ion. In nearly all other respects
the Indians of Canada had not emerged even from savagery to that stage
half way to civilization which is called barbarism.

These Canadian aborigines seem to have been few in number. It is
probable that, when the continent was discovered, Canada, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, contained about 220,000 natives--about half as
many people as are now found in Toronto. They were divided into tribes
or clans, among which we may distinguish certain family groups spread
out over great areas.

Most northerly of all was the great tribe of the Eskimos, who were
found all the way from Greenland to Northern Siberia. The name Eskimo
was not given by these people to themselves. It was used by the Abnaki
Indians in describing to the whites the dwellers of the far north, and
it means 'the people who eat raw meat.' The Eskimo called and still
call themselves the Innuit, which means 'the people.'

The exact relation of the Eskimo to the other races of the continent is
hard to define. From the fact that the race was found on both sides of
the Bering Sea, and that its members have dark hair and dark eyes, it
was often argued that they were akin to the Mongolians of China. This
theory, however, is now abandoned. The resemblance in height and colour
is only superficial, and a more careful view of the physical make-up of
the Eskimo shows him to resemble the other races of America far more
closely than he resembles those of Asia. A distinguished American
historian, John Fiske, believed that the Eskimos are the last remnants
of the ancient cave-men who in the Stone Age inhabited all the northern
parts of Europe. Fiske's theory is that at this remote period
continuous land stretched by way of Iceland and Greenland from Europe
to America, and that by this means the race of cave-men was able to
extend itself all the way from Norway and Sweden to the northern coasts
of America. In support of this view he points to the strangely
ingenious and artistic drawings of the Eskimos. These drawings are made
on ivory and bone, and are so like the ancient bone-pictures found
among the relics of the cave-men of Europe that they can scarcely be
distinguished.

The theory is only a conjecture. It is certain that at one time the
Eskimo race extended much farther south than it did when the white men
came to America; in earlier days there were Eskimos far south of Hudson
Bay, and perhaps even south of the Great Lakes.

As a