Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/41

Pikiulaq); there is no real, regular cycle of occupations for these few families, particularly as most of them are in the service of the trading station and police station. Boas^[1] states that, up to 1800, Depot Island and its environs were inhabited by a separate tribe, Inuissuitmiut, who fought with the Aiviliks; a descendent of this tribe is said to live among the Qaernermiut.

A very important spring and winter settlement in earlier times was Nuvuk, south of Wager Inlet; people often lived there in summer. In September 1864 Hall^[2] came across a tent-camp with 40 people there. Boas^[3] mentions that another tribe who lived there was exterminated by the Aiviliks while on a warring expedition under the leadership of their chief, Oudlinak. It is possible that these old stories of fights at Nuvuk and Depot Island date right back to the struggle between the Thule culture and the ever-progressing inland culture.

After having been uninhabited many years, a group of Aivilik Eskimos, who had been prevented from returning to Southampton Island by the ice, settled down in the winter of 1922–23 at Nuvuk. At Mátoq (Berthie Harbour), on the north side of the mouth of Wager Inlet, two families lived that winter and the one before; there is good seal hunting all the year round in the open current holes at the mouth of the fjord.

Southampton Island is a recent acquisition of the Aivilik Eskimos, but nevertheless is now their most important possession. Until 1902 it was inhabited by the Sadlermiut, who were very unfriendly towards the Aiviliks with whom they did not have much intercourse until the later years, when the whaling ships brought them to the island. It seems, however, that even before then the Aiviliks visited the northern part of the island fairly frequently, from which the Sadlermiut had disappeared at a much earlier date. The 60 year old Aivilik, Angutimarik, told me that in his childhood he had several times been in Duke of York Bay with his parents and he was able to point out tent rings, etc. from these visits; they spent the summer there hunting the caribou and fishing for salmon and returned with the arrival of autumn.

After the Sadlermiut had died off in 1902–3 a number of Aivilik Eskimos settled on the island, which is a splendid hunting district. As a rule their cycle of occupations is as follows: In spring they live partly at Duke of York Bay (Nias Island) and partly at South Bay (Bear Island), hunting the utoq. When the ice breaks up, a number of them go on trading journeys in whaleboats to Repulse Bay and Chesterfield Inlet (a station has now been established in South Bay),