i86 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x 



A Last Word. 



I had long been aware that an expedition under the auspices of a 

 Mr. Jesup was studying scientifically the modern aborigines of north- 

 eastern Asia, with a view to comparing them with the natives of northern 

 America, but had never seen any mention of the results of its researches, 

 which I am even now told are still in course of publication. However, 

 my attention was lately called to an estimate or resume of the con- 

 clusions which can legitimately be drawn from its labours and what 

 was previously known of the question, and I feel it my duty to share 

 this with my readers. Dr. Alexander Chamberlain, then, wrote some 

 time ago: 



"Summing up the evidence on this question, it may be said with 

 certainty, so far as all data hitherto presented are concerned, that no 

 satisfactory proof whatever has been put forward to induce us to believe 

 that any single American Indian tongue or any group of tongues has 

 been derived from any Old World form of speech now existing or known 

 to have existed in the past. 



"In whatever way the multiplicity of American Indian languages 

 and dialects may have arisen, one can be reasonably sure that the 

 differentiation and divergence have developed here in America, and are 

 in no sense due to the occasional intrusion of Old World tongues indi- 

 vidually or en masse. It may be said here that the American languages 

 are younger than the American Indians, and that, while the latter 

 may have reached the New World in very remote times via Bering 

 Strait, the former show no evidence of either recent or remote Asiatic 

 (still less European) provenance. 



"There is absolutely no satisfactory evidence, from a linguistic 

 standpoint, of the ultimate Asiatic derivation of the American aborigines; 

 nor is there any of such a character as to argue seriously against such 

 a view, which seems on the whole both reasonable and probable. 



"Certain real relationships between the American Indians and the 

 peoples of northeastern Asia, known as 'Paleo-Asiatics', have, however, 

 been revealed as the results of the extensive investigations of the Jesup 

 North Pacific Expedition, which have been concerned with the soma- 

 tology, ethnology, mythology, folk-lore, linguistics, etc., of the peoples 

 on both sides of the Pacific, from Columbia river to Bering Strait, and 

 from the Amur to the extreme point of northeastern Asia".^ 



1 "American Anthropologist", Vol. XIV, p. 55- 



