ORIGIN OF STEFANSSOxN'S BLOND ESKIMO 



1225 



trousers, a long white linen tunic, girded 

 at the waist, embellished on high days 

 and holidays with little sleeveless jackets 

 of bewildering color and embroidery. 

 The women on feast days emulate the 

 rainbow in their clothes and bedeck 

 themselves with endless strings of coins 

 and necklaces of beads. 



All classes are passionately fond of 

 music and dancing, and when a dozen 

 peasants get together there is bound to 



be a dance, the favorite time being after 

 church on a Sunday, when they will 

 dance for hours for the edification of the 

 village pope and his wife. 



There is a wealth of folk-lore, ballads, 

 dance songs, and romantic tales, and 

 these, together with an implicit belief in 

 werewolves, vampires, and revenants, 

 render the Rumanian peasant one of the 

 most delightful and entertaining com- 

 panions in the world. 



THE ORIGIN OF STEFANSSON'S BLOND 



ESKIMO 



By Major General A. W, Greely, U. S. Army 



IN THE past few years there has 

 been no Arctic discovery that has 

 excited more general interest than 

 the finding upon Wollaston Land, or 

 Victoria Island, of native tribes who 

 have never seen white men, and among 

 whom are numerous individuals of the 

 so-called blond Eskimo type. 



The detailed account of these peculiar 

 and hybrid Children of the Ice is due to 

 the courage and endurance of an Ameri- 

 can explorer, Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson. 

 With IDr. R. M. Anderson, he has made, 

 under the auspices of the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, extensive and 

 valuable contributions to the geography 

 and the ethnology of the continental 

 coast of North America and of the adja- 

 cent islands. Few are aware, however, 

 that Stefansson has added a new inhab- 

 ited district to Canada ; yet such is the 

 case. In that most valuable geographic 

 publication. Atlas of Canada, issued by 

 the Interior Department of the Dominion 

 of Canada in 1906, on map 29, showing 

 the aborigines, the word "uninhabited" 

 is printed in red across the extent of 

 Victoria Island. 



As these reports of the current exist- 

 ence of hybrid Eskimo have given rise 

 to wide discussion, and at times to ad- 

 verse comment, it appears timely to pre- 

 sent in connected form such detailed ac- 

 counts of earlier explorers and investi- 

 gators as bear on the subject. These 

 extracts, which on the whole confirm the 

 accuracy of Stefansson's observations, 



naturally relate to two differing phases 

 of the question. First, as to the actual 

 existence and as to the geographic dis- 

 tribution of the hybrid Eskimo — for such 

 are the blond natives — and then as to 

 their probable origin. 



existeince; and distribution of the 

 beond eskimo 



Stefansson reports that during more 

 than a year of intimate life among the 

 Eskimo of Coronation Gulf and of 

 Prince Albert Sound (off the west coast 

 of Wollaston Land) he met about 1,000 

 of an estimated total population of 2,000 

 dift'erent natives who had never seen a 

 white man. He adds: "The 200 visited 

 in Prince Albert Sound dififered in gen- 

 eral features from the Eskimo of Alaska 

 and of the Mackenzie River. Some of 

 the Wollaston Land natives have blue 

 eyes; 50 per cent have light eyebrows, 

 and a few have reddish beards. The 

 characteristics of these people seem to 

 suggest a mixture of European and Es- 

 kimo blood." 



The following extracts from the re- 

 ports of various Arctic explorers — men 

 of high standing and of unquestioned 

 probity — disclose that many hybrid indi- 

 viduals have been found among the vari- 

 ous Eskimo tribes, the country covered 

 extending about 2,000 miles, from the 

 coast of East Greenland westward to 

 Wollaston Land. Attention is called es- 

 pecially to the fact that the tribes herein 

 mentioned are those so situated that in 



