NELSON] TRIBES AND DIALECTS 25 
found a village occupied by a mixture of people from King island in 
Bering strait, Sledge island, and others from different parts of Kaviak 
peninsula. These people had united there and were living peaceably 
together in order to fish for crabs and tomcods and to hunt for seals, 
as the supply of food had become exhausted at their homes. 
There are few places among the different divisions of the people living 
between Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers where a sharp demarkation is 
found in the language as one passes from village to village. In every 
village in this region they have had friendly intercourse with one 
another for many years, and intermarriage has constantly taken place. 
They visit each other during their festivals, and their hunting and 
fishing grounds meet. All of these causes have aided, since the ces- 
sation of the ancient warfare which served to keep them separated, in 
increasing the intercourse between them and have had a tendency to 
break down the sharp distinctions that existed in their dialects. The 
language used in this region, south of the Yukon mouth, is closely 
related to that of the Unalit along the shore of Norton sound north of 
the Yukon. 
The greatest distinctions in language appeared to be in the curious 
modification of the sounds of the vowels, these being lengthened or 
shortened in a different manner, thus causing the pronunciation to be 
differently intoned in the two districts. The Nunivak island people 
and those living at Cape Vancouver, however, appear to speak a lan- 
guage quite sharply divided from that of their neighbors. 
As it is, one of the natives from any portion of the district south of 
the Yukon mouth, except on Nunivak island or Cape Vancouver, can 
readily make himself understood when visiting villages of the lower 
Yukon or among the Unalit of Norton sound. The distinction between 
the Unalit and Kaviagmut Eskimo, or the Unalit and the Malemut, is 
considerable, and people speaking these tongues do not readily com- 
municate at once, although if takes but a short time for them to learn 
to talk with one another. The dialect of the people of Point Hope 
appears to differ but slightly from that used at the head of Kotzebue 
sound. There is such a general resemblance between the dialects 
spoken by the Eskimo of the Alaskan mainland that a person belonging 
to one district very quickly learns to understand and speak other dia- 
lects. My Unalit interpreter from St Michael accompanied me on the 
Corwin, and when at Plover bay, on the eastern coast of Siberia, man- 
aged to understand a considerable portion of what the people of that 
point said. He had great difficulty, however, in comprehending the 
language of the St Lawrence islanders, and in fact could understand 
but few words spoken by them. Both at East Cape and at Plover bay, 
on the Siberian coast, there were many words that I could understand 
from my knowledge of the Unalit tongue gained at St Michael. The 
people of St Lawrence island and Plover bay are closely related and 
the dialects spoken by them are very similar, so that they have no diffi- 
culty in communicating with each other. 
