32 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



CHAPTER III 

 THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION' 



Earlier writers have distinguished a number of " tribes " among the Copper 

 Eskimos; but the term "tribe," if we use it at all, should be given a very broad 

 interpretation, for the groups into which these natives divide themselves have 

 none of the permanence and stability that we are accustomed to associate with 

 tribes in other parts of the world. It is true that each group has its local name, 

 a name derived from the district it habitually frequents in summer; but the 

 individual members are constantly changing from one group to_ another, not 

 merely temporarily for some special purpose, such as the acquisition of stone 

 lamps and pots or the obtaining of wood for sleds and tables, but permanently 

 also, whenever the new district offers greater advantages, especially in the 

 matter of game. At the east end of Coronation gulf, when a native was asked 

 what district he belonged to, he would sometimes answer " Oh, I h3'-° ^- -"y 

 homes. Asiak, PiDgangnaktok, Nenmtak, Kilusiktok, I have lived in .. ^ ^J, 

 both when 1 was young and since I reached manhood." Another would say 

 ••It makes no difference which you call my home, Puivlik, Kogloktok, Nennitak, 

 Kiglinik or Kilusiktok, for I have lived in all those places." A native who is 

 living in Bathurst mlet one year, may be hunting in the Coppermine region the 

 next, while still later you may find him in south-west Victoria island. In a 

 settlement of Eskimos at the Duke of York archipelago in February, 1915, 

 there were representatives of the following districts: Kilusiktok, Nagyuktok, 

 Asiak, Kogloktok, Pallik, Walliak, Puivlik, Noahognik, Hanerak, Akulliakattak 

 and Kanghiryuak. By representatives in this case is meant that the natives 

 had lived most of their lives in one or other of these districts, although they were 

 all amalgamated at that particular time into one settlement at the west end of 

 Coronation gulf. A year later, in a settlement off the mouth of the Tree river, 

 only four out of thirteen adults called themselves Tree river natives proper 

 (Pingangnaktok) ; one came from Kilusiktok, one from Asiak near the Copper- 

 mine river, one from the Coppermine itself, four from Walliak, one from Noahog- 

 nik and one from Akulliakattak. 



Districts that are poor in game naturally become wholly or partly deserted 

 in time, while others continue to support a considerable population. Generally 

 speaking the tendency of the natives is to keep to the districts in which they 

 were brought up, where every lake and hill, every favourite haunt of fish and 

 caribou, is familiar to them. If an Eskimo migrates to another district he invari- 

 ably tries to associate himself at first •ndth one of its older inhabitants who can 

 guide him about the country. When our expedition was leaving this region in 

 the summer of 1916, arrangements were made \vith a trustworthy native named 

 Ikpakhuak to take charge of our station in Bernard harbour till other white 

 men should arrive a month or two later. Ikpakhuak at first was rather unmlling, 

 for his real home was across the strait and the new district was unfamiliar to 

 him; he was not acquainted, he said, with the places in which to find fish and 

 game, and he feared that he might have difficulty in providing food for his 

 family. 



The Eskimos, like ourselves, have that indefinable feeling of home in the 

 country they have known since childhood. Some of the natives who wandered 

 in the summer of 1915 over southwest Victoria island had been absent for two 

 or three years in Coronation gulf. Travelling with them I was greatly touched 



iPor this whole chapter cf. especially Stetansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, pp. 

 25-40 and G.S.C. Museum Bulletin, No. 6, pp. 14-15. 



