108 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



their shamans would interrogate the spirits that they believed to control the 

 weather, and try to appease their anger and bring about a cessation of the 

 storms. Whenever they did abate in the slightest degree, and there was the 

 faintest prospect of securing seals, every man and youth would sally forth, and 

 search for hours in the bitter cold in the hope that he might at last find some- 

 thing to take home to his starving wife and children. There was not a man in a 

 Kilusiktok settlement that I visited at the end of February whose face was not 

 covered with great blotches where he had been severely frost-bitten. Even the 

 women braved the weather, and fished for tom-cod through the ice behind the 

 shelter of a few snow-blocks. Sometimes the natives would recall dreadful tales 

 of years gone by, how, not a generation before, the Kanghiryuarmiut had chopped 

 up the corpses of their dead and eaten the frozen flesh to save themselves from 

 starvation. Away in the east, too, the Netsilingmiut had cut off a man's legs 

 while he was still alive and tried to appease their hunger with his flesh. No one, 

 so far as I know, actually starved to death in 1916, though the lives of two or 

 three old people were undoubtedly shortened through the privations they had to 

 endure. Fortunately, a change came over the weather about the middle of 

 March. Before the month was out the crisis was over; the huts of the Eskimos 

 were filled once more with meat and blubber, and the dance-house resounded 

 with song and laughter. > 



A few remarks may be added about the way in which these natives produce 

 fire. The thong drill used by all other Eskimos is known to them, but they never 

 employ it except in an emergency, because of the labour involved and the diffi- 

 culty of obtaining suitable wood. They use in its stead two lumps of pyrites, 

 which they obtain from the Kugaluk river on south-west Victoria island, from a 

 creek a few miles east of the Coppermine river, and possibly from one or two 

 other sources as well. Parry's description of the process will serve admirably; 

 he says : " For the purpose of obtaining fire the Esquimaux use two lumps of 

 common iron pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leather case, 

 containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands. If this tinder does 

 not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground 

 willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught, it is gently blown 

 till the fire has spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of oiled 

 wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process having occupied 

 perhaps two or three minutes."^ 



The Copper Eskimos use the seeds of the Eriophorum or cotton-grass more 

 often than those of the ground willow for. both tinder and lampwieks. Large 

 quantities of these Eriophorum seeds are collected during the late summer and 

 fall and are stored in small bags of one kind or another, often made from a 

 loon's foot, or a squirrel skin, or the lining round the heart of a caribou or 

 bear. The tedious process of stripping the stalks from the seeds is done by the 

 women in spare moments in their houses. For the lampwick the Eriophorum 

 seeds are dipped in the blubber, then drawn up on to the edge of the lamp and 

 pinched into a low ridge all along its rim. Such a wick requires renewing every 

 day, whereas a tinder bag will last for months. In winter, if the lamp expires 

 in one house, a fire-stick dipped in blubber is kindled at a neighbour's lamp and 

 carried over in a bag or other convenient receptacle. Eriophorum seeds are 



'Mr. Stetansson, I think, gives too gloomy a picture of their life when he says (op. cit., p. 131): "At Cape 

 Bexley and to the east there is apparently hardly a winter when the people do not have to subsist for 

 considerable periods on seal oil alone . . . saved the previous spring and cached during the summer." 

 At that time he had never visited the country except in spring and summer. I have already explained 

 that this oil is stored away for their lamps in the fall, and generally lasts, with the food they collect in 

 the_ summer, until about Christmas. January and February are the critical months in stormy winters, 

 which occur, as far as my data allow me to judge, about once in every four years. Then they suffer from 

 privation and want, but real starvation on any considerable scale probably happens not more often than 

 once in every fifteen or twenty years. 



Tarry, Vol. Ill, p. 284. 



