1 882.] Limit of the Innuit Tribes on the Alaska Coast. 573 



ing ground to another of a few families or a community, always 

 involved the transportation of every log or plank and every par- 

 ticle of wood to be found about the place. As an instance of this 

 kind, I may point to the removal of the people of Makushin, on 

 Oonalashka island which took place in the early part of the year 

 1879. I" the summer of 1880 I visited the spot from which the 

 people had removed, and found the outlines of every house indi- 

 cated by a slight depression in the ground and enclosed by low 

 ridges of earth covered already with a dense growth of sphag- 

 num and grasses. Every piece of wood about the whole settle- 

 ment had disappeared simultaneously with the people, and I have 

 no doubt that an explorer unacquainted with the circumstances 

 could dig up these remains without finding a scrap of iron, or 

 anything indicating their recent occupation by at least semi-civil- 

 ized people. Another example of this kind, and even more forci- 

 ble in total absorption of all signs of recent occupation, can be 

 found on the island of Atkha at the site of the former settlement 

 of Korovinsky, the people of which removed to Nazan on the 

 other side of the island, less than fifteen years ago. 



In the settlements remote from the trading centers the people 

 of Innuit stock live to-day as they did probably centuries ago, in 

 a manner not at all inconsistent with the remains found in the 

 lower strata of shell heaps. Even the presence of stone and bone 

 arrow and spear heads is no true indication of age, as they are 

 manufactured at the present day, as I had an opportunity to wit- 

 ness frequently during my travels in remote regions. 



The time required for the formation of a so-called layer of 

 "kitchen refuse" found under the sites of Aleutian or Innuit 

 dwellings, I am also inclined to think less than indicated by Mr. 

 Call's calculations. Anybody who has watched a healthy Innuit 

 family in the process of making a meal on the luscious echinus 

 or sea urchin, would naturally imagine that in the course of a 

 month they might pile up a great quantity of spinous debris. 

 Both hands are kept busy conveying the sea fruit to the capacious 

 mouth ; with a skillful combined action of teeth and tongue, the 

 sn ell is cracked, the rich contents extracted, and the former falls 

 rattling to the ground in a continuous shower of fragments until 

 the meal is concluded. A family of three or four adults, and 

 P^haps an equal number of children, will leave behind them a 

 t of their voracity a foot or eighteen inches in 



sh-jl 



