fort

tween the primitive and the civilized. I expect then to take up the type of adaptation peculiarly characteristic of a modern civilized society, and thus to conclude my essay. I do not by any means undertake to explain anything and everything in the societal organization by a formula; I am trying to indicate the main and characteristic lines upon which societal evolution operates, and no more.

The Eskimo are a primitive people occupying an exceptional habitat under exceptional conditions of isolation. They are likely to show the human form of adaptation in terms approaching the lowest and simplest. Something the same might be said of any group of desertdwellers: the Australians, the Indians of southwestern United States, the Hyperboreans of Siberia, the Bushmen of Africa. Similarly isolated are mountain and plateau peoples, as in Tibet, or the inhabitants of inaccessible islands, as the Andamanese. Steppe and plains dwellers, as the Kirghiz, or the inhabitants of any other more open type of natural environment, being as a rule considerably less isolated, do not realize for us so good a "nature's experiment." And in what I have to say of the

Eskimo themselves I have reference rather to their former conditions, under extreme isolation, than to the present; for of late some of them, for instance in Alaska, have had their life-conditions altered, in this case by the introduction of the domesticated reindeer. The effect of such acculturation is analogous to the introduction of the horse among the Indians, elsewhere referred to.

The pursuit of the struggle for existence, in the polar desert, must be carried on within the conditions offered.2 Vegetable food can be had but in the smallest amounts, and there are no native condiments or intoxicants. Clothing must be of a single type as to materials, and the fact that it is worn for protection rather than ornament has led to the adoption of practically a single pattern. Shelter must be made out of the materials at hand; but these do not include any wood, at least for many of the groups, and

1 P. 158 above.

2 What is said here of the Eskimo is based chiefly upon the following ethnographical writings: Cranz, "Historie von Grönland"; Holm, "Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne"; Fries, "Grönland, dess Natur och Innevånare"; Nansen, "Eskimo Life"; Boas, "The Central Eskimo," in Bu. Amer. Ethnol., VI; Nelson, "Bering Strait Eskimo," in Bu. Amer. Ethnol., XVIII, pt. I; Murdoch, "Point Barrow Eskimo," in Bu. Amer. Ethnol., IX. Also Ranke, “Der Mensch," II; Ratzel, “History of Mankind," II.

so the house-builder is thrown back upon animal products (bones and skins) and snow. If the Eskimo's methods of supplying these three main needs of man are scrutinized, there can be nothing but astonishment at the cleverness displayed in adaptation and at the perfection of the result. Civilized man cannot better them much, and finds it necessary, when sojourning in the arctic regions, to adopt the Eskimo ways. This is one of the best proofs of the success of their adaptation.

This same perfection of adaptation appears all through the maintenance-mores. Consider the effectiveness of the tools and weapons, sledges and canoes, of the hunting and fishing methods, and how this is attained by the use of materials whose working-up would seem hopeless for these purposes to peoples much farther advanced in civilization. Here we should note that what is to us a much superior adaptation may be a maladaptation on the Eskimo stage. The introduction of the rifle among these childlike savages has led, in some cases, to indiscriminate slaughter of game in the most wasteful way. The pleasure of firing off the "thunder-tubes" and of killing has been succeeded by scarcity, want, and misery.

One of the necessities of the environment is the conservation and generation of heat. To conserve animal heat the clothing and shelter of the Eskimo are wonderfully adapted. Similarly the heat in the bodies of slain animals is made use of by the drinking of the blood of those recently killed. And the lamp, simple as it is, and the methods of expressing oil without heat, represent apt reactions of the mind upon a situation the overcoming of which alone enables human beings to live in the environment.

Recurring for a moment to the matter of shelter, we find in the summer shift to the skin tent an adaptation which, when it was once partially given up at the instigation of aliens whose mores led them to think that people must be sedentary to be civilized, proved itself to have been entirely expedient.1 Further, it is noteworthy that the use of snow for building purposes forced these people to adapt their architectural methods to the material, with the result that they developed the dome a form unparalleled among primitive peoples, since it was not imposed in the life-conditions elsewhere. Similarly, it may be added, the environment forced adaptation to the snow in the form of 1 Nansen, "Eskimo Life," p. 87.

snow-spectacles.

Each of these inventions and

practices is in the highest degree rational as we look at it after the act, because it represents so expedient an adaptation.

But let us extend the field of observation somewhat. In such an environment the relation of population to land is unique. The former is thin and scattered (not over 35,000 all across America), and the groups are small and segregated. The Law of Population1 demands it. This immediately alters the terms of the struggle for existence, for, in a sense, the social environment is removed. Hence the mores corresponding to this situation of isolation at once appear; and we find a virtual absence of war (though legends, probably originating while this people occupied a habitat less peculiar, refer to war) and of trade. Militancy on the one hand and commercialism on the other are nearly unrepresented. In particular there have developed the mores of peace, so that Eskimo who visited Europe and saw the evidences of militarism thought of sending missionaries there to inculcate the loftier mores of amity. The absence of trade caused the natives to remain strangers to its

1 P. 24 above.