File:In the Alaskan wilderness (1917) (14797246153).jpg

Identifier: inalaskanwildern00gord (find matches)
Title: In the Alaskan wilderness
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: Gordon, G. B. (George Byron), 1870-1927
Subjects: Eskimo languages Alaska -- Description and travel
Publisher: Philadelphia : The John C. Winston Company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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him or to one of his family who wasabsent with his own family. Our things werethen carried up from the canoe and we were madeat home. The Sikmiut people we found more comelyand better kept than any we had seen. Thefirst thing that struck us was the diversity ofphysical type among the inhabitants of thisvillage, for though the Tinneh features and staturestood out distinctly in a majority, there weremany individuals in whom this type was greatlymodified and there was a third class of individualstotally unlike the Tinneh in features and in statureand who represented an Eskimo element. Thefirst class and the last were sharply distinguished. The second fact by which we were struck wasthat our new friends spoke a language that wasnot Tinneh but Innuit and that correspondedclosely to the language of the coast Eskimo.This I could recognize at once from the littleknowledge of Eskimo that I had acquired duringmy visit to the Bering Sea coast in 1905. Inow made good use of that small knowledgeno
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and also of Father Francis Barnums grammarand dictionary of the Innuit language. Thatadmirable study of the language of the Eskimoon the Western Coast of Alaska was a very greathelp from this point in our journey onwards.It made communication with the natives vastlyeasier and constituted a basis for inquiry inmany directions. In our efforts to communicatewith the Indians up river and at the lake we hadno such help, and besides, the Tinneh dialectsare more difficult than the Innuit. Indeed, thelatter is not only a very pleasant soundinglanguage, but it is simple in structure and doesnot offer any difficulties to our pronunciation.It can be written perfectly well by means of ouralphabet and when once learned it lends itselfto a great variety of expression. While the same may be true to a somewhatless extent of the Tinneh dialects, they are, Ibelieve, more difficult to our ear and harder tospeak correctly. The name of the Sikmiut village itself is Innuitin form, for the ending miut is th

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