4G8 
the year.^ ;So the main body of the Eskimo made their homes 
on the coast where, given favonralde weather, they could capture 
sea mammals both in winter and in summer, and in summer, more- 
over, could trap the shoals of salmon trout that migrated yearly 
up the creeks and rivers. Yet even they abandoned their sealing 
and fisliing ])laces when midsummer a]iproached, aiul hunted the 
caribou while its fur was prime, and for a month or two afterwards 
wlien it assumed the long thick coat so valuable for winter garments 
and sleeping-robes. For the caribou was well-nigh indispensable to 
all Eskimo, because its fur offered the most suitable clothing for 
extremely cold weather, its sinew provided thread for sewing and 
lines for sealing and fishing gear, and its bones and antlers could be 
worked into numberless articles ranging from liarpoons and arrow- 
heads to thimbles.- 
For another reason, too, the Eskimo were better off on the sea- 
coast than following the movements of the caribou month by month. 
Inland, on the barren grounds, there was no fuel except scattered 
patches of heather, dwarf willow, and the creeping dryas. The 
Caribou Eskimo had to build separate kitchens of snow to cook with 
these fuels in winter,'^ and in their real dwellings, the snow-huts in 
which they workerl and slept, kept only tiny lamps of burning 
caribou-fat that lacked even the warmth necessary to dry their 
clothing. The coast Eskimo, on the other hand, derived an excellent 
fuel from the blubber of the sea mammals, particularly the seals, 
and as long as they prospered in their seal-hunting lacked neither 
food for themselves nor light and warmth in their houses. Even if 
their hunting was not always successful, or without its rlangers and 
hardships, yet. given territories that lay outside the limits of the 
forests, they endured fewer famines on the seacoast, and could render 
their homes more comfortable, than their kinsmen who roamed the 
barren lands of the interior.'* 
Many Inrlian tribes also hunted sea mammals — the Beothuk of 
Newfoundlanfl, the Micmac of Nova Scotia, and all the tribes along 
1 C/. Birkol -Srnii li , Krtj.: “The Cnribou E.^kimoH. Mnleriz*! aiul Soi’inl I.ifp anr! tlir.ir Cultiira! Posi- 
tion”; Pniiort of tin* Fifth Tliiilc F.xpoiUtion 1921-24, vol. v. pt. i. pp. 101, 135 (Cnponlingon, 1929). 
2 In northwest Oreenlamt rnriliou were .so sraree that the local “ Polar” Eskimo, who inhabited that 
distrirt, Renerally wore trousers of polar-bear fur and coals of seal, rabbit, or bird skin. 
•'1 Despite their niune, “Eaters of raw meal,” the Eskimo always preferred cooked food, or, for 
second choice, frozen. They ate rziw meat aiifl lish only when driven by necessity. 
^ It i.s much easier, of cour.se, to find i-easons why the Eskimo shonhl have developed a different mode 
of life from the Indians, given an Aretic anti snb-Aretic home, than to explain how they eame to settle 
down in that home. No theory yet aihaaneed seems to provide a satisfactory answer ti> the latter 
problem. 
