Anthropology of Southeastern Alaska— Laughlin 73 



pected to throw much light on the prehistoric and early historic 

 movements of these people. 



The blood group studies of various southern and western 

 Eskimos such as the Aleutian Eskimos and the Kuskokwim 

 Eskimos clearly identify them as belonging to the Eskimo stock 

 as a whole and serves to distinguish them from the Indians. 

 When relatively unmixed with Europeans the Eskimos appear 

 generally to have more group A than O and to have amounts 

 of group B ranging from 2% to 12%. The few figures for 

 Alaskan Athabascan Indians indicate a much higher propor- 

 tion of O than of A and no group B. Blood group data will 

 therefore be useful in future studies to demonstrate the differ- 

 ences between Indians and Eskimos and various degrees of 

 mixture if this has taken place. The use of the M and N types 

 and of the Rh factors will make such studies even more dis- 

 criminating and therefore more valuable. Blood group studies 

 may also be of use in demonstrating the presence of gradients 

 or clines among the Eskimos. 



Anthropometric studies of the southern Alaskan populations 

 are exceedingly meager. It appears from available data that 

 the headform of the Eskimos becomes increasingly greater in 

 breadth and in lowness of vault as one passes from Bering 

 Strait south to Kodiak Island and the eastern Aleutians. Thus, 

 it is not possible on the basis of present information to draw a 

 sharp line between any two contiguous groups of Eskimos. 

 The practice of ignoring contiguous groups and of comparing 

 one series of southern Eskimos with a series of eastern Eskimos 

 could only demonstrate larger differences because two oppo- 

 site ends of the range of a continuous population were being 

 compared. Brachycephaly and low vault height may reach their 

 climax among the Koniags and the eastern Aleuts but we now 

 know that the western Aleuts are all relatively longer headed 

 than the eastern Aleuts and we may expect differences among 

 the Ugalak and Chugach Eskimos. 



Though large skeletal collections have been assembled for 

 the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak Island and certain sites in south- 

 ern Alaska, the fundamental problems of the sequence and 



