Ап Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 75 
Gulf, has specially added to our knowledge about the Eskimo tribes 
which group themselves around Coronation Gulf. His observations 
and experiences as regards the occurrence of the musk ox he com- 
prises in these indubitably correct words: “It is the nature of the 
musk ox that it cannot long survive in any country inhabited by a 
hunting people. We find nowadays that the range of the musk ox 
and the range of the Eskimo are mutually exclusive, for the Eskimo 
always exterminate those within their range. Their hunting method 
allows of nothing else, for when a dog or two have been set on a 
band of musk oxen they will hold the animals in one place indefinitely 
and give the Eskimo time to kill them at leisure.” 
By examining the kitchen-middens in North Alaska, STEFANSSON? 
found evidence that the Eskimo had there hunted the musk ox, 
and from the traditions of the Eskimo he thought that he was able 
to calculate that the last musk oxen must have been killed about 
1860. Immediately east of Mackenzie Delta, musk oxen have been 
slain within the memory of man. Around Coronation Gulf the animal 
has now disappeared within the region which the Eskimo can easily 
reach when on their hunting expeditions; on Victoria Island it is only 
found on the rarely visited north coast; on Banks Island musk oxen 
are numerous, and something similar holds good of the other side, 
the interior region of the Barren Grounds. Probably it is also the 
Eskimo who have exterminated the musk ox in the Melville Peninsula 
and in Baffin Land, inasmuch as these lands are not so large that 
the relatively numerous groups of Eskimo living at the coasts cannot 
chase the much sought after game. Only the interior and more 
inhospitable islands in the Archipelago to the north of Boothia and 
Victoria Island, which are cut off by means of pack-ice, have, like 
the Barren Grounds, been able to afford the musk ox hiding places 
and by-places where the small wandering groups of Eskimo have not 
been able to exterminate them entirely. These small hunting groups 
— as I have previously pomted out — either had to become extinct 
or advance further “along the musk ox track,” and must then, in 
most cases, have landed in Greenland. On comparing a map of 
districts with deserted Eskimo ruins (for example, THALBITZER in 
М. о. G., Vol. 31) with а map of the distribution of the musk oxen 
(M. 0. G., Vol. 34, p. 401) the conformity is immediately apparent; 
the region is essentially the same. Or, to phrase it differently, 
it may be said that most of the districts where the Eskimo are 
now extinct, or from which they have vanished, lie inside the present 
range of distribution of the musk ox, and there is hardly any doubt 
that these two points, the Eskimo becoming extinct and the self- 
assertion of the musk ox, are to a certain extent reciprocally and 
correlatively connected. 
1 STEFANSSON, II, p. 450 and p. 455. 
