400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



This old culture in the Canadian Arctic, represented by the Naujan 

 find, has been called the Tlmle culture. There is much evidence to 

 show that this culture in a distant past originated in the neighbor- 

 hood of Bering Strait, in eastern Siberia, or in north Alaska, and 

 spread thence to the East, across the American Arctic, where its ruins 

 are found everywhere, both on the mainland and in the Arctic archi- 

 pelago. 



In the northernmost part of the west Greenland coast, in the Cape 

 York district, is situated the trading post of Thule, Knud Easmus- 

 sen's station, erected to supply the small Polar Eskimo tribe with 

 European goods. In 1916, close to this place, was found a very old 

 Eskimo midden containing many antiquities. The culture repre- 

 sented here is the same Thule culture found in the Canadian Arctic; 

 we have the harpoon heads with open socket, the lamp with a wick 

 ledge, and many baleen objects. These finds show that the Thule 

 Eskimos from the American Arctic also reached Greenland and were 

 the first Eskimo inhabitants of this country. 



The recent inhabitants of this region, the Polar Eskimos, have 

 many elements in common with the Thule culture; their men have 

 bearskin trousers and their women long boots, as the "Tunit" of the 

 Canadian Eskimos. And the house of the Polar Eskimos, a round 

 stone house, is a descendant of the whalebone house of the Thule 

 culture. 



I spent the summer of 1929 on the small island of Inugsuk, together 

 with my young American assistant, Dr. Frederica de Laguna. The 

 island is situated 10 miles north of Upernivik, the northernmost of 

 the Danish colonies on the west coast, separated from Thule by the 

 large, ice-filled, uninhabited Melville Bay. This small, rocky island 

 is situated in the mouth of Upernivik's ice fiord, one of the most 

 prolific ice-producers derived from the inland ice; the sea around 

 Inugsuk was always filled with enormous icebergs of all sizes and 

 shapes, dangerous neighbors, which in overturning often sent heavy 

 flood waves against the shore. On the west side of this small island 

 was situated the remains of a large old Eskimo village; most of it 

 had already been washed away by the subsidence of the land and 

 the action of the sea. 



A small strip of lowland, about 300 feet long and 100 feet wide, 

 was covered with a thick layer of old refuse, and had a cliff 3 to 6 

 feet high raised over the beach. Here bones, baleen, wooden pieces, 

 and implements were scattered. On the top of this midden were 

 three houses, which were inhabited about 1850; but the lower and 

 greater part of the midden was much older. The ground was frozen 

 solid just below the surface, and it took the whole summer to excavate 

 to the bottom ; but Inugsuk proved to be the richest finding place for 

 old Eskimo antiquities which I have met in Greenland. 



