Note 84 — Chapter III · The Savage State of the Industrial Arts

The Eskimo are placed in circumstances that are in some respects similar to those presumed to have conditioned the life of the blond race and its hybrids during the early phases of its life-history, and among the traits that have made for the survival of the Eskimo is undoubtedly to be counted the somewhat genial good-fellowship of that race, coupled as it is with a notable disinclination to hostilities. So also the Indians of the North-West Coast, whose situation perhaps parallels that of the neolithic Baltic culture more closely even than the Eskimo, are not among the notably warlike peoples of the earth, although they undoubtedly show more of a predatory animus than their northern neighbours. In this case it is probably safe to say that their technological achievements have in no degree been furthered by such warlike enterprise as they have shown, and that their comfort and success as a race would have been even more marked if they had been gifted with less of the warlike spirit and had kept the peace more consistently throughout their habitat than they have done.—Cf. Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Report, 1884–1885; The same, “The Secret Societies and Social Organisation of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report, National Museum, 1895; A. P. Niblack, “Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia,” ibid, 1888.