From: floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson)
Subject: Re: Question of Nativity
Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 07:46:48 GMT

In article <93005.123028IO20905@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> <IO20905@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> writes:
>
>I'd like to see more information/discussion about the "sources,"
>for lack of a better term, about the "aborigines."  I have not studied
>such material, so in my haunting fogginess, I think the Arctic cultures
>may have crossed on the Bering Landbridge, particularly the Eskimo,

There is no question that Eskimo culture exists on both sides of
the Bering Sea.  Siberian Yup`ik is just one of several branches
of the Yup`ik language/culture/people.  They are also definitely
related by genetics, culture, and language structure to Aleut and
Inupiaq (Inuit).  And all of them are without question related
more distantly to the Mongol people of Asia.  Relationships beyond
that become mostly speculation...

The "Asianness" of Eskimo people is so great that occasionally
Japanese tourist in the Anchorage International Airport mistake
Eskimo people for Japanese, and try starting up conversations in
Japanese!

>while the other (and multitudinous) Indian group came up from the south.

That is an interesting concept...  and one of controversy.  It
depends on when one thinks the Indian groups came to Alaska.
Certainly the Southeastern Alaska Indians have been there as long
as any of the Pacific Northwest cultures have been in place (And I
don't really know how long that might be, either.).

The Indian people of the Interior are Athabaskan and may have been
in Alaska only as recently as the European influx into America.

Ancient Indian and Eskimo sites have been dated to at least 11,500
years ago, and the various resulting theories of who came from
where at what time seem to be changing faster than anyone can keep
up with.  Some think that recent findings, in Interior Alaska, of
distinctly Indian objects that date at about 11,000 years back and
are very very similar to like objects found in the lower 48 means
that ALL humans in the Americas migrated across the Land Bridge
after the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago.  That theory
seems to rely on them also having very quickly spread over the
entire continent too.

(Personally I suspect Indian cultures either were in the Americas
long before that, maybe back 15,000 to 20,000 years, or didn't
come via the Bering Land Bridge at all, or both...  But I am
NOT a student of the subject, I just like that idea better!)

>I think Indians and Eskimos do not consider each other "kin."

Well, not genetically kin, but certainly kindred souls...  The
easiest to measure description I've ever heard of the difference
between Indians and Eskimos is that they are less alike than the
English and Japanese.

>The "eskimo," as I understood, was a pejorative term used by the
>Algonquin, meaning "raw meat eaters."  The French learned to call such
>people "les esquimaux," which in turn became the English Eskimo.
>The Arctic cultures seemed, historically and still today, to be in
>the minority, even among the Indians who had/have so much traffic with
>Euro- Anglo- settlers of America.  The distinctive Arctic cultures
>seem to be lost amid the Euro- Anglo- concept of "Native Americans."

There are only a few Eskimo cultures as opposed to many Indian
cultures, hence there is a bond all across the Arctic polar
region.  And in most areas where the cultures have existed in the
past they are still the majority of all people.  The effect is
that people away from the Arctic, Indian or non-Indian, don't seem
to hear or know much about Eskimo people or culture, but in the
areas where the cultures exist, they have a very distinct and
pronounced affect on everyone including non-Eskimo people.

Floyd


-- 
floyd@ims.alaska.edu        A guest on the Institute of Marine Science computer
Salcha, Alaska              system at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
Newsgroups: alt.native