SECRETARY'S REPORT 43 



Program." From Clarksville he proceeded to the field headquarters 

 at Lincoln, Nebr., where he reviewed the results obtained by the field 

 parties, working in the Missouri Basin during the summer and early 

 fall months. Following his return to Washington he participated 

 in the annual meeting of the Committee for the Recovery of Archeo- 

 logical Remains. During the winter and early spring months Dr. 

 Roberts worked on the manuscript of an article summarizing the activ- 

 ities and the results of the archeological salvage program for the 

 10 years that it has been operating. In May he went to the Lincoln 

 office to assist in the preparation of plans for the summer's fieldwork 

 in the Missouri Basin. He was in the Washington office at the end 

 of the fiscal year. 



During the first two months of the fiscal year Dr. Henry B. Collins, 

 anthropologist, with three assistants conducted archeological field- 

 work on Southampton and Walrus Islands in Hudson Bay. The 

 work was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the National 

 Museum of Cana v da and was supported in part by a grant from the 

 American Philosophical Society. The party, consisting of Dr. Col- 

 lins, Dr. J. N. Emerson, University of Toronto, William E. Taylor, 

 Jr., National Museum of Canada, and James V. Wright, anthropology 

 student at the University of Toronto, left Montreal by R. C. A. F. air- 

 craft on June 8, 1955, and arrived at Coral Harbour, Southampton 

 Island, the following day. On June 13 they went by Eskimo dog 

 team over the sea ice to Native Point, an abandoned Eskimo village 

 site 40 miles down the coast, where they camped for the summer. 

 Native Point (Tunermiut) was the principal settlement of the Sadler- 

 miut, the aboriginal Eskimo tribe of Southampton Island, the last of 

 whom died there in an epidemic in the winter of 1902-3. The site 

 consists of the ruins of 75 semisubterranean stone and sod houses in 

 addition to a dozen old "quarmats" or autumn houses built by the 

 Aivilik Eskimos who have camped there in recent years. Hundreds 

 of stone graves, cairns, and meat caches lie along the beach near the 

 site and on the old shorelines in every direction for miles around. 

 Excavation of house ruins, middens, and graves at the main Sadler- 

 miut site and two smaller sites nearby supplemented the work of the 

 previous year and provided an adequate picture of the material cul- 

 ture and way of life of the Sadlermiut Eskimos. The Sadlermiut are 

 commonly thought to have been descended from the Thule Eskimos 

 who migrated from Alaska to Canada and Greenland some seven or 

 eight hundred years ago. However, from the work on Southampton 

 and Walrus Islands it seems more likely that the Sadlermiut had 

 merely been influenced in some ways by the Thule culture and that they 

 were actually the descendants of the prehistoric Dorset Eskimos, who 

 were the other, and principal, object of study by the expedition. 



