IIRDI.R'KA] 



WRITER'S TRIP ON YUKON 83 



of most available stone, and essentially hunting habit of the people 

 that resulted in many skins which called for numerous scrapers. 

 Nevertheless the site deserves a thorough further exploration. 



There was apparently not much basketry along the river, the place 

 of the baskets being taken by the birch-bark dishes of the Indian and 

 the kantag or ingeniously made wooden dish of the Eskimo part of 

 the river. 



Canoes among the Yukon Indians were mainly of birch bark, 

 while the Eskimo had mainly skin canoes. 



11. Neither the Indians nor the Eskimo of the Yukon practiced 

 deformation of the head or of any other part of the body, or dental 

 mutilation. The Indians as well as the Eskimo occasionally pierced 

 the septum of the nose, for nose pieces, while the Eskimo cut on 

 each side a slit in the lower lip for the introduction of labrets. The 

 Eskimo cut their hair short in a characteristic way, reminding 

 strongly of certain monks; the Indians left their hair long. But 

 at Anvik the Indians both cut their hair and wore labrets. They 

 also used the wooden dish. 



12. From all the preceding it appears that there must have been 

 long and intensive contacts between the Yukon Eskimo and Indians; 

 that, through war or in peace, they became mutually admixed; and 

 that there were mutual cultural transmissions. 



13. No further light for the present could be gained on the origin, 

 antiquity, or early migrations of the Yukon Indian. It was deter- 

 mined, however, that he represents but one main physical type, and 

 that this type is the same as that of the Indians of the Tanana and 

 most other Alaskan Indians of the present time. 



14. Exceptional skeletal remains were washed out from the bank 

 at Bonasila. They are of Indians (?), but appear to be not those 

 of the Yukon Indian of to-day. They present a problem which is 

 to be solved by further exploration of the site. 



15. The Eskimo of the lower parts of the river are in general 

 better preserved and more coherent than the Indians. They are 

 more tractable people and are taking more readily to work and 

 civilization. 



16. These Eskimo show, in the majority of cases, fairly typical 

 Eskimo physiognomies. But their heads are not as those of the 

 northern and eastern members of the race. The head is less narrow, 

 less high, and has but now and then a suggestion of the scaphoid 

 form that is so characteristic of the Greenland, Labrador, or north- 

 ern Eskimo cranium ; also, the angles of the jaws are less bulging 

 and the lower jaws themselves do not appear so heavy. 



17. The Yukon Eskimo burials are in all essentials much like 

 those of the Indians up the river. Here again a cultural connection 



