Figure 15.—Nelson's map. (Eighteenth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1898)
Other useful publications in these connections are the United States Coast Pilots of Alaska, the various accounts of travelers, explorers, and men in collateral branches of science (geology, biology, etc.), the publications of the Alaska Division of the United States Department of Education, the annual reports of the Governor of Alaska, and the decennial reports on Alaska of the United States Census.
Figure 16.—Linguistic map, United States census, 1920
The object of the following notes and data is some measure of usefulness to future anthropological and archeological workers in Alaska. They are surely incomplete and very imperfect, yet they may be of some service.
Archeological and anthropological research in the highly important western Eskimo region is bound to develop in a not far distant future; for this is the region through which in all probability America was peopled. It is this region that promises to solve the problem of the antiquity of the Eskimo and may throw much light upon the origin of these people, and one that, as shown, above, has begun to reveal highly interesting old cultural conditions. And it is a region in which destruction of the remains by nature, but most so recently by the natives themselves, proceeds at an alarming pace.
The information on which these notes and the accompanying charts are based has been obtained largely from the Russian and other maps, from local traders, teachers, missionaries, and natives, and from a few explorers.[61] Only in a minority of cases was it possible to visit the places in person; to have visited all would have been a task of pleasure, but would have required a staunch boat of my own and at least three full seasons.