3. SOME EXAMPLES OF EXPANSION BY SEA BY NON-WHALING ABORIGINAL PEOPLES

Looking at Algonquians, Picts, and non-whaling Pacific Coast Tribes

by
ANDRES PÄÄBO

Synopsis: When the long-range seagoing peoples expanded around the arctic sea, in their quest for whales, porpoises, walrus, seals, and so on, they became established in whatever new environment contained these sea animals. However all along there was also fish as a mainstay of their lives, and so these people could enter territories in which such large sea-mammals were rare, but fish was plentiful. Since fish (freshwater fish) were also found inland, skin-boat peoples could also travel up rivers and settle inland, thriving on annual harvests of plentiful fish like salmon. This chapter deals with a few identifiable descendant peoples, arising from the original oceanic peoples. These people arose in a very simple way - they descended the coasts from the arctic waters, and adapted to lives that were less dependent on sea mammals and more dependent on fish. The peoples discussed here include the "Picts", Algonquians, and selected Native peoples of the Pacific coast of North America.

NOTE TO LINGUISTS RE WORD COMPARISONS IN THIS ARTICLE . The comparisons between far-away languages of aboriginal boat peoples against Finnic language are only intended to show coincidences that may be significant. They are done because there is already non-linguistic similarities in culture, way of life. The compared pairs of words will be assembled to a great degree intuitively, looking for dual similarity - both in word form and meaning - since finding only a single similarity is too easy and is likely to be random chance and mean nothing. Take careful note of how close the forms are, and how close the meanings are. The closer they both are at the same time, the more likely the pairing is to be valid. Obviously your opinion will vary and you will think some of these are impossibe to connect, while others are remarkably similar and worth closer inspection. Of course, if any scholar is interested, they can look more deeply into how the particular language works to find more similarities. If I were to do a thorough investigation himself it could take ten years and the results may fill 1000 pages. But we cannot ignore noticable coincidences simply because it is not feasible to spend 10 years of research on it . We show what we can. from a limited investigation. At least presenting something rather than nothing is a beginning from which further study can grow if someone is interested. - AP

Introduction

CONTINUING INVESTIGATION OF EVIDENCE OF EXPANSIONS BY SEA

    The theory of the expansion of Boat Peoples from the watery lands south of the Ice Age glaciers ( PART ONE: THE ORIGINS AND EXPANSIONS OF BOAT-ORIENTED WAYS OF LIFE : Basic Introduction to the Theory ), proposes that there was an original expansion across northern Europe of peoples originating in the "Maglemose" archeological culture. PART TWO of these articles looks in more detail at the branch of the boat people who took first to the Baltic sea with large dugouts (archeological "Kunda" culture) and then headed north to the arctic ocean, and developed skin boats because there weren't any large enough trees for seagoing dugouts. (See PART TWO: SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of Whale Hunters) In PART TWO we also looked at the Inuit language and found remarkable parallels with Finnic (Estonian and Finnish today), thus producing an echo of the circumpolar movements of whale hunters. Then we looked at the Kwakwala language of the Northwest Pacific coast of North America, a language of the Wakashan languages of cultures with whaling traditions, which showed amazing parallels both Inuit and Finnic languages.
       Obviously if there are sea peoples in the arctic, once they have the capability to do so, and are in pursuit of large sea mammals like whales and seals, with success and population growth, they will start to migrate around the arctic seas, and even south along oceanic coasts in search of the fertile waters filled with sea life.
     We have already considered the migration across the North Atlantic to establish the "Dorset" culture of the east part of the North American arctic waters. In this article we will consider the evidence of migrations southward along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. (PART ONE has already looked at the Wakashan whale hunters of the Pacific coast of North America, and made a mention of the Ainu seagoing original peoples of Japan.)

THE AREAS OF STUDY IN THIS ARTICLE

    Once the skin boat peoples were established in arctic Norway, they were free to migrate southward along the Norwegian coast and into the British Isles, and even further south, establishing people ancestral to the Picts. We are not speaking of whaling peoples, but 'regular' sea-hunters and fishers. Similarly once the circumpolar whalers were in the arctic near Greenland, some were free to migrate south along the Labrador coast (the same way the Icelandic Norse ventured south in 1000AD) and establish themselves there, and south to Newfoundland and even further. At the lower end of the Labrador coast was the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, which was the gateway into a large inland water system known as the Great Lakes. They would have travelled into that water system. There they would have become ancestral to the Algonquian speaking peoples, the ones best known for the birch bark skin boats (canoes).In most cases we will find that these peoples were attracted to salmon, which were probably migrating up and down rivers to both Atlantic and Pacific in large number, Atlantic eels perhaps too,
       Similarly circumpolar sea peoples arriving at the Bering Strait were free to descend south along the Asian and North American coasts (although ocean currents there favoured the Asian side) We will look at a few Native cultures that were found and recorded at the midpoint of the NorthAmerican coast for cultural and linguistic features that would tie them to the boat-people expansion. PART TWO already looked at the Wakashan (specifically Kwakiutl) whaling peoples of the Pacitic coast.
       Because voyages across the North Atlantic would begin in the Norwegian arctic waters, we begin our journey with some attention on the great number of rock carvings found at Alta, Norway. I believe that Alta, Norway, was a staging area for many of the migrations that contributed to the culture of the northeast quadrant of North America.

The First Wave of Seagoing Expansion

BALTIC > LAKE ONEGA > WHITE SEA > ARCTIC NORWAY > ALTA, NORWAY

    Archeology shows that large harpons alongside adzes first appear in the "Kunda" culture in the location of today's Estonia southward along the east Baltic coast, and it makes sense that these were the first boat people to make large dugouts and venture into the sea to hunt large sea-mammals. With the success of this culture, breakaway groups expanded to other places with sea-mammals. Lake Onega and White Sea rock carvings suggest the dugout canoe was replaced by skin boats made of moosehide forced by the lack of lack of large enough trees in the arctic to fashion large seagoing dugouts. Once the skin boat concept was established, it was an easy step to make them larger and larger, and there are rock carvings showing this larger boat, maintaining the moosehead on the prow that honoured the animal from whose skin the boat was made.
    While the east Baltic, then Lake Onega and the White Sea were the first staging areas for the expansion of sea peoples into the northern seas, the coast at Alta, Norway, was the second staging ground. This article will look at migrations that seem to have originated from developments concurrent with the development of the congregating site at Alta Norway.
    The region of Alta, Norway, was originally under glaciers, so that location did not become relevant until the glaciers had receded, freeing up the coast as well as the interior. As we saw in PART TWO, the first boat peoples to venture into the fertile waters off the coast of arctic Norway, probably returned south for the winter. For one thing the moosehead on the prow signified that these people must have regularly visited places sufficiently south to find the animal known as the moose (or in Britain known as the "elk", in Finnish "hirvi", in Estonian as "põder"). As I pointed out in PART TWO, the rock carvings at Lake Onega show a man on skis pursuing a moose. The moose images in general do not show any antlers. Since antlers are grown in summer and lost in fall, it follows the people who made the carving were not there in summer and never saw the moose with antlers. Thirdly, winter was dark in the arctic and people would have nothing to do but wait out the winter. The further south they went in winter, the more light they would have to hunt moose and other winter animals. Last but not least, rock carvings found on islands in the Norwegian arctic show images of forest animals, and nothing of the animals they are there to catch - as if expressing homesickness for the other location.
    Thus the first stage of the expansion into the oceans represented those sea-hunters who went into the arctic seas in spring, harvested sealife during the summer, and returned in fall, arriving back in the upper forest zone when the moose bulls had lost their antlers. As we saw in Part Two, some such peoples also became whale hunters because the rock carving shows whale hunting activity from large skin boat with the moosehead on the prow. It is easy to track these peoples from the moosehead on the prow.
    The second stage I believe begins when a tribe or extended clan decides not to return south. Archeologically speaking this would be the "Komsa" culture found on the arctic coast of Norway. The people who occupied the site archeologists have found appeared to have simply stored food and waited out the dark winter. By not returning south, these people could no longer make their skin boats from moose. As we see in photographs below, the Alta carvings show an abundance of skin boats with reindeer heads (the snout is square rather than round) - indicating that those who stayed simply used reindeer skins sewn together. Since reindeer lived further north than the moose, there was no need to descend into moose forests. Obviously those seafarers that actually left arctic Norway could no longer use reindeer hide, and probably used walrus hide, as that is what was used by the Inuit of arctic North America - although it is possible Greenland "Eskimos" whalers may have managed to employ whale hide.
   Originally that was entirely the origin of peoples harvesting the Norwegian arctic waters, because glaciers blocked access to the Norwegian arctic from below. But when the glaciers had shrunk, access to the coast from the interior was easy, even easier than today considering the interior lands were more depressed and wet. As a result, a new pattern of migration developed, in this case between the coast in the Alta region, and the interior regions. Indeed the boat journey via the rivers was easy, and the ancient elevated Gulf of Bothnia and the lakelands of what is now Finland were not far away for boat peoples. For this reason it may be possible to make links between the rock paintings on rock faces in Finland and the rock carvings at Alta. The Alta images are carved in granite and thus have preserved themselves well. The Finnish rock paintings are worn and often hard to make out, since paint is not as durable as a carving in granity; but it is reasonable to assume that they are basically from the same peoples. There are large areas in between without any evidence of images for one simple reason - it is marshland and a lack of granite walls or floors.

SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA FREED FROM GLACIERS

The three maps at right review the concept presented in the main theory of the expansion of boat peoples. In the beginning there were no humans on water (or than creating rafts as needed to cross bodies of water) and north Europe was home to reindeer hunters, each tribe oriented to a particular herd. As the world climate warmed, the reindeer, needing to keep north of the forests, shifted their migrations north and the hunters followed (1). These eventually became the Samoyeds. As the glaciers shrunk, the Kola Peninsula,White Sea, and the emerging Baltic was free of Ice. It was at this time that reindeer hunters could migrate west into the Kola Peninsula (2) (and then further west as the glaciers shrunk) This division of the Samoyeds mixed later with incoming Finnic boat peoples and became the reindeer Saami. And at the same time the new dugout-boat peoples expanded through the north south of the glaciers, eastward until further passage was blocked by the Ural Mountains (3). These formed the foundation of all the Finno-Ugric boat peoples. Finally, with the region of Finland and northern Norway becoming free of ice, and the development of skin boats, many groups of Finnic boat peoples migrated to the northern coasts, to harvest sea life in the arctic seas, especially in the waters warmed by the North Atlantic Drift. (4). Those who remained in the arctic year-round then used the ALTA area coast as a staging location for excursions into the sea both west and south (5)

ARCHEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING: The Maglemose Culture (9,000BC-6,000BC) around Denmark arose from reindeer hunters of Ahrensburgian Culture south of Denmark. It obviously took 3,000 years for the adaption to boats and water, and for its expansion. The climate was warming rapidly and all populations expanding. On the east Baltic coast, the Kunda Culture (8,000 BC- 5,000 BC) has arisen from the Swiderian Culture (11,000 BC – 8200BC) of reindeer hunters, who probably lasted longer because reindeer herds were not blocked by the seas, and could still migrate northward to keep north of the melting tundra. The Kunda Culture were boat peoples but hunted large sea animals. They might very well have borrowed the idea of the dugout boat from the Maglemose Culture which was quite extensive.in its range. Archeologists have found post-Swiderian Culture in Finland too, and therefore the theory that some reindeer people went north (1 in the map) appears true. In the south, the Maglemose Culture evolved into Konglemose Culture and then Ertebolle Culture, while the Kunda Culture evolved into the Narva Culture and Nemen Culture which basically added various useful innovations from farming peoples arriving into Central Europe, as much as the northern environment permitted, but not likely losing the core of their original boat-orientaton either in fishing or trading activity.

GENETICALLY SPEAKING: Geneticists believe the original y-chromosome haplotype of Europe was "I", and this was the haplotype of the original reindeer people (the R1a haplotype had not yet become dominant yet). The I haplotype, in the form I1 became dominant and is still strong in Scandinavia today, in spite of the entry of the more recent R1a. Finland has less of the I1 because of it being displaced by N1c1 that apparently came from the east from reindeer peoples of the region north of the Ural Mountains and its Samoyed reindeer peoples. There is no evidence the N haplotype was anywhere in Europe among the reindeer people there. The N haplotype has been traced into central Asia and it probably moved north as the climate warmed, similar to what happened in Europe. The big genetic debate is how the N hapologroup migrated east into the Saami and Finns. The general tendency is to connect it with a westward movement of the "Uralic" languages which include FInno-Ugric. If that is the case, why is the N1c1 haplogroup strong in the Saami of northern Scandinavia. Being furthest from a suggested Samoyedic origins the language of the Saami should be least Finnic, but instead it appears to be a convergence of Finnic and an unknown reindeer people language. That suggests the Ugric languages are too - a convergence - and not a divergence from a common ancestor. This debate, I believe, is greatly overshadowed by my finds (see later) of Finnic words in North America by boat people who could only have departed before the above complications. I will assume that N1c1 post-dates the initial boat people expansion.,

Alta Norway, a Major Location that Was a Multi-tribe Meeting Place and Launching Place for Sea Voyages

THE TRADITION OF MEETING PLACES

Alta, Norway is a location that must have been the meeting place for many tribes - tribes who were indigenous and harvested the seas, tribes who arrived seasonally from the interior, and possibly visitors from farther away.
The visitors, finding granite hills engraved with carvings, would have added their own at every visit. Such places where many tribes congregate, to trade, exchange news, socialize, and engage in common festivals are well known throughout the world of northern hunting peoples. The Lake Onega region was one such place where many tribes congregated. The region at the mouth of the Vistula another. It is possible to predict such locations according to the organization of water systems. Such locations appear in archeological investigations as different archeological "cultures" overlapping in that area, suggesting they came together, camped near one another. It is in such locations that sites of religious/spiritual nature can be found.

ALTA AS A MULTI-TRIBAL CONGREGATING REGION

Important to people who scattered into the environment in clans was having places to congregate to affirm large social orders. Several clans formed a tribe, and several tribes formed a 'people'. The fact that each tribe lived in a different environment, meant that material culture differed, but language and cosmology that was independent of circumstances would have remained largely undifferentiated as long as they congregated to affirm their large social order. .
Besides the tribe, consisting of a number of extended families, being reaffirmed at certain tribal congregating sites, there were places where several tribes could meet. These locations are suggested when archeological artifact material overlaps or has contact. The map shows some locations of overlap which probably were intertribal congregating places.
One of the consequences of such sites is that no matter how the hard material culture adapted to varying environmental conditions, the soft culture - religious worldview, language, etc - was quite unified over a very wide region from the regular contact. Languages naturally drift ad where there is no contact with neighbours each language developes into dialects and extreme dialects become new languages. Settlement bound farming peoples, for example may have had hundreds of dialects over the same amount of land that the highly mobile, regularly congregating, boat-using hunter gatherers had a single language. (like the example of the Cree natives in northeast North America, also boat peoples, and with one language in three dialects across 3000 km.) Our interest here with respect to the Atlantic sea-harvesters, is the Alta area. The adjacent map is developed from a learned text on the archeology of northern Europe, that depicts the detectable archeological groupings found in the archeological artifacts. I have proposed certain areas as multi-tribe meeting areas, based on points where three peoples territories meet, as well as major traditions such a rock carving sites. At this early stage, all the archeological cultures shown could have easily spoken the same language, with only dialectic variation. We bear in mind that the main reason for variation in the artifacts is that they lived in different environments. The "Kunda" culture for example hunted seals, so had large harpoons.

THE ALTA, NORWAY ROCK CARVING SITE

The Alta area has granite ridges, and because granite is hard, it has been determined that the carvings are between 6200-2000 years old. This means it was begun by the earliest skin boat peoples who visited the fertile waters off the coast - waters warmed by the North Altantic Drift that reached that location. We can also interpret the age as evidence that the skin boats were in use first in arctic Norway before it arrived anywhere else.
But the Alta site continued to recieve tribes both from along the coast and from the interior, as suggested by the fact that carvings are as new as 2000 years ago with some examples as late as 500 years ago. One can argue that a site that starts a tradtion of rock carvings both attracts more carvings, and in general grows in importance as a congregating site. The following information box shows some images from the site (images stolen from the internet)

MAJOR SITE OF PREHISTORIC ROCK CARVINGS AT ALTA NORWAY

Alta, Norway granite cliffs are covered with carvings.

The rock carvings in Alta are dated between 6200 and 2000 years old, and made by people who lived by hunting and fishing. Archeological investigation shows that the coastals camps established by these mobile peoples ate much fish, mainly cod. There are no images of a cod, probably for that reason: familiarity. The images are dominated by fishing from boats of all sizes (one shows a crew of 32) made of skin (leather) on a frame. The wildlife depicted include reindeer, elk. bears, dogs and/or wolves, foxes, hares, geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, halibut, salmon and whales. They also depict people, boats, hunting, trapping and fishing scenes, as well as people taking part in dances and ritual acts. The wide variety suggest tribes who came there came from the interior to exploit the abundant life of the arctic Norwegian coast and interior.

There is much in the rock carvings that resonate with peoples today far away from this location. For example they show techniques of capturing reindeer that were still found among the Inuit of arctic North America in this century in respect to the caribou (North American reindeer) These rock carvings were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on Dec 3 1985, the only prehistoric site among four Norwegian sites on a list of sites considered to have particularly great national and international value. Since 1972, about 4000 images have been recognized, dispersed on approximately 60 panels in four separate areas in Alta. The largest is at Hjemmeluft/Jiepmaluokta, where Alta Museum is situated. The Alta carvings ceased to be made around 500AD. That corresponds to approximately the time that the original Scandinavia began to be taken over by Germanic powers in Denmark.

        The congregating site was very important to nomadic hunting peoples because they moved around the environment as clans for most of the year, and needed to meet each other to share news, find mates, and carry out celedbrations.
    It is obvious from common sense that eventually some arctic seagoing people would no longer travel south in the winter, this is clear too from the fact that the Alta carvings show a large number of skin boats with reindeer, not moose, heads.
    But throughout its history the Alta site would have attracted peoples from the interior, from the Scandinavian interior, rather than for the Lake Onega area which was considerably further away. As the map shows Alta was located north of the mountain range and could be reached from rivers descendng into the interior. These interior people would have had small skin boats for navigating rivers, and as I will argue below, are one of the ancestors of the Algonquian peoples of the northeast quadrant of North America - the hunting people of the birch-bark canoe. But most of the carvings, from more recent times generally reflect the historic "Finn" culture in general, which originally was found in seagoing and forest peoples, and not just the reindeer tenders that have survived into modern times. (The original word "Finn" became "Lapps" and as later as the early 20th century, there were "Forest Lapps" and "Fisher Lapps" as well as the "Reindeer Lapps" who wanted their own name "Saami" which reflects the fact that they are also Finnic-speaking remnants of the reindeer peoples, which are also found towards the east as the "Samoyeds".
    It is important to make the connection between the aboriginal peoples who came to Alta, and all the vanished peoples that the Germanic conquerors of the Scandinavian Peninsula referred to as "Finns" since they took over. It is easy to see why the regions to the interior was called "Finnmark". Towards the east there was "Finnlanda". It underscores the fact that the "Finns", were the aboriginal peoples, But there has been debate as to how they relate to the Finnish who cover the same landscape as "Finns" of today's Finland. An obvious answer it that they are almost the same, since when Finland became a country there was not sharp distinction between the natives in the wilderness and the "Finns" in the more developed southern Finlands.,
    The map below in any event shows how interior boat peoples living in locations with moose, could have made the journey. There were also routes through the mountains that were used for trade in the nearer era.

Map using the modern topography, shows that Alta was easily accessible because there were no mountains blocking the way, as well as major rivers oriented in suitable directions. The presence of images of moose and some moosehead boats, suggest that some of the visitors to Alta, who made their own carvings at Alta, migrated to and from the coast in this way from the interior. These people depicted in the Alta carvings were, therefore not exclusively oceanic people. It is this sort of people who are the best candidates for peoples like the Algonquians of North America. (Later in time there is also a connection between the coast and the interior at the Lofotens, as discussed later.)

ROCK PAINTINGS IN FINLAND - FROM THE SAME INTERIOR CULTURES?

The Finnic boat peoples of the interior regions made images according to available rocks. About the same time as the images at Alta were carved into rock, these far-ranging boat-oriented hunters were also drawing the images onto vertical rock walls beside ancient waters. Because of the long range migrations of boat peoples they would be the same or closely related to those from the interior who migrated to and from Alta. The Finnish rock paintings are of similar age as the rock carvings at Alta, but paintings deteriorate much faster than carvings made into granite; hence the Finnish rock paintings are very blurry and smeared. Similar rock paintings are found on similar rock walls in the Great Lakes of North America, but they are much clearer and younger.

The people who made the rock paintings and carvings made them only where Nature provided the surfaces. That is why there are large regions without images - there simply were not rock surfaces to use. These people could have been very widely distributed

North American Algonquians - the Rock Art Evidence

ROCK PAINTINGS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC

Anyone who is aware of the rock paintings on the walls of cliffs in Finland, which were painted from boats, and also those in North America around the Great Lakes, cannot help but notice their similarlities. In both regions, separated by the Atlantic, people in canoes found it necessary to stop beside sheer walls descending to the water, and make paintings using red ochre. Did these people first come from Finnic sources in northern Scandinavia, via the Alta gateway, first crossing the North Atlantic in skin boats, and then travelling inland in shallower vessels?

This image, by Dewdney reproduced from Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes (S. Dewdney & K.E. Kidd) represents a section of the rock paintings found on the rock face beside the water at Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. In the center we see a boat with a prow with an animal head. Does this depict a skin boat of Scandinavian origin?

LATER ARRIVALS TO NORTH AMERICA HAVE TO 'MOVE ON'

    A very important concept regarding aboriginal peoples, was that, like all humans, they were very territorial. Supposing the arctic waters west of Greenland were already inhabited by seagoing peoples, an early "Dorset" culture, already established early. Then later, when the Alta area became a new staging location for boats heading west into the ocean, new migrations would have run into the "Dorset", and been forced southward along the Labrador coast. It is there that ancestors of the Algonquians of the northeast quadrant of North America became established. Thus, in a sentence, the Algonquians could have originated in a second wave of migrations, from the second staging area, Alta. We have nothing to prove it, other than the concidences of making rock paintings on    How similar are the Canadian rock paintings to those in Finland, when comparing the two locations?
    The rock paintings at Lake Mackinaw, Ontario, are interesting because they are towards the east, hence closer to the direction from which visitors would have come.

    The image above shows an impressive location that canoes would have passed on a route northward from eastern Lake Ontario. One should not imagine that men made intentional journeys to such cliffs, but rather that it was on their normal long-distance canoe routes, and that the voyagers were impressed by the vertical rock walls and were moved to make drawings. (Possibly feeling the same way as a tourist with a camera). Obviously where there were no cliffs descending to the water, there were no drawings. We should not assume that because a region has no drawings the people did not pass through there. There simply were no places to put drawings. Southern Ontario does not have very many locations such as the one at Lake Mackinaw in southeast Ontario. The greatest concentration of rock paintings done on cliffs beside the water are found alongside Lake Superior and lakes towards its northwest. A detailed study of the Great Lakes rock paintings is found in Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes (S. Dewdney & K.E. Kidd)

Lake Superior versus Alta Artistic Style

LAKE SUPERIOR (La Croix) MOOSE ROCK PAINTING IN NORTH AMERICA

MOOSE ROCK PAINTINGat Alta, Norway (It is carved, and the red has been recently added for visibility)

Note the similarity of style between the Lake Superior (La Croix) moose on the left and the moose from the Alta carvings to the right. In general the artistic style of many of the woodland animals at the Alta carvings is quite similar to Alqonquian artistic styles. The result of North Atlantic crossings and visitors?

North American Algonquians - the Linguistic Evidence

"CANOE" A WORD FROM NORWAY?

    There has been a debate for some time as to the origins and meaning of the word "Canoe". Native linguists have offered some proposals, however there is a third alternative related to Scandinavian arctic origins. So far we have talked about skin boats depicted at Alta, clearly designed for use in the ocean. So far we have assumed that the boats used on rivers were dugouts. The fact that the Inuit possessed a small skin boat known as the kayak, shows that where trees were completely absent, the small arctic dugout was replaced by a small arctic skin boat. But did skin boats replace dugouts in southern regions too? The birchbark canoe, is certainly an example of skin boat construction. It is basically a skin boat, except the skin used is birch bark sewn together. Their advantage was their light weight. They could be easily carried from one water system to another.
        Is there any evidence of skin boats in ancient Finnic Scandinavia, used in the interior in the manner of the birch bark canoes of the Algonquians - making them light to be readily carried from one water body to another?
      Historical records do speak of small skin boats used in northern Scandinavia among peoples known by names such as the Anglo-Saxon Cwens, Germanic Quans. Historical records speak of the Cwens crossing the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula easily because of small skin boats that they could portage with ease. To be specific, they are described crossing over into the Lofotens to attack unwelcome Norse settling there as the Danes conquered Norway in 800-1000 AD.
       The earliest and most extensive description of it comes from a northern Norwegian of the 9th century, "Ohthere" (in Anglo-Saxon), who spoke about them at the court of King Alfred of Wessex, where his accounts were recorded. King Alfred presented his accounts in his Orosius. The man Ohthere, said as follows:
Then along this land southward, on the other side (east) of the mountain, is Sweden, to that land northwards; and along that land northwards Cwenaland. The Cwenas sometimes make attacks on the Norse over the mountain, and sometimes the Norse on them; there are very large freshwater seas between the mountains, and the Cwenas carry their boats over land into these lakes and thence make attacks on the Norse; the boats are very small and very light. [from Orosius]
     I believe that the Cwens, identified today as the Kainu dialect at the north end of the Gulf of Bothnia, may have been a tribe from among the original Finnic natives of forested Sweden. Elsewhere in the historical record, they appear with their names expressed a little differently, such as Quans. Because of the similarity of the word to the Swedish word for 'women' (kvinna) a myth developed in history that the Quans were people dominated by women. But the truth may be that when the region now Sweden was invaded by Germanic men, that they took wives from among the natives, from among the Quans/Cwens and that the Swedish word 'kvinna' came from them. (It would be similar to in North America the word squaw entered the English language.)
    I spoke earlier of how the original name of the boat peoples was something like UINI or with lower vowels UENE and meant 'of the water-floating', but the word could also refer to the boat itself - the instrument that floated on water. Thus, the actual name of the Cwens/Quans may have actually been NAHK-UENE, 'skin boat', (employing the Esto/Finn nahk 'skin,fur'). Observers would have interpreted this longer word as K'WEN. It is interesting to note that the Finns called the descendants Kainu, which means the original may have been NAHK-UINI since the form with the 'I' can more easily transform to Kainu (NAHK-UINI --> K-UINI --> K-AINU).     Note that it is also possible to take the approach that the initial "K" sound was a dialectic feature at the start to launch the UINI, and not an abbreviation of "NAHK". After all, in the same region, there was also the word "Finni". With "Finni" versus "Cwens, etc", we may be talking about Germanic speakers hearing two native dialects, one which they interpreted as having "F" at the front and the other as having "K" at the front. Note this is just an observation. Finnish scholars are welcome to look into it more closely.
      The K-UINU appear to have carried on trade up the Tornio River reaching the Lofotens via Narvik, thus placing peoples with a more developed, trader, character, in the Lofotens area before the arrival there of the Norse during the 800-1000AD conquests by the Danish kingdom of the time.
     The K-UINU skin boats were not kayaks, but at least, they presented examples of light skin boats used for navigating through river systems. It is not known if such boats were always made out of animal skins or whether at any time bark, such as birch bark, was used. Certainly there was birch bark through the area.
     The northern Algonquian people of Canada are now famous for the use of boats that used birch bark as their skins. Perhaps, just as the invention of the kayak is the reason for the expansion of the Inuit, the invention of the birch-bark canoe, from original models that used animal skins, was the reason for the expansion of the Algonquians. Birch bark was readily everywhere in the northern forests. There was no need to procure numerous skins from large animals. Skins were better used for clothing.
       The argument in favour of this approach to the origins of the word 'canoe', is that ancient peoples named things by describing them. Alternative explanations fail to provide a descriptive meaning as clear as 'skin boat'   The name for the vessel would have endured, even as the original meaning was forgotten. This leads us to investigating whether the Algonquians of Canada also adopted some words brought by visitors or immigrants who crossed the North Atlantic in skin boats.

DID VISITORS FIND RESIDENCE OR SIMPLY INTRODUCED INNOVATIONS?

    There are two ways a word from another language can appear in a language. On the one hand there is the genetic method, where the word is inherited and suggests the language is actually related to the other language. The other, more common way is that there was once contact with the other language and the word was borrowed. In looking at Algonquian languages we are not trying to show that they are genetically descended from the same distant parents as the Finnic languages. In order for that to be true we should be finding significant number of similar words, but more importantly similarity in grammar. For example, the Inuit language has noticable similarities to Finnic grammar, suggesting there might be a genetic explanation.
   We already looked at words in some languages. In PART TWO - SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of Whale Hunters. - we looked at many words in the Inuit language of the North American arctic, that showed close parallels with Estonian and Finnish. If here we propose the Algonquian canoe-oriented hunters of the northeast quadrant of North America, also came largely across the North Atlantic, then we should also be able to find connections across the North Atlantic between Algonquian languages and Finnic languages. Our results will be significant whether the words are genetic in origin or simply borrowed. Both will suggest there was contact sometime in the last 6,000 years, while the first will suggest the immigrants were very successful and became enduring residents of the northeast quadrant of North America. What we will find, most probably, will be evidence of contact.
      For the visitors to become residents, there cannot have been people there already with boats and defending their territories. But if there were no boats, the immigrants would have found an empty territorial niche with no indigneous people defending it. We must never forget when we speak of migrations that either there has to be an empty niche to enter, or the immigrants have to wage war and drive out the indigenous occupants of the desired territory.
    Perhaps northeast North America originally did not have people with a boat-using way of life (ie earlier people may only have used boats, rafts, to cross bodies of water, not to use as an everyday vehicle for hunting-gathering.) They could have become established easily. More likely, perhaps peoples who crossed the North Atlantic, bringing the boat culture, mixed with indigenous hunters, and the combined culture, adding boat use to hunting, experienced a dramatic explosion that caused the migrations inland. This would be the most common manner by which new cultural innovations appear - being adopted, copied. It is how most farming practices spread in prehistoric Europe after it had become visible. The fact that Algonquian languages were found up all the water systems draining into the northern Atlantic, proves that there was an introduction of new culture that was so beneficial that it caused a population growth that promoted expansion. Only a small number needs to have come, who then intermarried with the natives and produced a more successful culture causing their small beginnings to expand dramatically, absorbing or diminishing the original native hunters.

This map shows how easy it is for oceanic boat people (labelled "Dorset Culture) to access the northeast quadrant of North America. both from the north via Hudson Bay, and up the St Lawrence River to the Great Lakes.

North American Algonquians - Their Arrival and Origins?

    What is interesting about the Algonquian languages is that their distribution in northeastern North America is such as one would expect if boat peoples travelled up all the rivers after descending via the winds and currents of the Labrador and Newfoundland coast, and finally being discouraged to go further south only below Newfoundland where the Gulf Stream current came from the opposite direction. The exception to this pattern are the Cree, who lived in the water basin of the south part of Hudson Bay. It is however possible that the Cree transferred into this northern water basin after first travelling up rivers such as the Ottawa or Saguenay, and then followed the Hudson Bay southern coast.
     If the Algonquian boat-using hunter-fisher-gatherers originated from voyagers who crossed the North Atlantic at an early time then we have to consider that the voyagers may have all been men, and they took wives from people already found at their destination, indigenous people without a boat-culture. The combined talents perhaps produced a new more prosperous culture that caused a population explosion that then fuelled the expansion up the rivers. We must not forget that we cannot have a dramatic expansion of peoples without population growth, and we cannot have population growth without some beneficial development. I suggest that if the original peoples of northeast North America did not originally use boats as a daily vehicle, then a people who came with a boat-culture already developed, would have introduced the conditions that would have caused the required population growth as they would have entered an untouched economic niche. For example, what if these newcomers discovered and exploited the bountiful supply of fish in the "Grand Banks" off the south coast of Newfoundland?
     We also note that the Algonquians who retained the name Innu to describe themselves, were within Quebec and Labrador. Is it possible then, that the influence of the newcomers was strongest where they first came, and that the influence degenerated with those who migrated westward into the interior?
     Are the Algonquians descended from the arctic "Dorset" culture that preceded the "Thule" culture identified with today's Inuit? Common sense is that the "Dorset" did not vanish. The scholarly belief that the Inuit ("Thule") arrival from the west arctic wiped out the "Dorset" does not seem believable. If there had been battles in which the Inuit ("Thule") were more powerful, there would have been refugee migrations of "Dorset" to other locations and an obvious direction was southward. Is it a coincidence that the Newfoundland Boethuks, scholars say, arrived in the Newfoundland area around the early centuries AD, about the time the "Dorset" culture is estimated vanished. The Boethuks, moreover, had skin boats. In one of the Norse Vinland Saga's the Norse are met by a fleet of people in skin boats.
    As stated at the start, the INI form was used by the Algonquians of Labrador and Quebec in the form Innu. Nonetheless the more westerly Algonquians still had words of the form inini to mean 'man, person'. Since the Inuit had inuk to mean 'man, person' we have to conclude that there is some sort of connection between them, that they both ultimately originated from peoples who came with skin boats. Being from Estonian descent, I have always found it remarkable that the Estonian word for 'person' is inimene, where -mene is an ending

TRACING SKIN BOATS BACK TO THEIR ORIGINS

    We began above by speaking about Alta, Norway, and also about the coincidence of similar rock carvings and paintings being found in North America. Is this evidence of the transmission of a culture across the North Atlantic, that may have passed through a "Dorset" stage?
    The seagoing peoples at the Norwegian coast would not have only travelled west but also south. They could have followed whale migrations south to Portugal. They could have given rise to the "megalithic" culture, that left megalithic constructions up the west Europe coast, and then up the Irish Sea and into the northern Isles,.
     There is no question that there once existed an "Atlantian" people. They travelled the north Atlantic ocean, camping on islands, as we can see in the illustration of Greenland Inuit whale hunting. They were short people, and that is to be expected too, as an adaptation. People who travel extensively by boat need strong upper bodies, but can have short legs (Short legs on large torsos can be still seen among the Inuit - short legs are also good for reducing loss of body heat)
    Author Farley Mowat (Farfarers, 1998), pictured a people he called "Albans" based in the British northern islands. He pictured them being most interested in walrus, and travelling as far as the Labrador coast to obtain walrus ivory to sell in Europe. In his book Farfarers, Mowat's view of the skin boat traditions of the northeast Atlantic was far too narrow, however. He made no mention of the rock paintings of skin boats in Norway, and made no connection between the Norwegian examples of skin boats and the skin boats of the British Isles, recorded in historical records and surviving through the centuries as the Irish "curragh".
       We can read with interest however when Farley Mowat reveals that in the traditions of the Shetland Islands in the north of the British Isles, sea-harvesting peoples called the "Finns" appeared.
Existing Shetland traditions speak of a people called Finns who inhabited Fetlar and northwest Unst for some time after the Norse occupied Shetland. This name is identical with the one by which the Norse knew the aboriginals of northern Scandinavia. It is also the name given by Shetlanders (of Norse lineage) to a scattering of Inuit (sic). who, in kayaks, materialized amongst the Northern Isles during the eighteenth century.. (Mowat, Farfarers: Before the Norse, p 110, Toronto, 1998)
     But it did not occur to Mowat that these were the same people as the ones he was looking for, and not some other people? He was looking for people closer to himself - settled people living on the coasts - and thus did not seriously consider "Finns" to have been identifiable with "Sea-Lapps" from the Norwegian coast, and that possibly they were less primitive than the Inuit/Eskimo he assumed they were.
The difference between the Altantic seaharvesters that were called "Finns", and those who left a record of skin boat use in the British Northern Isles, may be simply that the latter became more localized by becoming more involved with the economies of the interior of Britain. There is indeed proof that skin boat peoples of the British Isles were more localized than their migratory ancestors, and found everywhere on the coasts, at least on the west side. According to Mowat in Farfarers, the Roman poet Avienus, quoting fragments from a Carthaginian periplus (seaman's sailing directions) dating to the six century B.C. described a rendevous with native British in skin boats as follows.
To the Oestrimnides [Scilly Islands] come many enterprising people who occupy themselves with commerce and who navigate the monster-filled [ie walruses, seals, whales, propoises, etc] ocean far and wide in small ships. They do not understand how to build wooden ships in the usual way. Believe it or not, they make their boats by sewing hides together and carry out deep-sea voyages in them. (quotes in Mowat, Farfarers)
      The people described in the above passage are clearly not the long ranging oceanic aboriginals, but still they are probably descended from them. Finding good conditions in the British Isles, and the ability to trade wares from the sea for other goods, they would have formed an intermediate culture. It is these people that are identifiable with the archeological "Picts". They exploited land resources and trade, (such as keeping sheep and goats on various islands roaming wild, to harvest from time to time when they stopped there).
   Evidence that the skin boat of the British Isles was descended from the Norwegian skin boats is found as late as the 18th century. A drawing of a curragh from the 18th century is interesting in that there is an oxhead on the prow. This is remarkable as it suggests descent from an arctic European tradition of putting the head of the animal whose skin is used, at the prow, a practice that began with the moose-skin boats and the moosehead on its prow, visible in ancient rock carvings such as those in the Norwegian arctic at Alta, and Sørøya, and other places like Lake Onega.

It is only because of my noting the animal heads on the prows of skin boats in Alta and Lake Onega carvings that I saw the oxhead on the prow of this Irish curragh made of ox skins.

    When boat skins were later made of planks, the practice of the head on the prow seems to have continued for a time, giving rise to the "dragon boat" concept. The presence of the "dragon-head" in Norse vessels demonstrates that the Germanic conquerors of the Norwegian coast (800-1000AD) became identifiable with seafarers purely from the Finnic natives starting to speak the Germanic language (Norse), and participating in the new Norse culture. The idea of Vikings originating from Germanic heritage is false. Vikings originated from the Finnic boat peoples, and became speakers of Germanic Norse in much the same way that North American Native peoples have become English speakers..
Another important historical reference presents us with another truth that ought to be obvious - that the skin boats of the British Isles crossed the waters to Norway as well. This comes from Pliny the Elder dated to 77 A.D. in which he writes about information from an earlier historian Timaeus whose original work has been lost.
The historian Timaeus says that there is an island named Mictis lying inward six day's sail from Britain where tin is found and to which the Britons cross in boats of osier covered with stiched hides. (Pliny, NaturalHistories, IV, 14, 104.)
      Mowat suggests that this place called Mictis might have been Iceland. However if the skin-boat seafarers of the British Isles had an intimate relationship with any location it may have been the Lofoten Islands of Norway. We also note that since the Gulf Stream flowed past the British Isles and north towards the Lofotens, then the sailing was with the current.
     If they travelled to the Lofotens, that brings into play the Cwens spoken about by Ohthere (as discussed earlier), who seem to have carried on trade between the Lofotens and the Baltic, employing portable skin boats, canoes.
   Thus we can accept that many of these oceanic skin-boat peoples, who ventured away from the Norwegian arctic waters where they began, and then became localized among the British Isles, tended to sheep on land behind their huts, and traded with interior peoples; but at the same time the traditional way of life would have continued as well: there were also the long-range migrations of traditional oceanic people, who made circuitous migrations from one sea harvest area to another. They would be the ones who would camp for a time on outer islands (like the Shetlands) to use as a home base for harvesting the surrounding seas. The "Finns" of Shetland traditions were not, I'm certain, accidental visitors of Inuit. I think they were people who deliberately migrated in a circuit which touched on Iceland, Faroes, Shetlands, and Norway.

Ocean currents, archeological cultures, and the Onega and Alta rock carving sites.

    Looking at the map above, showing how the ocean currents circulate in the north Atlantic, it is likely that the "Finns" who touched on the northern islands of the British Isles, can probably be identified with the "Fosna" archeological culture of Norway, or at least, that part of them who would have migrated in current circuit "B" (see map). These oceanic people would have had no interest in making their way into the dangerous surf close to the coasts. They appear to have preferred camping in the outer islands close to their fishing/hunting sites. Such people would have travelled, through a year (or possibly several years), between the Lofotens of Norway, Iceland, and then back via Faroes and Shetland, and then back to the Lofotens. They would time it to meet up with other clans at a common congregating site.
    As mentioned earlier, these people of circuit "B" would also have stopped in the British outer islands (such as the Shetlands, mentioned by Mowat). But a breakaway tribe must have remained in the British Isles to become the peoples seen by visitors over a millenia ago travelling in skin boats (which Romans called curucae and Celts called curraghs) in the remote coasts of British Isles, mainly in the north and northwest.
   According to historical references after the arrival of Christianity Irish monks sought to get away from civilization to live a solitary meditative life. They headed north into the outer islands, and there they encountered short people who created dwellings that resembled igloos made of stone, that is, domes (or near domes with a small roof) created by piling rocks round and round, sealed on the outside with sod so that they were like underground houses. (Note that arctic Norwegian dwellings were similarly semi-buried and often using sod to seal the roof.) These short "Peti" (As a Norwegian text called them) that the monks encountered, appeared also to have left   goats and/or sheep to run wild on grassy islands, so that when they returned to these islands they would be able to harvest them for meat to supplement their seafood diet. Obviously those "Picts" who became more settled, if any did, became more diligent breeders of these sheep and goats. Such islands would have been ideal for monks - there they would have solitude but also have familiar goats and sheep to survive on. We are speaking of early Christianity in Ireland, shortly after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
    Looking further in circuit "B", we can expect that the seagoing peoples of circuit "B" also visited the outer islands towards the east side of Iceland. This is confirmed by history and archeology - which affirms there were aboriginal peoples, Eskimo-like people who were inclined to camp on the outer island close to the areas they fished and hunted. Since these were seasonally migratory people, foreign observers would never observe them to be settled anywhere. They would never need to build any permanent dwellings anywhere.
    Thus the absence of any early permanent settlement on Iceland should not be construed as Iceland being unknown. It was known, alright - by aboriginal peoples. They were known by the "Picts" and "Finns" too insomuch as they themselves were aboriginal or semi-aboriginal. Therein lies the problem in Mowat's Farfarers - he cannot accept that the people he envisions - the "Albans" (one group among the Pictish north of the British Isles) - were more primitive, more like Greenland Eskimo, than he wants to admit. Scholars have tended to want to relegate aboriginal peoples to the background, like wild animals and require that peoples who did anything interesting must have been "civilized".
     The exception has been archeologists and anthropologists. They do not discriminate between civilized and uncivilized. For them it is perfectly acceptable to envision aboriginal seafarers who may have migrated throughout the arctic waters, and known all about Iceland, the North Atlantic, Labrador, etc. - already maybe 5000-6000 years ago. But there remains a racist perspective which implies "aboriginals do not count", and so there are endless debates as to whether the Norse landings around 1000AD were the "first" or whether there were earlier landings on Labrador or Newfoundland coasts, by Irish monks; or some other group. Who cares? Aboriginals always knew, and European seagoing aboriginals from the Alta area, visited and perhaps stayed millenia ago. Archeology has found evidence of contact with Europe - primitive aboriginal Europe -dating long before the "Norse" visits to "Vinland".
       Oh yes, there were the aboriginals camping on islands doing their sea harvest, but if we want to find the somewhat civilized peoples like Mowat's "Albans" at Iceland before the Norse, then we have to find farms. And so Mowat ventured the theory that many of the farms attributed to Norse, were actually stolen by the Norse after they wiped out the "Albans". My criticism of "Farfarers" is in another article. What he describes appears to be remains of "Dorset" seagoing behaviour, and they may have been the source of Algonquian peoples about 2000 years ago, or if not, earlier
    The aborignal peoples named "Picts", as I suggested earlier, may have actually had a name that meant 'hunters'. This idea is inspired by the fact that the ancient Roman historian Tacitus, mentioned one tribe in the Vistula River was called Peucini; This is obviously analogous to Estonian püügi(n) 'of the catching (hunting, fishing)'. Peti, Pehti, Picti, etc fit that pattern too. What could be more descriptive than calling the primitive sea-hunters exactly that - '(sea)hunters'. The later historic Picts were different peoples, more settled and more civilized. We are not speaking of those.
Is it possible that when the Romans conquered the British Isles and circles them in their ships to assert their power, that the unrest that followed caused the sea-hunting peoples to avoid returning to the British Isles. They left, and moved their activity to Iceland and even Newfoundland. The word Beothuk does vaguely resemble the Picti word, which in an Estonian-like form would be püükide (people) of the catches' or püide. Given that the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede wrote that the "Picts" in the British north in his time (6th century), had "come from Scythia in longboats", the historic "picts" could have been long distance traders from Scythia. But "Scythia" had been defined by the Romans as being the region that began at the east Baltic coast. That coast was where the Estonians were located. So it is possible that Estonian-originating traders had colonies who were active in fetching sea-goods from the actual Picts. This would therefore mean that the word püükide was indeed the source of the word Picti.

THE JOURNEY OF PYTHEAS 320BC

      Another piece of history that involved the North Atlantic is the journey of Pytheas to Iceland, which he called Thule. It is assumed by most academics today that Iceland was the Thule mentioned by the Greek traveller Pytheas, who voyaged in the north around 320BC, presumably with natives as hosts or guides. More likely he accompanied traders. We should not assume that Pytheas sailed unknown waters of the north with a ship and crew from the Mediterranean. He was obviously taken by people who knew the region and Thule was the name they gave to Iceland.
     Most likely Pytheas was a Massilian merchant (ie at Marseilles) who was always engaged in commercial dealings with Veneti merchants who were established in Brittany and constantly sailing to and from Britain (according to Julius Caesar), as well as delivering goods south via the Loire and Rhone River routes. He may have asked the Veneti traders if he could accompany them north, and if they would show him where major northern goods came from - tin, walrus ivory and skins, and amber - since in fact his journey proceeds first to Britain (where tin came from) then to the Orcades (Orkney Islands) where once there were walrus herds, and finally it appears all the way to the southeast Baltic, where the island of Abalus was identified as the source of amber.
      We have mentioned often that the original Scandinavia and northern Britain was probably originally "Finnic", and that means linguistically as well. Indeed even today the surviving northern reindeer Saami are considered linguistically Finnic. The next closest are the Finns and then Estonians. (I don't know the Saami language, and therefore my comparisons are with Estonian ) Thus it is interesting to note that the word Thule seems to be a simple Finnic word that easily describes Iceland. Considering that Iceland is an island with active volcanoes that erupt ever generation or so, it would be natural to call it '(island, land) of fire'. In Estonian it would be pronounced exactly as the Greeks would say Thule (In Greek Th represents the softer "D" sound. In Estonian and Finnish the single T is spoken like a "D". A double T is needed for the harder T of English). While the academic world is non-committal in identifying the language that existed in Norway and Sweden before it was conquered by the Germanic Danes, "Finnic" has always been the clear option since at least the Saami survives today, and their language has been found part of the Finno-Ugric Uralic languages. There is no better alternative, and the notion that the original language has completely vanished is not believable. If we find words with strong coincidences to Finnic in languages of North America then we are speaking of connections to the Scandinavian and Baltic area that predate any alternative theories of Finnic language origins.
      The modern Estonian word for 'volcano' is tulemägi literally 'fire-mountain', and so the word tule is correct in association with volcanoes. "TULE-" is the stem to which endings are added, and so a foreigner would always hear the stem as case endings are added (tule-sse, tule-st, tule-lt, etc). Thus Pytheas, listening to his hosts speak, would repeatedly hear "dew-leh" which would be written in Greek Thule. Finnish adds an -N for the genitive, hence 'of fire' is tulen, which agrees with one ancient reference which called it Tylen.
     Because they have long disappeared, assimilated into the Norwegians, most people are unaware that the peoples formerly called "Lapps", earlier called "Finns" and today called "Saami" were not a single cultural group. Generally the literature says, there were three types of "Lapps", the Sea-Lapps, Forest Lapps, and Reindeer Lapps, with only the last enduring in the Norwegian north into modern times. The Reindeer Lapps have endured strongly, and that is why they, or "Saami" as associated with reindeer herders, today, and the public knows little of the fact that the whole Scandinavian peninsula was once filled with "Finns" of every nature. In other words, at one time, perhaps as late as the stories of "Finns" camping on the Shetlands, there were "Sea-Lapps" or "Sea-Finns" down the. Norwegian coast, and travelling into the British north to fish; and there were "Forest-Lapps" or "Forest-Finns" across the entire Scandinavia where land was not under the Germanic plow, as far as Finland and beyond. Meanwhile southern clans and tribes, those in greater contact with encroaching farmers, whether Celtic or Germanic, adapted towards more civilized ways - adopting farming, engaging in trade, following European culture.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 'PICTS' or 'SEA-FINNS"

       History reveals that Britain was invaded by Romans and Celts, and then by Germanic invaders. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the withdrawal of Romans from Britain, history states that there were three groups fighting to seize power in the void left by the departure of the Romans - the Germans (Angles, Saxons, etc) pushing in from the southeast coast, the Celts pushing in from the southwest coast, and the "Picts" from the north. When the term "Picts" is used in historic texts, it refers generally to all the peoples in the north, which would generally tend to exclude the primitive peoples hidden in remote places. What is important is that the north was different from the Romans and the Celts, and had its own language, which was presumably the native British language.
    History reveals that when southern civilization pushes into the north, it assimilates natives from south to north; thus it is a reasonable assumption that the northerners, whether seafarers or not, were descendants of the original British who retained their original language and culture. (Those in the south had become Romanized or Celticized) Past historians have wondered about the origins of the "Picts" of northern Britain.
      After Britain had been taken over by Anglo-Saxons, Ireland by Celts, and the Scots were beginning to take over in the north, a monk scholar named Venerable Bede, in his description of Britain, attempted to identify the "Picts" of his time and their origins. Obviously deriving his information from arrogant patronizing Celtic sources, perhaps Irish monks, he told a strange story of Picts arriving by sea in longboats, attempting to land in northern Ireland, and being told by the Scots there that the land was full and they should cross over to what is now Scotland. The Picts in Bede's north were a peculiar people in that they followed their descent matrilineally. It is in the nature of the Irish legends to try to explain prevailing realities; thus the explanation for their matrilineal culture was that when the Scots told them to move on, the Scots also gave the Picts Scottish wives because the Picts came without any women. Out of gratitide the Picts therefore kept track of the lineage of these Scottish woman.
     This story is obviously self-serving self-glorification on the part of Scottish and Irish legend-weavers. If we investigate the matter, the evidence seems to point to a different story. The Picts, descended from native people, were in northern Ireland first, and the Scots were migrating from the southern parts of Ireland in search of a place to settle. Reaching the north, they found the Picts there, and it would be the Picts that told the Scots to cross over into the northern part of Britain, since the first Scottish settlements appear on that side. The Picts who told the Scots to move on, according to Ptolemy's geography of HIbernia (Ireland in the Roman Age), were probably those he called Rhobogdi. This word can be interpreted as a low vowel dialect version, or an interpreter's corruption, of a word that in higher vowels would sound like RHIBIGDI. If we assume that RHI- is some sort of descriptive prefix, then we have BIGDI, a word that is a perfect candidate for the origins of the word Picti that first appeared in Roman records in the third century AD. (Yes, the word is first used with reference to a people in the north of Britain about the same time as the information of Ptolemy's geography of Abion and Hibernia!)
        The soft form of BIGDI is significant in that Finnic language tends to be softer. (T is more like "D", P more like "B", K more like "G", unless these are all doubled). If we interpret it with Estonian, it could have a simple meaning '(people) of the catches' (ie catches of fish, etc) which in modern Estonian would be püükide ("pew-kee-deh"). (Supporting the presence of such a word in western Europe is the French word for 'catch' pêche) It seems reasonable that during Roman times, the northerners would come south to sell their catches at markets, and, since the catches from the sea were the major product of the north, all the northerners could have eventually acquired the general description of 'people of the catches'. One of the problems faced by people trying to make sense of the Picti word, is that in Caesar's time the peoples south of the mouth of the Loire were called the Pictones. That was the reason Mowat in his Farfarers assumed that some of the Pictones migrated north with some of their neighbouring Veneti, and that was where the name came from. But if the name had a descriptive meaning, the two names could be a coincidence: both fished and both assumed a name that described that activity.
       The Venerable Bede, said also that the Picts came "in longboats from Scythia". We can read this part of the legend in the following way: The people identified as Picts were seen in Bede's time to recieve long distance traders arriving in longboats, and it was observed the Pict language was similar to that of the visiting traders. It was established that these visitors came from "Scythia", and thus the deduction was that the Picts had originated in the same place.
     In Greek times "Scythia" referred to all the lands north and west of the Black Sea, but by Roman times only the northern parts remained "Scythia", the southern part becoming "Sarmatia". By Bede's time "Scythia" would have been understood to be the lands to the east of the east Baltic coast. Since all the peoples with boats and engaged in trade in "Scythia" were in Bede's time (a century or two before the Vikings), Finnic (Estonians, Livonians, etc) , we conclude that the Picts to which Bede referred were those who were part of a trade network, and who recieved goods from the east Baltic coast. Given that to the west of the Rhobogdi Ptolemy shows Vennicni, we can presume that the Vennicni name is a corruption of Vennicones in Ptolemy's Albion near Aberdeen, and that these are identifiable with the trader-Picts who were part of the Veneti/Venedi world of traders. Thus we see two groups identifiable with "Picts", the sea-harvesters who only fished, and the traders who maintained trading posts and warehouses and awaited the arrival from time to time of a longboat with goods. Within these two groups, the level of primitiveness, or civilizedness, varied too; however I believe that in general, the larger populations in the south generally saw the north as the region of the "(fish) catchers" in much the same way that in North America, the eastern coast is generally seen as the regions of "fishermen" , or the "fishing industry" even though much else is going on there too.

THE "PICTI" NAME IN PTOLEMY'S DESCRIPTIONS FROM THE ROMAN AGE

There has been a tradition to assume that the name of the Picts, originating from Roman"Picti" first used in the early 3rd century AD, was derived from a Latin word meaning 'painted', presumably from native British painting their bodies for war. However all indications are that it was an indigenous word, not one invented by Romans. The appearance of a people called Rhobogdi has been mentioned above. We will look at Ptolemy's naming more closely. The map below shows the two locations of the names Rhobogdi and Epidi.

I show how one can arrive at Epidi by raising the vowels and abbreviating Rhobogdi. Such names were collected in Roman times from sources who were usually not natives, but officials working for the Romans and the distortions could have been made by the official and not the natives themselves. Since the major occupation of the northern peoples was harvesting the sea, one could suggest that the Picti word (Bogdi in the example), had something to do with catching fish, etc. That inspires us to suggest the Estonian püükide 'of the catches' may be some sort of parallel. (We bear in mind that Estonian has a very strong sea-trader tradition and would qualify as being located on the coast of "Scythia"which the Venerable Bede claimed was the source of the Picts!) The Rho at the front, would be the RA found in Rhone, Rhine, etc. which means 'way, path' and is often seen in the names of the earlier trade waterways (Ptolemy named the Volga Rha) but more often ot appeared as a suffix: Lige-RA, Wese-RA, Od-RA, etc.
There probably were two types of historic Picts. One type were sea-harvesters and used skin boats made from walrus hides, lived nomadically on outer shores and islands, and lived in semi buried circular rock shelters (like igloos, but made of rock and covered with sod). They were of the oceanic sea-hunter stock which had ultimately come from arctic Norwegian shores, and perhaps remained tied to it. The other type of people associated with the term "Pict" in later history, were long distance traders of the Veneti trade network, who made their stops at the trader-Picts. Ptolemy's map even suggests these trader-Picts were established beside the sea-hunter-Picts in order to be handy to each other. To the west of the Rhobogdi were the Vennicni and on the east side near today's Aberdeen were the Vennicones. Since the term VENNE, VENTA, etc were associated with trading, they can be seen as the trader-Picts, with long distance trade links to the east Baltic coast (the coast of "Scythia")

     In his description of "Picts" Bede was probably describing the more visible trader-Picts, descendants of VENNE traders, not the less visible Picts out at sea, and living on islands and coasts. The sea-harvesters would rarely have been encountered by farming peoples, and the VENNE traders served as intermediaries in any trading contacts between them and the farmers to the south(Celts, Saxons, etc). The trader-Picts, as stated, may have been people of a Baltic-Finnic nature, hence the connection with "Scythia" behind the east Baltic. But the sea-hunter-Picts could have had another dialect, more like the dialect of the Norwegian sea-hunters. Or indeed, something like the Greenland Inuit, if we include them among the North Atlantians.
     Mowat, in reviewing Bede's story said that it was a reference to the Scilly Islands at the southwest tip of Britain. But this presumes Bede was confused about what "Scythia" really meant - which is impossible as everywhere in Latin texts "Scythia" is east of the east Baltic (Finnic) coast. Where then does "Scilly" come from? In Ptolemy's geography, not far from their location the name Uxella appears. I suggest that the Scilly Islands were originally called "Uxella Islands", and the modern name "Scilly" is a corruption of that over the centuries. ("Uxella" via Finnic suggests a combination of uks and -la giving 'place of the door, port' which reminds us once again of the deep Finnic aboriginal nature of not just Scandinavia, but also the British Isles.)
       The end of both the seagoing "Finns" and the "Picts" came around 1000AD, as a result of the conquest of the Norwegian coast by the Danish kingdom, and then the expansion of the Celtic Scots into the Pictish north. The dominant culture eventually takes over.
     Memories of "Finns" visiting the Shetlands, or accounts of dark-complexioned "wild Irish" (as the illustrator of the curragh called them), may represent the last witnessing of these peoples in the British Isles. After civilization arrived in the British north, there was a new breed of fishermen, who lived in settlements, did farming or kept sheep and goats on the side, etc. They weren't real sea-people, forever migrating seasonally from camp to camp. They were now land people who had a permanent settlement and went to sea now and then.
     Most references to ancient British, whether they were called peoples of Britannike or Albion, referred to the highly visible localized and settled peoples of the British mainland. They did not refer to the sea-going peoples with their skin boats who inhabited the outer islands and coast, and appeared to observers only at coastal markets. Thus these sea-people are relatively invisible in the historical records made by visiting Greeks and Romans.

SUMMARIZING THE STORY OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLES OF THE BRITISH ISLES

    I think that there was in the British Isles ALWAYS the dicotomy of peoples, the peoples of the land territories and the peoples of the surrounding seas. And because they lived in such different environments they did not interract very much, and were therefore ethnically somewhat different, although ultimately both were of the same origins in the northern aboriginal boat-peoples or water-peoples in general.
     When the British Isles were invaded by the Romans and the Celts, the only escape the sea-hunters of the British Isles had from the aggressors, was to simply sail away, find a new place to live that lacked the ugly Europeans. Some may have migrated to Canadian shores. It is interesting that according to archeologists the natives who were called called "Beothuks" appeared in Newfoundland around about Roman times. Interestingly, when Portuguese captured some into slavery in the 17th century, there is one record that stated that they resembled Portuguese except a little taller and better built in the upper body. Were they Picts? Where they refugees from Roman expansions into the British north? Was the name "Beothuk" a variation of the name of the Picts? (In Estonian püüde or even peode means 'of the catching'; also we note that Ptolemy identifies a tribe named Epidi)
   Pure common sense alone suggests that aboriginal seafarers landed on the Canadian coast of Labrador and Newfoundland numerous times in the past 6000 years, Any other view will ignore the fact that the aboriginal seafarers were far more advanced than the Norse, already thousands of years before the Norse. And if so then we would expect that the cultures and languages of the peoples of the Canadian arctic (Inuit) and of the forested regions below (Algonquian-culture peoples), would possess in their language and culture elements that can be compared with those of the Finnic-Uralic world at the origins of skin boats, and more directly oceanic people of the northeast Atlantic, historically appearing as skin-boat peoples there, described as short people called "Finns" and in northern British waters, "Picts".

The Basques as Southern Descendants of Sea Peoples

    I believe that all the Atlantic oceanic people originated from the same origins - the skin boat peoples who harvested the seas off the coast of arctic Norway. That was their training ground. Once they had mastered their way of life and their populations grew, some wandered south, discovered the British Isles, and then with continued success, some continued further south.
   That brings us to the question of the Basques. The Basques in recent centuries have been well known as harvesters of the Atlantic, including whaling in the waters off the North American coast from as early as the 16th century. It is easy to believe that they are descended from the same world of oceanic seafarers as the Picts, Norwegian "Finns", and the Inuit. One does not learn to be at home on the waters of the Atlantic overnight. (Similarly the Portuguese have the same origin, except that the coastal Portuguese have lost their original language in much the same way as the original people of the Norwegian coast did.)
      The Basque language, is acknowledged to be pre-Indo-European. Some scholars assume that the Basques are descended from the original peoples of nearby regions dating back to the cave people who left art on cave walls. However, we have to recognize that there were two types of people during the pre-Indo-European civilization in Western Europe - the seagoing people and the interior people. The Basques display strong seafaring traditions, and therefore it is reasonable to propose that they are descended from the Atlantic seagoing peoples and not interior peoples. This connection to seafaring in turn implies that they are distantly related to Finnic and Inuit cultures, to the peoples of the expansion of boat-peoples. While it is possible the Basques learned whaling in the modern era, it is equally possible that the Basques have always known whaling, and have had an ancient connection with peoples like the Greenland Inuit whalers. We don't know very much about what the Basques did in ancient times.
    In PART TWO we scanned the languages of whaling peoples - Inuit and Kwakwala - and found many remarkable coincidences with Finnic. What will we find if we scanned Basque words for resonances with Finnic languages.
       It happens that Basque indeed presents some words that can be interpreted with Estonian. Not too many - otherwise linguists would already have made a connection common knowledge - but it is there. If the Basques emerged from oceanic hunters, then the linguistic distance between Estonian and Basque would be less than 6000 years, dating back through arctic Norway and Lake Onega to the "Kunda" culture.   It follows that we SHOULD find the same nature of similarities between Estonian and Basque as between Estonian and Inuit, or other boat people descended from the same "Descendants of KALLU" (See PART TWO).
        A genetic connection between two languages cannot be proven by conventional comparative linguistic analysis if the two languages are more than about 3000 years apart. However the ability to find a great number of coincidences that are unlikely to have been borrowed from a mutual third language, has statistical significance. If there are coincidences better than what would occur by random chance, conclusions can be drawn from it. Let us do a short comparison of Basque and Estonian words.

COMPARING BASQUE AND FINNIC

     Linguists have observed that the grammatical structure of Estonian and Basque are similar, having many case endings, for instance. Our intention here is not to make definitive linguistic discoveries, but to show that - along with the other evidence - comparing Basque with Finnic does not contradict our theory. In fact I think what we will find tends to support it. It is what we would expect, given the Basques are so sea-oriented.
     I will focus on words: I used a mere 1000 common Basque words as the source, and my own basic knowledge of Estonian words. I found that the majority of Basque words were obviously Basque versions of Romance names, borrowed from many centuries of influence from Romans and then French and Spanish. Thus if we eliminate the Romance words, we greatly reduce the number of usable Basque words.
    From this limited word list I found a rate of coincidence with Estonian that is much greater than random chance. One has to recognize that the Basque words have to not only resemble Estonian words but the meanings have to resemble each other too. The probability of such double coincidence by random chance is very low (See discussion of probabilities in PART TWO).
     The remarkable parallels between Basque and Estonian include the following:
    Basque su 'fire', compared to Estonian süsi 'coal, ember', süüta 'fire up'; Basque oroi 'thought' compared to Estonian aru 'understanding'; Basque ama 'mother' compared to Estonian ema 'mother'; Basque uste 'believe' compared to Estonian usk 'belief', usu 'believe'; Basque ola 'place' vs Estonian ala 'field (of endeavour)'; Basque kale 'street' vs Estonian kald 'bank, shore' (ie original streets of boat people were rivers, shores); Basque ke 'smoke' vs Estonian kee 'boil'; Basque leku 'space' vs Estonian lage 'wide open (place)'; Basque hartu 'take' vs Estonian haara 'grab hold'; Basque ohar 'warning' vs Estonian oht 'danger'; Basque tira 'pull' vs Estonian tiri 'pull away, pull loose'; Basque gela 'room' vs Estonian küla 'living place, abode, settlement'; Basque lo 'sleeping' vs Estonian lÄbeb looja '(it, like the sun) sets, goes down, goes to sleep'; Basque marrubi 'strawberry' vs Estonian mari 'berry'; Basque txotx 'twig' vs Estonian oks 'branch''; Basque ohe 'bed' vs Estonian ase 'bed'; Basque osatu 'complete' vs Estonian osata 'without any part''; Basque or, zakur 'dog' vs Estonian koer 'dog'; Basque jan 'eat' vs Estonian jÄnu 'thirst'; Basque jarraitu 'continue' or jarri 'become' vs Estonian jÄrg 'continuation', jÄrel 'remaining, to-come', etc; Basque giza 'human' vs Estonian keha 'body'; Basque haragi 'beef/meat' vs Estonian hÄrg 'ox'; Basque izen 'name' vs Estonian ise(n) 'of oneself'; Basque lau 'straight' vs Estonian laud 'board, table' (ie straight piece of wood); Basque lasai 'calm' vs Estonian laisk 'lazy' or lase 'let go'; Basque ezti 'honey' vs Estonian mesi 'honey;
      Basque is considered to be descended from the people the Romans generally called Aquitani, located mainly in the Garonne River water basin as far as the Pyrennes mountains. Aquitani in fact implies 'water-people'in Latin. The name may have been inspired by Uituriges or Uitoriges ( Caesar Gallic Wars, I, 18) the name of a people who controlled Burdigala the town on the lagoon formed by the outlets of the Garonne River. The word Uituriges or Uitoriges resembles Estonian/Finnish because the the first part corresponds well with UI- words meaning basically 'swim', such as Estonian uju, Finnish uida. The latter part of Uituriges, is the word meaning 'nation' (as in Estonian riik, riigi), hence the name Uituriges means 'floating nations'. An alternative name for them in the historical record was Bituriges. If this was a true alternative name, then we should look to BI in the meaning of 'water', and the full word paralleling modern Estonian Veederiigid, meaning 'water-nations'. This latter version would be the most applicable inspiration for the Latin Aquitani. I believe in a pre-literate world where people and places were named by describing them, that it is possible BOTH versions Uitoriges and Bituriges were used.
     The most interesting word in Basque from the point of view of sea-peoples is the word for 'water' which is ur. This word exists, in my view, in the name "Uralic Mountains". Perhaps we can allow ur to an abbreviation of UI-RA. The -RA is a widely used element of the ancient world, appearing in association with travel-ways. Furthermore, the Basque allative case ending (motion towards) is -ra. Combining this with the appearance of UI in the historical name Uitoriges, suggests it is possible Basque ur is ndeed an abbreviation of UI-RA, 'the way of the floating, swimming'. It obviously did not view 'water' originally as the liquid but as the sea over which the seafarer travelled.
     The Basque word for 'earth' appears to add an L to ur producing lur. But it is more likely from ALU-RA, 'land-territory path'. ALU (Estonian alu 'base, foundation, territory') is reflected in Basque ola meaning 'place (where something is done)'. Thus here once again the Estonian interpretation mirrors something in Basque, indicating too that Basque and Estonian were closer at an earlier time. The chances of the Basque lur being based on ALU is supported by the fact that in Roman times the stem ALU occurs several times, especially in the Roman name Albion but more clearly in the Greek Alouiones (read ALU-AVA-N). If the native British used ALU or ALO 'land-base', 'territory' as the stem for some geographic names, then we can expect that the ancestors of the Basques did too, since in seafaring terms both places were part of the same early Atlantic world.

SUMMARY: ABORIGINAL SEAFARERS IN THE EAST ATLANTIC

    While the theory of an eastern north Atlantic aboriginal seafaring people who moved with the currents in a circuit that touched the coasts of Norway, Iceland, Faeroes, Shetlands, northern Britain and back to Norway is undeniable, and it gives us a framework for interpreting historical accounts about "Finns" in the ocean.
    But as we look southward, the millenia of involvement of civilization, has made it more difficult to interpret early events in the British Isles and southward.
    The only clear whaling peoples in the east Altantic are the Basques. Basques are today modern people and it is difficult to find the evidence of the deep past. But there are two ways of doing so. First of all a people so dedicated to the Atlantic ocean, and to fishing and whaling, is likely to have had it a long time. It isn't only a recently acquired interest. Secondly we can compare Basque words with Estonian. When we eliminate Basque words that are obviously of Latin origins, the number of remarkable coincidence to Estonian with the remaining words, is quite large. As with the case of whale hunters of the North American arctic and Pacific, finding the coincidences with Estonian speaks strongly of connections going back to the beginings of whaling peoples.
    Let us continue to look for more coastal peoples with a strong orientation to the sea,

The American "Northwest Coast" - Some Native Languages OTHER THAN Whale Hunters

(who may have originally arrived as whale hunters)

        In PART TWO (SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of Whale Hunters) we looked at the Wakashan group in the region of Vancouver Island, who were original arrivals on the coast and brought whale hunting traditions. In this section we look further at the Northwest coast of North America.continue south along the Pacific coast of North America and consider other Native peoples whose relationship to the whale hunters is less clear. They may represent later arrivals since both examples we look at were forced to establish themselves upriver not on the coast, suggesting the coastal parts of the rivers were already settled when the arrived (As described in PART ONE humans are territorial and once virgin territories are taken newcomers are told to move on to secondary locations - unless they steal the territories after winning a battle )
    As I mentioned in PART TWO, during the 1970's when a student at the University of Toronto, I went into the stacks where books are kept and pulled books off the shelf covering the North American Native (Indian) languages, flipping through the word lists, to see if words that resembled Estonian words jumped out, focusing on basic words such as those for 'mother', 'father', 'earth', 'sky', 'water', 'fish', 'sun', 'day' and so on. What I discovered was that I was seeing Estonian-like words in several languages along the middle Pacific coast, known more commonly as the Northwest Coast (of North America). PART TWO looked at the acknowledged whale hunter peoples around Vancouver Island whose languages have been grouped under the name "Wakashan", with special attention to the Kwakwala (Kwakiutl) language. Our results were remarkable and the evidence tended to support Wakashan, Inuit (Eskimo), and Finnic languages having a common parent in prehistoric whale hunters, probably dating back to the archeological "Kunda" culture.
     In this PART THREE, we take a closer look at the situation on the Pacific coast with a view of understanding better the origins of the various peoples there - which ones came by boat already with maritime traditions, and which ones moved to the coast later from the interior and adapted to coastal life. It is the ones who were boat peoples originally in which we hope to find a background extending back in time to the circumpolar skin-boat migrations.

The above map from "The Cultures of the Northwest Coast" by Philip Drucker (1965) shows the various Native nations and languages of that coast. The variation in the language groups are often so extremely different from their neighbours, that much speculation has been fuelled as to how the diversity of peoples arrived there - which came by boat and which came from the interior and borrowed maritime habits already found there. The scheme is not exactly the same as some other interpretations. For the Vancouver Island area, the Wakashan group of languages, see also the map in PART TWO. I have added "Kalapuya" because I will look at some of its words, later.

THEORIES ON THE ORIGINS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST CULTURE

     Because of the peculiar features of the Northwest Coast native people, features which include totem poles, colourful masks and other traits of advanced culture and technology, scholars have tended to separate the development of the Northwest Coast culture from the general average progression of culture among the more inland native people. Origins in Polynesia and Asia have been proposed owing to various similarities in art and artifacts. However, recent archeological findings and scholarly studies do not support such a simplistic idea as a wholesale settlement of the coast by immigrants from elsewhere. It is much more complex than that. Any visitor to the Northwest Coast in at least the last 5,000 years would have found the coast already occupied by a strong and healthy maritime people. Thus a migration coming from the sea would either have been chased away, or if they managed to find a place to settle and be at peace with their neighbours, they would have been assimilated into the dominant surrounding culture after a few generations.
      However, in the case of intrusion by land from the Interior, the displacement of the coastal people already there would not have been as difficult, because the displacement would not have to occur suddenly, but it could occur slowly as natives of the Interior slowly learnt the ways of the coastal people and bit-by-bit intruded into their economic niche.
      After the initial arrival of boat peoples to the vacant coastal areas around 3000BC, the coast developed mainly on its own (in situ), accepting influences from the interior natives. Apparently the culture and population blossomed from about 3,000 BC, and as Knut R. Fladmark determines from his paleoecologi'cal study (A Paleoecological Model For Northwest Coast Prehistory. Knut R, Fladmark, National Museums of Canada, Ottawa,1975), this occurred as a result of the sudden flourishing of the salmon owing to a stabilization of a previously fluctuating ecological environment which greatly affected the fish. The number of archeological finds from that period onward suggests that the coastal people acquire free time to develop higher culture and energy-expensive technology, and the population grew.
     Another explanation for the sudden flourishing of the coast from around 3000BC could be that previous populations were not inclined towards boats and fishing, and the sudden flourishing resulted from newcomers introducing this new maritime way of life that made greatest use of the abundant salmon. It is possible that original Americans, derived from land-based people, may have looked upon fish like today modern people look upon snakes or insects. It took newcomers in boats to introduce the highly beneficial notion of catching and eating the plentiful salmon. Interior peoples came out to the coast to exploit this new way of life.
        The main groups of native people on the Northwest Coast were the following. There was the northern group which included the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and Haisia, South of them, centred around Vancouver Island were the people of-the Wakasham group which included Kwakiutl (Kwakwala), Nootka, Bella Coola,etc. Further south there were primarily the people known as Salish.

NORTHERN GROUPS: WAKASHAN, SALISH , HAIDA, AND TLINGIT

        We begin with our determination in PART TWO that the Wakashan languages around Vancouver Island, languages of whale hunters, appear to have linguistic kinship with Inuit and going back to Finnic in arctic Scandinavia.
      Indeed it is believed that the Wakasham cultures most closely represent the original cultures of the Northwest Coast The first to present this theme was Franz Boas who in 1902 and 1910 papers, according to Fladmark (p268) "saw an early basic unity of culture around the North Pacific, from Siberia to the Columbia River. This continuum was later disrupted by a coastal Eskimo migration, separating Siberian and Northwest Coast cultures and by the intrusion of the Tsimshian and Coast Salish, Boas based the Tgimshian migration on traditional histories of certain clans who claimed an interior origin. The theory of a coastward Salish movement was initiated by the pioneering archeological research of Harlan I, Smith, who interpreted a number of traits found at Marpole and Port Hammond shell- middens as being of Interior derivation..."
       Linguistically, the northern and Salish languages are different from the Wakasham languages, also suggesting that people with different languages have arrived from the interior and taken up the maritime culture introduced by the boat peoples, and presumably occupying places by then not yet occupied.
     Since 1950, publications by C.E. Borden have pursued the concepts of an early Eskimo substratum and later migrations from the Interior. Fladmark quotes Borden with the following passage, written after Bordens first season of field work at Whalen Farm site (my underlining): " While the evidence which was gathered last summer... cannot be as yet regarded as conclusive, the data that were obtained strongly suggest that an earlier group of Indians who lived at this site for a considerable time, and whose entire organization was evidently coastal by long tradition, was eventually overwhelmed by intrusive Indians whose culture exhibits strong ties with the interior... It appears that an early period of extensive dislocations among the Indian groups of the Northwest were caused by repeated waves of migration of Athapaskan speaking peoples sweeping from Northern regions southward along the coast and through the interior.. Great unrest was caused among the Salish, It appears that Salish-speaking groups were jostled out of positions in the interior of Washington and migrated towards the coast, where they adapted themselves to a new life. They did not necessarily settle for long periods in one place but often may have been hustled along to more distant places by newer groups coming from the interior" (Borden,1950, p245)
       Regarding other linguistic groups on the Northwest Coast, besides the Wakashan and Salish considered above, Borden had these notes in a second paper of 1954:(pl94, quoted by Fladmark p 271) " Again, if as it seems, the Haida and Tlingit languages are related to Athapascan we may assume that when the late-arriving Athapascan peoples were expanding, some of them either crowded or followed the early Salish southward into the interior of British Columbia, while a few groups, especially the ancestors of the Haida and Tlingit, filtered through river valleys...to the coast where they either displaced, or more likely, mingled with the (Wakashan?) maritime population already present, at the same time adopting much of their coastal culture. The origin of the Tsimshian is obscure. They may be late arrivals from Asia (cf. Barbeau), but it is also possible that they migrated northward from an early southern habitat... It is probable that the Tsimshian came to their present location from the interior."
    According to Borden, the prehistory of the Northwest Coast as archeology shows it in investigations done the following stages of evolution 1)An early maritime or "Eskimoid" culture with northern origins; 2)coastal migrations of interior groups, 3)a final repatterning and intergration of elements derived from early Interior and Coastal cultures.
      To put it simply: First came the whalers from their circumpolar migrations who established maritime culture where none had existed before, and then interior people seeing new opportunities in unoccupied coastal locations, migrated to the coast, and finally there were various degress of merging of cultures as the two cultural and linguistic groups interracted. Two of the coastal peoples with interior origins, but now with significant maritime ways of life, for example, are the Haida and Tlingit.
        By 1962, after excavations in the Fraser Canyon, Borden still believed the ancestral Wakashans were responsible for the original maritime culture on the Northwest Coast, but now was wondering if their culture was transferred back north and caused the success in the Eskimo there to cause their west-to-east expansion (the "Thule" cultural expansion) In other words he wondered if the migrations had gone the other way. Borden avoided proposing a common ancestry for Northwest Coast and Eskimo culture by using the term "Eskimoid" (Eskimo-like). However, other scholars went on to propose such a common ancestry.
    (Our own theory in the UI-RA-LA articles, of the circumpolar expansion of boat peoples, particularly whalers, of course proposes a common ancestry going back to the first development of sea-peoples at the White Sea, for the simple reason that something as dramatic as taking to the open sea needed a long period of development starting from the simplest steps in marshes and rivers.)
      Fladmark does not place much faith in theories pertaining-to an Asian or Eurasian connection, but acknowledges the possibility in the following passage: "..it is always tempting when dealing with microblade assemblages to draw comparisons and ultimate origins from Eurasian Upper-Paleolithic cultures. Certainly it is possible to find Eurasian parallels for any of the traits of the Early Microblade Complex - for example thick-nosed scrapers of the early Moresby Tradition of the Queen Charlotte Islands are remarkably similar to Aurignacian carinate scrapers. However, the marked absence of important Upper Paleolithic traits, such as true burins and backed blades on the Northwest Coast, indicates that correspondences are generalized, and any attempt at directly deriving the Early Coast Microblade Complex from Old World ancestors would be speculative at least." (p286) Fladmark himself relates the archeological evidence to paleoecological events on the Northwest Coast, and concludes with the following theory: "Before about 5000 years before present there were oscillating sea-levels varying river gradients, and climatic fluctuations along the entire coast which maintained regional salmon . and other anadromous fish productivity far below present levels. Thus, during the period from about 10,000 years before present to 5,000 years before present, the coastal people did not depend on fish as much as they did after. Archaeological data pertaining to before 5,000 B.P. (before present) show that the early cultures on the coast belonged to two groups: a northern group who were probably marine oriented (who probably hunted sea animals and were generally "Eskimoid"), and a southern group who were probably land-oriented. The former is called the Early Coast Microblade Complex, and the latter the Lithic Culture type. Kitchen middens (accumlations of refuse) from this early period lack shells (indicating the people did not eat shell-fish) and art work or articles of ground stone, After 5,000 B.P. archeological sites along the entire Northwest Coast show large midden accumulations of shells, ground stone ornaments and art-work. This sudden surge in culture Fladzuark attributes to the ecosystems stabilizing and the regional salmon species suddenly becoming very productive. According to Fladmark: 'When salmon achieved full productivity, man probably required little or no adjustment in his exploitive technology' The maritime technology for catching fish was already in place, so that 'adaptive developments took the form of specializing towards this resource more than any other, and making requisite adjustments in settlement and energy dissipating mechanisms in response to the pronounced seasonality, locational concentration, and high magnitude of this single energy source."(p296)
    As I said earlier, another approach is that the indigenous peoples did not exploit salmon because to them it was a strange creature, and then the arriving maritime culture promoted it within themselves and to all with whom they came in contact. Salmon were plentiful and life began to revolve around the salmon. Theories about fluxuations in fish populations are not significant in this matter.
     Before life began to revolve around the salmon, the coastal people were mobile and scattered. Afterward, the people became more focussed on this resource which produced massive amounts of food ('energy') on a seasonal basis. The result was the availability of energy to devote to the manufacture of technological and cultural items. Based on numbers of radiocarbon-dated artifacts, a surge in-population occurred between 4000 B.P and 3000 B.P. (2000BC to 1000BC). As I say, I believe the major cause of this was simply the arrived boat peoples educating the interior peoples of the degree to which salmon were edible, and causing a rush out to the coast to exploit this resource. Of course it is always possible that interior peoples were already familiar with eating fish. But if so, archeologists will have to fine remains of fish bones in kitchen middens dating to before 5000 BP. If the only find land animal bones then I would conclude that to them eating fish was as "yucky" as modern culture feels about eating snakes or insects, in spite of their being edible.
      Comparison of the languages and mythology beween the Wakashan (using Kwakwala as the example) and Finnic languages was done in PART TWO, and it tends to agree with the archeological findings of connections with Inuit, and ultimate origins in the ancient Finnic whaler cultures depicted in the rock carvings of arctic Scandinavia. It is hard to argue against the conclusion that the Wakashan languages and cultures originate as "Sons of the Thunder-god KALLU" , and were then influenced subsequently by the newcomers - Salish, Haida, Tlingit - from the itnerior. See PART TWO >> SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of the Whale Hunters for full investigation of language and mythology of the Wakashan peoples, particularly Kwakwala (Kwakiutl). Such connection to Finnic also discounts any theory of Inuit originating on the Pacific coast and eventually migrating to arctic Scandinavia. The most sensible theory - given the rock carvings of whale hunting in the White Sea dating to 6000 years ago - is that first the whale hunters entered arctic North America as far as Alaska, but then a cooling climate blocked passage between the east and west half of North America, and then around 1000AD this passage opened up again and the western branch, which had acquired newer "microlithic" culture in the meantime, came back to the east side, and their culture merged with the "Dorset" culture there. It was a case of similar languages and cultures coming together again, (It would be analogous to today British immigrants settling in Canada, also English speaking)
    But let us proceed to new information from the Pacific coast. The following investigates Native peoples on the coast that are best viewed as salmon peoples. Whether or not they came as whale hunters we do not know. All we know is the remarkable similarities to Finnic.

SOUTHERN GROUPS OF NORTH PACIFIC COAST --KAROK, YUROK, & HUPA

    If we refer to the map above, we find the Karok, Yurok and Hupa at the south end, in northern California.
     While the story towards the north seems to speak of early arrival of the Wakashan groups from the north as "Eskimoid" whalers, and later migrations towards the coast of interior peoples, plus some mixing, the story towards the south is less clear. However we will look at it because of similarities with Finnic culture.
     The Karok, Yurok and Hupa formed the southern focus of the so-called North Pacific Coast Culture While most of the information of this culture comes from studies of the Yuroks, there was a high degree of cultural uniformity among the three groups: neighbours on the same river highway, they visited each other's performances of the same festivals, intermarried and feuded over the same issues. (Drucker p 176) But their languages were very different from each other.
     Surrounding this pronounced culture, further south and further inland were simple patterns of Central Californian genre (Drucker p 177) North of this area where the Pacific coast cultures of diminishing intensity until one reached the Columbia River and the Chinook tribes. In this area too, in the interior was the Kalapuyan tribe, which we will look at also, later.
      As concerns the Karok, Yurok and Hupa cultures, in spite of the sameness of culture, the languages are not. The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other language.
       In my investigation of Pacific coast languages for words that resembled Estonian or Finnish, I looked at all three, and the Karok language had most examples by far that could be compared to Estonian/Finnish. Since Karok bears no resemblance to Yurok or Hupa, we can presume that this association between the languages is a relatively recent development - one or two of them being original, and the remaining/remainder arriving in the area by migration. Before I advance a theory about Karok origins, we will look at the Karok culture and then at words that resonate with Estonian/Finnish words - as much as I could find using the limited word list in the source material.

BACKGROUND TO KAROK

    The Karok , Yurok and Hupa tribes are a group that - in spite of their different language - practiced a similar culture. All of them occupying the Klamath River valley in northwestern California, wherever their culture came from, the river valley tied them all together culturally.
    This distinctive northwestern California culture, which may be considered a variety of the North Pacific culture centering in British Columbia, reaches its most intense form among these three tribes
    The Karok-Yurok-Hupa culture lacked many of the features of the culture to their north, but to compensate there was an elaboration of certain features well beyond what was practiced in the north, such as the development of the use of dentalia shells like modern money.

DENTALIA SHELLS AS MONEY

     The Nootka who 'fished' the shells, like other northerners, sorted them into large medium and small sizes, and strung them by an imprecise fathom.
    Yurok on the other hand, graded their shell treasures like jewelers sorting fine gems, and devised a standard of measurement. Yurok strings were all the same length. The unit of highest denomination was a string filled from end to end by ten shells of nearly equal length. (Drucker p 177-178)
   The Yurok and presumable Hupa and Karok, thus used dentalia nearly like modern currency. Indeed every adult male has a mark tatooed on his upper arm by which he could check the accuracy of the length of a string of dentalia held between thumb and forefinger.
     Naturally societies that have established a monetary standard are interested in "monetary wealth" and so there was an overwhelming interest in weath, and indeed the society idealized the notion of men spending as much time possible in the routine of sweat bathing and cold water bathing, partial feasting, observing strict continence, gathering sweathouse wood all for the ultimate purpose of achieving wealth. (Drucker 183)
     While the Nootkan and Kwakwala people in British Columbia put themselves through various purification rituals just as rigorously, they did not identify as precisely as the Karok, Yurok and Hupa, what the outcome of these rituals would be To the tribes in British Columbia, the purpose of purification rituals was to become charming and charismatic so that the spirits of the environment would act favourably towards them, but what constituted favourable behaviour was left open to the circumstances and needs of the time.
    As in modern monetary society, the Karok, Yurok, and Hupa even assigned value to rare items that had little instrinsic value like the dentalia shells, large obsidian blades, scalps of giant pileated woodpeckers, and skins of albino deer. The pursuit of rare goods to which are assigned a high value is an obvious raison d'etre for a trading people, and I wonder if a trading people arrived at the mouth of the Klamath perhaps 2000 years ago (about the time of the Romans when there were several seatrading peoples like Phoenicians and Veneti) and settled there on the river, and by doing so transferred their trader material culture to the natives, including the sauna (more about the sauna, below) We note that in the northeast parts of North America too, the native peoples had little concept of material wealth until the concept was brought by European traders seeking furs and suddenly transforming an animal's coat into a monetary unit.

ORDERLINESS IN CUSTOMS AND LAW

Other aspects of the society also indicated sophistication of the kind we associate with Europe. The principle of wergild was used as a device for resolving conflicts (conflicts resolved by suitable payments) based on the value of a man's life being equal to the bride price paid for his mother. In terms of how much penalty there should be, "With the same kind of precision shown in their refinement of the dentalia-grading system, they worked out an elaborate scale of seriousness of offences against the person, from murder to an insult....This systematic approach gave an orderliness to Yurok law that was lacking in the wergild settlements of groups far to the north, where grandiose demands for blood money were just as grandiosely rejected." (Drucker, p 184)
Yurok (and presumably Karok and Hupa) society was made up of small groups of patrilineally related males, clustered around the genealogical senior of the unit, the 'rich man'. Nominal owner of the sweathouse and the group's wealth, he directed activities of the group-owned economic tracts, such as a section of the salmon weir or acorn grounds. However, as among other Coast Indians, wealth was really a group, not individual property....(true also in Europe in the non-Indo-European regions like across northern Europe in the Finnic regions in Roman times)

THE SWEATHOUSE (SAUNA)

Although sweat bathing was found throughout North America in more improvised forms using rocks heated in a fire outside, among the Karok, Yurok and Hupa, it was refined into an institution with its own special building and rituals - much like Finnic practices going back 2000 years. The sweat bath was an important part of the ritual purification for good fortune. The men usually assembled in late afternoon for the sweat bath; when they left the sweathouse by the flue exit, they plunged into the chill river water, then spent several hours alternatively immersing and scrubbing with aromatic herbs, while reciting formulaic prayers for good fortune." (Drucker p 180) Primitive sweathouses were found among other Indian people throughout North America notably the Algonquians who we believe are also from boat-people, hence ultimate north Scandinavian aboriginal origins.
But here it was in a permanent structure with an interior fireplace. Drucker described it as follows: They Yurok sweathouse was a rectangular structure of planks....The walls lined the sides of a deep pit ....A large fire pit in the floor provided direct heat, not steam, for sweating. Men entered through the usual round doorway......Ethnographers and others who observed the Indians still using their typical structures were impressed by the neatness of the sweathouses....Sweathouses rarely contained more than neat wooden stools and well-polished wooden headrests, which were individual property of each occupant, and perhaps a load of wood stacked beside the fireplace....etc. (p 180)

Early Finnic saunas too were semi-buried like the above. The Finnic versions might be covered with sod to seal cracks better.

These two men, in the adjacent illustration from archives (see text on the illustrations for the sources) in this case from the Hupa culture, look like they could be mistakened for a couple of old Finns of the past century, emerging from their sauna.

    Was the similarity of the Karok-Yurok-Hupa sweat house with Finnic sauna of the last millenia a coincidence? The natural result of continued development from the primitive makeshift "sweat lodge" of the Algonquians and others? Or does it suggest, as with other cultural behaviour the arrival of traders into the Klamath, from Finnic sea trade peoples of Roman times or earlier? (The southerly Finnic cultures in the European north, through contacts with continental Europe and beyond, did establish seatrade in northern waters and possibly south too via amber trading)
    Perhaps the Klamath River peoples, already shaped by early whale hunters, received a new wave of visitors, now more advanced, who were able to enhance what already existed (based on the principle that it is easier to evolve from something that already exists than to invent something entirely new and therefore mysterious to the general public.)
    The sophistication of the other institutions especially in having money, strongly suggests there was once the arrival of trading peoples. Perhaps first came one group of peoples, who established the Yurok and Hupa, and then a third who spoke Finnic. (The possibility is high that early traders were Finnic, given that there were Finnic boat peoples descending rivers like the Volga and Dneiper, and trading amber down into Babylon already 5000 years ago (as proven by amber being found in Babylonian tombs). We will compare the Karok language with Finnic below, but it would be interesting to see if it is possible to connect Yurok or Hupa or both to some other ancient seatrade people such as Phoenicians or some other peoples of south Asia.

RELIGIOUS RITUAL

       As a result of the pursuit of wealth the Karok-Yurok-Hupa culture was more secular than the coastal Indians of British Columbia. Here, instead of working to please ambiguous imagined spirits, men worked to gain the liking of the dentalia shells (to attract money), or quite real things such as charming a real deer he could see rather than an imagined spirit before seeing a real deer.
       Still, there WAS religion, just as there is religion in out modern secular world. Humans need to address an unknown even if in most of their regular lives they deal with hard reality not superstition. There was the World Renewal Cycle. Because their life was based on harvesting salmon, and collecting acorns, the ritual involved the concept of ancestral people and the First Salmon and the First Acorn. This ritual ensured continued success in harvesting salmon and acorns.
      Peculiar to the Karok-Yurok-Hupa societies was that they generated major festivals around these rituals, whereas towards the north the ritual towards the first salmon was a solemn act, which was not spun into celebrations, socializing, etc. In this respect once again, their culture resembles what was found in northern Europe among the indigenous aboriginals, when they gathered at places accessible to several adjacent tribes. In particular, Finnic culture had the midsummer festival that marked the longest day or shortest night of the year, with a huge bonfire to light up the night during the few hours of darkness -- but this was a concept only found in the north where the annual progression of the length of day or night was dramatic ultimately culminating above the arctic circle in days or nights lasting months.
     Regarding 'first fruits' ritual: in Europe. There was around 4000-5000 years ago a practice of young women of the 'Hyperboreans' of the Baltic taking the first fruits of their grain harvest south to the Greek island of Delos to the shrine of Artemis (Diana). See Herodotus' account of the 'Hyperborean Maidens'. It must have been important for such a long annual journey jut to offer the first harvested grains to a shrine on an island in the Aegean!!

QUESTIONS RAISED

Are these similarities in culture and daily life with developed Baltic Finnic culture of before the Roman Age, pure coincidence? Or is it the result of parallel evolution from the foundations laid down by whale hunters? Or does it suggest traders of ultimate Balto-Finnic origins arriving at the mouth of the Klamath around the Roman Age - before or after? Are the further coincidences in words in the Karok language, suggestive of later arrivals, or are we looking at words carried to the area already from early times by the first whalers to migrate down the coast from the circumpolar boat peoples?

KAROK LANGUAGE

        The Karok language is not closely or obviously related to any other (in the area), but has been classified as a member of the northern group of Hokan languages, in a subgroup which includes Chimariko and the Shasta languages, spoken in the same general part of California as Karok itself (William Bright pg 1)
     This suggests to me that the Karok may have arrived by sea, and travelled upriver. Possibly there were no people along the river where they settled originally. Perhaps the Chimariko and Shasta are descendants of the original arrival.
       The following is my investigation of Karok words from a Finnic perspective. Note the discussion in PART TWO of the ins and outs of comparing languages that are beyond the applicability of linguistic methodology but still provide evidence that surpasses random chance. The following choice of studying Karok is not arbitrary, but, as with Kwakwala, based on finding a remarkable number of words that resonated with Estonian.

NOTES ON ORTHOGRAPHY USED HERE

    The Karok words in the source The Karok Language, William Bright, uses a phonetic orthography dating to the 1950's. In order to be reasonably consistent with what I did with writing out the Kwakwala language (PART TWO) in a more readable fashion, I interpreted the orthography of the Karok words in my own way like with the Kwakwala, based on extended Roman alphabet and Latin phonetics. The accent mark in the original I show by bolding and the dot representing length II show by doubling the letter. Sadly until recently with the establishing of an international phonetic alphabet there have been very many phonetic orthographies, so that I am sometimes lost when looking at older materials - since I am not a trained linguist familiar with such things. If my interpretation of the sound of a KAROK word is a litle incorrect, I don't think it is serious enough to alter the comparison with an Estonian/Finnish word. We are not pursuing precise linguistics here, just scanning for coincidences in sound patterns and meanings that are beyond the probability of random chance. To better understand how William Bright 'heard' the words, see Bright, William The Karok Language, 1957, University of California Press, Berkeley&Los Angeles
     Thus to summarize: the phonetics of Latin is used as before with Kwakwala   TRYING to present it the same way; bolding means emphasis of a sort, length is shown by doubling the consonant. Furthermore the ' means glottal stop. The Estonian/ Finnish words are written in standard Estonian/Finnish without further markings. (Those with no knowledge of Estonian, please refer to any handbook on pronouncing Estonian or Finnish; however the variations from Latin pronunciation are not great. The most important characteristic about Estonian and FInnish is that the first syllable is always emphasized.).

KAROK	ESTONIAN/FINNISH (stress on 1st syllable)
'AAHKU 'to burn' 'AHI- 'to burn' 'AAHA 'fire, lantern'	AHI / AHJO 'fireplace / forge'
-AHI is also used to mark the past tense.	Estonian uses the -SI- or -I- to mark the past tense.
' IŠ 'flesh, body'	IHU / IHO 'flesh, body'
PAAH 'boat'	PAAT 'boat'
' IMMAAN 'tomorrow'	HOMME / HUOMENNA 'tomorrow'
KUUSRA(H) 'month; sun, moon'	KUU / KUU 'moon'
' IPAHA 'tree'	PUU / PUU 'tree'
YUMAA 'pertaining to the dead'	JUMAL / JUMALA 'god' (J is pronounced like Y)
KOO 'all'	KÕIK / KAIKKI 'all'
KOOVAN 'together'	KOOS / KOOSSA 'together'
KOOKANHI 'to accompany'	KAASA/ KANSSA 'in accompaniment with'
KARU 'also'	KA 'also'
' AXAK 'two'	KAKS / KAKSI 'two'
TIIK 'finger' TIIV 'ear' TIIT 'fin'	TIIB or TIIV 'wing'
IKXIV 'thunderhead'	ÄIKE , IKKE / UKKONEN 'lightening'
'ARAARA 'man, person'	RAHVAS 'a people, nation'
'IINIŠ 'to come into existence' ' IIN '(the world, human race) to exist' compares with Inuit words like inuit 'people' and inuusaaqtuq 'he is born'	INIMENE/ IHMINEN 'person' SÜNNI / SYNTY 'be born'
' AAHO 'to walk, go' (note glottal stop at start is a K-type sound) Compares with Kwakwala QASA 'walking' and Inuit qai-	KÄI /KÄY 'walk, go'
' AAS 'water' compares with Kwakwala 'WÄP	VESI/VESI 'water'
VIIHI 'to dislike, hate'	VIHA / VIHA 'anger, hatred'
IMYAH- 'to breathe'	HINGA / HENGITTÄ 'breath' IME / IMEÄ 'suck
SU' VARIH 'deep'	SÜGAV / SYVÄ 'deep'
SU' 'down, inside'	SUU / SUU 'mouth'
IMUUSTIH 'to look at, watch'	IMESTA /IHMETELLÄ 'be amazed'
' UUS 'pine cone'	KUUSK / KUUSI 'fir-tree'
VAASAN 'enemy' VAASIH 'back'	VASTA / VASTA 'against, opposing', 'opposite side'?
' AASIŠ 'go to bed'	ASE 'bed, nest'
KOOKA 'kind, classification'	KOGU / KOKO 'grouping, collection'
SIIRIH 'to shine'	SÄRA Est. 'sparkle'
TAAT 'mother' Since Inuit ataata refers to 'father' this looks like a gender reversal	TAAT Est. 'old man' TÄDI 'auntie'
'AKAH 'father' compare with Kwakwala QÄQÄS 'your grandfather' and Inuit AKKA 'paternal uncle'	UKKO 'mythological god'
MA' 'mountain'	MÄGI / MÄKI 'mountain'
PATUMKIRA 'pillow'	PADI Est. 'pillow'
'AAMA 'salmon' This looks like a simple matter of substitution of M for L ?	KALA / KALA 'fish'
YAV 'good'	HEA / HYVÄÄ 'good
' AK 'pertaining to use of hands'	KÄE/ KÄEN 'of the hands'
' ASA 'to wear on one's body'	KASUTA Est 'use' KASUKAS Est 'fur coat'
HOOTAH 'late'	OOTA / ODOTA 'wait'
KUNIŠ 'sort of, kind of'	-KENE Est 'kind of'
-TARA 'instrument'	TARVE / TARVE 'instrument'
SOME GRAMMAR......
-VA suffix for action over extended time	-V / -VA suffix marking present participle
-TIH suffix marking continuing action	-TI ending for Estonian past imperfect passive
-AHI like past tense	-SI / -I marker for past tense

CONCLUSION FOR KAROK VS FINNIC

        Note regarding initial glottal stops. Finnic languages stress the first syllable and when the initial sound is a vowel, a unintended consonantal feature appears to launch that consonant.. When in history foreigners interpreted Finnic words, they often added initial consonants like H, KH, WH, PH, that were not really intended. For example it is likely the initial "F" in "FINN" was not really there, but Germanic or Latin observers in history heard it and recorded it.. Thus when Karok puts a glottal stop in front of an initial vowel we have to consider whether it is really there as a relevant linguistic feature or is it a phonetic event. This can be proven by finding the word inside a compound word and noting if the glottal stop is still applicable.
       The Karok source words I scanned also include all kinds of compound words and derivations. We selected only those that show strong correspondences. Some may be coincidences, but some patterns are sufficiently unique that they could not appear by random chance. For example the words that have similar patterns in Kwakwala, Inuit, and Finnic such as 'AKAH   'father' (Kwakwala QÄQÄS 'your grandfather', Inuit AKKA 'paternal uncle', Finnic UKKO 'sky-father') or ' IIN   '(the world, human race) to exist' ( Inuit words like inuit 'people' and inuusaaqtuq 'he is born', Est/Finn inimene/ihminen 'person'). Note that there could be many more, but for all these investigations of words the word list was to various degrees limited. These were not thorough, not exhaustive, investigations. Words that endure a long time are words that were used practically daily and only changed in general characteristics. Except that some words that were used a hundred times a day could produce variations such as different ways of referring to one's mother. Indeed even in FInnic, we find 'mother' give by ema in Estonian and Äiti in Finnish.
    The most interesting word in the Karok list is PAAH for 'boat'. Today Estonian says PAAT and it is very common. Since this word is similar to puu, 'tree', it is possible that when whaling people created skin boats and had both skin and wood boats, they were inclined to distinguish between the skin boat and small wood dugout (which continued too), The normal word vene for boat came ultimately from the concept of 'gliding, floating, on water', but if you had two kinds of these - the one that was of skin and the dugout, well you would like to distinguish between these two. In any event, unless it is a brand new word, the Karok PAAH did not come from English 'boat' . The English 'boat' must have come from the seagoing peoples into original Native British back some 5000 years ago and inherited into Anglo-Saxon.
   Unfortunately the studies presented here are not thorough, not exhaustive. Much more could be found if thorough study was done. What is more important perhaps is the RATE at which we found seeming resonances with Finnic. After all, if we had 1000 Karok words and only found the above number, that would not be very good. The above words represent 1 in 35 to 50 words (depending on how close the word form and meaning has to be).
My intention is only to point out remarkable coincidences, and it is up to the reader to evaluate the probabilities of such coincidences occurring by random chance. Of course the results will be rough, but our intention is only to find sufficient coincidences to suggest there is a hidden story, and the coincidences cannot occur at that rate by random chance.
    We find such remarkable coincidences in the next languages. In this case the number of words available to me was very limited, and therefore the small number of coincidences actually still represents a very high rate, even larger than 1 in 35. The similarities of a few words to Karok seems to suggest the Kalapuyans were a branch of the original Karoks, as we discuss below.

The Kalapuyan Languages

A FISH CATCHING PEOPLE ON A BRANCH OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER

    Immediately to the north of the original home of the Karok Indians lay the homelands of the Indian tribes that belonged to several linguistically defined groups including the Shasta, Takelma, and Kalapuyan. Although Kalapuyan tribes are not often discussed in connection with the North Pacific Coast culture, as they lived slightly inland (see map above), they occupied the banks of a major branch of the Columbia River, a river that flowed into the Columbia from the south, and no doubt they lived by fishing salmon as intensely as the Columbia River Chinook Indians.
     Kalapuyan defines a family of languages or dialects. By discovering similar words among several languages of the Kalapuyan family, linguists hope to discover words that belonged to the original language, which might be called "Proto-Kalapuyan". Such a study was done by William Shipley involving a comparison of three Kalapuyan languages: Tfalati, Santiam, and Yoncalla. This work (Proto-Kalapuyan, in Languages and Cultures of Western North America, 1970 - see references at bottom) was used as one of the sources of Kalapuyan words for comparison with Finnic.
       It has been proposed many years ago - in 1965 - by Morris Swadesh that Kalapuyan languages are perhaps related to Takelma and together they formed a larger grouping. In any event, Swadesh presented words of Takelma plus three Kalapuyan languages (the three described above) in his 1965 paper (see references below) and I also mined that paper as a source of Kalapuyan words.
      The following short study looks at Kalapuyan words which strongly resemble Estonian and Finnish words, starting with Shipley's list of Kalapuyan words, and then adding words that Swadesh presented but Shipley did not present, to enlarge the source words. Even so, the total number of words remains small. But bear in mind that since the source words were small in number, our small number of discoveries still representr a high rate of coincidences. We are not seeking to do an exhaustive analysis, but only to show that we are able to find remarkable parallels that by laws of probability suggest they cannot all be mere random chance correspondences. Therefore, in spite of the limited results, the following is as significant or even more significant than our analysis of Karok above.
    Like the Karoks, it is difficult to link Kalapuyans to the whale hunter migrations, since they too had moved into the interior and lived off harvesting salmon. What is needed is to determine if there are connections between them and Wakashan culture, but as I said above, the highly sophisticated sauna and money culture suggests strong influence from a later Finnic trader-people who perhaps decided to settle down,
    To begin with, the name "Kalapujans" is so close to Estonian kala püüdjad 'fish catchers' that I hoped to find a parallel; however I failed to find the data I sought.. I did however find a word for 'fish' from Swadesh's material. It was given as K'AWAN (I use ' for the glottal stop or throat catch) which came from the Yonkalla dialect. It is possible therefore that there could have been a replacement of L with W. It is possible that thousands of years ago they were originally called by KALA-PÜÜDJAN and then over time the whole language drifted linguistically, influenced by neighbouring languages. The whole name degenerating to Kalapuyan while the word for fish degenerates independently from KALAN to KAWAN. We can therefore see if there is other evidence of a L > W shift.

WORD COMPARISONS - KALAPUYAN VERSUS FINNIC

Because the "Proto-kalapuyan" words derived by Shipley are still artificial, the following comparisons are made from the real Kalapuyan word, indicating the dialect with T, S, or Y representing respectively Tfalati, Santiam, or Yoncalla.
In terms of orthography, I continue to use the approach that uses the Latin sounds as a basis, with additional markers selected from common keyboard symbols. Emphasis (if the source material gives it) is given by bolding, the single quote marks a catch in the throat or glottal stop, and a dash marks a sound break (without catch). These are very intuitive conventions.

KALAPUYAN T=Tfalati; S=Santiam; Y=Yoncalla (from limited resources)	ESTONIAN/ FINNISH (common words only)	KAROK (limited by limited resources)
PAL (T) 'big' PALA (S)	PALJU / PALJON 'much, alot'
PUU£ (T,S 'blow'	PUHU / PUHU 'blow / speak'
' EEFAN (S) 'father' YEEFAMA (Y)	ISA / ISÄ 'father'	(KWAKWALA has OS 'father')
TIITA (S) 'give' TII& (Y)	TEE / TIE 'do'
HUUSU (Y) 'good'	HEA / HYVÄÄ 'good'	YAV 'good'
TAHKI (T) 'kill' TAHEI (S)	TAPPA / TAPPA 'kill'
PA£ (T) 'lake' PAA£ (S,Y)	PAAT (Est) 'boat'	PAAH 'boat'
MEEFU (T) 'mountain' MEEFUU (S) MAFFU (Y)	MÄGI /MÄKI 'mountain, hill'	MA' 'mountain'
NUNA (T, S) 'nose'	NINA / NENÄ 'nose'
MIM (T,S) 'person' MIMI (Y)	INIMENE (Est) 'person'	' IIN '(the world, human race) to exist' compares with Inuit words like inuit 'people'
T-ASTU (S) 'sit' T-ESTU (Y)	ISTU/ ISTU 'sit'
HUYS (T,S) 'smell'	HAIS / HAISU 'smell'
YALKYAK (T)'straight' YALK (S)	JALG / JALKA 'leg, foot'
PYAN (T, S) 'sun'	PEA / PÄÄ 'chief, most important' PÄIKE (Est) 'sun'
KwAYN (T)'swim' KwAY (S)	KÄI / KÄY 'go'	' AAHO 'to walk, go' (note glottal stop at start is a K-type sound) Compares with Kwakwala QASA 'walking' and Inuit qai-
PAMYUT (T) 'think' MUYT (S)	Est. PEAMÕTTE 'main idea' MÕTTE / MIETE 'thought'
K'AWAN (Y) 'fish'	KALA / KALA 'fish'	'AAMA 'salmon' substitution of M for L ?
PUUHA (S) 'alder (tree)' PO-P (T) PEEM (T) 'tree'	PUU / PUU 'tree'	'IPAHA 'tree'
HUL-LII (S) 'want'	HOOLI / HUOLI 'want, desire'
WAL-LA (S) 'down'	ALLA / ALLA 'down'
SOME TAKELMA WORDS (neighbouring, but not considered Kalapuyan)
KAA'-M 'two'	KAKS / KAKSI 'two'	'AXAK 'two'
' EL-AA- 'tongue'	KEEL / KIELI 'tongue'	(Kwakwala has KhALAM 'tongue' )
PEYAAN 'daughter, girl'	POJA / POJAN 'child; boy'

Note that although the number of comparisons obtained, the original sources of words was quite small. The word list for Karok was also moderately small. These comparisons can be continued if larger number of original (old) words can be uncovered. It is clear that in whatever way the Finnic seafarers arrived and mixed with indigenous peoples, the very fact that some of the above words are also found in Karok, Kwakwala and even Inuit seems to point to the arrival of boat peoples who crossed oceans, originally as whale hunters. , originally of the same groups that became the Inuit, perhaps even more than once over the course of time.

Conclusions on Language Analysis

     Nobody likes science that uses intuition, because the value of the result depends on the quality of the intuition. But intuition works when used by experienced people, and can even be quantified a little by having the intuitive person first try to establish the "control" of what results are achieved at random so that coincidences that are not random are noticed.. Then when that same person analyzes a real language, a rate above the "control" suggests that the results are not purely random chance. It is analagous to the manner in which drug companies test drugs - one group is given a placebo and the other the real drug and the results are recorded. If the results from the real drug are better than the results among those THINKING they are taking a real drug, but really only taking a placebo, then that proves the result.
    The reality is that comparing Finnic with languages that theoretically have separated from a common parent language as much as 5000-6000 years ago cannot use any existing methodology, and all we can hope for is to discover a pattern. Additionally, it is not necessary to investigate the matter in one field only. If there is a genuine common heritage, the evidence will be found not only in language but in culture. For example, the Kwakiutl, Inuit, and Finnic languages clearly had the same word for 'harpoon', and that is relevant for whale hunting cultures. In addition the whale hunting peoples had a mythological bird KOLI that was responsible for thunder.
   The methodology for analysis of deep history is to be as multidisciplinary as possible. A truth will not leave evidence in only one location. We have also investigated what the archeology reveals.
    But language analysis is more powerful if we also analyse the nature of the words. It is well known by linguists that words that are in constant use, such as words for family, are likely to be preserved for hundreds of generations. Therefore the validity of our word comparisons is helped by that word meaning referring to family. We can evaluate probabilities of being correct by evaluating the probability of a word form and meaning surviving little changed over many thousands of years. For example whale hunters are likely to preserve their word for 'harpoon'. I also find it relevant that the Kwakwala language has so many words connected to sound, notably the sound of surf, as that reveals a great amount of experience on water.
    Language must also have logic in it when words change. Linguists want to discover a systematic shift of sound, such as "L" becoming "W" or "K" becoming a glottal stop. But shifts in meaning must make sense too. What is the likelihood (to invent an example) of the word for 'mouth' becoming the word for 'water'
    The science when using intuitive rather than deductive approaches, lies in the laws of probability. In the examples given for the Kalapuyan we note that there is correspondence with Finnic in the word for 'nose', and the word for 'smell.' That coincidence is the most powerful one of all the data. The fact that BOTH have good correspondences, adds support, since if a people preserve the word for 'nose' they will more probably also preserve the word for 'smell' since the two are connected concepts.
    Thus, in the absence of formal linguistic analysis methods - impossible for such distant comparisons - we can look for proof within the conceptual logic of the results themselves.

SOURCES REFERRED TO ABOVE FOR THE KAROK AND KALAPUYA STUDIES
(Other references are cited within the text or illustrations)

Boaz, Frank
Some problems in North American archaeology 1902, American Journal of Archaeology (2nd series)
Ethnological problems in Canada. 1910, Journal Royal Anthropological Institute 40:529-39
Borden, Charles
Notes on the prehistory of the southern Northwest Coast. 1951, British Columbia Historical Quarterly 14:241-46
Facts and problems of Northwest Coast prehistory, 1950, Anthropology in British Columbia 4:35-49 Some aspects of prehistoric Coastal- Interior relations in the Pacific Northwest 1954a, Anthropology in British Columbia 4:26-32
Bright, William
The Karok Language, 1957, University of California Press, Berkeley&Los Angeles
Drucker, Philip
Cultures of the North Pacific Coast, 1965, Chandler, San Francisco
Shipley, William
Proto-Kalapuyan, 1970, Languages and Cultures of Western North America, ed. E.H.Swanson Jr., Ohio State Univ Press, Pocatello, Idaho, 1970
Swadesh, Morris
Kalapuya and Takelma, July 1965, International Journal of American Linguistics, vol 31, No. 3

3.

SOME EXAMPLES OF EXPANSION BY SEA BY NON-WHALING ABORIGINAL PEOPLES