The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-02
Origin OF the Eskimos.

Commander Robert E. Peary gives
| in the February number of Hampton's
magazine his own solution of riddle
that has puzzled explorers and scien-
lists for the past few centuries. The
riddle is the origin of the Eskimos.
The commander in this second in
stallment of his wonderfully interest
| ing story of the discovery Of the North
pole, reveals the importance OF we'll
trained Eskimos in polar travel, and ne
| incidentally gives a remarkable sketch
of the Greenland tribe that he himself
employed. He says:
1.-The members of the little tribe in
habiting the western coast Of Green
land and from Cape York to Etah are
in many ways quite different from the
Eskimos of Danish Greenland. or those
of any other Arctic territory. There
are now between 220 and 230 in the
tribe. They are savages. but they are
not savage: they are without govern
ment, but they are not lawless; they
are utterly uneducated according to
our standard, yet they exhibit a re-
markable degree Of intelligence. In
temperament like children. with all a
child's delight in little things, they are
nevertheless enduring as the most ma
tured of civilized men and women, and
the best of them are faithful unto
death. Without religion and having no
idea Of God, they will share their last
meal with anyone who is hungry,
while the aged and helpless among
them are taken care of as matter OF
course. They are healthy and pure
blooded; they have no vices, no intoxi-
cants, no bad habits-not even gamb
ling. Altoghether, they are a people
unique upon the face of the earth. A
friend of mine calls them philosophic
anarchists of the north.
81 have been studying the Eskimos
for eighteen years, and no more eff
fective instrument for Arctic work
could be imagined than these plump,
bronze-skinned, keen-eyed and black
named children of nature. Their
very limitations were their most valua-
BILE endowments for the purpose of my
work.
There is a theory, first advanced by
Sir Clements Markham, president of
the Royal Geographical society of
London, that the Eskimos are the
remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe,
the Onkilon; that the last members of
this tribe were driven out on the Arc
tic ocean by the fierce waves of Tartar
invasion of the middle ages. and that
they found their way to the New Sibe-
rian islands, thence eastward over
lands yet undiscovered to Grinnell
Land and Greenland. I am inclined to
believe in the truth of this theory for
the following reasons:
Some of the Eskimos are of dis
tinctly Monaghan type, and they dis
play many Oriental characteristics,
such as mimicary, ingenuity, and pa
tience in mechanical duplication. There
is a strong resemblance between their
stone houses and the ruins of houses
found in Siberia"
other parts of the narrative tell of
the fora and fauna of the Arctic.
"In some Places says the COM
mander Sin this caost in summer, the
mander is thick and long as on a New
England farm. Poppies bloom here
with dandelions, buttercups and saxi
frage; though to the best of my knowl-
edge the flowers are all devoid of per-
fume. 1 have seen bumblebees even
north of Whale sound: there are flies
and mosquitoes, and even a few spi-
ders. Among the fauna of this country
are the deer. the Greenland caribou,
the fox-the blue and white-the
Arctic hare, the polar bear, and per-
haps once in a generation a stray
wolf"