Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/250

If we now proceed to determine the position of this Eskimo tribe within the whole Eskimo culture on the basis of the foregoing description of its material culture, it must first of all be declared that it belongs to the great subdivision of the Eskimos who are called Central Eskimos. This great group, whose mutual relationship has been proved by Boas, comprises the Eskimos between Davis Strait in the east and Coronation Gulf in the west and it includes the tribes: Copper, Netsilik, Caribou, Iglulik, Baffin Land and Labrador Eskimos; each of these groups again comprises several subgroups with their own names, but otherwise form separate groups connected by the ties of relationship and culture. The characteristic features of the Central Eskimos, in contradistinction to the Greenlanders and Western Eskimos, are their wandering life, as a result of which the snow house and the tent are the only forms of dwelling, the great importance of caribou hunting, the advanced development of icehunting, the material of their clothing, its cut and preparation, the form of sledge and its draught, a number of characteristic types of implements, the many taboo rules and the sharp separation between sea and land, as well as certain negative features such as the lack of the woman's boat and urine tanning. Of the Central Eskimo tribes the Baffin Land and Labrador Eskimos, who are very closely related to each other, form a separate group occupying a position midway between the Central Eskimos proper, further to the west, and the Greenlanders, whom they resemble in the greater importance of the hunting of aquatic mammals, in the wider use of sealskin clothing, in the use of the women's boat and permanent winter houses, whereas by their snow houses, clothing and most implements they are connected with the other Central Eskimos.

It has been shown elsewhere^[1] how, in earlier times, a culture