To save repetitions and possible confusion and to show more clearly the status of the southwestern and midwestern Eskimo, the entire cranial material will be dealt with in this section, and previous records on the northeastern and a few other groups of the Eskimo will not be drawn upon to preserve the advantage of dealing with data obtained by the same methods, instruments, and observer.
In presenting the records it is found expedient, both on geographical and anthropological grounds, to make but three groupings. The first of these comprises the Eskimo from their southernmost limit to Norton Sound and the Bering Sea islands; the second group takes in Seward Peninsula (or the larger part of it) and the Arctic coast to Point Barrow; while the third embraces all the Eskimo east of Point Barrow. The first of these three groups is remarkably homogeneous, the second and third show each some exceptional units. It may be said at once that the dialectic subdivisions of Dall, Nelson, and others, in a large majority of cases are not found to be accompanied by corresponding physical differences, so that in a somatological classification they become submerged.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Skeletal Measurements and Observations of the Point Barrow Eskimo, Amer. Anthrop., n. s. XVIII, pp. 203-244, Lancaster, 1916.
[143] In 1928 Mr. Collins brought another important accession to these collections.
SKULL SIZE
The external size of the skull is best expressed by the cranial module or mean of the three principal diameters; the internal size, respectively the volume of the brain, by the "cranial capacity."
The module among the southwestern and midwestern Eskimo averages 15.44 centimeters in the males and 14.77 centimeters in the females. For people of submedium stature these are good dimensions. Fifty-two male and 40 female skulls of the much taller Sioux (writer's unpublished data) give the modules of only 15.25 and 14.27 centimeters; while 6 male and 9 female Munsee Indians, also tall,[144] give practically the same values as these Eskimos, namely 15.48 centimeters for the males and 14.75 centimeters for the females.
Not all the western groups, however, give equally favorable proportions. In general, the coast people below Norton Sound, and especially below the Yukon, give, so far as the males are concerned, the lowest values. It is interesting to note that it is precisely these people who among the western Eskimo are reputed to be about the lowest also in culture. The Togiak and near-by Kulukak males showed, as seen before, also about the smallest head in the living. The St. Lawrence Island males stand just about the middle, but the females of this island, as, interestingly, also in the living, show markedly less favorably. The Nunivak skulls, as with the living, are somewhat above the average, while in the small Pilot Station (Yukon) group, just as in the near-by contingent of Marshall among the living, the males have the largest heads in this western territory. The lower Yukon Eskimo were also shown, it may be recalled, to be of a higher stature than the majority of the coast people. It is a group that deserves further attention.
The module of the female skull does not evidently stand always in harmony with that of the male. The most striking example of this is shown, as already mentioned, by the St. Lawrence Island females, both skulls and the living. The females of this isolated island are also unduly short, but their small head is not entirely due to the defective stature. There must exist on this island, it would seem, some conditions that are disadvantageous to the female. In the small groups, such as that from the Little Diomede, the disharmonies are doubtless partly due to small numbers of specimens, but there may also be other factors, such as the bringing in of women from other places.[145]