This is the most important ruin as well as living Eskimo village in
Arctic Alaska. It is unanimously declared by the Eskimo of the coast
to be one of the oldest settlements and has always been the largest
native center on the coast. The point was called Golovnin Point by the
early Russians; it was called Point Hope by Beechey in 1826 in honor
of Sir William Johnston Hope. At the time of its visit by the revenue
cutter _Corwin_, 1884, there are said to have been two villages;[65]
the second being possibly at the site of the old whaling station.
Rasmussen, who visited the village about 1924, speaks of it in part
as follows:[66] "Point Hope or Tikeraq, 'the pointing finger,' is
one of the most interesting Eskimo settlements on the whole coast of
Alaska, and has doubtless the largest collection of ruins. The old
village, now deserted, consists of 122 very large houses, but as the
sea is constantly washing away parts of the land and carrying off more
houses, it is impossible to say what may have been the original number.
Probably the village here and its immediate neighborhood had at one
time something like 2,000 souls, or as many as are now to be found
throughout the whole of the Northwest Passage between the Magnetic Pole
and Herschel Island."
The ruins are to the northwest and west of the present village. Those
to the northwest consist of imposing heaps, which together form an
elevated ridge facing the sea. It is said that this old settlement was
abandoned because of the encroachments upon it by the sea, particularly
during storms.
The ruins of this main compound have been for several years assiduously
excavated inch by inch by the local Eskimo, and thousands of articles
of great variety, of stone, bone, ivory, and wood, with here and there
in the uppermost layers an object of metal, are being gathered and
sold to all comers. With these are found a few human skulls and bones,
but especially the skulls and bones of various animals, all of which
unfortunately have hitherto been left behind in the mud. But the
probably most valuable central and lower portions of the piles remain.
The locality calls loudly for proper exploration, which will well repay
any museum by the quantity and value of the specimens that are sure to
be recovered.