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101
Intercourse with other Tribes.

Whaling, and later on the trading stations, have each contributed towards erasing the old tribal boundaries, and the mutual intercourse and trade between the tribes has undergone a very radical change. At the trading stations the members of the different tribes meet and, although they do not as yet regard each other as kinsmen, the former attitude, frequently one of hostility, as no longer observable.

At Chesterfield Inlet the Aiviliks met Qaernermiut ("Kinipetu"). Tradition says that in earlier times there has been trade between them at Baker Lake, the Aiviliks buying wood in exchange for dogs. The relations between the two tribes seem to have been good as a rule. Klutschak[1] mentions an instance of a quarrel: Two Kinepetus were living among the Aiviliks; when shooting at targets one of them was wounded. The tribes then agreed to choose three men each, and these were to represent the whole tribe in the quarrel; they could not cross the boundary of the other tribe without risking death.

The relations between the Netsiliks and the Aiviliks seem to have been much more antagonistic. Rae[2] writes: "The natives of this part of the coast (Pelly Bay) bear a very bad character, and are much feared by their countrymen of Repulse Bay". Hall[3] writes: ". . . there existed a strong war-like feeling between the natives of that region (Netsilik) and those of Iwilik", and Klutschak[4] "Seit langer Zeit schon standen die Netchilliks und Eivillik-Eskimos in einer Fehde, deren Ursprung in längst vergangenen Generationen zu suchen ist und nur durch die unter den Eskimos allgemeine noch existierende Blutrache fortgepflanzt wird", and later[5] he says that an Aivilik Eskimo undertook a journey of 400 miles in order to take blood-vengeance of a Netsilik who had killed his uncle.

In the whaling season, when Netsiliks and Aiviliks came together. there were often hard fights with the fists; on Southampton Island there still lives an Aivilik Eskimo who once killed a Netsilik in a fist-fight.

This state of war has now more or less given place to mutual contempt; the Aiviliks look down upon the Netsiliks, ridicule them for their swinish habits (they sometimes use their drinking cup as a night-pot, they aver) and their lice and look down upon them with about the same feeling as the metropolitan looks down upon the rustic. Nowadays, however, many Netsiliks live at Repulse Bay. Wager Inlet, Depot Island, attracted by the trading stations; as a rule they live by themselves, but the marked difference is becoming more and

  1. ↑ p. 227.
  2. ↑ 1850 p. 121.
  3. ↑ 1879, p. 82.
  4. ↑ p. 150.
  5. ↑ p. 228.
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