Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/146

 Behring Straits and landed in Alaska. This theory is based upon the fact that a similarity is traced between the Eskimo language and the dialects of some of the Mongolian tribes of northern Asia. A certain Eskimo tradition would rather tend to bear out this theory. It is something like this: A very long time ago there were two brothers made by the beaver and placed on an island in the Western Sea. There they lived and fed upon birds which they caught with their hands, but at length food grew scarce, and the brothers, being hungry, fought for the birds they had taken. This quarrel led to a separation, and one brother went to live in the western portion of our "Great North Land," and became the father of the Eskimos in that region; while the other went still farther east, and became the father of the natives of Hudson Bay and Straits.

The range of the Eskimos is very large, extending completely across the northern part of North America—toward the south, to about the sixtieth parallel of latitude, west of Hudson Bay, but east of the bay, to about the fifty-fifth parallel; while toward the north their range is almost unlimited. They are a very thinly scattered race, roving in small bands over great treeless wildernesses.

My first meeting with the Eskimos led me to think them a wild people. There were thirty-six of them, all women and children, piled into one of their "oomiacks," or skin boats, and all were whooping and yelling at the top of their voices, while those not paddling were swinging their arms (and legs, too) in the wildest manner. They were natives of Prince of Wales Sound, Hudson