THE SEASON AT IPIUTAK
_
By FROELICH RAINEY
Reprinted from Farthest-North Collegian
That curious gravel bar at Pt.
Hope, where the T gara Eskimos
have lived for so many centuries
now looks like a No-man’s Land
after a heavy barrage. For three,
consecutive summers we, and
most of the Tigara men, who
were working for us, have been
digging out endless house ruins
and graves reaching from the tip
of the bar to its base nearly five
miles eastward, .and from the air
the excavations resemble count
less shell craters blown out of a
broad green field.
Ipiutak Culture Pre-Eskimo
The ancestors of our Eskimo
workmen, who settled the arctic
shore probably before the Latins
founded Ron..., have left scores
of ruined .- <1 houses and many
thousand., of graves, represent
ing centum ; < nstant occupa
tion, but tics people were not
the pioneers. Long before them,
another people found that they
could make a harvest of seals
and walrus there where migrat
ing sea mammals must pass in
northward and southward move
ments. Those real arete pioneers,
whom we h.av; acme to call ‘Ipiu
tagmiu” (Ipiutak-people) after a
p’ace name in the v'cinity of
their ruined town, lived along
the north shore of the Point
Hope bar only a short distance
north of the present Eskimo vil
lage of Tigara, but the living Es
kimos were unaware of this an-,
cient ruined settlement until our
discovery in 1939.
*30, Houses, lf>0 Graves Unearthed
Since then we have unearthed
■approximate y 7(t0 houses and
150 graves containing thousands
of implements and carvings
made by the people of Ipiutak.
Furthermore, we have learned
that those people lived in an arc
tic town of nearly 000 houses and
that their dead filled a emmet my
four miles lorg. Three or four
thousand people must have livid
there at one time.
Advanced Barbaric Culture
The elaborate ivory carvings
and the strange but beautifully
• made implements found in the
ruins are not those of a prim
itive people with an advanced
barbaric culture such as was de
veloped in eastern Asia in pre
Christian times. Consequently we
lok to the early civilization of
eastern Asia for an explanation
csf this ancient culture of the
American Arctic. Perhaps some
eastern Asiatics who learned to
hunt sea mamma’s about the
mouth of tine Amur River in
Siberia, or on the Kurile Islands,
moved northward following the
yearly migration of the sea mam
mals to found this earliest known
Settlement in Arctic America.
Certainly any people w’ho at
tempted to invade the barren
Arctic coast would need a com
plex material culture, and no
one with a primit've culture like
that of the Alaskan Indians could
hop to survive in that waste
'ar.d. i
Oriental Origin Likely
Art motifs of the Ipiutak peo
ple suggest an origin in the Or
ient and part of our research
wth the collections will be to
trace these connections. But
there is another and equally im
portant side to the research. Arc
the historic Eskimos actually d s
tant descendants of the race who
lived at Ipiutak. or are they de
scendants of later immigrants to
Arctic America? There are at
least two methods by which we
can answer this question. Imple
ments made by historic Eskimos
in Alaska, Canada, and G: cn
’and dur;ng a per'od of perhaps
2,009 years have been excavated
from many ruined villages in
the Arctic, and by comparing
there with our collections from
Ipiutak we can determine, in
part, the degree of relation-hip
and the trends of development.
But immigrants often adopt in
whole or in part the material
culture of an earlier people al
ready settled in the new region,
so that a continuity of the cul
ture does not always prove a con
tinuity of race. Fortunately for
the archaeologist, people leave
not only their implement? but
their skeletons as a record of
the past, and from these skele
tons we can piece tegether the
racial as well as the cultural his
tory.
500 Skeletons Exhumed
Ail Point Hope- is a cemetery.
In -cme p’ace-s there is bar/Iy
room to make a new grave.
Groups and types of graves mark
epochs in the history of settle
ment on that point and after
careful study of the position,
tvpe, and age we are now able to
c rrclate collections of skeletons
with several time period- extend
ing from the earliest, Ipiutak,
times to the present. This past
summer our Eskimo crew of Civ
ilian Conservation Corps workers
excavated over 599 skeletons
from these different periods. Far
from being superstitious or in
any way hesitant about exhum
ing the remains of some people
who were actually their fort -
bearers, they did the work with
a very real interest and most
became ski'ed at their task. This
colection of skeletons, one of the,
largest ever made at one site, has
been shipped to Dr. Harry Shap
iro at the American Museum in
New York where, during the
next two years, he will complete
the tedious task of comparative
study and correlation. When this
CAA Plans
Courses For
Ferrv Pilots
j
WASHINGTON', Jan. — Plans
to train several hundred ferry
pi tvs for lease lend ferry activ
ities from CAA-taught civilian
fivers have been worked out by
the Civil Aeronautic- Administra
ti-on and A'r Coro? ferrying ex
pr-rtc, it was announced by Don
ald H. Connolly, administrator of
civil aeronautics.
Candidates will be high-rank
ing graduates of the CAA’s most
advanced “cross-country" course
who a'ready have qualified as
commt rcial pilot? and flight in
structors.
Atfd t'rnnl Courses
Tiie CAA will contract with
u‘s‘ :’d g commercial aviation
schools to give additional cours
t-• in in-‘rumen* and muni-mo
tored flying. T ,n Pan Ameri
::n Airways, v’ :!i is operating
the North African service for the
government, will take many of
’he pilots on a alary status for
final s-ch oling n cd stial naviga
tion and other fine points of over
water cpi-rati-or.
Before starting the training,
candidates must pass exacting
phy-ica’ and mental examina
tions. They will be given strict
physical tests, as well as both
oral and written mental and com
petency exam-nations.
Ready By March
Connol y said the schools will
be in .full swing by March and
that they will turn out 24 pilots
per week.
White detail.- of the courses
are yet to be worked out with
Pan American offieia’s, he said,
they will irtclud.- a thorough in
strument <x urse in the Link
trainer an-d “under the hood” in
the four-place single-eng ned air
craft. >• ’!-■ ved by extensive fly
ing in tw -motor Lockheed trans
r rtn. Tl . transports will be pro
ci:;n 1 by 'he CAA and rented to
lh*s sch i ‘ ]v.
PIONEER WATER
DELIVERY
■SPRING WATER
Always At Your Service
Phone Rlarh 44
is finished we should know what
rack' connection exists between
the historic K mos and these
first archc pioneres. If we find
that the Eskimos are distant rel
stiver ot the Ipiutak people and
net u distinct race, we shall have
gone far in answering that long
standing puzzle as to who the
E-k mos are and where they
came from.
B r- Defence Bonds and Stamp?
LASHLEY QUADS HAVE PRE-CHRISTMAS PARTY
*
Santa Claus paid a pre-Christmas visit to the Lashlev quadruplets nursery at Louisville, Ky., and
the quads were all agog at their first sight of a tree. They are 10 months old. Left to right, they
tire: Mildred, Marline and John. Beulah is all tears.
ASSEMBLY LINES RUJH COMBAT PLANES
Assembly lines such as these at a Curtis-Wright pla t at Buffalo, N. Y. ;«re rushing fast, hard
hitting pursuit planes for the w ar effort. Two of the c< mj.ar.y's j !a I.- new operate a total of 13
assembly lines and are near peak production.
RECORD BREAKING DIVE BOMBER
Here is an overhead view of the “Baltimore, u Martin medium bomber which recently set a
world’s record for bombers with 560 miles per h >ur speed in a 65 - degree dive with three mem
aboard. Large numbers of these ships are now go ng to the Koval Air Force.
| ,
lit.fiitntnswiL .u mamsism.jm*. ^ua
WOMEN? HE'S AGAINST 'EM!—That determined little cynic. Barry Thompson. 18
! months, just won’t give In to a woman's wiles, as anyone can tell seeing what poor luck Eileen Lac,a.
2, lias with her kisses. Barry's father. Cordon Thompson, and Eileen’s father, Carl Cadra, play wil t
an orchestra at Syracuse. N. V. Ike children travel with parents when band makes one-nieht stand.,.