Appendix 247 



Ekaluktok river flowing southeast. This meeting can hardly take place, there- 

 fore, before the middle of June. Now at this season, in a normal year, the 

 snow is fast leaving the ground, the rivers are breaking out, and the lakes are 

 becoming surrounded with a margin of water. TraveUing by sled, especially 

 with an Eskimo sled shod with frozen mud, grows more and more difficult 

 every day. It is very improbable then that the Kanghiryuak natives travel 

 any farther by sled until the fall. Even if they did push down to the coast, as 

 Mr. Stefansson supposed^, and reach the mouth of the Ekaluktok river in 

 Wellington bay, they would find the natives either already inland, or else 

 caching their stocks of blubber on the shore before going into the interior of the 

 island to fish and hunt, not, under ordinary circumstances at least, preparing to 

 cross the strait to the mainland. We must assume therefore that the Kang- 

 hiryuarmiut cache their sleds in the interior (as the Puivhrmiut did in the 

 summer of 1915), spend the summer hunting and fishing in the neighbourhood, 

 recover their sleds in the fall, and, travelling down to Wellington bay, become 

 merged for the winter with the Ekaluktomiut on Dease strait. Theoretically, 

 of course, they might cross over to the mainland as soon as the sea was frozen 

 solidly over (in November), and either make their way west to Bathurst inlet, 

 or east to the EUice river or to Ogden bay; then during the dark days of winter 

 they might push on south to the Akilinnik and return to the coast in the spring. 

 Such a course might appeal to the European explorer, equipped with a light 

 steel-shod sled and a high-powered hunting rifle, and anxious to make the 

 journey as quickly as possible. But to the Eskimo time is of no value; his 

 hunting weapon is the bow and arrow, and his cumbersome sled with its heavy 

 mud shoeing is little adapted to inland travel over the soft snow of early winter. 

 Moreover, owing to the scarcity of game and fuel along the Arctic coast at this 

 season of the year, after the caribou have migrated south (very few seals are 

 obtainable before the new year), the Copper Eskimo is compelled to lay in a 

 stock of provisions to last him over Christmas at least, while for fuel he utilizes 

 the blubber that he has cached on the coast the previous spring. Hence a long 

 journey at this season of the year, when the daylight does not last more than 

 five hours, with a sled loaded down with provisions and blul)ber, is not prac- 

 ticable. The Bathurst inlet natives who travel to the Akilinnik in the fall of 

 the year and return to the coast in the spring take their sleds and stocks of 

 blubber with them inland the previous spring, and have their journey half 

 completed before the summer overtakes them. It is not unlikely indeed that 

 they reach the AkiUnnik, or one of its tributaries in the neighbourhood of 

 Aberdeen lake, before Christmas, perhaps even before the dark days set in, 

 when travelling, with its concomitant fishing and hunting, becomes more 

 difficult. 



We must suppose, therefore, that the migrating Kanghiryuarmiut remain 

 with the Ekaluktomiut during the early winter. They could lay in a store of 

 dried and frozen meat and fish during the summer, and fall, but for blubber 

 they would have to rely on the supplies that were cached by the Ekaluktomiut 

 during the spring. This factor alone would be sufficient to limit the number 

 of migrating natives to two or three families. Towards spring, when the Eka- 

 luktomiut visit their western neighbours, the usual reshuffling of groups would 

 occur, and some Kanghiryuak and Ekaluktok natives might join the Bathurst 

 inlet people and travel southward. Again they would cache their sleds inland 

 when the snow melted, and either pack across to the Akilinnik in the summer, 

 returning with the first snows, or else make the journey by sled in the early 

 winter and return the following spring. They could then rejoin the Ekaluk- 

 tomiut before the latter abandoned their sealing on the ice, travel with them 

 up the Ekaluktok river in the late spring, and join their countrymen from 

 Prince Albert sound in the interior of Victoria island about the middle or end 

 of June, exactly two years after they had left them. 

 'G.S.C., Museum Bulletin, No. 6, 1914, p. 6. 



