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with tangs; the appearance of these elements seems to be due to influences from other Eskimos — probably the Aiviliks; a large number of the later forms are, however, types peculiar to Southampton Island, types which show that here there has been a rapid local development, independent of the surroundings; this applies for instance to the two commonest forms of harpoon heads, arrow heads and harpoon blades of flint with tangs, knife handles with wedge-shaped cut in the fore end, the flint flaker and the whole of the richly developed flint technique, cooking pots and lamps of lime-stone slabs, the comb with the pierced grip and the hair ornament of ivory;[1] the absence of the salmon spear and grave goods is also peculiar to the island.

There may be reason to mention in addition the admixture of elements from the Cape Dorset culture which we have in the collection from the island: the harpoon heads with narrow shaft sockets and the needles and other objects with holes cut through, not drilled; in this connection there may be reason for recollecting that the enormous woman's boot is also known from Hudson Strait in earlier times,[2] that the language of the Sadlermiut somewhat resembled that of the Oqomiut and that the legends speak of intercourse with the Sikosuilarmiut on Bell Peninsula, indeed even of the origin of the Sadlermiut from them; these circumstances make it probable that here there has been an influence from southern Baffin Land, an influence which, judging from the Kuk find, seems to date very far back, although not to the oldest house ruins on the island.

We have thus been able to follow the Sadlermiut right from the time when, at the Thule culture phase, they built their first whale bone houses at Kuk, trace how their culture changed, by isolation, separate development, by slight influences from west and east; but all the time the Thule elements were the bases of their culture — like a relic of an older stratum of culture they lasted even until the present time on their inhospitable island. But we have also seen how they gradually became fewer, how they disappeared from the northern part of the island and finally, how an epidemic carried them away in 1902 from their last settlement on the south coast. Southampton Island is now in the possession of the Aiviliks; the last redoubt of the Thule culture in the Central Eskimo region has fallen! The Sadlermiut are already well on the way to inclusion among the legends of the Aiviliks as the last Tunit in the country!

  1. A fragment of one of these may possibly have been found at Naujan, however. See Pl. 30. 23.
  2. Ellis, 1750, p. 142.