NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND — COLLINS  373 
must  be  recognized  as  a  cultural  entity,  and  not,  as  Mathiassen  had 
believed,  as  a  locally  stamped,  late  phase  of  the  Thule  culture.  In 
the  general  range  of  its  forms  it  is  quite  different  from  the  Thule 
and  other  phases  of  Eskimo  culture.  As  was  pointed  out  earlier, 
its  peculiar  art  is  to  a  certain  extent  suggestive  of  the  earliest  phase 
of  Old  Bering  Sea  art,  and  it  likewise  resembles  the  old  Alaskan 
culture  in  its  highly  developed  stone  chipping  technique.  It  cannot 
have  been  derived  from  the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture  as  we  know  it, 
however,  for  the  latter  is  already  in  many  respects  a  highly  developed 
Eskimo  culture,  possessing  numerous  important  features  of  which  the 
Dorset  culture  had  no  knowledge. 
As  Jciiness  has  pointed  out,  the  Dorset  culture  shows  unmistakable 
Indian  affinities,  particularly  with  the  Beothuk  and  the  prehistoric 
"  Red  Paint  "  culture.  Jenness  has  suggested  that  since  the  Dorset 
culture  preceded  the  Thule,  it  may  have  been  derived  from  that  of 
the  Caribou  Eskimos.  In  view  of  the  divergence  of  the  Dorset  culture 
from  Eskimo  culture  generally  and  its  rather  close  relationship  to  that 
of  the  Indians,  it  would  seem  that  its  origin  might  with  equal  propriety 
be  sought  in  the  latter  direction ;  in  which  case  we  would  suppose 
the  Dorset  to  have  been  an  originally  Indian  culture,  which  before 
the  spread  of  the  Thule  culture  to  the  central  regions,  had  gradually 
\\orked  northward ;  later,  with  the  advent  of  the  Thule  Eskimos,  the 
Dorset  peoples  would  l)e  forced  to  give  way,  and  gradually  succumb 
to  the  better  equipped  and  more  aggressive  newcomers  from  the  west. 
This,  of  course,  is  only  speculation ;  the  problem  is  one  of  complexity, 
involving  numerous  factors  the  full  significance  of  which  is  not  yet 
apparent.  I  think  we  may  safely  say  that  it  will  not  be  possible  to 
arrive  at  a  real  understanding  of  archeological  conditions  in  the  eastern 
Arctic  until  the  Dorset  culture  has  been  fully  revealed  and  its  origin 
and  relationships  determined. 
The  excavations  of  Jochelson  on  the  Aleutian  Islands  and  of  de 
Laguna  at  Cook  Inlet  have  provided  detailed  information  on  the  early 
forms  of  culture  which  prevailed  in  these  regions.  The  material  from 
the  Aleutians  shows  a  somewhat  closer  approach  to  the  northern  forms 
of  Eskimo  culture  than  that  from  Cook  Inlet,  which  is  almost  at  the 
extreme  southern  limit  of  the  Eskimo  territory.  In  neither  case, 
however,  is  there  more  than  a  general  resemblance  to  northern  Eskimo 
culture.  Speaking  of  the  Kachemak  Bay,  Cook  Inlet,  culture,  de 
Laguna  (1934,  p.  217)  says: 
The  basis  seems  to  have  been  a  fairly  generahzed  type  of  Eskimo  culture, 
which  itself  included  a  number  of  elements  common  to  the  Arctic  and   North 
