﻿144 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Concerning- the " Northerners," a remote unsophisticated branch of 

 the Innuit, occupying the northwestern peninsula of the same main- 

 land region, Mr. Turner x informs us : " These people are unusually 

 tall and of fine physique. The men are larger than the average white 

 man, while the women compare favorably in stature with the women 

 of medium height in other countries." E. W. Nelson 2 says : 



The Malemut and the people of Kaviak peninsula, including those of the 

 islands in Bering Strait, are tall, active, and remarkably well built. Among 

 them it is common to see men from five feet ten inches to six feet tall. 



Yet 



The Eskimo from Bering Strait to the lower Yukon are fairly well-built people, 

 averaging among the men about five feet two or three inches in height. The 

 Yukon Eskimo and those living southward from the river to the Kuskokwim 

 are, as a rule, shorter and more squarely built . . . and all of the people in the 

 district about Capes Vancouver and Romanzof, and thence to the Yukon 

 mouth, ... all are very short. 



Of the Norton Sound Eskimo, Dall 3 writes that he has often seen 

 both men and women six feet high and that some of the men are 

 still taller. Also that the men have great strength, one being able to 

 take a hundred pound bag of flour in each hand and another by his 

 teeth and walk ofT thus burdened. 



As to the eyes in particular, he reports that they are " small, black 

 and almost even with the face," also that the " women are sometimes 

 quite pretty." Lieutenant Holm 4 admits that Eskimo have not large 

 eyes, but asserts the same of Indians, disqualifying both ; yet the 

 Skrellings were natives of some kind. Captain Robinson, 5 as quoted 

 at second hand by Patterson in his valuable little work, described 

 Mary March, a Beothuk prisoner, as having black eyes, " larger and 

 more intelligent than those of the Eskimo." The two types were 

 neighbors and naturally chosen for comparison by one who knew them 

 both. 



Wide divergences are noted in complexion, in physiognomy, in 

 hairiness of the face, in the proportions of the body and limbs, 

 between the Eskimo of different districts. Thus we have a puzzling 

 absence of uniformity in a race which is considered unusually 



1 The Hudson Bay Eskimo. Eleventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1889- 

 1890, p. 179. 



2 The Eskimo About Bering Strait. Eighteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. 

 Ethnol., 1 896-1 897, pp. 26, 28. 



3 W. H. Dall: Alaska, pp. 137-140. 



4 A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. Notes. 



5 Rev. Geo. Patterson: The Beothicks of Newfoundland, p. 146. 



