CHAPTER XIII. 



THE LABRADOR ESKIMOS AND THEIR FORMER RANGE 



SOUTHWARD. 



It is not my purpose to give a detailed account of the 

 Labrador Eskimos, but simply to put together what I 

 have found in relation to them in works referring to 

 Labrador, and to add a few notes made during the two 

 summers spent on that coast in i860 and 1864. Al- 

 though I was aware that the Eskimos formerly lived as 

 far south as the southern entrance to the Strait of Belle 

 Isle, where I saw two individuals in i860, one said to be 

 a full-blooded Eskimo woman, I regarded them as strag- 

 glers from the north. It now seems more probable, from 

 the Rev. Mr. Carpenter's statement, in a subsequent page, 

 and from the fact, to be hereafter stated, that several 

 hundred Eskimos lived at Chateau Bay, opposite Belle 

 Isle, in 1765, while others were known to have extended 

 as far east as the Mingan Islands, that this race had a 

 more or less permanent foothold on the northern shores 

 of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. If this was so, it seems 

 not improbable that this roving race may have made, 

 in very early times, expeditions farther south to Nova 

 Scotia and New England. Here also comes to mind 

 the theory of Dr. C. C. Abbot, that the Eskimos for- 

 merly inhabited the coast of New Jersey during the 



river-terrace epoch. 



245 



