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Talk to BLAM on the DNA studies.

Yes, one rather famous (or infamous) study found that the Sa'ami, the Chippewa, the Berbers and some other American Indian groups (iriquois, Cherokee, Choctaw, etc.) carry a genetic marker unique to the Sa'mi.

That blew the ethnologists out of the water. They'd always believed the Sa'ami were a Turcic people who'd originated in Siberia somewhere. Genetic studies demonstrate that they have no more East Asian ancestry than other white folk ~ 5% to be precise ~ which is now generally believed to reflect some Ice Age or immediate post Ice Age gene transfers (my guess is trading girls over centuries you move those genes thousands of miles).

The most extreme notion to arise out of this is the idea that the Clovis people were, in fact, Sa'ami. The idea is they had boats, fished and hunted seals along the edge of the North Atlantic Ice Shelf, and went back and forth from Europe to America to Europe to America for many centuries.

An East Asian group from Siberia beat them to Oregon, and probably beat them to Wisconsin too (the famous Oregon human coprolite and a pile of butchered elephants from 14,500 years back play a part in that one).

Current belief is the Sa'ami are simply the first of many different groups that moved out of the Western European Refugia as the Big Ice melted and opened up new lands. They traveled further, faster, and harder and managed to become a genetic isolate for up to 15,000 years ~

It seems that the more recent views by the archaeologists of the timing of the crossing from Siberia into America give or take 13,000 years ago was done the way you describe, that is, in small boats hunting along the coastline. Previously, the majority held that the early hunters came through a valley in Alaska which had warmed enough to form a corridor through the ice. Recent archaeological discoveries and carbon dating has shown that the people actually came before the corridor was opened, that leaves the boats.

Thanks for the inputs. Let me know when you write your first book on the Sami. You've written enough on FR and if collected together could almost make that book.

BTW, I'm presently in Indy (Carmel) for Christmas.