[46] Dall, W. H., and Jochelson, W., made, as is well known, valuable excavations in the Aleutian Islands; but the Aleuts were not Eskimos. (See Cat. of Crania, etc., U.S.N.M., 1924, 39.) [47] Nelson, E. W., The Eskimo About Bering Strait; Eighteenth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pt. 1, Washington, 1899, p. 263. [48] My Life with the Eskimo, N. Y., 1913, 387, 388. See also his The Stefánsson-Anderson Arctic Expedition: Preliminary Ethnological Report. Anthrop. Papers Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., XIV, N. Y., 1914. [49] Wissler, Clark, Harpoons and Darts in the Stefánsson Collection. Anthrop. Papers Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., N. Y., 1916, XIV, 401-443. [50] See section devoted to this find, p. 318. OLD SITES IN THE REGION OF THE WESTERN ESKIMO The shores of the Alaska rivers, the littoral parts of Alaska, the more northern Bering Sea islands, and those portions of the Asiatic coast that were once or are still occupied by the Eskimo, are strewn with "dead" villages and old sites. Many of these dead villages or sites are historic, having been abandoned, or very nearly so, since the coming of the whites; some are older, in instances doubtless considerably older. Collectively they offer a large, almost wholly virginal and highly important field to American archeology. They may contain much of the secrets of Eskimo origin and of his cultural, as well perhaps as physical, evolution. But these secrets are not to be given up easily. They are held within a perpetually frozen ground, which on one hand preserves everything, but on the other will not yield its contents except to assiduous and prolonged labor. Ruined or "dead" villages began to be encountered by the earliest Russian and other explorers. Beechey (1826) tells us that between approximately the latitude of Nelson Island and Point Barrow (60° 34´ to 71° 24´ N.) they noticed 19 (Eskimo) villages, some of which were very small and consisted only of a few huts, and others appeared to have been deserted a long time.[51] Hooper, in 1884, reports Eskimo ruins on the Asiatic side: "Near the extremity of the cape [Wankarem] we found the ruins of houses similar to those now in use by the Innuits, half underground, with frames of the bones of whales. Probably they were former dwellings of Innuits, who for some reason crossed the straits and attempted to establish themselves on the Siberian side. These houses have been found by different travelers at many places along this coast, and various causes assigned for the abandonment of the attempt to settle here by the Innuits. * * * "At Cape Wankarem and at other places on the Siberian coast we found the ruins of houses similar to those now in use by the Innuits. These houses, which have been found by different travelers at many places along that coast, are not at all like those used by the Tchuktchis, which, on account of the migratory habits of the reindeer tribes, are so constructed that they can be taken down and put up again at will."[52]