Part 15

"The stone culture of the site, although rich in forms, is deficient in technical development and is scarcely worthy of being classed as neolithic. There were found in numbers the following types of artifacts: Circular, discoidal stone pebbles with rim fractures due to use; river wash pebbles of irregular form used as improvised scrapers and hammerstones; basaltic, discoidal hammerstones with abraded edges and pitted at the center; large flake saws of trachyte (trap rock) triangular in section but provided with sharply fractured cutting edges; slender flaked fragments of trap rock tapered to the form of wedges with intentionally worked end sections and cutting edges; crudely flaked stone knives with evidence of secondary chipping at cutting edges; other knives of thin slabs of trap rock with flaked and bilaterally ground beveled cutting edges; oblong axes of flaked sandstone with hafting notches struck off at the edges midway from the base; abrading tools of sandstone; celts of sandstone with ground and beveled working edge and notched for hafting as an ax; stone scrapers with ground and beveled cutting edges; fragmentary perforators of stone; re-chipped, flaked knives shaped by grinding; roughly worked, multiple-grooved hammers or mauls; and many stone objects unformed and unworked but classified generally as hammerstones.

THE POTTERY

"About a hundred pottery shards and smaller pottery vessels were recovered from the site at Bonasila. Pottery vessels representative of the Bonasila culture were shaped out of the solid and show no trace of coiling. In this respect they conform to the generalized north Asiatic and Eskimo ware. There is, however, no check stamp decorative design that is applied with a paddle by the Eskimo nor evidence that pottery vessels had been built up about a basketry base. The paste is light buff or gray in color, the buff ware being better fired and of the same color on the inside, while the gray ware is either gray or black on the inner surface. A well-defined unfired area covers one-half of the sectional diameter. Both buff and gray wares show evidence of better firing than in modern Eskimo pottery. Tempering is of coarse fragments of steatite, which is much more durable than tempering materials such as blood, feathers, and ashes formerly employed by the primitive Eskimo potter.

"The pottery from Bonasila is utilitarian and consists of shallow spherical lamps, globose bowls, and cooking pots without feet or bases. The ware is coarse, side walls and bottom varying from 1 to 2 centimeters in sectional thickness. This type of pottery is practically duplicated in shards recovered by Doctor Hrdlička from what is now Eskimo territory in the Yukon Valley near the Russian Mission. It is probable that further search would bring to light an extensive region yielding this type of ancient pottery of distinctive design and unrelated either to Tinné or Eskimo ware.

"Decorative attempts consist of bold incised parallel transverse lines on the upper sector of the outer surface of the vessel. Deep corrugations appear on the inside of the rim flare. Both corrugations and incised line decorations were made with a paddle or wood splinter shaped for the purpose. Some of the shards have deeply incised punctations irregularly encircling the outer surface of the vessel just below the rim extension.

"Shallow spherical pottery lamps accompanied surface burials at Bonasila. These lamps have a less durable tempering material than the other pottery fragments recovered. The paste is porous and is poorly fired. Decorative designs incised on the interior surface of the lamps are reminiscent of typical Eskimo punctate designs as traced on the inner circumference of rectilinear or curvilinear etchings on ivory and bone. It is very probable that these pottery lamps are of a later date and are of Eskimoan handicraft.

THE ALASKAN GROOVED STONE AX

[Pl. 10]

"The grooved stone ax is a typical New World implement. Its distribution is limited to tribes of the eastern maize area, the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, the Athapascans, and the northern woodlands tribes. Elsewhere in America grooved stone implements of any description are rare, although not unknown. The groove for the attachment of cord or sinew binding is common also to the stone adze, which is characteristic of Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest and of the Eskimo of Arctic America. The distribution of the stone adze is more intensive but is much less extensive than is that of the grooved stone ax and appears to be an environmental form borrowed from the Arctic tribes by the Indian of southeast Alaska and of British Columbia.

"The double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone ax has two areas of distribution in North America. One of these is the country of the northeastern woodlands Indians, extending as far south as the Central Atlantic States. The other area of distribution is the extreme northwest, or the mainland of Alaska.

"In the collection brought to the National Museum from Alaska by Doctor Hrdlička are eight grooved stone implements. All but one of these have cutting edges for use as axes or adzes. The exception, Cat. No. 332809, U.S.N.M., is a grooved spherical stone maul or club 9.5 centimeters (3.7 inches) long and 7.5 centimeters (2.9 inches) in sectional diameter. This grooved object was found near Tanana on the beach of the Yukon River. Like the grooved stone axes in Doctor Hrdlička's collection, the groove is incomplete. A flattened space of approximately 2 centimeters is left un-grooved for the hafting of a flat surfaced handle end with binding, which is passed around the transverse groove and then through a hole in the wooden handle.

"Three single-grooved, double-bitted stone axes were collected from various points on the Yukon River. These are of interest because of their similar grooving and double cutting edges. Each is identical in form, each has been shaped by pecking, except in the sector near the cutting edges where they have been sharpened and polished by grinding. Between the raised borders of the centrally pecked groove and the cutting edges the surface has been shaped to a slight concavity by pecking. In Cat. No. 332805, U.S.N.M., this concavity is replaced by a well-defined convex bevel. The pecked groove is at right angles to the longitudinal axis and is comparatively shallow but has a wide diameter of 2 centimeters or more. The material is uniformly of basalt. The axes are 20 centimeters or more long, while the sectional diameter varies from 6 to 10 centimeters according to whether the ax is flattened or oval in section.

"Grooved, double-bitted stone axes similar to those collected by Doctor Hrdlička from the Middle Yukon region have since become known also from stations farther south in Alaska. One was plowed up in a field near Matanuska and is now in the chamber of commerce exhibit at Anchorage, while another was collected in 1927 by the writer from near Chitna, Alaska. This Alaskan type of grooved ax is practically identical with that of the central Atlantic seaboard States, as figured by Walter Hough in the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, volume 60, article 9, page 14.

"Another grooved type of stone object brought to the National Museum by Doctor Hrdlička is a stone war club of unusual type. It was found on the Yukon River beach 1½ miles below the Mission at Tanana. It is 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) long and is slender, the maximum sectional diameter being but 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches). Like the single-grooved axes, it was shaped by pecking, but much of the surface was also ground. The reverse or hafting surface is flat; the obverse is convexly tapered to sharp cutting edges which are at right angles to the haft. The material is basalt. The hafting grooves, two in number, are comparatively deep and closely spaced. As to form this stone weapon is unique, appearing, so far as is known to the writer, nowhere else on the American Continent. It has been entered on the records of the National Museum as Cat. No. 332807, U.S.N.M.

"One form of the double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone axes resembles closely ivory forms made from walrus tusks in the Bering Sea region. This form also gives evidence of secondary modification, specimens having been broken intentionally to reduce the tool to a simple adze. The material is basalt and its range in the north is limited to the Eskimo area, but becomes widespread to the south in southeastern Alaska and in British Columbia. The form of this widely diffused stone adze is approximated in a series of broken stone axes collected by Doctor Hrdlička. Two such broken and originally double-bitted axes, Cat. Nos. 332806 and 332810, U.S.N.M., were collected from the banks of the Yukon at an old village site below Anvik. These axes are broken with a crude irregular fracture just above the upper transverse groove. Another stone ax, Cat. No. 332812, U.S.N.M., is from Ruby, Alaska, and is practically identical with the double-bitted but single-grooved stone ax from Tanana.

"It would appear from this brief presentation that there is a remarkable similarity of form, approaching identity, in the ancient stone axes from the river valleys of central Alaska. Whether the particular ax has one cutting edge or is double-bitted; whether it is provided with one or with two parallel transverse hafting grooves, the general identity of form remains. The striking thing about the presence of the double-bitted ax among archeological finds from central Alaska is that we do not find it represented in such numbers anywhere until it again reappears in the Atlantic seaboard States. The very interesting cultural objects discovered by Doctor Hrdlička and supplemented by my collection in 1927 show that Alaska is far from sterile or fully known archeologically and make further exploration both promising and important."

ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE YUKON

Notes on the physique of the Yukon natives are found in the reports of all the explorers of the river, but they are imperfect and of little scientific value; the principal ones are given below.[26] Anthropometric observations on the living people of the middle and lower Yukon, with its tributaries, are nonexistent.[27] As to crania, there are a few measurements on two "Yukon Indian" skulls (No. 7530, and probably No. 7531), and on three crania of the Yukon Eskimo, by Jeffries Wyman (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1868, XI, 452); on one "Ingaleet" and three "Mahlemut" or Norton Sound Eskimo skulls by George A. Otis (List of Specimens, etc., 35); and on four skulls collected by Dall, one from Nulato and the rest presumably from St. Michael, by Hrdlička (Catal. of Crania, p. 30, Nos. 242925, 242899, 242901, 242936).

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Glazunof (Wrangell, Stat. und Ethnog. Nachr., 146-147): "The men are big, brunette, with bristly black hair."

Zagoskin (pt. II, 61-62): "The Tinneh belong in general to the American family of redskins, but marked external differences are perceptible in those who are mixed with the Eskimo. The Tinneh are of medium stature, rather dry but well shaped, with oblong face, forehead medium, upright, frequently hairy, nose broad and straight, hooked, eyes black and dark brown, rather large * * * expression intelligent, in those of more distant tribes somber, roving; lips full, compressed; teeth white, straight; hair straight, black to dark brown, fairly soft; many of the men hairy over the body and with fairly thick, short mustache and beard; hands and feet medium, calves small; in general lively, communicative, cheerful, and very fond of pleasure and song."

Dall, William H., Alaska and Its Resources, 53-54: "The Ingaliks are, as a rule, tall, well made, but slender. They have very long, squarely oval faces, high, prominent cheek bones, large ears, small mouths, noses, and eyes, and an unusually large lower jaw. The nose is well formed and aquiline, but small in proportion to the rest of the face. The hair is long, coarse, and black, and generally parted in the middle. * * * Their complexion is an ashy brown, perhaps from dirt in many cases, and they seldom have much color. On the other hand, the Koyúkuns, with the same high cheek bones and piercing eyes, have much shorter faces, more roundly oval, of a pale olive hue, and frequently arched eyebrows and a fine color. They are the most attractive in appearance of the Indians in this part of the territory, as they are the most untamable. The women especially are more attractive than those among the Ingaliks, whose square faces and ashy complexion render the latter very plain, not to say repulsive." (Some of these statements were evidently somewhat in error.--A. H.)

Schwatka, F. (Milit. Reconn. (1883), Comp. Narr. Explor. Alas., 350): "As regards these Ingaliks as a class, they are, as a rule, of average height, tolerably well built, but slender, differing in this respect from the natives farther down the river. They have long black hair and a complexion brown by nature, but often verging toward black on account of a liberal covering of dirt."

See also Richardson, J. (Arctic Search. Exp., I, 379). Jones, S., The Kutchin Tribes (Smiths. Rept. for 1866, 320-327). Whymper, F., Travel and Advent., etc.; and later writers (including Bancroft's "Native Races," etc., I, 127 et seq.).

[27] Ten (8 m. 2 f.) Loucheux, or Kucha-Kuchin, from the upper Yukon, were measured by A. J. Stone and reported by F. Boas (Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist, New York, vol. XIV, pp. 53-68, 1901).

THE LIVING INDIAN

Notes on the living Indians of the Yukon have already been given in the Narrative. They will be briefly summarized in this place. Measurements of the living were impracticable during the journey.

_Pure bloods._--The Yukon Indians are a sparse and largely mixed population. The mixture is especially evident in the children and the younger generation. It is mainly that with whites, but in the lower settlements there is also a good deal of older mixture with the Eskimo. There is fortunately as yet no Negro admixture.

_General type._--The full bloods are typically Indian, though not of the pronounced plains type. The type is fairly uniform, but there is not seldom, even up the river, as elsewhere in Alaska, a suggestion of something Eskimoid in the physiognomy.

_Color._--The color in general is near medium brown, ranging to lighter rather than darker. The hair is the usual full black of the Indian.

_Stature and strength._--- The stature and build are generally near medium, rather slightly below than above.

_Head form._--The head is generally moderately rounded high meso- to moderately brachycephalic. The face is medium Indian.

_Body._--The body proportions seldom impress one with unusual strength, yet some of the men are by no means weaklings. The most fitting term by which to characterize conditions in this respect is again "medium," with an occasional deviation one way or the other.

_Photographs._--The accompanying photographs, taken by the writer from Tanana to Anvik, show a few of the physiognomies. Some of the girls and women, as well as boys and men, are quite good looking. (Pls. 13-18.)

From Anvik downward along the river the type of the people becomes plainly more Eskimoid and on the whole more robust. But as one can frequently meet farther up the river individuals who remind one more or less of the Eskimo, so here it is frequent to see faces that look like Indian. Whether due to old mixture or to other reason, the fact is that there is no line of somatological demarcation in the living populations of the river, and the same applies, as will be seen later, to the skulls.

SKELETAL REMAINS OF THE YUKON

The first Yukon Indian skull measured was that of a half-chief of the Nulato group, collected in the early sixties by William H. Dall. There are now three records of this skull, originally and again now a Smithsonian specimen, one in Wyman ("Observations on Crania," Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1868, XI, 452, No. 7530), one in the Otis "Catalogue" (35, No. 259), and one in Hrdlička's "Catalogue of Human Crania in the United States National Museum Collections" (p. 30, No. 242925). It is a normal, well-developed male skull, which gives no suggestion of mixture. The true measurements of this "type" specimen, taken by present-day instruments and methods, are as follows:

_Yukon Indian skull No. 242925_

Vault: Length cm 18.4 Breadth cm 14 Height to bregma cm 13.8 Cranial index _76.1_ Mean height index _85.2_ Height-breadth index _98.6_ Cranial module (mean diameter) cm 15.40 Cranial capacity c. c. 1,520 Face: Menton-nasion (teeth but slightly worn) cm 12.1 Alveolar point-nasion cm 7.3 Diameter bizygomatic maximum cm 14 Facial index, total _86.4_ Facial index, upper _52.1_ Facial angle 69° Alveolar angle 53.5° Orbits: Right-- Height cm 3.25 Breadth cm 4.2 Left-- Height cm 3.45 Breadth cm 4 Mean index _81_ Nose: Height cm 5.1 Breadth cm 2.5 Index _49_ Upper alveolar arch: Length cm 5.7 Breadth cm 6.7 Index _85.1_ Basio-facial diameters: Basion-alveolar point cm 10.6 Basion-subnasal point cm 9.4 Basal-nasion cm 10.5

The skull is seen to be mesocephalic, rather high, and of good brain capacity; the face is of medium Indian proportions; the orbits are unequal, rather low; the nose is of medium height and breadth; the upper dental arch, the basic-facial diameters, and the facial and alveolar angles, are all near medium Indian.

There was another Indian skull in the five Wyman reported, but its identity is uncertain. A later collection by Dall included three Indian female crania from Alaska, but their exact provenience is uncertain; their measurements are given in my catalogue.

On the 1926 trip I succeeded in collecting directly from the burials along the lower middle Yukon 17 adult skulls and skeletons. Such material is both scarce and difficult to obtain, due to the attitude of the Indians. All the specimens in the collection are from the Russian times on the river. A few of the skulls show traces of Eskimoid in their features, but none offer a suspicion of a mixture with the whites. The measurements are given below. They partly agree, partly disagree, with those of the Nulato skull. The vault, the breadth of the nose, the dimensions of the dental arch, are much alike, but the height of the face, nose, and orbits in the Nulato specimen is somewhat lower. These may be tribal but also simply individual differences. We may generalize by stating that the lower middle Yukon Indian was mesocephalic, with a fairly high vault, and moderate capacity. The face was of relatively good height but moderate breadth, resulting in a high upper facial index. Facial and alveolar prognathism and other features approach the prevalent Indian medium.

LOWER MIDDLE YUKON INDIAN CRANIA

SEX: MALE

+----------+----------+-----------+----------------+-------- Catalogue|Collection|Locality |Approximate| Vault: Diameter|Diameter No. | | |age of |antero-posterior| lateral | | |subject | maximum| maximum | | | | (glabella ad| | | | | maximum)| ---------+----------+----------+-----------+----------------+-------- 332512 |A. |Magi |Adults | 18.4| 13.8 |Hrdlička |(Bonasila)| | | | | | | | 332517 |do |Ghost |do | 18.1| 13.8 | |Creek, | | | | |near Holy | | | | |Cross. | | | | | | | | 332514 |do |do |do | 18.0| 13.9 | | | | | 332503 |do |Greyling |do | [28] (17.3)| (13.4) | |River | | | | |(above | | | | |Anvik). | | | | | | | | 332507 |do |Ghost |do | 18.2| 14.1 | |Creek | | | | | | | | 332526 |do |do |do | 18.5| 14.4 | | | | | 339752 |H. W. |do |do | 17.5| 13.9 |Krieger | | | | | | | | | 332502 |A. |do |do | 17.8| 14.2 |Hrdlička | | | | +================+======== | (7)| (7) | | Total | 126.5| 98.1 | | Average | _18.07_| _14.01_ | | Minimum | 17.5| 13.8 | | Maximum | 18.5| 14.4 ---------+----------+----------+-----------+----------------+--------