178 POLAR PROBLEMS 



many tribes as possible. The scientific results of the expedition are 

 still in process of compilation, and the only fairly comprehensive 

 survey hitherto published is that which appeared in the Geographical 

 Review'^. The article in question describes how Birket-Smith and I 

 encountered, on the shores of Lake Yathkyed in the Barren Grounds 

 (in the Kazan River basin, 63° N. and 98° W.), an Eskimo tribe, the 

 most primitive of all those we met throughout the whole of the expedi- 

 tion, that seemed to represent in many ways the remains of the 

 aboriginal Eskimo culture. The Danish professor H. P. Steensby 

 had already, some years before, put forward^ the theory that the 

 origins of the Eskimo culture were to be sought by the great lakes 

 and rivers of northern Canada. The Eskimos were thus, to begin 

 with, an inland people but later made their way down to the coast, 

 either voluntarily, in pursuit of the reindeer on their way to the 

 coast regions, or driven out themselves by hostile Indian tribes. 

 And on the shores of the Arctic they gradually developed that form 

 of culture which at the present day is regarded as typical of the 

 Eskimos generally, based on the capture of marine animals. 



The tribes we met in the Barren Grounds had no recollection 

 of ever having lived by the sea, and there was nothing whatever in 

 the form of their implements to suggest that they had ever done so. 

 Furthermore, their religion was of a pronounced inland type, devoid 

 of the numerous taboo rules which are so characteristic of the coast 

 dwellers. This and many other observations made it seem likely 

 that we had here come upon a survival of an ancient aboriginal 

 culture, and it would be supremely interesting to follow it up along 

 its presumed route down towards the coastal regions. The best means 

 of doing so would be by archeological investigation, but this we 

 were unable to undertake during our stay inland, and it would in 

 any case be extremely difficult in the Barren Grounds. The Eskimos 

 of these regions have no permanent winter dwellings where refuse 

 accumulates, providing the material for archeological "finds"; they 

 live throughout the winter in snow huts, and, as these are constantly 

 being rebuilt on different sites, kitchen middens have no time to 

 form. Even did such exist, it would be extremely difficult to trace 

 them, for we have not here, as on the coast, ruins of the houses them- 

 selves to indicate the site. Precisely the same difficulty is encountered 

 by the archeologist in the case of the tent rings, which are indications 



" Knud Rasmussen: The Danish Ethnographic and Geographic Expedition to Arctic America: 

 Preliminary Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 15, 1925, pp. 521-562. With 

 sections on Folklore by Knud Rasmussen; Physical Anthropology, Linguistics, and Material Culture, 

 by Kaj Birket-Smith; The Archeology of the Central Eskimos, by Therkel Mathiassen; Contribu- 

 tions to the Physical Geography of the Region North of Hudson Bay, by Peter Freuchen and Therkel 

 Mathiassen; and a map in 1:4,000,000. 



2 In his: Om Eskimokulturens Oprindelse: En etnografisk og antropogeografisk Studie, Copen- 

 hagen, 1905; revised Enghsh transl. as: An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the 

 Eskimo Culture, Meddelelser om Gr0nland, Vol. 53, No. 2, Copenhagen, 1916. 



