184 



been closer than that general connection existing between all 

 Eskimo. No doubt the Greenlandic Eskimo have in earlier times 

 been more of a wandering people than they are now. Today 

 they must be called a settled people. They keep to those fjords 

 where they are most at home and to the districts where they 

 are born. At certain seasons of the year and in certain places 

 where the fishing or reindeer hunting is good, large numbers 

 of people congregate from all sides, yet they never come from 

 a greater distance than 70 — 80 miles, and they do not remain 

 together longer than a month or six weeks. 



The tribe at Amma.^sdUk on the east coast is now quite 

 isolated, since the Eskimo who dwelt farther south on the same 

 coast have all moved over to the west coast *i. But even befpre 

 that time they do not seem to have had as much communica- 

 tion with their southern neighbors, as these neighbors had 

 with each other or with the west coast**i. 



With respect to the inhabitants of Gape York (76° — 78° 

 18'N. lat.) they have not time out of mind had any communica- 

 tion with the other Greenlanders. The inhabitants of Uperna- 

 uik, their nearest neighbors to the south , have never met 

 people from up there, but have only occasionally seen their 

 sledge-tracks without knowing where they came from. The 

 people of Cape York have not, so far as is known, any tradition 

 about their southern countrymen. But there have repeatedly 

 come immigrants to them from some unknown tribe in , or 

 south of, Ellesmere Land, whose language they say is some- 

 what different from their own (cf. Introduction p. 38)*). 



♦) Meddelelser om Grönland Vol. XXV. 1902 (G. Meldorf). 

 •') W. A. Graah's northernmost Greenlanders on the east coast at Omevik 



(about 64° 30' N lat.) do not seem to have had the slightest idea that 



there were other Greenlanders living farther north on the same coast. 



Cf. Graah: Undersögelses-Reise til Ostkysten af Grönland i Aarene 1828 



—31. Kobenhavn 1832, pag. 140. 

 **) Peary: Northwest over the Great Ice, 1898, pp. 406. 488. — Kroeber: 



The Eskimo of Smith Sound (1899) n. s., pp. 266— 268. 



