448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 195 



and believes that the similarity in measurements between Hudson 

 Bay Eskimo and Chipewyan-Cree sustains his view of the Indian 

 origin of the Eskimo : 



It is undeniable that the similarities between the [Hudson Bay] Eskimos and 

 both the Cree and Chipewyan are remarkably great ... all that can be said 

 at present regarding the relationship between the Eskimos and the Northern 

 Woodlands Indians is that in the regions about Lake Athabaska lives an Indian 

 group whose likeness to the Eskimos seems unmistakable. This, however, is a 

 fact of far-reaching importance. It agrees exactly with the opinion I advanced 

 years ago, that the ancestors of the Eskimos once lived in the northern wood- 

 lands west of Hudson Bay. [Birket-Smith, 1940, p. 109.] 



As indicated earlier, the archeological evidence lends no support to 

 this theory. And the physical resemblances between Caribou Eskimo 

 and neighboring Indians can support it only if one disregards the far 

 more likely explanation that the resemblances in question are due to 

 fairly recent contacts. Birket-Smith (1929, vol. 2, p. 41) has shown 

 that while the Caribou Eskimos have been in contact with the Chipe- 

 wyan for little more than 200 years, there had been an earlier period of 

 contact with the Cree, as a result of which a number of Indian elements 

 had been adopted by the Caribou. If there was cultural borrowing 

 from these relatively recent contacts it would seem reasonable to 

 suppose that there would also have been opportunity for race mixture. 



Seltzer's other thesis — that the Copper Eskimos of Coronation Gulf 

 and the Alaskan Eskimos of Kotzebue Sound, Seward Peninsula, St. 

 Lawrence Island, and Southwest Alaska were descended from the 

 Chipewyan Indians — was a reaffirmation of a similar theory originally 

 proposed by Shapiro. From metrical resemblances between the 

 Chipewyans and the Seward Peninsula, Coronation Gulf, and Smith 

 Sound Eskimos, Shapiro concluded that the origin of these three 

 Eskimo groups was to be found in interior Canada west of Hudson 

 Bay: 



Most probably these present Eskimo groups are derived from an Indian stock 

 which migrated northward to the coast and then moved northeastward to Smith 

 Sound and westward to Seward Peninsula. Finally, this migration seems to 

 be recent and superimposed upon an earlier distribution of Eskimo. [Shapiro, 

 1931, p. 3S1.] 



Here, as in the case of the Cree, we may first inquire as to the 

 purity of the 44 Chipewyan Indians who, according to Seltzer and 

 Shapiro, represent the ancestral stock from which these several Eskimo 

 groups were derived. Grant, who measured the Chipewyans, was 

 under no illusion as to their purity. He states specifically that the 

 individuals in this group, who had been selected on the word of his 

 Indian interpreters, were, on the basis of his own observations and 

 measurements, no purer than the population as a whole : 



