Abstract
CONSIDERABLE interest has been aroused by the announcement made by M. Vilhjalmar Stefansson (see NATURE of August 22, p. 644), communicated to the Press through Reuter on September 10, that he had discovered a tribe—or, to be more accurate, thirteen tribes—of white Eskimos living in the neighbourhood of Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island. It is stated that ten of these tribes had never heard of white people—other than themselves. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that this fair complexion is derived from the intercourse, so frequent in recent times, between Eskimos and the men of whaling ships. The telegraphed account states that “M. Stefansson believes the white Eskimos are descendants of the colony which set out from Norway to Greenland some time after the discovery of that, island. Ethnologically, the white Eskimos bear not a single trace of the Mongolian type, differing in the shape of the skull and general features, colour of eyes, and texture of hair, which in many cases is red. They spoke Eskimo, though the explorer thought he detected some Norse words. They probably numbered two thousand. Many of them had perfectly blue eyes and blonde eyebrows”
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MACRITCHIE, D. A Tribe Of White Eskimos. . Nature 90, 133 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/090133b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/090133b0
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