152 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 . 



with a brown bear. He and the natives of his settlement saw two or three flashes 

 of Ughtning one day, and retired in alarm to their tents. Taligvak fell asleep, but 

 was suddenly awakened by the sound of fighting outside, and before he had 

 time to rise a brown bear ripped open the side of his tent and broke the poles. 

 Taligvak seized his knife and delivered a blind thrust at the animal. He missed 

 it,' but the bear, quite as startled as the man' at the sudden collapse of the tent, 

 turned round and fled, tramping down in its terror the racks of meat that the 

 Eskimos had set out to dry. 



Polar bears are run down on foot, usually with the help of dogs, and are then 

 speared with harpoons, or with knives lashed to the ends of long poles. We ran 

 down a mother and its cub close to Cape Baring in 1915, after a chase of about 

 five miles. The natives have many stories, of course, about their experiences 

 with these animals. One seized the leg of a woman as she was entering the 

 passage of her hut. She screamed, and a man rushed out and shot it with his 

 bow. Another bear trampled downa snow hut and carried off a woman who was 

 sleeping inside, although there was a man on each side of her. A polar bear 

 attacked a boy who had lingered behind his people during a migration. He 

 thrust his harpoon into its throat until it retired, when he fled and told his people ; 

 several of the hunters then returned and killed the bear. A rather humorous 

 story is told of a native in south-west Victoria island, near Cape Hamilton, 

 who heard a noise outside his tent one night and, thinking his dogs were fighting, 

 seized his snow-duster and went out to punish them. In the darkness he faintly 

 discerned an animal in front of him, so he caught hold of it and began to thresh 

 it. To his horror it proved to be a polar bear, but with great presence of mind 

 he caught up his bow and shot it. 



There is very little that calls for notice in the methods by which birds are 

 secured. A native who comes on a flock of ptarmigan will circle cautiously 

 round it until he can shoot at two or three birds in line, when there is naturally 

 far less chance of his missing. Some of the natives have even tried to line up 

 two caribou in this way, and the hunter who has succeeded in bringing them 

 both down with one shot will boast of it for months afterwards. In the early 

 days of spring loons and other water-fowl settle in small pools of open water 

 and dive down in pursuit of fish. The Eskimos wait until the bird dives, then 

 rush up and the moment it emerges shoot it with their arrows or stab it with 

 their fish-spears. Snares are employed for squirrels and for small birds like 

 sand-pipers, larks and snow-buntings, but never for ptarmigan or for caribou. 

 In the case of birds the noose is set over the nest and the end made fast to a 

 stick. Snares for squirrels, on the other hand, are usually operated. by hand. 



Fishing. 



Primitive as are the methods of fishing that the Copper Eskimos employ 

 they are nevertheless in most cases very efTective. The fish-net, so universal 

 among the Eskimos of the Mackenzie river and o' northern Alaska, is here 

 unkjiown, or wrs until the last few years. Often the Copper Eskimos practise 

 the most primitive of all methods, catching the fish with their hands as they 

 lurk beneath boulders on the edges of lakes or streams. It is but one stage in 

 advance of this when they rock the boulders with their feet, and stab with 

 improvised spears at the fish as they dart out from underneath. But their 

 commonest method of fishing is with hook and line through holes or cracks 

 in the ice with which the lakes are covered during the greater part of the year. 



The hook, karyok, was originally made of copper, but iron, beaten into the 

 same shape, now frequently takes its place. Of whichever, metal it is made, 

 however, the hook is always barbless; even if given an ordinary European hook 

 the natives will immediately file away the barb. This may be due in part to 

 trere conservatism, but mainly to the fact that lake trout and lake salmon, 



