X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 3/5 



the Arctic marine fauna bearded seal, walrus, Greenland whale, 

 narwhal, swordfish, polar bear, are everywhere the same. So also 

 the kayak and all its belongings are identically named in the 

 eastern and western dialects, showing that not only the language, 

 but the industries, usages, and it may be added many myths and 

 beliefs, were much the same as at present 1 . Yet, according to 

 Fru Signe Rink, some of the national folklore would carry us 

 back to an immensely remote epoch, when the Eskimo people, 

 already fully specialised, were still in direct relation not only with 

 the Siberian aborigines, but even with the " Hairy Ainu " them- 

 selves 2 . 



Here is again raised the whole question of racial affinities, 

 or at least close contact and direct intercourse, 

 based on the evidence of like usages, arts, religious s y em*. 

 notions, traditions, legendary matter and everything 

 comprised under the expression folklore. That great similarities, 

 and even identities, do exist in all these respects between the 

 North American, the Siberian, and other aborigines is undeniable. 

 Cases in point are the vapour-baths produced by red-hot stones, 

 which follow the Arctic circle with much southing from Lapland 

 round to Alaska and down the north-west coast ; several creation 

 and procreation myths ; a common belief in good and bad spirits, 

 with a vague conception, and that borrowed, of a really Supreme 

 being ; religion mostly at the shamanistic stage, though with 

 considerable differences ; magic practices and jugglery associated 

 with sickness and witchcraft. 



But when all this, and much more of a like order, is carefully 

 analysed, it is found to establish little beyond the psychic unity 

 of man, with the accepted fact that America received some of its 

 primitive inhabitants from Asia during the New Stone Age, that is, 

 when the migrating peoples had already reached a certain degree 

 of mental culture. It will never prove, for instance, that the Aleuts 

 are Japanese, the Thlinkits Yakuts, the Eskimauans Tunguses, the 

 Kwakiutls Gilyaks, or that there has been any direct contact 

 between these several groups since the New Stone Age. It is a 



1 Op. dt. ii. p. 10. 



' 2 The Girl and the Dogs, an Eskimo Folk-tale, Amer. Anthropologist, June 

 and July, 1898. 



