Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
Thanks to the kind aid of the Reverend Doctor Baldwin, I was able to
visit several of the sites east of Nome, more particularly the Nook
village, and it was still possible to find two skeletons and a skull on
these sites.
The Nook site must have been one of considerable importance. It
was an especially large village, or rather two near-by villages,
in one of which I counted upward of 30 depressions, remnants of
the semisubterranean houses with vestibules, such as are elsewhere
described from the Yukon.
Here a clear illustration was had of what changes on sites of this
nature may be wrought in a short time by the elements.
Fifteen years ago, I was assured, there were still many burials and
skeletal remains scattered along the coast near the Nook village.
Then in 1913 came a great southwestern storm, which at Nome ripped up
the cemetery and carried away some coffins with bodies, scattering
them over the plains in the vicinity. Since that storm not a vestige
remains of any of the burials or bones near the large Nook village.
On prolonged examination I found nothing but sands overgrown with the
usual coast vegetation. Everything had been carried away or buried and
the pits of the houses were evidently themselves largely filled in.
The burials on this coast west of Golovnin Bay were evidently all of
a simpler nature than those on Norton Sound and the Yukon. There is
plenty of driftwood, but for some reason this was not hewn into boards
with which to make burial boxes. The dead were merely laid upon and
covered with the driftwood, though this was done, as later seen on
Golovnin Bay, rather ingeniously. One of the two skeletons found near
Cape Nome, an adult male, lay simply among the rocks on the lower part
of the slope of the hill.
Old sites, though often small, may be confidently looked for along all
these coasts in the shelter of every promontory, at the mouth of each
stream, and on the spits which separate the ocean from inland lagoons
(as in the case of the Nook village).
NOME--BERING STRAIT--BARROW
Friday, July 23. Received word to be on the _Bear_, which arrived
yesterday, before 10 o'clock this morning. Due to the shallowness of
the water the boat, though drawing only 18 feet, stands far out from
the shore and makes a pretty sight, looks also quite large in these
waters where there is nothing above a few hundred tons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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