Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
Barrow is a good-looking and rather important place. It stretches about
2 miles along the low shore, in three clusters, the two main ones
separated by a lagoon. It has a radio station, a mission hospital, and
a school. There are over 200 natives here, and also quite a few whites,
including Mr. Charles Brower, the trader, observer and collector, with
his native wife and their family, the teacher, the missionary and his
family, and the nurses.
The burial place here is the most extensive in the Eskimo territory.
Taking the older parts and the new, it covers over a square mile of the
tundra, beginning not far beyond the site of the hospital and extending
to and beyond a small stream that flows over a mile inland. But the
burials were grouped in a few spots, the rest being barren.
This extensive burial ground is now about exhausted for scientific
purposes, except for such skeletons and objects as may have been
assimilated--i. e. buried--by the tundra. That such exist became quite
evident during our search, and they naturally are the oldest and
most valuable. We secured two good skulls of this nature. They were
completely buried, only a little of the vault showing, and had there
been time we should doubtless have found also parts of the skeletons.
The skulls were discolored brown.
Of the later skeletal material we found but the leavings, the best
having been carried off by other collectors. There were remnants of
hundreds of skulls and skeletons, but for the most part so damaged as
not to be worth saving. Nevertheless our diligent midnight search was
not in vain, and we brought back four sacks full of specimens, the
Eskimo carrying his with the utmost good nature. The destruction here
is due to sailors and other whites and to dogs, foxes, and reindeer.
The reindeer herds, going in hundreds over the ground, help materially
to scatter and damage the bones. So, the older material gone, while
the more recent burials are, at least so far as the younger element
is concerned, quite worthless to science, containing many mix bloods
of all sorts--even occasionally with the negro (men from the wrecked
whaleboats). The collection now secured was the last one possible from
this locality, except through excavation.
Tuesday, August 10. The boat is now crowded. We lost one woman and got
three; also about five or six men--newspaper, movie, radioman, a dog
teamster, a trapper. Quite a variety, in every way, and most are to go
with us at least as far as Nome. They will have to hang up two hammocks
in our little cabin each night, and some must sleep elsewhere.
Packing the whole morning. Five boxes. My man of last night helping, a
fine, big young fellow. This aid in the work is a great boon to me,
and the transportation of the many specimens by the _Bear_ down to
Seattle or San Francisco will be a fine service to the Institution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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