1914] Northwestern Den6s and Northeastern Asiatics 185 



Conclusion. 



We may therefore now take it for proven that: 



1st. The passage not only of individuals, but of whole bands or 

 tribes of aborigines, from Asia to America is more than possible: it is 

 probable, since several persons are known to have effected it, and com- 

 mercial intercourse has existed from time immemorial between the two 

 countries. 



2nd. This passage must have really been accomplished by the 

 present North American tribes, because we find that on the Pacific 

 side of the American continent the number of native stocks who differ 

 radically from each other is very much greater than on the Atlantic 

 slope, a circumstance which predicates immigration from Asia much 

 more than from any other continent. 



3rd. The very traditions of the Denes and other North American 

 peoples point to a northwestern origin and the crossing, in times past, 

 of a narrow sheet of water. 



4th. The geographical nomenclature of both Western and Eastern 

 D6nes, no less than the traditions of the southern Navahoes, support 

 the thesis of such an origin and southward migrations. 



5th. Most important technological points, such as the building and 

 use of human habitations and adjuncts thereto, fishing contrivances 

 and the like, also tend to confirm it. 



6th. The sociology of Palaeo-Asiatics and that of North American 

 peoples, especially with regard to the way of washing oneself, eating 

 meat, preserving and cooking fish and sap, the disposal of the dead, 

 costume and modes of personal adornment, the manner of preparing 

 for, and practising, war, ceremonial banquets and national amusements, 

 are identical on the adjoining parts of the two continents. 



7th. Such exclusively psychological characteristics as the religious 

 system, shamanism and the cult of spirits, totems or protecting genii, 

 the various modes of contracting marriage and the improvisation of 

 love-songs, as well as the etiquette of silence upon meeting with a 

 stranger, the use of the calumet as a means of determining peace or 

 war, and the smoking of the same pipe in succession by a crowd of people, 

 the naming of married persons after their first-born, likewise prove, if 

 not an absolute community of origin, at least past intercourse, between 

 northeastern Asiatics and northwestern Americans. 



8th. This same intercourse is furthermore irrefutably proved by 

 a legend which is strikingly the same among both Samoyeds and Carriers, 

 and the fact that many other mythological similarities do exist between 

 northeastern Asiatics and northwestern Americans. 



