Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1913-04-18
STEFANSSON IS LOYAL
TO STARS AND STRIPES
Explorer Who Discovered
Strange Blond Eskimos to
Devote Life to Them.

In the American Magazine appears
an account of Nilhjalmur S%tefansson,
the young Canadian born descendant
of Vikings. who discovered the Blond
.sklmoS' OH the ice of northern Cam
ada. and proposes 10 spend the best 20
Years of his life studying the secret Of
their origin. Following is an extract:
"Stefansson is the daring young ex-
plorer and scientist who discovered the
Blond EskimoS.' thu adding a new
race to the catalogue of the nations.
The far north always calls its chill
dren back again to the ice and snow.
S~tefansson'S parents were both born in
Iceland, near Akureyri on the northern
coast. within rowing distance of the
the Ole Icelandic Sagas of Eric the
Red. whose son Left had planted a
colony to the west on the coast of
America nearly five centuries before
The tim of Columbus. A year or two
before Vilhjalmur's birth his parents
emigrated to America and settled in
Manitoba on lake Winnipeg. Here
Vilhjalmur was born. November 3.
1879. to be Graded in hardship. In
1SS0-1SS1 a famine swept over Mani
O and took off their neighbors by
scores. His brother and sister died OF
malnutrition. but Vilhjalmur survived.
From his infancy he was Injured not
my ~ SSCAA ~ Out oiSO W StAA
cold. At Lake Winnipeg the Their
mometer reached 50 degrees Fahren-
heit below zero. four degrees under the
owest temperature at Herschel ISL
and, S~tefansson's most northern sta
ton in the Arctic.
I'm 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 and study carried him
through school and college. Many
stories are told both of his achieve
ment in the classroom and of his jokes
and pranks and boyish Instructions;
for S%tefansson has always been a lead
er of men. In 1909 he was graduated
at the University of Iowa and came
east TO Harvard for three years of
study IN his chosen field of a%nthropol-
ogy the study of the races OF man
kind. For two years he was assistant
in the Peabody Museum at Harvard,
and published several learned articles
that attracted international attention.
In 1906 he came to New York. where
he has since been connected with the
| American Museum of Natural History.
~"Stefansson's first expedition to the
Arctic was in 1906, while the long jour-
ney from which he has just returned
was begun in 1908. In all he has
tramped 10000 miles. On the ice OF
northern Canada. in regions heretofore
marked 'uninhabited.' Stefansson dis
covered hundreds of Eskimos who had
never seen a white man before. These
strange people often themselves re-
sembled white men more than Eski-
mos; indeed they welcomed the ex-
plorer as one of their own kind.
Most remarkable was a tribe whom
S~tefansson discovered May II, 1910,
called the Ha-ne-rag-mi-ut. Their
total humber is about 40 say Mr..
Stefansson. of hon l saw II. and was
said not to have seen the blondest OF
the group They are markedly differ
ent from any American aborig:nes l
group of S~candinavians or North Eu-
ropean peasants. Perhaps better than
my characterization of them was that
of my Alaskan companion. who has
worked for 10 or more years on a
whaling vessel. and VINO said. They
are not Eskimos. they are fo'c'sA 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 APP
~pearance? Are they the lost tribe OF
Greenland. the descendants Of the
Morse colony founded by Eric the Red
which disappeared so mysteriously off
the map Of Greeland in the 18th CEN
turyo Or are they the survivors Of q
prehistoric connection between Europe
and the American continent
ITO answer these questions and to
solve many other problems for the adj
vancement of science. Stefansson pur-
poses to spend the best 90 years Of his
| life among the people he has discoy-
| cred