1896-97 ] THE DENES OF AMERICA IDENTIFIED WITH THE Tl'NGUS OF ASIA. 169 



waves of humanity for passing from Asia to America. As a second 

 proof, they call by the name, TJii-lan-ottine (the inhabitants of the top of 

 the head), the Dene tribe which haunts the shores of Cold Lake, where, 

 they say, the head of their giant lies. It is thus easy to see, that by this 

 giant they meant to symbolize their own nation. * * * The Peaux 

 de Lievre have another version of their arrival in America. Formerly, 

 they say, we dwelt on the shore of a western sea, and our enemies were 

 on the east, but since the earth has changed sides we find ourselves in 

 the east and our enemies in the west. By these enemies they now mean 

 the nation of the Mollouches (? Kolush or Thlinket) ; but, in their 

 tradition, they mention a powerful people who shaved the head, wore 

 wigs, and reduced them to live in slavery." 



Mr. W. H. Dall, in his article on "The Origin of the Innuit or 

 Eskimos," published in the first volume of Contributions to North 

 American Ethnology, favors the Asiatic derivation of some of our 

 aborigines ; and, from the fact that, at the present day, Behring Strait i.s 

 frequently crossed by natives on the ice, infers that it constituted a 

 highway for immigrants in the past. He quotes, somewhat disjointedly, 

 from Mr. C. R. Markham's Arctic Paper, of 1878, presented to the 

 Geographical Society of London, as follows : " During the centuries 

 preceding the appearance of the Innuit in Greenland (1349 A.D.), there 

 was a great movement among the people of Central Asia. The pressure 

 caused by invading waves of population on the tribes of northern Siberia 

 drove them still farther to the north. Year after year, the intruding 

 Tartars continued to press on. Their descendants, the Yakuts, pressed 

 on, until they are now found at the mouths of rivers falling into the 

 Polar Sea. But these regions were formerly inhabited by numerous 

 tribes, which were driven away still farther north over the frozen sea. 

 Wrangell has preserved traditions of their disappearance, and in them, I 

 think, we may find a clue to the origin of the Greenland Eskimos. The 

 Yakuts were not the first inhabitants of the Kolyma. The Omoki, the 

 Chelaki, the Tiaigiises, and the Yukagirs, were their predecessors. These 

 tribes have so wholly disappeared that even their names are hardly 

 remembered." Sauer found the Tungus between Irkoutsk and lakoutsk, 

 the latter being the centre of the Yakuts, whose tradition, reported by 

 him, is that they passed by the Tungus, when migrating from the south, 

 so as not to come into conflict with them. The Russians found this 

 northern spur of the Turkish family in lakoutsk in 1620. Mr. Dall 

 corrects Mr. Markham in some particulars, and denies that the Yukagirs, 

 Tunguses, etc., have disappeared. The fact that the Mantchus arc 

 Tungusic sufficiently disproves Mr. Markham's assertion, but the fact of 



