Utilizing the materials of the Otis and Barnard Davis Catalogues and
with measurements taken for him on additional specimens in several of
our museums, Boas, in 1895 (Verh. Berl. anthrop. Ges., 398), as already
mentioned, reported the cranial index of 37 "western Eskimo" skulls
of both sexes (without giving localities or details) as _77_. He also
reports in the same place (p. 391) the cephalic index of 61 probably
male living "Alaska Eskimo," again without locality, as _79.2_. These
rather high indices and the relatively elevated stature (61 subjects,
165.8 centimeters) lead him to believe (p. 376) that both are probably
due to an admixture with the Alaskan Indian, though the report contains
no measurements of the latter.
The data that it is now possible to present may perhaps throw a new
light on the matter. As was already seen in part from the data on
the living, the head resp. the skull tends to relative shortness and
broadness throughout the southwestern, midwestern, and Bering Sea
region (excepting parts of the Seward Peninsula). Important groups in
this region, particularly those on some of the islands, had little or
no contact with the Indian. The cranial index in most of the groups of
the southwestern and midwestern Eskimo equals or even exceeds that of
the Indian. And Eskimo groups with a relatively elevated cranial index
are met with even in the far north, as at Point Hope, Hudson Bay, and
Smith Sound.[150] Finally, the shorter and broader head connects with
that of the Asiatic Eskimo and that of the Chukchee, as well as other
northeastern Asiatics.[151]
The records now available show the highest cranial indices to occur on
the coast between Bristol Bay and the Yukon and on lower Yukon itself,
while the lowest indices of the midwest area, though still mesocranic,
occur in the aggregate of Nunivak Island and the mouths of the Yukon.
Another geographical as well as somatological aggregate is that of the
people of the St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands and of Indian Point,
Siberia, the cranial index in these three localities being identical.