196 A^ANSJS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. ■ 



into the pit of the neck, and the lower maxillae being thus forced down, the 

 mouths were wide open. 



It is regretable that photographs of these mummies cannot be offered, as in 

 the picture given by Mr. Dall the limbs, are dislocated and distorted, failing en- 

 tirely to express any idea the embalmers may have desired to perpetuate, or the 

 admirable care and solicitude in their work. The thighs were brought up and 

 doubled close upon the abdomen; the legs folded snugly upon the thighs, and 

 the feet pressed sharp down backward. The arms were laid symmetrically on 

 the thorax, and the forearms bent upon the arms, the hands not crossed in repose 

 upon the chest, but with the fingers curved over the front of the shoulders.* 

 Thus much for the aspect of the bodies. 



What may be the origin, we may ask of these people? Whence came they ? 



It is not probable that an autochthonic race existed in these Aleutian Islands. 

 Such rude, inhospitable storm beaten regions were not likely to be the cradle of 

 a special tribal birth. Regarding these islands as they appear on the map, the 

 idea is forced upon the mind that at some remote epoch the two continents of 

 Asia and America formed one territory. The volcanic nature of the entire region 

 indicates a vast change of the earth's surface by which the constinuity of the 

 continents was destroyed. The long promontory of Aliaska extending from 

 Alaska, nearly touches the easternmost island of the Aleutian chain. A long 

 succession of wild eruption-torn islands in a crescentic line crosses the sea, thence 

 to the Kamschatkan coast ; the whole group, hung like a grand festoon of gems 

 formed by Titan hands and resplendent with the illumination of volcanic fires, 

 appears suspended from shore to shore, to adorn the approaches to the Straits of 

 Behring, or rather, in a military view, like a vast circumvallation of fortresses to 

 defend tlieir entrance from invasion. But the Arctic Ocean has its own defences 

 and needs no such gigantic ornament. Only the ruined abutments now remain 

 of the " bridge," which some author calls the Aleutian Islands, by which migra- 

 tions of peoples passed from continent to continent, and the bridge was the seg- 

 ment of a circle. 



This view seems sufficient without seeking a Malay, Japanese or Chinese ori- 

 gin for the natives of the Aleutian Isles. Their progenitors were an autochthonic 

 race. It is a prevailing opinion that a vast invasion of wild tribes from the far 

 northwest poured down upon, the ancie;nt mound builders of North America, 

 sweeping them away from their copper mines on Lake Superior, destroying their 

 temples, burial places and fortresses in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, 

 and exterminating their race or driving them back whence they originated, across 

 Texas into Mexico and Central America, leaving no vestiges of them but their 

 teocallis and their mounds. How immense must have been such an invasion and 



* In regard to Aleutian burial ceremonies, says Coxa, page 173: " The bodies of poor people are wrap- 

 ped in their own clothes, or in mats, then laid in a grave and covered with earth. The bodies of the rich are 

 put, together with their clothes and arms in a small boat made of the wood driven ashore by the sea ; the boat 

 is hung upon poles placed cross-ways, and the body is then left to rot in the open air. " 



