380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



question that is being keenly disputed in Denmark. We may leave it 

 to that country's decision and contrast the Canadian Arctic. 



The Eskimo population of Canada has always been much smaller 

 than that of Greenland (it numbers today, including Labrador, only 

 about 6,500) ; and it is distributed over many times the length of 

 coast line, so that the settlements are farther apart and more isolated. 

 Moreover this coast line (even Baffin Island) is an integral part of 

 the mainland of America, accessible both by land and by sea. The 

 highly mineralized pre-Cambrian zone touches it in several places, 

 and each year air transport brings the most remote areas into closer 

 touch with the centers of civilization farther south. Today the region 

 between Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes is experiencing a mining 

 boom ; next year it may be the hunting grounds of the Eskimo between 

 Great Bear Lake and the Arctic Ocean. No administration, therefore, 

 could possibly insulate the Canadian Eskimo from the outside world 

 unless it concentrated them into one area, e.g., the northern archipelago 

 or the region round the Magnetic Pole ; and in that narrow space most 

 of them would perish from starvation, so limited are the food resources. 

 Moreover, no one can foresee the future of aviation. It is quite possible 

 that within the next 20 years airplanes will be flying on regular sched- 

 ules between Europe and America over the Canadian Arctic, and that 

 the region will be dotted with emergency landing stations. 



Insulation or segregation of the Canadian Eskimo is therefore im- 

 possible. They must sink or swim in civilization's tide, with no period 

 of tutelage to equip them for the struggle, and with only such protec- 

 tion as an open-door policy will permit. Even their ^uage will 

 disappear before many generations, because their settlemen s have little 

 or no contact with one another, but trade almost exclusively with white 

 men who only rarely understand their tongue. To preserve its identity 

 and its language in the face of outside pressure a people requires the 

 cohesion given by population mass, and this the Canadian Eskimo 

 definitely lack. 



Nevertheless, the temperament of the Eskimo is the strongest guar- 

 antee of their survival, though not as a separate people. Wliether 

 because or in spite of their difficult environment, they have developed 

 through the ages a most unusual cheerfulness and resourcefulness that 

 have already withstood the shock of European impact and will carry 

 them through the adjustment period. Their temperament will facili- 

 tate their intermarriage with Europeans and leave its mark on their 

 descendants, so that in years to come the American Arctic, no less than 

 Greenland, will be inhabited by hardy frontiersmen carrying in their 

 veins a strain of Eskimo blood, but speaking a European language. 



