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CHAPTER XXIV 
THE ESKIMO 
Tlie last of our ])hysiographic* regions was the Arctic and sub- 
Arctic coasts of Canada from the Alaskan boundary to the strait of 
Belle Isle, excluding only the southern and western shores of James 
bay. JJiis was the home of the Eskimo ( a Cree word meaning “Eaters 
of raw meat a people distinct in physical appearance, in language, 
and in customs from all the Indian tribes of America. Yet just 
as their ])eculiar jiliysical appearance masked but did not debar 
their partial derivation from the same division of mankind as the 
Indians — fi’om the great Mongolian stock that ])redominates through- 
out eastern and northern Asia — so their peculiar customs and mode of 
life have so many links with the customs of many of our liulian tribes 
that one suspects not merely borrowing on both sides, but the deriva- 
tion of their cultures from the same or kindred sources in past ages. 
Canada was not the home of all the Eskimo, nor even of one- 
half their number, for they extended from the Siberian shore of 
Bering sea in the west to Ci’eenland in the east. Alaska and Green- 
land each contains to-day twice as many Eskimo as there are in 
Canada,^ where long stretches of coast-line have no inhabitants 
at all and the many large islands north of the mainland are deserted, 
though many of them bear the ruins of prehistoric dwellings and 
camp-sites. If we pry more closely into the distribution of our 
Eskimo at the time of their first contacts with Europeans we find 
them grouped in certain areas fringed by large tracts of territory 
that seldom felt their footsteps. What was the cause of this? 
Except in two regions, the basins of the Colville and Xoatak 
rivei’s in Alaska and the barren grounds between Hudson bay and 
Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, the Eskimo were everywhere a 
littoral people, who subsisterl during the greater part of the year on 
the sea mammals frequenting the coast, and journeyed inland only 
1 Eskimo pnpiilnlion of Alask.T in 1010. 14.087: Tnriian Popuiation in the I'nilcd and Alaska, 
1910, p. 112. Washinirton, Gov<Tnmt*iit I’rintiiiK Bur'>aii, 1915; of rirwnlniu! in 1927, 1.5.634: Greenland, 
vol. iii, " The Cloloni/ation of Greenland and Its History Uniil 1929”; pMlilL.ihe<l h>- the Coininbsion for 
tlie dit<elion of tine Geolotieal and Geograidiien! Invest ifratiotis in Greenland, p. 404 fCopenhagen and 
Loiifion. 1929): ot Canada in 1929, 7.103; of Laltrador “not more than 1,000 on th<‘ .-Mlantie roast south 
of C.ape Chidli'v”; Eneyclopaedia Hritanniea. Illh eflirion. aitiele " Labrathii'.” 
