2 In Itelmes, or Kamtskadals, as of decidedly Mongoloid appearance.1 The words of their language are found by the separable combination of roots; and if Kennan is correct in his assertion that they use prefixes, they are distinguished by this from the Ural-Altaians as well as from the Eskimo. They live chiefly by fishing; the dog, which they harness to sledges, is their domestic animal. comparison with other Behring's nations, they are very unskilful sailors. Their only social institution was the duty of "vendetta " in the inhabitants of an Ostrog. The husband belonged to the family of his parents-in-law. Shamanism was in full force, though there was no actual caste of sorcerers, but each individual conjured the spirits at his own peril. Belief in a future life led frequently to suicide fathers allowed themselves to be strangled by their children or were thrown to the dogs. It was supposed that the poor would be recompensed for their sufferings in the present world by superfluity in the next.3 The musical talents of the Itelmes are of a very high order, for they have even composed part songs.4 Steller saw dances and dramatic representations, which usually consisted of comic imitations of their foreign visitors. Adolph Erman praises their honesty, gentleness, and "innate refinement of manners." 5 Much that he tells us of their self-sacrificing hospitality is touching, and Kennan has recently experienced the same. In Steller's time water was their only beverage, so that the decoction made from the fly agaric can only have become customary at a later period. : (b) Koriaks and Tshuktshi.-Steller says of the Koriaks who live on the Sea of Okotsk and as far north as Kamtshatka, that in stature, face, hair, and the deep tones in which they speak, they are as like the Itelmes as "one egg is to another." 6 This can 1 Steller, Kamtschatka, p. 298. 2 Latham (Varieties, p. 274) asserts, without giving evidence, that the Kamtskadal language has some community in the vocabulary with Corean and Japanese. This is probably only in words of civilization which have been borrowed in intercourse. 3 Steller, Kamtschatka, pp. 277, 294, 270, 271. + Ibid. p. 332. 5 Reise um die Erde, vol. iii. p. 422. • Kamtschatka, p. 251. Itelmes, Koriaks, and Tshuktshi. 391 only be true of the fishing population on the coast, for the Koriaks of the interior, who live a patriarchal life in tents on the produce of their herds of reindeer, are described as people of more than average height; they are therefore taller than the Itelmes, whom they do not resemble either in hospitality or in obliging and kindly treatment of strangers. In their physical characters, Kennan describes these tribes as of North American type.7 Unlike most of the Behring's nations, they are untainted by erotic vices, and are at the same time jealous husbands. Unfortunately, they are only too fond of intoxicating themselves with the decoction of fly agarics, which, in spite of the strict prohibition of the Russian government, is brought to them by unconscientious merchants. The old people of this tribe and of the Tshuktshi3 allow their own children to kill them with lances, presumably believing that man will enter on a new life at the exact age at which he left the world, and that it is therefore better not to empty the cup to the dregs. The Tuski, or Tshuktshi, are as closely related to the Itelmes in language as are Spaniards to Portuguese. They live in almost entire liberty on the coasts of the Behring's Straits breeding reindeer, and on the shores of the Frozen Ocean as fishermen. They are sometimes termed Reindeer Tshuktshi to distinguish them from the Namollo, with whom they were formerly combined. They are powerful men, able to walk lightly under burdens of 200 lbs. A Tshuktshi boy, whom Colonel Buckley took from Plover Bay to San Francisco, was always supposed to be a Chinese; the same mistake has been frequently made about two native Aleutian sailors in a town in which Chinese and Japanese are to be met with in every street. In conclusion, the Tuski sail on the Behring's Straits in leathern boats with a framework of whalebone, and make use of a sail, probably in imitation of European ships. They tie inflated sealskins to the outside of the boats to guard against capsizing, after the manner of Polynesian outriggers. (c) The Namollo and the Eskimo.-Quite at the north-eastern corner of Asia, on Behring's Straits, and along the Frozen Ocean, the Tshuktshi border on the Namollo, with whom they were formerly confused. They differ little from their neighbours in manners and habits. Lütke o noticed their well-marked Mongolian features, prominent cheek-bones, small noses, and frequently obliquely set eyes. We also know that the Namollo language is allied to the Eskimo." Chamisso, who had an opportunity of comparing the Namollo of the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the Eskimo in Kotzebue Sound, observes that the population of the north-east point of Asia as well as all Americans from Behring's Straits to the Eskimo of Baffin's Bay, belong to "the same race of men, with a conspicuously Mongolian form of face."12 The Eskimo, whose name is derived from Esquimantsic in the Abenaki language, or from Ashkimeg in the Ojibwa dialect, which, in both cases, means "eaters of raw meat,” 13 call themselves In-nu-it, a plural form of in-nu, the man. Their words are always formed by means of suffixes, 14 and so far the method is the same as in the UralAltaic group, though the most important character, the harmony of the vowels, is wanting in the Innuit language. Although the Eskimo language is in no exact sense incorporative, it will soon be shown that it is a transition between the Ural-Altaic and the American types. At the time of the visits of the Northmen to America, that is, about A.D. 1000, the Innuit lived somewhat to the south on the Atlantic coast; and at the beginning of last century they might occasionally be seen in Newfoundland. 15 It was only in the middle of the fourteenth century that they appeared in Greenland.16 Barnard Davis gives as the cranial indices of the Greenland Eskimo a breadth of 71 and a height of 75, and of the Eskimo of eastern North America, 70 and 75 for the same dimensions. But these characters are worthless, for the skull is artificially shaped." In the case of the western Innuit, among whom this habit is supposed to be unknown, and who, therefore, 10 Voyage autour du monde, vol. ii. p. 264. 1835. 11 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iii. p. 301. 12 Otto von Kotzebue's Entdeckunge Reise, vol. iii. p. 176. 1821. 13 Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, vol. iii. p. 178. 14 Steinthal, Typen des Sprachbaues, p. 220. 16 David Cranz, Historie von Grönland, vol. i. p. 333. 17 See above, p. 58. 15 Charlevoix. Namollo and Eskimo. 393 have skulls of natural form, 75 is the index of breadth, and 77 the index of height; hence they are mesocephals in whom the height is greater than the breadth. 18 In other points the Innuit exactly resemble the northern Asiatic populations in all physical characters, especially in skin and hair. The oblique setting of the eyes, and the broad flat faces, are recognizable even in the Eskimo of Greenland, 19 although intermixtures with German blood have frequently taken place there. The Namollo and Eskimo are not tall people; but we have already contradicted the old and erroneous statements as to their dwarfish size. 20 Their women are not prolific, or rather productiveness is considered undesirable, so that this race also will not escape extinction. 21 Under the name of Angekoks we find among them genuine North Asiatic Shamans, who prepare themselves for their magic cures and incantations by such prolonged solitude and fasting that, as Cranz ingenuously remarks, "their imagination becomes disordered." 22 They worship a benevolent creator named Torngarsuk or Anguta. 23 When they hear the praises of an Almighty God from the mouths of missionaries, many of them imagine that their Torngarsuk is intended.24 Opposed to him stands a baneful female deity said to be without a name. Not only do they believe in a future life, but also in a future punishment for malefactors and the unrighteous. 25 In their legends the Innuit tell of an Arctic paradise called Akillnek, and have narratives of travelling adventures, in which the oriental bird, the roc, is replaced by gigantic seagulls. Among them has also been found the story of the girls who, when bathing, turn, not into swans-which are unknown— but into ducks. Hall, who lived among them so long, says they are the best-hearted people on the face of the earth. Their intelligence is proved by the fact that they quickly learnt dominoes, 18 Barnard Davis, Thesaurus Craniorum, pp. 219–224. 20 See above, p. 81. 21 D. Cranz, Historie von Grönland, vol. i. p. 212. 22 Ibid. book iii. vol. i. p. 268. 23 So called by Hall, Life with the Esquimaux, p. 524. 24 David Cranz, vol. i. pp. 264, 265. 25 Hall, Life with the Esquimaux, p. 524. draughts, and even chess.26 Leopold von Buch, when travelling in Arctic Norway, persuaded himself that human society could hope for no intellectual gains from the inhabitants of those regions where the full strength of man is consumed in the struggle against the asperity of nature to procure the bare necessaries of life. This would apply with far greater force to Polar America. The Eskimo, it is true, have not inferred the flattening of the earth from certain disturbances in the moon's course; they have not analyzed water into its two component gases, nor have they founded a universal religion, but, relying on their own strength and skill, they have entered zones in which day and night are as long as seasons: they have proved that man can still hold his own where a nine months' winter turns the land to stone, where no tree can grow, and where there is not even enough drift wood to serve for the shaft of a spear. Of the bones of Arctic mammals killed in the chase, they have laboriously constructed sledges, and put together spears, which, lashed round with the sinews of animals, are sufficiently substantial to enable bold hunters to kill the white bear in close combat. They have found out how to build huts of snow as quickly as tropical natives build them of branches and leaves; nay, they have constructed arched vaults of stone, which had not occurred to any of the civilized people of Mexico. They know how to warm their huts with train-oil lamps, and how to melt snow and ice over them that they may allay their thirst. They possessed in sledges, which were unknown in other parts of America, a means of accomplishing land journeys; to move these they had harnessed to it draught animals, namely, dogs; while in America, the most advanced stage of such art was to be found only among the Incas of Peru, who use llamas as beasts of burden, though not as draught animals. It is an achievement in the history of civilization to have peopled the highest latitudes of the earth, and the Eskimo performed this unenviable task when they were themselves still in the stone age. Now, indeed, they procure iron from the Danes for lance and harpoon points; but Northern Greenland had long been inhabited by them before 26 H. Rink, Eskimoisk Digtekonst, in For Ide og Virkelighed, p. 222 et seq. Copenhagen, 1870. + For their toros see Smithson, Rep. 1884 PEII, " $.307. 411. |