ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY IN ALASKA 



By Ales Hrdlkka 



INTRODUCTION 



Alaska and the opposite parts of Asia hold, in all probability, the 

 key to the problem of the peopling of America. It is here, and here 

 alone, where a land of another continent approaches so near to 

 America that a passage of man with primitive means of navigation 

 and provisioning was possible. All the affinities of the American 

 native point toward the more eastern parts of Asia. In Siberia, 

 Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria. Formosa, and in some of the islands 

 off southeastern Asia, living remnants of the same type of man as 

 the American aborigines are to this day encountered, and it is here 

 in the farthest northwest where actual passings of parties of natives 

 between the Asiatic coast and the Bering Sea islands and between 

 the latter and the American coasts have always, since these parts were 

 known, been observed and are still of common occurrence. 



With these facts before them, the students of the peopling of this 

 continent were always drawn strongly to Alaska and the opposite 

 parts of Asia; but the distances, the difficulties of communication, 

 and the high costs of exploration in these far-off regions have proven 

 a serious hindrance to actual investigation. As a result, but little 

 direct, systematic, archeological or anthropological (somatological) 

 research has ever been carried out in these regions; though since 

 Bering's. Cook's, and Vancouver's opening voyages to these parts a 

 large amount of general, cultural, and linguistic observations on the 

 natives has accumulated. 



For these observations, which are much in need of a compilation 

 and critical analysis, science is indebted to the above-named captains; 

 to the subsequent Russian explorers, and especially to the Russian 

 clerics who were sent to Alaska as missionaries or priests to the 

 natives; to various captains, traders, agents, miners, soldiers, and 

 men in collateral branches of science, who came in contact with the 

 aborigines; to special United States Government exploratory expe- 

 ditions, with an occasional participation of the Biological Survey 

 and the Smithsonian Institution, such as resulted in the fine '" Cm- 

 win " reports and the highly valuable accounts of Leffingwell, Dall, 



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