Present Status of Alaskan Eskimos— Lantis 49 



heavily and became an habitue of the Nome jail. It is not only 

 tuberculosis and other diseases, although these are important. 



We must consider the more subtle factors of prestige, leader- 

 ship, opportunity for social advance, and economic self-direc- 

 tion. If Eskimos were sufficiently advanced to take advantage 

 of new techniques when given reasonable opportunity— which 

 they have done—then they probably were too advanced to be 

 treated as child-like dependents. We must try to see realis- 

 tically how Eskimos and Whites have reacted to each other, 

 and how they can work together in a society that, despite its 

 remote location and scattered population, is becoming surpris- 

 ingly urban and industrial in its standards, attitudes, and out- 

 look for the future, no matter what are the present physical 

 conditions of living. 



Now let us see what ethnological and social anthropological 

 information is available on Alaskan Eskimos. 



Alaska's west coast seems to have had a longer history of Es- 

 kimo culture, a much higher development of this culture (in 

 social organization, art, ceremonial, and probably other aspects), 

 a denser Eskimo population, and a greater amount of local 

 variation than any other region in the whole Eskimo domain. 

 It should have attracted many students, but did not. After, let 

 us say, 1880 it was not nearly so difficult to reach as the Victoria 

 Island region north of Canada. In fact a large fleet of whaling 

 ships was going there regularly 25 years before 1880. It was 

 not an alien country. Bering Sea and even much of the Arctic 

 coast north of Seward Peninsula were not so cold and barren as 

 the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Yet scientific monographs on 

 Alaskan Eskimo culture, including language, published between 

 1880 and 1930 can be counted on fewer than ten fingers. Per- 

 haps someone like Sir John Franklin should have got lost. 

 People going to Alaska to find him might incidentally have 

 found— scientifically— the Eskimos. Or, better still, they might 

 have undertaken a scientific program such as the Danes visual- 

 ized and supported for Greenland, and as we are doing here at 

 last. 



In the next twenty years, Frederica deLaguna, Henry Collins, 



