measure out the Caribou Eskimo territory in square kilometres, as a region that is inhabited one year may be empty next year; but if we take the territory that is more or less regularly inhabited or travelled in connection with hunting, we arrive, as quite a rough result, at about 185,000 sq. km, or an area of the size of two-thirds of Italy and more than the New England states combined. If we take only the region from which we have definite figures of the population, it is limited to about 160,000 sq. km, which serve as a home for 437 people. This gives a density of population of one person to about 365 sq. km, or barely 0.003 to one sq. km, a figure which just corresponds to what Ratzel assumes for "Jäger- und Fischervölker in den vorgeschobensten Gebieten der Ökumene".[1]
It would be uselesss to compare this result with, for instance, European conditions, as we have to do with quite another culture than ours. It is of more interest to try to make comparisons with other Eskimo territories. The ice-free part of West Greenland measures 116,000 sq. km and is thus considerably less than the land of the Caribou Eskimos, but nevertheless has 13,847 inhabitants (1923), or more than thirty times as many. The density of population in West Greenland is almost 0.12 per sq. km. In Alaska the density is also much greater than on the Barren Grounds, but is not now suitable for comparison, because the un-national reindeer breeding has disturbed matters.[2] This striking difference in the density of population between various Eskimo regions has undoubtedly to some extent had historical causes; the geography of the countries, however, has also had some effect. With the uncertain caribou hunting in the interior each hunter requires a greater area than those hunting sea mammals and pursuing sea-fishing, which permit of much more concentration.
Settlements. The character of the habitations of a country is dependent upon many factors, which F. von Richthofen places under three categories: man himself (i. e. stage of culture, physical demands, etc.), natural conditions and, finally, at a later phase of development, matters of a higher kind such as state, communications and the like.[3] Here we can entirely ignore this latter category. It therefore seems clearer in this connection to differentiate between historical and geo-
- ↑ Ratzel 1909–12; II 173.
- ↑ As a matter of fact, comparison with Greenland is also unsatisfactory, because the Greenlander above all makes use of the sea and not the land. In an anthropogeographic section of the work Greenland (Vol. II) I have therefore calculated the density of population in proportion to the coast line and, for the inhabited regions, found 0.51 per kilometre coast line as an average. Of most interest would be a comparison with the inland population in the Colville district before the introduction of the domesticated reindeer; unfortunately there is not sufficient data.
- ↑ F. v. Richthofen 1908; 122.
