NO.     I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    I.SLAND COLLINS  3// 
sea  where  there  was  no  land  visihle.  And  even  if  they  had  reached  the 
Commander  Islands  they  would  have  had  hefore  theni  the  still  greater 
stretch  of  open  water  to  Attn,  the  westernmost  of  the  Aleutians. 
Improbable  as  such  a  theory  would  appear  from  a  geographical  stand- 
point, the  strongest  evidence  against  it  is  cultural.  The  fact  that  the 
known  cultural  remains  on  the  Aleutians  are  of  an  essentially  Eskimoid 
or  American  character,  as  demonstrated  by  both  Dall  and  Jochelson, 
shows  that  the  islands  must  have  been  peopled  from  the  Alaskan 
mainland.  As  was  pointed  out  previously,  the  presence  of  pottery 
in  Kamchatka  and  its  absence  in  the  Aleutians  is  in  itself  an  argu- 
ment against  a  west  to  east  movement,  for  if  such  had  occurred,  it 
would  seem  that  pottery  would  have  been  introduced  into  the  Aleutians. 
When  we  consider,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  early  Aleuts  must  have 
been  expert  navigators  to  have  settled  and  maintained  contacts  between 
the  widely  separated  islands,  it  would  have  been  by  no  means  an 
insui>erable  feat  for  them  to  have  pushed  on  and  reached  the  Com- 
mander Islands  and  then  the  Kamchatka  peninsula.  The  Commander 
Islands  were  uninhabited  when  discovered  by  Bering  in  1741.  and  no 
traces  of  kitchen  middens  or  aboriginal  house  ruins  have  ever  been 
reported.  It  is  a  question,  however,  whether  these  have  been  really 
searched  for.  Some  of  the  Aleutian  middens,  even  the  largest,  are 
at  the  present  time  very  inconspicuous,  appearing  either  as  grass- 
covered  knolls  along  a  hill  slope  or  as  natural  ridges  along  the  shores. 
The  obliterating  effects  of  time  are  still  better  illustrated  by  the  Old 
Bering  Sea  site  at  Gambell,  which  was  so  completely  merged  into 
the  hillside  that  the  present  Eskimos  had  no  knowledge  of  its  exis- 
tence. The  indications  of  cultural  connections  between  the  Aleutians 
and  Kamchatka  are  so  clear  as  to  lead  to  the  ex^^ectation  that  evidences 
of  aboriginal  occupancy  will  eventually  be  discovered  on  the  Com- 
mander Islands. 
If  the  hyix>thesis  of  a  westward  migration  from  the  Aleutian  Islands 
to  Kamchatka  should  be  borne  out  we  would  seem  to  have  at  least  a 
partial  ex])lanation  of  the  cultural  resemblances  between  the  Northwest 
Indians  and  the  Palae-Asiatic  tribes  of  Siberia  which  were  revealed 
through  the  investigations  of  the  Jesup  Expedition.  As  pointed  out 
above,  it  seems  by  no  means  improbable  that  the  late  wave  of  Thule 
culture  which  penetrated  into  northern  Alaska  as  far  west  as  Bering 
Strait  might  have  introduced,  among  other  eastern  culture  traits,  an 
eastern  form  of  folklore  which  blended  with  and  to  a  certain  extent 
supplanted  a  mythology  in  which  Indian-Siberian  elements  had  been 
more  prominent.  Whether  the  Indian  elements  in  Siberian  mythologv 
had  been  transmitted  directly  across  Bering  Strait  or  over  the  Aleutians 
