Report of The International Polar Expedition
to Point Barrow, Alaska – 1881-1883
In 1881, the US Army ordered a group of men to be “assigned to duty as the expeditionary force to Point Barrow, Alaska Territory… and establish there a permanent station of observation, to be occupied until the summer of 1884.” The men stayed at Utquiagvik from 1881 to 1883.
Although the main purpose was for scientific/meteorological studies, the report describes the observations of the locals first hand while learning from them.
The 1884 report recorded in-depth observations of the Inuit prior to any major outside influence on their culture.
Pages of Interest:
(page numbers listed by actual report –
not Adobe page number)
Observations of the Inuit – 54
Census of Locals (in their Inuit name) – 49
Inuit Vocabulary – 51
Inuit Artifacts Collected – 61-86
According to the report, hundreds of specimens (now artifacts)
were collected and stored at the United States National Museum.
Some items collected during the 1880’s were logged as “ancient” then.
It is unknown if the ancestral artifacts have been recovered.