Until recently collections of skeletal remains of the western Eskimo
were confined largely to skulls. The material in our own institutions
comprised a small collection of Mahlemut (St. Michael Island) and
"Chukchee" (Asiatic Eskimo) crania made in the early sixties by W. H.
Dall; a larger series of crania gathered in 1881 on St. Michael and St.
Lawrence Islands by E. W. Nelson; 28 skulls with 3 skeletons brought in
1898 by E. A. McIlheny from Point Barrow; a valuable lot of skulls from
Indian Point, Siberia, with a few from St. Lawrence Island, collected
by W. Bogoras; and some scattered specimens by other explorers. To
this were added in 1912 an important collection of skulls, with a
few skeletons, made by Riley D. Moore, at that time my aide, on St.
Lawrence Island; an important lot of crania gathered a few years
later by V. Stefánsson at Point Barrow; and a third large and highly
interesting lot, this time of both skulls and skeletons, collected near
Barrow for the University Museum at Philadelphia in 1917-1919 by W.
B. Van Valin. But none of the later material was described excepting
the McIlheny collection which, in 1916, was reported upon by E. W.
Hawkes.[142]
During the survey which is the subject of this report a special effort
was made to collect all the older skeletal material along the Bering
Sea and Arctic coasts that could be reached, and the result was the
bringing back of some 450 crania, nearly 50 with skeletons, and many
separate parts of the skeleton; nearly all of the specimens proceeding
from localities thus far not represented in the collections. To which
were added in 1927 nearly 200 skulls with a good number of skeletons
gathered by H. B. Collins, jr., assistant curator in the Department
of Anthropology, United States National Museum, and my aide, T. D.
Stewart, on Nunivak Island and along the west coast of Alaska from
Bristol Bay to near the Yukon delta.[143]
We thus have now a relatively vast amount of skeletal material on the
western Eskimo; it is essentially a virginal material; it is well
identified as to locality; and the specimens are mostly in very good
condition.
Aside from Hawkes's thesis, nothing of note had been published on
these collections until 1924, when the first number of my Catalogue
of Human Crania in the United States National Museum Collections
appeared, which includes the principal measurements on 290 skulls of
the western Eskimo. Since then, in view of the growing importance of
the subject, I have remeasured every specimen reported before; have
measured personally all the new collections; and thanks to the kindness
of those in charge have been enabled to extend the measurements to
all the collections of Eskimo crania, both from Alaska and elsewhere,
that were preserved up to the spring of 1928 at the National Museum at
Ottawa, the American Museum of Natural History of New York, and the
Wistar Institute of Philadelphia, which now contains the University
Museum collections. The total records reach now to 1,283 adult skulls
from practically all important parts of the total Eskimo area, besides
a considerable quantity of other bones of the skeleton. The main
results of the work will be given here, the detailed measurements being
reserved for another number of the Catalogue.
To save repetitions and possible confusion and to show more clearly the
status of the southwestern and midwestern Eskimo, the entire cranial
material will be dealt with in this section, and previous records on
the northeastern and a few other groups of the Eskimo will not be drawn
upon to preserve the advantage of dealing with data obtained by the
same methods, instruments, and observer.
In presenting the records it is found expedient, both on geographical
and anthropological grounds, to make but three groupings. The first
of these comprises the Eskimo from their southernmost limit to Norton
Sound and the Bering Sea islands; the second group takes in Seward
Peninsula (or the larger part of it) and the Arctic coast to Point
Barrow; while the third embraces all the Eskimo east of Point Barrow.
The first of these three groups is remarkably homogeneous, the second
and third show each some exceptional units. It may be said at once that
the dialectic subdivisions of Dall, Nelson, and others, in a large
majority of cases are not found to be accompanied by corresponding
physical differences, so that in a somatological classification they
become submerged.