328 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
guard against the approach of the Magemut, who lived just south of 
the Yukon mouth and were the chief enemies of the Unalit. 
Near St Michael, on the top of an elevated islet close to the coast, is 
the site of an ancient village which had been surprised and destroyed 
by this last-named people long before the arrival of the Russians in 
that region. Digging in some of the pits marking the places once 
occupied by houses, I found charred fragments of wood and various 
small articles belonging to the former occupants. 
The following account of the ancient warfare of the Eskimo on the 
lower Yukon and adjacent region southward was given me in January, 
1881, by an old man living near Andreivsky: 
The people of the lower Yukon and Pastolik fought against those 
living on the southern part of the Yukon delta and the country south- 
ward, including the villages at Big lake and in the Kuslevak mountains 
and the Magemut of the coast just south of the Yukon mouth. The 
old man said that the main war between these people started in a 
great village located near Ikogmut. Two boys were playing with a 
bone-tip dart, and one of them accidentally pierced his companion’s 
eye; this so enraged the father of the injured boy that he caught the 
other and destroyed both his eyes. The fathers of the two boys then 
fought, one armed with a beaver-tooth knife and the other with a bone 
bodkin, the fight resulting in the death of both men. The quarrel was 
taken up by relatives and friends on both sides, the village became 
divided, and the weaker party was forced to leave the Yukon and go 
southward, where they settled. From that time continual warfare was 
carried on between them. 
Battles took place usually in summer, and the victors killed all they 
could of the males of the opposing side, even including infants, to 
prevent them from growing up as enemies. The dead were thrown in 
heaps and left. The females were commonly spared from death, but 
were taken as slaves. 
When young men fought in their first battle each was given to drink 
some of the blood and made to eat a small piece of the heart of the 
first enemy killed by them, in order to render them brave. An Unalit 
at St Michael told me that in former days each of their young warriors 
always ate a small piece of the heart of the first enemy killed by him 
on a hostile raid. : 
During the battles on the Yukon the best fighters used to throw 
themselves on their backs and kick their heels in the air in derision of 
the enemy when they approached one another. When any of the men 
exhausted their supply of arrows they would stand in front of their 
comrades aud break those of the enemy with their spear shafts by 
striking them as they flew past. No shields were used. They said 
that if an arrow was coming straight at a man he could not see it, so 
it was very hard to avoid being hit, but that a man could readily see 
one flying toward another. Some of the warriors are said to have 
been very expert bowmen. My old informant told me that his name- 
