These Eskimos are described as cheerful and good-humoured, quick-tempered but placable, and with strong conjugal and parental affections. They are shrewd and observant and some exhibit considerable capacity. Far to the eastward, in Boothia, the Eskimos live in snow houses instead of wooden huts. These snow houses are built of large blocks of snow carefully laid and made in the shape of a dome with a square hole for light. The dog sledges of the Boothians are rude, and the runners made of folded seal-skin carefully coated with ice.
Still further east, in Melville Peninsula at the head of Hudson’s Bay, the Eskimos average an inch or two more in height. Instead of lip ornaments, they tattoo the face, arms, and hands, and as with the Boothians their winter habitations are snow huts. Besides dog sledges they have kayaks 25 feet long, with a width of 21 and depth of 10½ inches, but no umiaks or women’s boats. Their dog sledges are heavy, with runners of bone scarped and lashed together. Their weapons are spears, bows and arrows, and bird darts used with a throwing-stick.
Thus the Eskimos spread themselves over a vast extent of country, wandering from Bering Strait to Labrador, a distance of 2000 miles. They adapted themselves to their environment alike in the construction of their dwellings and in their contrivances for fishing and hunting. They are equally at home whether the building material is plank, drift wood, stone or snow; and with the same versatility they adapt their weapons and sledges to the materials within their reach. These Eskimos, by reason of their vigour and courage, of their shrewdness and intelligence, have been among the greatest and most successful wanderers on the face of the earth.
The problem of the peopling of Greenland has been more difficult to solve. It is now clear that the Eskimos, as we call them, who established themselves in Greenland, originally came from the north. We therefore seek for the evidence of movement of Arctic people. The most remarkable migration was that of the Onkilon, Omoki, and other Siberian tribes during a long period of years, owing apparently to pressure from the south. We are told that their abandoned yourts may still be seen near the Indigirka and Cape Chelagskoi. As we have already said, there is a tradition that they wandered away from Cape Jakan to the land in sight in the distance, which we now know to be Wrangell Island, and thence across the ice to the American continent. Finding the coast already occupied they went northwards and eastwards seeking for a home. They must have come in very small parties and at long intervals, for the desolate country could not sustain a large migration. Wandering along the coasts of Banks Island, they came to a region which, owing to the absence of open water during long intervals, was unable to support them.
This is one of the most wonderful migrations ever performed. It is unrecorded. But the long route is strewn with abundant vestiges of marches, during centuries perhaps, over the snow and ice, in search of an abiding-place. Many must have perished. We found relics at frequent intervals from Melville Island to Baffin’s Bay. Their appearance and the lichens growing upon them, justify the conclusion that the movement took place centuries ago[3]. The relics consist of stone iglus or winter huts, circles of stones to keep down summer tents, stone fox-traps, stone lamps, graves built with stone slabs, and many articles brought from a distance. Among these were portions of the bones of whales used to support the roof of an iglu, other pieces cut into a shape for running melted snow into a vessel, pieces of the bone runners of sledges, and a willow switch 2 feet 3 inches long, covered with lichens[4]. These vestiges are numerous and continuous from Melville Island to Wellington Channel. Then the traces form two branches; one along the coast of North Devon to Cape Warrender and the north water of Baffin’s Bay, the other up Wellington Channel and the western coast of Ellesmere Island, then across the land to Sir Thomas Smith’s Channel. The most northern traces are near the 82nd parallel, where the framework of a wooden sledge, a stone lamp, and a snow scraper of walrus tusk were found[5]. Further north, life could not be supported, and the wanderers wended their way southward to Greenland. Perhaps a few followed the musk oxen and reached the east coast.
Thus, we may safely believe, was Greenland first peopled. A further proof is that they have the word umingmak (a musk ox), which does not exist in Greenland, but was met with in the far northern wanderings and the tradition handed down. Very gradually the Eskimos worked their way south along the west coast of Greenland. But they were in the region between Disco Bay and Holsteinborg in a far-off prehistoric period. There have been rich finds of implements in North Greenland (68° to 71°) in deep deposits of great age[6]. The Eskimo appeared much later in South Greenland.
The Greenland Eskimo differed very little from his congener of the North American coast. He was dolichocephalic, with a short broad face, small slanting eyes, cheeks broad, prominent, and round, hair straight and black, and about the same average height. In Greenland the Eskimos passed the winter in iglus or stone houses, the floors of which are sunk some feet below the surface of the ground. In summer they lived in skin tents, while their property was moved from one hunting encampment to another in their umiaks or women’s boats, which are 30 feet long by 5 wide and 2½ deep, flat-bottomed, and made of seal-skins stretched on a frame. The kayak or hunter’s canoe is the triumph of Eskimo art. It also consists of seal-skin stretched on a frame, but the frame, flat-bottomed and sharp at both ends, is designed on the most perfect lines for speed and buoyancy. It is entirely covered except a hole for the hunter, who ties a waterproof, which is attached all round to the kayak, around his waist when seated. Then, with his double paddle, he faces the wildest seas with dauntless courage, and with his harpoon secures his prey with unerring aim. The Greenland kayak is the most perfect application of art and ingenuity to the pursuit of necessaries of life to be found within the Arctic Circle.
The use of the kayak among the Eskimo of Hudson’s Bay makes it probable that, at one time, there was some intercourse by way of Davis Strait.
Interior of Greenland Hut