Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
It takes us a little less than 10 days of a fairly good journey to
reach San Francisco. Dock at Oakland late in the evening. The next
morning, after breakfast, the boxes and barrels with collections are
taken on the dock--a big pile. Then the Santa Fe officials kindly
run a flat freight car to the pile, the boxes, etc., are loaded on,
the main part taken to the freight depot, the most valuable ones to
express, shipped, and shortly after what remains of the expedition is
on the Santa Fe Limited for Chicago. It only needs to be added that,
notwithstanding the variety of receptacles and the difficulties of
packing, the collections reached the Institution without damage to
a single specimen. Thanks once more for the help received in making
all safe to the captain and officers of the _Bear_, to Mr. Berg, the
best of boatswains, to the carpenter, and to all those of the crew who
assisted.
THE YUKON TERRITORY--SITES, THE INDIANS, THE ESKIMO
THE TANANA
BRIEF HISTORICAL DATA
The Tanana is the largest tributary of the Yukon. It is over 600 miles
in length, and in its breadth, though not in its volume, it appears
to equal, if not to exceed, the Yukon at their junction. The first
white men to see the mouth of the Tanana were the Russian traders
(about 1860), followed before long by the employees of the Hudson Bay
Co. Dall says that it has long been noted on the old maps of Russian
America, under the name of the River of the Mountain Men, while the
Hudson Bay men called it the Gens-des-Buttes River. (Alaska and Its
Resources, 281-282.) Dall mapped the junction of the river with the
Yukon. The first who descended a part of its course were two traders,
Harper and Bates, who reached the river higher up, sometime in the late
seventies. The name of Harper is preserved by having been given to
the big bend of the stream, 12 miles above its mouth. Its scientific
exploration begins only in 1885, with the passage down nearly its
entire length of Lieut. Henry T. Allen, United States Army;[5] the main
work concerning the geography and geology of the river being done in
1898 by A. H. Brooks.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Allen, Henry T., Military Reconnaissance in Alaska. Comp. Narr.
Expl. Alas., 415-416, 446-452.
[6] Brooks, A. H., Reconnaissance in the Tanana and White River Basins.
Twentieth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv., Washington, 1900, pt. VII,
437-438; also the Geog. and Geol. Alas., U. S. Geol. Surv. Doc. 201,
1906.
POPULATION
The native population of the Tanana has always been remarkably
scarce. Dall obtained an estimate of their whole number as about 150
families.[7] Petrof, in 1880, thought they numbered perhaps seven
or eight hundred;[8] Allen in 1885 estimated them at between 550
and 600;[9] Brooks, in 1898, thought there were less than 400;[10]
and the 1910 United States Census gives the total number of the
"Tenan-kutchin," full bloods and mix bloods, as 415.[11]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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