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
[Footnote N120: This is an interesting fact, as it shows that the
Eskimo from Demarcation Point east learned to smoke from the
people of Point Barrow, and not from the English or the northern
Indians, who use pipes “modeled after the clay pipes of the Hudson
Bay Company.” (Dall, Alaska, p. 81, Fig. _A_.) They acquired the
habit some time between 1837, when T. Simpson found them ignorant
of the use of tobacco (see reference above, p. 65), and 1849, when
they were glad to receive it from Pullen and Hooper. (Tents, etc.,
p. 258.) Petitot (Monographie, etc., p. xxvi) states that the
Eskimo of the Mackenzie informed him that the use of tobacco and
the form of the pipe, with blue beads, labrets, and other things,
came through the neighbors from a distant land called
“Nate´ρovik,” which he supposes to mean St. Michaels, but which,
from the evidence of other travelers, is much more likely to mean
Siberia.
The Eskimo geography, on which Fr. Petitot relies so strongly, is
extremely vague west of Barter Island, and savors of the fabulous
almost as much as the Point Barrow stories about the eastern
natives. The evidence which leads Fr. Petitot to believe
“Nate´ρovik” to be St. Michaels is rather peculiar. The Mackenzie
natives call the people who are nearest to Nate´ρovik on the north
“the Sedentary.” Now, the people who live nearest to St. Michaels
on the north are the “Sedentary American Tchukatchīs”(!);
therefore Nate´ρovik is probably St. Michaels. (“Le nom
_Natéρovik_ semble convenir à l’ancien fort russe Michaëlowski, en
ce que la tribu iunok la plus voisine de ce poste, vers le nord,
est désignée par nos Tchiglit sous le nom d’ _Apkwam-méut_ ou de
Sédentaires; or telle est la position géographique qui convient
aux sédentaires Tchukatches américains, dont la limite la plus
septentrionale, selon le capitaine Beechey, est la pointe
Barrow.”) A slight acquaintance with the work of Dall and other
modern explorers in this region would have saved Fr. Petitot from
this and some other errors.]
[Footnote N121: See Wrangell, Narrative of an Expedition, etc.,
p. 58. “The Russians here [at Kolymsk, 1820] smoke in the manner
common to all the people of northern Asia; they draw in the
tobacco smoke, swallow it, and allow it to escape again by the
nose and ears(!).” The tobacco is said to be mixed with “finely
powdered larch wood, to make it go further” (ibid.). See also
Hooper, Tents, etc.: “Generally, I believe, about one-third part
of wood is used” (pp. 176 and 177; and Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2,
p. 116.)]
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