ESKIMO

any member of a group of peoples who, with the closely related Aleut, constitute the chief element in the native population of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Greenland, Alaska, Canada, and far eastern Russia (Siberia). Self-designations vary among the languages and dialects of the Eskimo peoples. They include such names as Inuit, Inupiat, Yupik, and Alutiit, each of which is a regional variant of the people or the real people. The name Eskimo, which has been applied to Arctic peoples by Europeans and others since the 16th century, originated in Montagnais, an Algonquian language. (Once erroneously thought to mean eaters of raw flesh, the name, though still somewhat obscure, is now believed to make reference to snowshoes.) The Arctic peoples of Canada and Greenland in general prefer the term Inuit, while those of Alaska still generally favour the term Eskimo. The oldest known Eskimo culture is that from a site on Umnak Island in the Aleutians, for which an age of 3,018 (plus or minus 230) years was recorded. In the late 20th century there were an estimated 117,000 self-described Eskimo: some 51,000 in Greenland and Denmark, 43,000 in Alaska, 21,000 in Canada, and about 1,600 in Siberia. The Eskimo are an Asian people who are distinguishable from the American Indians by their more Asian features, by the relative smallness of their hands and feet, and by a few less obvious traits. Another distinguishing feature of the Eskimo is the appreciable percentage of the B blood type (ABO system), which seems to be totally absent from the American Indians. Because blood type is a very stable hereditary trait, it is believed that at least a part of the Eskimo population is of different origin from the Indians and that they are not, as scholars earlier thought, merely an Indian people who developed separately in the far north. The Eskimo-Aleut languages, of which there exist many dialects owing to the wide geographic area occupied by the Eskimo and Aleut, support this theory. Traditional Eskimo culture was totally adapted to an extremely cold, snow- and icebound environment in which vegetable foods were almost nonexistent, trees were scarce, and caribou, seal, walrus, and whale meat, whale blubber, and fish were the major food sources. The Eskimo used harpoons to kill seals, which they hunted either on the ice or from skin-covered, one-person canoes known as kayaks. Whales were hunted using larger boats called umiaks. In the summer most Eskimo families hunted caribou and other land animals with the help of bows and arrows. Dogsleds were the basic means of transport on land. Eskimo clothing was fashioned of caribou furs, which provided protection against the extreme cold. Most Eskimo wintered in either snow-block houses called igloos or semisubterranean houses of stone or sod over wooden or whalebone frameworks. In summer many Eskimo lived in animal-skin tents. Their basic social and economic unit was the nuclear family, and their religion was animistic. Eskimo life changed greatly in the 20th century owing to increased contacts with societies to the south. Snowmobiles have generally replaced dogs for land transport, and rifles have replaced harpoons for hunting purposes. Outboard motors, store-bought clothing, and numerous other manufactured items have entered the culture, and money, unknown in traditional Eskimo economy, has become a necessity. Many Eskimo have abandoned their nomadic hunting pursuits to move into northern towns and cities or to work in mines and oil fields. Others, particularly in Canada, have formed cooperatives to market their handicrafts, fish catches, and ventures in tourism. See also Arctic.