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.