SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

WASHING 25 D. C.

September 2, 1959

Mr. Larry Jonas

2326 N. E. 42nd Avenue

Portland 13, Oregon

Dear Mr. Jonas:

To take your questions of August 14 in order:

1. No present reputable scientific ethnologists or archaeologists “hold that any part of the Indians may have come from Jewish descent.”

2. All reputable archaeological work, recent and other, detracts form “the Jewish origin theory.”

3. There is no known family resemblance between Hebrew or Egyptian or any other language of western Asia, Europe, and Africa, on the one hand, and any aboriginal New World language.

4. There is no evidence that any Indians used smelted iron or steel tools in preColumbian times. Some Eskimos made tools by hammering out meteorites, but this did not involve smelting iron ore. There is much evidence that American Indians did not know how to smelt iron.

5. The elephant, horse, cattle, sheep, swine, and goats were not present in the New World in 1492. Mammoths and horses did not become extinct in North America until after man had arrived via Bering Straits (and were hunted by early Indians), but had been extinct thousands of years when Europeans arrived.

The enclosed statements include bibliographies which are recommended for further study of the problem.

Very truly yours,

[signed] William C. Sturtevant

William C. Sturtevant

Acting Director