PRESENT COMMERCE A.MONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 
9 
antler and bits of metal) that are imitations, at last analysis, of 
Sheffield scissors. 
Commerce of ideas must accompany commerce in articles 
and materials. One who tries to decipher culture historical 
records from among the mass of lore and legends of a tribe gets 
considerable help through remembering that, though an Eskimo 
readily adopts new ideas and beliefs, he modifies all of them so as to 
make them assimilate readily with his previous ideas and beliefs, 
and he will neither abandon nor greatly modify his previous 
stock. Hence Christianity, for instance, is not replacing the 
old beliefs in any locality known to me, but is being superim- 
posed upon them. Certain practices, it is true, are being aban- 
doned — e. g., sorcery. This is not, however, from a lessened 
faith in the powers of the sorcerer, but because "it is wrong to 
practice witchcraft.” There is, however, a belief (which may 
indeed always have existed) that the sorcerers of to-day are less 
powerful than those of the past. 
Turning now to the natural resources of each tribe and their 
commercial intercourse with their neighbours, we will consider 
first the region between the mouth of the Yukon and the mouth 
of the Mackenzie. The treatment will be brief, for the reason 
that the writer has little first hand information regarding Alaskan 
trade intercourse that is not already in print in one language 
or another. 
At Port Clarence, and other places whose people undertook 
journeys to Siberia, there arrived each summer, from the south, 
boats of the Unalit and perhaps other tribes loaded with wooden 
platters, buckets, dishes, and dippers, which were exchanged 
entirely for Siberian wares — reindeer skins, jade and other 
beads, metal articles and (in later times only ?) tobacco. These 
wooden articles were kept at Port Clarence a year, for when the 
Unalit arrived it was considered too late in the season for visiting 
Siberia, but the next year they were taken by boat across the 
strait. Ivory, oil, and other products of sea animals formed an 
important part of the cargoes, and after the Russian fur trade 
commenced in Siberia, and perhaps earlier, furs were carried 
west also. The Siberian wares which formed the return cargoes, 
were bartered off at the summer trading centres in Kotzebue 
