242 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



especially at the east end of Coronation gulf, where the people had been rather 

 more isolated. There we found them more honest, more hospitable, and more 

 courteous than the inhabitants of the west end of the gulf and of Dolphin and 

 Union strait, where many of the younger men and women were shameless beggars 

 and meddling thieves, who would slyly turn out every bag on one's sled and 

 examine or carry off its contents. For them the unprotected stranger was fair 

 booty, and only the fear of being cut off from all supplies of rifles and ammunition 

 and other articles on which they were learning to depend prevented them from 

 robbing us more extensively than they did. Even among themselves petty 

 stealing became more frequent, and detection more difficult. This degradation 

 in manners and morals was not of course universal. Some of the natives them- 

 selves deplored it, and used what little influence they had to check their neigh- 

 bours and bring about more honourable relations. Two or three of the worst 

 offenders against us received salutary punishments, and the arrest in 1916 of 

 the two murderers of the Roman Catholic missionaries acquainted the natives 

 for the first time with the agents of civilized law. In that year an Anglican 

 mission under the energetic and capable leadership of the Rev. H. Girling took 

 over our station at Bernard harbour, the Hudson's Bay Company established a 

 trading post and several white trappers and traders planted themselves at 

 various points along the coast. In 1917 a second patrol of the Royal North 

 West Mounted Police visited Coronation gulf and a post of the Police was 

 later established at Tree river, and the solitary traveller may now wander with 

 impunity everywhere provided that he exercises a reasonable amount of tact 

 and prudence. 



Rapid changes are taking place in the culture of the natives, and implements 

 of iron and steel, rifles, fish-nets, open boats, European textiles and sewing- 

 machines, European foods, cheap musical instruments arid the development of 

 trapping at the expense of hunting and sealing will work a complete transforma- 

 tion within the space of a very few years. Already the new culture elements 

 and the new teachings that are filtering in from the west have profoundly modi- 

 fied their social and religious ideas, and before the present generation passes 

 away the primitiveness of the Copper Eskimo will have ceased to exist. How 

 many will remain by that time, and whether they will be able to take any part 

 in the development of this region depends largely on the manner in which we 

 fulfill our trust. For in throwing open their country to outside invasion we 

 have incurred a heavy responsibility towards the natives. We may increase 

 the security of life among them by checking infanticide and murder, we may 

 protect them from unscrupulous exploitation and from the ravages of intox- 

 icating liquors, but all this will, be of little avail unless we immediately take 

 measures to secure them against the introduction of our diseases. Smallpox 

 carried off 2,000 of the Greenland Eskimos in 1734 and 1735, and in the same 

 century it destroyed many of the Labrador natives as well. Thirty years ago 

 it was estimated that the Eskimo population of the Mackenzie river delta 

 numbered 2,000; by 1913 it was reduced to barely 500, the majority of the 

 natives having been swept away by measles. The epidemic of influenza in 191 8 

 exacted a terrible toll among the Eskimos of northern Alaska, several settlements 

 being practically wiped out. The Copper Eskimos have no diseases of their 

 own, or at least none were known up to 1916; but white men and western 

 Eskimos are flocking into their country, and in a few more years perhaps they 

 too will fall victims to some of the scourges of our civilization. It may be 

 impossible to prevent this calamity entirely, but at least we could do something 

 to check it, by instituting a kind of quarantine such as the Danes have done for 

 Greenland. At the present time the only practicable route into the Copper 

 Eskimo country is by way of the Mackenzie river, and if no one were allowed 

 to go eastward without a certificate from a medical officer it might be possible 

 to save these natives from the worst of our diseases and a more or less speedy 

 extinction. 



