10  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
of  an  older  culture  which,  after  a  locality  outside  the  Central  Eskimo  territory, 
in  North  Greenland,  we  have  called  the  Thule  culture.  Whereas  the  present 
day  Central  Eskimos  live  a  very  nomadic  existence,  with  snow  houses  and  tents 
as  their  only  dwellings,  with  caribou  hunting  as  their  principal  occupation, 
whilst  the  hunting  of  marine  animals  has,  as  far  as  most  tribes  are  concerned, 
retired  somewhat  into  the  background,  the  Thule  culture  has  to  a  much  greater 
degree  been  connected  with  the  coast,  has  been  based  upon  the  hunting  of  the 
big  marine  mammals,  especially  whales  and  walruses,  and  has  had  permanent 
winter  houses  situated  at  the  good  hunting  grounds;  and  in  the  implement 
technique  of  these  two  cultures  we  see  great,  fundamental  differences.  [Mathias- 
sen,  1927,  vol.  2,  pp.  I,  2.] 
....  in  the  central  regions  proper,  west  of  Hudson  Bay,  the  Thule  culture  has 
been  entirely  swept  away;  a  little  more  has  remained  in  Baffin  Land  and 
Labrador.  In  the  Cape  York  district  in  North  Greenland  we  find  the  pure 
Thule  culture  at  the  bottom,  and  its  present  inhabitants  have  retained  much  of 
the  old  culture,  even  if  they  have  been  exposed  to  the  influence  of  the  Central 
Eskimos.     In    North-east    Greenland    we   find    a    later    offshoot    of   the   Thule 
culture In  northern  West  Greenland  we  recognize  in  scattered  finds  most 
of  the  types  of  the  Thule  culture In  the  western  regions  we  see  in  all 
the  archaeological  finds  great  similarity  to  the  Thule  culture  and,  in  addition, 
signs  that  a  typical  Thule  culture  would  appear  at  the  bottom  if  a  search  were 
made  for  it,  something  which  for  the  present  we  only  have  from  East  Siberia. 
The  Western  Eskimos,  however,  have  received  a  great  part  of  their  elements 
from  the  Thule  culture,  and  an  Eskimo  group  like  the  Pt.  Barrow  Eskimos  is 
in  reality  very  closely  related  to  the  Thule  culture.  [Mathiassen,  1927,  vol.  2, 
pp.  180,  181.] 
We  must  therefore  imagine  that  the  Thule  culture,  with  all  its  peculiar  whaling 
culture,  has  originated  somewhere  in  the  western  regions,  in  an  Arctic  area 
where  whales  were  plentiful  and  wood  abundant,  and  we  are  involuntarily  led 
towards  the  coasts  of  Alaska  and  East  Siberia  north  of  Bering  Strait,  the 
regions  to  which  we  have  time  after  time  had  to  turn  in  order  to  find  parallels 
to  types  from  the  Central  Eskimo  finds.  There  all  the  conditions  have  been 
present  for  the  originating  of  such  a  culture,  and  from  there  it  has  spread 
eastwards  right  to  Greenland,  seeking  everywhere  to  adapt  itself  to  the  local 
geographical  conditions.  And  it  can  hardly  have  been  a  culture  wave  alone; 
it  must  have  been  a  migration.    [Mathiassen,  1927,  vol.  2,  p.  184.] 
The  first  Eskimo  to  migrate  over  the  arctic  coasts  of  Canada  and  Greenland 
were  thus  the  carriers  of  the  Thule  culture,  and  as  we  have  the  home  of  that 
culture  in  the  west,  it  is  to  the  west  that  we  must  turn  to  find  the  original 
home  of  the  Eskimo.    [Mathiassen,  1930  c,  p.  606.] 
When  Mathiassen's  work  appeared  there  was  no  information  availa- 
ble on  the  archeology  of  the  western  regions,  and  in  the  absence  of 
this  he  attributed  to  the  Thule  culture  a  basic  importance  which,  in 
the  light  of  subsequent  investigations  in  Alaska,  seems  unjustified. 
However,  Mathiassen's  pioneer  investigations  marked  the  beginning 
of  systematic  work  in  the  American  Arctic  and  his  masterly  report 
must  be  recognized  as  the  first  major  landmark  in  Eskimo  archeology. 
