1914] Northwestern DfeN^s and Northeastern Asiatics 187 



The writer thus ends his review: "The general conclusion to be 

 drawn from the evidence disclosed by the Jesup Expedition is that the 

 so-called ' Paleo-Asiatic ' peoples of northeastern Asia, i.e. the Chukchee, 

 Koryak, Kamchadale, Gilyak, Yukaghir, etc., really belong physically 

 and culturally with the aborigines of northwestern America".^ 



So far, so good. We have here as explicit as possible an admission 

 of at least past intercourse, nay almost community of origin, between 

 the Asiatic and American aborigines — the very conclusion I have myself 

 reached after an altogether independent investigation, and without 

 being in the least aware of that suggested by the labours of the Jesup 

 Expedition. 



Considering the nature of the ground I operated on, I might almost 

 be tempted to regard my own researches as even more important than 

 those of the above mentioned American body, as far, at least, as the 

 ethnological conclusions they warrant are concerned. The Siberian 

 aborigines are to-day Russianized to a great extent, and for that reason 

 the study of their life and sociological characteristics may be said to 

 have lost much of its value in the eyes of the ethnologist.^ But my own 

 work was based on old, and now very rare, books by writers who saw 

 them in their primitive state. Hence the advantage would seem to 

 be on my side. 



Be this as it may, the identity of our conclusions with regard to the 

 ethnographical unity of the Siberians and the North Americans must 

 be regarded as all the more significant as they were reached after quite 

 independent researches, since practically the last line of the preceding 

 pages was written before I had any inkling of the results of the Jesup 

 Expedition. 



It should, therefore, be perfectly useless henceforth to dispute the 

 accuracy of those conclusions. They are now admitted by all who have 

 made an exhaustive study of the question. 



Yet the late Dr. Chamberlain and myself differ on a most important 

 point. While conceding the identity of the above mentioned groups 

 of human beings from an ethnological standpoint, our late lamented 

 friend claimed that the " Palseo- Asiatics " "probably reached the parts 

 of Asia they now inhabit (or once inhabited, for some of them had 

 formerly a larger area of distribution) from America at a time more 

 recent than the original peopling of the New World from Asia by way 



Ubid., pp. 55-56. 



* A member of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition admits as much when he writes 

 of the Yukaghirs that they are "a tribe which to a great extent has lost its original 

 peculiarities" and the study of which is "difficult, and, from a practical point of view, 

 a thankless task" (W. Jochelson, "The Yukaghii and the Yukaghirized Tungus", p. 2). 



