THE ESKIMO RACE AND LANGUAGE, 261 



THE ESKIMO RACE AND LANGUAGE. 



THEIR ORIGIN AND RELATIONS. 



BY A. F. CHAMBERLAIN, B.A. 



Within the confines of the Dominion of Canada, the ethnologist 

 and the philologist can find fit subjects for investigation and research. 

 In our Eastern Provinces we have still feeble remnants of that 

 mighty race, which, as late researches have shown, once occupied the 

 whole country East of the Mississippi, from Florida to Labrador, and 

 whose original seat, Mr. Horatio Hale thinks, was on the borders of 

 our own St. Lawrence, whence they spread in times long past, to the 

 south and south-west. In Manitoba and the adjoining districts of 

 the Territory, some have seen evidences of the sojovirn of that won- 

 derful people, the mysterious "Mound-Builders," while in British Col- 

 umbia and on our far western border, there linger yet tribes whose 

 language yields us evidence of connection, perhaps even kinship, with 

 the ;amed Aztecs of the land of Anahuac. Across the vast plains 

 of our North-West Territories the Cree and the Athapascan have 

 wandered from time immemorial, long ere the white man set foot 

 upon the "new discovered isle." But to the student of America's 

 past, there can be no tribe, no nation, so interesting as that which 

 occupies our sea-coast from Labrador to the borders of Alaska con- 

 tinuing thence even into the Old World, the Innuit or Eskimo, as 

 they are commonly designated. To use the language of Dr. Latham, 

 "the Eskimo is the only population clearly and indubitably common 

 to the two Worlds, the Old and the New."* The habitat of the 

 Eskimo stretches from Labrador and Greenland to the shores of the 

 River Anadyr in North-Siberia. From the North-western to the 

 South-eastern point of the Eskimo territories is in a straight line 



♦Native Races of the Russian Empire, 1854, p. 291. 



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