Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/451

Regarding the final extinction of the Sadlermiut it has hitherto been thought^[1] that is was due to starvation, owing to Eskimos with guns having exterminated the caribou on the island. This, however, was by no means the case; there were large numbers of caribou on the island — and are still — and, what is more, the Sadlermiut were Image missingFig. 96.Qingaq, the last male Sadlermio. so little caribou hunters that the extermination of this animal would in no way have meant a catastrophe to them.

The Sadlermiut died of an infectious disease, not of starvation. Angutimarik, who was on the island at that time, relates: In the summer of 1902 a ship came to the Scottish station at C. Low and brought with it a disease; several of the Aivilik Eskimos who were at the station became ill and some of them, including Angutimarik himself and Aqat, lost children, who contracted severe diarrhoea and died very quickly (typhus?). Some of the Sadlermiut who called at the trading station also fell ill, and some of them were so bad that they had to be sailed back to Tunirmiut in the station's whale-boat. When their settlement was visited during the winter they were all dead; some of the Eskimos lay on the platforms, others outside the houses; a number of dogs were running about, and there was a great deal of meat and blubber in the depôts. The disease must have carried away the whole population very rapidly.