The Stoic of the woods, the man without a tear, &c.,
have been formed. The Athabaskans, on the other hand, have not contributed much to our notions on this point. In the first place, they are less known; in the next, they are less typical.
But this raises their value in the eyes of the ethnologist; and the very fact of their possessing certain characteristics, in a comparatively slight degree, makes them all the fitter for illustrating the phenomena of transition.
Previous, however, to this, we must get our[233] other extreme. This is to be found in the ethnology of—
The Eskimo.—It is a very easy matter for an artistic ethnologist to make some fine light-and-shade contrasts between two populations, where he has an Iroquois or a Sioux at one end, and an Eskimo of Labrador at the other. An oblique eye, bleared and sore from the glare of the snow, with a crescentic fold overshadowing the caruncula lacrymalis, surmounted by a low forehead and black shaggy locks, with cheek-bones of such inordinate development as to make the face as broad as it is long, are elements of ugliness which catch the imagination, and produce a caricature, where we want a picture. And they are elements of ugliness which can be accumulated. We may add to them, a nose so flat, and cheeks so fleshy, as for a ruler, placed across the latter, to leave the former untouched. We may then notice the state of the teeth, from the mastication of injurious substances; and having thus exhausted nature, we may revert to the deformities of art. We may observe that wherever there is a fleshy portion of the face that can be perforated by a stone knife, or pierced by a whalebone, there will be tattooing and incisions; and that wherever there are incisions, bones, nails, feathers, and such like ornaments will be inserted. All this is the case. What European ladies do with their ears, the[234] Eskimo does with the cartilage of his nose, the lips, the corners of his mouth, and the cheeks. More than this—in the lower lip, parallel to the mouth, and taking the guise of a mouth additional, a slit is made quite through the lip, large enough to allow the escape of spittle and the protrusion of the tongue. The insertion of a shell or bone, cut into the shape of teeth, completes the adornment.
Then comes the question of colour. The Indian has a tinge of red; a tinge which enables us to compare his skin to copper. The Eskimo is simply brown, swarthy, or tawny.
Again, the Eskimo hold periodical fairs. Whales are scarce in the south, and wood in the north of Greenland; and in consequence of this, there are regular meetings for the business of barter. This gives us the elements of commercial industry; elements which must themselves be taken in conjunction with the maritime habits of the people. What stronger contrast can we find to all this than the gloomy isolation of the hunters of the prairie-countries, whether Sioux, Iroquois, or Algonkin?
Again, it is safe, in the way of intellectual capacity, to give the Eskimo credit for ingenuity and imitativeness. The Indian, of the type which we have chosen to judge him by, is pre-eminently indocile and inflexible.
Yet all this, with much more besides, is capable[235] of great qualification—qualification which we find necessary, whether we look to the extent to which the Eskimos approach the Indian, or the Indian the Eskimo—each receding from its own more extreme representative.
The prominence of the nasal bones is certainly common amongst the Red Indian tribes; and rare amongst the Eskimo. Yet it is neither universal in the one, nor non-existent in the other. Oval features, a mixture of red in the complexion, an aquiline nose, have all been observed amongst the more favoured of the Circumpolar men and women.