1887] On Some Popular Errors in Regard to the Eskimos. 15 
small race measured by Sutherland come from a region where 
they have been long in contact with the whites. 
The evidence, therefore, seems strongly to contradict the pop- 
ular belief. It is not unlikely that the popular idea arose from the 
fact that the earlier explorers compared the Eskimos with some 
of the tallest of the European race. 
I am strongly inclined to believe that the very name by which 
we know these people owes its origin to a similar case of hasty 
generalization. “Eskimo,” according to the best authorities, 
means “eater of raw flesh,” and most people believe that all 
Eskimos habitually eat their food raw, devouring enormous 
quantities of reeking flesh and blubber. 
Undoubtedly flesh is sometimes eaten raw, especially in a 
frozen state, and in certain limited regions where fuel is very 
scarce, raw-flesh eating appears from necessity to have become a 
habit, as, for instance, at Cumberland Gulf (teste Kumlien, “ Bulle- 
tin U. S. National Museum,” No. 15, p. 20). 
Nevertheless, most observations indicate that this habit is excep- 
tional, and the writings of all the original observers, from the time 
of Egede and Crantz, are full of accounts of the cooking of food, 
even when the oil-lamps furnished the only fire for this purpose. 
Captain Parry explicitly states that the people of Igloolik pre- 
ferred to boil their food when they could obtain fuel (“ Second 
Voyage,” p. 505), and we, also, found that food was habitually 
cooked at Point Barrow, though certain articles, like the “ black 
skin” of the whale, were usually eaten raw. 
The enormous consumption of fat, supposed to be a physio- 
logical necessity to enable them to withstand the excessive cold, 
is probably the exception rather than the rule, to judge from the 
accounts of actual observers. It seems quite probable that the 
amount consumed in most cases is little, if any, greater than 
that eaten by civilized nations, when we consider that the people 
who eat the fat of the seal with the flesh and use oil for a sauce 
_to their dried salmon, have no butter, cream, fat bacon, olive oil, 
or lard. 
We found, indeed, at Point Barrow, that comparatively little 
actual blubber either of the seal or whale was eaten, though the 
fat of birds and the reindeer was freely partaken of. Seal or 
whale blubber was too valuable,—for burning in the lamps, oiling — 
leather, and many other purposes, especially for trade. 
