263 



the way between them, he wrote down a word containing the 

 group tq^ where now-a-days — in Greenlandic, in the Labrador 

 dialect and undoubtedly also in the dialect of Baffin Land — 

 we find rç[] it is the word for «the little finger«: 



Frobisher 1576: yacketrone (i.e. locative: on the little finger). 



Present Greenlandic and Labrador loc. : erqerqiine^ in the 

 nominative, erqerqoq. 



Present N Al. yiukutko. NW Al. etitkook. SW Al. ikkilth- 

 köka (ray little finger). 



Frobisher's form is probably meant to reproduce something 

 like [i^dk''etqon'e] , which, among other things, shows that the 

 assimilation tq > rq in this [dialect had not yet been carried 

 out in this word at the end of the 16 C.*). This might in- 

 dicate that the Eskimo who speak this dialect, the Central 

 Eskimo, have come to this coast from the districts farther 

 west, where tq is still to be found, some time after the sepa- 

 ration of the Or. and L. Eskimo. 



If all the premises are correct, then we may conclude that 

 the Central Eskimo have taken possession of their present 

 territory in Baffin Land sometime between 1266 and 1576, 

 after their Eskimo predecessors in these parts had wandered 

 north in the direction of Greenland. The inhabitants of La- 

 brador had probably already at that time been settled for 

 several centuries on the same coasts where they are today. If 

 the Skrælings whom the old Norsemen found in Markland (and 



') The occurrence of rq in the first syllable of Gr. erqerqoq is yet to be 

 explained; we get the impression that it is the uvular of the following 

 syllable that has cast its influence back on the first and produced a phone- 

 tical analogical formation (of. Lat. quinque <C *pe//kwe, Brugmann g 332). 

 Furthermore it is striking to find ia in the first syllable instead of 

 e. The correctness of the traditional form, however, seems to be con- 

 firmed by comparison with the form that is still preserved in the N Al. 

 dialect, to which may be added the following parallels: NAl. yiöksa 

 cheek = Gr. ersaq and NAI. yögniabivin egg moon, whose first syll- 

 able may possibly be related to Gr. ItHk the white of an egg (-wm 

 time, -nia hunt for). 



