"Grooved, double-bitted stone axes similar to those collected by Doctor Hrdlička from the Middle Yukon region have since become known also from stations farther south in Alaska. One was plowed up in a field near Matanuska and is now in the chamber of commerce exhibit at Anchorage, while another was collected in 1927 by the writer from near Chitna, Alaska. This Alaskan type of grooved ax is practically identical with that of the central Atlantic seaboard States, as figured by Walter Hough in the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, volume 60, article 9, page 14.
"Another grooved type of stone object brought to the National Museum by Doctor Hrdlička is a stone war club of unusual type. It was found on the Yukon River beach 1½ miles below the Mission at Tanana. It is 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) long and is slender, the maximum sectional diameter being but 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches). Like the single-grooved axes, it was shaped by pecking, but much of the surface was also ground. The reverse or hafting surface is flat; the obverse is convexly tapered to sharp cutting edges which are at right angles to the haft. The material is basalt. The hafting grooves, two in number, are comparatively deep and closely spaced. As to form this stone weapon is unique, appearing, so far as is known to the writer, nowhere else on the American Continent. It has been entered on the records of the National Museum as Cat. No. 332807, U.S.N.M.
"One form of the double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone axes resembles closely ivory forms made from walrus tusks in the Bering Sea region. This form also gives evidence of secondary modification, specimens having been broken intentionally to reduce the tool to a simple adze. The material is basalt and its range in the north is limited to the Eskimo area, but becomes widespread to the south in southeastern Alaska and in British Columbia. The form of this widely diffused stone adze is approximated in a series of broken stone axes collected by Doctor Hrdlička. Two such broken and originally double-bitted axes, Cat. Nos. 332806 and 332810, U.S.N.M., were collected from the banks of the Yukon at an old village site below Anvik. These axes are broken with a crude irregular fracture just above the upper transverse groove. Another stone ax, Cat. No. 332812, U.S.N.M., is from Ruby, Alaska, and is practically identical with the double-bitted but single-grooved stone ax from Tanana.
"It would appear from this brief presentation that there is a remarkable similarity of form, approaching identity, in the ancient stone axes from the river valleys of central Alaska. Whether the particular ax has one cutting edge or is double-bitted; whether it is provided with one or with two parallel transverse hafting grooves, the general identity of form remains. The striking thing about the presence of the double-bitted ax among archeological finds from central Alaska is that we do not find it represented in such numbers anywhere until it again reappears in the Atlantic seaboard States. The very interesting cultural objects discovered by Doctor Hrdlička and supplemented by my collection in 1927 show that Alaska is far from sterile or fully known archeologically and make further exploration both promising and important."
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).
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Glazunof (Wrangell, Stat. und Ethnog. Nachr., 146-147): "The men are big, brunette, with bristly black hair."