90 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY IN ALASKA [ETH. ANN. 46 



Dead sites are known to exist from west to east, at Cape Wooley ; 

 at the mouth of the Sonora or Quartz Creek; at the mouth of the 

 Penny River — some natives are said to still go to fish there in sum- 

 mer; at the mouth of a small river 3 miles east of Nome; both west 

 (a larger village) and east (a small site) of Cape Nome; and 18 

 miles east of Nome (the " Nook " village). 



Most of these sites have been peopled within the memory of the 

 oldest inhabitants. 



Thanks to the kind aid of the Reverend Doctor Baldwin, I was 

 able to visit several of the sites east of Nome, more particularly the 

 Nook village, and it was still possible to find two skeletons and a 

 skull on these sites. 



The Nook site must have been one of considerable importance. 

 It was an especially large village, or rather two near-by villages, in 

 one of which I counted upward of 30 depressions, remnants of the 

 semisubterranean houses with vestibules, such as are elsewhere de- 

 scribed from the Yukon. 



Here a clear illustration was had of what changes on sites of this 

 nature may be wrought in a short time by the elements. 



Fifteen years ago, I was assured, there were still many burials 

 and skeletal remains scattered along the coast near the Nook village. 

 Then in 1913 came a great southwestern storm, which at Nome 

 ripped up the cemetery and carried away some coffins with bodies, 

 scattering them over the plains in the vicinity. Since that storm 

 not a vestige remains of any of the burials or bones near the huge 

 Nook village. On prolonged examination I found nothing but sands 

 overgrown with the usual coast vegetation. Everything had been 

 carried away or buried and the pits of the houses were evidently 

 themselves largely filled in. 



The burials on this coast west of Golovnin Bay were evidently all 

 of a simpler nature than those on Norton Sound and the Yukon. 

 There is plenty of driftwood, but for some reason this was not hewn 

 into boards with which to make burial boxes. The dead were merely 

 laid upon and covered with the driftwood, though this was done, 

 as later seen on Golovnin Bay, rather ingeniously. One of the two 

 skeletons found near Cape Nome, an adult male, lay simply among 

 the rocks on the lower part of the slope of the hill. 



Old sites, though often small, may be confidently looked for along 

 all these coasts in the shelter of every promontory, at the mouth of 

 each stream, and on the spits which separate the ocean from inland 

 lagoons (as in the case of the Nook village). 



Nome — Bering Strait 1 — Barrow 



Friday, July 23. Received word to be on the Bear, which ar- 

 rived yesterday, before 10 o'clock this morning. Due to the shallow- 



