Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/435

During my first sojourn at Repulse Bay in January 1922 the manager of the trading station there, G. Cleveland, told me that an old Eskimo living there, Saorre, or, as the whalers called him, Tony, had lived on Southampton Island for two years before the Sadlermiut became extinct, having worked at the Scottish whaling station which lay near Cape Low from 1901–3. With Cleveland as interpreter — for which favour I owe him a great debt of gratitude — I commenced to systematically question Saorre regarding everything he knew about the Sadlermiut, and as time went on this proved to be quite a lot. During the half year I later spent on Southampton Island I was most of the time in the house of Angutimarik — whaler-name Tom — the second of the still surviving Aivilik Eskimos who knew something of the Sadlermiut; Angutimarik had also spent two years at the Scottish whaling station before the Sadlermiut died out and his knowledge of these people seemed to be even better than Saorre's, as he had hunted and travelled with the Sadlermiut much more than the latter. Partly with Jacob Olsen as interpreter and partly through my own efforts, during the first part of our stay on Southampton Island I acquired a large amount of information about the Sadlermiut, until Angutimarik recollected that they were taboo; by that time, however, we had elicited from him almost everything he knew. I have also some information from Aqat — whaler name Chester — a third, old Aivilik who had a rather more superficial knowledge of the Sadlermiut, acquired during a brief stay at the Scottish station there. Both Saorre and Angutimarik are men between fifty and sixty, intelligent and reliable Eskimos, whose word there is no reason for doubting. What they related about the Sadlermiut, which forms the contents of this chapter, provides a good supplement to what can be read from the archaeological material and to the features which Boas describes from the particulars supplied by Capt. Comer.

The Sadlermiut were small but very stoutly built and very strong people; they had very little beard, less than the Aiviliks; their features were often like those of the Polar Eskimos. Towards strange Eskimos they were always very shy and suspicious; when they entered a strange house they always looked carefully about as if they were afraid of an ambush. They had very little intercourse with the Aiviliks, although they often met at the trading station where they sometimes played football; at such times the Sadlermiut, when in the course of the game they ran against an Aivilingmio, had the habit of