Food 101 



seasons a considerable quantity of blubber is wasted until the warm days of 

 spring, when it is carefully stored away in large bags and cached on the mainland 

 or on an island near the shore for use in the following autumn. 



Around Prince Albert sound and Minto inlet polar bears are almost as 

 important an item of diet in winter as seals. The liver is said to produce sickness 

 and is therefore never eaten. According to McChntock, the same thing is said 

 in Greenland about the heart,i but whether this is so among the Copper Eskimos 

 I do not know. Caribou are very numerous in the valley of the lower Copper- 

 mine river throughout the winter. In February, 1915, we saw at least two 

 hundred in a single day, just above Bloody fall. The Copper Eskimos, however, 

 never hunt them at that season, but spend all their days on the sea ice. 

 One man said that their bows would snap with the intense cold; but this can 

 hardly be true, for the Backs river natives, who remain inland all the winter, live 

 during that season on caribou and musk-oxen, which they must formerly have 

 secured with bows and arrows, though now many of the hunters possess rifles. 

 In reality the Copper Eskimo is afraid to leave the ice in winter, because it is 

 there alone that he can obtain an ample supply of fuel for his lamp. It is only 

 in the Coppermine region that caribou are numerous enough to furnish the back- 

 fat that might take the place of blubber, and back-fat in any case is a very poor 

 substitute. The Backs river natives use it, but their existence in winter is 

 characterized by the Copper Eskimos as cold and miserable in the extreme. 

 Wood is found in abundance all down the Coppermine to within twelve miles 

 of its mouth, but an open fire is impracticable in a snow hut, and unsatisfactory 

 in a tent; the northern Indians in their tipis scorch on one side of their bodies 

 while they freeze on the other. 



In the early spring, when the caribou are moving across the straits north- 

 ward, the Eskimos are still living on the sea ice. Occasionally they attempt to 

 intercept the deer; but as a rule they have little success, because the level surface 

 of the ice gives no cover to a hunter who must approach within twenty yards of 

 his quarry before he can launch a shaft with any certainty of hitting his mark. 

 Rifles, however, are changing this, and the Eskimos are beginning to hunt the 

 deer on land and ice alike, both in the spring and fall. They welcome a change 

 of diet just as we do, and after a long regime of seal-meat they look forward to 

 caribou-meat and fish in the early spring just as much as they do to seal-meat 

 at the end of summer. Eagerly the natives watch for the first sign of the migrat- 

 ing caribou; they even go shoreward at times to intercept the herds. In March, 

 1916, a band of natives moved close in to the shore off Cape Lambert just at 

 the time when the caribou might be expected to cross the strait, and portions of 

 the first deer they killed were conveyed by sled to the main camp near the Liston 

 and Sutton islands. There the natives were expectantly awaiting its arrival. 

 As the sled approached the settlement the hunter ran from side to side two 

 or three times to announce his success, and immediately an excited crowd of 

 natives turned out of their huts to welcome him. 



Whether fish or caribou predominate in their summer diet depends entirely 

 on the resources of the particular region in which they live.'' Thus in 1915, in 

 southwest Victoria island, sealing was definitely abandoned at the end of April. 

 In May, when the main body of the caribou was migrating north across Dolphin 

 and Union strait, the Eskimos ate more caribou-meat than fish, especially those 

 parts of the animal that are less suitable for drying, such as the head, the chine, 

 the shoulders and the thighs. In June caribou were less plentiful, so during 

 that and the following month the people lived mainly on fish, moving about 



•McClintook, p. 100. 



2The introduction of rifles has naturally increased the possibilities of hunting and made caribou cor- 

 respondingly more important. Fish-nets are slowing coming into vogue, but as long as the caribou remain 

 numerous the Eskimos will always spend more time in hunting than in fishing, because the caribou furnish 

 not only food, but skins for clothing and for tents, sinew for sewing and for small lashings, and bone and 

 horn that can be worked up into implements of various kinds. 



