The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-10-01
Popular Ethn0lOgy.

Mr.. G. r. Markham has written an es-
say "On the Origin and Migration OF the
Greenland Eskimo" which forms one OF
the most interesting and instructive pa
pers in the volume on Attic geology and
enthnology recently presented to the Brit
ish Artic Expedition by the Royal Geo
graphical Society. Mr.. Markham has
evidently given the sub ject careful study,
and his hypothesis seem to be on the
whole sound. For three centuries after
the Morse began to settle in Greenland in
the end of the tenth century, Mr.. Mark
ham believes that no indigenous race was
seen in the land; that all at once about
the middle of the fourteenth century, a
horde of Sk9llings appeared in the eX-
IRENE northern frontier settlements of
Greenland, and seem rapidly to have
stamped out the Morse colonies. Whether
this was so or not, there seems great prOba-
bility in the theory of the migration of
the Greenland EsquimauX advanced by
Mr.. Markham. During the centuries pre-
ceding the first reported appearance of
the EsquimauX in Greenland, the COM
motions in Central Asia, under Tugrul,
Beg, Jenghiz, Khan, and other leaders,
were the means of sending forth swarms
of Turks and MOngOls in all directions.
The pressure caused by these invading
waves on the tribes of Northern Siberia
drove them still further to the north.
Horde succeeding horde increased the
pressure, until at last the OmOki, the Che
laki, the OnkilOn, and other aboriginal
tribes were drivenquite out Ofthe country,
and have long ago disappeared entirely,
leaving only traditions Of their existence
and remains here and there of their courts
Ordwellings. Mr.Markham, says that here
we have probably the commencement of
the exodus of the Greenland Esquimaux,
which spread over a period of one or two
centuries. He believes they must have
made their way from Cape Chelagskoi to
the Parry group, probably over a chain
of islands. Still keeping nOrthward by
Banks Islands, Melville Island, Bathurst
Island, North Somerset and Devon, Jones
Sound, Carey Islands, on all of which I'M
doubted traces of Esquimaux have been
found, but where the conditions are not
favorable to permanent settlement, the
Asiatic emigrants made their way to
Smith Sound, which they crossed in par
ties during the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Some established
their hunting-g grounds between Humboldt
and Melville Bay glaciers, and became the
ancestors of that very curious and inter
esting race ofmen, the Artic Highlanders
Here the vegetation, the constant open
water, and other conditions rendered a
permanent settlement possible. Mr.. Mark
ham believes that some of these migrants
proceeded southwark and peopled South
Greenland, not only so, but that parties
also wandered still further north than the
Humboldt glacier, and that it is not i'm
probable that the new British expedition
may find groupes of Esquimaux up to the
very pole itself Nous verrOns. Mean
time Mr. Markham's theory seems plaus-
ible one, and to answer all the require
ments of an immigration into Greenland
of people such as the Esquimaux. DR..
Rink, however, in a paper on the ODE
scent of the Esquimaux," is inclined to
believe them the last wave of an aborig-
inal American population driven from the
interior by the pressure of tribes behind
them. This may have been so, and the
people in the northeast of Siberia, so
strongly resembling the Esquimaux in
language, physique, and customs, may
have been American emigrants; but the
reverse hypothesis appears much more
probable,