45° 



NA TURE 



[Sept. 4, 1884 



as preliminary the question, Were the natives met with by the 

 Scandinavian seafarers of the eleventh century Esquimaux, and 

 whereabouts on the coast were they actually found ? It may be 

 to Canadians a curious subject of contemplation how about that 

 time of history Scandinavia stretched out its hands at once to 

 their old and their new home. When the race of bold sea-rovers 

 who ruled Normandy and invaded England turned their prows 

 into the northern and western sea, they passed from Iceland to 

 yet more inclement Greenland, and thence, according to Ice- 

 landic records, which are too consistent to be refused belief as 

 to main facts, they sailed some way down the American coast. 

 But where are we to look for the most southerly points which 

 the Sagas mention as reached in Vineland ? Where was Keel- 

 ness, where Thorvald's ship ran aground, and Cross-ness, where 

 he was buried, when he died by the shrilling s arrow ? Rafn, 

 in the " Antiquitates Americana?," confidently maps out these 

 places about the promontory of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, 

 and this has been repeated since from book to book. I must 

 plead guilty to having cited Ram's map before now, but when 

 with reference to the present meeting I consulted our learned 

 editor of Scandinavian records at Oxford, Mr. Gudbrand Vig- 

 fusson, and afterwards went through the original passages in 

 the Sagas with Mr. York Powell, I am bound to say that the 

 voyages of the Northmen ought to be reduced to more moderate 

 limits. It appears that they crossed from Greenland to Labra- 

 dor (Helluiand), and thence sailing more or less south and west, 

 in two stretches of two days each they came to a place near where 

 wild grapes grew, whence they called the country Vineland. 

 This would, therefore, seem to have been somewhere about the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it would be an interesting object for 

 a yachting cruise to try down from the east coast of Labrador a 

 fair four days' sail of a Viking ship, and identify, if possible, the 

 sound between the island and the ness, the river running out of 

 the lake into the sea, the long stretches of sand, and the other 

 local features mentioned in the Sagas. While this is in the 

 printers' hands, I hear that a paper somewhat to this same effect 

 may come before the Geographical Section, but the matter con- 

 cerns us here as bearing on the southern limit of the Esquimaux. 

 The skralings who came on the sea in skin canoes (huihkcipr), 

 and hurled their spears with slings (valsioiigva), seem by these 

 very facts to have been probably Esquimaux, and the men- 

 tion of their being swarthy, with great eyes and broad cheeks, 

 agrees tolerably with this. The statement usually made that 

 the word skraling meant "dwarf" would, if correct, have 

 settled the question ; but, unfortunately, there is no real warrant 

 for this etymology. If we may take it that Esquimaux Soo 

 years ago, before they had ever found their way to Greenland, 

 were hunting seals on the coast of Newfoundland, and cariboo 

 in the forest, their life need not have been very unlike what it is 

 now in their Arctic home. Some day, perhaps, the St. Law- 

 rence and Newfoundland shores will be searched for relics of 

 Esquimaux life, as has been done with such success in the Aleutian 

 Islands by Mr. W. H. Dall, though on this side of the conti- 

 nent we can hardly expect to find, as he does, traces of long 

 residence, and rise from a still lower condition. 



Surveying now the vast series of so-called native, or indige- 

 nous, tribes of North and South America, we may admit that 

 the fundamental notion on which American anthropology has to 

 be treated is its relation to Asiatic. This kind of research is, 

 as we know, quite old, but the recent advances of zoology and 

 geology have given it new breadth as well as facility. The 

 theories which account for the wide-lying American tribes, dis- 

 connected by language as they are, as all descended from ances- 

 tors who came by sea in boats, or across Behring's Straits on the 

 ice, may be felt somewhat to strain the probabilities of migra- 

 tion, and are likely to be remodelled under the information now 

 supplied by geology as to the distribution of animals. It has 

 become a familiar fact that the Equida;, or horse-like animals, 

 belong even more remarkably to the New than to the Old 

 World. There was plainly land-connection between America 

 and Asia for the horses whose remains are fossil in America to 

 have been genetically connected with the horses re-introduced 

 from Europe. The deer may have passed from the Old World 

 into North America in the Pliocene period ; and the opinion is 

 strongly held that the camels came the other way, originating in 

 America and spreading thence into Asia and Africa. The 

 mammoth and the reindeer did not cross over a few thousand 

 years ago by Behring's Straits, for they had been since Pleis- 

 tocene times spread over the north of what was then one 

 continent. To realise this ancient land-junction of Asia and 



America, this " Tertiary-bridge," to use Prof. Marsh's expres- 

 sion, it is instructive to look at Mr. Wallace's chart of the pre- 

 sent soundings, observing that an elevation of under 200 feet 

 would make Behring's Straits land, while moderately shallow 

 sea extends southward to about the line of the Aleutian Islands, 

 below which comes the plunge into the ocean depths. If, then, 

 we are to consider America as having received its human popu- 

 lation by ordinary migration of successive tribes along this high- 

 way, the importance is obvious of deciding how old man is in 

 America, and how long the continent remained united with Asia, 

 as well as how these two difficult questions are bound up to- 

 gether in their bearing on anthropology. Leaving them to be 

 settled by more competent judges, I will only point out that the 

 theory of northern migration on dry land is after all only a re- 

 vival of an old opinion which came naturally to Acosta in the 

 sixteenth century, because Behring's Straits were not yet known 

 of, and was held by Buffon in the eighteenth, because the zoo- 

 logical conditions compelled him to suppose that Behring's 

 Straits had not always been there. Such a theory, whatever 

 the exact shape it may take, seems wanted for the explanation 

 of that most obvious fact of anthropology, the analogy of the 

 indigenes of America with Asiatics, and more especially with 

 East and North Asiatics or Mongoloids. This broad race- 

 generalisation has thrust itself on every observer, and each has 

 an instance to mention. My own particular instance is derived 

 from inspection of a party of Botocudo Indians lately exhibited 

 in London, who in proper clothing could have passed without 

 question as Thibetans or Siamese. Now when ethnologists like 

 Dr. Pickering remark on the South Asiatic appearance of Cali- 

 fornian tribes, it is open to them to argue that Japanese sailors 

 of junks wrecked on the coast may hare founded families there. 

 But the Bolocudos are far south and on the other side of the 

 Andes, rude dwellers in the forests of Brazil, and yet they ex- 

 hibit in an extreme form the Mongoloid character which makes 

 America to the anthropologist part and parcel of Asia. Looked 

 at in this light, there is something suggestive in our still giving 

 to the natives of America the name of Indians ; the idea of 

 Columbus that the Caribs were Asiatics was not so absurd 

 after all. 



It is perhaps hardly needful now to protest against stretching 

 tin- generalisation of American uniformity too far, and taking 

 literally Humboldt's saying that he who has seen one American 

 has seen all. The common character of American tribes, from 

 Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego, though more homogeneous 

 than on any other tract of the world of similar extent, admits of 

 wide subvariation. How to distinguish and measure this sub- 

 variation is a problem in which anthropology has only reached 

 unsatisfactory results. The broad distinctions which are plainly 

 seen are also those which are readily defined, such as the shape 

 of the nose, curve of the lips, or the projection of the cheek- 

 bones. But all who have compared such American races as 

 Aztecs and Ojibwas must be sensible of extreme difficulty in 

 measuring the proportions of an average facial type. The 

 attempt to give in a single pair of portraits a generalised national 

 type has been tried — for instance, in the St. Petersburg set of 

 models of races at the Exhibition of 1862. But done merely by 

 eye, as they were, they were not so good as well-chosen indi- 

 vidual portraits. It would be most desirable that Mr. Francis 

 Galton's method of photographs superposed so as to combine a 

 group of individuals into one generalised portrait, should have 

 a thorough trial on groups of Iroquois, Aztecs, Caribs, and 

 other tribes who are so far homogeneous in feature as to lend 

 themselves to form an abstract portrait. A set of American 

 races thus " Galtonised " (if I may coin the term) would very 

 likely be so distinctive as to be accepted in anthropology. 

 Craniological measurement has been largely applied in America, 

 but unfortunately it was set wrong for years by the same mis- 

 leading tendency to find a uniformity not really existent. Those 

 who wish to judge Morton's dictum applied to the Scioto 

 Mound skull, " the perfect type of Indian conformation, to 

 which the skulls of all the tribes from Cape Horn to Canada 

 more or less approximate," will find facts to the contrary set 

 forth in Chap. XX. of Wilson's " Prehistoric Man," and in 

 Quatrefages and Hamy, "Crania Ethnica." American crania 

 really differ so much that the hypothesis of successive migrations 

 has been brought in to account for the brachycephalic skulls of 

 the mound-builders as compared with living Indians of the dis- 

 trict. Among minor race-divisions, as one of the best established 

 may be mentioned that which in this district brings the Al- 

 gonquin and Iroquois together into the dolichocephalic division ; 



