THE ROUTES OF ESKIMO WANDERINGS 

 INTO GREENLAND 



I 



THE beginning of the history of the Eskimos, more than that of any other 

 people in the world, is hidden in darkness ; so far no explorer has been 

 able to tell with certainty whence they came, and the tribes themselves veil 

 their origin in obscure myths which give only sparse information. The only 

 thing we do know is that, when these 40,000 people stepped into the light of 

 history, they were spread over half of the world's Arctic periphery towards 

 the harsh, ice-filled oceans whose coasts no one else could inhabit. On this 

 mighty stretch of coast of more than 10,000 kilometres, where they bridged 

 points as far apart as the East of Greenland and Alaska, the Aleutic Isles and 

 Siberia, they have understood, as no other hunting people, the art of self- 

 preservation, and in the midst of a merciless fight for existence they have 

 created a culture which compels the greatest admiration of all white men. 



Now, where had this people its first home? 



William Thalbitzer has, by a study of the oldest myths, come to the con- 

 clusion that various circumstances point to districts towards the Far West. 

 Thalbitzer writes in his book, " Greenlandic Myths of the Past of the Eskimo," 

 p. 80: 



" So far away from their goal, a thousand years ago or more, the wander- 

 ing commenced which led to the coasts of Greenland. At that time the chief 

 camp of the nation was by Behring Strait. There we find the original forms 

 of the language and the culture which, later on, the wanderers towards the 

 east continued and adapted on the coasts of David Strait. They probably 

 arrived here in the tenth century of our reckoning, perhaps somewhat sooner, 

 perhaps somewhat later, spreading themselves during successive centuries on 

 one side down towards Newfoundland, to the southern border of Labrador, and 

 on the other side across Smith Sound along the west coast of Greenland to 

 Cape Farewell, and north of Greenland a goodly distance down along the 

 eastern coast. The Stone Age people which the Icelandic Vikings met in the 

 Middle Ages, and to whom they had to yield in the end, the same people 

 which the English discoverers of the sixteenth century found again in larger 

 numbers both on Baffin Land and in Greenland, was not a very old population 

 on these coasts ; their forebears had lived not many generations ago in the 

 lands of the evening sun, far towards the west, by the mouths of the great 

 rivers on both sides of the Rocky Mountains." 



Another authority, Professor Steensby, is of the opinion that once they 

 were a North American inland people with the culture of the fisherman and 

 the hunter, whose origin must be looked for by the great lakes and rivers 

 which have the Rocky Mountains to the west and Hudson Bay to the east. 

 Pursued by inimical Indian tribes, they have slowlv withdrawn towards the 

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