PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 
17 
mercial importance — copper. The metal is so abundant that 
not only do they gather in the summer enough to supply the 
wants of all their neighbours and to pay for most of their 
own imports, but it is found in such large, pure and easily 
workable masses, that they are induced to make of copper 
various articles which even among other copper gatherers 
(e.g., the Kogluktogmiut of Bloody fall) are made of bone 
or horn, such as the middle-piece of the seal harpoon, snow 
testers for discovering suitable building sites in winter, “feelers” 
for locating seal holes, etc. They find enough fire stone (pyrites) 
for their own use, though not equal in quantity or quality to 
that found among the Hanefagmiut. Since 1855 or thereabout 
M’Clure's abandoned ship the “Investigator” and her caches 
on shore in the Bay of Mercy on north Banks island have helped 
the tribe to retain the mastery of the commercial situation 
locally. Though their last expedition to the wreck (which 
has long been broken up by the waves) was some fifteen or 
twenty years ago, articles of iron are even now more abundant 
and cheaper among them than among the more eastern groups 
who are nearer the present source of supply — Hudson bay. 
At present the Sound people trade chiefly with three tribes — 
the HanefSgmiut, Puiblifmiut, and Ekalluktogmiut. For a 
hundred or so years ago there are to be added, to our knowledge, 
the now extinct tribes of northwestern Victoria island and Banks 
island and the vanished inhabitants of Cape Parry. There may 
be copper in the district north of Minto inlet; there is almost 
certainly none in Banks island ; there is quite certainly none on 
the mainland near Cape Parry so far as the Eskimo have dis- 
covered; this whole now deserted territory they must, therefore, 
have supplied with copper through indefinite periods of the 
past, as they now supply both southwestern and southeastern 
Victoria island (but not south-central Victoria island). What the 
western limits of the copper traffic were in early times future 
archaeological research may show; certainly some of it got 
beyond the Mackenzie delta. 
Next in importance to their activities as original producers 
of copper, comes their traffic as middlemen in stone lamps and 
stone pots. They say (and the uniformity of type and material 
