1)8 



any other 'vvliicli might be suggested, there is no satisfactory comi)arison to 

 be made in point of facility. 



I assume, then, that the larger part of North America may have been 

 peopled by way of Bering Strait. ]\Ir. Marldiam's proposition that popula- 

 tion may have reached the Polar Archipelago by way of Wrangell Land 

 and the unknown Polar region, does not involve any weighty objections 

 except our ignorance of the region indicated. I am told by the whalers 

 that in cruising near Wrangell Land they have noticed on the shore vivid 

 green spots, like those that are the peculiar characteristics of the Aleutian 

 Kjokkenmodden; and that they believe that land to be, or to have been, 

 inhabited. With the greater facility afforded by the Strait route, however, 

 we may doubt whether the majority of emigrants would select that by way 

 of the Polar Sea. 



But with these points I have little to do. I believe that this emigration 

 was vastly more ancient than Mr. IVIarkham supposes, and that it took place 

 before the present characteristics of races and tribes of North American 

 savages were developed. For confirmatory testimony I refer the reader to 

 Part II of this paper. 



While the Innuit at present are almost exclusively maritime, it is by no 

 means certain that all branches of their stock have always been so. Indeed, 

 we have occasional instances, like that of the Arctic Highlanders, where we 

 find a strictly Innuit tribe without the means of navigation. It is known 

 that, at a period not very remote, the Innuit occupied territory luucli farther 

 to the south or east or inland than they do now. Franklin records the existence 

 of Innuit two hundred miles farther up the Mackenzie, in his time, than 

 they range at present. There are many facts in American ethnology which 

 tend to show that originally the Innuit of the east coast had, much the same 

 distribiition as the walrus, namely, as far south as New Jersey.* I have 

 already mentioned that the National Museum has received relics, apparently 

 of Innuit type, from shell-heaps near the mouth of the Stikine River, col- 

 lected by Lieut. F. M. Ring, U. S. A. This is nearly four hundred miles 

 south and east of the most southeastern Innuit of the northwest coast. And 

 this is not, in my opinion, the most southern ancient limit of these people 

 by any means. Whether the strange similarity of the skulls of the Northern 



*Dr. Leidy , since the above was written, reports a walrus tusk from the phosphate beds of South Carolina. 



