Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
Many of the sites to be given are now "dead" and there may be several
old sites in the vicinity of a living village. Others combine ruins
with present habitations. Still others are partly or even wholly
abandoned a part of the year when the inhabitants go camping or
hunting, and are partly or wholly occupied during the rest of the
year. Finally, there are some new settlements, with modern dwellings
and ways, and their number will increase, the Eskimo taking kindly to
civilization and individual property.
The data to be given here are limited to the Eskimo territory in
southwestern and western Alaska, leaving out those in Siberia where
much is uncertain. Due to the uncertainties of the Prince William Sound
region they will begin with Kodiak Island. There are also on hand,
principally due to Dr. E. P. Walker, numerous locations of old sites
and villages in the Indian parts of southern and southeastern Alaska,
but these will best be reserved for another occasion.
The Eskimo area will be roughly seen from the accompanying map
published on the basis of the enumeration by the Fourteenth United
States Census of 1920. A very great part of the territory allotted to
the Eskimo, as well as that of the Indian, is barren of any population
or its traces; the divisions represent the hunting grounds or grounds
claimed by each people, not an occupied territory. The data will be
given in south-to-north order.
Nearly all the settlements in these regions are now, and have evidently
always been, on the shores of the seas and bays, as close to the water
as safety would permit. A few villages and sites occur also, however,
on inland lakes and rivers. The favored locations have been an elevated
flat near the mouth of a fresh-water stream or the outlet of a lagoon,
a sufficiently elevated spit projecting into the sea, or an elevated
bar between the sea and an inland lake. The essentials were an elevated
flat, a supply of fresh drinking water, and a location favorable for
fishing and hunting; if there was some natural protection, so much
the better. There were no inland settlements except on the lakes and
rivers. In a few cases, as at the Kings and the Little Diomede Islands,
very difficult locations were occupied only because outweighed by other
advantages.
Caves throughout the occupied region north of the Aleutian chain are
absent, and there was therefore no cave habitation.
None of the settlements were very large, though a few were much larger
than others. They ranged from one or two family camps or houses to
villages of some hundreds of inhabitants. A large majority of the
settlements had from but two or three to approximately a dozen families.
There were two main types of dwellings, the semisubterranean sod houses
for the winter and the skin tents for summer. In some places the two
were near each other; in others the summer dwellings were in another
and at times fairly distant locality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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