102 



hypothesis, though I would not be understood as asserting that such did not 

 occur. 



Certainly, the homogeneity of the Innuit stock in traditions, habits, and 

 language is too great to have resulted from the modification in a few cen- 

 turies of an incongruous horde of Mongols, Scythians, and Chukchi. 



We have no knowledge of the Arctic Sea to justify us in asserting that 

 thei'e is a bridge of ice and land, even in winter, between Wrangell's Land 

 and the Parry Archipelago, a distance of a thousand miles, in which no land 

 is known to exist, and in some parts of which deep water and strong ciu*- 

 rents, which we know to be there, would put a barrier of open water across 

 the desert of a thousand miles of broken ice. 



The occupation of the Aleutian Islands by human beings, in all 

 probability the ancestors of the present Aleuts, is, I think, shown by Part 

 II of this paper to be of very ancient date. This is still further confirmed 

 by the modifications in their language, which, though evidently of Innuit 

 stock, has become greatly differentiated from the other Innuit dialects. For 

 instance, the Aleuts can count up to two thousand by the decimal system, 

 according to Veniaminoff, while their nearest neighbors, the Kaniagmut, 

 can only coimt up to two hundred. The words, too, with few exceptions, 

 are quite different in the two dialects, while all the other Innuit tribes have 

 many words in common. It is noteworthy, too, that the tribes who have 

 pressed upon the Innuit people of the northwest coast have traditions of 

 origin to the southeast, as, for instance, the T'linkets, who profess to have 

 come from the Nasse River region. 



My own impression agrees with that of Dr. Rink that the Innuit Avere 

 once inhabitants of the interior of America ; that they were forced to the west 

 and north by the pressure of tribes of Indians from the south ; that they 

 spread into the Aleutian region and northwest coast generally, and possibly 

 simultaneously to the north ; that their journeying was originally tenta- 

 tive, and that they finally settled in those regions which afforded them 

 subsistence, perhaps after passing through the greater portion of Arctic 

 America, leaving their traces as they went in many places iinfit for penna- 

 nenf settlement ; that after the more inviting regions were occupied, the 

 pressure from Indians and still unsatisfied tribes of their own stock, induced 



