New Britain herald., 1918-11-22
EXPLORER TELLS OF
 THE BLONDE ESKIMO
". J, Bowen Says They Are
 Aborigine of White Race

l Seattle. Nov. 22.-"Sure they're blond Eskimos'. They are aborigines { living up in the white Arctic on Vic | toria Land in their primevaI state ab- 1 solutely untouched by the outside 1 worlds civilization. They are com | pletely out of contact with every thing and, consequently. have none l or our improvements and also none 1 of our evils"
 w. J. Bower, known along the Arc l JIG coast as Levi Bower, one of the very few men who have gone from 1 the outside into the far northern. a1 most fabled, land of the "bIond Eski l mos thus described them when he l was here recently.
 And I don't think it was Stefans 1 son who first found them,' Bower as- serted Vilhjalmur Stefansson, re- turned Canadian Arctic explorer, who has been credited with discovering the strange tribe, agrees with Bower 1 that he did not find them first He does, however, claim that he made the first study of the tribe and brought back to the outside world the first report of it's existence.
 According to Stefansson and Bower, ! Captain Klinkerberg, master of the WHdIluS SCnOOnoT OlSa 1Q 19UD push
 ed northwest to Victoria Land where he found the blond tribe. On his re- turn to the whaling base at HerscheI Island, an Arctic Ocean point he told of his findings. Stefansson, then at Herschel, heard KIfnkenberg's story and mediately went to Victoria where he made a, study of the natives. Bower claimed the "blond ESki- mos" are really blond. Stefansson does not go that far but says they have light gray, almost blue eyes and l a few have light hair and eyebrows. Bower pointed out that the blond 1 natives have round full eyes while the other Eskimos of the far north have the slant eyes of Asiatics.
 Tt looks as if the blond Eskimos' come from early Green1anders, orr Scandinavian stock of some kind, Bower said. 1T know they are not half white and half Eskimo because the half breed Eskimos have black eyes and black hair. These white ones have light eyes and light skin and hair. The old men of the tribe l have the same white features as the young.
 Bows and arrows are used by them, they know nothing about to- bacco and liquor, they make their fires with a sort of flint, they dress in skins, they spear their reindeer and club their fish, they won't eat out sider's food and they speeak a lan- guage similar to that of the Eskimo "They are hospitable, friendly and square, too square, I think. If you give them anything they are not sat isfied until they give you something in return. I gave one woman an empty baking powder tin and she immediately brought me big skin. 'FWe left a gun with them. Instead
 of using it to kill meat, the men seemed to think it was plaything for when I left they were shooting their
 bullets away at targets and wildly
 into the air. When they ran out of
 ammunition they probably turned the
 gun around and got some real use
 out of it a club
 Bower said he thought there were
 over 250 "blond Eskimos' on Vic
 torta Land. It is not very probable
 that they will ever be molested much
 by the outside world for Victoria,
 Land Is far off the usual run of
 traders and whalers go into the Arc
 tic no longer.
 Bower has served on whaling ves-
 sels in many parts of the north, and
 until his recent return to the States,
 had not been out of the Arctic for
 five years. On Sefansson' last trip he
 was steward on the schooner Polar
 Bear which Stefansson used for a
 time. Stefansson took Bower into
 the "blond Eskimo country.