production of meat and skins for clothing, would be a curse to the Eskimos, and the sooner the H. B. C. realise that by encouraging such an artificial state of affairs they are in reality destroying their own prospects, the better it will be for all parties. Mathiassen has described the fatal consequences of the competition of unscrupulous companies among the primitive natives at Ponds Inlet.[1] During my sojourn in the country the H. B. C. practically had a monopoly, and justice demands the admission that conditions such as those mentioned in Baffin Land are unknown here; but it is no use closing one's eyes to the circumstance that a de facto monopoly in the hands of such an unsentimental trust as the H. B. C. always contains a danger to a helpless handful of people such as the Caribou Eskimos.
Summary of hunting implements. If we compare the number and character of the hunting implements among the Eskimos in Alaska and Greenland with those of the Caribou Eskimos, we cannot refrain from noticing how few and primitive are the latter's means of procuring food. They may be set up in the following table in connection with Mason's system:[2]
- Implements for striking (sling, bola).
- Implements for cutting (hunting knives).
- Implements for piercing (bow and arrow, dagger, lance, bird dart).
- Implements for seizure (toggle harpoon, barbed harpoon, leister, fish hook).
- Entangling apparatus (net, snare).
- Traps of various kinds, pit-falls, caribou fences and weirs.
To these must be added some few implements used indirectly in hunting such as trout needle, drag, breathing hole searcher, seal indicator and wound plug.
Bow and arrow. The bow and arrow were the weapons which were formerly in most extensive use in the different forms of the hunting of land animals. The rifle is always used against bigger game nowadays. Even high-power rifles are now on sale at the trading posts: fortunately, however, they are too expensive to have come into general use. Shot guns are hardly ever used, because there is so little bird hunting, but sometimes .22 rifles are used for grouse-shooting.
Although there was said to be an old Qaernermio living who had used bow and arrow for caribou hunting, and although these weapons
