Eskimos Are, as Robert Marshall

Eskimos are, as Robert Marshall states "a Mongol race, with the straight black hair, slant eyes, and dark irises which characterize that great division of the human family. They occupy a strip of country for the most part at the north of the Arctic Circle, extending from the East Cape of Siberia to Greenland. Their most northerly extremity is at Smith Sound in northern Greenland at about 80° Latitude, while their most southerly extension reaches into the lower Kuskokwim Valley in Alaska around Latitude 60°" (Marshall, 1972).Their habitation area extends over four countries: the United States, Canada, the U.S.S.R., and Greenland. The word Eskimo means "eaters of raw meat" and was used by the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada for these hardy neighbors of them who wore animal-skin clothing and were adept hunters. Their own term for themselves is Inuit, which means the "real people." The anthropologist Thomas Huxley defined the "Esquimaux race in on the Methods and Results of Ethnology (Huxley, 1865) " to be the indigenous peoples in the Arctic region of northern Canada and Alaska.

The Eskimo inhabit one of the most inclement regions of the world. Although some groups are settled on rivers and depend on fishing, and others follow inland caribou herds, most Eskimo traditionally have lived primarily as hunters of maritime mammals (seals, walrus, and whales), and the structure and ethos of their culture have always been fundamentally oriented to the sea. Particularly when compared to other hunting and gathering populations, Eskimo groups are justly famous for elaborate technologies, artisanship, and well-developed art. They live in small bands, in voluntary association under a leader recognized for his ability to provide for the group. Only the most personal property is considered private; any equipment reverts through disuse to those who have need for it. In the traditional Eskimo economy, the division of labor between the sexes was strict; men constructed homes and hunted, while the women took care of the homes. Their religion is imbued with a rich mythology, and shamanism has been practiced. The main institutional and psychological patterns of the culture -- religious, social, and economic -- are much the same.

There are some differences in traditional kinship systems, however, especially in the western regions, and the language is divided into two major dialectical groups, the Inupik speakers (Greenland to western Alaska) and the Yupik speakers (southwestern Alaska and Siberia).The languages of Eskimo groups are part of Eskimo-Aleut family. Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. Also called Eskaleut, it consists of the Eskimo languages (known as Inuit in the north of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland; as Yup' ik in the west of Alaska; and as Yuit in Siberia) on the one side, and the single Aleut language on the other. According to Joseph Greenberg's highly controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, "Eskimo-Aleut is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas, and represents a distinct wave of migration from Asia to the Americas." The Eskimos have an extremely rich vocabulary concerning their own traditional spheres of life (nature, weather, sea, fishing, handicraft, etc.). There is also a unique "language of the spirits" used by the shamans that is full of archaic words and metaphoric periphrasis.

The Russian influence first made itself felt in the 1930s. The Eskimo language was quickly infiltrated by unadapted Russian loanwords, bilingualism developed and the transition to Russian began. The influx of loanwords has stopped the operation of the flexible derivational system of Eskimo. The schooling, working and living environment is prevalently Russian now. In the 1960s there was a growing number of mixed marriages between Russians and the Eskimo, so the contact with the Russian language has acquired a direct and personal character. Now, in order to save the Eskimo language from complete extinction close and personal contacts with this language are necessary.