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Show POWELL.] ESSELENIAN FAMILY. 75 nothing is known. Dall compiles the following estimates of the Alaskan Eskimo from the most reliable figures up to 1885: Of the Northwestern Innuit 3,100 (?), including the Kopagmiut, Kangma-ligmiut, Nuwukmiut, Nunatogmiut, Kuagmiut, the Inguhklimiut of Little Diomede Island 40 (?), Shiwokugmiut of St. Lawrence Island 150(?), the Western Innuit 14,500 (?), the Aleutian Islanders ( Unungun) 2,200 (?); total of the Alaskan Innuit, about 20,000. The Central or Baffin Land Eskimo are estimated by Boas to number about 1,100. l From figures given by Rink, Packard, and others, the total number of Labrador Eskimo is believed to be about 2,000. According to Holm ( 1884-, 85) there are about 550 Eskimo on the east coast of Greenland. On the west coast the mission Eskimo numbered 10,122 in 1886, while the northern Greenland Eskimo, the Arctic Highlanders of Ross, number about 200. Thus throughout the Arctic regions generally there is a total of about 34,000. ESSELENIAN FAMILY. < Salinas, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 85,1856 ( includes Gioloco ?, Ruslen, Soledad, Eslen, Carmel, San Antonio, and San Miguel, cited as including Eslen). Latham, Opuscula, 350,1860. As afterwards mentioned under the Salinan family, the present family was included by Latham in the heterogeneous group called by him Salinas. For reasons there given the term Salinan was restricted to the San Antonio and San Miguel languages, leaving the present family without a name. It is called Esselenian, from the name of the single tribe Esselen, of which it is composed. Its history is a curious and interesting one. Apparently the first mention of the tribe and language is to be found in the Voyage de la P^ rouse, Paris, 1797, page 288, where Lamanon ( 1786) states that the language of the Ecclemachs ( Esselen) differs " absolutely from all those of their neighbors." He gives a vocabulary of twenty- two words and by way of comparison a list of the ten numerals of the Achastlians ( Costanoan family). It was a study of the former short vocabulary, published by Taylor in the California Farmer, October 24,1862, that first led to the supposition of the distinctness of this language. A few years later the Esselen people came under the observation of Galiano,* who mentions the Eslen and Run^ ien as two distinct nations, and notes a variety of differences in usages and customs which are of no great weight. It is of interest to note, however, that this author also appears to have observed essential differences 1 Sixth Ann. Rep. Bu. Eth., 426,1888. ' Relacion del viage hecho por las Goletas Sutil y Mexicana en el afio de 1792. Madrid. 1802, p. 172. |