[120]. 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.
[121]. 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.)
[122]. Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.
[123]. See also Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xxix.
[124]. See Beechey, Voyage, p. 323; T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 156—“tobacco, which * * * they call tawāc, or tawākh, a name acquired of course from Russian traders;” Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 239; also Maguire and J. Simpson, loc. cit. passim. Petitot calls ta´wak “mot français corrompu”!
[125]. Since the above was written, the word for pipe, “kuinyɐ,” has been found to be of Siberian origin. See the writer’s article “On the Siberian origin of some customs of the Western Eskimos” (American Anthropologist, vol. 1, pp. 325-336).
[126]. In some of the older houses, the ruins of which are still to be seen at the southwest end of the village of Utkiavwĭñ, whales’ bones were used for timbers. Compare Lyon Journal, p. 171, where the winter huts at Iglulik are described as “entirely constructed of the bones of whales, unicorns, walruses, and smaller animals,” with the interstices filled with earth and moss.
[127]. Op. cit., p. 256.
[128]. Compare Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 46: “Small lattice shelves * * * on which moccasins * * * are put to dry.” Plover Bay. See also plate to face p. 160 Parry’s Second Voyage.