Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 239, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1912 — FINDS LOST COLONY Steffanson Tells Story of Discovery of Norsemen. [ARTICLE]

FINDS LOST COLONY

Steffanson Tells Story of Discovery of Norsemen.

Explorer Sees Kin of Scandinavians Who Were Last Heard of in 1412—Also Finds Strange Bear In Arctics.

Seattle.—Vilhjalmar Stefansson, after passing more than four years in arctic exploration, returned to Seattle by steamer from Nome, Alaska, and told of his discovery of what he believes to be the descendants of the Scandinavian colonists of Greenland who were last heard of In 1412. When trade with Greenland was resumed in the seventeenth century trace of the colonists had disappeared. With his • companion, Dr. R. M. Anderson of Forest. City, lowa, Stefansson made a valuable zoological and ethnological collection, which is on the steam whaler Belvedere with Dr. Anderson and will arrive In San Francisco the first week in November on the way to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Stefansson and Anderson went to the arctic In 1908 by way of Winnipeg, Edmonton and down the Mackenzie •river to its mouth. They were bound for Coronation Gulf, a region which Is marked uninhabited on Canadian maps and which they had been warned to avoid. Of the so-called white Eskimos he found at Coronation Gulf, Stefansson said:

“They were taller than the Greenland Eskimos, but not so tall as the Alaska Eskimos. They spoke Eskimo, though I thought. I detected some Norse words. I visited thirteen groups of these people, who number probably 2,000, and saw 1,000 of them. Ten of these groups or tribes had never come into contact with whites and had not even a tradition bf them.

“Between the country of the blond Eskimos and the Mackenzie is a barren strip 300 miles wide, which Is never crossed by Eskimos. The Eskimos west of the strip have no knowledge of Eskimos to the east. Those to the east know there are western Eskimos, but believe them savage cannibals. >

"Musk ox, polar bear and seals are abundant, and the blond Eskimos live well. Many of them have eyes as blue as my own. A great many of the men have sandy or red beards. They have no tradition of their ancestry.” Stetfansson passed the first winter at the mouth of Colville river, Alaska; the second at Cape Parry, the third on Gulf and Victoria Land, and the fourth at Cape Parry. In bis collection are the skins, skulls and leg bones of nineteen barren ground grizzly bears. Only one barren ground grizzly Is In any museum.