Abstract
MB. SPECK'S investigations have shown that the Naskapi-Montagnais are well worthy of study. Owing to the conditions of their environment the margin between existence and extinction is extremely narrow in fact so narrow, that on occasion they have been forced to resort to cannibalism. Like the Eskimo, they appear to have established a state of equilibrium between environment and mode of life which has enabled them to survive, though precariously. Hence their culture, that of a purely hunting people, affords evidence of having been static over a long period. Variation would tend to extinction rather than survival and advance. Probably this state of equilibrium was attained very soon after their migration and settlement in their present location. This would account for the tenacity with which the people cling to their all-important animal cults, notwithstanding their ready acceptance, superficially, of the tenets of Christianity. In the character of these animal cults, in which the bear figures prominently, they show, more perhaps than any other Amerindian group, affinities with north-east Asia.
Naskapi:
the Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula. By Frank G. Speck. Pp. 248 + 20 plates. (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935.) 3.50 dollars.
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Anthropology and Ethnology. Nature 137, 443 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137443c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137443c0