PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 
23 
at a single time and place. The largest camp we ever saw prob- 
ably did not have over forty individuals and the total seen by 
us was not far from two hundred. There were, however, parties 
whom we never had the chance to see — some had come and gone 
before the band we were with reached Dease river (the first week 
in August), others came and went while we were hunting west 
and south of the main woodgathering place, which is a clump of 
remarkably heavy trees located on an eastern (unmapped) 
branch of the upper Dease which heads near the east end of Mc- 
Tavish bay and flows north, northwest, west, and last southwest 
to join the main Dease about twenty miles above its mouth. 
This clump of trees is known to the Bear Lake Slaves as “Big 
Stick island” and is about 25 miles, as the crow flies, from the 
mouth of the Dease, in a direction a little north of east. 
The most westerly route from the sea to “Big Stick island” 
leads from the mouth of Richardson river to the narrows of Dismal 
lake. Here those parties that have kayaks ferry across while 
those without boats approach the lake some three miles farther 
east, where it is fordable along the west side of a group of willow- 
grown islands. From the narrows the road leads south about 
eight miles to the crest of the Great Bear Lake-Coronation Gulf 
divide and another eight miles down a small stream that runs 
through a chain of ponds to Imaefnirk lake, the source of the 
middle branch of the Dease. The road then skirts the east 
shore of this lake for five or six miles, passes south over another 
small divide (between the middle and south branches of the 
Dease) to “Big Stick island.” This route is followed generally 
by members of the Puiblifmlut, Noahonifmiut, Ualliryumiut, 
P^lifmiut, Nagyuktogmiut, and Kogluktogmiut. In 1910 the 
Kogluktogmiut were the only tribe whose full strength was found 
south of the Dease — the others were represented by groups of a 
few families. There were three families from Cape Bexley (Akfl- 
liakattdgmiut). Some years the entire Kogluktogmiut tribe 
spends the whole summer on Bloody fall of the Coppermine, 
and portions of other tribes occasionally fish there too. In 1910 
there were no people at all anywhere on the lower Coppermine. 
Other routes, whose minutiae are unknown to me, lead from 
the sea to various points west of the Kent peninsula to the Cop- 
