Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
The next records are those by George A. Otis, published in 1876 in
the Check List of the Specimens in the Section of Anatomy of the
United States Army Medical Museum, Washington (pp. 13-15). Aside from
those on Greenland crania the author gives here the measurements of 3
presumably Eskimo skulls collected by Dall; of 2 western Eskimo skulls,
no locality; and of 3 Mahlemut skulls, probably from Norton Sound (St.
Michael Island). In his later (1880) catalogue,[110] page 13, Otis adds
to the above three skulls from Prince William Sound, which, however,
were more probably Indian; the three Mahlemuts, on the other hand, are
given with the Alaskan Indians (p. 35). These data are of but little
value. The Eskimo skulls are the same Smithsonian specimens that were
reported upon in 1868 by Jeffries Wyman.
In 1878, Rae[111] mentions some measurements or observations on the
skulls of Western Eskimo by Flower, but no records of these could be
located. Rae says:
I had the privilege of attending the series of admirable lectures
so ably given by Professor Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons
a few weeks ago on the "Comparative Anatomy of Man," from which I
derived much useful information and on one point very considerable
food for thought.
I allude to the wonderful difference in form exhibited between
the skulls of the Eskimos from the neighborhood of Bering
Strait, and of those inhabiting Greenland, the latter being
extremely dolichocephalic, whilst the former are the very
opposite--brachycephalic, the natives of the intermediate coast,
from the Coppermine River eastward, having mesocephalic heads.
In 1879 Lucien Carr, in his "Observations on the Crania from the Santa
Barbara Islands, California"[112] (p. 281), gives erroneously Otis's
measurements of Aleut skulls as those of "Alaskan Eskimo."
Meanwhile W. H. Dall has published (1877) his monograph on the "Tribes
of the Extreme Northwest,"[113] in which he includes Wyman's and also
some of Otis's data on the Eskimo (and Aleut) skulls from Alaska and
Asia. The Tshuktshi are now classed as Asiatic Eskimo, the Mahlemuts as
Eskimo from St. Michael Island. The total number of skulls described in
the former series is 11, in the latter series 6 (of Aleuts the number
of skulls measured is 27 adults and 7 children). The means of the
principal measurements of the Eskimo series, both sexes together, are
as follows:
JEFFRIES WYMAN'S AND OTIS'S MEASUREMENTS OF WESTERN ESKIMO CRANIA
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