H. P. STEENSBY. 
or 
D 
a new direction as the point of origin for the Eskimo. His showing 
that the legends with the two groups of Eskimo point inwards towards 
the centre is a very important matter. 
After contemplating the conditions of culture, MurpocH! has formed 
a theory as to the descent of the Eskimo, which agrees with the result 
of Boas’s investigations. After having carried through his criticism 
of Rink, whereby he shows that from a cultural point of view there 
is nothing which speaks in favour of Alaska as the native land, 
Murdoch formulates his hypothesis, which, he says, is probably quite 
as correct as RINK's. It is his opinion that the central tribes and not 
the Yukon Eskimo possess the most primitive culture, and therefore 
they are nearest to the original home of the race, which was not the 
interior of Alaska but the district south of Hudson Bay. Here a part 
has separated, and streamed into Labrador and populated it, while 
the main body has gone northwards along the west coast of Hudson 
Bay to take possession of the Arctic Archipelago, and finally to reach 
Greenland via Smith Sound, leaving as a trace of their wanderings 
the house-ruins and other relics which are now found far north of 
where the Eskimo are at present stationed on the western side of 
Baffin Bay. From the original home — evidently before the Labra- 
dors separated — another large section went northwards along lakes. 
and rivers, always keeping to the east of the Rocky Mountains, until 
they could pass westwards along the Yukon basin. Here they again 
divided, one section going down the Mackenzie in order to disperse 
towards the west as far as Bering Strait and Asia, while the other 
section went down the Yukon and the Kuskoquim and _ dispersed 
along the coast; where, towards the south, it became more and more 
changed on account of the new and peculiar surroundings. It will be 
seen that, according to this view, the people in South Alaska are not 
primitive, but highly specialized, Eskimo, who have brought with them 
to a relatively fertile and temperate district accomplishments which 
germinated under widely different circumstances. 
What is interesting in these remarks of Murpocu is that he, like 
Boas, locates the primitiveness in the central districts. While Rink, 
for whom Eskimo culture was the Subarctic sea-coast form, only 
counted on the central Arctic districts as the necessary complementary 
and connecting link between east and west, MURDOCH, in consequence 
of his long stay at Point Barrow, had his attention directed to just 
the Arctic Eskimo groups. His hypothesis as to their migrations, 
itself, is not so satisfying, however, in comparison with Boas’s and 
Rınk’s calm and penetrating understanding of the shifting of peoples, 
in that Murpocu is rather too free in his chapters on the treatment 
of the wanderings of the ancient Eskimo. 
1 Murvocn, Il. 
