210. Point Barrow.—The Eskimo Nuwuk. Good-sized living village. Remains of older habitations. Population in 1853, 309. (G.D.A.)
The St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands
ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND
Ranking in archeological and anthropological importance with Wales and in some respects perhaps even exceeding the latter, is the large island of St. Lawrence, with the almost forgotten little Punuk group at its eastern extremity.
Figure 26.—Russian map of St. Lawrence Island, 1849. (Tebenkof)
The main island was discovered by Bering on St. Lawrence Day, August 10, 1728, and it was found peopled by the Eskimo. In 1849 an excellent map of it was published by Tebenkof in Novo-Archangelsk, and on this map (fig. 26) are indicated about a dozen smaller or larger Eskimo settlements, some of which, however, are not named and may already have been "dead."
About 1878 there were still six settlements with somewhat less than 1,500 Eskimo inhabitants on the island. That winter (1878-79) not less than 1,000 of the population died of famine (Hooper), three of the villages becoming completely depopulated and a fourth nearly so. The Punuk Island village may have become extinct about the same time.
To-day there are on the St. Lawrence Island but two living settlements, the main one, now known as Gambell, at the old site of Chibukak on the northwestern cape, and the other, Savonga, about 40 miles east of it, near Cape North.
A number of the old sites on this island, and also that on one of the Punuks, indicate a long occupation, antedating by far the advent of the Russians. The accumulations rise in some places to imposing heaps or ridges. Their frozen contents yield quantities of fossil ivory, all of which shows the work of man, and among them occur specimens with fine curvilinear designs and of high scientific as well as artistic value.