HKDL1CKA] Sl'MMARY 361 



between him and his Indian neighbors, as well as other races. 

 Proceeding from the east westward, conditions are reversed. In 

 general the farther west we proceed the less exceptional on the 

 whole the Eskimo becomes and the more he approximates the Indian, 

 particularly the Indian of Alaska and the northwest coast. As this 

 can not, in the light of present evidence, be attributed alone to mix- 

 ture, it is plain that if it were possible to proceed a few steps farther 

 in this direction the differences between the Eskimo and the Indian 

 would fade out so that a distinction between the two would become 

 difficult if not impossible. 



The facts point, therefore, to an original identity of the source 

 from which were derived the Indian, more particularly his latest 

 branches, and the Eskimo, and to the identification of this source with 

 the palaeo- Asiatic yellow-brown people of lower northern Asia. The 

 differentiation of the Eskimo from this source must have proceeded 

 over a fairly long time, and probably started already it would seem 

 on the northern coasts of Asia, where conditions were present capable 

 of beginning to shape him into an Eskimo ; to be carried on since in 

 the Bering Sea area and especially in the Seward Peninsula and 

 farther northward and eastward. In a larger sense the cradle of 

 the Eskimo, therefore, while starting probably in northeast Asia, 

 covered in reality a much vaster region, extending from northern 

 Asia and the Bering Sea to the far American Arctic. 



SUMMARY 



What is the substance of the results of all these new observa- 

 tions and studies on the western Eskimo, who is the main subject of 

 this report? In large lines this may be outlined as follows: 



1. The western Eskimo occupied, uninterrupted by other people 

 (save in a few spots by the Aleuts), the great stretch of the Alaskan 

 coast from Prince William Sound and parts of the Unalaska Penin- 

 sula to Point Barrow, all the islands in the Bering Sea except the 

 Aleutians and Pribilovs. and the northern and western coasts of 

 the Chukchi Peninsula in Asia. 



They extended some distance inland along the Kuskokwim and 

 Yukon Rivers; along the interior lakes and livers of the Seward 

 Peninsula; along a part of the Selawik River, most (perhaps) of the 

 Kobuk River, and apparently along the whole Noatak River, com- 

 municating over the land with the lower Colville Basin. But no 

 traces of original Eskimo settlements have ever been found in the 

 true Alaska inland or along those parts of the Alaska rivers that 

 constitute the Indian territory. 



2. The present population is sparse, with many unpeopled inter- 

 vals, and not highly fecund, but, except when epidemics strike, it 



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