CHAPTER VII
The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries.
It is evident that the ESKIMO--who are quite distinct from the
Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries--have
been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of _Eskimantsik_, a
northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
five hundred miles--from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
Greenland--the difference in their dialects is little more than that
between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
of one Amerindian tribe and another--even where they belong to the
same language group--is very great--not less than that between German
and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
Hindustani.
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