CHAPTER III.
Aboriginal Inhabitants of Alaska.

THE aborigines of North America are naturally divided into two great groups. One of these comprises the natives universally known under the name of Indians. For the other (to supply a term long needed in generalization, to distinguish the tribes of Innuit, Aleutians, and Asiatic Eskimo from the natives comprised under the first head), in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in September, 1869, I proposed the term Ordrian * in allusion to their universal coastwise distribution. The pertinence of this appellation will be better appreciated if the reader will take the trouble to lay down on the map the boundaries of the territory actually occupied by the members of this group. He will see that it forms a belt or girdle along the north and west coasts of America, and the extreme east coast of Asia, rarely interrupted, as on the northwest shore of Kenai ; sometimes produced inland near a great water-course, such as the mouth of the Yukon or Mackenzie ; but no-where attaining any great breadth, and everywhere interposed between the Indians, who occupy the interior, and the sea.
Our knowledge is yet insufficient, and the scope of this chapter is too limited, to admit of the discussion of the question of the original identity of the Indian and Orarian stocks. It is an easy matter, however, to show the most salient points of present difference. Another and more interesting question, that of the original derivation of the natives of America, is also too wide for discussion here, while the facts on which to ground any hypothesis are very limited in number.
To the overshadowing influence of Indo-European study in
* From ora, a coast. I should have preferred a term of native derivation (e. g. Innuit) had there been any of sufficient scope ; failing in that, a classical term was adopted.