91 



to make show the bodies of the whalers to have been preserved with stone 

 weapons and actual utensils instead of effigies, and Avith the meanest apparel 

 and no carvings of consequence. These details and those of many other 

 customs and usages, of which the shell-heaps bear no testimony, yet of the 

 existence of which, from analogy and circumstantial evidence, there can be 

 no doubt, do not properly come within my limits. From the hints I have 

 given, a tolerably natural picture can be drawn of the life of the people I 

 have described. 



In concluding this division of my subject, I must reiterate the remark 

 that the evidences of progress indicated in the succession in the shell-heaps 

 rest on a comparison of the best productions of each period, and that the 

 inference must not be drawn that all the productions of a particular class in 

 any one period are superior to all of a preceding period. Rude and primi- 

 tive forms appear in every stratum, finely finished and ornate forms only in 

 the later deposits. Poor workmanship is as often the product of individual 

 want of ability as it is of general barbarism. Yet when we find no evidences 

 of good workmanship at all, we may draw fair conclusions as to the gen- 

 eral conditions which existed among the fabricators as a race. 



I conclude from the foregoing facts that the* generalizations with which 

 I prefaced my account are not ill-founded so far as they relate to the fol- 

 lowing points : The very ancient existence of a population on these islands, 

 in a much more savage condition than recorded in any historic account ; a 

 population distinctly of Innuit stock, and with habits similar to those of the 

 other Innuit, except so far as modified by the peculiar surroundings, which 

 brought out local characteristics not common to the other branches of the 

 same race ; also, that a tolerably clear case of gradual progTcssion has been 

 made out from the commencement of the Fishing Period to the latest 

 deposits, and that the sharp line which separates the Littoral Period from 

 those which succeed it may be due either to an incursion of more advanced 

 people, or less probably to a change in habits due to new inventions and a 

 greater supply of food ; that the several strata shown to exist correspond 

 to actual stages of development in the social histoiy of the people who 

 formed the shell-heaps; and, lastly, that the contents of the latter form an 

 approximate index to the character of those stages and the relative develop- 

 ment of the fishermen and hunters of that ancient time. 



