ESKIMOS. The name Eskimo is said to have come from Indian neighbours to the south, and to signify people who eat their food raw. This name seizes upon one of the striking cultural differences between the Eskimos and at least the most northerly Athabascans of Canada. The Slaveys and 'Dog-Ribs, for instance, were horrified even at seeing white men eating their ordinary underdone roasts; they would naturally be still more revolted with the Eskimo habit of eating not only underdone meats but also completely raw flesh on occasion.
According to the view of the greater number of leading anthro pologists, the Eskimos are merely one kind of North American Indian, both in blood and language. A few authorities state that they are lighter in complexion than most other Indians, but the majority opinion holds them to be average North American natives in eyes, complexion and hair. In head-form different groups range between average cephalic indices of 74 and 82. In stature they are not a particularly small people, the men averag ing 1,647 mm. in east Greenland, 1,648 mm. around Coronation Gulf, 1,689 mm. at the Mackenzie mouth, and 1,682 mm. on the Noatak River in western Alaska. In the districts of southwest Greenland and Labrador there is so much white blood that neither the original stature of the people nor any other physical char acteristic can be determined.
It seems likely that some two thousand years ago, or less, the ancestors of the present Eskimos were forest dwellers north of Lake Superior. Then, apparently, they moved north till they struck the Canadian Arctic coast somewhere between Coronation Gulf and Boothia Peninsula, splitting there into two main streams, one flowing northeast across the islands and then southeast into Greenland, the other west along the north coast of America and around the west and south coasts of Alaska as far as Prince William Sound. A few hundred, apparently in fairly recent times, crossed over to Siberia and occupied the immediate corner around and a little beyond East Cape. The Labrador Eskimos crossed Belle Isle straits and penetrated some distance south into New foundland, but it is not clear whether these were forays or per manent settlements.
About half the Canadian arctic islands are either occupied now by Eskimos or visited by them occasionally. Other islands, such as Melville, were occupied some centuries ago, perhaps only for a short period. Prince Patrick Island has not yet been so fully explored that we know whether it ever was occupied, and the same is true of the Ringnes Islands. But Brock, Borden, Lougheed and Meighen Islands were sufficiently examined by the Stefansson Expedition of 1913-18 to make it seem probable that they were never occupied and perhaps never even visited by Eskimos, whether in ancient or modern times.
In 1928 the total Eskimo population was estimated at 30,000.
Of this number about half have more or less white blood. Out of nearly 15,000 Eskimos in Greenland, perhaps Io,000 come under this head, and some are practically white. The like is true of southern Labrador, where people classified as Eskimos speak no language but English. There has also been some blood mixture on the west coast of Hudson Bay and in Baffin Island ; but from King William Island west to and including Victoria Island there has been no European intermar riage in historic times, and it is one of the disputed questions whether the so-called "Blond" Eskimos of Coronation Gulf and southwest Victoria Island have European blood (in that case de rived from the Norse colony which occupied Greenland in the Middle Ages), or whether the few "blond" individuals in this district are pure North American Indians who came by their lighter complexions "naturally." There is an uninhabited stretch of about 200 miles from Coronation Gulf to Cape Bathurst. Thence west ward slight recent admixture with Europeans begins, and increases along the south-west Alaskan coast and south to the limit of Eskimo occupation.
It is difficult to estimate what the population may have been before the white man came. Contagious diseases, introduced by Europeans, notably measles, have wrought great havoc among the Canadian and Alaskan Eskimos. In certain western districts a single epidemic about a quarter of a century ago is known to have killed from 25% to 75% in different places. Judging from Richardson's account, there must have been more than a thousand Eskimos in the Mackenzie delta in 1848, and perhaps twice that number. But in 1906 Stefansson found these represented by less than thirty descendants. Fully half of that reduction appeared to be accounted for by two epidemics within the memory of people who were still living in 1906, and the preceding reduction was doubtless due to epidemics then forgotten, perhaps one or more of the smallpox plagues that have swept aboriginal Canada. Sim ilar reductions in numbers seem likely for all sections except Greenland. Even there epidemics doubtless took toll formerly, but a strict quarantine maintained by the Danes has enabled the population to increase considerably during the last half century. Perhaps i oo,000 may be a reasonable minimum estimate for Eskimo numbers before white contact began to injure as well as benefit the natives.
It seems probable that the various epidemics have now killed off most of the susceptibles (except between King William and Victoria islands), leaving only the immunes and the descendants of immunes, so that the Eskimo population generally is probably now at about its lowest numerical ebb. It seems likely, therefore, from all accounts, that the Eskimos are destined to disappear not by actually dying out but by merging into the white population, with whom they readily intermarry. A strong social prejudice against such marriages is found only in large towns, like Nome, Alaska. In places where the Eskimos markedly outnumber the whites there is no such prejudice.
A description of the living habits of the Eskimos at once brief and clear is impossible, for they live under many environments, both natural and social. In southwest Greenland, for instance, they have been in touch with Europeans for nine hundred years. But on the south shore of Dolphin and Union Straits and else where they had never seen Europeans, either so far as we or they know, until the Second Stefansson Expedition in 191o, and there were even small numbers farther east and south who had never met Europeans until the Rasmussen Expedition in 1923. These same Eskimos had naturally never seen a book, or words either written or printed; but the Eskimos of south-west Greenland have been publishing every year since 1861 an annual in their own lan guage, edited and printed by themselves, exclusively from Eskimo contributors, both writers and artists. Some Eskimos in Green land live more than 600 miles north of the arctic circle, but others in Labrador live more than 600 miles south of the circle. Many Eskimos have never seen a tree but others visit forested country either occasionally or frequently, and some live perpetually or temporarily in or near a forest. In Hudson Bay they have had the current firearms of Europe in every decade since before the American Revolution, but in Coronation Gulf all of them were still hunting with bows and copper-tipped or stone-tipped arrows in 1910. Some have lived for decades almost entirely on food which they buy with wages, others buy no food even now and live exclusively by hunting or fishing. Some Eskimos depend mainly on seal, some eat that meat rarely, and a few have never tasted it. Whales, even bowhead running towards 8o feet in length, were captured in some districts of Alaska and Canada as far east as Coronation Gulf, and again around Baffin island and other eastern districts. In most other parts the larger whales were not captured, and consequently not eaten, except when they happened to drift ashore dead. The smaller whales, such as the beluga, were more widely hunted. The walrus is important food in certain easterly and westerly districts, but not in the central section from Point Barrow to Hudson Bay. Some Eskimos live mainly by caribou hunting and others have never seen a caribou; some live mainly by fishing while others rarely taste fish.
Even such common statements as "Eskimos live in snow houses" are, in that simple form, more entertaining than instructive, for over half the Eskimos in the world have never seen a snow house, and only about one-quarter are in the habit of using them as the common dwellings of winter. Snow houses are wholly absent from Alaska. In the Mackenzie delta they were used only in emer gencies. From there eastward to the Atlantic, however, they are the usual winter dwelling except in parts of Labrador. Of nearly 15,00o Eskimos in Greenland to-day, less than 50o have ever seen a snow house. The only Greenlandic snow-house users are the small group around Cape York, and even they more commonly dwell in houses of earth raftered with slabs of stone or with the bones of large animals.
The Eskimos speak one language from easternmost Greenland to farthest Alaska as do also a few hundred people in Siberia on the other side of Bering Straits. It is of the type called poly synthetic. In order to get along reasonably well an Eskimo must have at the tip of his tongue a vocabulary of more than io,000 words, much larger than the active vocabulary of an average business man who speaks English. Moreover these Eskimo words are far more highly inflected than those of any of the well-known European languages, for a single noun can be spoken or written in several hundred different forms, each having a precise meaning different from that of any other. The forms of the verbs are even more numerous. The Eskimo language is, therefore, one of the most difficult in the world to learn, with the result that almost no traders or explorers have even tried to learn it. Con sequently there has grown up, in intercourse between Eskimos and whites, a jargon similar to the pidgin English used in China, with a vocabulary of from 30o to 600 uninflected words, most of them derived from Eskimo but some derived from English, Danish, Spanish, Hawaiian and other languages. It is this jargon which is usually referred to by travellers as "the Eskimo lan guage." (See ESKIMO LANGUAGE.) Roughly speaking, the Eskimos are, in social organization, corn munistic anarchists, with the modification that usually raw materials are common property but made articles are privately owned. In the Mackenzie district, for instance (before European influence became strong), a pile of fish caught by a man belonged to him only in a modified sense. Large animals were divided among the people present at the kill, but smaller animals would be taken home by the one who caught them. However, when these were cut up the hunter's wife would either give pieces of raw meat to all who wanted them, or only to families that had none of their own. In some cases she would send away no meat but would shout an invitation to all within hearing to come and share the meal after she had cooked it. Really personal articles, such as a woman's sewing gear, could be sold by her without asking her husband's consent, although she usually asked his advice. He could similarly sell his private hunting gear, but seldom did so without previous discussion with his wife. A thing of recognized common property, such as a dog, could never be sold "legally" except by both man and wife. If it did happen that a husband sold a dog without consulting his wife, the com munity thought it reprehensible. A house belonged to the family that built it as long as they occupied it, and, if they wanted to retain ownership when they moved away, they could do so, but only for a short time by leaving a substantial part of their property behind. This was seldom done, however, for when a man moved away he usually intended to be gone at least a year and in that case was perfectly willing that anyone else should move in. The first corner did move in, and if by some accident the builder's family returned they would no more think of ousting the new occupant than we would think of driving away a camper who had pitched his tent on public land where our tent had stood the week before.
A statement about the Eskimo religion can scarcely be brief and clear without being misleading. It is not far wrong, however, to say that the idea of worship as Christians understand it is rudi mentary or absent. In the Mackenzie district, for instance, Stef ansson found no trace of any idea like that of a god or a goddess, although it has been found by Boas, Rasmussen and others farther east, possibly because it is goo years since the Greenland Eskimos first came in contact with the Christian Norse colony. There have been several centuries of Christian contact, too, around Davis Straits and Hudson Bay, whereas the same contact is less than a century old at the Mackenzie mouth, and really less than half that, so far as effective cultural relations are concerned.
Judging from the Mackenzie view, the Eskimos formerly thought of every stick and stone as well as every cloud and beast and bird as having a life or a soul. To their mind nothing in Nature ever happens ; it is always done by or through some spirit. These are not worshipped, or influenced by anything like prayer, but are controlled by charms and magic formulae. A spirit, according to that view, is neither good nor bad, but merely does the good or evil bidding of him who controls it. This controller is always some human being, most likely a shaman ; but it may be anyone who has a charm or knows a magic formula.
Like more highly civilized people, the Eskimos are, of course, confused in their religious thinking. Different answers and con fused answers come from the most thoughtful and best-informed members of the same community. As a general rule the Macken zie Eskimos do not think that bad weather or a famine is caused by any spirit acting for itself, though it may be caused by a spirit acting for a shaman. But they agree that famines sometimes come without the intervention of a malevolent human being. As nearly as we can express it, they seem to think that these famines come automatically as the result of the breaking of some tabu—not that this breaking offends any spirit but merely that the famine just comes when a tabu has been broken. Such a famine or other unfavourable condition can be changed by discovering who has broken a tabu and getting that person to confess. This confession need not be accompanied by any penitence or effort at restitution. Just as the mere breaking of a tabu brings on trouble so does the mere confession stop it.
There is an almost infinite variety of tabus among the Eskimos. Every act of human life can be subject to tabu. Still the most numerous and complicated are the ones which relate to food. In northern Alaska, for instance, the number of tabus applying to mountain sheep alone is no doubt much greater than the entire number of tabus mentioned in the Bible as applying in one way or another to every variety of food and drink used by the Jews.
Public opinion is the only controlling influence over those Eskimos who have been little influenced by other North American Indians or by whites. The force of this public opinion is to us in comprehensibly strong. It appears unthinkable to an ordinary Eskimo to go against it. There are no chiefs, soldiers, police or prisons, and there are practically only two punishments ; the dis approval of the community, and death. When an individual be comes intolerable there are informal discussions about him that go on for months and perhaps for years. There is such secrecy about these that it is seldom that even a man's own mother tells him about it. In case of eventual unanimity, the theoretically right thing is that the obnoxious person shall be killed by his nearest of kin. This is to prevent blood feud, for the highest duty of revenge lies upon the nearest relative. If the nearest acts as executioner, there is no one to take revenge upon.
In cases where a man is killed before the community arrives at unanimity of opinion there is usually a blood feud. Such feuds end usually by the family that is for the moment one ahead in the retaliation game suddenly moving bag and baggage to a distant community. Even so, there have been instances of revivals of feuds after as much as twenty years. An exceptional making-up of all blood feuds occurred in the Mackenzie district following the dreadful measles epidemic of 'goo which destroyed most of the community. The survivors agreed that now they were so few they must bury all differences along with their dead.
Monogamy is the common relation of the Eskimos, but polyg amy and polyandry are either of them socially permissible, and both occur. In the Mackenzie district a second wife is usually taken by a man on the suggestion of the first wife who points out either that her health is not good enough or that the family and household are now too large for her to manage without assistance. The husband, however, selects the second wife. She nevertheless usually gets along very well with the chief wife, being in some measure a form of favoured servant.
There are no other servants in an Eskimo household, excepting that anyone who chooses to adhere to the family and who is ad mitted into it naturally does his or her share of the work. Volun tary adherents who are blind, crippled or ill, are taken in as readily as those who are well (at least that is the theory) and are expected to do no work, or only what their infirmity permits. The head of a family is proud of the number of voluntary adher ents that gather to him, for it is a sign that he is looked upon as a resourceful man and a good provider. He is even more proud of the dependents who cannot work, for their number shows that he has a superabundance of resources, since he can care for them. The leading man of the Mackenzie community in i 906, for in stance, had a family of twenty-seven, nineteen of whom were voluntary adherents, three of these helpless. This man was called a chief by the white traders, but neither he nor anyone else in that community had any such powers as chief ship implies. He had a great deal of influence but no authority.
While yet unchanged by civilization, the Eskimos seem to have been everywhere the healthiest and happiest people in the world. Disagreeing on many things, most travellers have agreed on this, especially regarding their happiness. By the common testimony of observers, they laugh as much in a month as ordinary civilized people do in a year, and they have all the other signs of content ment and well-being. There has been no agreement in explain ing this, however. Some think it is a racial trait, some believe it to be due to the stimulating climate or to the outdoor life, and some think it is caused by the stimulating nature of the food. In certain Eskimo districts, such as western Alaska, vegetables were eaten to a considerable extent even before white men appeared, but there are many districts, such as Coronation Gulf, where nothing but flesh food is eaten even to-day. It required about twenty years at the mouth of the Mackenzie, from the time whaling ships began to winter there, before the Eskimos could be induced to eat any considerable proportion of white man's food, even where it was urged upon them. It will probably be twenty years (from 191o, when the first trader came there) before any considerable amount of vegetables begins to be eaten in Coronation Gulf.
The Eskimos are themselves well satisfied with their flesh foods and their clothes of hide and fur. They are equally satisfied with their country and climate. No "primitive" people is so difficult to induce to visit foreign lands, or so uniformly eager to get back after a season spent away. They are commonly looked upon by the world as an unfortunate people, but seem congenitally unable to grasp that point of view themselves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For Greenland: See the works of H. Rink, K. RasBibliography.-For Greenland: See the works of H. Rink, K. Ras- mussen and W. Thalbitzer, and many articles in the great Danish annual Meddelelser om Groenland (some of these in English, or in Danish with French summaries) . For Baffin island: See the writings of Franz Boas in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History and his The Central Eskimo, Bureau of American Ethnology (1888) . For Labrador: L. M. Turner, Ethnology of the Ungava District, Bureau of American Ethnology (1894) ; E. W. Hawkes, "The Labrador Eskimo," Memoir 91 of the Geological Survey of Canada (1916) . For the mainland and islands from Hudson Bay to Coronation Gulf: K. Rasmussen, Across Arctic America (1927), a greatly abridged translation from the Danish ; see also the various reports of Rasmussen's Fifth Thule Expedition. For the Copper Eskimos (mainland and islands around Coronation Gulf) : V. Stefansson, My Life With the Eskimo (1913), Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (1914), The Friendly Arctic (1921). D. Jenness, The Life of the Copper Eskimos and several articles in Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18 (Ottawa, 1922 seq.) ; K. Rasmussen, op. cit. For Mackenzie river: V. Stefansson, op. cit. and Hunters of the Great North (1922). For northern Alaska: J. Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Bar row Expedition, Bureau of American Ethnology (1892) ; V. Stefansson, op. cit. North-western Alaska: E. W. Nelson, The Eskimo About Bering Strait, Bureau of American Ethnology (1899) . (V. S.) a town of Asia Minor, the capital of the vilayet of the same name. It is a station on the Haidar Pasha Angora railway, 1941 m. from the former and 164 m. from Angora, and the junction for Konia ; and is situated on the right bank of the Pursak Su (Tembris), a tributary of the Sakaria. Pop. (1927) 81,556. Eski-Shehr, i.e., "the old town," lies about a mile from the ruins of the ancient Phrygian Dorylaeum. The latter is mentioned in connection with the wars of Lysimachus and Antigonus (about 302 B.c.), and frequently figures in Byzantine history as an impe rial residence and military rendezvous. It was the scene of the defeat of the Turks under Kilij-Arslan by the crusaders in 1097, and fell finally to the Turks of Konia in i 176. The town is divided by a small stream into a commercial quarter on low ground, in which are the bazaars, khans and the hot sulphur springs (12 2 ° F) which are mentioned as early as the 3rd century by Athenaeus; and a residential quarter on the higher ground. The town is noted for its good climate, the Pursak Su for the abundance of its fish. About 18 m. to the E. are extensive deposits of meerschaum.