Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/14

At the suggestion of Dr. Knud Rasmussen, the leader of the Fifth Thule Expedition, the ethnological work of the Expedition was split up, he himself undertaking the study of the intellectual culture of the Eskimo tribes with which the Expedition came into contact, whilst the study of the material culture was divided between Kaj Birket-Smith, M. A., and myself, Birket-Smith studying the tribes on the Barren Grounds and round about the North-West Passage (the groups: the Caribou and Netsilik Eskimos), whilst I studied the tribes on the Melville Peninsula and in Baffin Land; Birket-Smith also undertook the anthropological and linguistic work and I the archaeological. The result of my archaeological studies has already been published^[1]; the present work is to communicate the results of my studies of the present-day Eskimo tribes with whom I have had an opportunity of living while on the Expedition.

In this the name Iglulik Eskimos includes not only the Iglulingmiut group proper, but also the Aivilingmiut, who live more to the south, and the inhabitants of northern Baffin Land, Tununermiut, these groups, as will be shown later on, being in reality so closely related that they must be regarded as forming one Eskimo tribe with in all essentials a uniform culture. The whole of this Eskimo tribe is thus called the Iglulik Eskimos, after the place which from ancient times has been and is still the principal settlement, the island of Iglulik off the northern point of Melville Peninsula.

My sojourn in the land of the Iglulik Eskimos lasted from 18th September, 1921. when I arrived on our schooner "Sokongen” at Danish Island, close to Vansittart Island, the place which was to be the headquarters of the Expedition, and until 18th September, 1923, when I left Ponds Inlet in Northern Baffin Land on board the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer "Nascopie". It was not until December 1921 that I got into touch with the Eskimo inhabitants of the country,