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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Lhrough successive intermarriages." 

 Tunes 's report would indicate that the 

 fusion was not entirely complete in 1656. 



Of the fair-haired people on the east 

 coast of Greenland, Graah says: "But 

 as I shovild venture to conclude that the 

 Eskimo of Hudson Bay have not any 

 claims to the honors of a Roman parent- 

 age from the circumstance of Sir Ed- 

 ward Parry's having seen among them 

 many good Roman noses, neither do I 

 conceive that the natives of the east coast 

 of Greenland descended from the old 

 Icelandic colonies because they resemble 

 Europeans in some points." Graah be- 

 lieved that "they were originally of the 

 same stock as the Eskimo." 



Graah's opinions are clearly contro- 

 verted by Hansen's anthropometrical 

 measurements of 91 Eskimo of the east 

 coast, which prove that they are not of 

 pure stock, for the Eskimo is decidedly 

 dolichocephalic, or long-r_eaded. The 

 cranial indexes of but 29, less than 30 

 per cent, of these East Greenland natives 

 are of this type, while 57 are round- 

 headed and 8 short-headed. 



Of the Eskimo of the central North 

 American coasts and islands, Sir John 

 Richardson says : "In their position they 

 have little or no intercourse with other 

 nations, and have borrowed nothing 

 whatever, either from the Europeans or 

 the Tinne — the conterminous Indian 

 people." Bearing incidentally and ad- 

 versely on their freedom from Indian 

 hybridization, he continues : "I merely 

 remark that the Eskimo differ more in 

 physical aspect from their nearest neigh- 

 bors than the red races do from one 

 another. . . . The dissociation of the 

 Eskimo from the neighboring nations, 

 on account of their physical dissimilarity, 

 is met by an argument (from other 

 sources) for the mutual affinity deduced 

 from philological coincidences." While 

 refraining from a definite decision, he 

 incidentally remarks that "they seem to 

 have most of the vices, as well as the 

 virtues, of the Norwegian vikings." 



It is most interesting to note an opin- 

 ion hazarded by Thomas Simpson, who 

 in 1838 was exploring Richardson River, 



accompanied by an Eskimo interpreter 

 and by two Hare Indians. Meeting a 

 fair-haired Eskimo, he says : "The slen- 

 der, agile figures of the Hares contrasted 

 with the square, rugged forms of these 

 natives of the sea. It seemed as if on 

 the northern confines of a new conti- 

 nent I had together before me descend- 

 ants of the nomadic Tartar and the sea- 

 roving Scandinavian, two of the most 

 dissimilar and widely separate races of 

 the ancient world." 



Probably this opinion of 74 years since 

 is among the earliest assumptions that 

 Scandinavian blood is an element in the 

 hybridization of the Eskimo of the coasts 

 of the continent of North America. 



That the admixture of alien blood 

 among the hybrid natives of Victoria 

 Land originated in regions to the east- 

 ward seems assured from the greater 

 homogeneity of the language and of the 

 customs of the blond Eskimo with those 

 of eastern tribes than with the tribal 

 characteristics of their Inuit brethren to 

 the west. 



If the blond Eskimo are descend- 

 ants of Norse-Greenlander ancestors of 

 four centuries since, the Norse strain 

 must have been overwhelmingly diluted 

 through pure Eskimo intermarriages. If 

 such is the case, one must consider the 

 "blonds" of today as perchance a re- 

 markable instance of that occasional re- 

 version of types, whereby a passing race 

 gradually resumes the general form of 

 its ancient ancestors. 



Possibly, however, it may be a case of 

 atavism— that is, the recurrence in a de- 

 scendant of characters of a remote an- 

 cestor — instead of those of an immediate 

 or near ancestor, similar to other abnor- 

 mal developments that have been pointed 

 out by scientists. 



Finally, it may be said that the condi- 

 tions and facts developed by Stefansson's 

 explorations and discoveries, when asso- 

 ciated with information drawn from the 

 accounts of earlier explorers, present an 

 intricate racial problem that may well 

 tax the acuteness of American ethnolo- 

 srists for some time. 



