The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1918-11-06
BLOND ESK|MOS
ARE ABOR|G|NES
Arctic Explorer Asserts
They Are a Pure Race and
Not Contaminated
STEFANSSON DID
NOT DISCOVER THEM
Study of Arctic Tribe-Know Moth
ing of Tobacco or Liquor and Are
Hospitable, Square and Friendly.


SEATTLE, Nov. 6..-s"Sure they re
blond Eskimos They are aborigines
living up in the white Arctic on Vic.
toria Land in their primeval state alb
solutely untouched by the outside
world s civilization They are com
pletely out of contact with everything
and, consequently, have none of our
improvements and also none of our
evils
w. j. Bower, known along the Arctic
coast as Levi Bower, one of the
very few men WHO have gone far from
the outside into the far northern al
most tabled land of the "blond Eski-
mos thus described them when he was
here recently.
And ! don I think it was Stefans-
son who first found them, = Bower as
serted. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, returned
Canadian Arctic explorer, who has been
credited with discovering the strange
tribe. agrees with Bower 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 out
side world the first report of its ex
stence,
According to Stefansson and Bowcf
4 Captain Klinkerberg. master of tin
whaling schooner Olga in 1905 pushed
northwest to Victoria Land where III
found the blond tribe. On his return
10 the whaling base at Herschel Island
an Arctic Ocean point. he told of his
findings Stefansson, then at Herschel,
heard Klinkerberg 5 story and immedi
ately went TO Victoria where he made
a study of the natives.
Bower claimed the blond Eskimos"
ire really blond Stefansson does not
20 that far but says they have light
gray, almost blue eyes and few have
light hair and eyebrows Bower point
ID out that the blond natives have
-ound full eyes while the other Eskimos
# the far north have the slant eyes of
Asiaties.
II looks as if the blond Eskimos
'ome from early Grcenlanders, or Sean
linavan stock OF some kind, Bower
aid. 4 know they are not half
White and half Eskimo because the
Ialf breed EskimoS have black eyes
nd black hair. These white ones have
light skin and hair. The old men of
he tribe have the same white features
IS the young.
They are hospitablc. friendly and
quarc, too square, think If vc,,
i've them anything they are not salts.
led until they give you something in
retnrn. | gave one woman an empty
baking powder tin and she immediately
brought me a bic skin
: We left gun with them. Instead
If using it to kin meat. the men seemed
thing it was a plavthing for when |
| eft they were shooting their bullets
way at, targets and wildly into the
'ir When they ran out of ammunition
hey probably turned the gun around
| md got some real use out of il as a
alub.
Bower said he thought there were go
blond EskimoS ON Victoria Land
Il is not very probable that they will
over be molested much by the outside
world for Victoria Land is far off the
usual run of traders and whalers 90
nto the Arctic no longer
Bower has served on whaling vessels
n many parts of the north. and until
MS recent return to the States, had not
been out of the Arctic for five wears
On Stefansson's last trip he was a
'teward on the schooner Polar Bcal
which Stcfansson used for time
Stefanssou took Bower into the
blond Eskimo country