DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



the cause of the papal letter, and which thus did not reach 

 the Pope until thirty years after the alleged incursion; their 

 object must have been to obtain further advantages. The 

 papal document of 1448 must therefore be entirely discarded 

 as historical evidence so far as its statements about Greenland 

 are concerned. 



Consequently, the only possibly historical statement left to 

 us to prove that the Eskimo took the offensive, is that of 

 their "harrying" in 1379; but from this we can doubtless 

 only conclude that at the most there was a collision between 

 Eskimo and Greenlanders. It has also been adduced that 

 the Eskimo of Greenland have a few legends of fighting 

 with the ancient Norsemen, and one which tells how the 

 last of the Norsemen was slain. It must, however, be 

 remembered that these legends were taken down in the last 

 century, when the Eskimo had again been in contact with 

 Europeans for several hundred years, and when Norwegians 

 and Danes had been living in the country for over a hundred 

 years. Some of the legends certainly refer to recent collisions 

 with Europeans, and it is not easy to say what value can be 

 attached to the others as evidence of an extermination of the 

 last Norsemen. It is also to be remarked that the Norsemen, 

 or Long-Beards, are not spoken of with ill-will in these 

 legends, but rather with sympathy, which is difficult to 

 understand if there had been such hatred as would account 

 for a war of extermination. Add to this that the particular 

 encounter which led to the last Long-Beard being pursued 

 and slain arose, according to the tale, quite accidentally, 

 which is difficult to imagine if it was the conclusion of a 

 lengthy war of extermination, in which homestead after 

 homestead and district after district had been harried and 

 laid waste. The legends of the Eskimo cannot therefore 

 be cited as evidence of the probability of any such war. 



It has been said that, even if such warlike proceedings 

 would be entirely incompatible with the present nature, 

 disposition and way of thinking of the Greenland Eskimo, 



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