Ill 
erty than they could pack on their backs, carry in their canoes, and 
trans])ort on their toboggans, sleds, or travois. Indeed, even the 
agricultural Iroquoians, who built new villages every ten or twelve 
years, and the tribes on the Pacific coast, who abandoned their houses 
for three or four months each summer and probably moved their 
village sites about once in a generation, had little desire to encumber 
themselves with personal property that was not readily removed. 
It was only natural, therefore, that trade should be restricted 
mainly to small objects, eitlier raw materials, food products, or 
articles of clothing and adornment. An Indian household was 
normally sufficient unto itself.^ It provided its own shelter, clothing 
and food, weapons for fishing and hunting, and tools and utensils for 
domestic use. Put the resources of all regions were not alike, and 
there were certain useful or desirable objects that many tribes could 
obtain through barter alone. Metallic copper, for example, which was 
valuable for tools and ornaments, occurred in a few localities only: 
around lakes Superior and Michigan, on the White river in Alaska, 
on the Coppermine river that flows into the Arctic ocean northeast 
of Great Bear lake, and in the centre of Victoria island in tlie Arctic 
archipelago. The Coronation Gulf Eskimo, who used the two last 
deposits, traded their copper east and west to other Eskimo tribes; 
and the Yellowknives bartered the Coppermine metal with Indian 
tribes to the south until the Chipewyans forcibly wrested the trade 
from their liands shortly tiefore the establishment of European trad- 
ing-posts on the shores of Hudson bay. The cojiper around the Great 
Lakes enriched not only the Iroquoian and othei' tribes of that area, 
but Indians far down the Mississipjii and Atlantic Coast tribes from 
the bay of Eundy to Virginia; while from the Copper river, in Alaska, 
the metal passed in trade all along the Pacific coast as far as Van- 
couver island, and probably beyond.- 
Concerning trade in other minerals we have less information. 
Xephrite from the Kobuk river, in northern Alaska, found its way to 
the Mackenzie delta; and the same mineral, present in the form of 
loose boulders on the Lower Thompson and Fraser rivers around Kam- 
loops and Lytton, was traded over a wide area of British Columbia, 
1 Considering the houseJiold ns the unit in a settlement of closely related families that rendered 
mutual assistance. 
- There may have been another, less important source for copper iji HritLsii Columbia itself. 
