454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN" INSTITUTION, 193 3 



of very early man or his handiwork is more likely to come about 

 through accident than by design. 



Meanwhile, an orderly approach calls for investigations directed 

 toward the solution of a more immediate problem — that of the 

 origin and early history of the Eskimos who at present occupy the 

 Bering Strait region. Until we have full information as to the 

 nature and extent of the prehistoric remains left by the Eskimo, 

 an objective approach toward the more fundamental problem of 

 original migrations will remain very difficult. Fortunately, prog- 

 ress has been made in this direction within the past few years, and 

 although the recent investigations have thrown no new light on 

 original migrations nor revealed the existence of any pre-Eskimo 

 remains, they have added materially to our knowledge of Eskimo 

 prehistory and have necessitated a reexamination in its entirety 

 of the complex problem of Eskimo origins and migrations. 



Aside from the usually fragmentary and general accounts of the 

 early explorers, our knowledge of the Alaskan Eskimo is based prin- 

 cipally on the pioneer ethnological studies of Dall, Nelson, and 

 Murdoch, made under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution 

 in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Somewhat later a 

 comprehensive program of ethnological and archeological investiga- 

 tions in neighboring regions was inaugurated under the direction of 

 Dr. Franz Boas,- The results, embodied in the reports of the Jesup 

 North Pacific Expedition of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, include a number of valuable studies on the language, mate- 

 rial culture, and social organization of the tribes of the North Pacific 

 coast of America and of eastern Siberia by Boas, Swanton, Bogoras, 

 Jochelson, Laufer, and Teit; and on the archeology of British 

 Columbia and Washington by Harlan I. Smith. An outstanding 

 accomplishment of the Jesup expedition was the clear demonstra- 

 tion of cultural affinities existing between these now separated tribes. 

 Some of the resemblances, particularly in the field of folk lore, were 

 remarkably close and led to the formulation of the theory that there 

 had been in the past an intimate and extensive contact between the 

 tribes of northeastern Asia and of northwestern America, exclusive 

 of the Eskimo. The latter, according to the theory, were thought 

 to have entered Alaska from the eastward, forming a wedge which 

 separated the northwestern Indians from the related tribes of 

 northeastern Siberia. 



The groundwork for a systematic investigation was thus laid 

 through studies on the present aborigines, but the necessary exten- 

 sion of the problem into the more remote past was not attempted 



2 Boas, F., The Jesup North Taciflc Expedition, 13th Internat. Congr. Amer., pp. 91-100, 

 New York, 1902. 



