hkdliCka] ARCHEOLOGY OF WESTERN ESKIMO 175 



beveled faces in wooden figures from northeast Asia, in wooden 

 Eskimo masks from the Yukon, and in wooden ceremonial figures 

 from Panama. The latter are shown herewith. (PI. 27.) The 

 whole presents evidently a nice problem for the archeologist and 

 student of culture. 



I had further the good fortune to secure, through the kindness of 

 Reverend Baldwin, two handsome and remarkable knives from 

 fossil mammoth ivory. These knives were said to have been made 

 recently by the Eskimo of the Seward Peninsula. They are shown in 

 Plate 28. They each bear on the handle a nicely carved crouching 

 animal figure. With them are shown, somewhat more reduced, two 

 probably ceremonial knives from Old Mexico; and also the handle 

 of a late palaeolithic poignard from France, illustrated by De 

 Quatrefages. 30 Regarding the latter form we read the following in 

 Mortillet : 3T " D'autres poignees de poignard, faites dans des donnees 

 pratiques et artistiques analogues, ont ete recueillies dans diverses 

 collections. Les plus remarquables sont deux poignees en ivoire 

 trouvees par Peccadeau de l'Isle, a Bruniquel. L'une se rattachait a 

 la lame, comme dans la piece precedente, par le train de derriere; 

 1 'autre, au contraire, par la tete." Knives with similar crouching 

 animal figures on the handle are being made by the King Islanders. 



Here, evidently, is one more interesting problem for the archeolo- 

 gists. 



The art shown by these objects, the conventionalization, and 

 especially the decorations, appear to show affinity on one hand to 

 deeper eastern Asia and on the other to those of the American north- 

 west coast and even lower. This may prove to mean much or little. 

 The fact that these specimens establish beyond question is that at one 

 time and up to a few hundreds of years ago there existed in the lands 

 of the northern Bering Sea native art superior to that existing 

 there later and at the present, and comparable with the best native 

 Siberian or American. 



The meaning of this fact seems to me to be of importance. The 

 evidence suggests, aside from other things, that American cultural 

 developments may after all not have been purely local or even 

 American, but that they may, in part at least, have been initiated or 

 carried from Asia. In view of these and other recent developments 

 it seems rational to consider that America may have been peopled 

 by far eastern Asiatic groups that not merely carried with them 

 differences in language and physique but also in some cas-s relatively 

 high cultural developments. But these for the present are mere 

 hypotheses. 



M Quatrefages, A. de., Hommes fossil, s et hommes sauvages. Paris, 1884. 

 «» Mortillet, G. de., Le prehistorique origine et antiquity de l'homme. Paris, 1900, 

 206-207, 



