In one of the acts of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages" the Eskimo plays a very unimportant rôle. Perhaps in no other race is the combative instinct less predominant; in none is quarrelling, fierceness of disposition, and jealousy more conspicuously absent, and in none does the desire for the factitious renown of war exist in a more rudimentary and undeveloped state. Perhaps the constant fight with cold and hunger is a compensation which must account for the absence of such unmitigated evils as war, taxes, complex social organization and hierarchy among the curious people of the icy north. The pursuits of peace and of simple patriarchal lives, notwithstanding the fact of much in connection therewith that is wretched, and forbidding to a civilized man, seem to beget in these people a degree of domestic tranquility and contentment which, united to their light-hearted and cheery disposition, is an additional reason for believing the sum of human happiness to be constant throughout the world.
MENTAL CHARACTER AND CAPACITY.
The intellectual character of the Eskimo, judging from the information which various travellers have furnished, as well as my personal knowledge, produces more than a feeble belief in the possibility of their being equal to anything they choose to take an interest in learning. The Eskimo is not "muffled imbecility," as some one has called him, nor is he dull and slow of understanding, as Vitruvius describes the northern nation to be "from breathing a thick air"—which, by the way, is thin, elastic and highly ozonized—nor is he, according to Dr. Beke, "degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible with the retention of rational endowments." On the contrary, the old Greenland missionary, Hans Egede, writes: "I have found some of them witty enough and of good capacity;" Sir Martin Frobisher says they are "in nature very subtle and sharp-witted;" Sir Edward Parry, while extolling their honesty and good nature, adds, "Indeed, it required no long acquaintance to convince us that art and education might easily have made them equal or superior to ourselves;" Sauer tells of a woman who learned to speak Russian fluently in rather less than twelve months, and Beechy and others have acknowledged the intelligent help they have received from Eskimo in making their explorations.
Before going further, it may not be amiss to speak in a general way of the bony covering which protects the organ whose function it is to generate the vibrations known as thought. Of one hundred crania, collected principally at Saint Lawrence island, a number were examined by me at the Army Medical Museum, through the courtesy of Dr. Huntington, with the result of changing and greatly modifying some of the previous notions of the conventional Eskimo skull as acquired from books on craniology. Perhaps after the inspection and examination of a large collection of crania, it may be safe to pronounce upon their differential character; but whether the differences in configuration are constant or only occasional manifestations, admits of as much doubt as the exceptions in Professor Sophocles's Greek grammar, which are often coextensive with the rule.[4]
The typical Eskimo skull, according to popular notion, is one exhibiting a low order of intelligence, and characterized by small brain capacity, with great prominence of the superciliary ridges, occipital protuberance and zygomatic arches, the latter projecting beyond the general contour of the skull like the handles of a jar or a peach basket; and lines drawn from the most projecting part of the arches and touching the sides of the frontal bone are supposed to meet over the forehead, forming a triangle, for which reason the skull is known as pyramidal.
The first specimen, examined from a vertical view, shows something of the typical character as figured in A, and when viewed posteriorly there is noticed a flattening of the parietal walls with an elongated vertex as shown in D; while a second specimen, represented by B, shows none of the foregoing characteristics, the form being elongated and the parietal walls so far overhanging as to conceal the zygomatic arches in the vertical view, so that if lines be drawn as previously mentioned, instead of forming a triangle they may, like the asymptotes of a parabola, be extended to infinity and never meet.
For purposes of comparison a number of orthographic outlines, showing the contour of civilized crania, from a vertical point of observation, are herewith annexed. No. 1 is that of an eminent mathematician who committed suicide; No. 2, a prominent politician during the civil war; No. 3, a banker; and No. 4, a notorious assassin. Nos. 5 and 6 are negro skulls. Further comparison may be made with the Jewish skull, as represented in No. 7, in which the nasal bones project so far beyond the general contour as to form a bird-like appendage.
| Figure A | Figure B |
| Figure C | Figure D |
A collection of Aleutian heads, as seen from a vertical point of observation, when I looked down from the gallery of the little Greek church at Ounalaska, presented at first certain collective characters by which they approach one another. But anatomists know that a careful comparison of any collection will show extremely salient differences. In fact, individual differences, so numerous and so irregular as to prevent methodical enumeration, constitute the stumbling-block of ethnic craniology. Take, for instance, a number of the skulls under consideration: in proportions they will be found to present very considerable variations among themselves. The skulls figured by A and B are respectively brachycephalic and dolichocephalic. The former has an internal capacity of 1,400, the latter 1,214 cubic centimeters; but the facial angle of each is 80°, and in one Eskimo cranium it runs up to 84°. If the facial angle be trustworthy, as a measure of the degree of intelligence, we have shown here a development far in excess of the negro, which is placed at 70°, or of the Mongolian at 75°, and exceeding that observed by me in many German skulls, which do not, as a rule, come up to the 90° of Jupiter Tonans or of Cuvier, in spite of the boasted intelligence of that nationality.
| Illustration No. 1. | Illustration No. 2. | Illustration No. 3. |
| Illustration No. 4. | Illustration No. 5. | Illustration No. 6. |