802 : BEPO RT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



Another trade route of importance in this connection is that afforded 

 by the waters of the Yukon River. Eskimo patterns have been car 

 ried up into the country of the Kenai Indians, a tribe usually designated 

 in the northwest as the Tenanah, and of the same linguistic relation 

 ship as the Apache, the Navajo, and among many others the Hupa 

 Indians of California. These designs are made up of straight lines, 

 dots, and nucleated circles, and occur upon strips of bone with perfora 

 tions at one end, and used, it is presumed, as necklace ornaments. 

 Similar ornaments are found also among the Thlinkit, of which illus 

 trations are given on plate 9. 



In the National Museum is an interesting relic made of horn, used 

 as a cylindrical box for dentalium shell money, upon which are incised 

 and blackened lines so arranged between two parallel longitudinal 

 lines that the original white surface of the specimen is a serrated figure 

 and not the ordinary zigzag, plate 30. Although the resemblance of 

 this to some of the zigzag and meander patterns of the Eskimo is very 

 striking, no connection can be apparently traced between the two peo 

 ples, even along the supposed course of migration of the Ilupa toward 

 the coast at the time of the separations of the Apache or Athabascan 

 tribes, vivid traditions of which still obtain among the Apaches, and 

 linguistic evidence of which is complete. 



A well-known trade or culture route in fact, one of the earliest to 

 influence the crude arts of the Eskimo was by way of the Diomedo 

 Islands, when the natives came in contact with the Cossack outposts in 

 eastern Siberia. 1 



The traffic which naturally resulted brought among the American 

 natives various articles of liussian manufacture, among which, no 

 doubt, were ikons and other Christian and ecclesiastical objects and 

 prints, articles which are usually found to be highly decorated in both 

 design and color. Such objects would most naturally tend to influence 

 the simple art of a people who were naturally given to the ornamenta 

 tion of various utensils and weapons, as also of articles of clothing. 



Through this channel were obtained, so Mr. Murdoch informs me, 

 the Siberian pipes and seal nets, which, together with the native labret, 

 have extended eastward of Point Barrow to Cape Bathurst, beyond 

 which locality, it is believed, neither are found. This blank area between 

 Cape Bathurst and the delta of the Mackenzie forms a barrier, or line 

 of demarcation, beyond which the several bodies of Eskimo are artis 

 tically distinct from one another. In other words, the three objects 

 named as common to the Alaskan Eskimo are totally absent east of the 

 locality indicated, as found by Mr. Murdoch during his residence at 

 the Point. 



Mr. Haddon 2 remarks that although decorated objects pass along 



1 &quot; There is good reason to believe that the Malayans, the Dutch of Asia, crossed 

 the Pacific Ocean in the pursuit of commerce.&quot; Dwight. Travels in New England 

 and New York. New Haven, 1821. I, p. 129. 



-Evolution in Art, p. 330. 



