April 10, 1911

The Eskimo fear the woodless barrens about as much as a fish fears water, and when the fur trade draws them inland the doom of the last muskox will be not a decade away nor that of the last caribou many decades. This will have its effect on those northern tribes of Indians who are still to an extent caribou-eaters, while the disappearance of the caribou will drive the Eskimo back again to the sea coast. They will then have to get all their living from the water instead of three-fourths of it as at present and will have to dress in sealskins where they now use caribou. By then they will have learned tea drinking, tobacco using, etc., and will have lost their economic independence as completely as have all Eskimo west of the Baillie Islands. They will then be less well fed than at present, less well clothed, richer only in ideas without which they now live content and in wants which their poverty will never completely satisfy.