riodicity, not only in the situation of the habitations but in their very character, but not of course so pronounced as among agriculturing tribes, the cause of the diversity not being the solid earth but living and wandering animals.
The habitation is most permanent and concentrated in the autumn, when the camps of the Eskimos lie near to the crossing places of the caribou, and in the winter, when they only reluctantly journey away from the autumn meat caches and at any rate keep close to the lakes, where there is a chance of fishing. Thus Hearne wrote long ago: "When the Eſquimaux who reſide near Churchill River travel in winter, it is always from lake to lake, or from river to river, where they have formed magazines of proviſions and heaps of moſs for firing".[1] Still, even at this time of the year it is not an uncommon occurrence that a family breaks camp and moves out alone to a place where it believes hunting prospects are better. In that case their religion merely demands that those left behind move into a new snow house. In summer, conditions lead to a more scattered existence in the interior, whereas the Eskimos who move to the coast collect at a few places where there is good walrus and seal hunting.
Thus it may be said that at all seasons there is a tendency to flock together. The gregarious instinct is strong among the Eskimos, primitive people on the whole being reluctant to face nature or the rest of society alone. It is not always, however, that nature allows them to obey the instinct, whereby we see the inconstancy that one family moves into a settlement whereas another moves from it, and a month later perhaps the place is deserted for miles around. To give a universal list of the settlements of the Caribou Eskimos is therefore simply an impossibility.
Naturally, this has left its mark upon the social conditions, as Mauss and Beuchat have sought to show. In one of the following chapters we deal with the social life of the Eskimos; it ought however to be mentioned here that the camps on the Barren Grounds are not. from an economic, social or religious point of view, separate individualities, and no wonder, for even with the far greater permanency of habitations in Greenland there are only very vague tendencies in this direction.
As will appear from the foregoing, the factor that is determinative with regard to the choice of situation of the camp is the most simple of all, viz. access to hunting and fishing. It is only exceptionally that the question of drinking water plays any part in these regions, where there is an abundance of fresh water almost everywhere. Drinking water is scarcest on the most southwesterly shore of
- ↑ Hearne 1795; 160, footnote.
