There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there.

As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved the whole tribe from the formerly ever-present danger of starvation for a family, or even an entire village.
There is a theory, first advanced by Sir Clements Markham, ex-president of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that the Eskimos are the remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon; that the last members of this tribe were driven out on the Arctic Ocean by the fierce waves of Tartar invasion in the Middle Ages, and that they found their way to the New Siberian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet undiscovered to Grinnell Land and Greenland.

I am inclined to believe in the truth of this theory for the following reasons: Some of the Eskimos are of a distinctly Mongolian type, and they display many Oriental characteristics, such as mimicry, ingenuity, and patience in mechanical duplication.

There is a strong resemblance between their stone houses and the ruins of the houses found in Siberia.

The Eskimo girl brought home by Mrs.Peary, in 1894, was mistaken by Chinamen for one of their own people.