka-lik, applied by the natives of Norton Sound to the Indians,’ and 
which Mr. Dall was informed meant “children of a louse’s egg,” all 
appear to be compounds of the word erKek, a louse egg, and the affix 
lik. (I suspect erkilek, from the form of its plural, to be a corruption 
of “‘erkilik,” since there is no recognized affix -leK in Greenlandic.) 
Petitot® gives an interesting tradition in regard to the origin of this 
name: “La tradition Innok dédaigne de parler ici des Peaux-Rouges. 
L’ayant fait observer 4 mon narrateur Apviuna: ‘Oh!’ me repondait-il, 
‘jl ne vaut pas la peine d’en parler. Ils naquirent aussi dans l’ouest, sur 
Vile du Castor, des larves de nos poux. C’ést pourquoi nous les nom- 
mons Itkpe/le/it.” 
CONTACT WITH CIVILIZED PEOPLE. 
Until the visit of the Blossom’s barge in 1826 these people had never 
seen a white man, although they were already in possession of tobacco 
and articles of Russian manufacture, such as copper kettles, which they 
! Arctic Papers, p. 144. ® Crantz, vol. 1, p. 208. 
2 Koya’-ku’kh-ota‘na, Dall, Cont. to N. A. Eth., p. 27. 7 Journ. Anthrop. Inst.. 1885, p. 244. 
3Tbid., p. 28. § Dall, Alaska, p. 28, and Contrib., vol. 1, p. 25. 
4 Hooper, Tents, ete., p. 276. * Monographie, p. xxiv. 
» Ibid., p. 273. 
