mooney: the Greenland Eskimo 145 



civilization and well within the Arctic circle. Between pastoral 

 visits and sick calls in an open skin kayak, or by dog sledge, 

 from one to another of the small native settlements scattered for 

 three hundred miles along the dangerous west coast, this de- 

 voted missionary — whose only white companions are his wife 

 and two children and a couple of assistants — has found time to 

 give to his charges in their own language a volume of church 

 hymns, a brief history of Greenland, and several literary trans- 

 lations, besides making some important archeologic explorations. 



In a paper upon "Eskimo Migrations," published originally 

 in the native language in Atuagagdliutit, Mr. Frederiksen arrives 

 at the conclusion, from linguistic, geographic, and archeologic 

 evidence, that the Eskimo tribes reached Greenland from an 

 original nucleus body in the extreme west. He believes that they 

 traveled southward around the coast to the east, the Eskimo of 

 the East Greenland coast representing the oldest migration, and 

 decreasing in number toward the north by reason of the scarcity 

 of game and of building material. The houses also dwindle in 

 size as we proceed northward along the east coast. The Norse 

 occupation about the year 1000 made a wedge of separation be- 

 tween the Eskimo of the east and west coasts for several cen- 

 turies, but with the extinction of the Norse colony about 1490, 

 probably from attack and final absorption by the natives, some 

 of the eastern bands again moved down toward the south. Of 

 those who remained behind, the most northerly, beyond Angmag- 

 salik, finally became extinct by starvation through the gradual 

 diminution of the whale and seal, while the more southern 

 tribes were saved from the same fate only by the kindly care 

 of the later Danish colonists. The Eskimo of South Greenland 

 have probably a considerable strain of the old Norse blood, 

 which may help to account for their superior capacity for 

 civilization. 



The prevailing early house type of the South Greenland 

 Eskimo, on both the east and west coast, as shown by the ruins, 

 was rectangular, but about Sukkertoppen and Holstensborg, 65° 

 to 68° N., Mr. Frederiksen has discovered numerous remains 

 of semi-subterranean houses of circular form, always in groups, 



