Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/432



was a happy inspiration which caused Dr. Marett to suggest to Miss Czaplicka, on completing her course at Oxford in Anthropology, that she should undertake a monograph on the aboriginal tribes of Siberia. For though the present volume, which has resulted from his suggestion, comprises no original researches in the field, it is none the less important, as presenting to the English-speaking student a summary—and frequently much more than a summary—of valuable reports from Russian sources not otherwise accessible. It is chiefly from such sources that first-hand information must be obtained, together with a few works in German, chiefly by German-speaking Russians, and the Reports (in English) of the Jesup Expedition, so far as they relate to the extreme north-east. All these sources and others have been utilized by Miss Czaplicka. The book will thus be a very useful, and, if I may judge by its rendering of the voluminous reports of the Jesup Expedition, trustworthy compendium of facts relating to tribes little known to western European students.

But it is more than this. Beginning with a chapter of geographical and physiographical information, essential for the proper understanding of the life of the Siberian tribes, the writer proceeds to give a list and a short account of the tribes themselves. She divides them (following Patkanoff) into two classes, the Palaeo-Siberians, the real aborigines, consisting of the Chukchi, Koryak, Kamchadal, Ainu, Gilyak, Eskimo, Aleut, Yukaghir, Chuvanzy, and the Ostyak of Yenisei; and the Neo-Siberians, later incomers