THE EARLY MAN OF NORTH AMERICA. 593 



Our knowledge of the Esquimaux is far from complete. They call 

 themselves Jnnuit, not Esquimaux, and the name signifies the peo- 

 ple. Although divided into tribes and smaller companies, they are 

 very uniform in their physical appearance and customs. A tribe met 

 with by Sir John Ross about 77 north latitude believed themselves 

 to be not only the only Esquimaux, but the only people in the world. 

 As their numbers are comparatively small, and they have a total 

 ranee of about 5,000 miles of coast-line, it is evident how a tribe 

 might exist for centuries without meeting any competitors for seal 

 and bear meat in its range. The different tribes practise a sort 

 of communism with regard to their possessions. Different families 

 dwell together in one house, and rely upon each other for mutual sup- 

 port. So much, in brief, we may say here of this people. With 

 regard to their affinities, they are from their speech a branch of the 

 Turanian family, and allied to the Hungarian, Turkish, Lapp, and 

 Basque races. As to their habits, while their morals seem to be good, 

 they are most voracious eaters, from the fact that they cannot always 

 depend on their supply of food, and so gorge themselves when they 

 get a quantity. Parry tells of an Esquimaux boy who ate eight and a 

 half pounds of seal-meat, one and a half pound of bread, one and a 

 half pint of soup, and drank three wineglasses of gin, a tumbler of 

 hot whiskey-and-water, and five pints of water, consuming the whole, 

 between intervals of rest, in one day. They seldom wash except in 

 summer, in which I think they are excusable to some degree, in the 

 absence of proper heating apparatus in their huts. 



As usual, travelers and scientists speak badly of boys. It is 

 always the boys who are doing the worst actions, be they Esqui- 

 maux or New-Englanders. While I myself, in the present lecture, 

 am guilty of this unavoidable presentation of the facts, I yet believe 

 that the most of the wrongs of this world are committed by grown- 

 up persons, and I look to the growing generation of boys to make 

 better and wiser men than their fathers. They have the benefit of a 

 greater amount of experimental information stored up for them in 

 books from which they can take fresh departures in knowledge and 

 happiness. 



It has been my aim in the present lecture to give you the result 

 of latest information on the earlier man of North America, and at the 

 same time to indicate some of the different branches of science which 

 it is necessary for us to pursue in order to understand anthropology or 

 the study of man. We have called upon geology to describe the strata 

 in which we find the relics of man, and to explain their probable age and 

 the manner of their deposition. Archaeology has shown the progress 

 from the simple to the complex in the various implements used by 

 man, and has classified them. Ethnology has allowed us to discrimi- 

 nate between the different races of mankind, to study their habits 

 and migrations, and classify their religions. Biology has enabled us 

 vol. x. 38 



