Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1913-05-08
THE NEW RACE
Something About the Man Who
Discovered the New Race in the
North

ings, who discovered the Blond Es-
kimos'' on the ice of northern Can
ada, and proposes to spend the best
twenty years Of his life studying
the secret Of their origin. Following
is an extract:
"Stefansson is the daring young
!. explorer and scientist who discoy-
cred the Blond Eskimos,' thus ad-
ding a new race to the catalogue of
the nations.
"The Far North always calls. its
children back again to the ice and
snow. Stefansson's parents were
both born in Iceland, near Agurey-
ri on the northern coast, within
rowing distance of the Article Cir
Gle. They were schooled in the old
Icelandic Sagas of Eric the Red,
whose son Left had planted a colo
ny to the west on the coast of
America nearly five centuries be-
fore the time Of Columbus. A year
or two before Vilhjalmur's birth his
parents emigrated to America and
settled in Manitoba on Lake Winni-
peg. Here Vilhjalmur was born,
November 3, 1879, to be Graded in
hardship. In l88O-1S8l famine
swept over Manitoba and took off
their, neighbors by scores. His bro
ther and sister died of malnutri-
tion, but Vilhjalmur survived. From
his infancy he was Injured not only
to starvation but also to intense
cold. At Lake Winnipeg the ther-
mometer reached SO degrees Fab
renheit below zero, four degrees
under the lowest temperature at
Herschel Island, Stefansson's most
northern station in the Arctic.
In 1881 the family crossed the.
line into North Dakota, and ever
since Stefansson has been loyal to
Uncle Sam. His determination and
fondness for books ana study car
ried him through school and col
iege.. Many stories are told both of
his achievement in the classroom
and Of his jokes and pranks and
boyish insurrections; for Stefansson
has always been a leader of men. In
1903 he was graduated at the Uni
versity of Iowa and came east to
Harvard for three years of study in
his chosen field Of anthropology,
the study of the races of mankind.
For two years he was assistant in
the Peabody Museum at Harvard,
and published several learned arti-
cles that attracted international at
tention. In 1906 he came to New
York, where he has since been con-
neeted with the American Museum
of Natural History.
.Stefansson's first expedition to
the Arctic was in 1906, while the
long journey from which he has
Just returned was begun in 1905. In
all he has tramped 10000 miles. On
! the ice Of northern Canada, in re-
gions heretofore marked 'uninha-
bited, Stefansson discovered hun
dreds of Eskimos who had never
seen white man before. These
strange people often themselves re-
sembfed white men more than Es-
kimos; indeed they welcomed the
explorer as one Of their own kind.
Most remarkable was a tribe
whom Stefansson discovered May
II, 1910, called Ha-ne-rag- -mi-ut.
Their total number is about forty
says Mr.. Stefansson, of whom saw
seventeen and was said not to have
seen the blondest of the group.
they are markedly different from
any American aborigines I have
seen. They suggest, in fact, a group
OF Scandinavians or North Euro
pean peasants. Perhaps better than
my characterization Of them was
that Of my Alaskan companion, who
has worked for ten years or more
on a whaling vessel and who said,
They are not Eskimos, they are
fo'c'sle men. Two Of them had
full chin boards to be described as
light, tending to red; every one had
light eyebrows; one, perhaps the
darkest Of all, had hair that curled
slightly.
What is the history Of this race?
How account for their European
appearance? Are they the lost tribe
OF Greenland, the descendants of
the Morse colony founded by Eric
the Red which disappeared 50 mys-
teriously off the map Of Greenland
q the fifteenth century? Or are
il1ey the survivors Of prehistoric