422 
sugar, and tea. Now a diet of straight seal-iueat will keep a hunter 
or a trapper in good health, but a diet that consists mainly of ban- 
nock and tea is practically starvation. So, over large parts of the 
Arctic and sub-Arctic the Eskimo are now worse clad, and more ill- 
nourished, than in the days of their isolation. ^ 
There seem to have been about 2,000 Eskimo living between the 
Alaska-Canada boundary and cape Bathurst when Sir John Frank- 
lin’s expedition explored this coast in 1826. In 1929 there were less 
than 800, and of that number only about twelve were really native to 
the district, the remainder being immigrants from Alaska. The 
earlier inhabitants perished from diseases introduced by Europeans; 
as late as 1900 an epidemic of measles caused great mortality. In 
1902 typhus carried off all the surviving inhabitants of Southampton 
island, Hudson bay. Other parts of Hudson bay, Baffin island, and 
the Labrador j:)eninsula suffered great depletions in the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries, and during the last few years European 
diseases have been ravaging the newly accessible groups between 
Coronation gulf and the Alagnetic Pole. So from a pre-European 
population estimated by Alooney at 22,500 the Canadian and 
Labrador Eskimo have been reduced to 8,000 (in 1929). Some 
decline was inevitable, perhaps, because even our mildest diseases 
are fatal to unimmunized natives, and the isolation of the Eskimo 
until the twentieth century deprived them of all medical services. 
To-day, however, many of the survivors have developed a partial 
immunity to the commonest diseases, and the government is estab- 
lishing a chain of doctors across the Arctic to check the spread of 
epidemics and to combat the high mortality, particularly of infants. 
At the same time it is conserving the wild life throughout the Arctic 
and sub-Arctic, and introducing domesticated reindeer from Alaska 
to augment the supply of meat and prevent the recurring famines. 
Assuming that these measures are successful, the Eskimo should 
more than hold their own during the present century, and by gradual 
amalgamation with white trappers and traders produce the hardy 
and resourceful stock necessary for the development of Canada’s Far 
North. 
1 The same conditions prevail among the Athapaskan Indians of northern Canada, and doubtless con- 
tribute not a little to lower their vitality and render them easy victims to influenza, tuberculosis, and 
other diseases. 
