Anthropological Survey in Alaska

by Aleš Hrdlička

Opinions By Former and Living Students

Origin in Asia.—Many opinions on the origin of the Eskimo have been expressed by different authors. Among the earliest of these were those of missionaries, such as Crantz (1779), and of the early explorers, such as Steller, v. Wrangell, Lütke and others. They were based on the general aspect of the Eskimo, particularly that of his physiognomy; and seeing that in many features he resembled most the mongoloid peoples of Asia they attached him to these, which meant the conclusion that he was of Asiatic derivation. Quite soon, however, there began to appear also the opinions of students of man. The first of these was that of Blumenbach, as expressed in his Inaugural Thesis of 1781. In this thesis, more particularly its second edition, he classifies the Eskimo expressly as a part of the Caucasian or white race. But after obtaining an Eskimo skull and an Eskimo body he changes his opinion and in 1795-1806 he comes out with a definite classification of the Eskimo as a member of the Mongolians; and a similar conclusion, with its implied or expressed consequence of a migration from Asia to America, has been reached since, mainly on somatological but also in part on linguistic and cultural bases, by a large number of authors, including Lawrence, Morton, Pickering, Latham, Flower, Peschel, Topinard, Brinton, Virchow (1877), Quatrefages and Hamy (1882), Thalbitzer, Bogoras and numerous others. With all of this, the conception of the Asiatic origin of the Eskimo has not passed the status of a strong probability, lacking a final conclusive demonstration.

A chronological list of the more noteworthy individual statements is given at the end of this section.

Origin in America.—Since the earlier parts of the nineteenth century the opinion began to be expressed that the Eskimo is not of Asiatic but of American origin. Already in 1847 Prichard tells us that there are those who "consider them as belonging to the American family," and he plainly favors this conception.

Between 1873 and 1890 the American origin of the Eskimo is repeatedly asserted by Rink, who for 16 winters and 22 summers lived with the eastern Eskimo, first as a scientific explorer and later as royal inspector or governor of the southern Danish settlements in Greenland (preface by R. Brown to Rink's Tales and Traditions, 1875). In this opinion, briefly, the Eskimo were derived from the inland Indian tribes of Alaska; without referring to the origin of the Indian.

Rink's authoritative opinion was followed or paralleled by Daniel Wilson (1876), Grote, Krause, Ray, Keane, Brown, and others. In 1887 Chamberlain expresses the somewhat startling additional theory that it was not the Eskimo who was derived from the Mongolians but the Mongolians from the Eskimo or their American ancestors. And in 1901-1910 Boas comes to the conclusion that the Eskimo probably originated from the inland tribes (Indian?) in the Hudson Bay region.

An interesting case in these connections is that of Rudolf Virchow. In 1877 (see details at the end of this section) he expresses the belief in the Eskimo coming from Asia; in 1878 he seems to be uncertain; and in 1885 he comes out in support of the opinion that the original home of the Eskimo may have been in the western part of the Hudson Bay region. Among later students of the problem, Steensby[205] and Birket-Smith[206] incline on cultural grounds to this hypothesis.

Wissler, not explicit as to the Eskimo in 1917 (The American Indian), in 1918 (Archæology of the Polar Eskimo) finds, after Steensby, the most acceptable theory of the Eskimo origin to be that "they expanded from a parent group in the Arctic Archipelago"; but in 1922, in the second edition of his The American Indian, he repeats word for word his opinion of 1917, which appears to favor an Asiatic derivation.

Origin in Europe—Identity with Upper Palaeolithic man.—About the sixties of last century growing discoveries in France of implements, etc., of later palaeolithic man brought about a realization that not a few of these implements and other objects, particularly those of the Magdalenian period, resembled like implements and objects of the Eskimo; from which, together with the considerations of the similarities of fauna (reindeer, musk-ox, etc.), and of climate, there was but a step to a more or less definite identification of the Magdalenians and Solutreans with the Eskimo. In 1870 Pruner-Bey[207] claims a similarity between Solutrean and Eskimo skulls. In 1883 these views received the influential support of De Mortillet (see details). In 1889 the theory receives strong support from the characteristics of the Chancelade (Magdalenian) skeleton which Testut declares are in many respects almost identical with those of the Eskimo. And within the next few years the notion is upheld by Hamy and Hervé. It remains sympathetic as late as 1913 to Marcellin Boule, and finds most recent champions in Morin and Sollas.

However, there were also many who opposed the effort at a direct connection of the upper palaeolithic man of Europe and the Eskimo. Among these were Geikie, Flower, Rae, Daniel Wilson, Robert Brown, Déchelette, Laloy. At present the theory is supported mainly by Morin and Sollas, opposed by Steensby, Burkitt, Keith, MacCurdy, and others; while most students of the Eskimo ignore the question.

Other hypotheses.—Besides the preceding ideas which attribute the origin of the Eskimo to Asia, or America, or old Europe, there were also others that failed to receive a wider support; and there were authors and students who remained undecided or were too cautious to definitely formulate their beliefs. Some of the former as well as the latter deserve brief mention.

Gallatin, in 1836, mainly on linguistic grounds, recognizes the fundamental relation of the Eskimo and the Indian and seems inclined to the American origin of the former, but makes no clear statement to that effect. For Meigs (1857), who probably followed an earlier opinion, the Eskimo came "from the islands of the Polar Sea." C. C. Abbott (1876) saw Eskimo in the early inhabitants of the Delaware Valley. To Grote (1875, 1877), the Eskimo were "the existing representatives of the man of the American glacial epoch"; they were modified Pliocene men. Nordenskiöld (1885) follows closely Meigs and Grote; the Eskimo may be "the true autochthones of the Polar regions," having inhabited them from before the glacial age, during more genial climate. Keane (1886) believed the Eskimo developed from the Aleuts. For De Quatrefages (1887), man originated in the Tertiary in northern Asia, spread from there, and some of his contingents may have reached America and been the ancestors of the Eskimo; the western tribes of the latter being a mixture of the Eskimo with Asiatic brachycephals. Nansen (1893) avoids a discussion of the origin of the Eskimo; and the same caution is observable more or less in most modern writers.

The following chart of the more noteworthy opinions regarding the origin of the Eskimo will show at a glance the diversity of the views and their lack of conclusiveness.