The Caribou Eskimos/Part 2/Chapter 4

Time perspective in circumpolar culture. What I here call the circumpolar culture region is first and foremost the arctic and sub-arctic regions in the Old and the New Worlds. That the "Polar peoples" in this word's ordinary but not particularly apt meaning, comprising the Eskimos, the Siberian tribes, and the Lapps. present certain fundamental points of resemblance in culture and in so far form one whole, is an old truism, and in fact we have gradually come to recognise that the sub-arctic Indians, too, cannot be separated from these people. The absurdly high wall which inherited prejudice has raised between the northern Indians and the Eskimos, combined with the slight knowledge we had — and in some respects still have — of them, are circumstances which have each contributed to their not previously having gained access to the position in relation to the other Polar peoples which modern ethnography concedes them. But we have seen that, with the boreal regions in both continents as a centre, there are radiations to much more southerly regions: Central Asia, California,^[1] and the Laurentian Lake region. Although these regions cannot be said to come in under what is ordinarily termed the boreal culture area, they display unmistakeable connections with it; the very basis of the development seems to be mutual, even if the character of the culture in the south is greatly altered both by local creations and impulses from elsewhere, mostly from the great Asiatic and American civilisations. Within certain limits we must therefore include them in the following considerations.

We have no historical sources to draw from when trying to unravel the culture history of the circumpolar region, and we have practically no archæological evidence outside of the Eskimo area. The first attempt at a destratifying by ethnographic means dates back to Hatt's pioneer work on Arktiske Skinddragter 1914. In distinguishing between two dress complexes, of which the earliest is characterised by the frock of poncho cut, legging-breeches and sandal-boots, in con​trast to the cloak cut, breechcloth-breeches and moccasins of the later complex, he comes to the conclusion that the snow-shoe in its origin is closely connected with the later complex and that its invention has meant nothing short of a cultural revolution in the boreal regions. "Whilst the earlier culture, to which the dress complex A (i. e. the earliest) belongs, was connected with coasts and rivers, the inland culture, equipped with snow-shoes and moccasins, was able to make much more use of the great stretches of country between the rivers for hunting than had previously been possible".^[2] The Eskimos, who originally did not know the snow-shoe, have developed their distinctive stamp out of the earlier culture. The evident correctness throughout the whole of this reasoning raises it beyond any doubt. To the later complex Hatt also places curing of skins by smoke and the use of the two-handed scraper.^[3]

The hypothesis is further argued in Hatt's work on Kyst- og Indlandskultur i det arktiske, which saw the light in 1916, and a brief English summary of it concludes the comprehensive study of Moccasins and their Relation to Arctic Footwear of the same year. One of the outstanding results of these further investigations is that the carrying cradle, the birchbark canoe, and the conically shaped tent are established as belonging to the later culture. Finally, in his studies of Rensdyrnomadismens Elementer^[4] Hatt has shown how reindeer breeding and the whole of the complex bound up with it is a further development of the culture belonging to snow-shoe hunting, so that in the boreal region we must reckon with two, or rather three, layers: (1) a culture connected with rivers and coasts; (2) a culture which, with the invention of the snow-shoe, has been enabled to utilise the intermediate land areas; (3) reindeer nomadism.^[5]

​Hatt terms the first two culture layers as "coast" and "inland" culture respectively, "because the earliest of them is found most strongly represented among coast people, whereas the latter especially belongs to inland tribes".^[6] I will not deny that I consider these names inapt, because they very easily lead to misunderstanding and are therefore difficult to use in practice. Originally "the coast culture" was also spread in the interior, associated with rivers and lakes; but the term "coast" inevitably leads one's thoughts in the direction of something particularly maritime. Like all Eskimos, the Caribou Eskimos have essentially a "coast" culture in Hatt's meaning of the word, but an "inland" culture according to everyday language, and inversely, there live at the coast both Algonkian tribes and Tungus who in all essentials are at the "inland culture" stage. This ambiguity contains a danger of misunderstanding.

But that the substance of the matter, the division into layers and the determination of the relative ages of the layers, is correct I have not the slightest doubt. I have essayed to use it in a study of the wanderings of the Algonkians, for the purpose of showing that these Indians have presumably spread from a centre southwest of Hudson Bay, probably the regions about Lake Winnipeg, and I have at the same time suggested a substitution of the terms "coast" and "inland" culture with the less ambiguous terms "ice-hunting" and "snow-shoe" cultures, as the very fishing from lake and river ice must be taken to have been the fundamental occupation in winter,^[7] before the snowshoe opened up new hunting possibilities in the snow-covered forests. I also indicated it as being probable that earth-covered winter lodges. skin boats, and the primitive runner sledge were elements of the "ice-hunting culture" — which I will now, too, make bold to call this complex — points of view which have been further examined in the foregoing analysis.

How fruitful Hatt's hypothesis otherwise has proved to be, appears from the fact that Hallowell has succeeded in establishing the connection of bear ceremonialism with the snow-shoe culture, and he also draws attention to other features which seem to belong to this layer: the drum as a pronouncedly shaman implement, scapulimantia. "the earth-diver motif" in the folk lore, marked-off hunting territories, and sanguinary animal sacrifices.^[8] ​The position of the Caribou Eskimo culture in this culture series does not require long deliberation. We find among the Caribou Eskimos ice-fishing, the frock of poncho cut, the legging-breeches, the sandal-boot, the domed house of snow (corresponding to the earth covering of more southern regions), the simple runner sledge, the skin boat — in other words all the elements which place the Eskimos as a whole at the stage of the ice-hunting culture, only without that series of special adaptations which connect the other Eskimos especially to the sea. What elements of the snow-shoe culture there are among the Caribou Eskimos are very few and have obviously intruded in recent times. We furthermore find that the Caribou Eskimos, together with the Indians on the northwestern plateaux, in California and by the Great Lakes, have a considerable number of elements in common which are lacking in the sub-arctic region; there is a natural explanation of this as soon as we assume that the gap here is the result of the intrusion of the snow-shoe culture. The elements which the Caribou Eskimos have in common with the sub-arctic culture must, in so far as these are not the very recent loans, which were already separated at the beginning of the analysis, be regarded as elements which from the ice-hunting layer have descended to the snow-shoe culture. We see this from the fact that these common elements, with few and insignificant exceptions, are all very widely diffused, and this outside the real region of the snow-shoe culture, for instance hunting fences and fish weirs, the hunting of swimming animals, skin quivers, barbed harpoons with tang, prick-tattooing, etc. etc. For it is clear that the intrusion of the snow-shoe culture has not been as a stream of lava which has spread and buried everything below it, but a slow infiltration of new elements, whereby many old features, and especially those like, for instance, hunting swimming animals, which is most profitable and in no way collides with snow-shoe hunting, have been allowed to continue their existence undisturbed.

In view of the fact that certain elements of the ice-hunting culture have a western diffusion in North America, this may be a hint that some day it will be possible to distinguish between earlier and later layers in that culture. By this I mean such elements as, for instance, the poncho and the two-skin frock, which in western North America seem to have replaced still more primitive types of dress (the lengthened skirt). The position of the backed bow is not clear. If it belongs to the ice-hunting culture at all it must be to its latest layer; but it is not improbable that such an effective weapon has been able ​to obtain a comparatively considerable diffusion, even though the actual process was late in commencing. If so, it is possibly a western element among the Eskimos, parallel with, but not derived from, the sinew-lined bow in the south of North America, and in that case the bow of the ice-hunting culture has been the simple type. A simple, single curved bow of antler with such a sporadically occurring (old?) feature as the fastening of the string to a hole in the stave, is in fact before us from the Caribou Eskimos.

These, however, are details which the future must try to clarify and which do not alter the main result. In accordance with the views here propounded this may be formulated as follows: that the culture of the Caribou Eskimos is no pure ice-hunting culture, it is true, as it has absorbed a few later elements; but having regard to the fact that it has neither undergone an adaptation to the ice of the sea like the culture of the other Eskimos, nor any adaptation to the snow of the forest, like the snow-shoe culture, it must be said to be nearer the ice-hunting culture than any other culture of the present time.

The position of the ice-hunting stage in the general development of culture. The primitive stamp of the ice-hunting culture is an essential condition to its being thought to extend over such an enormous area as the circumpolar region, from northern Europe to eastern North America. But when speaking of the ice-hunting culture as a unit we must take a certain reservation. It is incredible that an absolutely homogeneous culture should ever have prevailed over the whole circumpolar region. There will certainly always have been differences owing to local adaptation, just as it is most probable that an element has at times only reached one of the borders simultaneously with its already having made way for a new one elsewhere. In so far a term such as ice-hunting culture is merely an abstraction, an expression meaning that a certain common basis must be assumed to lie under the building up of the culture everywhere in the circumpolar region.

This basis has, as I have said, a primitive stamp. And now that it can furthermore be traced right to Europe, it cannot be gainsaid that the old and hitherto abortive attempts to link Eskimo culture to the Palæolithic stage in Europe appear in a new light. The thought of such a connection was first advanced by Boyd Dawkins, who pointed out the similarities between the barbed harpoon heads of the Magdalenian epoch and of the Eskimos, the prongs of the bird dart or the leister, arrow straighteners, skin scrapers, naturalistic art, and lack of care for the dead.^[9] Similar ideas have often been reiterated, most recently by Rivet, who described two objects, the one with cer​tainty, the other possibly originating from the Magdalenian, which he interprets as parts of a ring-and-pin game similar to that of the Eskimos.^[10] Bogoras is even of the opinion that reindeer nomadism dates back to Palæolithic times,^[11] which however to me appears to be very improbable.^[12] On the whole, not all the suggested similarities are unassailable, and the attempts to connect Eskimo and Magdalenian culture have on the whole won little support; this is not so strange, as hitherto the Eskimos have stood exclusively as hunters of aquatic mammals, whereas the Ice Age man was a terrestrial hunter. This objection, however, now falls if the comparison is not made with the Eskimos in general but with the ice-hunting culture.

It is not my intention to make an investigation of this sort here, and still less to anticipate the results it might give. I would merely point of that Boyd Dawkins' old hypothesis is no longer ethereal in substance but that there really is a basis for a serious discussion of the problem. The possibility of a connection can no longer be rejected in advance. Among archæologists there now seems to be a general belief that the early Scandinavian Stone Age culture, i. e. the South Baltic Mullerup culture and the Kunda culture in Estonia and certain parts of Russia, must be regarded as Epipaleolithic, building upon Paleolithic foundations.^[13] From these cultures the threads presumably run to still later Stone Age groups, as the formerly so-called "Arctic Stone Age" in Scandinavia, and perhaps the comb-ceramic culture in Finland and northern and Central Russia.^[14] Still further down the ages we have the Lapp Iron Age culture from the finds in Varanger Fjord, about which Shetelig says that "it is difficult to ward off the thought of direct tradition from an Epipalæolithic civilisation as we know it in the Scandinavian 'Bone Age' and later Stone Age by the Baltic and in Russia".^[15] It may be that some lines may be followed along this path; quite recently Menghin has expressed opinions tending towards the same view,^[16] and the similarity between the Lapp finds and Japanese Stone Age finds has been referred to previously.^[17]

Of the occurrence of Palæolithic and Epipaleolithic culture in North Asia and North America we know too little at present to enable us to say anything with certainty. As early as 1884 a find which seems to be Palæolithic was made at Afontova, southwest of Krasnoyarsk ​in southern Siberia.^[18] Several other sites containing Palæolithic types have been investigated in later years; according to Jochelson "they are concentrated in southwestern Siberia, namely, in the valley of the upper course of the Ob River, in the upper course of the Yenisei River and on the banks of its tributary, the Angara River".^[19] In the Gobi desert N. C. Nelson has found scrapers and flakes of Mousterian and Aurignacian character in the Orok Nor region and on the high plain lying between Ulan Nor and the Artsa Bogdo mountains, as well as a distinct Mesolithic culture with chipped stone artifacts which "in several specific details conform closely to the Azilian flint industry of western Europe".^[20] Farther south, in the Ordos country, Palæolithic sites have been discovered by Licent and Teilhard de Chardin.^[21] It is probably only a question of time when they will also be found in China proper; in Japan there are no definite traces of Palæolithic settlement, ^[22]and perhaps they are less likely to occur there.

Palæolithic man in North America is still being strongly disputed, though theoretical considerations argue strongly in favour of an immigration as early as in an interglacial period,^[23] and in the Delaware valley Volk has found human bones and chipped and scorched stones in the same layer as bones of musk-ox and moose, which at any rate seems to bring the time of the habitation of this area close up to the Ice Age, even if the find need not necessarily mean contemporaneity with it, as Volk himself seems to think.^[24] There is thus a possibility that one may regard the ice hunting culture as being late-Palæolithic or Epipalæolithic.

In regarding the circumpolar culture region as a unit, it is worth mentioning that Father W. Schmidt comes to a similar conclusion along quite another channel, as it more or less corresponds to what he calls the vaterrechtlich-grossfamiliale Kulturkreis.^[25] In his view this has sprung from northern Central Asia. How the connection with European, Palæolithic culture is to be sought does not appear clearly; Father Schmidt apparently believes that the Asiatic centre has been ​cut off from Europe by the inland-ice in Scandinavia and North Russia and the mountain glaciers of the Caucasus and Iran. I shall, however, refrain from going further into this question, as also that of the relation of the ice-hunting culture to the culture of other primitive peoples such as Bushmen, Australians and especially the natives of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, whose conformities with North American forms of culture (in many cases, however, not the ice-hunting, but the snow-shoe stage, cf. moccasins, carrying cradle, bark vessels) have been pointed out by Erland Nordenskiöld. A satisfactory clarifying of this question will doubtless prove to be of the very greatest importance to our understanding of the whole history. of American culture.

Origin of Eskimo Culture. It will be recollected that the analysis of the culture of the Caribou Eskimos led to the result that two great centres can be shown in Eskimo culture, one in Alaska and another in the Central regions. In itself this fact has long been known. When Rink broke through the jungle of loose assertions which characterise the earlier — and to be sure, some later — speculations as to the origin of Eskimo culture and presented the first scientifically based theory on this question, he fixed his eyes upon Alaska.^[26] He thought he had there found an especially primitive culture, because in so many ways it recalls that of the Indians. We know now that he was arguing the wrong way round. In reality the culture transition is due to the fact that the Eskimos have exercised a very strong influence upon the Kaiyuhkhotana by the lower Yukon, both peoples being simultaneously subjected to the strong influence of the Northwest Indians. That this is actually the case can be seen from the circumstance that most of the elements which especially separate the Alaskan Eskimos from their eastern kinsmen have their centre of gravity on the North Pacific coast. Some of these elements have travelled far — the labret for instance to Mackenzie — but otherwise the position is that the further south one goes, the more points of contact does one meet there. Boas refers to the conical wooden hat. the sweat house, the highly developed wood carving, masks, potlatch institution, and slavery,^[27] but there are many others such as the approach to totemism, the raven myths, platform burial, head trophies, the high development of basketry, the four-sided box-drum, ​nose ornaments, etc. These elements cannot therefore be advanced in favour of the view of the Alaska culture as a primitive transitional stage to an earlier, Indian culture; but where Rink was right was in his showing that Alaska has played an important rôle as a culture centre.

Rink's hypothesis was not allowed to remain long unchallenged, as Murdoch, in reviewing Rink's Eskimo Tribes, showed that a smooth line of development from west to east was out of the question, but that the Central tribes on the contrary had a primitive culture, for which reason he sought the original home of the Eskimos in their region, or rather, in the forests south of Hudson Bay.^[28] The same year Boas showed that the legends in Labrador and southern Baffin Land pointed northwards, at Iglulik southwards and among the Western Eskimos eastwards. "Therefore it seems probable that the lake region west of Hudson Bay was the home of the Eskimos".^[29] In this view there is a concrete element which gives it more value than Murdoch's subjective estimate of the stage of culture.

Along another channel, by an investigation of the adaptation of the various tribal groups to geographical environment, Steensby in 1905 was led to considering the Central regions as the starting point of the wanderings of the Eskimos.^[30] Mostly out of considerations of language Thalbitzer^[31] and Bogoras^[32] have, however, steadfastly argued a western origin in the regions round the Bering Strait, and as a matter of fact it cannot be disputed that in the culture there are elements which point to the west, just as decidedly as there are others which point towards the Central regions. In the English edition of his work on the Origin of the Eskimo Culture, 1917, Steensby put his finger upon the apparently correct explanation of this: to a certain extent both views are justified, there must be a stratification in the culture, a drift from the Central regions and one from the west; the principal problem to solve is, which of them is the earliest.

For the purpose of solving it he divides the various hunting and fishing methods and implements into three groups.^[33] The first, which comprises among other things the methods of hunting caribou and catching salmon as well as the bow and the leister, is met with everywhere and therefore sheds no light on the matter. To the second group he places those elements whose distribution has its centre of gravity in the two marginal regions to the east and west, i. e. princi​pally the sub-arctic regions — seal hunting from kayak and with nets, whaling from umiak — whereas they are lacking in the Central region. In the third group we find such methods as mostly belong to the arctic phase of culture, above all breathing-hole hunting, the dog sledge and the snow house. It might appear, Steensby admits, as if the third or arctic group was the latest, as it gives the impression of having pushed its way like a wedge into the Central regions and thus split the earlier, sub-arctic culture into a western and an eastern branch. Nevertheless his opinion is that this is not the case, but on the contrary that the arctic group is the earliest. In the first place this is decidedly the case in one of the sub-arctic regions, Greenland. But besides, it is in the arctic phase that we find the elements which actually are characteristic of the Eskimo mode of living, whereas on the other hand the particularly sub-arctic elements are either the result of a specialising (kayak hunting) or a loan from foreign forms of culture (seal hunting with nets and whaling with the umiak). And if these elements are missing in the Central regions, it is simply the result of unfavourable, geographical conditions.

Starting out from the view that the arctic culture is the earliest, he attempts to definitely determine the place of its development, which would thus be synonymous with the cradle of the Eskimo culture. In doing so he fixes upon the stretch between Coronation Gulf and Hudson Bay. In the peculiar, geographical physiognomy of these regions, characterised by the absence of timber, by the even, nine month-long covering of winter ice, the abundance of seals and the immense flocks of wandering caribou, he finds a suitable background for the process of adaptation which has led to the arctic phase of culture and thus started the whole development of the Eskimo culture. He terms this earliest, arctic culture as the Palæ-Eskimo. Only when the Palæ-Eskimo had spread as far west as Bering Strait and came into contact with Asiatic nations — Steensby goes so far that he particularly points to Japanese fishermen, which however is not very probable — did the culture development again begin to stir, partly by a specialised adaptation to the less severe living conditions, partly by the absorption of foreign elements. This commenced a later, Neo-Eskimo culture layer which gradually spread eastwards, although the severe arctic climate prevented it from taking root in the Central regions where, as a result, the old, Palæ-Eskimo culture character was preserved.

Steensby sought to find the starting point of the Palæ-Eskimo culture in a culture of a kind similar to that of the sub-arctic Indians in the "caribou area". Against this Wissler has made the objection that the points of similarity between Eskimo and Indian cultures may be due to later loans and that it is therefore necessary to know which of ​them is the earliest.^[34] After Hatt's investigations and those made in this work this question would seem to be answered in this way, that they have each developed on a mutual basis. Of much more serious kind is the criticism which Hatt has raised against the dating of the layers. It is a keystone in Steensby's hypothesis that if the so-called Neo-Eskimo elements are missing in the Central regions, the cause is geographical conditions. This is undeniably an extremely weak point; for as Hatt has shown,^[35] there is not only little probability that the absence of the umiak and the seal net in the Central regions can be traced back to geographical causes, but there are also other conformities between the two border regions in respect of which the explanation given is quite inapplicable, for instance the wearing of gutskin frocks and urine tanning. It will be understood that Hatt comes to the opposite result to Steensby's: the Central layer must be the latest, the peripheral the earliest.

If we now take the results of the foregoing analysis and proceed to form an opinion on the problem which lies in these diverging theories, it is necessary first of all to realise clearly what we are dealing with. It must be emphasised that it is a question of finding not the original home of the Eskimo somatic type or the Eskimo language, but solely that of the culture. Now a culture is a very composite phenomenon, in which elements from widely different sources and of greatly different ages gather together, not into an accidental and incoherent conglomerate, but a harmonious, working organism. What we require is to find our way into the centre of it, the pulse, without which it cannot live. For such a peculiar folk as the Eskimos this is not difficult, and so early a writer as Rink has defined what is to be called "the Eskimo culture home. to be distinguished from the original cradle of their race".^[36] That which makes the Eskimos stand out from all other peoples, the sub-arctic tribes in Siberia and North America included, is their capacity for living entirely independently of the forest. It is this capacity which has enabled them to make their way further north than any other people, that which has enabled them to take the step out into the arctic archipelago and opened up access to Greenland. In other words it is their adaptation to the sea.

If we now take it that the views which have been expressed about the culture of the Caribou Eskimos are correct, we have in it a form of culture that has never undergone such an adaptation, but stands as a somewhat — though not essentially — altered relic of an ancient culture layer, a form which, according to the above definition of ​Eskimo culture, may be called "Proto-Eskimo". This culture is now to be found in the Central regions, and it is obviously connected with the continental character in the "real" Central Eskimo culture; but from this one cannot, it is true, conclude that the Central centre is the oldest. Just as a consequence of the entire view which has here been advanced with regard to the position of the Caribou Eskimo culture as a continuation of the ordinary, circumpolar ice-hunting culture, there would be nothing unreasonable in presuming that Inland Eskimos have lived on the tundra right from Hudson Bay westwards to Alaska. As a matter of fact we have the important inland population in the Colville District, and it has not yet been definitely established whether we have here an example of inland dwellers under strong coast influence, or of coast dwellers who have gone into the interior, though their intimate connection with the sea favours the latter supposition. But if there can have lived an original, Proto-Eskimo inland population in Alaska, we are no nearer in the question of the relative ages of the culture centres. For that matter they may be equally old.

We must try other means and endeavour to find out what the adaptation to the sea consists of. To Rink, seal hunting from the kayak was decidedly the bearing element; but it is obvious that this cannot be right. Seal hunting from the kayak belongs to the summer, a time of the year when the Eskimos have many other means of livelihood, especially caribou hunting and salmon fishing. Something similar may be advanced against regarding whaling as the central point. In this connection it is of no significance that nowadays the right whale does not occur in the waters of the North West Passage, which are much too shallow for them to live there; for we know that at the time of the Thule Culture, when the land lay lower than it does now, whaling was an important occupation in the Central regions. What is important, on the other hand, is that whaling has always been a gamble, which might just as easily go wrong as right. Even though successful autumn whaling can provide enormous quantities of meat and blubber, I consider it more or less impossible that settlement in the arctic regions can be based upon whaling.

The great difficulty to arctic life is, however, the winter. We must seek an occupation which, without too much risk of failure, can provide the daily food and the necessary heat throughout the winter, and this can only be ice-hunting for seal. Steensby already recognised that the main prop in the Eskimo culture is its adaptation, not to the sea as such, but to its ice, and that the result of this adaptation was ice-hunting.^[37] Of the various ice-hunting methods it is of no avail ​to think of the hunting of basking seals, as this is a pronouncedly spring occupation which cannot be carried on in winter at all, as the seals then remain in the water. Nor can the use of the net come into consideration, as it is presumable that in many places the ice very early in the winter becomes too thick for it to be used.^[38] The most certain ice-hunting method in winter — i. e. that which in connection with the surest profit makes the least demand upon local conditions — is undoubtedly breathing-hole hunting. It is this first and foremost which makes the arctic coasts inhabitable, and to it attaches the other necessary element, the blubber lamp, which can no doubt be done without on the tundra with its comparatively rich vegetation of lichen and Cassiope, but only with difficulty, and in many cases not at all, on the barren sea coast along the Northwest Passage and in the archipelago.

Breathing-hole hunting and blubber lamps thus being considered to be the main props of the Eskimo culture proper, the problem of its home tapers down to the question of whence these two elements have come. The culture complex from which they have emanated has conquered Arctic Nature and was the first to enable the Eskimos to spread over regions which until then had been unhabitable. Is then this complex the western one, with its centre in Alaska, or that which has its root in the Central regions? The solution also gives the answer to the question which has hitherto stood open: whether the Thule culture first met the Central culture complex in the latter's home land, or whether this already took place in the west, in Alaska.

Nothing can be decided in advance. The starting point must be sought in the fishing and the primitive lamps of the ice-hunting culture; but as this culture must be taken to be an old, circumpolar form of culture, a conversion in the particular direction may just as well be sought by the Northwest Passage, by the Bering Strait and, for that matter, on any coast whatever in the Arctic. With regard to the blubber lamp of the special Eskimo, wide and crescent shaped type. reasons have previously been advanced to show that it originates from the Central regions (cf. p. 100 seqq.). With breathing-hole hunting matters are more difficult. It is found among all Eskimos with the exception of the Aleut-Pacific group. For geographical reasons its importance of course declines in the sub-arctic regions; but still it crops up wherever there is a chance for it. Even on King Island in the middle of Bering Strait, and still more remarkable, at one or two settlements quite close to Cape Farewell, typical breathing-hole hunt​ing is practised, and it is also known not only to the Chukchi and Koryak but also to the Kamchadal^[39] and Gilyak.^[40]

It now appears to me probable, for several reasons, that breathing-hole hunting in the North Asiatic coast culture is a loan from the Eskimos, so that we see, from the almost wholly Eskimoised Coast Chukchi, over the Coast Koryak and Kamchadal to the Gilyak, a gradually decreasing Eskimo influence. Bogoras has pointed out that the borrowed Eskimo words in the Chukchi language have principally to do with aquatic mammals and their hunting, whereas on the contrary the Chukchi words in the Asiatic Eskimo dialects mostly refer to terrestrial animals, which indicates that the Chukchi have taken the hunting of aquatic mammals from the Eskimos.^[41] Among the Gilyak seal hunting is probably intrusive, being quite insignificant compared with fishing — for instance most of the seal meat is used as dog feed^[42] — and the harpoon head for white whales in open water is of a widely-diffused, Eskimo type, which also indicates influence from the north. But besides this we have the following: in the first place, breathing-hole hunting is only practised at the sea coast itself, whereas sealing in the Amur is never practised in this way;^[43] the Sakhalin Ainu hunt seals basking on the ice,^[44] but to my knowledge not at the breathing holes. This is more in conformity with regarding this method as a loan from outside rather than as an old component of the culture in these regions. In the second place, we have seen that fish spearing from the ice with a harpoon or leister is obviously a very old method which, over the greater part of the sub-arctic region, has retired in favour of hook fishing or net fishing from the ice. Among the Eskimos the net has probably come from the west. Murdoch and Steensby are of this opinion,^[45] and this is supported by the fact that the netting of both seals and fish is much more important, and occurs in far more variations in Alaska than among the Eskimos further east; for instance with regard to seal hunting, the position at Point Barrow is that sealing with the net, both in the tide-water cracks and in the breathing holes, has almost supplanted the old ice hunting with the harpoon. If we now turn to the Gilyak, we will find this inconsequence, that the hook and the net are used in ice fishing, but sealing at the breathing holes proceeds with the harpoon; it may be that sealing with the net in open water is ​possible — in CNM there is a net (K 1: 96) which is stated to have been used in this manner — but it cannot be of any importance compared with harpoon hunting, as it is not mentioned by Schrenck at all. But if breathing-hole hunting were just as old as fishing, it would be reasonable to presume that it, too, would have been entirely converted to net hunting.

Thus a variety of circumstances dispute that breathing-hole hunting has originated among the Palæ-Asiatic people. On the other hand, in the Central Eskimo region it is particularly highly developed, it there being connected with a number of special inventions: the breathing-hole searcher, the breathing-hole scoop, two different kinds of indicators, a screen for protection against drifting snow, rests for the harpoon during the waiting time, the use of dogs to smell out the breathing holes. Against all this the border regions can only produce the sealing stool, which, however, in the Central regions has its counterpart in the special hunting bag which is also used as a mat under the feet while waiting for the seal to appear. To me this high development in the Central regions seems to argue that it is there that the method has its home. There is an indirect confirmation of this in the fact that the result was the same with regard to the blubber lamp, with which breathing-hole hunting seems to be closely associated. The consequence of this would then be that the whole of the Central culture complex must be presumed to be the oldest. It is this complex that has spread westwards to Alaska, because only this from the beginning had the elements which were a condition of settlement along an arctic coast. We may also express the result thus: that Steensby was right in describing the drift from the Central regions as Palæ-Eskimo and the development by the Bering Strait as later, Neo-Eskimo.

But while saying this, I must emphasise that there is no absolutely binding proof. To obtain this, extensive archæological investigations will be necessary, both in Alaska and in northeastern Asia, particularly on the west coast of the Okhotsk Sea, where possibly a now broken-off connection between Koryak and Gilyak must be sought for.^[46] But I accept the hypothesis of the Central origin of the earliest Eskimo culture as that which, in my opinion, most readily explains the facts we now have before us.

Somatic, linguistic and cultural correlations: The Aleut-Pacific Eskimo Culture. Although it is not the intention to go into physical anthropology and linguistics, there are certain matters which deserve mention in this connection, because ​they seem to confirm the view propounded above. Boas and others have expressed the opinion that the Eskimos have come to Alaska at a late period, they having like a wedge split an old connection between the Indians and the Palæ-Asiatic tribes.^[47] It is this point which we shall examine a little more closely.

Everywhere east of Alaska the Eskimo somatic type, Eskimo language and Eskimo culture are closely related, so that Wissler is justified in calling the Eskimos "a fine example" of this triple correlation.^[48] Whereas all eastern Eskimos are dolichiocephalic, or mesocephalic with a distinct dolichocephalic tendency, in Alaska there is a leaning towards brachycephaly which presumably becomes more pronounced southwards, so that the population of the Aleutian Islands, with a cephalic index of 82 for the cranium and 84 for the living,^[49] is just as markedly brachycephalic as the eastern Eskimos are the opposite. Similar values of the cephalic index exist among the Indians on the North Pacific coast, on the plateaux in British Columbia, and in the Mackenzie area, where for crania it fluctuates between 80 and 84.^[50] The Palæ-Asiatic tribes in Northeast Asia are also brachycephalic, or mesocephalic with a tendency to brachycephaly.^[51] This distribution of the index values would mostly indicate that the dolichocephalic "Eskimo" somatic type has split a former complete region with a brachycephalic population on both sides of the Bering Sea, but has itself gradually dispersed during its advance and has not reached the Aleutians. Once a wave of migration from the east has thrown a bridge between the Central regions and Bering Strait, a culture drift can go the same way back without changing the somatic type; but if the connection from the beginning was made by an emigration eastwards from Alaska, the brachycephalic type from these regions ought presumably to be traceable in the Central and Eastern regions.

Thalbitzer has shown that, phonetically, the Eskimo language in Alaska is at a more primitive stage than the eastern dialects, which have undergone a deep-going metathesis.^[52] In southern Baffin Land and West Greenland there has proceeded not only a uvularisation but also a retrogressive labialisation. The linguistic material which I collected on the Fifth Thule Expedition shows that the Polar Eskimos in this respect are related to the other Greenlanders, the Iglulik group to the southern Baffinlanders, whereas neither the Caribou nor Net​silik Eskimos, no more than the population in Alaska, know anything of labialisation and uvularisation.^[53] In spite of everything, however. there still seem to be some points on which the Alaskan dialects are more primitive, although for the present I am sceptical towards the features which are advanced by Bogoras as being especially primitive as regards the Asiatic dialects.^[54]

On this basis Thalbitzer seems inclined to assume a migration from west to east; but this is scarcely justified. In the first place it must be remembered that even if the Alaskan dialects in certain respects are at an oldfashioned stage, they are far advanced in other directions. By this I mean the peculiar dropping of [i] in unstressed syllables, and of intervocalic [n] and [ɳ], which we find in South Alaska.^[55] But the most important thing is that we have no guarantee whatever that the cradle of a language is to be sought just there where a language with an old fashioned character is spoken.

If arguments were to be presented to show that the Eskimo language came from Alaska, there would be much more reason for attaching weight to another circumstance which seems to have dimly occurred to Bahnson when he accepted Rink's hypothesis,^[56] but which is expressed with great distinctness by Sapir, though without his adopting any definite attitude towards the matter.^[57] This refers to the splitting of the Eskimo language into dialects. The first to try on a scientific basis to prove the linguistic relationship of the Aleut with the Eskimos was Rasmus Rask;^[58] but the difference is nevertheless so great that later on Buschmann divided the two groups as being fundamentally different as to language,^[59] and it is the modern investigators Uhlenbeck, Jochelson and Thalbitzer who are the first to acknowledge Aleutian as being related to Eskimo, forming a special group co-ordinated with all the other dialects. Within these again that of southern Alaska seems to be equal to the others, right from ​Bering Strait to Greenland. This might indicate that the earliest fracture into dialects took place in the west. In the Aleutian language, however, despite the general conformity with Eskimo in the narrow sense, there are numbers of roots which cannot be traced back to the common Eskimo roots. Thalbitzer considers it not improbable that this "great, unexplained remainder" is possibly "strongly inoculated with components from another language, of the relationship of which we know nothing".^[60] This assumes its particular importance when we compare it with the result reached above, according to which the Eskimo somatic type seems to have wedged itself into a former population, somatically different, in South Alaska.

If we finally turn to the culture, it will be recalled that on many occasions there has been an opportunity of examining the difference between the Aleut-Pacific Eskimo culture and the rest, the culture at Bristol Bay and in the delta of the Yukon and Kuskokwim, however, forming a transition. We find this difference in culture expressed in the cut of the frock and footwear, in the form of the blubber lamp, in the peculiar frying pans of stone, whaling with the lance instead of with harpoon, burial in a sitting position and in caves, embalming of the dead, and so on. As regards some elements it is at present impossible to say whether they are due to an original culture difference from other Eskimos or merely to strong influence from the Northwest Indians and Northeast Asia; this applies to the special stone technique (pecking), traces of matriarchate etc. This difference in the culture may be compared with the separate position of these regions in a somatic and linguistic respect and with the fact that the recent archæological investigations by Jenness have brought to light samples of an old "Bering Sea Culture", characterised by peculiar and sometimes problematic forms and a very typical ornamentation.^[61] This may indicate that originally in the sub-arctic regions from the Yukon and southwards there has been a population which was different, somatically, linguistically, and culturally, from the Eskimos and only in the course of time became Eskimoised. It is as yet too early to go further into the question of the position of this culture. I consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in Eskimology. a problem whose solution will undoubtedly disperse the darkness in matters concerning much more remote regions; but it can only be done through renewed studies in the field.

Main features of the history of the Eskimo Culture. According to the hypothesis which has been presented in the foregoing (fig. 5), the Eskimo culture has developed on the foun​dation of an ancient, circumpolar culture, associated with rivers and lakes in the interior. It must be presumed that at the time when the adaptation to the sea had not yet taken place, the Proto-Eskimos lived in the Mackenzie area, perhaps concentrated about one or more of the lakes among which Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, and Athabasca Lake are most prominent. The occurrence of a number of especially western elements already in the Proto-Eskimo culture may be explainable by a relatively easy connection with the Pacific coast. Both Liard River and Peace River break through the Rocky Mountains in valleys which open unobstructed access from the east to the inner plateau,^[62] and important routes lead further along the Stikine, Nass, Skeena, and Fraser Rivers down to the coast.^[63] Whether the Proto-Eskimos have extended their habitat so far westwards as inner Alaska, and whether the inland dwellers in the Colville district are a remnant — strongly influenced in a maritime direction — of them. cannot at present be decided. This question is bound up with the manner in which one regards the position of the Athapaskans, their possible relationship to the Tlingit and Haida, etc.

On the other hand an attempt has been made to show that the Caribou Eskimos are, from a cultural point of view, a rather but not greatly transformed survival group of the Proto-Eskimos. The question of how such an old form of culture could be preserved on the Barren Grounds while elsewhere comprehensive processes of development were going on, can presumably be answered by a closer examination of how the Palæ-Eskimo culture in the Central regions arose. There can be no question of looking for the place on the west coast of Hudson Bay. In the annual summer migrations of the caribou towards the north Steensby has rightly seen one of the factors which carried the Proto-Eskimos out to the sea, and on the west coast of Hudson Bay this great migration does not go towards but parallel with the coast. Furthermore, its southern part in any case is quite low, with a broad shoal outside, so that it is not suitable atall for breathing-hole hunting, which for this reason cannot very well be imagined to have originated there.

In the first edition of his anthropogeographical study Steensby himself has placed the centre of development to Coronation Gulf, whereas later on he more cautiously only indicates the regions between Mackenzie River and Hudson Bay. In reality, Coronation Gulf and Bathurst Inlet have all the conditions necessary for a Palæ-Eskimo culture centre. The narrow straits which separate the mainland from Victoria Island make the transition from inland to coast less ​abrupt, and in spring and autumn the caribou migration proceeds over the ice. An inland tribe which followed the caribou northwards could not possibly avoid making the acquaintance of the sea ice, which there lies just on the threshold of the sub-arctic forests, and if such a tribe waited for the coming of the caribou, it would very easily lead to the inland fishing becoming "peep" and breathing-hole hunting for seal.^[64] The Palæ-Eskimo culture has thereby seen the light.

It is not difficult to understand, however, why some Proto-Eskimos never got out to the sea and its new possibilities. The timber line, which more or less follows the sea coast south of Coronation Gulf, at Bathurst Inlet swings sharply round to the southeast and only reaches the coast again at Churchill. That branch of the Proto-Eskimos which there would follow the wanderings of the caribou would never reach out to the sea. Not until much further north is there any strait over which the caribou cross the ice, but on the contrary endless tundras where most of the animals remain in summer. At this spot there would be no reason at all for the Proto-Eskimos to change their culture, and for that reason it may be presumed to have remained more or less stationary.

In the meantime the Palæ-Eskimos were spreading along the Arctic coast. We do not know if they have gone eastwards to Baffin Land and Labrador and northwards over the Archipelago to Greenland. Steensby thought that the Palæ-Eskimos had reached Greenland,^[65] but in advance I consider it rather improbable. On the other hand they must have got as far as Alaska; but we do not know here either whether this has actually been a migration, or whether it has rather been a spreading of culture, whereby more and more Proto-Eskimo tribes from the interior have moved out to the coast. We have no archæological evidence of such a Palæ-Eskimo migration; but as the winter dwelling, as this investigation shows, must have been a snow house, we cannot expect to find any. As Mathiassen says, it would have to be tent rings, meat caches, etc. on high ground which would be capable of interpretation as Palæ-Eskimo.^[66]

A time, rich in fertile development, has arrived in Alaska for the Eskimos. Some new elements are doubtless the result of independent adaptation to the milder conditions, but still more seem to be loans from the northwest coast of America and from Asia. Here arose the Thule Culture which, with unimportant alterations, corresponds to what Steensby called the Neo-Eskimo culture.^[67] Mathiassen has given ​a number of weighty reasons for showing that the home of the Thule Culture must be sought in these western regions, and I shall not anticipate his further studies of this important problem, but merely in further support of it mention what I have on a previous occasion stated in a popular book:^[68] several of the Neo-Eskimo elements display close association with Siberia, for instance sails, needle-and-thread tattooing, the bow drill, special forms of decoration such as chain links and drawn-through strips of skin, as well as the pottery making also referred to by Mathiassen. Other elements are associated with Fig. 5.Stratification of the Eskimo culture, according to the hypothesis set forth in this work. 1, Proto-Eskimo stage, at present only represented by the Caribou Eskimos; 2, Palæ-Eskimo stage; 3a and 3b, Neo-Eskimo stage in the western and eastern border regions respectively; 3c, the connecting link between west and east, the now extinguished Thule culture in the Central regions; 4, Eschato-Eskimo stage, closely allied to the Palæ-Eskimo layer. The ? marks the Aleut-Pacific Eskimo culture, the position of which is yet obscure. the North Pacific region and — signifying their age — especially with its southern part in the areas about Vancouver Island, for instance the compound fish hook, floats for harpoons, whaling, washing and skin curing with urine, and closed stone graves. As has been stated, the Eskimos in southern Alaska have probably found an earlier coast population which is still represented in the Eskimoised Aleut and Pacific Eskimos; their part in the development of the culture of the Neo-Eskimos and their relation to the other Northwest American and Northeast Asiatic peoples are, however, matters which as yet are quite uncertain.

The superiority of the Neo-Eskimo culture over the earlier phase enabled it to spread eastwards. It has also, as Mathiassen's investigations show, in comparison with the present culture been favoured by a submergence of the land which has apparently given the large aquatic mammals, and especially the whales, better conditions than they have now. It is presumably in this period that the advance into the now uninhabited, northern parts of the Arctic Archipelago and the immigration to Greenland took place.

Finally, in the Central regions there has been a new advance of Eskimos from the interior. and this led to the formation of a culture layer which of course, as a consequence of its origin, must display many points of similarity with the Palæ-Eskimo culture and therefore marks a cultural inversion in these regions. I venture to suggest ​that this layer be called the Eschato-Eskimo layer. It is most strongly marked by the Northwest Passage, not so pronounced on Baffin Land, but still traceable in Labrador and the Cape York district. The advance to Hudson Bay which some of the Caribou Eskimos made in the eighteenth century, and the spreading of the Aivilik tribe to Southampton Island after its original population became extinct in 1902–03, mark the last swell in this movement. We will not go far wrong if we seek one of the main causes of the reviving vigour of the Central tribes in the uplift of the land which has taken place towards the end of the Neo-Eskimo period and which is presumably continuing to this day. This uplift has restricted the haunts of the large aquatic mammals, especially the whales, and must therefore have weakened a culture which was mainly based upon the hunting of these mammals.

In broad strokes I have here outlined the history of the Eskimos as I read it from the facts at hand. For the sake of greater distinctness I have in this last paragraph made use of more definite expressions than our knowledge really justifies; but he who has followed the foregoing exposition will know that I am aware of at least some of the weak points. I regard the hypothesis I have set up as a working hypothesis, useful for bringing into some measure of order what we already know and, I hope, useful in leading Eskimology one little step further. But I will conclude with the words which a greater investigator than I uttered about a hypothesis of infinitely wider compass than whether the Eskimos reached out to the sea a few hundred kilometres more to the east or west; I mean Huxley's pronouncement on Darwinism, or rather the whole doctrine of evolution: ". . . I accept it provisionally, in exactly the same way as I accept any other hypothesis. Men of science do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand and to part with it, cheerfully, the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small. And if in course of time I see good reasons for such a proceeding, I shall have no hesitation in coming before you, and pointing out any change in my opinion without finding the slightest occasion to blush for so doing".