I32 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



3. There is no trace in the older burials of tuberculosis. Two cases 

 that were encountered, were from burials of late Russian or earlier 

 post-Russian times (near or after 1867). It is positive therefore that 

 tuberculosis had not existed among these people before the contact 

 with whites. It was evidently brought here by the Russians. This 

 explains the present general lack of immunity against this scourge. 

 Every one of these people must be regarded as predisposed to the 

 disease, which is of consequence in dealing with them medically, in 

 schools and otherwise. 



4. None of the bones collected or seen showed any trace of cancer, 

 tumors, inflammation, syphilis, or rachitis ; and there were no signs of 

 scurvy. 



5. The prevailing pathological conditions in the older individuals 

 were those of the spine, accompanied occasionally with those of the 

 joints, and were arthritic in nature. All grades of arthritis deformans 

 were seen in the spine, from the beginning of marginal exostoses in 

 the lumbar and lower dorsal region to an ankylosis of the whole spine 

 due to fusion of those exostoses. In several cases two and in one 

 instance three of the cervicals were fused, with the rest of the spine 

 not much affected ; in these cases there may have been some special 

 factor at play. 



6. There were but a few really old people in these burials, show- 

 ing that real old age was rare ; on the other hand there were but few 

 young adolescents or adults of both sexes, indicating lower mortality 

 among especially the young women than was found last year to have 

 prevailed on the Yukon. This indicates the absence on the Kuskokwim 

 of some pernicious habit that was present on the other river and that 

 probably related to the period of child bearing in the young women. 



7. There were no perceptible traces in the burials of any Indian 

 influence or admixture. 



The whole study shows the presence, along the 400 miles of the 

 lower Kuskokwim River and its bay, of a rather large and, in many 

 parts of the region, still mostly fullblood population, of remarkably 

 homogeneous character, and constituting the bulk of the western 

 Eskimo. It makes it certain that this type did not arise through mix- 

 ture with the Indian, but that it represents a pure old Eskimo strain, to 

 which conform a large majority of the Eskimo people in the Bering 

 Sea together with such important groups as those of Point Hope, 

 Smith Sound and elsewhere. This is, according to present indications, 

 the parental or basic type, from which the narrower and more keel- 

 shaped skull type of parts of the Seward Peninsula and the Arctic, and 



