392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



tained connections with the south, however, since Geist " found a 

 whetstone of Kobuk River nephrite in Old Bering Sea remains on 

 St. Lawrence Island. The other branch colonized the coastline of 

 Siberia southward from East Cape and either then or later estab- 

 lished a few outposts on St. Lawrence Island. Subsequently, I 

 suspect, the southern colony on the Siberian shore below Bering 

 Strait, powerfully stimulated by a yet more southern source (ulti- 

 mately, it ma}^ be, from China), revolutionized its style of art, and 

 acquired perhaps some new elements, such as pottery and the bow 

 drill, that appear to have been unknown in the still earlier period 

 I hinted at before, the period when the ancestors of the Dorset people 

 first crossed Bering Strait onto Alaskan soil and pushed into the 

 heart of North America. 



The reader may say, perhaps, that, like a fecund rabbit, I have 

 already delivered too large a brood of unsubstantiated theories 

 (some of them possibly still-born). Nevertheless I hope he will 

 pardon me if I add one more progeny to the overabundant litter. 



In Old Bering Sea remains on St. Lawrence Island Collins found 

 many dog skulls that had been broken for their brains ; and the dogs 

 were of a smaller breed than those of Punuk and later times. Fur- 

 thermore, objects associated with dog traction, such as toggles, flat 

 bone sled-shoes, and whip ferrules, did not appear until the close 

 of the Punuk period, or roughly 200 years ago, so that evidently the 

 St. Lawrence islanders throughout most of their history never used 

 dogs to drag their heavy-runner sleds. In the eastern Arctic, how- 

 ever, Mathiassen found numerous dog-harness toggles in Thule 

 remains dating back 1,000 years or so ; and the dogs that wore this 

 harness doubtless belonged to that rather large and heavy breed so 

 prevalent in the eastern Arctic today. Moreover, the Thule Eskimo, 

 like the modern, seldom or never ate them, for Mathiassen remarked 

 no broken dog skulls in any Thule site. No dog bones have yet been 

 recovered from an unmixed Dorset site, nor have we found any sled 

 toggles or harness toggles, though there are some flat, bone sled- 

 runners. We read in Frobisher's Voyages,^* however, that in the six- 

 teenth century the Eskimo of Frobisher Bay, in the heart of the 

 old Dorset range at the eastern entrance to Hudson Strait, kept two 

 distinct breeds of dogs, a smaller one for eating and a larger one 

 for dragging the sleds. 



How are we to explain these facts? It seems to me quite possible 

 that dog traction was unknown to the earliest Eskimo who reached 

 America, not only to those who remained in Alaska, but to those, too, 

 who pushed eastward into Canada and later spawned the Dorset 



" Gelst and Rainey, Archaeological excavations at Eokulik, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. 

 Misc. Publ. Univ. Alaska, vol. 2, p. 190, 19.36. 



" The three voyages of Martin Froblslier, pp. 136-137. Hakluyt Society, London, 1876. 



