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179 9 The Qikiqtaryungmiut World-System in the Marginal Periphery the period between 1889, when the whalers arrived at Herschel Island in force, and about 1907, when the price of baleen collapsed and whalers’ overwinterings were reduced in frequency (Bockstoce 1980, 1986), saw Herschel Island drawn into the marginal periphery of the European world-economy. During this period, enormous quantities of both bulk goods and preciosities became available to Qikiqtaryungmiut at Pauline Cove on Herschel Island. This greater availability is expected to increase the indigenous world-system’s breadth and depth and to change the form of internal differentiation, with the Qikiqtaryungmiut potentially becoming a core society. Before evaluating the expectations outlined in Chapter 5, a number of shortcomings in the data for this period must be acknowledged, because they limit the scope and reliability of potential interpretations. First, the early contact components at Pauline Cove, represented by Feature 8 and the upper level of Feature 5, are both interpreted to represent warm-season occupations, whereas earlier components from Herschel Island are all derived from winter houses. Because very different categories of activity and behavior are expected to occur during different seasons, the resulting artifact and ecofact distributions will not be directly comparable (Hickey 1986:81). Second, Euroamerican trade goods recovered from early contact period contexts cannot be considered to have been obtained through exchange with other indigenous regional groups. Because of the presence of the whaling fleet at the site, most of the trade goods are assumed to have been obtained directly from the whalers. In terms of the indigenous world-system, therefore, these trade goods can be used to indicate the range of goods that entered the system but cannot be interpreted uncritically as direct evidence for increasing depth of the indigenous world-system. 180 Chapter 9 A third and somewhat unexpected problem is the fact that the ethnohistoric record for the early contact Qikiqtaryungmiut is not better than that of previous periods and is in some ways inferior, despite the intense Euroamerican activity at Pauline Cove. Early accounts and secondary sources do not emphasize Inuit activities, and when they do, it is not always clear whether the Inuit referred to are Qikiqtaryungmiut and other Inuvialuit (referred to as some variant of “Kogmollik” in most sources) or Alaskan Iñupiat (referred to as some variant of “Nunatamiut”). Many individuals from this latter group were brought to Herschel Island by whalers and played many roles, including serving on whaling crews, hunting for caribou to provision ships, and sewing clothes. Others traveled to the area by themselves. Also present, although in smaller numbers, were Siberian Yupik “Masinkers” (Bockstoce 1986:274). Therefore , when ethnohistoric sources refer to “Eskimos” it is often unclear which group is being referred to. Fourth, and related to the previous issue, is the question of whether the two early contact-period contexts on Herschel Island, Features 5 and 8, relate to Inuvialuit (local Qikiqtaryungmiut from the Herschel Island area or others who traveled from farther east in the Mackenzie Delta region), as opposed to Inuit from elsewhere, and in particular Alaskan Iñupiat (Friesen 2009b). Iñupiat culture, including material culture, was very similar to that of the Inuvialuit ; very few categories of material culture can be used to differentiate the two. This is particularly true of the Qikiqtaryungmiut, who were the westernmost Inuvialuit, many of whom traveled to Barter Island annually to trade with Iñupiat before the arrival of whalers. However, Feature 8 did include one arrowhead that hints at an Inuvialuit origin. It is made of bone, in a form that is relatively common in the Mackenzie Delta region but rare or unknown to the west. In fact, Murdoch (1892:206) collected one of these arrowheads in Alaska, where it was referred to as a “Kunmud’lin” type, the name being the Iñupiat term for Inuvialuit (see Morrison 1988). When this is combined with the fact that these two features are located at some distance from the main whaler settlement, which is not what would be expected from Iñupiat closely connected to the whaling ships, it seems most likely that they represent local Inuvialuit occupations. It is significant that interior Gwich’in also came to Herschel Island during this period, primarily to trade and to hunt for whalers’ subsistence; however, their material culture is different enough that they can be ruled out as having occupied these two features. Fifth, and finally, the expectations outlined in Chapter 5 are based on the assumption...

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