Anthropological Survey in Alaska

EUROPEAN

Dawkins, 1866:[254] "The sum of the evidence proves that man, in a hunter state, lived in the south of Gaul on reindeer, musk sheep, horses, oxen, and the like, at a time when the climate was similar to that which those animals now inhabit. To what race did he belong? In solving this the zoological evidence is of great importance. The reindeer and musk sheep now inhabit the northern part of the American Continent and are the principal land animals that supply the Esquimaux with food. The latter of these has departed from the Asiatic Continent, leaving remains behind to prove that it shared the higher northern latitudes of Asia with the reindeer, and this latter has retreated farther and farther north during the historical period. May not the race that lived on these two animals in southern Gaul have shared also in their northern retreat, and may it not be living in company with them still? The truth of such a hypothesis as this is found by an appeal to the weapons, implements, and habits of life of the Esquimaux. The fowling spear, the harpoon, the scrapers, the marrow spoons are the same in the ice huts of Melville Sound as in the ancient dwellings of southern Gaul. In both there is the same absence of pottery; in both bones are crushed in the same way for the sake of the marrow, and accumulate in vast quantities. The very fact of human remains being found among the relics of the feast is explained by an appeal to what Captain Parry observed in the island of Igloolik. Among the vast quantities of bones of walruses and seals, and skulls of dogs and bears found in the Esquimaux camp, were numbers of human skulls lying about among the rest, which the natives tumbled into the collecting bags of the officers without the least remorse. A similar carelessness for the dead was also observed by Sir J. Ross and Captain Lyon. This presence, then, of human remains in the south of Gaul is another link binding the ancient people then living there to the Esquimaux. Their small size also is additional evidence.

"The only inference that can be drawn from these premises is that the people in question were decidedly Esquimaux, related to them precisely in the same way as the reindeer and musk sheep of those days were to those now living in the high North American latitudes. The sole point of difference is the possession of the dog by the latter people, but in the vast lapse of time between the date of their sojourn in Europe and the present day the dog might very well have been adopted from some other superior race, or even reduced under the rule of man from some wild progenitor. By this discovery a new people is added to those which formerly dwelt in Europe. The severity of the climate in southern Gaul is proved by the northern animals above mentioned. As it became warmer musk sheep, reindeer, and Esquimaux would retreat farther and farther north until they found a resting place on the American shore of the great Arctic Sea. Possibly in the case of the Esquimaux the immigration of other and better-armed tribes might be a means of accelerating this movement."

Hamy, 1870:[255] "Il nous parait, comme à MM. de Quatrefages, Carter-Blake, Le Hon, etc., que les caractères anatomiques des races de Furfooz et de Cro-Magnon doivent leur faire prendre place dans le groupe hyperboréen."

Dawkins, 1874[256]: In 1866, Boyd Dawkins, on the basis of the resemblances between the implements of the Eskimo and those of the later prehistoric man of Europe, advances the idea that the Eskimo were close kin to the palaeolithic man of Europe, before the scientific forum. In his Cave Hunting he says: "Palaeolithic man appeared in Europe with the arctic mammalia, lived in Europe along with them, and disappeared with them. And since his implements are of the same kind as those of the Eskimos, it may reasonably be concluded that he is represented at the present time by the Eskimos, for it is most improbable that the convergence of the ethnological and zoological evidence should be an accident."

1880:[257] "The probable identity of the cave men with the Eskimos is considerably strengthened by a consideration of some of the animals found in the caves. * * *

"All these points of connection between the cave men and the Eskimos can, in my opinion, be explained only on the hypothesis that they belong to the same race * * *."

The cave man: "From the evidence brought forward in this chapter, there is reason to believe that he is represented at the present time by the Eskimos."

Mortillet, 1889:[258] "Les Groënlandais, au point de vue paléoethnologique, présentent un très grand intérêt. Ils paraissent se relier très intimement aux hommes qui habitaient l'Europe moyenne pendant l'époque de la Madeleine. Ils seraient les descendants directs des Magdalèniens. Ils auraient successivement émigré vers le pôle, avec l'animal caractéristique de cette époque, le renne. Habitués aux froids les plus rigoureux de l'époque magdalénienne, ils se sont retirés dans les régions froides du Nord. * * *

"Comme on le voit, il y a la plus grande ressemblance, tant sous le rapport physique et moral que sous le rapport artistique et industriel entre les hommes de la Madeleine et les Groënlandais. Cette ressemblance est telle que nous pouvons en conclure que les seconds sont les descendants des premiers."

Testut, 1889:[259] "Parmi les races actuelles, celle qui me parait présenter la plus grande analogie avec l'homme de Chancelade est celle des Esquimaux qui vivent encore à l'état sauvage dans leg glaces de l'Amérique septentrionale. Ils ont, en effet, le même crâne que notre troglodyte quaternaire; leur face est constituée suivant le même type; ils ont, à peu de chose près, la même taille, le même indice palatin, le même indice nasal, le même indice orbitaire, le même degré de torsion de l'humérus, etc. * * *

"La découverte de Chancelade, en mettant en lumière une analogie frappante entre le squelette de notre troglodyte périgourdin et celui des Esquimaux actuels, apporte à cette opinion aussi séduisante que naturelle, l'appui de l'anthropologie anatomique qui, dans l'espèce, a une importance capitale. Elle lui est de tous points favorable et élève à la hauteur d'une vérité probable, je n'ose dire d'une vérité démontrée, ce qui n'était encore qu'une simple hypothèse."

Hervé, 1893:[260] "* * * * par leurs usages et par leurs moeurs, aussi bien que par leur matériel industriel et artistique, les Hyperboréens actuels (Tchouktches et Eskimaux) sont extrêmement voisins des Troglodytes magdaléniens de l'Europe occidentale; à ce point que Hamy a pu dire 'qu'ils continuent de nos jours, dan les régions circumpolaires, l'âge du renne de France, de Belgique, de Suisse, avec ses caractéristiques zoologiques, ethnographiques, etc.' (op. cit., 366). 'Nous avons vu, d'autre part, que les plus purs d'entre eux ne diffèrent pas anatomiquement des Magdaléniens. C'est donc au rameau hyperboréen que nous sommes amenés à rattacher, au point de vue ethnique, les dernières populations de l'Europe quaternaire.'"

Boule, 1913:[261] "On sait d'ailleurs, depuis les travaux de Testut sur l'Homme de Chancelade, que les relations des Esquimaux sont avec d'autres Hommes fossiles de nos pays, mais d'un âge géologique plus récent."

Sollas, 1924:[262] The Magdalenians are represented "in part, by the Eskimo on the frozen margin of the North American Continent and as well, perhaps, by the Red Indians. * * *" Due to pressure of stronger peoples, the ancestors of the Eskimo were present to the north; "but as there was no room for expansion in that direction, it was diverted toward the only egress possible, and an outflow took place into America over Bering Strait or the Aleutian Islands. The primitive Eskimo, already accustomed to a boreal life, extended along the coast."

1927:[263] "The assemblage of characters presented on the one hand by the Chancelade skull, and on the other by the Eskimo, are in very remarkable agreement, and that the onus of discovering a similar assemblage, but possessed by some other race, rests with those who refuse to accept what seems to me a very obvious conclusion. * * *

"Our only reason for any feeling of surprise is, not that Chancelade man should prove a close relation of the Eskimo, but that so far he is the only fossil example of his kind of which we have any certain knowledge."

OPPOSED TO EUROPEAN

Rae, 1887:[264] "The typical Eskimo is one of the most specialized of the human race, as far as cranial and facial characters are concerned, and such scanty remains as have yet been discovered of the prehistoric inhabitants of Europe present no structural affinities with him."

Laloy, 1898:[265] "Cette théorie est absolument contredite par les faits." (That is, the theory of the identity of the Eskimo with the European upper palaeolithic man.)

Déchelette, 1908:[266] "C'est en vain qu'on a noté certains traits d'analogie de l'art et de l'industrie * * * telles analogies s'expliquent aisément par la parité des conditions de la vie matérielle."

Burkitt, 1921:[267] "Again the Magdalenians have been correlated with the Eskimos, who inhabit to-day the icebound coastal lands to the north of the New World, and also the similar lands, on the other side of the straits, in the northeast corner of Asia. But the vast difference in place and in time would make any exact correlation very doubtful."

MacCurdy, 1924:[268] "If a Magdalenian type exists, it is probably best represented by the skeleton from Raymonden at Chancelade (Dordogne). One must not lose sight of the fact that the osteologic record of fossil man is even yet so fragmentary that there is grave danger of mistaking individual characters for those on which varieties or species should be based."

Keith, 1925:[269] "In the Chancelade man we are dealing with a member of a racial stock of a true European kind."

MISCELLANEOUS AND INDEFINITE

Gallatin, 1836:[270] "Whatever may have been the origin of the Eskimo, it would seem probable that the small tribe of the present sedentary Tchuktchi on the eastern extremity of Asia is a colony of western American Eskimo. The language does not extend in Asia beyond that tribe. That of their immediate neighbors, the "Reindeer," or "Wandering Tchuktchi," is totally different and belongs to the Kouriak family.

"There does not seem to be any solid foundation for the opinion of those who would ascribe to the Eskimaux an origin different from that of the other Indians of North America. The color and features are essentially the same; and the differences which may exist, particularly that in stature, may be easily accounted for by the rigor of the climate and partly, perhaps, by the nature of their food. The entire similarity of the structure and grammatical forms of their language with those of various Indian tribes, however different in their vocabularies, which will hereafter be adverted to, affords an almost conclusive proof of their belonging to the same family of mankind."

Richardson, 1852:[271] "The origin of the Eskimos has been much discussed as being the pivot on which the inquiry into the original peopling of America has been made to turn. The question has been fairly and ably stated by Doctor Latham in his recent work On the Varieties of Man, to which I must refer the reader; and I shall merely remark that the Eskimos differ more in physical aspect from their nearest neighbors than the red races do from one another. The lineaments have a decided resemblance to the Tartar or Chinese countenance. On the other hand, their language is admitted by philologists to be similar to the other North American tongues in its grammatical structure; so that, as Doctor Latham has forcibly stated, the dissociation of the Eskimos from their neighboring nations on account of their physical dissimilarity is met by an argument for their mutual affinity, deduced from philological coincidences."

Meigs, 1857:[272] "A connected series of facts and arguments which seem to indicate that the Eskimo are an exceedingly ancient people, whose dawn was probably ushered in by a temperate climate, but whose dissolution now approaches, amidst eternal ice and snow; that the early migrations of these people have been from the north southwards, from the islands of the Polar Sea to the continent and not from the mainland to the islands; and that the present geographical area of the Eskimo may be regarded as a primary center of human distribution for the entire polar zone."

Abbott, 1876:[273] "It is fair to presume that the first human beings that dwelt along the shores of the Delaware were really the same people as the present inhabitants of Arctic America."

Grote, 1875:[274] Basing himself on certain biological reasonings, the author concludes "that the Eskimos are the existing representatives of the man of the American glacial epoch, just as the White Mountain butterfly (Oeneis semidea) is the living representative of a colony of the genus planted on the retiring of the ice from the valley of the White Mountains."

In a later communication[275] the author expresses the opinion that the peopling of America "was effected during the Tertiary; that the ice modified races of Pliocene man, existing in the north of Asia and America, forced them southward, and then drew them back to the locality where they had undergone their original modification. * * *

"During the process, then, which resulted in the race modification of the Eskimos, their original numbers must have been decreased by the slowly but ever increasing cold of the northern regions, until experience and physical adaptation combined brought them to a state of comparative stability as a race."

Baron Nordenskiöld[276] thought that the Eskimo might probably be the true "autochthones" of the polar regions, i. e., that they had inhabited the same previous to the glacial age, at a period when a climate prevailed here equal to that of northern Italy at present, as proved by the fossils found at Spitzbergen and Greenland. As it might be assumed that man had existed even during the Tertiary period, there was a great deal in favor of the assumption that he had lived in those parts which were most favorable to his existence. The question was one of the highest importance, as, if it could be proved that the Eskimo descended from a race which inhabited the polar regions in the very earliest times, we should be obliged to assume that there was a northern (polar) as well as an Asiatic cradle of the human race, which would open up new fields of research, both to the philologist and the ethnologist, and probably remnants of the culture and language of the original race might be traced in the present polar inhabitants of both Europe and Asia.

Keane, 1886:[277] "The Aleutian Islanders, who are treated by Doctor Rink as a branch of the Eskimo family, but whose language diverges profoundly from, or rather shows no perceptible affinity at all to, the Eskimo. The old question respecting the ethnical affinities of the Aleutians is thus again raised, but not further discussed by our author. To say that they must be regarded as 'ein abnormer Seitenzweig,' merely avoids the difficulty, while perhaps obscuring or misstating the true relations altogether. For these islanders should possibly be regarded, not as 'an abnormal offshoot,' but as the original stock from which the Eskimo themselves have diverged."

Quatrefages, 1887:[278] From migrations of Tertiary man: Men originated in Tertiary in northern Asia; spread from here to Europe and over Asia; "D'autres aussi gagnèrent peut-être l'Amérique et ont pu être les ancêtres directs des Esquimaux,... Sans même supposer l'existence passée de la continuité des deux continents, les hommes tertiaires ont bien pu faire ce que font les riverains actuels du détroit de Behring, qui vont chaque jour d'Asie en Amérique et reciproquement."...

"Evidemment la race esquimale est américaine. Au Groënland, au Labrador, dont personne ne lui a disputé les solitudes glacées, elle a conservé sa pureté. Elle est encore restée pure quand elle a rencontré les Peaux-Rouges proprement dits, parce que ceux-ci lui ont fait une guerre d'extermination qui ne respectait ni les femmes ni les enfants. Mais, dans le nord-ouest américain, elle s'est trouvée en rapport avec des populations d'un caractère plus doux et des croisements ont eu lieu. Or, parmi ces populations, il s'en trouve de brachycéphales. Tels sont en particulier certaines tribus, confondues à tort sous un même nom avec les vrais Koluches.... Ces tribus sont de race jaune et leur crâne ressemble si bien à celui des Toungouses que M. Hamy les a rattachées directement à cette famille mongole. Les Esquimaux se sont croisés avec elles; et ainsi ont pris naissance ces tribus, dont l'origine métisse est attestée par le mélange ou la fusion des caractères linguistiques aussi bien qu'anatomiques."

Nansen, 1893:[279] "So much alone can we declare with any assurance, that the Eskimos dwelt in comparatively recent times on the coasts around Bering Strait and Bering Sea—probably on the American side—and have thence, stage by stage, spread eastward over Arctic America to Greenland. * * *

"The likeness between all the different tribes of Eskimos, as well as their secluded position with respect to other peoples, and the perfection of their implements, might be taken to indicate that they are of a very old race, in which everything has stiffened into definite forms, which can now be but slowly altered. Other indications, however, seem to conflict with such a hypothesis, and render it more probable that the race was originally a small one, which did not until a comparatively late period develop to the point at which we now find it, and spread over the countries which it at present inhabits."

Tarenetzky, 1900:[280] "Die Frage ist bis jetzt noch nicht entschieden und wird wahrscheinlich auch niemals definitiv entschieden werden ob die gegenwärtig die Nordostgrenze Asiens und die Nordwestgrenze Amerikas bewohnenden Polarvölker ursprünglich aus Asien nach Amerika oder in umgekehrter Richtung zu ihren Wohnsitzen wanderten."

De Nadaillac[281] believed that the Eskimo (with some other aboriginal Americans), now savage and demoralized, have issued from races more civilized and that they could raise themselves to the old social level were it not for their struggle with inexorable climate, famines, and lately also alcoholism.

Jenness, 1928:[282] "We still believe that the Eskimos are fundamentally a single people; that they had their origin in a homeland not yet determined; but we have learned that they reached their present condition through a series of complex changes and migrations, the outlines of which we have hardly begun to decipher."

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS INDICATED BY PRESENT DATA

The maze of thoughts on the origin of the Eskimo shows one fact conclusively, which is that the necessary evidence on the subject has hitherto been insufficient. From whatever side the problem has been approached, whether linguistically, culturally, from the study of myths, or even somatologically, the materials were, it is plain, more or less inadequate and there was not enough for satisfactory comparisons. The best contributions to Eskimo studies, from the oldest to the most recent, all accentuate the need for further research, and more ample collections.

Another point is that heterogeneous and wide apart as many of the opinions may seem, yet when the subject is looked upon with a larger perspective they may often perhaps be harmonized. Thus a belief in an American origin of the Eskimo need not exclude that in the Asiatic derivation of his parental stock. Even in the case of the supposed European derivation the Eskimo are understood to have reached America through Asia; there is not one suggestion of any importance advocating the coming of the Eskimo over northwestern Europe and Iceland. Only the Meigs-Grote-Nordenskiöld theory of an ancient polar race and its descent southward appears now as beyond the bounds of what would be at least partly justifiable.

What is the contribution to the subject of the studies reported in this treatise, with its relatively great amount of somatological material? The answer is not easy.

Even the truly great and precious material at hand is not sufficient. There are important parts of the Arctic, such as the Hudson Bay region, Baffin Land, and the central region; several parts of the west coast, such as the inland waters of the Seward Peninsula and the Eskimo portions of the Selawik, Kobuk, Noatak, and Yukon Rivers; and above all the Eskimo part of northeastern Siberia, from which there are insufficient or no collections. There is, moreover, especially in this country, a great want of skeletal material from the non-Eskimo Siberian tribes, and also from the old European peoples that are of most importance for comparisons. It must be plain, therefore, that even at present no final deductions are possible. All that can be claimed for the evidence here brought forth is that it clears, or tends to settle, certain secondary problems, and that it presents indications of value for the rest of the question.

The secondary problems that may herewith be regarded as settled are as follows:

1. Unity or plurality of the race.—The materials at hand give no substantiation to the possibility of the Eskimo belonging to more than one basic strain of people. They range in color from tan or light reddish-yellow to medium brown; in stature from decidedly short to above the general human medium; in head from brachycephalic and low to extremely dolichocephalic, high and keel shaped; in eyes from horizontal to decidedly mongoloid; in orbits from microseme to hypermegaseme; in nose from fully mesorrhinic to extremely leptorrhinic; in physiognomy from pure "Indian" to extreme "Eskimo." Yet all through there runs, both in the living and in the skeletal remains, so much of a basic identity that no separation into any distinct original "races" is possible. At most it is permissible to speak of a few prevalent types.

2. Relation.—The general basic prototype of the Eskimo, according to all evidence, is so closely akin to that of the Indian that the two can not be fully separated. They appear only as the thumb and the digits of the same hand, some large old mother stock from which both gradually differentiated. This appears to be an unavoidable conclusion from the present anthropological knowledge of the two peoples.

The next unavoidable deduction is that the mother stock of both the Eskimo and the Indian can only be identified with the great yellow-brown stem of man, the home of which was in Asia, but the roots of which, as has been discussed elsewhere, were probably in ancient (later paleolithic) Europe.[283] The latter fact may explain the cultural as well as somatological resemblances between the Eskimo, as well as the Indian (for the Indian, physically at least, has much in common with the upper Aurignacians), and the upper glacial European populations. But such an explanation can not in the light of present knowledge legitimately be extended to the assumption that either the Indian complex or the Eskimo originated as such in Europe; they could be at most but parts of the eventual more or less further differentiated Asiatic progeny of the upper paleolithic Europeans.

3. Mixture.—It has been assumed by Boas and others that the eastern Eskimo have become admixed with the eastern Indian and the western with the Alaskan Indian, that the physical and especially craniological differences between the eastern and western Eskimo were due to such a mixture, and that both extremes deviated from the type of the pure Eskimo, who was to be found somewhere in the central Arctic. The evidence of the present studies does not sustain such an assumption.

As shown before[284] and is seen more clearly from the present data, the western Eskimo type is also present or approached in various localities in the far north (part of Smith Sound, Southampton Island, part of the Hudson Bay coast, with probable spots in the central Arctic proper). There is no indication of any central region where the western Eskimo type would be much "purer" than elsewhere.

Individual skulls and skeletons in the west, particularly in certain spots (especially on Seward Peninsula), show the same characteristics as the most diverging skulls or skeletons in the farthest northeast.

And both in the west and in the east the most pronounced Eskimo characteristics exceed similar features in the Indian, indicating independent development. Such characteristics involve the stature (taller in the west, shorter in the east than that of the Indian); the size of the head (everywhere averaging higher in the Eskimo); dolichocephaly, height of the head, its keel shape (all more pronounced in the eastern and now and then a western Eskimo than in any Indian group); the face, nose, orbits, and lower jaw; with the relative proportions and other characteristics of the skeleton. All these point to functional and other developments within the Eskimo groups and none suggest a large Indian admixture.

It is well known that more or less blood mixture takes place among all neighboring peoples where contact is possible, even if otherwise there be much enmity. Such enmity, often in an extreme form, existed everywhere it seems between the Eskimo and the Indian, as a result of the encroaching of the former on the latter; there are many statements to that effect. Within historic times also there are no records of any adoptions or intermarriages between the two peoples. Nevertheless where contact took place, as on the rivers and in the southwest as well as the southeast of the Eskimo territory, some blood mixture, it would seem, must have developed. The Indian neighbors show it, and it would be strange if it remained one-sided. But of a mixture extensive enough to have materially modified the type of the Eskimo in whole large regions, such as the entire Bering Sea and most of the far northeast, there is no evidence and little not only probability but even possibility. Nothing approaching such an extensive mixture is shown by the near-by Indians; and it would be most exceptional in people of this nature if a much greater proportion of the mixture was into the Eskimo.

Finally, a mixture of diverse human types, unless very old, may be expected to leave numerous physical signs of heterogeneity and disturbance, none of which is shown by either the western or eastern Eskimo. Such groups as that of the St. Lawrence Island, or that of Greenland, are among the most homogeneous human groups known. The range of variation of their characters is as a rule a strictly normal range, giving a uniform curve of distribution, which is not consistent with the notion of any relatively recent material mixture.

4. The indications.—The indications of the data and observations presented in this volume may be outlined as follows:

The Eskimo throughout their territory are but one and the same broad strain of people. This strain is fundamentally related to that (or those) of the American Indian. It is also uncontestably related to the yellow-brown strains of Asia.

In many respects, such as pigmentation, build of the body, physiognomy, large brain, fullness of forehead, fullness of the fronto-sphenotemporal region, largeness of face and lower jaw, height of the nose, size and characteristics of the teeth,[285] smallness of hands and feet, etc., the Eskimos are remarkably alike over their whole territory. They differ in details, such as stature, form of the head, and breadth of the nose. But the distribution of these differences is of much interest and probably significance. Higher statures, broader heads, and broader noses are found especially in the west, the latter two particularly in the Bering Sea region; low group statures, narrow heads and narrow noses reach, with few exceptions, their extremes in the northeast. Between the two extremes, however, there is no interruption, but a gradation, with here and there an irregularity. These conditions speak not of mixture but rather of adaptation and differentiation.

They strongly suggest a moderate stream of people, rooted in Asia, of fairly broad and but moderately high head, of a good medium stature, with a mesorrhinic nose (and hence probably originally not far northern), and with many other characteristics in common, reaching America from northeasternmost Asia after the related Indians, spreading along the seacoasts as far as it could, not of choice, or choice alone, but mainly because of the blocking by the Indian of the roads toward the south and through the interior; and gradually modifying physically in adaptation to the new conditions and necessities; to climate, newer modes of life, the demands of the kayak, and above all to the results of the increased demands on the masticatory organs.

The narrowness, increased length and increased height of the Eskimo skull, without change in its size or other characteristics, may readily be understood as compensatory adaptations, the development of which was initiated and furthered by the development and mechanical effects of the muscles of mastication.

A similar conclusion has been reached in my former study on the central and Smith Sound Eskimo (1910). It has been approached or reached independently by other students of the Eskimo, notably Fürst and Hansen (1915) in their great work on the East Greenlanders. It is a conclusion of much biological importance for it involves not merely the development but also the eventual inheritance of new characters.

Former authors, it was seen, have advanced the theories of an American origin of the Eskimo. This could only mean that he developed from the American Indian. And such a development would imply physical and hereditary changes at least as great as those indicated in the preceding paragraphs, and in less time. A differentiation commenced well back in Asia, geographically and chronologically, and advancing, to its present limits, in America would seem the more probable.

An origin of the Eskimo in Europe, during the last glacial invasion, would not only push into the hazy far past the same changes as here dealt with, but it would at the same time fail to explain the physical differences within the Eskimo group, and deny any substantial changes in him during the long time of his migration toward the American northern coasts.