PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 
13 
ceived were stone lamps and stone pots. They bought some 
copper too, but (within the last century or two at least) not 
much, for they were supplied from the west with Siberian metals. 
The preceding sketch has been made briefer than even the 
fewness of facts at the writer’s command makes imperative; in 
dealing with the tribes from Banks island to Back river an at- 
tempt will be made at greater thoroughness, not so much be- 
cause the information is more abundant as because this district, 
as Boas has somewhere said, “is virtually unknown.” 
The tribes with which it is desired to deal more fully are 
by Boas, the foremost of living students of the Eskimo, appar- 
ently excluded from the “Central Eskimo” group. In a work 
which is fortunately at hand for definite citation, he says: “The 
last tribe of the Central Eskimo, the Utkusiksalirmiut, inhabit 
the estuary of Back river” {The Central Eskimo, Sixth Annual 
Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1888). A century 
ago, while brisk intercourse was yet maintained, some cultural 
or other ground might possibly have been found for including 
them with their western neighbours among the Mackenzie River 
Eskimo, but the day for that is past. No geographic term 
descriptive of the district exists without being either too com- 
prehensive (as “Arctic Coast Eskimo,” cf. Hanbury), or not 
comprehensive enough and therefore misleading (as “Coronation 
Gulf Eskimo” or “Parry Island Eskimo”). Tentatively we 
shall in the present discussion give them a title from the chief 
commercial resource of their country — copper. Banks island and 
Back river may not define absolutely the area within which the 
production of implements of native copper had a decided influence 
on the culture of the people ; on the other hand, future research may 
show that they do. Meantime, for our convenience in the pres- 
ent paper, we will refer to the below-mentioned tribes collectively 
as the Copper Eskimo. In the list, the winter residence of the 
tribe will be given first, and then the summer residence. Tribes 
visited on their own hunting grounds are designated by (l), those 
members which have been interviewed away from home are 
marked (2). The rest are known to us only through the accounts 
of members of other tribes. 
