[Footnote N39: It is to be regretted that the expedition was not supplied with a copy of Dr. Simpson’s excellent paper, as much valuable information was missed for lack of suggestions as to the direction of inquiries.] With the people of the Nu´natăk (Inland) River, the Nunatañmiun, they are well acquainted, as they meet them every summer for purposes of trading, and a family or two of Nunatañmiun sometimes spend the winter at the northern villages. One family wintered at Nuwŭk in 1881-’82, and another at Utkiavĭñ the following winter, while a widower of this “tribe” was also settled there for the same winter, having married a widow in the village. We obtained very little definite information about these people except that they came from the south and descended the Colville River. Our investigations were rendered difficult by the engrossing nature of the work of the station, and the trouble we experienced, at first, in learning enough of the language to make ourselves clearly understood. Dr. Simpson was able to learn definitely that the homes of these people are on the Nunatăk and that some of them visit Kotzebue Sound in the summer, while trading parties make a portage between the Nunatăk and Colville, descending the latter river to the Arctic Ocean.[N40] I have been informed by the captain of one of the American whalers that he has, in different seasons, met the same people at Kotzebue Sound and the mouth of the Colville. We also received articles of Siberian tame reindeer skin from the east, which must have come across the country from Kotzebue Sound. [Footnote N40: Op. cit., pp. 234 and 236.] These people differ from the northern natives in some habits, which will be described later, and speak a harsher dialect. We were informed that in traveling east after passing the mouth of the Colville they came to the Kûñmû´dlĭñ (“Kangmali enyuin” of Dr. Simpson and other authors) and still further off “a great distance” to the Kupûñ or “Great River”--the Mackenzie--near the mouth of which is the village of the Kupûñmiun, whence it is but a short distance inland to the “great house” (iglu´kpûk) of the white men on the great river (probably Fort Macpherson). Beyond this we only heard confused stories of people without posteriors and of sledges that run by themselves without dogs to draw them. We heard nothing of the country of Kĭtiga´ru[N41] or of the stone-lamp country mentioned by Dr. Simpson.[N42] The Kûñmûdlĭñ are probably, as Dr. Simpson believes, the people whose winter houses were seen by Franklin at Demarcation Point,[N43] near which, at Icy Reef, Hooper also saw a few houses.[N44] [Footnote N41: This was the name of a girl at Nuwŭk.] [Footnote N42: Op. cit., p. 269.] [Footnote N43: Second Exp., p. 142.] [Footnote N44: Tents of the Tuski, p. 255.]