XLII ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 
It has been the practice to note, in connection with the name 
of each Indian photographed, his age, status in the tribe, and 
such biographic information as could be obtained. 
ACCOMPANYING PAPERS 
ETHNOLOGICAL RESULTS OF THE POINT BARROW EXPEDITION, 
BY JOHN MURDOCH, 
Mr. John Murdoch was the naturalist and one of the obsery- 
ers detailed in 1881 by the Chief Signal Officer of the Army with 
the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska. 
That point was established as one of the stations in the work 
of circumpolar observation proposed by the International Con- 
ference on that subject. In addition to the specific duties of 
the expedition, which were connected with meteorology, re- 
searches were made by all of its members, during the two 
years of their stay, on the habits and customs of the Eskimo 
of the neighborhood, and full notes taken. The ethnological 
material obtained consisted of those notes and of the objects 
collected. The notes were so voluminous and the objects 
which required description and illustration were so many 
that it was impracticable to publish them in the report of the 
commanding officer of the expedition, Lieut. P. H. Ray, Eighth 
Infantry, U.S. Army, which was issued in 1885. In order 
that the valuable ethnologic results obtained should not be 
lost, the Chief Signal Officer permitted the continued employ- 
ment of Mr. Murdoch to complete a special report upon them, 
and the late Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution furnished 
him important facilities for the work. It was decided to publish 
the report with full illustrations, as it now appears, in one of 
the serial volumes of Annual Reports of this Bureau. 
The work of collecting the objects mentioned and of making 
the ethnological notes was continued for more than two years, 
and two more years were occupied by Mr. Murdoch in the an- 
alytical study of those objects and notes before the present re- 
port could be completed. In this report Mr. Murdoch has pre- 
sented a simple and exhaustive account of the Eskimo of Alaska 
with commendable absence of theory. At the same time he 
