Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
A big umiak comes to us with many natives bringing the usual trade, and
on it, much to my pleasure, are both Doctor Jenness and Mr. Garber.
Doctor Jenness asks to go with us to the Little Diomede to do some work
there. He has had encouraging experience here, finding evidences of
occupation dating many centuries back, and has collected some valuable
specimens, including a few with the fine old curved-line decoration.
Mr. Garber gives me some valuable information about the skeletal
remains of this place and engages to collect for me, who can not leave
the boat, a few boxes of these specimens, which promise is fulfilled
later.
The natives are a jolly and sturdy lot, even though they bear, and that
since their earliest contacts with whites, a rather bad reputation.
That this is founded in some fact, at least, is told us in the annals
of the Russians, and is also shown by the little structure on the
hillside off which we are anchored. This has a tragic and at the same
time quaint history. It is the grave of a missionary Doctor Thornton,
who was killed, we are told, by two local young fellows. These were
apprehended, sentenced to die, and were to be shot by their relatives,
which all evidently found quite just. On the appointed day they were
taken out to the burial ground, helped to prepare their burials, one
asked yet to be allowed to go to the village to get a drink, went and
returned, and then both were shot. The executioner of the boy who went
to get the drink is said to have been his uncle.
THE DIOMEDES
Late that night we leave slowly for the Diomede Islands, the nearer
of which is only about 18 miles distant. The two islands lie, as is
well known, just about in the middle of the Bering Strait. One is
known as the larger or Russian, the other as the smaller or American
Diomede. The boundary line between Russia and the United States passes
between the two. Both islands have been occupied since far back by the
Eskimo. To-day there is one small village on the American and two small
settlements on the Russian island.
July 26. Up at 5.40, breakfast 6, and off in one of our staunch motor
boats, with Jenness, for the Little Diomede. Countless birds flying in
streams about the island.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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