Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
Many of the worked stones, and occasionally, according to native
information, skulls and bones, are washed out from the banks and
deposited (rolling, etc.) lower on the beach in something like strata,
and in that way evidence is being perverted. Some day a new bank or
even a dune may be formed over these secondary deposits and a great
source of possible future error be completed.
All the natives along the river (to here) like to bury on the lower
slopes of near-by hills.
To bed on floor of kitchen tent at the fine, clean little place of
Tucker's, at 10.30. At 1.30 the 20 dogs start a fine, sustained, unison
howl song, and I seem to hear an approaching boat. As the Governor of
Alaska is expected, slip on shoes and necktie, brush hair, and run out.
There is a little boat at the little "dock" (the only one seen so far
on the Yukon). Tucker and his son are already there, and I soon hear
that the governor is on the boat, which is that of Mr. Townsend, of the
Fish Commission. In a few minutes we meet, both in shirt sleeves. And
I learn the _Matanuska_, the boat that was to take me from the Russian
Mission to St. Michael, has broken down and is not coming. In her
place, but no telling as to time, will be sent the _Agnes_, a smaller
and slower boat, on which three people have already this season been
"gassed" (overcome by the exhaust gases), one of them jumping into the
river. She has accommodation for four persons at most, and that of the
most primitive, they say. The governor fortunately gives me some hope
that I may be picked up and taken down by the same boat which is taking
him to Holy Cross. He also tells me of a skull for me at one of the
stopping places, Old Hamilton. A frank, good, strong man.
Boat leaves in a few minutes. Back to bed, but now almost full
daylight--also cold, and so no more than a doze until 6.15, at which
time the boy comes to the kitchen where I was kindly accommodated
to start fire and breakfast. So up with a drowsy head. At 7
breakfast--coffee, oatmeal, flapjacks, and good company. Everything
about this place is neat, fresh, pleasing--the best individual place
on the river. Cloudy, blustery, cool; can not start, so go 1½ miles
down to Dogfish village, or I-ka-thloy-gia-miut--probably the same as
Zagoskin's I-ka-lig-vig-miut. Only three or four families there now;
nearly all the inhabitants died of influenza in 1900. But already
before reaching the village, in examining the stones along the beach, I
find some chipped ones, and they represent the same industry evidently
as those at the two sites yesterday. Later find numerous chipped
scrapers, pointed hammers, crude cutters and chisels, and a few axes.
Make quite a collection, including a few objects found in possession of
natives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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