GILBERTSON: ESKIMO CULTURE 7 



word and action whenever possible. Marett gives a quotation 

 from Seligman, in which a Vedda cave-dweller says: 



&quot;It is pleasant for us to go out and dig yams, and come home wet, 

 and see the fire burning in the cave, and sit round it.&quot; 



Upon this Marett comments thus: 



That sort of remark shows more light on the anthropology of cave- 

 life than all the bones and stones that I have helpd to dig out of our 

 Mousterian caves in Jersey.&quot; 



He emphasizes the importance of such &quot;human documents,&quot; in 

 these words: 



&quot;We need to supplement the books of abstract theory with much 

 sympathetic insight directed towards men and women in their concrete 

 selfhood. To study the plot without studying the characters will never 

 make sense of the drama of human life.&quot; (39: 242, 243.) 



2. GENERAL DESCRIPTION 



The Eskimoan linguistic stock is the northernmost branch of 

 the human race. It is also one of the widest distributed of the 

 world s peoples. Its territory extends from the east coast of 

 Greenland and Labrador to the eastern part of Siberia, a dis 

 tance of 5,000 miles. Thus, in the language of Latham (quoted, 

 15 : 261) &quot;the Eskimo is the only population clearly and indubit 

 ably common to the two Worlds, the Old and the New.&quot; The 

 present study is confined to the Eskimo proper, not including the 

 cognate Yuits of Siberia, or the natives of the Aleutian Islands. 



The Eskimo were the first American aborigines to come in 

 contact with Europeans. It is now the general consensus of 

 authorities that the SkraUinger, described by the early Norse 

 discoverers, were Eskimo. 



The two leading theories of the original home of the Eskimo 

 are that of Rink, who regards it as the interior of Alaska, and 

 that of Boas, who considers it probable that it was in the region 

 west of Hudson Bay. The latter is now the more commonly 

 accepted view. 



Mason recognizes on the American continent, north of Mexico, 

 twelve &quot;ethnic environments&quot; (28. 1 : 427-430), in each of which 

 there is &quot;an ensemble of qualities that impressed themselves on 

 their inhabitants and differentiated them.&quot; The characteristics 

 of the Arctic environment, inhabitated by the Eskimo include 



