PRESENT COMMERCE AMONG ARCTIC COAST ESKIMO. 
5 
whalers began to trade in Hudson bay, yet articles of wood still 
form more than half the entire power-in-exchange of what the 
trading parties bring home to Victoria island from their visits to 
the Akilinik. Though we do hot know how many centuries 
have elapsed since these trading expeditions first began, we can 
say definitely that their object, in so far as they were undertaken 
by northerners, must have been then the same as it is now — the 
securing of materials for bows, arrows, lances and spears, snow 
shovels, dishes, sleds, snow house floore, etc. 
The rapidity of trade movement is a question of interest. 
Beginning at the west, we may trace to advantage some Siberian 
article, such as a metal knife, that might conceivably have been 
passed on eastward without falling on the way into the hands 
of anyone who delayed it by owning it for use. Whether it had 
come across Bering strait by sled in winter or boat in summer, it 
would most likely be started on its way to the Colville from (say) 
Kotzebue sound, through purchase at a summer trading ren- 
dezvous on the coast, by Kuwflk or Noatak people who had 
descended to the sea in boats. These would return up the rivers 
to hunt the caribou, while the skins were good for clothing and 
while the animals were fat (in August and September). Not 
until the days lengthened in the following spring, could the knife 
easily get to the Colville, but in March or April trading parties 
would set out to sled over the Arctic divide and in June they 
would descend the river to (say) the trading centre of Nirlik 
near the western edge of the Colville delta, where they might 
trade the knife to a Barrow man going east to Barter island, or 
they might take the knife to Barter island themselves. Here 
it would be traded to Mackenzie River (Herschel island) Eskimo 
in mid -summer, just a year after leaving the coast west of Alaska. 
By open water it would reach Herschel island or might even get 
so far east as the east edge of the Mackenzie delta. If we were 
to suppose the knife to have reached the Barrow people from the 
west (viz. Point Hope, say), its course would be a little more 
devious probably, and its progress slower. 
The preceding paragraph is based on inquiries of various 
people now resident at Cape Smythe (Point Barrow) or east of 
