Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/190

Rh Niountelik, was unknown to them in so large a form; but they had often seen smaller pieces, and also coal, in each of the places where I had discovered it. They had likewise found "heavy stone," such as I showed them, at Kus-se-gear-ark-ju-a, a cape half a mile N.N.W. of Kodlunarn.

I asked them where these things came from, and the reply was, "Kodlunas brought them." I immediately said, "Did you see those kodlunas?" Their answer, with eyes wide open and countenances expressing surprise, was, "Ar-gi! ar-gi!" meaning No! no! "How, then," said I, "do you know that kodlunas brought them?"

Their response was, "All the old Innuits said so. The first Innuits who saw the white men were all dead, many, a great many years ago." The more I searched into this subject the more I found it to be well known, as a traditionary fact, that white men—kodlunas—once lived on the island then and since called by the Innuits Kodlunarn; that these men had built a ship there; had launched it, and started away for their homes; but that, before they got out of the bay, hands and feet were frozen, and finally the whole of them perished of cold. Ebierbing's statement to me was as follows:— Recollects hearing his father tell of these white men, and how they built a ship. The kodlunas had brought brick, coal, and "heavy stone," and left them on Niountelik and at other places about there. His father did not see them, but the first Innuits, who saw them, told other Innuits so, and so it continued to his day. Old Innuits tell young Innuits; and when they get to be old, they in turn tell it to the young. "When our baby boy," said he, "gets old enough, we tell him all about you, and about all those kodlunas who brought brick, iron, and coal to where you have been, and of the kodlunas who built a ship on Kodlunarn Island. When boy gets to be an old Innuit he tell it to other Innuits, and so all Innuits will know what we now know."

Thus, by the simple unadorned statement of Ebierbing may