THE ESKIMO RACE AND LANGUAGE. 283 



and Komi-mort, both meaning near. He says,^ " the root of Votiak is 

 Vot or Vod ; the indigenous name is Udemurt ; the Permians call 

 themselves Komy-mort (i.e., dwellers on the Kama), and the Siranians 

 living further east also call themselves Xouy-mort." With this 

 ethnic or rather locative suffix, may be compared the Samojed word, 

 muat, miat, house. Taking all the evidence into consideration, it 

 seems to me that the dolichocephalic ancestors of the Eskimo of 

 America were also the ancestors of the Turanians of Northern 

 Asia, and that the course of migration was from America west- 

 ward along Siberia into Europe ; the Eskimo ancestors being pro- 

 bably derived from Europe in early pi-ehistoric times, although 

 much might be said in favor of making America the scene of the 

 development of that peculiar variety of man now represented by the 

 Eskimo, and of considering palaeolithic man in Europe an offshoot 

 from this stock. The ocean, which in Pliocene times, probably 

 covered the north of the present continent of Asia, may be sufficient 

 to explain some of the movements of the Asiatic Turanians and their 

 comparatively late intrusion into Europe. 



I do not intend to discuss the folklore and mythology of the 

 Turanians in comparison with the Eskimo, and shall, therefore, con- 

 tent myself with pointing out a single remarkable coincidence. 

 Dr. Rink,^ gives the Eskimo legend of the origin of the white man, 

 as the offspring of a union between a woman and a dog. This is the 

 Greenland tradition according to Egede.^ A similar story is 

 reported by Mr. Murdoch * from Pt. Barrow. Now it is intei^esting 

 to find that the Japanese account for the origin of their predecessors, 

 the Ainos, in a similar manner. 



Baron Nordenskiold,'^ the eminent Swedish explorer, thinks that 

 " the Eskimo might probably be the true aulocthones of the Polar 

 Regions, i.e., they had inhabited the same previous to the Glacial 

 Age, at a pei'iod when a climate prevailed here equal to that of 

 northern Italy at present, as proved by the fossils found in Spitz- 

 bergen and Greenland." Nordenskiold further states that " if 



1. The Finns Journ. Anthr. Inst. vol. ii., p. 217, and p. 211. 



2. Esk. Tales and Trad., p. 147. 



3. Greenland, p. 195. 



4. Loc. cit., p. 594. Or. the legend of origin of the Tchugazzie in Richardson Arctic Search. 



Exped. p. 21.'j, 239. 



5. Oeogr. Soc. of Stockholm. Feb. 20, 1885. Summarized in Pro. Roy. Geog. See., New- 



Series vii., 1885. p. .402-3. 



