| The President of the University of Alaska through its first thirty years was an educator with a hobby and that hobby was Arctic archeology. When, in 1926, Dr. Charles E. Bunnell and Otto Wm. Geist met, the St. Lawrence Island archeological investigations of the University of Alaska had their beginning. |
| For the greater part of eight years Otto Geist lived on St. Lawrence Island with the Eskimos, in Eskimo houses, ate Eskimo food, wore Eskimo clothes, went hunting and trapping and fishing with the Eskimos, was adopted into a family, given the name "Aghvook" the whale, sacred above all animals, and was allowed to participate in ceremonies, funerals, and sacrifices, a privilege rarely granted a white person. On his left wrist was tattooed the image of Aghvook, and he looked on the island as home and its people as his people. |
| In the course of these years of strenuous work in excavations1 there grew also in Otto's notebooks a wealth of material on the history of the big island, on the legends, ceremonies, beliefs and notable incidents in the lives of its people. |
| With these notes as source material, with constant help from Dr. Geist and constant encouragement from Dr. Bunnell, this book was written. In the course of the work I had also, through Dr. Bunnell's thoughtfulness, the opportunity to spend several weeks on the Island with its people, an adventure which has enriched my life ever since. |
| The Eskimo words and names used in this book are in the language of St. Lawrence Island and may differ slightly from those of other Eskimo localities. The stories used in the course of the narrative are quoted verbatim as written for Dr. Geist by Silook, one of the islanders who went further with the government school teachers than most of them did at that time. In fact, he told me himself: "I am a literary man." |
| So far as we are able to know, from archeology, recorded history, recent customs, and the personal testimony of the Island's people, collected in Dr. Geist's notebooks, every fact, every incident, is true and actually happened at some time in the Island's history. I have merely woven all into a narrative. I have tried to write from the Eskimo point of view, and to keep the |
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