403 



The story or tradition which Knud Rasmussen heard \ that 

 some disease had once in the olden days carried away all the 

 old people, who knew how to build kayaks, and that these were 

 buried together with their owners , does not give a rational 

 explanation either of why they should give up the use of the 

 kayaks, since such a cause could have no effect with a tribe 

 accustomed to use the kayak. A probable explanation of the 

 story is , that these kayak builders who died were immigrants 

 — presumably from Baffin Land — who continued their custo- 

 mary summer mode of life , without at that time finding any 

 imitators among the true Polar Eskimos. 



Taken on the whole , we must guard against concluding 

 that the absence of use means the complete absence of know- 

 ledge. It is not at all strange, therefore, that the Greenlanders 

 more to the south, who certainly must also have come originally 

 along the "musk-ox way", early took up the use of the kayak 

 for their hunting by sea. It was only necessary that the whole 

 way from a kayak-building region in America to south of Mel- 

 ville Bay should be traversed by a single band within the period 

 of a single generation, so that some would remain to take the 

 initiative and produce a model for others to follow, when they 

 found it suited the conditions. The same applies with regard 

 to the reindeer hunting, the use of the bow and arrow etc. 



I shall not enter, however, upon the question of the immigra- 

 tion of the more southerly Greenlanders. From an anthropogeogra- 

 phical standpoint it is obvious, that the main mass must have come 

 down along the west coast. The western immigrants already find 

 the natural basis for a more permanent settlement at Etah, just as 

 the band which goes to the north, first meet with corresponding 

 conditions at Scoresby Sound or perhaps even only at Angmagsalik. 

 Between Scoresby Sound and AngmagsaHk lies the coastal 

 stretch charted by Amdrup, which is perhaps the most unap- 



Nye Mennesker, p. 32. 



