On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described by our chroniclers Probable situation of Vinland. as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this, the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216] While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for the general historian is not increased.
But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story. We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than any as yet mentioned,—details that could never have been conjured up by the fancy of any mediæval European. "Savages" unknown to mediæval Europeans. We must bear in mind that "savages," whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediæval Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind, let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest strip. The natives of Vinland. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants—at first with success—to frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]
These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The Northmen called them "Skrælings," a name which one is at first sight strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb skrækja, identical with the English screech. A crowd of excited Indians might most appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is not correct. Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings." The word skræling survives in modern Norwegian, and means a feeble or puny or insignificant person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in all probability correct, that the name "Skrælings," as applied to the natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant "inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however, that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians "savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.
Our chronicle describes the Skrælings of Vinland as swarthy in hue, ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225] Personal appearance of the Skrælings. This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226] Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the Frenchman also had in mind.
These Skrælings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think, be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro, was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,—very likely Algonquins. We seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skrælings came up the river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their voices (et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant), and, leaping ashore, began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls these canoes "skin-boats" (hudhkeipar), whence it has been inferred that the writer had in mind the kayaks and umiaks of the Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]
One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the Skrælings is a singular manœuvre which they are said to have practised in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft, this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the "balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe, it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout the account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.
The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to The uniped. find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233] Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]
It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called "sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. Misleading associations with the word "saga." To cite a "saga" as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society,—"that there is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as true the details Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon. related about the discoveries of the former than there is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235] The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation, and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif, The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure folk-lore. between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenæ conducted an expedition against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the Charlemagne of mediæval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore. If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events, these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history. The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.[237]