HBDLICKA] 



ARCHEOLOGY OF WESTERN ESKIMO 



177 



The Aleutian Islands and Kodiak are excellently dealt with by 

 Veniaminof and also Tikhmenief, though little special attention is 

 given to the location of the settlements. 



None of the Russian explorers, regrettably, report verbally on the 

 deserted sites or ruins. But their registration and location of many 

 villages that have since become "dead" is of much historical as 

 well as anthropological value. 



Of later and particularly American authors who gave attention to 

 the location of the western Eskimo settlements, the foremost is E. YV. 

 Nelson. Beginning in 1877 with the St. Michael Island and ending 

 with the cruise of the Corn/am in 1881, Nelson made trips down the 

 coast to the Kuskokwim, up the Yukon to Anvik, over the Bering 

 Sea, the St. Lawrence Island and parts of the Chukchee Peninsula, 



ito" isrf 



Figure 13. — World map 



and finally, with the Corwin, along the northern coasts to Point Bar- 

 row. And these journeys were devoted largely to biological and 

 ethnological observations and collections, the latter including the 

 location of the western Eskimo habitations of that time. His loca- 

 tions are given on the accompanying map (fig. 15) taken from his 

 classic memoir, " The Eskimo about Bering Strait," published in 1900 

 in the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnol- 

 ogy. This memoir contains a section of "Ruins" (pp. 263-266). a 

 brief account of the recently dead villages on St. Lawrence Island 

 (p. 269), and an instructive section on Eskimo burials (pp. 310-322). 

 Nelson brought also the first more substantial collection of Eskimo 

 crania. 



The next deserving man in these connections is Ivan Petrof. Of 

 Russian-American extraction, Petrof was charged in 1880 with the 



