NO,    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    LSLAND COLLINS  367 
Boas  has  called  attention  to  the  I'act  that  the  folklore  of  the  Western 
Eskimos  points  to  an  eastern  orij^in.  This  fact,  and  conditions  with 
regard  to  linguistics,  seems  to  provide  further  evidence  of  a  relatively 
late  wave  of  migration  entering  northern  Alaska  from  the  eastward. 
The  linguistic  evidence  is  particularly  striking,  for  according  to 
Jenness  the  Eskimo  dialects  in  Alaska  north  of  Norton  Sound  are 
closer  to  those  of  Greenland  and  Lahrador,  more  than  2,000  miles  to 
the  eastward,  than  they  are  to  those  of  the  Yukon-Kuskokwim  region 
immediately  to  the  south.  Jenness  (1933.  pp.  379-380)  says: 
....  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  a  Greenlander  can  still  travel  from  his  own 
country  right  across  Arctic  America  as  far  as  Bering  Strait  and  make  his 
dialect  understood  everywhere  with  little  difficulty.  Such  changes  in  speech  as 
he  would  encounter  throughout  this  immense  stretch  of  coast-line  are  of  a 
minor  character  only,  easily  surmountable  after  a  few  hours'  acquaintance.  South 
of  Bering  Strait,  however,  with  the  exception  of  one  or  two  oases  like  Inglestat, 
at  the  head  of  Norton  Bay,  where  the  dialect  differs  but  little  from  that  of 
Barrow,  the  dialects  change  rapidly,  so  that  a  Greenlander  would  probably 
require  thrtje  different  interpreters  to  converse  with  the  Eskimo  of  St.  Lawrence 
Island,  of  the  Kuskokwini  River,  and  of  Cook  Inlet. 
From  the  evidence  afforded  hy  skeletal  remains  it  would  appear 
that  actual  movements  of  peoples  were  responsible  for  the  dissemina- 
tion of  these  various  features  of  eastern  culture  into  northern  Alaska. 
From  1 91 7  to  1919  W.  B.  Van  Valin  carried  on  excavations  for 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania  at  two  old  Eskimo  sites  near  Point 
Barrow,  a  preliminary  report  of  which  has  been  published  by  Mason 
(1930).  Both  Mason  and  Mathiassen  (1930  a)  have  identified  the 
material  from  these  old  sites  as  Thule,  although  as  I  have  attempted 
to  point  out  above,  the  modern  Point  Barrow  culture  is  actually  much 
closer  to  the  Thule  than  is  this  prehistoric  material.  One  of  the  most 
interesting  results  of  Van  Valin's  excavations  was  the  discovery  of 
83  human  skeletons,  constituting  probably  the  most  important  and 
significant  lot  of  skeletal  material  from  the  Eskimo  area.  From 
Hrdlicka's  description  (1930),  the  old  Point  Barrow  crania  are 
shown  to  have  been  very  dififerent  from  those  of  the  modern  Point 
Barrow  Eskimos.  They  were  extremely  long  and  narrow,  high  and 
keel-shaped,  and  closely  resembled  the  highly  specialized  Greenland 
type  of  Eskimo  skull : 
The  "  igloo  "  crania,  while  plainly  pure  Eskimo,  proved  to  be  of  a  decidedly 
exceptional  nature  for  this  location.  The  skulls,  in  brief,  were  not  of  the  general 
western  Eskimo  type,  but  reminded  at  once  strongly  of  the  skulls  from  Green- 
land and  Labrador.  And  they  were  exceptionally  uniform,  showing  that  they 
belonged  to  a  definite  and  distinct  Eskimo  group.    (Hrdlicka,  1930,  p.  318.) 
A  comparison  of  the  Igloo  and  Greenland  series  shows  striking  similarities ; 
hardly  any  two  geographically  separate  groups  originating  from  a  single  source 
