Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/55

 Rh they form two groups of Mongolic peoples. The one group, consisting of the Ostiaks of Yenisei, the Yukaghirs, Ainu, and Gilyaks, he calls Nordasiaten von unbestimmter systematischer Stellung (the North Asiatics without a definite position); the other group at the extreme east and including Tlingit [Kolush] and Vancouver tribes, he calls the "Bering tribes." But, in the first place, not all those people are actually Hyperborean; and then, if the Yukaghirs and the Gilyaks are the "Northern Asiatics without a definite position," the others, e.g. Koryaks and Kamchadals, deserve the same name.

The whole population of Siberia was in 1897 about 5,727,000, but, if we remember that the Europeans (Russians and Poles mostly) are more than 5 millions in number, we shall see how very scarce are the natives of the country. According to Stanford's Compendium (1906), the Palaeo-Siberians would number about 300,000, and the Neo-Siberians about 750,000, but the statistics of Patkanoff, published in 1912, and based on the same census of 1897 as Stanford's Compendium, show a somewhat different number of aborigines.

The Palaeo-Siberians consist of:

I. Chukchis, between the Anadyr River, north-eastern Siberia, and the Arctic Ocean (except the north-eastern extremit}'). According to Stanford's Compendium their number is 12,000, but according to Patkanoff 11,771.

II. Koryaks, between the Anadyr River and the central part of the Kamchatka Peninsula (except the coastland between the Gulf of Anadyr and Cape Olintovsk). According to Stanford's Compendium their number is 5000, but according to Patkanoff 7335.

III. Kamchadales, in the southern part of Kamchatka Peninsula. According to Stanford's Conipcndinni their number is 3000, but according to Patkanoff 2805.