﻿2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



and permanent interest of the topic really demand the careful applica- 

 tion of every available test. 



Obviously we must aim to distinguish the true narrative from 

 less reliable accretions and competitors. We must also ascertain as 

 nearly as possible the condition of the American shoreline at the 

 period to which the statements of the sagas apply. These are the 

 prime requirements, and yet whatever else may throw any light on 

 the matter should not be neglected. 



A preliminary glance is perhaps needful at what preceded the 

 appearance of the Norsemen in the New World. In a fundamental 

 sense the title " New World " is deserved, for science and the most 

 venerated writings agree in ascribing priority of human life to the 

 other hemisphere, though their reasons differ widely. Most anthro- 

 pologists believe that man first walked over to America ; — from Eu- 

 rope as Dr. Brinton 1 supposed, from Asia as many others have 

 claimed — but in either case the route was at one, if not both, of the 

 far northern corners of the continent. The crossing is indeed occa- 

 sionally made in winter at the present day on the ice at Bering 

 Straits, as reported to Dr. Dall, 2 and in summer by boat almost at 

 will. However, no traces have yet been discovered of such passage 

 from Iceland or any other possible stepping stone on the eastern 

 side. 3 But even the earliest coming, however remote, must have been 

 rather late in the history of our race, an unarmored, ill-equipped off- 

 spring of the tropics, which had a long way to travel by slow de- 

 grees. The immigration may have been in a small way and often 

 repeated. Whoever came first to America, however, or whence they 

 came, or when, we have in the present inquiry to deal only with the 

 Eskimo and their southern neighbors. When Europeans finally lifted 

 the Atlantic curtain, the Eskimo were found as far south as the upper 

 end of Newfoundland ; they clung to the sea-shore almost everywhere. 



Below these Innuit along the coast, and behind their southeastern 

 wing in Labrador, as well as nearly everywhere throughout the 

 temperate parts of the continent, there were other uncivilized men 



1 D. G. Brinton: The American Race, (1901), p. 32. 



2 W. H. Dall: The Origin of the Innuit; in The Tribes of the Extreme 

 Northwest, p. 97. 



3 C. R. Markham : Origin and Migrations of the Greenland Eskimo ; in 

 Arctic Papers for Expedition of 1875, p. 166. See also W. H. Holmes : Some 

 Problems of the American Race. Amer. Anthrop., vol. 12, no. 2 (191 0), p. 178 

 Cf. A. Geike : Fragments of Earth Lore, p. 263. 



