A New Alaskan Race

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1908

A New Alaskan Race

DR. GEORGE B. GORDON, curator of the University of Pennsylvania’s archeological department, who returned to Philadelphia after a six months’ expedition through the wildest regions of the far Northwest, announces the discovery of a new race living along the Arctic coast on the Koskokwim River in Alaska. Dr. Gordon brings back a strange story of these people who had never before seen a white man, and who differ from all other tribes of Alaskan Indians.

Dr. Gordon heard rumors of the race in 1905, and after innumerable hardships reached the territory in which these aborigines live in Adamic simplicity. They are called by the Eskimos “Kushkwagamutes,” and show strong traces of Mongolian ancestry. Crime and vice are utterly unknown among them.

Dr. Gordon says they know absolutely nothing of the corruption and degeneracy with which the whites have infected the Athabascan Indians, and the Eskimos.

“Though they are dying out,” Dr. Gordon said, “they are strong and clean physically, and are intelligent. They have retained the most ancient characteristics of dress and speech. In clothing, instead of wearing furs, they sew skins of birds into robes, using the breasts of the loon and various species of duck which abound in the river.”

Of their clothing, utensils, arms, etc., Dr. Gordon gathered collections, and when they arrive, he and other ethnologists will try to discover whether the tribe is of Asiatic origin, or whether it emigrated from Lower California.

This new tribe is the only one in Alaska which makes pottery, Dr. Gordon says. All the others weave baskets.

They are monogamists, and no such thing as vice is known among them. They are permitted by their priests to have more than one wife, but never do so. They have no laws at all, but are governed by patriarchs. They are tall, and the women are graceful and beautiful.

“There are only four hundred of them left,” said Dr. Gordon. “It is to be hoped for their sakes that they die out before the white traders get to them. Then they can die as cleanly and happily as they live.”

Dr. Gordon and his helper traveled down the Koskokwim fifteen hundred miles in a small sloop. When they reached Behring Sea, they sailed for Nome, were caught in equinoctial gales and were adrift three weeks. Dr. Gordon was forced to throw his provisions overboard to save his specimens. He landed at Nome nearly dead with hunger and exposure.—The Idaho Scimitar.