28 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH.AXX.IS 



only the tip of the person s nose, the eyes and upper portion of the 

 nose being completely hidden by the prominent outline of the cheek. 

 Their eyes are less oblique than is common among the people living 

 southward from the Yukon mouth. Among the people at the north 

 western end of St Lawrence island there is a greater range of physiog 

 nomy than was noted at any other of the Asiatic localities. 



The Point Hope people on the American coast have heavy jaws and 

 well-developed superciliary ridges. At Point Barrow the men are 

 remarkable for the irregularity of their features, amounting to a posi 

 tive degree of ugliness, which is increased and rendered specially 

 prominent by the expression produced by the short, tightly drawn 

 upper lip, the projecting lower lip, and the small beady eyes. The 

 women and children of this place are in curious contrast, having rather 

 pleasant features of the usual type. 



The Eskimo from upper Kowak and Xoatak rivers, who were met 

 at the summer camp on Ilotham inlet, are notable for the fact that a 

 considerable number of them have hook noses and nearly all have a 

 cast of countenance very similar to that of the Yukon Tiune. They 

 are a larger and more robustly built people than these Indians, how 

 ever, and speak the Eskimo language. They wear labrets, practice 

 the tonsure, and claim to be Eskimo. At the same time they wear 

 bead-ornamented hunting shirts, round caps, and tanned deerskin robes, 

 and use conical lodges like those of the adjacent Tiune tribes. Among 

 them was seen one man having a mop of coarse curly hair, almost 

 negroid in character. The same feature was observed in a number of 

 men and women on the Siberian coast between East cape and Plover 

 bay. This latter is undoubtedly the result of the Chukchi-Eskimo 

 mixture, and in the case of the man seen at Hotham inlet the same 

 result had been brought about by the Eskimo-Indian combination. 

 Among the Eskimo south of Bering strait, on the American coast, not 

 a single instance of this kind was observed. The age of the individ 

 uals having this curly hair renders it quite improbable that it came 

 from an admixture of blood with foreign voyagers, since some of them 

 must have been born at a time when vessels were extremely rare along 

 these shores. As a further argument against this curly hair having 

 come from white men, I may add that I saw no trace of it among a 

 number of people having partly Caucasian blood. As a general thing, 

 the Eskimo of the region described have small hands and feet and the 

 features are oval in outline, rather flat, and with slightly oblique eyes. 



Children and young girls have round faces and often are very pleasant 

 and attractive in feature, the angular race characteristics becoming 

 prominent after the individuals approach manhood. The women age 

 rapidly,, and only a very small proportion of the people live to an 

 advanced age. 



The Malemut and the people of Kaviak peninsula, including those 

 of the islands in Bering strait, are tall, active, and remarkably well 



