570 Limit of the Innuit Tribes on the Alaska Coast. [July, 



invaders, consulting their own interests, gave their assistance to 

 the weaker tribe, and during their occupation of the country put 

 a stop to a further advance of the Thlinkets. Only fifteen years 

 have elapsed since tips restriction was removed and already we 

 see the effect in the absorption of former Innuit territory by .the 

 Kolash. 



Every fact I have been able to collect in connection with tribal 

 movements over this debatable ground, points to a migration of 

 the Innuits along the Alaskan coast southward and eastward 

 until they met the Thlinkets, and until stopped by the long stretch 

 of inaccessible cliffs and icy promontories already mentioned. I 

 am also inclined to believe that the whole movement originated 

 from the American Arctic coast at a period subsequent to the 

 invention of the kaiak. Within the last twenty years! have ob- 

 served instances of individual migration at various points of the 

 Alaskan coast, but always in the same direction. I have found 

 individuals and families from the Lower Yukon in the vicinity 

 of Bristol bay and in the interior of the Alaska peninsula. The 

 Mahlermite or Koikhpagamute of to-day looks to the southward 

 and eastward as the direction in which to find a better country, 

 just as his ancestors did centuries ago. 



Mr. Dall, in the paper above referred to, seems to adopt the 

 theory of the gradual advance of the Innuits from the interior of 

 North America to the coast before the impulse of successive 

 waves of other tribes behind them. This theory, first promul- 

 gated by Dr. Rink, is entirely tenable if we suppose that these 

 waves of retreating Innuits reached the coast first in high alti- 

 tudes, in a region devoid of timber, such as would lead to a 

 change from the habits of an inland people to those of the mod- 

 If in accor- 



i of tlu 



dance with this theory, the Innuits were driven northward along 

 the coast to their present homes before the onset of the Thlinket 

 tribes, the natural conclusion would be that the rear guard of the 

 vast Innuit army stopped about the region of the Copper river 

 country, where we find them to-day. This region and the whole 

 of Prince William sound, as well as the shores of the Kenai pen- 

 insula, are densely wooded, and the question arises, how came 

 these people to adopt the use of the kaiak when they are sur- 

 rounded with every facility for constructing canoes from the same 

 material that they must have known and applied to the same pu 



