When we, however, remember that the Eskimo once ranged
as far south as Massachusetts, that they did not reach Greenland till
the fourteenth century, that they had for three centuries intimate
relations with Scandinavians, that they were very fond of legends, and
that the Wabanaki even now mingle with them, the marvel would be that
the Norsemen had not left among them traces of their tales or of their
religion. But I do not say that this was positively the case; I simply
set forth in this book a great number of curious coincidences, from
which others may draw their own conclusions. I confess that I cannot
account for these resemblances save by the so-called "historical
theory" of direct transmission; but if any one can otherwise explain
them I should welcome the solution of what still seems to be, in many
respects, a problem.
I am, in fact, of the opinion that what is given in this work confirms
what was conjectured by David Crantz, and which is thus expressed in
his History of Greenland (London, 1767): "If we read the accounts which
have been given of the most northerly American Indians and Asiatic
Tartars, we find a pretty great resemblance between their manner of
life, morals, usages, and notions and what has been said in this book
of the Greenlanders, only with this difference: that the farther the
savage nations wandered towards the North, the fewer they retained of
their ancient conceptions and customs.
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