hrdliOka] ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE ESKIMO 331 



Between 1873 and 1890 the American origin of the Eskimo is re- 

 peatedly asserted by Rink, who for 16 winters and 22 summers lived 

 with the eastern Eskimo, first as a scientific explorer and later as 

 royal inspector or governor of the southern Danish settlements in 

 Greenland (preface by R. Brown to Rink's Tales and Traditions, 

 1875). In this opinion, briefly, the Eskimo were derived from the 

 inland Indian tribes of Alaska ; without referring to the origin of the 

 Indian. 



Rink's authoritative opinion was followed or paralleled by Daniel 

 Wilson (1876), Grote, Krause, Ray, Keane, Brown, and others. In 

 1887 Chamberlain expresses the somewhat startling additional theory 

 that it was not the Eskimo who was derived from the Mongolians 

 but the Mongolians from the Eskimo or their American ancestors. 

 And in 1901-1910 Boas conies to the conclusion that the Eskimo 

 probably originated from the inland tribes (Indian?) in the Hudson 

 Bay region. 



An interesting case in these connections is that of Rudolf Virchow. 

 In 1877 (see details at the end of this section) he expresses the belief 

 in the Eskimo coming from Asia; in 1878 he seems to be uncertain; 

 and in 1885 he comes out in support of the opinion that the original 

 home of the Eskimo may have been in the western part of the Hudson 

 Bay region. Among later students of the problem, Steensby * 4 and 

 Birket-Smith 45 incline on cultural grounds to this hypothesis. 



Wissler, not explicit as to the Eskimo in 1917 (The American In- 

 dian), in 1918 (Archaeology of the Polar Eskimo) finds, after 

 Steensby, the most acceptable theory of the Eskimo origin to be that 

 "they expanded from a parent group in the Arctic Archipelago"; 

 but in 1922, in the second edition of his The American Indian, he 

 repeats word for word his opinion of 1917, which appears to favor 

 an Asiatic derivation. 



Origin in Europe — Identity with Upper Palaeolithic man.. — Abouc 

 the sixties of last century growing discoveries in France of imple- 

 ments, etc., of later palaeolithic man brought about a realization that 

 not a few of these implements and other objects, particularly those 

 of the Magdalenian period, resembled like implements and objects 

 of the Eskimo; from which, together with the considerations of the 

 similarities of fauna (reindeer, musk-ox, etc.), and of climate, there 

 was but a step to a more or less definite identification of the Magda- 

 lenians and Solutreans with the Eskimo. In 1870 Pruner-Bey * 6 

 claims a similarity between Solutrean and Eskimo skulls. In 1883 



44 Contr. Ethn. and Anthropogeog. Polar Eskimos, Med. om Gronl., xxxiv, Copenhagen, 

 1910 ; also, Origin of the Eskimo culture, ibid., 1916, 204-218. 



,s Internat. Congr. Americanists, New York. 1928. 



" In Kerry, H. de, Le Maconnais prehistorique, etc., 1 vol, Macon, 1870, with a section 

 by Pruner-Bey. 



