The Netchilliks also
kill a few reindeer in this way. In the summer and fall these people
catch great quantities of salmon and cow-e-sil-lik, a species of fish
peculiar to this country, and in the neighboring hills kill a few
musk-oxen. Their main dependence, however, is upon fish from Back's
and Harris's rivers.
From Ikinnelikpatolok, the old Ookjoolik, we learned at the interview
that he had only once seen white men alive. That was when he was a
little boy. He is now about sixty-five or seventy. He was fishing on
Back's River when they came along in a boat and shook hands with him.
There were ten men. The leader was called "Tos-ard-e-roak," which Joe
says, from the sound, he thinks means Lieutenant Back. The next white
man he saw was dead in a bunk of a big ship which was frozen in the
ice near an island about five miles due west of Grant Point, on
Adelaide Peninsula. They had to walk out about three miles on smooth
ice to reach the ship. He said that his son, who was present, a man
about thirty-five years old, was then about like a child he pointed
out--probably seven or eight years old. About this time he saw the
tracks of white men on the main-land. When he first saw them there
were four, and afterward only three. This was when the spring snows
were falling. When his people saw the ship so long without any one
around, they used to go on board and steal pieces of wood and iron.
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