hiidlicka] PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 215 



1853, Seemann. vol. n, pages 49-51 : 50 



The Eskimos. — By comparing the accounts transmitted by different writers 

 we find that the various tribes, however widely separated geographically, differ 

 but slightly from each other in appearance, manners, customs, or language. 

 They are, however, by no means as uniform in size as might have been 

 expected. Those inhabiting the vicinity of Norton and Kotzebue Sounds are 

 by far the finest and tallest, while those living between Cape Lisburne and 

 Point Barrow are, like the tribes of the eastern portions of America, much 

 shorter in stature, and bespeak the inferiority of the districts in which 

 they live. 



Both sexes are well proportioned, stout, muscular, and active. The hands 

 and feet are small and beautifully formed, which is ascribed by some writers 

 to their sedentary habits, but this cannot be the case, as probably no people 

 take more exercise or are more constantly employed. Their height varies. In 

 the southern parts some of the men are 6 feet ; in the more northern there is 

 a perceptible diminution, though by no means to the extent generally imagined. 



Their faces are flat, their cheek bones projecting, and their eyes small, 

 deeply set, and, like the eyebrows, black. Their noses are broad; their ears 

 are large, and generally lengthened by the appendage of weighty ornaments ; 

 their mouths are well formed, their lips are thin. * * * 



The teeth of the Eskimos are regular, but from the nature of their food and 

 from their practice of preparing hides by chewing, are worn down almost to 

 the gums at an early age. Their hair is straight, black, and coarse ; the men 

 have it closely cut on the crown, like that of a Capuchin friar, leaving a band 

 about two inches broad, which gradually increases in length towards the back 

 of the neck; the women merely part their hair in the middle, and, if wealthy, 

 ornament it with strings of beads. The possession of a beard is very rare, 

 but a slight moustache is not infrequent. Their complexion, if divested of its 

 usual covering of dirt, can hardly be called dark ; on the contrary, it displays 

 a healthy, rosy tint, and were it not for the custom of tattooing the chin 

 some of the girls might be called pretty, even in the European acceptation of 

 the term. 



1861, Richardson : 51 



The Eskimos are remarkably uniform in physical appearance throughout 

 their far-stretching area, there being perhaps no other nation in the world so 

 Unmixed in blood. Frobisher's people were struck with their resemblance in 

 features and general aspect to the Samoyeds and their physiognomy has been 

 held by all ethnologists to be of the Mongolian or Tartar type. Doctor Latham 

 calls the Samoyeds Hyperborean Mongolidae, and the Eskimos he ranges among 

 the American Mongolidae, embracing in the latter group all the native races of 

 the New World. The Mongol type of countenance is, however, more strongly 

 reproduced in the Eskimos than in the red Indians — the conterminous Tiring 

 tribes differing greatly in their features, and the more remote Indians still 

 more. 



Generally the Eskimos have broadly egg-shaped faces with considerable 

 prominence of the rounded cheeks caused by the arching of the cheek bones, but 

 few or no angular projections even in the old people, whose features are always 



60 Seemann, Berthold, Narrative of the voyage of H. M. S. Hrrald. London, 1S53, vols. 

 I— II. On the Anthropology of Western Eskimo Land and on the Desirability of Further 

 Arctic Research. J. Anthrop. Soc, London, 18C5, vol. in, p. 301. 



"Richardson, Sir John, The Polar Regions. Edinburgh, 1861, p. 301. 



