An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 47 
Eskimo will not be given. Here the intention is only shortly to 
point out how it is the Eskimo culture in its Subarctic condition 
which first_b ver today holds good 
8 being the_typic scientific treatment and_the 
erlyati i i i i tion 
From the days of Eric the Red till about 1400 the Scandinavian: 
Greenlanders were to a certain extent in touch with the Eskimo, to 
which the Saga reports bear witness. Vinland travellers met people 
who decidedly must have been Eskimo; the interesting question whether 
they also came into contact with the Indians will not be entered 
upon here. From 1400 till the beginning of the 18th century sailing- 
expeditions from time to time came across polar peoples, and even 
seized whole families, whom they carried back to Europe, where 
they caused a certain sensation. 
It was, however, neither the Sagas nor the later reports of the 
travellers Jonn Davis and Martin FropisHer which laid the foun- 
dation of the modern conception of the Eskimo. 
Not until 1719 did the Dutch, and, somewhat later, the English, 
begin to engage in regular whale-hunting in Davis Strait or the west 
coast of Greenland as far as Disco. If matters had been allowed to 
run their own course here, as formerly in Labrador, where the natives 
and the hunters carried on a mutual war of extermination}, there is 
hardly any doubt that history. would have repeated itself; happily 
this did not happen. In 1721 Hans Eeepn’s mission began, and the 
sensible measures which resulted therefrom permitted the Eskimo 
economic culture to thrive in peace, while at the same time the 
people became possessed of those benefits of European culture which 
were suited to them. 
Several Danes who then spent a great part of their lives in 
Greenland were men of high culture; they described the people with, 
for that time, exceptional thoroughness and perspicuity, so that the 
Greenland and especially the South Greenland Subarctic form of 
Eskimo culture was in the literature established as the type of the 
Arctic mode of living. 
These authors were Hans and Povit EGEeps£, missionaries; OrTrTo 
Fasricius, clergyman; and Davip Cranz, Moravian Brother. A more 
vivid and impressive description of the Eskimo spirituality than that 
which Povit Ecrepr has given in his “Reports on Greenland”? must 
be searched for, and a better ethnographical account of the Eskimo 
implements and their use than that given by Fasricrus is hardly to 
be found even today. Finally, Davrip Cranz, in his “History of 
Greenland” written in German, has contributed to make the Eskimo. 
and their individual culture known to the world at large. 
1 CARTWRIGHT, pp. 1 sqq. 
