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II. 



ON THE DESCENT OF THE ESKIMO. 

 By Henry Kink, Director of the Danish Colonies in Greenland. 1 



The author, who has travelled and resided in Greenland for twenty- 

 years, and has studied the native traditions, of which he has preserved 

 a collection, considers the Eskimo as deserving particular attention 

 in regard to the question how America has been originally peopled. 

 He desires to draw the attention of ethnologists to the necessity of 

 explaining, by means of the mysterious early history of the Eskimo, 

 the apparently abrupt step by which these people have been changed 

 from probably inland or river-side inhabitants into a decidedly 

 littoral people, depending entirely on the products of the Arctic 

 Sea ; and he arrives at the conclusion that, although the question 

 must still remain doubtful, and dependent chiefly on further inves- 

 tigations into the traditions of the natives occupying adjacent 

 countries, yet, as far as can now be judged, the Eskimo appear to 

 have been the last wave of an aboriginal American race, which has 

 spread over the continent from more genial regions, following prin- 

 cipally the rivers and water-courses, and continually yielding to the 

 pressure of the tribes behind them, until at last they have peopled 

 the sea-coast. 



In the higher latitudes, the contrast between sea and land, as 

 affording the means of subsistence, would be sufficient to produce a 

 corresponding abrupt change in the habits of the people, while 

 further to the south the change would be more gradual. The water- 

 courses which may have led the original inland Eskimo down to the 

 sea-coast might probably have been the rivers draining the country 

 between the Mackenzie and the Athna rivers (? Athabasca). 



The same country also seems to afford the most probable means 

 of explaining the uniformity observable in the development of 

 Eskimo civilisation, which to some extent is still maintained amongst 



1 An article in the ' Me'rnoires de la Societe' Royale ties Antiquaires du 

 Nord.' (From the 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute,' April 1872.) 



