The one thing which more than all else has enabled the Eskimo to maintain an existence and to thrive in the frozen north is his discovery of a means of obtaining heat and light where wood is scarce—that is, the invention of the lamp. This invention, as has been shown by Walter Hugh and others, was favoured by the occurrence in the far north of animals like the seal and walrus, which yield oil with a high heat-giving property.
In Alaska the Eskimo stock is broken into several tribes speaking diverse dialects. Of these, two main subgroups are distinguished, namely, Innuits and Aleuts or Aleutians. The former includes several tribes living on the margin of the mainland, from near Mount St. Elias northward to the Arctic Ocean, and the latter consists of but two tribes, now
intermingled, which at the time of the discovery of the Alaskan region by the Russians inhabited the western portion of the Alaskan peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. A detailed account of these peoples should have united with it a study of the so-called Tuski of northeastern Siberia, who are of the same stock, and, as seems probable, are the descendants of Eskimos who migrated from America to Asia.
The Innuits.—This name, as is stated by W. H. Dall, is applied to themselves by all the tribes of the Eskimo stock, except the Aleuts and the eastern Siberian natives. It is in use at the present time from Greenland to Bering Strait, and thence southward to the vicinity of Mount St. Elias.
In Alaska the Innuits are divided into at least fourteen tribes, speaking as many different dialects, and distinguished by such names as Ugalakmuts, Kaniagmuts, etc. The termination mut, in a substantive sense, means a village at the place or on the river to the name of which it is added (Dall). In common with all other Eskimo tribes the Innuits are a sturdy, well-built people, having lighter-coloured skins than the Indians, and more nearly approaching the yellow of the Asiatics, but distinct from it, and in many instances having a decided reddish tinge to the cheeks. The prevalent idea that the Eskimo is of decidedly short stature is not borne out by the various tribes in Alaska, who are not much, if any, below the average height of Europeans. Their rotund bodies and full, round faces, in which the organ answering to a nose is depressed until between the eyes it is scarcely distinguishable, suggest that the severity of the climate has led to a development of fat for protection against cold in the same manner as among the seals and walruses. Such a generalization is perhaps misleading, as great individual variations occur as among all peoples, but the typical Innuit whose figure remains in one's memory when the bony hags, the cadaverous individuals, and the aged are forgotten or but dimly recalled, favours the conventional pictures of Santa Claus, with a face resembling the full moon, small black eyes with a suggestion of obliquity in their alignment, and nearly complete absence of a beard on the ruddy cheeks.
The food of the Eskimos of Alaska, as is the case with all
other divisions of that people, is derived mainly from the sea. Their diet is almost exclusively fish, the blubber and flesh of the seal, walrus, and whales, especially the white whale or beluga, which ascends the larger streams. To these sources of supply are added the arctic hare, caribou (reindeer), and in fact any flesh that can be obtained. Vegetable diet is almost unknown, except so far as it is supplied by the berries that grow in profusion on the tundras. The necessity for salt, so marked in the case of most peoples, is absent in the far north.
The coast of Alaska, where dwells the Innuit, is treeless. Inland from the margin of the sea extends the permanently frozen tundra. Wood for fires, sleds, frames for skin boats, spears, bows, arrows, etc., and in prehistoric time for producing fire by friction, is derived entirely from driftwood cast on the beach by the waves. This wood, consisting in many instances of great tree trunks from which planks two or more feet wide can be hewn, is brought to the sea by rivers heading far inland, as, for example, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, and distributed by the wind and currents all about the coast and islands of Bering Sea. Driftwood is also carried to the Arctic Ocean by the Mackenzie, but in general is not plentiful on the borders of the ice-bound northern ocean.
The houses of the Alaskan Innuit previous to the coming of the Russians, and still to a great extent, consist of a single room, usually measuring about 10 by 14 feet, situated in part below the surface of the ground and entered by means of a tunnel-like passageway. They are made of driftwood, and floored, lined, and roofed with planks hewn from the same material. On a roof of poles sods and earth are placed and rendered compact by stamping, thus forming a cover which serves to exclude water produced by the melting of the naturally added layer of snow. When spring-time approaches these partially subterranean winter dwellings are liable to be inundated, and are abandoned and tents used during summer seasons. Formerly these tents were made of skins of caribou or seal, but in these degenerate days cotton drilling bought of white traders
has been substituted. During winter journeys temporary snow huts are built, of the oval, bake-oven shape, well known to most Europeans from the many pictures that have been published of similar structures made by the more northern Eskimos. On the coast of Alaska, however, when driftwood is available, the roofs of the snow houses are frequently made of poles on which snow is piled.