The Eskimo are between 62 and 64 iuehes in height, with broad, round faces and high cheek bones. They are well built, usually fat, and many of the men have remarkable muscular development ; the eyes are narrow, the hair is straight and jet black, the beard is very thin and often entirely wanting. The skin is light-brown or dark-brown. They are a short-lived people, rarely attaining an age much beyond sixty years. The main cause of death is inflammatory rheumatism. All the groups, excepting those which have long had intercourse with the white race, may be classed in point of development with the prehistoric races of the age of ground-stone tools, though the Smith Sound natives, long before they met the whites, obtained iron from the Cape York meteor ites, with which they tipped their weapons. This tribe, and indeed all the Greenland Eskimo, have no wood except such fragments of drift wood from Siberia as they have picked up on the shore, and such pieces as they have obtained from men.
The sustenance of the Eskimo is chiefly de rived from the capture of seals and cetaceans animals, the pursuit of which has kept them in habitants of the seashore. The seal is their staple food and their most valuable resource, sup plying them with dog-food, clothing, boots, tents, harpoon-lines, light, and heat. The walrus, nar whal, whale, bear, and to a smaller extent the deer, fox, and hare also afford important sup p. for lies Thousands of birds are stored f winter use. The natives have no salt or substances of vegetable origin for food except where these sup plies are derived from the whites.
The men are constantly employed in hunting or in the manufacture and care of their hunting contrivances. among which is the kayak, in which they chase their sea prey. The kayak is a swift and seaworthy canoe made of skin, entirely decked over except for the round hole in the in which its one occupant sits. It is pro pelled by a double-bladed paddle. The oomiak, or woman's boat, also built • of skin, but open, is large enough to carry several passengers and freight. It is paddled by women. The harpoon is a remarkably ingenious implement whose detaches itself from the handle when the animal is hit, and, being attached to a float or drag, prevents the I.seape of the game. The dog-sledge is common everywhere except among the Eskimo of southwestern Greenland. In regions where iron is obtainable from the white men, iron run ners are now largely substituted for those of ivory or whalebone, formerly used. Eskimo dogs are admirably adapted for sledge work.
The dwellings are always of two kinds—tents for summer and houses or huts for winter use. The tents, or tupiks, are made of sealskin; the igloos. or winter in m.,es, are far more varied in structure among the different groups. They are usually built of stones, chinked and covered with moss and banked up with snow. The entrance is a long passage high enough to admit a man crawling upon hands and knees. In some places —for example, in northern Alaska—huts are half underground. Nally of the western and Lab rador Eskimo build their houses chiefly of wood. Some of the Louses of the East
Greenland natives shelter forty to sixty persons. The temporary winter houses, built .during jour neys, are made of blocks of snow, piled in a shape somewhat like that of a beehive. The dress for men and women consists of boots, trousers, and a jacket with a hood, which can be drawn up to cover the head. Women nursing children Carry their infants in hoods. The boots of the women are higher than those of the men, and indeed among the Smith Sound Eskimo extend to the thighs. Except where trade is carried on with the whites, the clothing is entirely of furs and the skins of birds, and may be considered perfect for the eondiions under which it is worn.
In the relations between the sexes there is much laxity, but where missionary influences prevail the marital relations are of the conventional civilized type, and the sexual morality of many natives is of a high order. There is much that is admirable in these simple-minded people. They arc honorable with regard to property, children and the aged and infirm are \yell cared for, and generosity and hospitality are characteristic traits. Most of the products of the hunt are common property. The Eskimo are naturally cheerful, merry and light-hearted, fond of song and music and with some skill in its production, though among tribes not in close contact with white men the only musical instrument is a kind of small tambourine made of membrane stretched over an oval bone frame. They are friendly to strangers and warfare is almost among them. Many are adepts in making carvings of walrus ivory, the Alaska natives excelling in the ornamentation and finish of these products. Those natives who are not under missionary influence have the vaguest religious ideas. They believe in invisible powers or demons which rule over the riches of the sea, and a special function of the angekoks, or shamans, is to propitiate these mys terious influences, BIBLIOGRAPHY. Dalt. "On the So-called ChukBibliography. Dalt. "On the So-called Chuk- chi," etc., American Naturalist, vol. xvi., No. 11 (1881) ; Olivier, "Sur les Esquimaux d'Asie," Bulletin Societe d'Anthropologie (1877, p. 586) ; John Ross, Second Voyage, appendix, pp. 1-104 (London, 1835) ; McLean, Notes on the Hudson Bay Territory, vol. ii., ch. 10 and 11 (London, 1849) ; J. Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedi tion, vol. i., ch. xi. (London, 1851): Hall. Life with the Esquimaux (1864) ; II. Rink, Talcs and Traditions of the Eskimo (London, 1875) ; id., Danish Greenland (London, 1887) ; id., The Eskimo Tribes (London, 1887) ; Jose phine Diehitsch Peary, My Arctic Journal (New York, 1893) : Nansen, Eskimo Life (London, 1894) ; R. E. Peary, Northward Orer the Great Ice, vol. i., appendix ii.: F. Boas, "The Central Eskimo," Sixth, Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 399-660; Nurdoek, "The Point Barrow Eskimo," Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1886-S7); Nelson, "The Eskimo About Bering Strait," Eighteenth An nual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, part 1 (1896-97).