360 A. §. Bickmore on the Ainos of Yesso. 
that these aborigines were the ancestors of the present Ainos. 
Thus, this people, although so little known to this day, are 
mentioned half a century before the time of N ebuchadnezzar, 
and siz hundred years before the northern and western parts of 
Europe were first described by Ceesar in his Commentaries, and 
more than two thousand one hundred years before the discovery 
of the continent by Columbus. In A. D. 272 the Ainos, for 
the first time, brought presents to the J apanese authorities 
and acknowledged them as their rulers. . D. 352 they 
rebelled, and in the year 366 they defeated the J apanese and 
killed their general. During the next two centuries, however, 
they appear to have been completely subjugated ; for an educa- 
ted Japanese informs me that as early as A. D. 655, the Jap- 
anese sovereign then reigning established a kind of government 
over the Ainos in Yesso, which was located near Siribets, a 
volcano on the north shore of Volcano Bay. In A. D. 1186, 
Yoritomo usurped the ruling power in Niphon, and becoming 
jealous of his brother Yosi Tsunay, had him put to death 
according to history, at a headland on the east coast now 
called Shendai. But according to tradition, Yosi T'sunai 
escaped to Yesso, and treating the Ainos here with the greatest 
and claims to possess some of the presents made by Yosi Tsunay 
to his ancestors. 
'Y> OF, as is 
