Distribution of the Population 33 



by the joy with which they would recognize each prominent lake and hill, and 

 call up memories of earlier days with which these landmarks were associated. 

 One of their kinsmen had died in that region; they wept as they passed near his 

 grave, and some of them, after the day's fishing was over, went back to visit it, 

 and spent the night there in mourning. 



However shifting and changing then the groups may be, a man will be 

 bound to one more closely than to any of the rest, and will usually call himself 

 a member of that group, though he may be living at the time in another far 

 remote. But the longer he remains in his new home the weaker grow the ties 

 that bind him to the old, till finally he merges in the group with which he is 

 living and calls himself by its name. Thus a woman who had spent all her 

 earlier life in the country behind Stapylton bay migrated with her parents to 

 Nennitak, at the east end of Coronation gulf. There after some years she 

 married, and though later she wandered all over the mainland between that 

 place and Stapylton bay, she called herself a Nennitak woman, because most 

 of her kinsfolk lived in that direction and the associations of her first home had 

 become less dear to her. Her husband again was brought up in Walliak, but he 

 spent his youth and early manhood in Kilusiktok, where he became one of the 

 K"r'+" fnwous shamans in the country. He was living during the three summers 

 frolic i.i/!L4 to 1916 in the basin of the Coppermine river close to his boyhood 

 home,' but he called himself a native of Kilusiktok, and was regarded as such 

 by the rest of his people. It is certainly not true to say of the Copper Eskimos, 

 what Boas remarks of the Eskimos of Hudson bay, that "almost without excep- 

 tion the old man returns to the country of his youth, and consequently by far 

 the greater part of the old people live in their native districts." ' Yet it may 

 have been true in earUer times, since there is reason to believe that the floating 

 character of the Copper Eskimo groups has been greatly accentuated in recent 

 years. 



It is necessary to bear all this in mind, therefore, when attempting to classify 

 the different groups that are actually found in the country at the present day. 

 Mr. Stefansson has given a fairly accurate list of them, and a map showing their 

 relative locations. The most westerly group on the mainland is the one round 

 Stapylton bay, known as the AkuUiakattangmiut. They gather in the fall at 

 Lake Akulliakatttak, which is not, as Mr. Stefansson believed, the source of the 

 Rae river, but a large lake, comparatively speaking, some three miles south of 

 South bay. There they sew their new clothing before the sun disappears for 

 the winter night, which in this latitude, allowing for refraction, occurs about 

 November 25; as soon as the ice is firm enough, they migrate out past Cape 

 Bexley. It was at Cape Bexley that one of our sledging parties, on December 

 23, 1914, found a village they had just deserted. It consisted of eight snow houses, 

 or rather of two double houses and four single ones. Dr. Anderson recorded in 

 his diary, "The natives had evidently come from the south along the coast (of 

 South bay), camped here one night, and gone on this morning, passing just 

 round the point, thence straight out on the ice in the direction of Victoria island. 

 The houses were scarcely iced inside, so the Eskimos must have been short of 

 blubber for fuel, and had probably just come from inland. One double house 

 was about fifty yards north of the others,, one double and three single houses were 

 in a close bunch, and a single house was about one hundred and fifty yards south 

 away from the rest." These natives had crossed over to Ingnerin on Victoria island, 

 where they were joined by three families who had spent the summer on Victoria 

 island. Early in January this community was still at Ingnerin, hving in eleven 

 snow huts; by March they had moved south into the middle of the strait, and 

 were there joined by some of their eastern neighbours. Two families came with 

 our party to Victoria island in the summer of 1915, others went east, and only 

 about six families returned to the region of Stapylton bay. 



'Boaa, Central Eskimo, p. 466. 

 23335—3 



