ES'KIMO. A race of the yellow type, confined to the Arctic regions of America and the extreme northeastern part of Asia. The name means `raw-fish eaters,' and was applied to them by their Algonquin Indian neighbors living south of them. The American Eskimo call thinselves lmmit, i.e. men; their congeners in Asia giving themselves the name Yuit or Yu-kouk, other forms of the same word. The Eskimo have been so absolutely secluded in their habitat that an thropologists have had great trouble in dealing with the question of their origin. Dr. H. Mink, who has made a life study of Greenland and its people, and is the greatest authority on them, holds that most Eskimo weapons and imple ments are of American origin; he advances the theory that, even though the Eskimos originally came from Asia, they developed as a race in the interior of Alaska, whence they finally migrated northward and spread out along the coasts of the ice sea. lie says that their speech is closely con nected with the primitive dialects of America, while their legend4 and customs resemble, or at least suggest, those of the Indians. The re searches of DalI, Olivier, .Nordquist, Krause, and others, however, have led to the conclusion now generally adopted that the Eskimo were derived directly from peoples of the Asiatic polar regions, some of whom came to America across the narrow Bering Strait. The Koriak and Tchuktchi, who in habit the extreme eastern portion of the penin sula of, Siberia, are regarded as an Asiatic branch of the Eskimo race, numbering probably not more than 2000 souls.
Though the evidence as to the origin of the Eskimo is not complete. there is at least good reason for the theory that within a comparatively recent period they lived along the American coast of Bering Strait. and Bering Sea. and thence gradually spread eastward over Arctic America and its northern islands to Greenland. They must have reached Greenland before the Nor wegian colonies of Osterbygd and Vesterbygd were established, for Eric the Red and others found in both these districts the ruins of human habi tations, fragments of boats, and stone imple ments, which they thought must have belonged to a feeble folk whom they therefore called •Skrel lings' (weaklings). Nansen and others believe that. at this period the Greenland Eskimo were living north of 6S° N., where seals and whales abound. and that they did not make their per manent settlements in South Greenland until after they had destroyed the Norwegian colonies there in the fourteenth century.
The regions inhabited by the Eskimo extend from Bering Strait aver the northern coast of America and its groups of Arctic islands to the east coast of Greenland. With a habitat spreading over 3000 miles. the Eskimo have a wider geographical range than any other aborigines. In spite, how ever. of the great distances which have divided the various groups from each other for probably more than 1000 years, the race has preserved the most striking uniformity in language. habits, and mode of life, excepting in so far as certain tribes have been influenced by contact with the white men. The insignificant differences of language among these isolated groups have been often re marked. Common to all are the same stem
words, the same affixes. The ehief characteristic of the language is that it is highly polysynthetie. single words of complex structure expressing ideas that in English would fill out whole sen tences. 1\ Ir. Hugh Lee, who learned the language the Smith Sound natives of North Green land, says that he had little difficulty in com municating with the Eskimo of Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. A similar condition has been observed among the Eskimo of Labrador, the Arctic archipelago, and Greenland.
DisTutuurtox. The Eskimo may be divided into seven groups. (1) The East Greenlanders. living along the east coast of the island, numbering, when Holm visited them in ISS4, 548 souls. It is not believed that any of them now live farther north than the sixty-eighth parallel of latitude, though Clavering met two families in 1823 north of 74° 30'. They are of pure blood, and so are (2) the most northern inhabitants of the world, the Eskimo of northwest Greenland (the Smith Sound natives or Arctic Highlanders) who inhabit the west coast between Melville Bay and Port Foulke, 7S° IS' N.. numbering, in 1897. 234 persons. (3) The natives of Danish West Green land, who live between Upernavik (73° 24' N.) and Cape Farewell, number nearly and are mixed breeds; they have been for a century and a half under the government and influence of the Danes. (4) The Labrador Eskimo, now num bering only about 1500, live along the Atlantic Coast. From Hopedale south most of them are of mixed blood; north of Hopedale they are almost wholly pure Eskimo. Moravian missionarirs and white fishermen have lived among them for more than a century, however, and no other Eskimo have been so greatly influenced as these in dress, manners. and customs. by long eontact with the whites. (5) The Eskimo of the central region include those of the Artie Archipelago, where probably only a few hundred natives now live, though ruined huts and other remains are seat teed far and wide along the tortuous shores, and the natives of the American mainland who hunt between the NVI.St side of IhnIson lIay and Cape Bathurst. This group is the most widely spread, its territories representing an extent. of land. in terseeted in every direction by the sea. measuring nearly 200o miles east and west and MOO miles north and south. ((I) The Mackenzie Rive• group are centrally divided by that rive-, their limit in the smith bring that of the tundras. while the forest region belongs to the Indians with Wh0111, according to their traditions, they have fought great hattles; they number about. 2000 souls. (7) The western Eskimo wander along flue northwest and western (-oasts of Alaska as far south as the \lent tan \ rehiring°. They have rapidly diminished in the past half-eentury, owing to the destruction of marine animals by whalers, and now number only a few hundred. The Siberian reindeer is being introduced among them, and missionary stations were established in 1892. The group includes the reindeer Eskimo of the northeast peninsula of Siberia. It is be lieved that the entire race now numbers not more than 17,000.