NO. 14 PREHISTORIC ART OF ALASKAN ESKIMO COLLINS I3 



Boas regards the Northwest Coast eye as a development of the 

 circle, and here arises an important theoretical point ; for if it should 

 be true that this highly important element in Northwest Indian art 

 arose from a design which forms an even more important part of the 

 old Eskimo art, we would have valid ground for considering that the 

 art of the two regions was historically connected. But, assuming 

 such a connection to have existed, there would still be no more reason 

 for considering that the cultural impetus had been exerted from 

 south to north than from the opposite direction. It must be remem- 

 bered that the Eskimo culture under consideration is ancient ; just 

 how ancient, it is yet too early to say, but at any rate it is the oldest 

 culture that has come to light in the extreme Northwest. It is, further- 

 more, closely related, apparently ancestral, to the very wide-spread 

 Thule culture which, in early times, extended across north central 

 Canada into Greenland, and which has been so thoroughly revealed 

 through the recent researches of Mathiassen. On the other hand, 

 there is no good reason for assigning an equal antiquity to the 

 peculiarly local and highly developed art of the present tribes of the 

 Northwest Pacific Coast. 



It seems fairly evident, viewed solely from the ethnological stand- 

 point, that certain culture traits now in the possession of the Alaskan 

 Eskimo were derived from the Alaskan Indians. But this, along with 

 a possibly similar condition in regard to physical type, may well have 

 been of a secondary nature. At any rate, it does not seem possible at 

 the present stage of our knowledge to point to any particular aspect 

 of the earlier Eskimo culture that might be said, wath any degree of 

 certainty, to have been similarly derived. 



In spite of the absence of any important specific resemblances 

 between the art of the two areas, there still remains a vague, general 

 similarity which may lead to the expectation that future archeological 

 work may reveal an earlier stage of Northwest Coast culture closer 

 to the ancient Eskimo culture of Bering Sea, or even, somewhere, a 

 culture that may have been ancestral to both the Northwest Coast and 

 Eskimo cultures. In this connection there is also the possibility that 

 very important results might come from investigation of ancient 

 sites in Southwest Alaska, or around Prince William Sound where 

 Eskimo territory impinged on that of the Tlingit. 



While it is difficult to trace true relationships of the newly found 

 ancient Bering Sea culture with Indian tribes of America or tribes of 

 northeastern Asia, it is plainly evident that there is an unbroken line of 

 succession where such would be most expected, namely, in the Eskimo 



