HUMAN RACIAL RESPONSES 



A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THERMOREGULATION 

 IN ESKIMOS, INDIANS, AND U. S. SOLDIERS 



Subjects 



The subjects for these experiments were six American white 

 soldiers, six Alaskan Eskimos, and six Athapascan Indians. Their 

 physical characteristics are presented in Table I. 



Cold Exposure 



The soldiers had been in Alaskaless than ten days, had arrived 

 from training camps in the southern states and, except subject 1, 

 were all born in the Southern U. S. Their previous cold exposure 

 was very negligible. 



The Eskimos came from the isolated village of Anaktuvuk Pass 

 in the Brooks Range and earned their livelihood by hunting and trap- 

 ping land animals. They pursue a relatively vigorous existence in a 

 cold climate. 



The Indians came from the village of Tetlin, Alaska, on the 

 Upper Tanana River. This is a region of climatic extremes and the 

 lowest winter temperature in North America has been reported 

 from this general area. Aboriginally these people were nomadic 

 hunters; presently they are engaged in trapping and wood cutting, 

 receive governmental subsidies, and are not as active in the cold 

 as formerly. 



Methods 



These experiments were conducted in November, December, and 

 January. Four and five days after they had arrived at the laboratory 

 and had been subsisting on a hospital cafeteria diet, duplicate meas- 

 urements of basal metabolic rates were made on the Eskimos and 



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