GILIAKS, gil'i-Oks. A people of the northern portion of the island of Saghalin, and the coast and lowlands about the mouth of the Amur and Liman. They number some 4500, and are divided into three tribes, with at least two chief dialects. Physically they seem to be a mixed people, one type found among them resembling more the Aino, the other the Tungus; but generally they are brachycephalic, of average height, and well built. Their marriage regulations and their bear festivals are of great interest. The Giliaks, who are a hunting and fishing folk, have been influ enced in their house-building and domestic ar rangements by the Russians, and in their orna mentation by the Chinese. Brinton (1890) classes them with the Tehuktehis, Koriaks, Kam chatkans, etc.; but Sternberg, who lived several years in this part of Asia, and Laufer, incline to place them as a people apart from all others, in respect of language in particular. Some in
clude them in the so-called `Paleo-Asiatics.' The Giliaks possess a canoe of the monitor form, which resembles that of the Kootenay Indians of British Columbia. The Amur and the Kootenay rivers are the only regions of the globe where this type is found. Besides the article of Deniker on the Giliaks in the Revue d'Ethnographie (Paris), for 1884, the literature about them em braces: Schrenck, "Die Volker des Amurlandes," vol. iii. of his Reisan und Forschungen in Amur land, 1854:56 (Saint Petersburg, 1881-91) ; Lau fer, "Explorations Among the Amoor Tribes," in American Anthropologist (New York) for 1900; and the researches of Sternberg, r6sumMd by Weinstein in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft filr Anthropologic for 1901.