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quent dispersals and reunions of the aborigines. Xow they wandered 
in individual families, now in small groups of three or four families 
together. At another time all the families in a district would com- 
bine into a definite band at some favourite fishing or hunting ground, 
and several bands generally united for a few short days each year to 
trade and to hold festivities. These fluctuations in the social group- 
ings occurred among all the tribes, but were particularly marked 
among the Eskimo, who “ reacted to the seasons, to their constantly 
changing environment, more than most of the inhabitants of our 
globe. ... In winter, when the land lay bare and silent beneath the 
snow, when the caribou had migrated south, when the twilight hours 
were brief and the nights long, the natives (Copper Eskimos) had 
banded together into tribes, and tribe combined with tribe to wrest 
a precarious livelihood from the frozen sea by united effort. Food 
had been common to all, and their snow-houses had adjoined each 
other so closely that the families seemed absorbed in the group. 
With the returning sun and lengthening days nature had recalled its 
life; the seals had appeared on top of the ice, the caribou had come 
northward again, and the tribes of Eskimos had broken up into little 
bands. For a time they had lingered on the ice to hunt more seals; 
then, turning landward, they had pursued the caribou over the snow- 
covered hills and plains. Now the snow was vanishing, the caribou 
had scattered, ami fish alone provided a sure livelihood until mid- 
summer. So my party, like many another throughout the country, 
was dividing up into its constituent households, each of which now 
toiled for itself alone. The tribe no longer existed; society had dis- 
solved into its first element, the family.” i 
Each family group, and each band, had a nominal leader, some 
man who through courage, force of character, or skill in hunting, had 
won for himself temporary pre-eminence. The composition of the 
family groups, and consequently their leaders, varied from one season 
to another, but the band was a relatively stable unit with definite 
territorial boundaries. Theoretically, every imlividual in a band 
was equal to every other, so that its leader enjoyed few or no 
privileges, and held his position only so long as he could win popular 
support. Thus a Jesuit missionary states of a Afontagnais band: 
“All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end; for he is 
1 .Ten n OSS, D. : " Tlie People of tlie Twilialit,” p. 136 f (Now York. 1028), “Tribe” and “band” in 
this pa.ssage corre.'spontl to “band” and “family pronp” in the present chapter. 
