Thus, in a nation of hunters inhabiting a rigorous climate, we may look for wiry, keen-scented men, who in their war upon wild beasts put forth strength and endurance in order to overtake and capture the strong; cunning is opposed by superior cunning; a stealthy watchfulness governs every movement, while the intelligence of the man contends with the instincts of the brute. Fishermen, on the other hand, who obtain their food with comparatively little effort, are more sluggish in their natures and less noble in their development. In the icy regions of the north, the animal creation supplies man with food, clothing, and caloric; with all the requisites of an existence under circumstances apparently the most adverse to comfort; and when he digs his dwelling beneath the ground, or walls out the piercing winds with snow, his ultimate is attained.
The chief differences in tribes occupying the interior and the seaboard,—the elevated, treeless, grassy plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and the humid islands and shores of the great Northwest,—grow out of necessities arising from their methods of procuring food. Even causes so slight as the sheltering bend of a coast-line; the guarding of a shore by islands; the breaking of a seaboard by inlets and covering of the strand with sea-weed and polyps, requiring only the labor of gathering; or the presence of a bluff coast or windy promontory, whose occupants are obliged to put forth more vigorous action for sustenance—all govern man in his development. Turn now to the most northern division of our most northern group.
THE ESKIMOS.
The Eskimos, Esquimaux, or as they call themselves, Innuit, 'the people,' from inuk, 'man,'[2] occupy the Arctic seaboard from eastern Greenland along the entire continent of America, and across Bering[3] Strait to the Asiatic shore. Formerly the inhabitants of our whole Hyperborean sea-coast, from the Mackenzie River to Queen Charlotte Island—the interior being entirely unknown—were denominated Eskimos, and were of supposed Asiatic origin.[4] The tribes of southern Alaska were then found to differ essentially from those of the northern coast. Under the name Eskimos, therefore, I include only the Western Eskimos of certain writers, whose southern boundary terminates at Kotzebue Sound.[5]
ESKIMO LAND.
Eskimo-land is thinly peopled, and but little is known of tribal divisions. At the Coppermine River, the Eskimos are called Naggeuktormutes, or deer-horns; at the eastern outlet of the Mackenzie, their tribal name is Kittegarute; between the Mackenzie River and Barter Reef, they go by the name of Kangmali Innuit; at Point Barrow they call themselves Nuwungmutes; while on the Nunatok River, in the vicinity of Kotzebue Sound, they are known as Nunatangmutes. Their villages, consisting of five or six families each,[6] are scattered along the coast. A village site is usually selected upon some good landing-place, where there is sufficient depth of water to float a whale. Between tribes is left a spot of unoccupied or neutral ground, upon which small parties meet during the summer for purposes of trade.[7]
The Eskimos are essentially a peculiar people. Their character and their condition, the one of necessity growing out of the other, are peculiar. First, it is claimed for them that they are the anomalous race of America—the only people of the new world clearly identical with any race of the old. Then they are the most littoral people in the world. The linear extent of their occupancy, all of it a narrow seaboard averaging scarcely one hundred miles in width, is estimated at not less than five thousand miles. Before them is a vast, unknown, icy ocean, upon which they scarcely dare venture beyond sight of land; behind them, hostile mountaineers ever ready to dispute encroachment. Their very mother-earth, upon whose cold bosom they have been borne, age after age through countless generations,[8] is almost impenetrable, thawless ice. Their days and nights, and seasons and years, are not like those of other men. Six months of day succeed six months of night. Three months of sunless winter; three months of nightless summer; six months of glimmering twilight.
About the middle of October[9] commences the long night of winter. The earth and sea put on an icy covering; beasts and birds depart for regions sheltered or more congenial; humanity huddles in subterraneous dens; all nature sinks into repose. The little heat left by the retreating sun soon radiates out into the deep blue realms of space; the temperature sinks rapidly to forty or fifty degrees below freezing; the air is hushed, the ocean calm, the sky cloudless. An awful, painful stillness pervades the dreary solitude. Not a sound is heard; the distant din of busy man, and the noiseless hum of the wilderness alike are wanting. Whispers become audible at a considerable distance, and an insupportable sense of loneliness oppresses the inexperienced visitor.[10] Occasionally the aurora borealis flashes out in prismatic coruscations, throwing a brilliant arch from east to west—now in variegated oscillations, graduating through all the various tints of blue, and green, and violet, and crimson; darting, flashing, or streaming in yellow columns, upwards, downwards; now blazing steadily, now in wavy undulations, sometimes up to the very zenith; momentarily lighting up in majestic grandeur the cheerless frozen scenery, but only to fall back with exhausted force, leaving a denser obscurity. Nature's electric lantern, suspended for a time in the frosty vault of heaven;—munificent nature's fire-works; with the polar owl, the polar bear, and the polar man, spectators.
In January, the brilliancy of the stars is dimmed perceptibly at noon; in February, a golden tint rests upon the horizon at the same hour; in March, the incipient dawn broadens; in April, the dozing Eskimo rubs his eyes and crawls forth; in May, the snow begins to melt, the impatient grass and flowers arrive as it departs.[11] In June, the summer has fairly come. Under the incessant rays of the never setting sun, the snow speedily disappears, the ice breaks up, the glacial earth softens for a depth of one, two, or three feet; circulation is restored to vegetation,[12] which, during winter, had been stopped,—if we may believe Sir John Richardson, even the largest trees freezing to the heart. Sea, and plain, and rolling steppe lay aside their seamless shroud of white, and a brilliant tint of emerald overspreads the landscape.[13] All Nature, with one resounding cry, leaps up and claps her hands for joy. Flocks of birds, lured from their winter homes, fill the air with their melody; myriads of wild fowls send forth their shrill cries; the moose and the reindeer flock down from the forests;[14] from the resonant sea comes the noise of spouting whales and barking seals; and this so lately dismal, cheerless region, blooms with an exhuberance of life equaled only by the shortness of its duration. And in token of a just appreciation of the Creator's goodness, this animated medley—man, and beasts, and birds, and fishes—rises up, divides, falls to, and ends in eating or in being eaten.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.