Distribution of the Population 



35 



number, did not reach the coast till the end of November, when they, camped 

 on the north end of Chantry island. On December 5th they migrated across 

 to the Liston and Sutton islands and commenced their winter seaHng, though 

 one of the men had already done a little sealing from the mainland. The Puivlik 

 Eskimos from Victoria island joined them just before the new year, and the 

 two groups remained united until the spring. 



In the following summer, 1915, about forty Eskimos from various groups 

 wandered about in Noahognik, while most of the nineteen who were there in 

 the previous year went away to other districts. In the spring of 1916 about 

 ninety Eskimos were hunting and fishing in Noahognik, several of whom had 

 come from as far east as Bathurst inlet; many of them, however, probably 

 went down to the Rae river valley about July or August. The increase in the 

 number of inhabitants during these two summers was due to the presence of 

 the expedition and the opportunities for trade that it offered. In earlier times 

 there were probably not more than twenty inhabitants, for the region is notice- 

 ably lacking in caribou, especially in mid-summer, when their skins are of the 

 greatest value to the Eskimos. 



Opposite the Noahognirmiut, on Victoria island, are the people called 

 Puivlirmiut, who wander in summer over all the country between the Colville 



Fig. 4. A group of Copper Eskimo men and boys who spent the summer of 1914 in Noahognik 



hills and the shores of Simpson bay as far south as Point Dickens. When 1 

 first met them at the end of November, 1914, they were encamped some two 

 or three miles up the estuary of the Kimiryuak river in nine double houses, 

 houses, that is to say, that comprised two rooms each, with a single passage 

 way leading to both. There were then 56 people, but the number was increased 

 to 62 a few days later by the addition of two families from Noahognik. In the 

 following summer eighteen natives, all closely connected by kinship or by 

 marriage, were hunting and fishing in the districts of Puivlik and Hanerak; in 

 the autumn they all gathered together at the mouth of the Okauyarvik creek. 

 Three other families (thirteen people), who were wandering at the same time 

 a little to the southeast, came down in the autumn to Clouston bay. In 1916, 

 late in the spring, more than thirty people were encamped at the south end of 

 Clouston bay, and one family had gone to the northwest; all of them intended 

 to spend the summer in Puivlik. 



In the month of December, when the sealing on the ice commences, the 

 Puivlik and Noahognik Eskimos regularly unite at the Liston and Sutton 



23335— 3i 



