56 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



CHAPTER V 

 DWELLINGS 



Materials from which to construct a dwelling are very limited among the 

 Copper Eskimos. There is no standing timber anywhere along the coast, and 

 the shores are almost bare of drift-wood. To obtain the wood they need for 

 sleds and household furniture the natives must travel south for many days 

 far into the interior. It is true that a little spruce still grows within thirty 

 and even twenty miles of the coast in the valley of the Coppermine river, but 

 it is all too small and stunted to be of any great value. The natives at the 

 western end of Coronation gulf obtain their timber from the neighbourhood 

 of Great Bear lake, while the eastern people often travel down to the Akilinnik 

 river for the same purpose, though the journey takes them half the year. 



One would hardly expect then to find in the Copper Eskimo country huts 

 of wood and sod such as dot the coastline everywhere from Alaska to Baillie 

 island. Traces of these, however, are not altogether lacking, for ruins of old 

 wooden houses have been noticed at various places from Cape Lyon to Corona- 

 tion gulf. There are six or seven on the small islands off Cape Lyon, and six, 

 very old and covered with grass, about fifty yards from the shore between 

 Deas Thompson and Da Witt Chnton points, a little east of the Roscoe river. 

 Fourteen similar ruins near the mouth of the Inman river were examined by 

 the Rev. H. Girling, and the implements he recovered from them conclusively 

 prove that the inhabitants of that site were western natives. 



Fig. 10. A fish-hook of caribou antler, from a ruined house beside the Inman river 



These places are outside the limits of the Copper Eskimo country, but 

 there are other ruins of the same type that lie within them. Four or five were 

 found on Chantry island in the spring of 1918, and about the same time seven 

 others were noticed at Cape Krusenstern, and one on an island off Locker point. 

 M r . W. G. Phillips, the Hudson Bay Company's factor at Fort Bacon (Bernard har- 

 bour), tells me that the houses of Cape Krusenstern were built of wood, rock, 

 and a good quantity of whalebone, and that the specimens gathered from them 

 were strange to the Copper Eskimos. In one of the houses there seemed to 

 have been an open fireplace, for the gravel was burnt in one spot and massed 

 together with oil; in each of them there was a well or hole in the middle lined 

 with flat stones. Captain Bernard's discovery of wood and sod houses on 

 south-west Victoria island has been mentioned in the previous chapter. Almost 

 certainly these dwellings were erected by western natives several generations 

 ago, for the Copper Esldmos build their houses of snow blocks only, and never 

 on any occasion employ wood in their construction. 



