Ranking in archeological and anthropological importance with Wales and
in some respects perhaps even exceeding the latter, is the large island
of St. Lawrence, with the almost forgotten little Punuk group at its
eastern extremity.
[Illustration: FIGURE 26.--Russian map of St. Lawrence Island, 1849.
(Tebenkof)]
The main island was discovered by Bering on St. Lawrence Day, August
10, 1728, and it was found peopled by the Eskimo. In 1849 an excellent
map of it was published by Tebenkof in Novo-Archangelsk, and on this
map (fig. 26) are indicated about a dozen smaller or larger Eskimo
settlements, some of which, however, are not named and may already have
been "dead."
About 1878 there were still six settlements with somewhat less than
1,500 Eskimo inhabitants on the island. That winter (1878-79) not less
than 1,000 of the population died of famine (Hooper), three of the
villages becoming completely depopulated and a fourth nearly so. The
Punuk Island village may have become extinct about the same time.
To-day there are on the St. Lawrence Island but two living settlements,
the main one, now known as Gambell, at the old site of Chibukak on the
northwestern cape, and the other, Savonga, about 40 miles east of it,
near Cape North.
A number of the old sites on this island, and also that on one of the
Punuks, indicate a long occupation, antedating by far the advent of the
Russians. The accumulations rise in some places to imposing heaps or
ridges. Their frozen contents yield quantities of fossil ivory, all of
which shows the work of man, and among them occur specimens with fine
curvilinear designs and of high scientific as well as artistic value.
Through Nelson in 1881 and R. D. Moore in 1912 the Smithsonian
Institution has acquired a large quantity of human skeletal material
from the main island, and there is now (1928) an expedition of the
Institution under Collins on the Punuk as well as the St. Lawrence
exploring some of the principal ruins.