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inua, spirit of the air) besides the Indian Kanlakpak or «great
raven». But the Eskimo myth here about the sun and the
moon is the same as in Greenland, whereas Veniaminow tells
us that the Aleutians have a somewhat similar story, in which
however, the brother and sister were converted into sea otters.
I have never ventured on the task of instituting a
comparison of the Eskimo folklore with the whole material of
TRADITIONS FROM THE ADJACENT NORTHERN COUNTRIES which we are
possessed of. However, I can not abstain from calling attention
to a few examples of what I have found in them similar to
Eskimo elements, though apparently almost as much contradicting
as supporting the proposed theory of Alaska as the cradle of
the Eskimo race and at all events tending to show how
puzzling the traditions can be on account of a too defective
knowledge about them.
In mentioning the SAMOJED TRADITIONS Castrèn tells us a
story about 7 bathing women who had laid off the clothing
which could transform them into birds, and a man who stole
one of them by laying hold on her clothes. This event, well
known also from other countries, exactly agrees with the chief
episode of a story which P. Egede asserts to have heard in
Greenland, while on the other hand Powers in his work on the
CALIFORNIA INDIANS states that he never discovered among these
any trace of beings like the «swanmaidens of mediaeval legends».
But again in Sproat’s TALES FROM VANCOUVER ISLAND we
recognise several Eskimo elements, as for instance: men lost in
venturing to brave the mysterious dangers in the unknown
interior of a fiord, cliffs able to clasp them, female murderers
who took the shape of birds, the sun and the moon as a
married couple.
While the latter examples indicate a kinship with the Western
Indians we are again puzzled by discovering similar hints in
the east, in the IROQUOIS TRADITIONS communicated by E. A.
Smith. We hear about a monstrous snake, the dismembered
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