An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 59 
Several other authors who have touched upon the question of the 
origin of the Eskimo culture have either concurred with one or another 
of the mentioned theories, or have expressed themselves from a special 
point of view. 
In order to throw further light on the Eskimo constituting a link 
in the whole North American body of people, G. Hotm has collected 
several congruities in legends and implements with Greenlanders, 
Aztecs and Mayas. He chose to search far from the border districts, 
just in order to disarm the assertion that the congruities might be 
due to the contact of the peoples. The congruities in the use of the 
throwing-board, missiles, and salmon-spear, which Ho.m points to, are 
certainly common to all North Americans, and can only be apprehended 
as a good argument to prove how deeply Eskimo culture is rooted in 
America, and it is conceivable that the same holds good as regards 
some of the principles of the legends. 
Watter Hoven, starting with the idea that Eskimo life is 
dependent on the blubber-lamp, investigated the conditions pertaining 
to the origin of this, and through this tried to decide where the 
hearth of the culture was, whereby he came to the conclusion that 
it must have generated on an Arctic coast. 
D. G. Brinton! thought that the question of the origin of the 
Eskimo should date back to a time when climatic conditions were 
different. They then lived on the Atlantic coast, as far south as 
Delaware River. ‘It is not improbable that their ancestors lived on 
the swamps of New England, when the reindeer grazed there, and 
accompanied this animal when it finally strayed northwards. They 
pertain historically and characteristically to the Atlantic people.” By 
this Brinton means that they rank with the Iroquois, Algonquins, 
Beothuks, and Tinne people. And it is on the basis of this consideration 
that he gives preference to the hypothesis of his countryman, Joun 
Murpocn, and maintains that the regions south of Hudson Bay are 
the point of origin for the Eskimo. 
Of additional importance as regards the question of the origin of 
the Eskimo culture are F. Boas’s publications of the results and 
— investigations of the Jesup Expedition. These investigations, and especi- 
ally the mythological ones, confirm the above-mentioned view of Boas 
that the western Eskimo have come from the east and have cut an 
old communication across Bering Strait. As JooHELSON expressed it: 
“There is no doubt that the Eskimo appeared on the American-Asiatic 
coasts of Bering Sea as an entering wedge which split apart the trunk 
of the common mythological tree.” 
In his latest great work ‘‘The Ammassalik Eskimo” THatsrrzer 
(p. 917) expresses the opinion that “the common Eskimo Mother- 
1 Brinton, J, pp. 59 sqq. 
