28 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



CHAPTER II 

 THE EXPLORATION OF THE COUNTRY 



The first of the early explorers to reach the country of the Copper Eskimos 

 was Samuel Hearne, who travelled overland with a party of Chipewyan Indians 

 to the mouth of the Coppermine river in 1771. Just below Bloody fall they fell 

 in with a band of Eskimos living in five tents on the west side of the river, all 

 of whom they massacred. Another party living in seven tents on the eastern 

 bank managed to make its escape, with the exception of one old man who was 

 so intent on collecting his- things that the Indians fell upon him before he could 

 reach his canoe. Only two small pieces of iron were foimd in the spoils of the 

 twelve tents. Hearne's party, afraid to linger any longer in this region, hastily 

 returned to the south again, and for another half a century the Copper Eskimos 

 were left undisturbed. 



In 1819, Captain Franklin, afterwards Sir John Franklin, was placed in 

 command of an expedition sent out to explore the north coast of America east- 

 ward from the mouth of the Coppermine river. In 1821 he reached the lower 

 waters of the Coppermine, and found a party of Eskimos at the same place at 

 which Hearne had encountered them, just below Bloody fall. Most of the 

 natives fled, but FrankUn was able to communicate with one family, from which 

 he learned that the tribe called themselves Naggeooktormoeoot, or Deer-Horn 

 Esquimaux, that they usually frequented the Bloody fall during June and the 

 following months for the purpose of salting [?] salmon, then retired to a river 

 which flows into the sea a little farther west (Richardson river) and passed the 

 winter in snow-houses. 



Leaving these Eskimos, Franklin proceeded by boat along the coast to the 

 eastward as far as Point Turnagain. At various places he came on fresh traces 

 of Eskimo settlements, but nowhere did he see the Eskimos themselves. On the 

 return journey he ascended the Hood river for some distance, then struck over- 

 land to Fort Providence, on Great Slave lake. No white man since Franklin 

 has ever made this journey, but the Eskimos of the present day follow almost 

 the same route, though some of them ascend the Tree river instead of the Hood. 



Richardson and Kendall, in the course of Franklin's second expedition in 

 1826, travelled eastward from the Mackenzie river in two boats, the Dolphin 

 and the Union. They encountered first the Eskimos of Kittigaryuit village, 

 in the Mackenzie delta, the inhabitants of which "had heard of the Esquimaux 

 at the mouth of the Coppermine river, and knew them by their name of 'Naggoe- 

 ook-tor-moe-oot' (or Deer-horns), but said they were very far off, and that they 

 had no intercourse with them, adding that all the inhabitants of the coast to 

 the eastward were bad people." 



Farther east, these explorers saw recent footsteps of a small party of Eskimos 

 on the beach in the neighbourhood of De Witt Clinton point. Again, "five miles 

 beyond the Harding river, on the extremity of a rocky cape, the Esquimaux had 

 constructed several storehouses of drift timber, which were filled with dried 

 deer's meat and seal-blubber; along with which, cooking kettles, and lamps made 

 of potstone, copper-headed spears, and various other articles, were carefully 

 laid up. The ashes of the recently extinguished fires showed that the natives 

 had quitted this place only a few days." 



It is reasonable to suppose that both the foot-prints and the storehouses 

 were due to the same Eskimos, who were probably western natives, since the 

 storehouses were built of wood. They bear out the present-day tradition amongst 

 the Copper Eskimos that the two peoples had intercourse up to two generations 



