190 ESKIMO GEOGRAPHIC NAMES 



ant Episcopal mission at Anvik, 17 miles higher up the stream, 

 gardens producing potatoes (7 or 8 inches long and 3 inches in 

 diameter 1 , turnips weighing 10 pounds, cauliflower, radishes, 

 cabbage, lettuce, carrots, beets, and peas, while strawberries, 

 blackberries, raspberries, and other well-known small fruits 

 were growing wild in the immediate vicinity. At Circle City, 

 1,322 miles up the river, and at Fort Cudahy, 1,522 miles up, 

 many favorite varieties of garden truck seemed to be thriving. 

 Dr Jackson sums up his statement in the following words : 

 " While Alaska will never be an agricultural state in the same 

 sense in which that term is understood in the Mississippi valley, 

 yet it has agricultural capacities much in advance of the public 

 sentiment of the country. 1 ' 



ON ESKIMO GEOGRAPHIC NAMES ENDING IN MIUT 



Mr Charles Hallock, in his article on the Kuskokwim river, 

 in The National Geographic Magazine for March, 1898, enu- 

 merates a number of names of Eskimo settlements on the river, 

 all ending in mute, and explains (on p. 88) that " mute means 

 village." This is not really a translation of the affix, although 

 words with this termination appear to be very generally used as 

 village names in that part of Alaska — at least, by white men. 

 Strictly speaking, such names are not applicable to the village 

 itself, but to the inhabitants of the village, for the termination, 

 which properly should be written mint, is simply the plural of 

 the well-known Eskimo enclitic affix mio, " he who dwells," or 

 '" that which belongs " (in any place), which is found wherever 

 any dialect of the Eskimo language is spoken. In Greenland 

 these names are applied only to the inhabitants of single village 

 sites, as, for example. Nungmiut, "the people of Godthaab ; " 

 but in the central region and in northwestern Alaska they are 

 applied sometimes to more extended regions, and thus serve as 

 a kind of tribal name. For instance, the Point Barrow Eskimos 

 call the people of the Mackenzie delta collectively Kupangmiun, 

 " the people who live on the great river." 



This termination should always be written miut (or miun in 

 the northwestern dialects), but appears in the writings of differ- 

 ent explorers in several incorrect forms, such as mute, mut, meat, 

 or mean. 



John Murdoch, 



Boston Public Library. 



