ESKIMO AND SKR^LING 



for coastal traffic.^ Nor has it produced any other maritime 

 people or any similar fishing culture. Again, if the Eskimo 

 culture had arisen there, it would be impossible to under- 

 stand how they learned to use dogs as draught animals. It 

 is otherwise on the northern west coast of North America, 

 which is indented by fjords and has many outlying islands, 

 with protected channels between them and the land. Here, 

 seamanship might be naturally developed and form the 

 necessary basis for a higher sealing culture like that of the 

 Eskimo. In addition, there are abundance of marine animals 

 which afforded excellent conditions for hunting. Here, too, we 

 have many different peoples with maritime habits; on the 

 one side the Eskimo northward along the coast of Alaska; 

 on the other side the Aleutians on the islands extending out 

 to sea, besides Indian tribes along the coast of southern 

 Alaska and British Columbia. Until, therefore, research has 

 produced sufficient evidence for a different view, it must 

 seem most natural that, in these favorable regions with a 

 rich supply of marine animals of all kinds, we must look for 

 the cradle of the culture that was to render the Eskimo 

 capable of distributing themselves over the whole arctic 

 world of America. To this must be added that in these 

 regions, by intercourse with people on the Asiatic side of 

 Bering Strait, the seafaring Eskimo may have learnt the 

 use of the dog as a draught animal, which is an Asiatic, and 

 not an American invention, and which is also of great 

 importance to the whole life and distribution of the Eskimo 

 in the ice-bound regions. We cannot here pursue further the in- 

 quiry into the still open question of the origin of the Eskimo 

 and the development of their culture.- 



1 It would be otherwise on the west coast of Greenland, with its excellent 

 belt of skerries; but as the Eskimo could not reach this coast without having 

 developed, at least in part, their peculiar maritime culture, it is, of course, out 

 of the question that this can have been their cradle. 



2Cf. on this subject H. Rink [1871, 1887, 1891]; F, Boas [1901]; cf. also 

 H. P. Steensby [1905], Axel Hamberg [1907] and others. These authors hold 

 various views as to the origin of the Eskimo, which, however, are all different 



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