Connecticut Western News

Alaska Antiquities.

At the last meeting of the California Academy of Sciences, W. H. Dall, of the United States Coast Survey, read an interesting paper on his recent discovery of prehistoric remains in Alaska. Among these relics, mention is made of seven skeletons, which were found arranged around the edge of a small cave located under an isolated rock, on Omaknok Island. Contrary to the record of similar caves in Europe, no remains of animals were found. Near one of the skeletons there were heaped together a number of stone knives, a bone awl, and two fragments, one of pumice, and the other of fine sandstone, with their edges and surfaces smoothed and squared, evidently for the purpose of dressing down the asperities of skins to be used for clothing. The most interesting collections are reported to have been found near the skeleton of a woman, which was stationed farthest from the entrance to the cave; these consisted of two bone tabrets, shaped like those now in use among the Thlinkeets and Botcqudas; a lot of needles, made of the wing-bones of birds; a needle-case, made of the humerus of some large bird, closed at each end by a wooden stopper; bone awls, stone knives, a whetstone of fine-grained sand, and a little case of birch-bark containing plumbago. The only anatomical peculiarity of the bones, which agreed in all essential respects with Esquimaux remains of similar character, was the great stoutness of the long bones, and a remarkable thickening of the inner face of the under jaw, which was so extensive in a majority of cases as to nearly close the space between the halves of the jaw, the bone being over an inch in diameter. So far as the memory of the present inhabitants goes, these are the remains of a prehistoric race, though, from the perishable nature of many of the implements found, it is evident that the title does not apply in its present interpretation.