19 1 4] Northwestern D6n6s and Northeastern Asiatics 169 



out mercy or compassion, and the vanquished frequently undergo the 

 painful operation of scalping'\^ 



X. 



We now come to evidence of former intercourse, or community of 

 origin, between native Americans and Asiatics which I consider con- 

 clusive, because it is of a purely psychological order and could not have 

 been influenced by the requirements of physical needs or environment. 



We all know that in northeastern Siberia and northwestern America 

 there is but one religious system, shamanism, and that the various 

 observances that flow therefrom are common to both countries. Northern 

 Asia has always been considered the original home of shamanism, and 

 therefore the different American peoples that follow it must have had 

 at least intercourse in times past with the aborigines of that region. 



According to that system, the constitutive parts of the visible world 

 are the abode of as many spirits, some of which are good — hence the 

 totems — others of a noxious nature — hence disease and material or 

 moral adversities. The whole is too well known for me to dwell on it. 



We should therefore not be surprised to read in the relation of a 

 prominent traveller through Siberia that "as every locality has its own 

 elf, the Yakuti, when on a journey, have no respite, soothing one object 

 of terror after another ".^ 



This soothing is done chiefly by means of ofltering. " In the branches 

 of the trees along the road were suspended numberless offerings of 

 horsehair", remarks the same traveller. 



One who followed in his footsteps found similar tokens of the natives' 

 faith in ubiquitous spirits at a place called Coeil,^ while, writing of the 

 Kamtchadales, an author much older than both of those I have just 



^ Ihid., p. 151. Compare with the above what two old English authors say of the 

 wars of the Kamtchadales. I quote from the French translation in my library: "Ces 

 guerres se font avec plus de ruse que de bravoure. lis sont tres laches et n'osent pas 

 paroitre avec fermete devant un ennemi. Ceci est d'autant plus extraordinaire qu'ils 

 meprisent la vie hautement, et que le suicide est fort commun parmi eux. 

 'Leur attaque se fait par des attaques nocturnes d'autant plus faciles qu'ils ne 

 tiennent jamais des gardes. Le plus petit parti peut ainsi detruire un village entier. 

 lis n'ont qu'a mettre un seul homme devant la porte de chaque cabaue, et ne laisser 

 sortir personne. Le premier qui s'avise de s'echapper est facilement massacre ou fait 

 prisonnier" {Description abregSe du Pays de Kamtschatka, pp. 67-68; Erlang, 1768). 

 No description of the way of making war obtaining among the Western Den^s of 

 old could be more correct than that of those two authors, Grieve and Jefferys, despite 

 the fact that they intend it for an Asiatic, not an American, nation. 



'^ Geo. Simpson, "An Overland Journey", Vol. II, p. 115. 



^ J. Bush, "Reindeer, Dogs and Snow-Shoes", p. 351. 



