by a missionary of heathens, who, therefore, could not have developed this peaceful temper through the influence of Christianity.
Then came the Europeans. Without knowing or understanding the people or its requirements, they started from the assumption that it stood in need of improvement in every possible way, and consequently set to work to disturb and overturn the whole social order. They tried to force upon the Eskimos a totally new character, gave them, all in a moment, a new religion, and broke down their respect for their old customs and traditions, of course without being able to give them new ones in their place. The missionaries thought that they could make this wild, free people of hunters into a civilised Christian nation, without for a moment suspecting that at heart these people were in many respects more Christian than themselves, and, among other things, like so many primitive people, had put into practice the Christian doctrine of love (charity) very much more fully than any Christian nation. The Europeans, in short, conducted themselves in Greenland exactly as they are in the habit of doing wherever they come forward in the name of the Christian religion to 'make the poor heathen partakers in the blessings of eternal truth.'
Very characteristic of this view is the following
