of ethnographic information. Unfortunately, this too is often difficult to use, because it not only originates from Hudson Bay (and here both from the Caribou Eskimos and the Aivilingmiut), but also from Baffin Land and Labrador.[1]
Only one single scientific, ethnographic work has, up to the last few years, partly dealt with the tribes referred to here. This is the indefatigable investigator Franz Boas' Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay, in which, based upon Capt. Geo. Comer's observations and collections, a great quantity of information is given about the Hudson Bay tribes. Although most of it concerns the Aivilingmiut, it will always stand as fundamental for the study of the Caribou Eskiinos too. In 1913 and the following year or two Chr. Leden made some journeys between Churchill and Chesterfield Inlet, on which he visited, among other places, the land at the head of Rankin Inlet and collected material for the study of Eskimo music. A report on this was not published until 1927. The information given in this book about the life of the Eskimos is, without being otherwise indicated, taken just as often from Greenland and other places as from the Barren Grounds, and excels besides by such thorough inaccuracy of detail that it is useless as a scientific work. I have therefore as a rule preferred to leave this book entirely out of consideration. In 1925 the leader of the Catholic Mission at Chesterfield, Mgr. A. Turquetil, O. I. M., published a short article on the Eskimos at Hudson Bay.
An investigation into these was one of the most important tasks of the Fifth Thule Expedition; how the work was distributed has already been mentioned. I arrived by dog sledge from Repulse Bay at Chesterfield Inlet in February 1922 and then continued to Baker Lake after staying about a month. Knud Rasmussen arrived there about the middle of May together with Helge Bangsted and the Polar Eskimo Qâvigarssuaq (Miteq) and we journeyed together to Yathkyed Lake or Hikoligjuaq. We spent a month there, after which Knud Rasmussen spent the rest of the summer at Chesterfield Inlet, Bangsted and I at Baker Lake, to return to our headquarters on Danish Island in the autumn. In March 1923 I came again to Chesterfield Inlet with the West Greenlander Jacob Olsen. In order to become acquainted with the coast group of the Caribou Eskimos we followed the coast from there to Eskimo Point. At this place and also on Sentry Island
- ↑ Low's interpreter, Mr. Harry Ford, whom I met as Hudson's Bay Company's manager at Baker Lake, and from whom much of the information came, was born on the coast of Labrador and has also for some time been manager at Little Whale River.
