I. 



The Eskimo tribe, which is called here the Polar Eskimos, 

 lives on the north-west coast of Greenland, between 76° and 

 79° N. L., and is the most northern people on the globe. From 

 the West Greenlanders they are separated by the nninhabited 

 ice-shores of Melville Bay and from the natives of Ponds [nlet 

 on the northern part of Baffin Land by the likewise uninhab- 

 ited large islands of EUesmere Land and North Devon. 



The title "neighbours of the North Pole", which E. Astrup 

 gives them, is theirs with right, not only because their land is 

 so near to the pole, but also on account of the great and 

 important help they have given in recent times to the Polar 

 expeditions. For a long time they were known under the 

 name "the arctic Highlanders", a title given them by John 

 Ross, by which he intended to convey the impression both of 

 remarkable stature and also of the northerly and mountainous 

 nature of their land. Later, Bessels with small reason intro- 

 duced the name Itaner or Etah'er from the most northerly, 

 large settlement of the tribe, lia or Etah. More frequently the 

 tribe has been named after their most southerly settlement the 

 Cape York Eskimos. The title Polar Eskimos has come into 

 use mainly since L. Mylius-Erichsen's Danish Expedition of 

 1902—1904. 



Although there is full reason to regard the tribe as an 

 ethnographic unit, owing to the apartness of its region from 

 that of all other Eskimos and owing to the special character- 

 istics of its culture, yet its numbers are extremely few. Ac- 



