16 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 6. 
these people we were handicapped by difficulties in understand- 
ing their speech and in making ourselves understood. After 
that I had little difficulty with the language, and my native 
companions (from Port Clarence, Alaska, and Mackenzie river) 
still less. There wore off, too, during this period, the distrustful 
reserve with which we were in the beginning treated as the 
first complete strangers who had to their knowledge ever come 
to live among them. Naturally the main part of what we 
know about their present and past commerce consists of what 
they have told us, and of apparently safe inferences therefrom. 
Some things we know *‘af our own knowledge," however, e.g., 
the sources of copper, kettle-stone, pyrites; certain of the land 
and ice trade routes; methods of travel, rate of travel, etc. 
From the point of view of what an Eskimo wants and needs, 
the most westerly of the now existing tribes, the Kanhityuafmiut, 
had natural resources within the limits of their annual migra- 
tions as a tribe, which must formerly, even more than now, 
have made them nearly or quite the most prosperous tribe of 
the district we are considering. Their winter seat in Banks island 
(near Nelson head) is well supplied with seals for food and 
fuel, but so abundant are the polar bears whose meat and fat 
they prefer to seal, that in 1910-11 over 150 of the tribe's total 
of about 200 lived almost exclusively on bears — “and so it was 
with our forefathers too". The muskoxen, whose horns furnish 
them material for spoons and dippers for their own use and for 
trade, as well as for knife handles and a dozen other articles, 
are perhaps more abundant in Banks island than anywhere else 
in the region. Certainly the Hanefagmiut and PuiblirmlOt 
have long been purchasing muskox horns and articles made 
of them — chiefly from the Kanhifyulrmiut. Prince Albert 
sound (Kanhiryuak) from which the tribe gets its name, supplies 
them well with caribou in summer and autumn, and seals in the 
spring. The three chief rivers that fall into the head of the 
sound are all rich in fish which they spear and hook — nets are 
unknown. The south coast of the sound supplies them with 
driftwood sufficient for arrows and other small articles, but bows, 
sleds, pails, etc., they obtain by purchase. The mountains 
to the northeast of the sound furnish the chief article of com- 
