Anthropological Survey in Alaska

ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE YUKON

Notes on the physique of the Yukon natives are found in the reports of all the explorers of the river, but they are imperfect and of little scientific value; the principal ones are given below.[26] Anthropometric observations on the living people of the middle and lower Yukon, with its tributaries, are nonexistent.[27] As to crania, there are a few measurements on two "Yukon Indian" skulls (No. 7530, and probably No. 7531), and on three crania of the Yukon Eskimo, by Jeffries Wyman (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1868, XI, 452); on one "Ingaleet" and three "Mahlemut" or Norton Sound Eskimo skulls by George A. Otis (List of Specimens, etc., 35); and on four skulls collected by Dall, one from Nulato and the rest presumably from St. Michael, by Hrdlička (Catal. of Crania, p. 30, Nos. 242925, 242899, 242901, 242936).

The Living Indian

Notes on the living Indians of the Yukon have already been given in the Narrative. They will be briefly summarized in this place. Measurements of the living were impracticable during the journey.

Pure bloods.—The Yukon Indians are a sparse and largely mixed population. The mixture is especially evident in the children and the younger generation. It is mainly that with whites, but in the lower settlements there is also a good deal of older mixture with the Eskimo. There is fortunately as yet no Negro admixture.

General type.—The full bloods are typically Indian, though not of the pronounced plains type. The type is fairly uniform, but there is not seldom, even up the river, as elsewhere in Alaska, a suggestion of something Eskimoid in the physiognomy.

Color.—The color in general is near medium brown, ranging to lighter rather than darker. The hair is the usual full black of the Indian.

Stature and strength.—- The stature and build are generally near medium, rather slightly below than above.

Head form.—The head is generally moderately rounded high meso- to moderately brachycephalic. The face is medium Indian.

Body.—The body proportions seldom impress one with unusual strength, yet some of the men are by no means weaklings. The most fitting term by which to characterize conditions in this respect is again "medium," with an occasional deviation one way or the other.

Photographs.—The accompanying photographs, taken by the writer from Tanana to Anvik, show a few of the physiognomies. Some of the girls and women, as well as boys and men, are quite good looking. (Pls. 13-18.)

From Anvik downward along the river the type of the people becomes plainly more Eskimoid and on the whole more robust. But as one can frequently meet farther up the river individuals who remind one more or less of the Eskimo, so here it is frequent to see faces that look like Indian. Whether due to old mixture or to other reason, the fact is that there is no line of somatological demarcation in the living populations of the river, and the same applies, as will be seen later, to the skulls.

Skeletal Remains of the Yukon

The first Yukon Indian skull measured was that of a half-chief of the Nulato group, collected in the early sixties by William H. Dall. There are now three records of this skull, originally and again now a Smithsonian specimen, one in Wyman ("Observations on Crania," Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1868, XI, 452, No. 7530), one in the Otis "Catalogue" (35, No. 259), and one in Hrdlička's "Catalogue of Human Crania in the United States National Museum Collections" (p. 30, No. 242925). It is a normal, well-developed male skull, which gives no suggestion of mixture. The true measurements of this "type" specimen, taken by present-day instruments and methods, are as follows:

The skull is seen to be mesocephalic, rather high, and of good brain capacity; the face is of medium Indian proportions; the orbits are unequal, rather low; the nose is of medium height and breadth; the upper dental arch, the basic-facial diameters, and the facial and alveolar angles, are all near medium Indian.

There was another Indian skull in the five Wyman reported, but its identity is uncertain. A later collection by Dall included three Indian female crania from Alaska, but their exact provenience is uncertain; their measurements are given in my catalogue.

On the 1926 trip I succeeded in collecting directly from the burials along the lower middle Yukon 17 adult skulls and skeletons. Such material is both scarce and difficult to obtain, due to the attitude of the Indians. All the specimens in the collection are from the Russian times on the river. A few of the skulls show traces of Eskimoid in their features, but none offer a suspicion of a mixture with the whites. The measurements are given below. They partly agree, partly disagree, with those of the Nulato skull. The vault, the breadth of the nose, the dimensions of the dental arch, are much alike, but the height of the face, nose, and orbits in the Nulato specimen is somewhat lower. These may be tribal but also simply individual differences. We may generalize by stating that the lower middle Yukon Indian was mesocephalic, with a fairly high vault, and moderate capacity. The face was of relatively good height but moderate breadth, resulting in a high upper facial index. Facial and alveolar prognathism and other features approach the prevalent Indian medium.

Skeletal Parts

There are seven adult skeletons of males and seven of females. For present purposes it will suffice to take the males alone and to restrict consideration to the long bones. The essential data on these are given on page 160, where they are contrasted with those of North American Indians in general, and with those of the western Eskimo.

The bones show both relations to as well as differences from the bones of Indians in general and fair distinctness from those of the Eskimo.

Contrasted with the long bones of miscellaneous North American tribes taken together, the Yukon Indian bones show absolutely slightly shorter humerus (or arm), somewhat shorter radius (or forearm), a slightly shorter femur (or upper part of the leg), and a plainly shorter tibia. These Indians had therefore relatively somewhat shorter forearm and especially the leg below the knees than their continental cousins. These facts are plainly evident from the radio-humeral and tibio-femoral indices of the two groups. In this relative shortness of the distal parts of the limbs the Yukon Indian approaches the Eskimo, standing near midway between the Indian in general and the Eskimo. There might be a ready temptation to attribute this to a mixture with the Eskimo; but an examination of the records will show that the same condition, so far at least as the upper limb is concerned (lower?), is already present in the old Bonasila skeleton, which gives no suggestion of an Eskimo mixture. It is more likely, therefore, that these are generalized characteristics of functional origin such as a considerable use of the small canoes. This view seems to be supported by the relative strength of the bones. In the Yukon Indian the humerus is stouter, the femur of the same strength, and the tibia very perceptibly weaker than they are in Indians in general. In the Eskimo, with even greater dependence on the canoe, both the humerus and the femur are notably stouter, while the tibia is weaker, than are similar bones in the Indians in general.

The humero-femoral index in the Yukon Indians is unusually high, indicating a relative shortness of the femur. This character is not present in the Eskimo, nor in the continental Indian. It is probably also of old functional origin, though, this for the present must remain a mere suggestion.

All of this shows clearly the interest and value of other skeletal parts than the skull, and particularly of the long bones, for anthropological studies.

Skeletal Remains from the Bank at Bonasila

The skeletal material from the bank at Bonasila consists now of portions of three adult skulls, one male and two females, and of 13 bones of the male skeleton. All the specimens are more or less stained by manganese and iron and all are distinctly heavier than normal, showing some grade of fossilization. They closely resemble in all these respects the numerous animal bones from the bank and in all differ from the later surface burials of the place.

THE CRANIA

The male skull, No. 332513, is represented by the frontal bone united with a larger part of the face, a separated left temporal, and the right half of the lower jaw. A large Inca bone, recovered from the beach a year later, may also belong to the same specimen. The missing parts are probably still somewhere in the sands of the beach where there is going on a very instructive scattering and redeposition on a 4 to 6 feet lower level of the contents of the old bank.

The skull is that of a male of somewhat over 50 years of age, judging from the moderate to marked wear of the remaining teeth. It is a normal undeformed specimen, and the same applies to the bones of the skeleton.

Notes and measurements.—The frontal shows a medium development, no slope. The supraorbital ridges are rather weakly developed for a male, leaving the upper borders of the orbits rather sharp.