378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



open to all and trade is free, though the Hudson's Bay Company enjoys 

 a virtual monopoly over a large area. No educational facilities exist 

 apart from the rudimentary teaching of English in a few missions. 

 In Alaska there are regular day schools in all the larger Eskimo centers ; 

 they too employ English as the medium of instruction. In the Green- 

 land educational system both day and high schools employ the Eskimo 

 language, though the teaching of Danish is now compulsory. 



In dealing with her Eskimo population, therefore, Canada, like the 

 United States, has followed an open-door policy that implicitly aims 

 at rapid assimilation, whereas Denmark has adopted a policy of segre- 

 gation and tutelage similar in many respects to Canada's policy with 

 her Indians, The merits of the two systems have been widely disputed, 

 not in reference to the Eskimo only, but in reference to many native 

 populations the world over, even the colored population of the United 

 States. In the South Seas, where Europeans have definitely rejected 

 segregation, the Maoris are increasing in numbers and merging tran- 

 quilly with the whites, whereas in Tahiti and other islands their 

 Polynesian brethren are rapidly declining. The Japanese have segre- 

 gated the Ainu, Britain has insulated the Nagas of Assam, Belgium its 

 pygmies in the Congo, South Africa its Bushmen and some of its 

 Bantus; and Australia is considering the segregation of its blacks. 



Now it is clear that segregation does not in all cases carry the same 

 aim. No one expects, under the tutelage which segregation permits, 

 that the pygmies of Central Africa, the Bushmen of South Africa, or 

 the Australian blacks, will advance to such an extent that they can 

 some day stand on their own feet in competition with other peoples. 

 Segregation in their cases is dictated by considerations of humanity 

 only, the same considerations that lead us to build old men's homes for 

 the indigent poor. These natives are comparatively few in numbers, 

 they are incapable, we believe, of making any important contribution 

 to the progress of man upon this earth, and if they should become 

 extinct within a few generations or centuries the world will presum- 

 ably be none the poorer. Whether they are doomed to disappear 

 quickly or to remain in tutelage for as long as we can foresee, our 

 moral sense compels us to make their lives no less comfortable and 

 happy than our own. 



Not humane considerations only, but economic ones also inspire the 

 segregation of certain Bantu tribes and of the Nagas of Assam. The 

 numbers of these peoples run into millions, and they inhabit large 

 areas of fertile tropical land that the white man, even if he tries to 

 colonize, cannot develop without native labor. Hence he must either 

 protect the local inhabitants and train them to develop their territories 

 themselves (in the beginning, at least, under his hegemony), or he 

 must permit their dispossession by Hindu, Chinese, and other peoples 

 who are also adapted physiologically for a tropical life. 



