Barring the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands in the south and the
Chukchee territory in the west, the Bering Sea is wholly the sea of
the Eskimo, the Indians occupying the inland but reaching nowhere to
the coast. There is doubtless much of significance in this remarkable
distribution. It is now quite certain that the Eskimo has not been
pressed out by the Indian; there are as a rule no traces of him farther
inland than where he has been within historic times. On the other hand
no Indian remnants or remains are known from any part of the coasts or
islands within the Eskimo region; though the study of the older sites
in these regions has barely as yet begun, besides which (see Narrative)
it is a serious question whether really old sites could now be located
in these regions at all even if they had once existed. At all events
the Eskimo appears from all indications to be the latest comer, and
judging from his remains his occupancy here is not geologically
ancient; it is one to be counted, apparently, in many hundreds of
years rather than in thousands. The Aleuts in the south are, as I have
pointed out in the Catalogue (No. 1, 1924, p. 39), not Eskimo but
Indians, related to the general Alaska Indian type; and the Pribilof
Islands appear never to have been occupied until fairly recently, when
a good number of Aleuts, mostly mixed bloods, have been transported and
established there in the interest of the seal fisheries.