400 



The stretch of coast which, from its position and wealth 

 of animal life, as described in preceding pages, is best suited 

 to attract these wanderings bands, is that occupied by the 

 Polar Eskimos. And from these remarks with regard to the 

 wanderings of the musk-ox Eskimos — remarks, which are natur- 

 ally hypothetical, but which can only be contradicted or con- 

 firmed by archæological investigations in the regions mentioned — 

 it will scarcely be surprising, if I express the opinion, that the 

 Polar Eskimos are just the latest arrivals of the musk-ox 

 Eskimos. It is quite possible, of course, that hundreds of 

 years have passed since they came to Greenland ; the remains 

 of houses found on Ellesmere Land seem all to be fairly old. 

 It is also probable that the tribe is made up of a fusion of 

 several bands. 



This view of the origin of the Polar Eskimos I base 

 further on the following points. 



1. As I have already pointed before, the Polar Eskimos 

 must at an earlier date have lived under conditions, when the 

 kayak hunting, the reindeer hunting and salmon fishing, or in 

 other words the main, summer modes of livelihood of the 

 ordinary, arctic Eskimo culture, had fallen into disuse. It is 

 difficult to imagine that this happened except under the con- 

 ditions described, when the musk-ox hunting was the main 

 mode of livelihood in the summer. 



2. The musk-ox hunting has never been forgotten by the 

 Polar Eskimos and is still to this day a special attraction 

 for them. 



3. In their folk-lore and their own experience the regions 

 beyond Smith Sound play a much greater part than, for example, 

 the lands lying to the south of them, and they held the view, 

 at any rate in Kane's and Hayes' time, that musk-ox hunting 

 Eskimos lived up here. Thus, a Polar Eskimo, who was con- 

 vinced that Hayes would meet with Eskimos to the north, said: 

 "There are good hunting-grounds to the north, plenty of musk- 



