260 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



season were truly astonishing in size. They will surely mislead the ingenious 

 calculator of the antiquities of shell-heaps a thousand years hence."* 



* Petroff : The Limit of the Innuit Tribes on the Alaska Coast; American Naturalist, 1882 ; p. 571, etc. 



Mr. Dall, after having read at my request the preceding extracts from his work and from Mr. Petroff's article, 

 communicated to me the following statements, which I take pleasure in making known : — 



" Knowing at the time Mr. Petroff's article was published that he had no practical knowledge of shell-heaps, 

 and that he had never resided or remained for any length of time in the Aleutian Islands, and, furthermore, find- 

 inf the contents of the article to consist chiefly of opinions rather than facts, I did not deem it worth the extended 

 consideration necessary to correct its misconceptions and errors. However, as the latter appear likely to pass into 

 serious literature, I have availed myself, by the kind permission of Dr. Rau, of the present opportunity of recti- 

 fying one or two of them. Referring to my work on the Aleutian shell-heaps, Mr. Petroff ascribes to me the 

 assumption 'that the earliest inhabitants were without a kyak or boat of some kind,' etc. On page 56 of my 

 paper I state 'they must have had rafts or rude canoes of some kind, but no trace of them is left.' He considers 

 drift-wood unfit for making canoes or even rafts ; but I have myself seen the present Aleuts constructing the frames 

 of their canoes of it. In fact, nearly all the boats and canoes (not made of bark) of Northern Alaska are made 

 of drift-wood, both on the Yukon and the coast. This happens because the drift-wood comes from the south- 

 eastern coast or the heads of rivers to the southward, and is of larger size than the wood growing nearer the 

 northern coast. 



" Mr. Petroff believes that the remains of villages on the Aleutian Islands and the continental coast are not 

 of the antiquity (I have) ascribed to them. He speaks of his astonishment at the rapidity with which sphagnum 

 ' and other vegetation ' extinguished the traces of man. This may be true for the continental coast, where he has 

 resided, and to which I did not refer ; it is certainly untrue for the Aleutian Islands, where it is a matter of no- 

 toriety that the remains of villages abandoned before the Russian advent are distinguishable at the present day as 

 far as the eye can reach ; even the paths formerly used by the inhabitants remain nearly free from vegetation, 

 and over the village-sites sphagnum is almost unknown, as they are nearly all comparatively high and tolerably 

 well drained. As to their antiquity, I state (1. c, p. 62) that ' even the most lax hypothesis will not permit us to 

 attempt any computation of the length of time' which it has taken to form the layers indicating village-sites 

 (fish-bone and mammalian layers), though I have shown that, given certain stated and not inherently improbable 

 conditions, the earliest (echinus) layer might have been formed within certain computable limits. All beyond 

 this I distinctly state 'is only an assumption.' Mr. Petroff s opinion that shell and bone-heaps eight or ten feet 

 in thickness ' must have accumulated within historic times ' it is not necessary to characterize, if by ' historic 

 times' he means since the Russian advent in 1742. If he means the limits of written history of the civilized 

 world, I have nowhere claimed anything equal in length to that period. It must be remembered that within fifty 

 years after their first exploration the Aleuts were reduced by disease, massacre, and starvation to about their 

 present population, not more than three thousand souls, who occupy altogether less than a dozen villages ; less, in 

 fact, than existed on a single bay of Unalashka Island previously. 



" It would hardly be worth while to continue tedious explanations for the benefit of readers who are supposed 

 to kn^w something of anthropology. If any such, after studying with care the facts collected in my article on the 

 Aleutian shell-heaps, shall find a more satisfactory and coherent explanation for them, I shall not regret it." 



