The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies Part 24

But this raises their value in the eyes of the ethnologist; and the very fact of their possessing certain characteristics, in a comparatively slight degree, makes them all the fitter for ill.u.s.trating the phenomena of _transition_.

Previous, however, to this, we must get our other _extreme_. This is to be found in the ethnology of--

_The Eskimo._--It is a very easy matter for an artistic ethnologist to make some fine light-and-shade contrasts between two populations, where he has an Iroquois or a Sioux at one end, and an Eskimo of Labrador at the other. An oblique eye, bleared and sore from the glare of the snow, with a crescentic fold overshadowing the _caruncula lacrymalis_, surmounted by a low forehead and black s.h.a.ggy locks, with cheek-bones of such inordinate development as to make the face as broad as it is long, are elements of ugliness which catch the imagination, and produce a caricature, where we want a picture. And they are elements of ugliness which can be acc.u.mulated. We may add to them, a nose so flat, and cheeks so fleshy, as for a ruler, placed across the latter, to leave the former untouched. We may then notice the state of the teeth, from the mastication of injurious substances; and having thus exhausted nature, we may revert to the deformities of art. We may observe that wherever there is a fleshy portion of the face that can be perforated by a stone knife, or pierced by a whalebone, there will be tattooing and incisions; and that wherever there are incisions, bones, nails, feathers, and such like ornaments will be inserted. All this is the case. What European ladies do with their ears, the Eskimo does with the cartilage of his nose, the lips, the corners of his mouth, and the cheeks. More than this--in the lower lip, parallel to the mouth, and taking the guise of a mouth additional, a slit is made quite through the lip, large enough to allow the escape of spittle and the protrusion of the tongue. The insertion of a sh.e.l.l or bone, cut into the shape of teeth, completes the adornment.

Then comes the question of colour. The Indian has a tinge of red; a tinge which enables us to compare his skin to _copper_. The Eskimo is simply brown, swarthy, or tawny.

Again, the Eskimo hold periodical fairs. Whales are scarce in the south, and wood in the north of Greenland; and in consequence of this, there are regular meetings for the business of barter. This gives us the elements of commercial industry; elements which must themselves be taken in conjunction with the maritime habits of the people. What stronger contrast can we find to all this than the gloomy isolation of the hunters of the prairie-countries, whether Sioux, Iroquois, or Algonkin?

Again, it is safe, in the way of intellectual capacity, to give the Eskimo credit for ingenuity and imitativeness. The Indian, of the type which we have chosen to judge him by, is pre-eminently indocile and inflexible.

Yet all this, with much more besides, is capable of great qualification--qualification which we find necessary, whether we look to the extent to which the Eskimos approach the Indian, or the Indian the Eskimo--each receding from its own more extreme representative.

The prominence of the nasal bones is certainly common amongst the Red Indian tribes; and rare amongst the Eskimo. Yet it is neither universal in the one, nor non-existent in the other. Oval features, a mixture of red in the complexion, an aquiline nose, have all been observed amongst the more favoured of the Circ.u.mpolar men and women.

In respect, too, to stature, the Eskimo is less remarkable for inferiority than is generally supposed. His bulky, baggy dress makes him look square and short. Measurements, however, correct this impression.

Men of the height of five feet ten inches have been noticed as particular specimens--better grown individuals than their fellows. And men under five feet have also been noticed for the contrary reasons.

Numerous measurements, however, give about five feet as the height of an Eskimo woman, and five feet six inches as that of a man. This is more than so good an authority as Mr. Crawfurd gives to the Malays; whose person is squat, and whose average stature does not exceed five feet three or four inches. It is more, too, than Sir R. Schomburgk gives the Guiana Indians, as may be seen from the following table:--

+---------------+-------+-------------+ | | Aged. | ft. in. | +---------------+-------+-------------+ | _Wapisianas._ | 12 | 4 8-5/10 | | | 15 | 4 6 | | | 16 | 5 1-1/10 | +---------------+-------+-------------+ | _Tarumas._ | 14 | 4 11-3/10 | +---------------+-------+-------------+ | _Mawackas._ | 15 | 4 10 | | | 16} | 4 9-5/10 | | | 17} | | +---------------+-------+-------------+ | _Atorais._ | 35 | 5 1-5/10 | | | 15 | 5 1 | +---------------+-------+-------------+ | _Macusis._ | 14} | 4 8 | | | 15} | | | | 14 | 5 0 | +---------------+-------+-------------+

It is more than the average of several other populations.

Neither is the Eskimo skull so wholly different from the American. It is, probably, larger in its dimensions; so that its cavity contains more cubic inches. The measurements, however, which suggest this view, are but few. On the other hand, the relations between the _width_ and the _depth_ of the skull, are considered important and distinctive.

By _width_ is meant the number of inches from side to side, from one parietal bone to the other; in other words, the _parietal diameter_.

_Depth_ signifies the length of the _occipito-frontal_ diameter, or the number of inches from the forehead to the back of the skull.

Now, in one out of four of the Eskimo crania examined by Dr. Morton, the parietal diameter so nearly approaches the occipito-frontal as for the skull in question to be as much as 54 inches in width, and as little as 57 in depth; a measurement which makes the Eskimo brain almost as broad as it is long. _Valeat quantum._ It is an extreme specimen. The remainder are as 55 to 73; as 51 to 75; and as 5 to 67, proportions by no means exclusively Eskimo, and proportions which occur in very many of the undeniably American stocks.

Likeness there is; and variety there is;--likeness in physical feature, likeness in language, and likeness in the general moral and intellectual characteristics. And then there is variety--variety in all the details of their arts; variety in their bows, their canoes, their dwellings, their fashions in the way of incisions and tattooings, and their fashions in the dressing of their hair.

This is as much as can be said about the Eskimo at present. It is, however, preparatory to the general statement that _all the remaining_ Indians of British North America recede from the Sioux and Iroquois type, and approach that of the family in question. Such, indeed, has been the case, though (perhaps) in a less degree, with one of the cla.s.ses already considered--the Athabaskan.

_The Koluch._--The extreme west of the British possessions beyond the Rocky Mountains, _north_ of lat.i.tude 55 is but imperfectly known.

Indeed, for scientific, and, perhaps, for political purposes as well, the country is unfortunately divided. The Russians have the long but narrow strip of coast; and, consequently, limit their investigations to its bays and archipelagoes. The British, on the contrary, though they possess the interior, have no great interest in the parts about the Russian boundary. In the way of trade, they are not sufficiently on the sea for the sea-otter, nor near enough the mountains for other fur-bearing animals.

Now, the mouth of the Stikin River is Russian, the head-waters British.

Beyond these, we have the water-system of the McKenzie--for that river, although falling into the Arctic Sea, has a western fork, which breaks through the barrier of the Rocky Mountains, and changes in direction from west and south-west to north. Lake Simpson, Lake Dease, and the River Turnagain belong to this branch; the tract in which they lie being a range of highlands, if not of mountains.

This is the country of the Nehannis; conterminous on the south with that of the Takulli, and on the north-east with that of the Dahodinni. How far, however, it extends towards the Russian boundary and in the north-west direction I cannot say.

The Nehannis are, probably, the chief British representatives of the cla.s.s called Koluch.[75] a.s.suming this--although from the want of a special Nehanni vocabulary, the philological evidence is wanting--I begin with the notice of the _Nehannis_, as known to the Hudson's Bay Company, and afterwards superadd a sketch of the _Sitkans_, as known to the Russians of New Archangel; the two notices together giving us the special description of a family, and the general view of the cla.s.s to which that family belongs.

That the Nehannis are brave, warlike, and turbulent, is no more than is expected. We are far beyond the lat.i.tude of the peaceful Eskimo. That they are ruled by a woman should surprise us. Such, however, is the case. A female rules them--and rules them, too, with a rod of iron.

Respect for s.e.x has here attained its height. It had begun to be recognized amongst the Athabaskans.

The Nehannis are strong enough to rob; but they are also civilized enough to barter; buying of the inland tribes, and selling to the Russians--a practice which seems to divert the furs of British territory to the markets of Muscovy. But this is no business of the ethnologist's.

They are slavers and slave-owners; ingenious and imitative; fond of music and dancing; fish-eaters; active in body; bold and treacherous in temper; and with the common Koluch physiognomy and habits.

_These_ we must collect from the descriptions of the Russian Koluches--the locality where they have been best studied being Sitka Sound, or New Archangel. We must do it, however, _mutatis mutandis_, _i.e._, remembering that the Sitkans are Koluch of an Archipelago, the Nehanni Koluch of a continent.

The Koluch complexion is light; the hair long and lank; the eyes black; and the lip and chin often bearded.

The _Konaegi_ are the natives of the island Kadiak. Now Lisiansky, from whom the chief details of the Sitkan Koluch are taken, especially states that, with few exceptions, their manners and customs are those of these same Konaegi; one of the minor points of difference being the greater liveliness of the Sitkans, and one of the more important ones, their treatment of the dead. They _burn_ the bodies (as do the Takulli Athabaskans) and deposit the ashes in wooden boxes placed upon pillars, painted or carved, more or less elaborately, according to the wealth of the deceased.

On the death of a _toyon_, or chief, one of his slaves is killed and burned with him. If, however, the deceased be of inferior rank the victim is _buried_. If the death be in battle, the head, instead of being burned, is kept in a wooden box of its own. But it is not with the shaman as with the warrior. The shaman is merely interred; since he is supposed to be too full of the evil spirit to be consumed by fire. The reason why burning is preferred to burying is because the possession of a piece of flesh is supposed to enable its owner to do what mischief he pleases.

_Now the Konaegi are admitted Eskimo._

Notwithstanding the similarity between the Sitkans and Konaegi there is no want of true American customs amongst them. Cruelty to prisoners, indifference to pain when inflicted on themselves, and the habit of scalping are common to the Indians of King George's Archipelago, and those of the water-system of the Mississippi. On the other hand, they share the skill in painting and carving with the Chenuks and the aborigines of the Oregon.

_The Digothi._--The Dahodinni are Athabaskan rather than Koluch; the Nehanni Koluch rather than Athabaskan. Now I imagine that the Dahodinni country is partially encircled by Koluch populations, and that a fresh branch of this stock re-appears when we proceed northwards. On the Lower McKenzie, in the valley of the Peel River, and at the termination of the great Rocky Range on the sh.o.r.e of the Polar Sea, we find the _Digothi_ or _Loucheux_; the only family not belonging to the Eskimo cla.s.s, which comes in contact with the ocean; and, consequently, the only unequivocally Indian population which interrupts the continuity of the Eskimo from Behring's Straits to the Atlantic. Perhaps the alluvium of a great river like the McKenzie, has determined this displacement. Such an occupancy would be as naturally coveted by an inland population, as undervalued by a maritime one. At any rate, the Loucheux have the appearance of being an encroaching tenantry; indeed, few Indians have had their physical appearance described in terms equally favourable.

Black-haired and fair-complexioned, with fine sparkling eyes, and regular teeth, they approach the Nehanni in physiognomy, and surpa.s.s them in stature. The same authority which expressly states that the Nehanni are not generally tall, speaks to the athletic proportions and tall stature of the Loucheux; adding that their countenances are handsome and expressive.

Whence came they? From the south-east, from Russian America. Their points of contrast to the Eskimo indicate this. Their points of contrast to the Athabaskans indicate it also. Their points of similarity to the Koluch do more. The Loucheux possessive p.r.o.noun is the same as the Kenay. Thus--

ENGLISH. LOUCHEUX. KENAY.

_My_-son _se_-jay _ssi_-ja.

_My_-daughter _se_-zay _ssa_-za.

Fuller descriptions, however, of both the Loucheux and Nehanni are required before we can decidedly p.r.o.nounce them to be Koluch; indeed, so high an authority as Gallatin places the latter amongst the Athabaskans.

_The Fall Indians._--In a MS. communicated by Mr. Gallatin to Dr.

Prichard, and, by the latter kindly lent to myself, and examined by me some years back, was a vocabulary of the language of the Indians of the Falls of the Saskatchewan. In this their native name was written _Ahnenin_. Mr. Hale, however, calls them _Atsina_. Which is correct is difficult to say.

_Gros ventres_ is another of their designations; _Minetari of the Prairie_ another. This last is inconvenient, as well as incorrect, since the true _Minetari_ are a Sioux tribe, different in language, manners, and descent.

_Arrapaho_ is a third synonym; and this is important, since there are other _Arrapahoes_ as far south as the Platte and Arkansas Rivers.

The ident.i.ty of name is _prima facie_ evidence of two tribes so distant as those of Arkansas and the Saskatchewan being either offsets from one another, or else from some common stock; but it is not more. Nothing can be less conclusive. This has just been shown to be in the case of the term _Minetari_.

The Ahnenin, or Atsina language is peculiar; though the confederacy to which the Indians who speak it belong, is the Blackfoot.

Of the southern Arrapaho we have no vocabulary; neither do we know whether the name be native or not.

A tract still stands over for notice. As we have no exact northern limits for the Nehanni, no exact western ones for the Dahodinni, and no exact southern ones for the Loucheux, the parts due east of the Russian boundary are undescribed.

I can only _contribute_ to the ethnology here.

_The Ugalentses._--Round Mount St. Elias we have a population of _Ugalentses_ or Ugalyakhmutsi. Though said to consist of less than forty families,[76] as their manners are migratory, it is highly probable that some of them are British.

_The Tshugatsi_.--In contact with the Ugalents, who are transitional between the true Eskimo and the true Koluch, the Tshugatsi are unequivocally Eskimo. The parts about Prince William's Sound are their locality.