ht of men on horseback. It is
the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives
were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and
deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]

[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skraelings."]

These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon
the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between
civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of
barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The
Northmen called them "Skraelings," a name which one is at first sight
strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skraekja_, identical
with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most
appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is
not correct. The word _skraeling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means
a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in
all probability correct, that the name "Skraelings," as applied to the
natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant
"inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion
that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually
applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that
Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since
his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much
ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however,
that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in
meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely
to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice
in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians
"savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and
so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging
epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.

[Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection
may be classed with Europeans), must have met with some such
people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of
Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]

[Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all
noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Cronica del Peru_,
cap. xxiii.]