The Anderson River throwing-stick (and we should include the Mackenzie
River district) is a very primitive affair in the National Museum, being
only a tapering flat stick of hard wood (Fig. 5). Marks 2, 3, 4, 5, and
6 are wanting. The index-finger cavity is large and eccentric and
furnishes a firm hold. The shaft-groove is a rambling shallow slit, not
over half an inch wide. There is no hook or spur of foreign material
inserted for the spear end; but simply an excavation of the hard wood
which furnishes an edge to catch a notch in the end of the dart. Only
one specimen has been collected from this area for the National Museum;
therefore it is unsafe to make it typical, but the form is so unique
that it is well to notice that the throwing-stick in Eskimoland has its
simplest form in the center and not in the extremities of its whole
area. It is as yet unsafe to speculate concerning the origin of this
implement. A rude form is as likely to be a degenerate son as to be the
relic of a barbaric ancestry. Among the theories of origin respecting
the Eskimo, that which claims for them a more southern habitat long ago
is of great force. If, following retreating ice, they first struck the
frozen ocean at the mouth of Mackenzie's River and then invented the
kyak and the throwing-stick, thence we may follow both of these in two
directions as they depart from a single source.