Copper Inuit
[5] It represents those westernmost Central Inuit who used and relied on native copper gathered along the lower Coppermine River and the Coronation Gulf.
[1] The people made copper arrows, spear heads, ulu blades, chisels, harpoons, and knives for both personal use and for trade amongst other Inuit.
This conflict seems to have been instigated by both the Dene and the Inuit and possibly was caused by trade disputes but sometimes due to raids for women.
It was here that Matonabbee, leader of Hearne's Chipewyan Dene guides, and his companions massacred a Copper Inuit group at Bloody Falls.
In the belief that the Copper Inuit had migrated to Hudson Bay for trading at various outposts, the Canadian government's 1906 map marked Victoria Island as "uninhabited".
They followed Vilhjalmur Stefansson's encounter with, and report on, so-called Blond Eskimos among the Copper Inuit[15] from his Arctic exploration of 1908–1912.
Alaskan Iñupiat and Mackenzie Delta Inuvialuit came into the Coronation Gulf area to co-exist with the Copper Inuit.
[11] The first Holman-area (Ulukhaktok) trading post was established in 1923 at Alaervik, on the north shore of Prince Albert Sound, but it closed five years later.
[19] The Copper Inuit have gradually adopted snowmobiles, satellite dish television service, and Christian churches.
[21] Historically, Copper Inuit lived among tundra, rocky hills, outcrops, with some forested areas towards the southern and southwestern range.
[19] Ducks, geese, guillemots, gulls, hawks, longspurs, loons, plovers, ptarmigans, and snow buntings were also part of the Copper Inuit diet.
[23] Copper Inuit clothing consisted of short-waisted inner parkas accented with long, narrow back tails, and sleeves that came short of the wrist.
[24] Copper Inuit had an animistic spiritual system,[23] which included belief that animal spirits could be offended through taboo violations.
[5] They believed that dwarfs, giants, "caribou people", and the sea-goddess Arnapkapfaaluk or "big bad woman" inhabit the world.
[5] Copper Inuit lived within geographically defined subgroups well documented by Stefansson,[27][28] Franz Boas, and others:
