Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/205

 DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 193

of the reindeer. It seems to me that the points made in this paper, regarding the relative age of the cultural elements of reindeer nomadism, can hardly be maintained. The criteria made out for earlier and later phenomena are purely subjective and a matter of debatable opinion. The vagueness of his chronology is not helpful in historical investigation. History must be based on historical data and documentary evidence, not on speculation. The account of Rubruck of the thirteenth century, Dr. Hatt quotes as proving the early use of ox or horse carts by the nomads, is of little value in view of the ancient accounts of the carts used by the nomadic Scythians in Hippocrates (cf. Minns, Scythians and Greeks* p. 50) and by the Turkish tribes in the Chinese Annals many centuries before that time. I fully maintain my point that the domestication of the reindeer presents a secondary and imitative process leaning toward horse and cattle, and as regards driving, toward the dog. Hatt denies the former influence, but then he hastens to explain that "reindeer milking certainly must be due to influence from cow or horse culture," and again, "the use of the reindeer for riding and carrying and as a milk-giving animal must have come into the Tungusian-Soyotian area as a result of contact with horse and cow culture;" and finally, "it is not to be denied that some reindeer nomads have taken over certain things from horse and cattle breeding."

I do not see that the data relating to the milking of reindeer which Dr. Hatt quotes alter the views expressed by me. Pekarski states plainly in regard to the Tungus of Ayan that butter is made to a small extent only, and this isolated case of modern origin is an exception which confirms the rule that butter was formerly not made by the Tungus in general. The fact that the Soyot consume reindeer milk in the shape of butter or cheese was stated by myself (p. 127). The chapter " Beginning of Reindeer Nomadism" is based on unproved premises and hypothetical and arbitrary speculations. Olsen (p. 113), according to Hatt, is wrong in his observations among the Soyot and must have misunderstood what he saw, because it so happens that his data contradict a theory of Hatt. This procedure seems to me entirely inadmissible, because it is based on the desire of the speculative theorist who combats the facts which disturb or shatter his dreams.

I strictly maintain my interpretation of Ohthere's account. Nowhere have I entertained any doubt as to the nationality of the Finn, as Hatt supposes. His two objections to my interpretation (p. 120) are not valid. How do we know that a Norseman in the ninth century would never think of keeping deer in a park? The supposition that "the reindeer is a

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