Kaadaraadar, ivory image of the Aleut deity, found in excavation of Chaluka, Umnak Island, 1948.

• Main Authors: W. S. Laughlin, G. H. Marsh
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ostrova; Sion; aleut; Arctic; Chaluka; Kamchatka; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.584.101; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic4-2-74.pdf

T HE unique position of the Aleutian Islands, forming a chain between two major continents, Asia and the New World, has resulted in much discus-sion on the origin and affinities of the Aleuts. The paucity of sound anthro-pological data together with the tantalizing proximity of the Komandorskie Ostrova, some 180 miles from the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands and only 90 miles from Kamchatka, have permitted the suggestion that the Aleuts followed this route from Asia to their present home. The early Russian fur traders, following Bering’s discovery of the Aleu-tians in 1741, found a friendly and knowledgeable population. These people, later named Aleuts, were Mongoloid in appearance and lived in semi-under-ground houses not unlike those of Kamchatka. T o the Russians the Aleuts were no more ‘ unlike the Kamchadals than many other Asiatic peoples and without good evidence to the contrary they naturally assumed that the Aleuts were of Kamchadal or other Asiatic origin and that they must have crossed the sea to the western islands from Asia. Bishop Ioann Veniaminov, who lived in Unalaska from 1824 to 1834 and converted many of the Aleuts to the