98 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1918-18 



the settlement and eaten frozen.^ Mr. Stefansson thought that the natives 

 never pour seal-oil on it because all their oil is cached on the coast in summer, 

 and they have no opportunity of eating the two together; but this is not quite 

 true, for the natives often take a small quantity of seal-oil inland with them 

 in the spring, and in any case more reindeer-moss is consumed in the early 

 winter, when the natives are living largely on seal-meat, than in summer. 

 The real reason why the two are not eaten together is because there is a taboo 

 against it. 



The Copper Eskimos are predominantly eaters of fish and meat. Collinson, 

 who calls them a carnivorous race, says that for the most part they consume 

 their food raw.^ This is not quite correct. What Parry observes of the Eski- 

 mos of Igloolik is equally true of the Copper Eskimos, "they prefer to boil their 

 food when they can obtain fuel."' In winter, unless blubber for the lamps is 

 unusually scarce, the principal meal of the day is always bciled seal-meat, but 

 in summer the Eskimo often suffers from a scarcity of fuel and has to eat his food 

 raw and unfrozen or merely sun dried. Cooking under any circumstances is a slow 

 and tedious process; using a lamp and blubber, it takes about an hour to boil 

 the meat even after the snow has been melted. In summer, using dry willow 

 twigs for fuel, with the pot set on a small hearth of three stones (one on each 

 side on which it rests and a third at the back to keep in the heat), the operation 

 takes a little less time. But willow is not always procurable; for example the 

 Colville hills in many places contain neither willow nor its best substitute, 

 heather, and the same is true of many places on the mainland. 



In many places on the coast driftwood would supply the natives with a fair 

 amount of fuel, if it were not deliberately avoided, as a rule, owing to the well- 

 known Eskimo taboo against mingling products of the sea with those of the 

 land. Driftwood comes from the sea, so caribou, and fish that are caught in 

 rivers and lakes, like trout and salmon, must not be cooked over a driftwood 

 fire. Seal-meat may, but seals supply their own fuel, while driftwood is scarce 

 and impracticable in a snow hut. The Eskimos frequently helped us to collect 

 spruce sticks from the beaches so that we could cook our own seal-meat in a 

 tent, on top of an iron stove. They sometimes objected to our cooking caribou- 

 meat when we were in their settlements on the ice, although we would point 

 out that the taboos that applied to them were not equally applicable to us. 

 Once too they protested against our using cottonwood for cooking seal-meat; 

 they said it would cause the weather to become very cold. They have no 

 scruples against cooking caribou-meat over a wood fire on land provided that 

 the wood has not been washed up by the sea. Generally they made shavings 

 of any wood they used, because the pot, having string handles, could not be 

 suspended over the fire, but had to be set on a stone hearth, which left only a 

 small space underneath for the fire. The taboo in regard to driftwood, however, 

 seems to be dying out. Dolphin and Union strait Eskimos would not cook 

 over a driftwood fire even the salmon that were caught migrating up the streams 

 to the lakes, though they had come directly from the sea only an hour or two 

 before; but their scruples broke down when some Tree river natives told them 

 that it was done at the east end of Coronation gulf. 



In many places the only possible fuel during the summer is the okauyak 

 {Dryas integrifolia) , and this is an abomination. Whenever it rains, or a dense 

 mist covers the land, as often happens in the late spring and summer, the plant 

 will not burn; while even if the weather is fine, but the wind a little boisterous, 

 it is difficult to maintain a fire in the small half-open tent the natives use. One 

 day when I lay ill in my tent on Victoria island, the Eskimos detailed the little 



'Dr. Anderson says that when the stomach contains woody grass fibre instead of the succulent rein- 

 deer moss it is usually discarded by the western Eskimos; whether this is true of the Copper Eskimos 

 also is uncertain. 



'Collinson, p. 285. 

 •sParry, Vol. Ill, p. 285. Cf. Murdoch, Am. Naturalist, Jan. 1887, p. 15. 



