Physical Characteristics of the Copper Eskimos 



b41 



Neither the moustache nor the beard develops to any extent before middle 

 age; indeed the presence of a beard is considered a certain sign of old age, or 

 at least of advanced years. The moustache is hardly ever thick, and the 

 beard invariably sparse and scraggy ; three inches is about its maximum length. 

 Mr. Stefansson's statement that "here (in Victoria island) are men with abund- 

 ant three-inch-long beards"^ applies, according to my observations, only to a 

 very few individuals found on the mainland as well as on Victoria island; and 

 certainly Back was guilty of considerable exaggeration when he said of 

 some Eskimos on the Great Fish river "they could hardly have nurtured a more 

 luxurious growth of beard, or cultivated more flowing mustachoes."^ The cheeks 

 are always perfectly glabrous in the younger men, but towards middle age they 

 become sprinkled with a few stray hairs. The beard is generally concentrated 

 on the chin, although sometimes there is a small goatee. Depilation is practised, 

 but not in any systematic fashion. The hair in this part of the face is usually 

 black like the hair of the head, but it often has a marked brownish tinge, notice- 

 able more particularly in the moustache and on the lower lip; even then the 

 hair on the chin is almost always black, so that the brownish tinge is probably 

 due in part to bleaching, the hot blood soup that is a favourite drink of the natives 

 being perhaps one of the agencies. It is worth noticing in this connection that 

 the hair of the head is almost invariably black, except sometimes at the extreme 

 tips, where bleaching is also liable to occur. 



Forehead 



The forehead is generally rather narrow but moderately high. It often 

 recedes a little, but not more than in Europeans. The women (and children) as 

 usual have somewhat straighter foreheads than the men. The lists of Section I 

 furnish the following table of percentages. 



FOREHEAD 



Cheeks 



The cheekbones are high and prominent, being especially noticeable when 

 the face is thin or elongated; but when the cheeks fill out in seasons of plenty 

 the bones are partly masked by masses of tissue. 



'Stefansson, My Life with the Eskimo, p. 193. 



^Back, Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River, London, 1836, 

 p. 383. 



'Under brownish-black are included all cases where the moustache is given as brow or brownish- 

 black, but the beard as black. 



