94 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY IN ALASKA [bth. ann. 46 



Jenness, of the Victoria Memorial Museum of Ottawa. Here also 

 is located an exceptionally educated and observant teacher, Mr. Clark 

 M. Garber. 



A big umiak comes to us with many natives bringing the usual 

 trade, and on it, much to my pleasure, are both Doctor Jenness and 

 Mr. Garber. Doctor Jenness asks to go with us to the Little Diomede 

 to do some work there. He has had encouraging experience here, 

 finding evidences of occupation dating many centuries back, and 

 has collected some valuable specimens, including a few with the 

 fine old curved-line decoration. Mr. Garber gives me some valuable 

 information about the skeletal remains of this place and engages 

 to collect for me, who can not leave the boat, a few boxes of these 

 specimens, which promise is fulfilled later. 



The natives are a jolly and sturdy lot, even though they bear, and 

 that since their earliest contacts with whites, a rather bad reputa- 

 tion. That this is founded in some fact, at least, is told us in the 

 annals of the Russians, and is also shown by the little structure on 

 the hillside off which we are anchored. This has a tragic and at the 

 same time quaint history. It is the grave of a missionary Doctor 

 Thornton, who was killed, we are told, by two local young fellows. 

 These were apprehended, sentenced to die, and were to be shot by 

 their relatives, which all evidently found quite just. On the ap- 

 pointed day they were taken out to the burial ground, helped to 

 prepare their burials, one asked yet to be allowed to go to the village 

 to get a drink, went and returned, and then both were shot. The 

 executioner of the boy who went to get the drink is said to have been 

 his uncle. 



The Diomedes 



Late that night we leave slowly for the Diomede Islands, the 

 nearer of which is only about 18 miles distant. The two islands 

 lie, as is well known, just about in the middle of the Bering Strait. 

 One is known as the larger or Russian, the other as the smaller 

 or American Diomede. The boundary line between Russia and the 

 United States passes between the two. Both islands have been oc- 

 cupied since far back by the Eskimo. To-day there is one small 

 village on the American and two small settlements on the Russian 

 island. 



July 26. Up at 5.40, breakfast 6, and off in one of our staunch 

 motor boats, with Jenness, for the Little Diomede. Countless birds 

 flying in streams about the island. 



The island is just a big rock, with barren flat top and steep 

 sides, covered where inclination permits with great numbers of larger 

 and smaller granite bowlders. There is neither tree nor brush here. 

 The village, if it deserves that name, with a school, occupies an 



