ESKIMO HELPING MR. STEFANSSON BREAK CAMP AND PACK THE SLEDS FOR THE JOURNEY

The one thousand Eskimo on the two sides of Coronation Gulf and Dolphin and Union Strait contain no more than twenty men who have ever seen a
white man, thus representing less contact with the white race than do the people of any other part of the explored Arctics

The Eskimo as a people are exceptionally generous and hospitable. They share their food to the last with one another or with guests: however, food
in quantity is more difficult to obtain each year in the Arctics. The Cape Parry region, full of game sixty years ago, is now gameless and deserted. The
Coppermine region has not ten per cent of the number of caribou of Richardson's time. Caribou were so plentiful then that Eskimo dressed in fawn
skins, and are so rare now that the people are forced to use hides of bull caribou, wolf skins, fox skins and even the skins of birds. In ten years it will be
practically impossible to live on the country while traveling in these districts

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Arctic expedition camp near Kendall River. The camp meatrack is built high to protect from foxes and wolverines

Group of Eskimo helping Mr. Stefánsson to break camp and pack. It is said that no Eskimo

QUOTATIONS FROM AN EXPLORER'S LETTERS

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fear and distrust of white men, of Indians and of the Eskimo to the west. Of one thing I am glad, that I have had an opportunity to see that all the best qualities of the civilized Eskimo are found more fully among their uncivilized countrymen.

SOME ETHNOLOGICAL RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION TO THE COPPERMINE RIVER

We are able to assign a population of about one thousand to the sea coasts lying between Kent peninsula and Cape Bexley of these we have seen about two hundred and fifty persons, but we have seen some representative of every group.

We are able to extend the geographic range of the Eskimo west of the Coppermine considerably to the south and to the west on the mainland beyond what was previously known to any explorer, and to show that this is not a recent spread or extension of territorial limits, but that owing to the choice of seasons by previous travelers it was not possible for them to know when they were within the limits of contemporaneous Eskimo occupation.

We can show a correspondence in culture greater than hitherto known between the Central (Coronation Gulf) Eskimo and the tribes who are their neighbors to the south. It seems likely that the evidence, when sifted, will show a focal point farther west than formerly believed, from which the Eskimo have spread east and west in former times.

We are able to extend the range of the wood-and-earth house, of permanent villages and of bowhead whaling some seventy-five or one hundred miles farther east than the limit assigned by the only previous observer, Dr. Richardson.

We have seen the manufacture and use of "primitive" hunting implements before the people knew firearms.

From our knowledge of the Western Eskimo and our experience this year to the east, we can adduce more numerous and stronger proofs than known before to show the extreme almost unbelievable conservatism of the Eskimo apart from what our collections, ethnological and archæological, may show. For instance, an Eskimo woman will always turn over pieces of boiling meat, believing they will not cook well on both sides although completely immersed in water. This belief comes from the days several generations back when cooking was done in shallow stone pots where the pieces of meat were seldom more than half covered and had to be turned over.

THE DISCOVERY OF A SCANDINAVIAN-LIKE PEOPLE IN VICTORIA LAND

We have found (May 17, 1910) a North European-looking people, the Ha-něrág-mi-ūt of Victoria Land north from Cape Bexley. Their total number is about forty, of whom I saw seventeen, and was said not to have seen the blondest of the group. They are markedly different from any American aborigines I have seen; they suggest, in fact, a group of Scandinavian or North European peasants. Perhaps better than my characterization of them was that of my Alaskan Eskimo companion, who has worked for ten or more years on a whaling vessel: "They are not Eskimo, they are fo'e'sle men." Two of them had full chin beards to be described as light, tending to red; every one had light eyebrows; one - perhaps the darkest of all had hair that curled slightly.

The Eskimo physical type varies considerably from Greenland to Siberia. It may be that all these variants are due partly to blood mixture, and that the earlier, purer type was more "European" in character than we have been thinking. On the other hand, there may have been direct admixture of European blood. In the fifteenth century there disappeared from Greenland the Icelandic (Norse

tirety. This colony had a bishop of the Church of Rome, two monasteries, a nunnery, fourteen churches and over three thousand inhabitants, who at one time sailed their own ships to Norway, to Iceland and to America. [Leif Ericson was one of these Greenlanders, and to the general public best known of them all.] This colony was in a fairly prosperous condition as late as 1412 and we have Vatican documents of a later date referring to it; when Hans Egede came there in the seventeenth century he found only house ruins to tell the story, and no sure trace of Scandinavianism in the language or blood of the Greenland Eskimo. Either

the colony had been massacred by the Eskimo, had disappeared through famine or pestilence, or had emigrated in a body. This last view many scholars have favored from the first, and if they did emigrate they may be represented in part by the present inhabitants of Victoria Land.

There are many philological points to suggest Scandinavian origin of these people. For instance, their word for "wolf" is arg-luk, a word conveying no analogy to any of my companions, even after they understood its meaning. Now the common Old Norse word for "wolf" is varg-ur. Not to go into fine philological reasoning, it is enough to say that an Eskimo is as likely to attach a -lūk to a foreign word as an Italian is to attach a final -o. One of the characteristics of the Hancragmiut dialect is the dropping of initial consonants. Thus the Icelandic vargur becomes arg-ur; change the final syllable to -luk (as Herschel Islanders change Cottle to Karluk) and you have arg-luk.

We heard here also a song alliterated in much the Old Norse scaldic style. This sort of alliteration and anklang is unknown to me personally or through books as a feature of Eskimo songs anywhere.

Again, in the forties of the last century Franklin's expedition with its full complement of men was lost near the east coast of Victoria Land. Some of these men are accounted for by journal entries of officers who themselves later perished, and others by graves and unburied skeletons along the route toward Back's River. Franklin's men must have known there was a boat route to the Hudson Bay Company's posts on the Mackenzie River, for Franklin's own three expeditions had discovered and mapped it chiefly by boat voyages. Is it unlikely then that some of his men attempted this route? And even if they did not, might not a few of his men have found their way to the Eskimo of Victoria Land and have had sufficient adaptability to learn Eskimo methods of self-support? A readily apparent objection to this hypothesis is that

Eskimo family approaching snow house village. Far at the left is seen the snow house built for Mr. Stefánsson by these Eskimo, who served him as an honored guest

Deserted winter village on the ice of Dolphin and Union Strait off the mouth of the Coppermine Eskimo snow villages melt in summer and even when built on shore leave little trace

River.