478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



principal products of the hunting of sea mammals. Walrus hides and 

 sealskins are used chiefly for the needs of the hunting people. Only 

 the fur seal, the polar bear, and the very rare sea otter supply pelts 

 that are marketable. 



The second branch of the overland hunting developed only since 

 the advent of Russian merchants and officers, or in the American 

 part of the Polar zone with the advent of English, American, and 

 Canadian traders. 



Three hundred years ago the northern countries were teeming with 

 costly sable and ermine. Now the hunting of such fur-bearing ani- 

 mals is greatly reduced. Squirrels and polar foxes alone go on 

 breeding, thanks to their wide distribution and fecundity. 



At all events, several grouf)s of hunters in the north exist in a 

 peculiar way. They can not get enough meat from the meat-supply- 

 ing species, so they live exclusively by hunting the fur bearers, chiefly 

 the squirrel. They sell the pelts, of whatever kind they succeed in 

 getting, and then buy some grain of the lowest quality which they 

 grind by hand grindstone and make into unleavened cakes. So these 

 hunters practically have passed from their natural economic state to 

 a condition in which exchange predominates. The Russian peasants 

 of the neighborhood live in a condition of natural economics, for 

 they consume the best part of their own harvest and sell only the 

 surplus of the product. 



I have tried to indicate five groups of natural conditions, one after 

 another, and the human culture developed in these surroundings on 

 the basis of the conditions as enumerated. Man in the north 

 lives wholly under the power of nature, and if we take three groups 

 of cultural phenomena — the material, the spiritual, and the social 

 culture — we notice that all of them are influenced with great force 

 and strictness by several groups of conditions mentioned above. 



I will cite two examples, referring, respectively, to the material 

 and the spiritual culture of the northern tribes. 



The first is connected with the question of fuel. Fuel is scarce 

 on the tundra and the inhabitants had to work out a method of heat- 

 ing without any fuel at all. The Chukchee, the Koryak, and the 

 Asiatic Eskimo have their sleeping room heated chiefly by the accu- 

 mulation of human natural heat, which can even be regulated by 

 accepting new guests or, in case of excessive temperature, by trying 

 to send away some who constitute the surplus. The Eskimo construct 

 for heating purposes an underground house with an inner sleeping 

 room, the protective walls of the underground room being made of 

 earth and sod. 



The Reindeer, and partly the Maritime Chukchee, construct their 

 huts and the inner sleeping rooms from the best reindeer skins. 

 This translation from one material into another reminds one of the 



