Ethnography of Bussian America. 41 



culty involved in the classifications of the tribes enumerated, 

 along with several others in the same territory, has suggested 

 itself to the mind of the reader : viz. the position of the unde- 

 termined tribes, and the relations of the Esquimaux and the 

 Kolooch groups to each other. These problems seem capa- 

 ble of being solved by means of the evidence of languages. 

 Previous, however, to the enumeration of our data upon this 

 point, it must be observed, that members of a third ethnogra- 

 phical division, in all probability, 'form part of the native po- 

 pulation of Russian America. From the Lake Athabasca, as 

 a centre, to the Atlantic on one hand, and to the Pacific on the 

 other, languages of this gi'oup are spoken ; so that the Atha- 

 bascan area in its extension from east to west, is second only 

 to the Esquimaux. Now both the Kolooch and Esquimaux 

 languages have fundamental affinities with the Athabascan, 

 and vice versa ; whilst it is generally the case in Ethnology, 

 that two languages radically connected with a third, are also 

 radically connected with each other. With this premise, we 

 may enumerate in detail, our data in the way of philology. 

 This method wdll introduce new names and new localities, 

 since we have often vocabularies where we have nothing else 

 besides. 



1. Beechey's Esquimaux. — The most northern specimen of 

 the western Esquimaux. Spoken in Kotzebue"'s Sound. 



2. The Aglimut vocabulary of the Altas Ethnographique. 



3. The Esquimaux of the Island of St Lawrence. — Ibid. 



4. The Asiatic Esquimaux of the Tchuktchi of Tchuktchi- 

 Noss. Klaproth's Asia Polyglotta. 



5. The Asiatic Esquimaux of the Tchuktchi of the mouth 

 of the river Anadyr. — Ibid. 



6. The Esquimaux of Norton Sound. — Cook's Voyages. 



7. The Kuskokwimer vocabulary of Baer's Beitrage. 



8. A vocabulary for the Island of Nuniwock in the Atlas 

 Ethnographique, is unequivocally Esquimaux. So also are 

 the dialects of the Peninsula of Aliaska. Having seen, how- 

 ever, no vocabulary, I am unable to state whether they most 

 resemble those of the Aleutian Islands, (a prolongation of its 

 western extremity), or of those of the Island Cadiack on its 

 south-eastern side. At any rate, the languages akin to the 



