STEFANSSON'S DISCOVERIES — A TENTATIVE SUMMARY 



OF RESULTS 



By Clark ]]'issler 



THE anthropological results of the Stef ansson-Anderson expedition may 

 be tentatively summarized, although an authoritative statement 

 cannot be made until the collections ha\e arrived and have been 

 given careful consideration and comparison with those from other regions. 

 The region between Cape Bathurst and King William Island was formerly 

 so little known that one could do no more than conjecture as to what 

 groups of Eskimo lived therein. 



Mr. Stefansson succeeded in visiting thirteen groups in that territory 

 and determining approximately their respective habitats. This alone marks 

 an important advance in our knowledge of the Eskimo. Moreover some 

 data as to the culture, language, and somatology of each group were re- 

 corded. This, in comparison with data on the Central and Alaskan Eskimo 

 should give us a fair idea of the whole gamut of Eskimo culture from Green- 

 land to the Aleutian Islands. When it is recalled that anthropologists have 

 found some important differences between the culture of the /Vlaskan Eskimo 

 and of those around Hudson Bay, it must follow that a boundary line or a 

 transitional belt exists somewhere in the region visited by Stefansson and 

 Anderson. The data will give at least a tentative solution of this problem. 



As to the past history of the Eskimo, we must appeal to what is in the 

 ground. The expedition noted many ruins of former villages and recorded 

 the character of houses and culture for further study. A point of especial 

 interest is, that from Cape Parry we have a collection of pottery dug up out 

 of the cutbank. Mr. Stefansson says this pottery is of the Point Barrow 

 type. This one fact is of considerable importance since it greatly extends 

 the pottery area among the P^skimo. Other archaeological material was 

 secured from the vicinity of Point Barrow and a comparative study of these 

 two collections, one east of the Mackenzie and one west, will prove of great 

 importance. 



It appears now that those collections supplemented by other historical 

 data will enable Mr. Stefansson to demonstrate that the introduction of 

 fish nets, lab rets and tobacco pipes was comparatively recent and from the 

 west, whereas pottery was known a long time before, in fact at Point Barrow 

 he reports it as occurring in the oldest known remains of the Eskimo. 



Lastly, we may mention the peculiar suggestions of European blood 

 among these Eskimo. This is an interesting somatological discovery. We 

 say traces of European blood because that seems the most reasonable 

 explanation of the observed facts. If a tendency toward blond hair only 

 occurred, the possibility of variation within the group might be granted but 



205 



