Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442Murdoch, John
History
Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442
Murdoch, John
Eskimos -- Alaska -- Barrow, Point, Region
_Other Eskimo._--The nearest neighbors of these people, as has been
stated above, are the Eskimo living at Demarcation Point (or Herschel
Island), eastward, and those who inhabit the small villages between
Point Belcher and Wainwright Inlet. These villages are three in
number. The nearest to Point Belcher, Nuna´ria, is now deserted, and
its inhabitants have established the new village of Sida´ru nearer the
inlet. The third village consists of a few houses only, and is called
A´tûnĕ. The people of these villages are so closely connected that
they are sometimes spoken of collectively as Sida´ruñmiun. At a
distance up the river, which flows into Wainwright Inlet, live the
Ku´ñmiun, “the people who live on the river.” These appear to be
closely related to the people of the first village below Wainwright
Inlet, which is named Kĭlauwitawĭñ. At any rate, a party of them who
came to Cape Smyth in the spring of 1883 were spoken of indifferently
as Kuñmiun or Kĭlauwitawĭ´ñmiun.
Small parties from all the villages occasionally visit Point Barrow
during the winter for the purpose of trade and amusement, traveling
with sledges along the land ice where it is smooth, otherwise along
the edge of the cliffs; and similar parties from the two northern
villages return these visits. No special article of trade appears to
be sought at either village, though perhaps the southern villages have
a greater supply of skins of the bearded seal, fit for making umiak
covers, as I knew of a load of these brought up for sale, and in the
spring of 1883 a party went down to the inlet in search of such skins.
Single families and small parties like that from Kĭlauwitawĭñ,
mentioned above, sometimes spend the whaling season at Point Barrow,
joining some of the whaling crews at the northern villages. The people
that we saw from these settlements were very like the northern Eskimos
but many of them spoke a perceptibly harsher dialect, sounding the
final consonants distinctly.
The people at Point Hope are known as Tĭkera´ñmiun “inhabitants of the
forefinger (Point Hope)”, and their settlement is occasionally visited
by straggling parties. No natives from Point Hope came north during
the 2 years of our stay, but a party of them visited the _Plover_ in
1853.[N38] We found some people acquainted by name with the Kuwû´ñmiun
and Silawĭ´ñmiun of the Kuwûk (Kowak or “Putnam”) and Silawik Rivers
emptying into Hotham Inlet, and one man was familiar with the name of
Sisualĭñ, the great trading camp at Kotzebue Sound. We were unable to
find that they had any knowledge of Asia (“Kokhlitnuna,”) or the
Siberian Eskimo, but this was probably due to lack of properly
directed inquiries, as they seem to have been well informed on the
subject in the _Plover’s_ time.[N39]
[Footnote N38: Maguire, NW. Passage, p. 384.]
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