hrduCka] WRITER'S TRIP ON YUKON 89 



women, children, and even men each year is large and promises to 

 grow from year to year as long as the supply lasts. This means that 

 unless scientific exploration of these old sites is hastened there will 

 be little left before long to study. 



The fossil ivory trade has become such that many of the officers 

 and the crews even of the visiting vessels, including the revenue cut- 

 ters, engage in buying the ivory from the natives and cutting it up in 

 their spare time into beads and other ornaments. A captain of a well- 

 known boat who with bis crew visited in the summer of 1920 a small 

 island on which there is an extensive frozen refuse heap containing 

 ninny bones and tools of the natives who once occupied the place, 

 exclaimed, "Gad, there's $50,000 of ivory in sight." 



The boat crew took away about " 2 bushels " of it, or all that could 

 be removed from the extensive frozen pile. I saw some of this ivory 

 later, all cut up, but with a number of the pieces still showing old 

 human handiwork, and some beads made of other parts of the lot 

 were brought later to my office in Washington. 



If American archeology and ethnology are to learn what they need 

 in these regions it is absolutely essential that they take early ,steps 

 for a proper exploration of the old sites, besides which every effort 

 should be made by the intelligent traders, missionaries, teachers, and 

 officials to save the more artistic and characteristic pieces of human 

 workmanship in the old ivory, and bring them with such data as 

 may be available to the attention of scientific men or institutions. 

 It would in fact be of much value, and the writer has suggested 

 this to the Governor of Alaska, to establish a local museum at Nome, 

 where such objects could be gathered and saved to science. 



ABORIGINAL REMAINS 



The coast of which Nome is now the human center, up to Cape 

 Wales, together with the nearer islands, was occupied by the Maigle- 

 miut (Zagoskin), or Mahlemut (Dall et al.) subdivision of the 

 Eskimo. They were a strong group, and great traders. During 

 the Russian times the Aziags, from what is now the Sledge Island, 

 witli probably others from the coast, visited yearly for trading pur- 

 poses as far as St. Michael and the Yukon, while the Wales people 

 were known to trade up to fairly recently as far as Kotzebue, both 

 at the same time having trading connections with Asia. 



Of these natives, with the exception of those at Wales, there 

 remains but little. On Sledge Island there are only two dead vil- 

 lages, and on the coast from Port Clarence to far east of Nome there 

 is not a single existing native settlement. A few remnants of the 

 people live in Nome, but they have lost all individuality. 



88253°— 30 7 



