Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 489 



stone knife \). In 1879 K. I. V. Steenstrup found 9 pieces of basalt 

 with round bullets and irregular parts of metallic iron in an old 

 grave at Ekahiit in the Umanak Fjord. They lay together with 

 knives similar to those brought home by Ross and with various 

 stone instruments. The 9 pieces of basalt with the iron balls were 

 obviously the material for the knives and it could be shown, that 

 the material belonged to a typical Greenland rock, thus of tellurian 

 origin ^). Nordenskiöld in 1870 and K. I. V. Steenstrup in 1871 had 

 already shown, that natural iron occurred in the basalt at Blaafjeld 

 (Uivfak) on Disko Island; Steenstrup's statement that the iron was 

 of tellurian origin received further confirmation from his discovery 

 of iron grains in the basalt at Asuk (first discovered in 1872, fully 

 confirmed in 1880) and several other places on Disko ^). 



There is thus no doubt, that the Eskimo in North Greenland 

 have found natural iron in their own land and used it for certain 

 apparatus. Solberg is. of opinion, that this change to a new material, 

 which displaced the stone and bone materials, can only be under- 

 stood on the basis, that the Eskimo had learnt its value through 

 European influence and he refers, as already mentioned, to a supposed 

 connection, historically quite uncertain, with the Icelanders of the 

 Middle Ages'^). I believe, that this explanation is quite unnecessary. 

 It was not more remarkable, that the immigrating Eskimo found 

 the natural iron in the meteorites at Gape York or in the basalt on 

 Disko and made use of it, than that the Eskimo at the Coppermine 

 River and Coronation Gulf before them discovered the natural cop- 

 per there and made weapon points and knife blades from it. The 

 small roundish discs, which the North Greenlanders beat out from 

 the iron grains and fixed in the marginal groove of the bone haft, 

 were for them merely a new kind of stone. They have without doubt 

 brought the idea of using the new material for this kind of imple- 

 ment with them from the central regions, for this method of theirs, 

 of using natural iron, is quite analogous to the method by which 

 their forefathers on Southampton Island in Hudson Baj^ fixed a 

 series of small round or oval flint blades on the cutting edge of 

 their large knives for cutting up the blubber of whales (?) and in 



1) Kroeber (1899) p. 285. One of the Cape York meteorites was conveyed by 

 Peary in 1897 to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 



2) K. I. V. Steenstrup (1882) pp. 115 — 122. 



3) Id. ibid. pp. 123—127. Cf. also A. G. Nathorst, Jordens Historia (1896) pp. 127— 

 130 and J. Lorenzen (1882) (chemical investigation of the metallic iron from 

 Greenland). 



*) Solberg (1907) p. 54. 



