| 9. | Winter houses half buried in the ground with cone-shaped frame of poles (p. 332). | 9. | (Jérémie?) |
| 10. | The Eskimos near Churchill burn moss in winter and fish from huts erected on the ice of the lakes (p. 332). | 10. | Ditto. (p. 160, footnote). |
Where the information about the winter houses comes from I cannot ascertain; but it is obvious that under the above circumstances no weight can be attached to it.
The last 150 years are characterised by the fact that not only is the coast of Hudson Bay more thoroughly explored; but the interior, the Barren Grounds proper, is also brought into view. Here the pioneer is Samuel Hearne, whose travels in company with the Chipewyan Indians from Churchill were undertaken for the purpose of discovering the coppermine which Knight long before him had expected to find. Although the journey in 1770 led far into the Barren Grounds and round the whole of Dubawnt Lake, they met no Eskimos. In many respects this is remarkable. It is more comprehensible that before the sadly famous meeting at the mouth of Coppermine River, they saw no Eskimos on the main journey either, which took them much nearer the forest line over the lakes Nueltin and Kasba.
Although Franklin, Richardson and Rae all have some scattered information about the Eskimos on the west coast of the Bay, it is Schwatka's outstanding journey, about a hundred years after Hearne, which first reveals that a strange group of inland Eskimos lives on the Barren Grounds. Both Gilder's and Klutschak's accounts of the Schwatka Expedition contain valuable ethnographic material. Since that time exploration has proceeded more rapidly, especially through J. B. Tyrrell's two great journeys on the rivers. Dubawnt, Kazan and Ferguson and by Hanbury's and J. W. Tyrrel's mapping of Thelon River. Although none of these travellers have paid much attention to the natives, they have brought tidings of them at a time when hardly anything was known of them. The J. W. Tyrrell referred to, a brother of J. B. Tyrrell, has written a popular account of his travels with an illustrated description of the Eskimos, but it seems mostly to apply to the natives of Labrador, where the author had previously sojourned. Only exceptionally are his observations so definitely localised that they can be used.[1] In 1896 the Rev. Lofthouse undertook a journey on Tha-anne River to Maguse Lake, but without meeting with Eskimos. While wintering at Fullerton in 1903–04 Low collected a lot
- ↑ The same applies to J. W. Tyrrell's little treatise in The Canadian Magazine.
