730 W. Thalbitzer 



the Eskimo on an island in the Bering Strait and on the coast of 

 Asia and among the Chukchee ^). Hinged toggles as weapon heads 

 яте known from the neighbours of the Eskimo on the Pacific. A distant 

 connection can also be seen between the Ammassalik men's knives, 

 which have two short, ornamental strings of beads on the end of 

 the haft directed away from each other, and the knives with similar 

 ornamentation, which the inland Indians of North Alaska have been 

 accustomed from ancient times to sell to the Eskimo^). Another 

 ancient feature is the hole (for the thumb) inside the edge of the 

 throwing stick instead of the notch in the edge, which has become 

 the common feature in all the newer throwing sticks of Greenland. 



Conclusion. — The peculiarities of the Ammassalikers' culture 

 thus witness in great part to their conservatism, also to some extent 

 to their powers of independent invention, but most of all to their 

 isolated position in the Eskimo world since their forefathers wan- 

 dered away from the common starting point in the central regions 

 and came to rest in the fjords where they now live. The}^ witness 

 perhaps in part to one thing more, the inherited contrast to their 

 neighbours in the south. In the introduction I have emphasized this 

 contrast which appeared both in their neighbours' hostile attitude 

 towards them in Graah's time (see pp. 339—340) and in their own 

 reference to the Southlanders as people with strange appearance and 

 absurd dialect (pp. 331—332). In this attitude we can possibly see 

 the reason, M'hy the old-fashioned relief work and other ornamenta- 

 tion of the Ammassalikers has never found a footing southwards, 

 nor the fish-hooks of the Southlanders found countenance at Am- 

 massalik. 



What connects this group of East Greenlanders with the north- 

 ern culture is their true ice-sealing implements and hunting meth- 

 ods. In contrast to the South Greenlanders they appear with dog 

 sledges and clothed in polar bear-skin trousers, just as their north- 

 ern countrymen would have done, if we had known them, and as 

 the Smith Sound Eskimo do to this day. The discovery far north 

 of characteristic implements of their culture harmonizes with their 

 almost forgotten traditions of their connection with the north (the 

 fragments of ivory relief work found by Amdrup on Sabine Island; 

 flat bone caps for the front end of the harpoon shaft found by the 

 German Polar Expedition in Franz Joseph's Fjord; the throwing 

 stick with finger hole instead of lateral spur found by Ryder in 



1) Bogoras (1904) pp. 272 273, fig. 197. 



-,; G. Gibbs (1867) pp. .314 and 320. Cf. Thalbitzer 1913) pp. 77 and (iO-(>l. 



