ment of the human intellect, and never has this been expressed better or more nobly than in the words placed over this introduction. They ought to form the starting point of all ethnographical philosophy.
Documentary evidence and criticism. If it is only possible to extract such sparse knowledge of the Caribou Eskimos from historical, literary sources, it is not really a result of there only having been little opportunity of learning to know them. Many tribes in different parts of the world, with which we have long been familiar, live in places that have been discovered much later than those we are now dealing with. It is more nearly a result of the systematically worked secretiveness carried on by the Hudson's Bay Company in these regions, especially in the eighteenth century. In addition, among the whites who had an opportunity of collecting information there were only few such interested and highly educated men as the Egede's, Cranz, Glahn, Fabricius and others who created the classical reputation of Greenland. Finally, it must not be overlooked that when the sense for scientific expeditions awoke, these were more attracted by the more northern regions, and the Caribou Eskimos' territory, which had no great, outstanding discoveries to offer, and which mostly lay outside the sphere of the Franklin searches, remained until the present day an almost unknown lacuna.
At first the prospects seemed otherwise. It is true that this region lies in an out-of-the-way corner of the world, at the extreme edge of the inhabited earth; but to it leads directly one af the roads which lay marked out and tempting when the great discoveries had thrown open the door to European civilisation. All were convinced that this road must lead to the treasure chambers of India and Cathay. That it was a blind alley — at any rate from a trade point of view — naturally could not be sensed beforehand. Of the nations, Great Britain and the Netherlands, who were most interested in a discovery which could strike a mortal blow at the world-wide empire of Spain and Portugal, it was the former who took the lead in the struggle for the Northwest Passage. When Henry Hudson in 1610 had discovered the bay which now bears his name, the fmding of a northwest passage seemed certain, and in 1612 Sir Thomas Button was sent out principally for the purpose of making that discovery.
Button's route was the first to touch the land of the Caribou Eskimos, he having followed the west coast of Hudson Bay. After his and Hudson's journeys, the stretch between Nelson River and Cape
duct on the part of the great mass of men, is at all possible to creatures that have been evolved from the animal world, whose nature bears so many of the marks of this animal origin, and whose principal springs of activity are essentially similar to those of the higher animals." (McDougall 1924; 18).
