FOOTNOTES:
[270] Gallatin, Albert, A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America. Archaeologia Americana, II, pp. 13, 14. Cambridge, 1836.
[271] Richardson, Sir John, Origin of the Eskimos. The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, LII, p. 323. Edinburgh, 1852.
[272] Meigs, J. Aitken, The cranial characteristics of the races of men. In Indigenous Races of the Earth, by Nott, J. C., and Gliddon, George R., Philadelphia, p. 266. London, 1857.
[273] Abbott, C. C., Traces of American Autochthon. Am. Nat., p. 329. June, 1876.
[274] Grote, A. R., Effect of the Glacial Epoch Upon the Distribution of Insects in North America. Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. Sci., Detroit meeting, 1875, B, Natural History, p. 225.
[275] Grote, A. R., On the Peopling of America. Bull. Buffalo Soc. Nat. Sc., III, p. 181-185, 1877.
[276] Eskimo. Lecture before the Geogr. Soc. of Stockholm, Dec. 19, 1884; abstract in Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc., VII, No. 6, p. 370-371. London, 1885.
[277] Keane, A. H., The Eskimo; a commentary. Nature, XXXV, p. 309. London, New York, 1886-1887.
[278] Quatrefages, A. de, Histoire Générale des Races Humaines, introduction l'Etude des Races Humaines, pp. 136, 435. Paris, 1887.
[279] Nansen, Fridtjof, Eskimo Life, pp. 6, 8. London, 1893. (Translated by William Archer.)
[280] Tarenetzky, A., Beiträge zur Skelet-und Schädelkunde der Aleuten, Konaegen, Kenai und Koljuschen. Mem. Acad. imp d. sc., ix, No. 4, p. 7. St. Petersburg, 1900.
[281] Nadaillac, M. de, Les Eskimo. L'Anthropologie, XIII, p. 104. 1902.
[282] Jenness, D., Ethnological Problems of Arctic America. Amer. Geogr. Soc. Special Publ. No. 7. New York, 1928.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS INDICATED BY PRESENT DATA
The maze of thoughts on the origin of the Eskimo shows one fact conclusively, which is that the necessary evidence on the subject has hitherto been insufficient. From whatever side the problem has been approached, whether linguistically, culturally, from the study of myths, or even somatologically, the materials were, it is plain, more or less inadequate and there was not enough for satisfactory comparisons. The best contributions to Eskimo studies, from the oldest to the most recent, all accentuate the need for further research, and more ample collections.
Another point is that heterogeneous and wide apart as many of the opinions may seem, yet when the subject is looked upon with a larger perspective they may often perhaps be harmonized. Thus a belief in an American origin of the Eskimo need not exclude that in the Asiatic derivation of his parental stock. Even in the case of the supposed European derivation the Eskimo are understood to have reached America through Asia; there is not one suggestion of any importance advocating the coming of the Eskimo over northwestern Europe and Iceland. Only the Meigs-Grote-Nordenskiöld theory of an ancient polar race and its descent southward appears now as beyond the bounds of what would be at least partly justifiable.
What is the contribution to the subject of the studies reported in this treatise, with its relatively great amount of somatological material? The answer is not easy.
Even the truly great and precious material at hand is not sufficient. There are important parts of the Arctic, such as the Hudson Bay region, Baffin Land, and the central region; several parts of the west coast, such as the inland waters of the Seward Peninsula and the Eskimo portions of the Selawik, Kobuk, Noatak, and Yukon Rivers; and above all the Eskimo part of northeastern Siberia, from which there are insufficient or no collections. There is, moreover, especially in this country, a great want of skeletal material from the non-Eskimo Siberian tribes, and also from the old European peoples that are of most importance for comparisons. It must be plain, therefore, that even at present no final deductions are possible. All that can be claimed for the evidence here brought forth is that it clears, or tends to settle, certain secondary problems, and that it presents indications of value for the rest of the question.
The secondary problems that may herewith be regarded as settled are as follows:
1. Unity or plurality of the race.—The materials at hand give no substantiation to the possibility of the Eskimo belonging to more than one basic strain of people. They range in color from tan or light reddish-yellow to medium brown; in stature from decidedly short to above the general human medium; in head from brachycephalic and low to extremely dolichocephalic, high and keel shaped; in eyes from horizontal to decidedly mongoloid; in orbits from microseme to hypermegaseme; in nose from fully mesorrhinic to extremely leptorrhinic; in physiognomy from pure "Indian" to extreme "Eskimo." Yet all through there runs, both in the living and in the skeletal remains, so much of a basic identity that no separation into any distinct original "races" is possible. At most it is permissible to speak of a few prevalent types.
2. Relation.—The general basic prototype of the Eskimo, according to all evidence, is so closely akin to that of the Indian that the two can not be fully separated. They appear only as the thumb and the digits of the same hand, some large old mother stock from which both gradually differentiated. This appears to be an unavoidable conclusion from the present anthropological knowledge of the two peoples.
The next unavoidable deduction is that the mother stock of both the Eskimo and the Indian can only be identified with the great yellow-brown stem of man, the home of which was in Asia, but the roots of which, as has been discussed elsewhere, were probably in ancient (later paleolithic) Europe.[283] The latter fact may explain the cultural as well as somatological resemblances between the Eskimo, as well as the Indian (for the Indian, physically at least, has much in common with the upper Aurignacians), and the upper glacial European populations. But such an explanation can not in the light of present knowledge legitimately be extended to the assumption that either the Indian complex or the Eskimo originated as such in Europe; they could be at most but parts of the eventual more or less further differentiated Asiatic progeny of the upper paleolithic Europeans.
3. Mixture.—It has been assumed by Boas and others that the eastern Eskimo have become admixed with the eastern Indian and the western with the Alaskan Indian, that the physical and especially craniological differences between the eastern and western Eskimo were due to such a mixture, and that both extremes deviated from the type of the pure Eskimo, who was to be found somewhere in the central Arctic. The evidence of the present studies does not sustain such an assumption.
As shown before[284] and is seen more clearly from the present data, the western Eskimo type is also present or approached in various localities in the far north (part of Smith Sound, Southampton Island, part of the Hudson Bay coast, with probable spots in the central Arctic proper). There is no indication of any central region where the western Eskimo type would be much "purer" than elsewhere.
Individual skulls and skeletons in the west, particularly in certain spots (especially on Seward Peninsula), show the same characteristics as the most diverging skulls or skeletons in the farthest northeast.
And both in the west and in the east the most pronounced Eskimo characteristics exceed similar features in the Indian, indicating independent development. Such characteristics involve the stature (taller in the west, shorter in the east than that of the Indian); the size of the head (everywhere averaging higher in the Eskimo); dolichocephaly, height of the head, its keel shape (all more pronounced in the eastern and now and then a western Eskimo than in any Indian group); the face, nose, orbits, and lower jaw; with the relative proportions and other characteristics of the skeleton. All these point to functional and other developments within the Eskimo groups and none suggest a large Indian admixture.
It is well known that more or less blood mixture takes place among all neighboring peoples where contact is possible, even if otherwise there be much enmity. Such enmity, often in an extreme form, existed everywhere it seems between the Eskimo and the Indian, as a result of the encroaching of the former on the latter; there are many statements to that effect. Within historic times also there are no records of any adoptions or intermarriages between the two peoples. Nevertheless where contact took place, as on the rivers and in the southwest as well as the southeast of the Eskimo territory, some blood mixture, it would seem, must have developed. The Indian neighbors show it, and it would be strange if it remained one-sided. But of a mixture extensive enough to have materially modified the type of the Eskimo in whole large regions, such as the entire Bering Sea and most of the far northeast, there is no evidence and little not only probability but even possibility. Nothing approaching such an extensive mixture is shown by the near-by Indians; and it would be most exceptional in people of this nature if a much greater proportion of the mixture was into the Eskimo.
Finally, a mixture of diverse human types, unless very old, may be expected to leave numerous physical signs of heterogeneity and disturbance, none of which is shown by either the western or eastern Eskimo. Such groups as that of the St. Lawrence Island, or that of Greenland, are among the most homogeneous human groups known. The range of variation of their characters is as a rule a strictly normal range, giving a uniform curve of distribution, which is not consistent with the notion of any relatively recent material mixture.
4. The indications.—The indications of the data and observations presented in this volume may be outlined as follows:
The Eskimo throughout their territory are but one and the same broad strain of people. This strain is fundamentally related to that (or those) of the American Indian. It is also uncontestably related to the yellow-brown strains of Asia.
In many respects, such as pigmentation, build of the body, physiognomy, large brain, fullness of forehead, fullness of the fronto-sphenotemporal region, largeness of face and lower jaw, height of the nose, size and characteristics of the teeth,[285] smallness of hands and feet, etc., the Eskimos are remarkably alike over their whole territory. They differ in details, such as stature, form of the head, and breadth of the nose. But the distribution of these differences is of much interest and probably significance. Higher statures, broader heads, and broader noses are found especially in the west, the latter two particularly in the Bering Sea region; low group statures, narrow heads and narrow noses reach, with few exceptions, their extremes in the northeast. Between the two extremes, however, there is no interruption, but a gradation, with here and there an irregularity. These conditions speak not of mixture but rather of adaptation and differentiation.
They strongly suggest a moderate stream of people, rooted in Asia, of fairly broad and but moderately high head, of a good medium stature, with a mesorrhinic nose (and hence probably originally not far northern), and with many other characteristics in common, reaching America from northeasternmost Asia after the related Indians, spreading along the seacoasts as far as it could, not of choice, or choice alone, but mainly because of the blocking by the Indian of the roads toward the south and through the interior; and gradually modifying physically in adaptation to the new conditions and necessities; to climate, newer modes of life, the demands of the kayak, and above all to the results of the increased demands on the masticatory organs.
The narrowness, increased length and increased height of the Eskimo skull, without change in its size or other characteristics, may readily be understood as compensatory adaptations, the development of which was initiated and furthered by the development and mechanical effects of the muscles of mastication.
A similar conclusion has been reached in my former study on the central and Smith Sound Eskimo (1910). It has been approached or reached independently by other students of the Eskimo, notably Fürst and Hansen (1915) in their great work on the East Greenlanders. It is a conclusion of much biological importance for it involves not merely the development but also the eventual inheritance of new characters.
Former authors, it was seen, have advanced the theories of an American origin of the Eskimo. This could only mean that he developed from the American Indian. And such a development would imply physical and hereditary changes at least as great as those indicated in the preceding paragraphs, and in less time. A differentiation commenced well back in Asia, geographically and chronologically, and advancing, to its present limits, in America would seem the more probable.
An origin of the Eskimo in Europe, during the last glacial invasion, would not only push into the hazy far past the same changes as here dealt with, but it would at the same time fail to explain the physical differences within the Eskimo group, and deny any substantial changes in him during the long time of his migration toward the American northern coasts.
Figure 29.—Probable movements of people from northeastern Asia to Alaska and in Alaska. (A. Hrdlička)
Absolute proofs of the origin of the Eskimo, as of that of the various strains of the Indians, are hardly to be expected. Such origins are so gradual and insidious that they would escape detection even if watched for while occurring; they are noticed only after sufficient differences have developed and become established, which takes generations. The solving of racial origins must depend on sound scientific induction.
Such induction may not yet be fully possible in the case of the Eskimo. The evidence is not yet complete. But with the present and other most recent data there is enough on hand for substantial indications. The evidence shows that barring some irregularities, due possibly to later intrusions or refluxes, the farther east in the Eskimo territory the observer proceeds the more highly differentiated and divergent the Eskimo becomes, and there is a greater gap between him and his Indian neighbors, as well as other races. Proceeding from the east westward, conditions are reversed. In general the farther west we proceed the less exceptional on the whole the Eskimo becomes and the more he approximates the Indian, particularly the Indian of Alaska and the northwest coast. As this can not, in the light of present evidence, be attributed alone to mixture, it is plain that if it were possible to proceed a few steps farther in this direction the differences between the Eskimo and the Indian would fade out so that a distinction between the two would become difficult if not impossible.
The facts point, therefore, to an original identity of the source from which were derived the Indian, more particularly his latest branches, and the Eskimo, and to the identification of this source with the palaeo-Asiatic yellow-brown people of lower northern Asia. The differentiation of the Eskimo from this source must have proceeded over a fairly long time, and probably started already it would seem on the northern coasts of Asia, where conditions were present capable of beginning to shape him into an Eskimo; to be carried on since in the Bering Sea area and especially in the Seward Peninsula and farther northward and eastward. In a larger sense the cradle of the Eskimo, therefore, while starting probably in northeast Asia, covered in reality a much vaster region, extending from northern Asia and the Bering Sea to the far American Arctic.