8 
BLOOD GROUPS 
In all, the blood of forty pure Beavers was examined. The technique 
was identically the same as that employed last year. The following table 
records the sources from which the samples of blood were obtained and 
the groups into which they fall. 
Table VII 
Blood Groups 
From this it may be seen that the blood of practically half the Beaver 
Indians examined belongs to Group O; the other half to Group A. This, 
however, is not to be regarded as the distribution of the blood groups of 
Northern Athapascan Indians in general, since it is quite at variance with 
our findings in 1928 among the Chipewyan Indians at lake Athabaska 
where the grouping was 80 per cent, 10 per cent, 10 per cent, and 0 per cent, 
and also with the findings of Ruggles Gates made in the same year on 
Mackenzie river among the Slave, Dogrib, Hare, and Loucheux Indians, 
who showed a grouping of 85 per cent, 15 per cent, 0 per cent, and 0 per cent. 
Inbreeding among the Beaver Indians, no doubt, explains the unusual 
distribution. The blood, however, of sixty-one various other Indians 
and mixed breeds in Peace River area was also examined, and found to 
possess a somewhat similar distribution, thirty-eight (or 62 per cent) 
falling into Group 0, and twenty-three (or 38 per cent) into Group A. 
In Peace River region there is, therefore, an unusually high percentage 
of Group A blood. For the sake of convenience, the findings of this 
year and last year, together with data presented by Gates and Snyder, are 
set out in the following table: 
Table VIII 
Blood Groups in Percentages 
Tribe of Indians 
Number 
examined 
O 
A 
B 
AB 
Pure Beaver Indians 
40 
61 
69 
71 
453 
% 
52-5 
62 
80 
84-5 
91-3 
% 
47-5 
38 
10 
15-5 
7-7 
% 
% 
Non-Beaver Indians and breeds in Peace River re- 
gion 
Chipewyan Indians 1 
Mackenzie River Indians (Gates) 2 
10 

Pure Indians (Snyder) 3 
10 
1 Grant, J. C, B.: “Anthropometry of the Chipewyan and Cree Indians"; Bull. No. 64, Anth. Ser., No. 14, 
National Museum of Canada (1930). 
*Gates, R. R.: “Blood Groups of Canadian Indians and Eskimos"; Am. Jour. Phys. Anth., vol. 12, No. 3 (1929). 
*Snyder t L. H.: "Human Blood Groups”; Am. Jour. Phys. Anth., vol. 9, No. 2 (1926). 
