Part 6
With the people of the Nu´natăk (Inland) River, the Nunatañmiun, they are well acquainted, as they meet them every summer for purposes of trading, and a family or two of Nunatañmiun sometimes spend the winter at the northern villages. One family wintered at Nuwŭk in 1881-’82, and another at Utkiavĭñ the following winter, while a widower of this “tribe” was also settled there for the same winter, having married a widow in the village. We obtained very little definite information about these people except that they came from the south and descended the Colville River. Our investigations were rendered difficult by the engrossing nature of the work of the station, and the trouble we experienced, at first, in learning enough of the language to make ourselves clearly understood. Dr. Simpson was able to learn definitely that the homes of these people are on the Nunatăk and that some of them visit Kotzebue Sound in the summer, while trading parties make a portage between the Nunatăk and Colville, descending the latter river to the Arctic Ocean.[N40] I have been informed by the captain of one of the American whalers that he has, in different seasons, met the same people at Kotzebue Sound and the mouth of the Colville. We also received articles of Siberian tame reindeer skin from the east, which must have come across the country from Kotzebue Sound.
[Footnote N40: Op. cit., pp. 234 and 236.]
These people differ from the northern natives in some habits, which will be described later, and speak a harsher dialect. We were informed that in traveling east after passing the mouth of the Colville they came to the Kûñmû´dlĭñ (“Kangmali enyuin” of Dr. Simpson and other authors) and still further off “a great distance” to the Kupûñ or “Great River”--the Mackenzie--near the mouth of which is the village of the Kupûñmiun, whence it is but a short distance inland to the “great house” (iglu´kpûk) of the white men on the great river (probably Fort Macpherson). Beyond this we only heard confused stories of people without posteriors and of sledges that run by themselves without dogs to draw them. We heard nothing of the country of Kĭtiga´ru[N41] or of the stone-lamp country mentioned by Dr. Simpson.[N42] The Kûñmûdlĭñ are probably, as Dr. Simpson believes, the people whose winter houses were seen by Franklin at Demarcation Point,[N43] near which, at Icy Reef, Hooper also saw a few houses.[N44]
[Footnote N41: This was the name of a girl at Nuwŭk.]
[Footnote N42: Op. cit., p. 269.]
[Footnote N43: Second Exp., p. 142.]
[Footnote N44: Tents of the Tuski, p. 255.]
As already stated, Capt. E. E. Smith was informed by the natives that there is now no village farther west than Herschel Island, where there is one of considerable size. If he was correctly informed, this must be a new village, since the older explorers who passed along the coast found only a summer camp at this point. He also states that he found large numbers of ruined iglus on the outlying sandy islands along the coast, especially near Anxiety Point. We have scarcely any information about these people, as the only white men who have seen them had little intercourse with them in passing along the coast.[N45] The Point Barrow people have but slight acquaintance with them, as they see them only a short time each summer. Captain Smith, however, informs me that in the summer of 1885 one boat load of them came back with the Point Barrow traders to Point Barrow, where he saw them on board of his ship. There was a man at Utkiavwĭñ who was called “the Kûñmû´dlĭñ.” He came there when a child, probably, by adoption, and was in no way distinguishable from the other people.
[Footnote N45: All the published information there is about them from personal observation can be found in Franklin, Second Exp., p. 142; T. Simpson, Narrative, pp. 118-123; and Hooper, Tents, etc., pp. 255-257 and 260.]
Father Petitot appears to include these people in the “Taρèoρmeut” division of his “Tchiglit” Eskimo, whom he loosely describes as inhabiting the coast from Herschel Island to Liverpool Bay, including the delta of the Mackenzie,[N46] without locating their permanent villages. In another place, however, he excludes the “Taρèoρmeut” from the “Tchiglit,” saying, “Dans l’ouest, les _Tchiglit_ communiquaient avec leurs plus proches voisins les Taρèoρ-meut,”[N47] while in a third place[N48] he gives the country of the “Tchiglit” as extending from the Coppermine River to the Colville, and on his map in the same volume, the “Tareormeut” are laid down in the Mackenzie delta only. According to his own account, however, he had no personal knowledge of any Eskimo west of the Mackenzie delta. These people undoubtedly have a local name derived from that of their winter village, but it is yet to be learned.
[Footnote N46: Monographie, p. xi.]
[Footnote N47: Ibid, p. xvi.]
[Footnote N48: Bull. de la Société de Géographie, 6^e sér., vol. 10, p. 256.]
It is possible that they do consider themselves the same people with the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta, and call themselves by the general name of “Taρèoρmeut” (= Taxaiomiun in the Point Barrow dialect), “those who live by the sea.” That they do not call themselves “Kûñmû´dlĭñ” or “Kanmali-enyuin” or “Kangmaligmeut” is to my mind quite certain. The word “Kûñmû´dlĭñ,” as already stated, is used at Norton Sound to designate the people of Point Barrow (I was called a “Kûñmû´dlĭñ” by some Eskimo at St. Michaels because I spoke the Point Barrow dialect), who do not recognize the name as belonging to themselves, but have transferred it to the people under consideration. Now, “Kûñmû´dlĭñ” is a word formed after the analogy of many Eskimo words from a noun kûñme and the affix lĭñ or dlĭñ (in Greenlandic lik), “one who has a ----.” The radical noun, the meaning of which I can not ascertain, would become in the Mackenzie dialect kρagmaρk (using Petitot’s orthography), which with -lik in the plural would make kρagmalit. (According to Petitot’s “Grammaire” the plural of -lik in the Mackenzie dialect is -lit, and not -gdlit, as in Greenlandic). This is the name given by Petitot on his map to the people of the Anderson River,[N49] while he calls the Anderson River itself Kρagmalik.[N50] The father, however, had but little personal knowledge of the natives of the Anderson, having made but two, apparently brief, visits to their village in 1865, when he first made the acquaintance of the Eskimo. He afterwards became fairly intimate with the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta, parties of whom spent the summers of 1869 and 1870 with him. From these parties he appears to have obtained the greater part of the information embodied in his Monographie and Vocabulaire, as he explicitly states that he brought the last party to Fort Good Hope “autant pour les instruire à loisir que pour apprendre d’eux leur idiome.”[N51] Nothing seems to me more probable than that he learned from these Mackenzie people the names of their neighbors of the Anderson, which he had failed to obtain in his flying visits 5 years before, and that it is the same name, “Kûñmû´dlĭñ,” which we have followed from Norton Sound and found always applied to the people just beyond us. Could we learn the meaning of this word the question might be settled, but the only possible derivation I can see for it is from the Greenlandic Karmaĸ, a wall, which throws no light upon the subject. Petitot calls the people of Cape Bathurst Kρagmaliveit, which appears to mean “the real Kûñmû´dlĭñ” (“Kûñmû´dlĭñ” and the affix -vik, “the real”).
[Footnote N49: See also Monographie, etc., p. xi, where the name is spelled Kρamalit.]
[Footnote N50: Vocabulaire, etc., p. 76.]
[Footnote N51: Bull. Soc. de Géog., 6^e sér., vol. 10, p. 39.]
The Kupûñmiun appear to inhabit the permanent villages which have been seen near the western mouth of the Mackenzie, at Shingle Point[N52] and Point Sabine,[N53] with an outlying village, supposed to be deserted, at Point Kay.[N54] They are the natives described by Petitot in his Monographie as the Taρèoρmeut division of the Tchiglit, to whom, from the reasons already stated, most of his account seems to apply. There appears to me no reasonable doubt, considering his opportunities for observing these people, that Taρèoρmeut, “those who dwell by the sea,” is the name that they actually apply to themselves, and that Kupûñmiun, or Kopagmut, “those who live on the Great River,” is a name bestowed upon them by their neighbors, perhaps their western neighbors alone, since all the references to this name seem to be traceable to the authority of Dr. Simpson. Should they apply to themselves a name of similar meaning, it would probably be of a different form, as, according to Petitot,[N55] they call the Mackenzie Kuρvik, instead of Kupûk or Kupûñ.
[Footnote N52: T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 112.]
[Footnote N53: Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 264.]
[Footnote N54: ibid, p. 263.]
[Footnote N55: Bull. Soc. de Géog., 6^e sér., vol. 10, p. 182.]
These are the people who visit Fort Macpherson every spring and summer,[N56] and are well known to the Hudson Bay traders as the Mackenzie River Eskimo. They are the Eskimo encountered between Herschel Island and the mouth of the Mackenzie by Franklin, by Dease and Simpson, and by Hooper and Pullen, all of whom have published brief notes concerning them.[N57]
[Footnote N56: Petitot, Monographie, etc., pp. xvi and xx.]
[Footnote N57: Franklin, 2d Exp., pp. 99-101, 105-110, 114-119 and 128; T. Simpson, Narrative, pp. 104-112; Hooper, Tents, etc., pp. 263-264. There is also a brief note by the Rev. W. W. Kirkby, in a “Journey to the Youcan.” Smithsonian Report for 1864. These, with Petitot’s in many respects admirable Monographie, comprise all the information regarding these people from actual observation that has been published. Richardson has described them at second hand in his “Searching Expedition” and “Polar Regions.” The “Kopagmute” of Petroff (Report, etc., p. 125) are a purely hypothetical people invented to fill the space between “the coast people in the north and the Athabascans in the south.”]
We are still somewhat at a loss for the proper local names of the last labret-wearing Eskimo, those, namely, of the Anderson River and Cape Bathurst. That they are not considered by the Taρèoρmeut as belonging to the same “tribe” with themselves is evident from the names Kρagmalit and Kρagmalivëit, applied to them by Petitot. Sir John Richardson, the first white man to encounter them (in 1826), says that they called themselves “Kitte-garrœ-oot,”[N58] and the Point Barrow people told Dr. Simpson of country called “Kit-te-ga´-ru” beyond the Mackenzie.[N59] These people, as well as the Taρèoρmeut, whom they closely resemble, are described in Petitot’s Monographie, and brief notices of them are given by Sir John Richardson,[N60] McClure,[N61] Armstrong,[N62] and Hooper.[N63] The arts and industries of these people from the Mackenzie to the Anderson, especially the latter region, are well represented in the National Museum by the collections of Messrs. Kennicott, Ross, and MacFarlane. The Point Barrow people say that the Kupûñmiun are “bad;”[N64] but notwithstanding this small parties from the two villages occasionally travel east to the Mackenzie, and spend the winter at the Kupûñmiun village, whence they visit the “great house,” returning the following season. Such a party left Point Barrow June 15, 1882, declaring their intention of going all the way to the Mackenzie. They returned August 25 or 26, 1883, when we were in the midst of the confusion of closing the station, so that we learned no details of their journey. A letter with which they were intrusted to be forwarded to the United States through the Mackenzie River posts reached the Chief Signal Officer in the summer of 1883 by way of the Rampart House, on the Porcupine River, whence we received an answer by the bearer from the factor in charge. The Eskimo probably sent the letter to the Rampart House by the Indians who visit that post.
[Footnote N58: Franklin, 2d Exp., p. 203.]
[Footnote N59: Ibid., p. 269.]
[Footnote N60: Franklin, 2d Exp., pp. 193, 203 and 230; Searching Exp., and Polar Regions, p. 300.]
[Footnote N61: N. W. Passage, pp. 84-98.]
[Footnote N62: Personal Narrative, p. 176.]
[Footnote N63: Tents, etc., pp. 343-348.]
[Footnote N64: Compare what Petitot has to say--Monographie, etc., p. xiii and passim--about the turbulent and revengeful character of the “Tchiglit.”]
The intercourse between these people is purely commercial. Dr. Simpson, in the paper so often quoted, gives an excellent detailed description of the course of this trade, which agrees in the main with our observations, though we did not learn the particulars of time and distance as accurately as he did. There have been some important changes, however, since his time. A small party, perhaps five or six families, of “Nunatañmiun” now come every summer to Point Barrow about the end of July, or as soon as the shallow bays along shore are open. They establish themselves at the summer camping ground at Pérnyɐ, at the southwest corner of Elson Bay, and stay two or three weeks, trading with the natives and the ships, dancing, and shooting ducks. The eastward-bound parties seem to start a little earlier than formerly (July 7, 1853, July 3, 1854,[N65] June 18, 1882, and June 29, 1883). From all accounts their relations with the eastern people are now perfectly friendly. We heard nothing of the precautionary measures described by Dr. Simpson,[N66] and the women talked frequently of their trading with the Kûñmû´dlĭñ and even with the Kupûñmiun.[N67] We did not learn definitely whether they met the latter at Barter Point or whether they went still farther east.
[Footnote N65: Dr. Simpson, op. cit., p. 264.]
[Footnote N66: Op. cit., p. 265.]
[Footnote N67: In the Plover’s time they were left a day’s journey in the rear.]
Some of the Point Barrow parties do not go east of the Colville. The articles of trade have changed somewhat in the last 30 years, from the fact that the western natives can now buy directly from the whalers iron articles, arms, and ammunition, beads, tobacco, etc. The Nunatañmiun now sell chiefly furs, deerskins, and clothing ready made from them, woodenware (buckets and tubs), willow poles for setting nets, and sometimes fossil ivory. The double-edged Siberian knives are no longer in the market and appear to be going out of fashion, though a few of them are still in use. Ready-made stone articles, like the whetstones mentioned by Dr. Simpson,[N68] are rarely, if ever, in the market. We did not hear of the purchase of stone lamps from the eastern natives. This is probably due to a cessation of the demand for them at Point Barrow, owing to the falling off in the population.
[Footnote N68: Op. cit., p. 266.]
The Kûñmû´dlĭñ no longer furnish guns and ammunition, as the western natives prefer the breech-loading arms they obtain from the whalers to the flintlock guns sold by the Hudson Bay Company. The trade with these people seems to be almost entirely for furs and skins, notably black and red fox skins and wolverine skins. Skins of the narwhal or beluga are no longer mentioned as important articles of trade.
In return for these things the western natives give sealskins, etc., especially oil, as formerly, though I believe that very little, if any, whalebone is now carried east, since the natives prefer to save it for trading with the ships in the hope of getting liquor, or arms and ammunition, and various articles of American manufacture, beads, kettles, etc. I was told by an intelligent native of Utkiavwĭñ that brass kettles were highly prized by the Kupûñmiun, and that a large one would bring three wolverine skins,[N69] three black foxskins, or five red ones. One woman was anxious to get all the empty tin cans she could, saying that she could sell them to the Kûñmû´dlĭñ for a foxskin apiece. We were told that the eastern natives were glad to buy gun flints and bright-colored handkerchiefs, and that the Nunatañmiun wanted blankets and playing cards.
[Footnote N69: T. Simpson saw iron kettles at Camden Bay which had been purchased from the western natives at two wolverine skins apiece. Narrative, p. 171.]
_Indians._--They informed us that east of the Colville they sometimes met “Itkû´dlĭñ,” people with whom they could not converse, but who were friendly and traded with them, buying oil for fox skins. They were said to live back of the coast between the Colville and the Mackenzie, and were described as wearing no labrets, but rings in their ears and noses. They wear their hair long, do not tonsure the crown, and are dressed in jackets of skin with the hair removed, without hoods, and ornamented with beads and fringe. We saw one or two such jackets in Utkiavwĭñ apparently made of moose skin, and a few pouches of the same material, highly ornamented with beads. They have long flintlock guns, white man’s wooden pipes, which they value highly, and axes--not adzes--with which they “break many trees.” We easily understood from this description that Indians were meant, and since our return I have been able to identify one or two of the tribes with tolerable certainty.
They seem better acquainted with these people than in Dr. Simpson’s time, and know the word “kŭtchin,” people, in which many of the tribal names end. We did not hear the names Ko´yukan or Itkalya´ruin which Dr. Simpson learned, apparently from the Nunatañmiun.[N70] I heard one man speak of the Kŭtcha Kutchin, who inhabit the “Yukon from the Birch River to the Kotlo River on the east and the Porcupine River on the north, ascending the latter a short distance.”[N71]
[Footnote N70: “The inland Eskimo also call them Ko´-yu-kan, and divide them into three sections or tribes. * * *
One is called I´t-ka-lyi [apparently the plural of Itkûdlĭñ], * * * the second It-kal-ya´-ruīn [different or other Itkûdlĭñ],” op. cit., p. 269.]
[Footnote N71: Dall, Cont. to N. A. Ethn., vol. 1, p. 30, where they are identified with Itkalyaruin of Simpson.]
One of the tribes with which they have dealings is the “Rat Indians” of the Hudson Bay men, probably the Vunta´-Kŭtchin,[N72] from the fact that they visit Fort Yukon. These are the people whom Capt. Maguire met on his unsuccessful sledge journey to the eastward to communicate with Collinson. The Point Barrow people told us that “Magwa” went east to see “Colli´k-sina,” but did not see him, only saw the Itkûdlĭñ. Collinson,[N73] speaking of Maguire’s second winter at Point Barrow, says: “In attempting to prosecute the search easterly, an armed body of Indians of the Koyukun tribe were met with, and were so hostile that he was compelled to return.” Maguire himself, in his official report,[N74] speaks of meeting _four_ Indians who had followed his party for several days. He says nothing of any hostile demonstration; in fact, says they showed signs of disappointment at his having nothing to trade with them, but his Eskimo, he says, called them Koyukun, which he knew was the tribe that had so barbarously murdered Lieut. Barnard at Nulato in 1851. Moreover, each Indian had a musket, and he had only two with a party of eight men, so he thought it safer to turn back. However, he seems to have distributed among them printed “information slips,” which they immediately carried to Fort Yukon, and returning to the coast with a letter from the clerk in charge, delivered it to Capt. Collinson on board of the _Enterprise_ at Barter Island, July 18, 1854. The letter is as follows:
FORT YOUCON, _June 27, 1854_.
The printed slips of paper delivered by the officers of H.M.S. _Plover_ on the 25th of April, 1854, to the Rat Indians were received on the 27th of June, 1854, at the Hudson Bay Company’s establishment, Fort Youcon. The Rat Indians are in the habit of making periodical trading excursions to the Esquimaux along the coast. They are a harmless, inoffensive set of Indians, ever ready and willing to render any assistance they can to the whites.
WM. LUCAS HARDISTY, _Clerk in charge_.[N75]
[Footnote N72: Ibid., p. 31.]
[Footnote N73: Arctic Papers, p. 119.]
[Footnote N74: Further papers, etc., pp. 905 et seq.]
[Footnote N75: Arctic Papers, p. 144.]
Capt. Collinson evidently never dreamed of identifying this “harmless, inoffensive set of Indians” with “an armed body of Indians of the Koyukun tribe.” It is important that his statement, quoted above, should be corrected lest it serve as authority for extending the range of the Koyukun Indians[N76] to the Arctic Ocean. The Point Barrow people also know the name of the U´na-kho-tānā,[N77] or En´akotina, as they pronounce it. Their intercourse with all these Indians appears to be rather slight and purely commercial. Friendly relations existed between the Rat Indians and the “Eskimos who live somewhere near the Colville” as early as 1849,[N78] while it was still “war to the knife” between the Peel River Indians and the Kupûñmiun.[N79]
[Footnote N76: Koyū´-ku´kh-otā´nā, Dall, Cont. to N. A. Eth., p. 27.]
[Footnote N77: Ibid., p. 28.]
[Footnote N78: Hooper, Tents, etc. p. 276.]
[Footnote N79: Ibid., p. 273.]
The name Itkû´dlĭñ, of which I´t-ka-lyi of Dr. Simpson appears to be the plural, is a generic word for an Indian, and is undoubtedly the same as the Greenland word erĸileĸ--plural erĸigdlit--which means a fabulous “inlander” with a face like a dog. “They are martial spirits and inhuman foes to mankind; however, they only inhabit the east side of the land.”[N80] Dr. Rink[N81] has already pointed out that this name is in use as far as the Mackenzie River--for instance, the Indians are called “eert-kai-lee” (Parry), or “it-kagh-lie” (Lyon), at Fury and Hecla Strait; ik-kil-lin (Gilder), at the west shore of Hudson Bay, and “itkρe´le´it” (Petitot) at the Mackenzie. Petitot also gives this word as itkpe´lit in his vocabulary (p. 42). These words, including the term Ingalik, or In-ka-lik, applied by the natives of Norton Sound to the Indians,[N82] and which Mr. Dall was informed meant “children of a louse’s egg,” all appear to be compounds of the word erĸeĸ, a louse egg, and the affix lik. (I suspect erĸileĸ, from the form of its plural, to be a corruption of “erĸiliĸ,” since there is no recognized affix -leĸ in Greenlandic.)
[Footnote N80: Crantz, vol. 1, p. 208.]
[Footnote N81: Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1885, p. 244.]
[Footnote N82: Dall, Alaska, p. 28 and Contrib., vol. 1, p. 25.]
Petitot[N83] gives an interesting tradition in regard to the origin of this name: “La tradition Innok dédaigne de parler ici des Peaux-Rouges. L’áyant fait observer á mon narrateur Aρviuna: ‘Oh!’ me repondait-il, ‘il ne vaut pas la peine d’en parler. Ils naquirent aussi dans l’ouest, sur l’ile du Castor, des larves de nos poux. C’ést pourquoi nous les nommons Itkρe´le´it.’”
[Footnote N83: Monographie, p. xxiv.]
CONTACT WITH CIVILIZED PEOPLE.