CHAPTER X
ESKIMO AND SKRÆLING
Distribution
Of all the races of the earth that of the Eskimo is the one that has established itself farthest north. His world is that of sea-ice and cold, for which nature had not intended human beings. In his slow, stubborn fight against the powers of winter he has learnt better than any other how to turn these to account, and in these regions, along the ice-bound shores, he developed his peculiar culture, with its ingenious appliances, long before the beginning of history. As men of the white race pushed northward to the “highest latitudes” they found traces of this remarkable people, who had already been there in times long past; and it is only in the last few decades that any one has succeeded in penetrating farther north than the Eskimo, partly by learning from him or enlisting his help. In these regions, which are his own, his culture was superior to that of the white race, and from no other people has the arctic navigator learnt so much.
Distribution of the Eskimo (after W. Thalbitzer, 1904)
The north coast of America and the islands to the north of it, from Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland, is the territory of the Eskimo. The map (below) shows his present distribution and the districts where older traces of him have been found. Within these limits the Eskimo must have developed into what they now are. In their anthropological race-characteristics, in their sealing- and whaling-culture, and in their language they are very different from all other known peoples, both in America and Asia, and we must suppose that for long ages, ever since they began to fit themselves for their life along the frozen shores, they have lived apart, separated from others, perhaps for a long time as a small tribe. They all belong to the same race; the cerebral formation, for instance, of all real Eskimo from Alaska to Greenland is remarkably homogeneous; but in the far west they may have been mixed with Indians and others, and in Greenland they are now mixed with Europeans. They are pronouncedly dolichocephalic; but have short, broad faces, and by their features and appearance are easily distinguished from other neighbouring peoples. Small, slanting eyes; the nose small and flat, narrow between the eyes and broad below; cheeks broad, prominent and round; the forehead narrowing comparatively above; the lower part of the face broad and powerful; black, straight hair. The colour of the skin is a pale brown. The Eskimo are not, as is often supposed, a small people on an average; they are rather of middle height, often powerful, and sometimes quite tall, although they are a good deal shorter, and weaker in appearance, than average Scandinavians. In appearance, and perhaps also in language, they come nearest to some of the North American Indian tribes.
Original home
From whence they originally came, and where they developed into Eskimo, is uncertain. The central point of the Eskimo culture is their seal-hunting, especially with the harpoon, sometimes from the kayak in open water and sometimes from the ice. We cannot believe that this sealing, especially with the kayak, was first developed in the central part of the regions they now inhabit; there the conditions of life would have been too severe, and they would not have been able to support themselves until their sealing-culture had attained a certain development. Just as in Europe we met with the “Finnish” sea-fishing on a coast that was connected with milder coasts farther south, where seamanship was able first to develop, so we must expect that the Eskimo culture began on coasts with similar conditions, and these must be looked for either in Labrador or on Bering Strait.