1914] Northwestern Denes and Northeastern Asiatics 159 



This was among the Yakuts, and I am quoting from Sir Geo. Simpson. 

 Speaking of infants, I may remind the reader of the long suckling prac- 

 tised by the Dene mothers, who quite often give the breast at the same 

 time to two children, one of whom has been walking for a long time. 

 Indeed, I remember a Carrier boy who must have been six or seven 

 years old, at the very least, since he was big enough to learn a certain 

 new hymn which he sang out to me for a consideration, and yet he was 

 sucking his mother! 



Now an English traveller among the Kirghis writes of a child of 

 three or four running to its mother to be suckled, and adds: "You 

 would be surprised to see boys of ten and eleven years of age feeding 

 from the mother".^ 



Of the Tungus children the same author says that "they invariably 

 run about naked [in summer] until they are ten or twelve years old",* 

 a remark which could not be truer of the children of the old D6n6 stock. 



Face tattooing also prevailed to the same extent among those two 

 aboriginal peoples. 



According to Sir Geo. Simpson the Yakuts use "canoes of birch- 

 bark, of the same peculiar shape as those of the Pend d'Oreille River, 

 near Fort Colville",^ after which he goes on to relate that these canoes 

 "also serve as coffins in the same manner as among the Chinooks and 

 other tribes of the American coast". 



The last mentioned craft are, of course, made of wood. They, too, 

 have their equivalents in form and manufacture among the Kamtcha- 

 dales, if we are to believe Bush, who mentions them as "dug-outs or 

 hollowed logs", the very best description that can be given of the canoes 

 of the Western D4n6s. 



The same primitive style of embarkation obtains among the Gilacks 

 of the Amoor valley, as is repeatedly stated in a book of travel by a 

 British naval officer.* 



Bush further states that "to ensure safety when the water is rough, 

 they [the Kamtchadales] lash two or more of them together, side by 

 side, by binding light poles across the tops".* I have myself seen 

 many a time canoe rafts among the Babines and Carriers, and Hearne 

 assures us that even the Eastern Denes used to resort to the same prac- 



^ Mrs. Atkinson, "Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants", p. 178? 

 London, 1863. 

 ' Ibid., p. 348. 



* Op. ciL, Vol. II, p. 127. 



* J. M. Tronson, "A Voyage to Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, Tartary", pp. 135, 

 277, 323; London, 1859. 



* "Reindeer, Dogs and Snow-Shoes", p. 46. 



