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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 78 



problems along the Yukon, which grand stream must have been one 

 of the principal arteries of the ancient movements of population ; 

 and the impressions increased until by the time the mouth of the river 

 was reached it was possible to formulate the following conclusions : 



I. The living Indian population along the Tanana, and the Yukon 

 below the Tanana, is scarce. It is doubtful if the total number of 

 the natives on both rivers, as far as covered on this trip, reaches 1,000. 

 And many of the younger adults and especially the children, are 

 mixed-bloods. Due to a lucky coincidence — a potlatch at the mission 

 above Tanana, and other conditions — about 400 Indians were actually 



Fig. 147. — Anvik, on the lower middle Yukon. 



seen. They all belong to one type, of moderate stature and features, 

 moderate pigmentation, and brachycephaly. They are identical with, 

 or very near to, the Alaska Indians further south. 



2. The boundaries between the Indian and the Eskimo both cul- 

 turally and physically, are indefinite and vague. Moreover, in olden 

 times the Eskimo, according to indications, extended somewhat 

 farther up the river than he now does. But the Indian seemingly 

 occupied always the middle two-thirds of the Yukon, and the Tanana. 

 As the trip proceeded down the Yukon below Ruby, the more speci- 

 mens obtained and especially the more skeletal material gathered, the 

 more difificult it became to say just where ended the Eskimo and where 

 began the Indian. There is no clear line of demarcation between the 



