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Why Therkel Mathiassen never went to Alaska

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Jarmo Kankaanpää

Why Therkel Mathiassen never went to Alaska

(Published in Andersson, A.-C., Gillberg, Å, Jensen, O.W., Karlsson, H., & Rolöf , M. (eds.):
The Kaleidoscopic Past. Proceedings of the 5 th Nordic TAG Conference, Göteborg, 2-5
April, 1997. Gotarc Serie C, Arkeologiska Skrifter No. 16. Göteborg University, Department
of Archaeology, Göteborg 1998, pp. 302-310.)

Abstract:
Danish archaeologist Therkel Mathiassen discovered the Thule culture while excavating in the
Hudson Bay area in 1921-23. Though he immediately recognized the culture's affinities with earlier
finds from northern Alaska, Mathiassen never took the next obvious step of excavating in that
potential source area. Previously unpublished correspondence between Mathiassen and Canadian
anthropologist Diamond Jenness indicates that Mathiassen did in fact plan to work in Alaska but was
discouraged by Jenness, who advised him that foreign researchers were not welcome there.
However, Jenness' other correspondence suggests that he may have had motives of his own for
keeping Mathiassen out of Alaska, and that what was at stake was much more than the origin of the
Thule culture.

Popular accounts of archaeological discoveries usually give one the impression that
breakthroughs in the field result either from simply sallying forth and discovering
what one already knew was there (as with Schliemann's Troy), or conversely
through totally fortuitous luck (as with the discovery of "Ötzi" the Tyrolean iceman).
The rise of reflexive anthropology has increased our appreciation of the influence of
the personality and personal history of the individual researcher on the interpretation
of archaeological data, but as far as most retrospective accounts are concerned, we
still live in a world where the archaeologist simply decides to go to a certain place
and finds there what training and personal experience have prepared him or her to
find. "Politics" come into play either through their influence directly on the
archaeologist's world view or on the amenability of the public or the powers-that-be
to the archaeologist's subject of study and interpretations, but the influence of
politics on the more mundane plane of who gets to study what and where is
generally considered no more than an unavoidable and – state-level political
enmities aside – largely unpredictable nuisance.

In some cases, however, the archaeologist may be caught up in a political game

between other archaeologists, a game that is quite as much a part of the "culture of
archaeology" as fieldwork itself and thus lawful prey to the archaeologist-as-
anthropologist. In the following, I would wish to present an example of one such
game that dramatically influenced the plans of one unsuspecting archaeologist, and
with him the course of one or two rather prominent branches of northern
archaeology.

Danish archaeologist Therkel Mathiassen (1892-1967) is known in Scandinavia

primarily for his work in Denmark, but he has also been justly called the father of
Eskimo archaeology. Mathiassen's excavations in the western Hudson Bay area
and northern Baffin Island in connection with the Fifth Thule Expedition in 1921-23
 2

were the first scientifically planned and conducted archaeological studies carried out
in the Eskimo area, and his finds and conclusions formed the basis of Eskimo
prehistory for years to come; in fact, much of his work is still valid today. This is not
to say that he was infallible – several of his conclusions actually later proved to be
erroneous – but his mistakes were largely due to shortcomings of the data and did
not detract from the value of his findings.

Through his excavations in Canada, Mathiassen identified an old Eskimo culture of

pronounced maritime character which he called the Thule culture. Mathiassen
concluded that this culture had spread into the Canadian Arctic from northern
Alaska some 1000 years ago and was ancestral to the historical eastern Eskimos –
an interpretation that by and large still stands. Both the western origin and the
maritime focus connected Thule with the hypothetical "Neoeskimo culture"
described by H.P. Steensby in his anthropogeographical analysis of Eskimo origins
(1905, 1916). The primary scientific agenda of the whole Fifth Thule Expedition was
in fact the evaluation of Steensby's theory of Eskimo origins, although this goal
remained elusive in the sense that the expedition's two scientific experts,
Mathiassen and ethnologist Kaj Birket-Smith, disagreed on the verdict (Mathiassen
1927, Birket-Smith 1929).

The amount of new light Therkel Mathiassen and his Canadian colleague,
anthropologist Diamond Jenness, were able to throw on Eskimo prehistory in just
the few years between 1925 and 1927 is a prime example of the way scientific
progress often seems to advance in sudden leaps, interspersed between periods of
slow plodding or even stagnation. After the publications of this duo on the Thule,
Dorset, and Bering Sea cultures, it became eminently clear that North Alaska and
the Bering Strait were the areas where future attention should focus. It seems thus
rather strange that after publishing their seminal reports, these two pioneers
apparently gave up on the issue and turned instead to more regional concerns
(Mathiassen to Greenland, Jenness to a totally different ethnic group), leaving
Alaska to a group of newcomers like Henry Collins, James Ford, and Froelich
Rainey. Why this sudden abandonment of an enterprise begun with such promise?
Jenness= correspondence, preserved in the files of the Canadian Museum of
Civilization, allows us insights into this question that quite naturally were not openly
discussed in publications at the time.1

It does not seem that leaving Alaska to the Americans was in any way a part of the
original plans of either Jenness or Mathiassen, quite the contrary. Already in early
1926, before setting out on his own final Alaskan trip during which he discovered the
Bering Sea culture (Jenness 1928), Jenness wrote to Mathiassen and expressed
the wish that the latter could come with him and “divide the work” (Jenness to
Mathiassen 01/21/26), an offer which Mathiassen politely declined, citing the dearth

1
The author wishes to thank the Canadian Museum of Civilization for access to the
correspondence of Diamond Jenness. For the sake of brevity, only the essence of the
relevant letters will be presented here; full quotes may be found in Kankaanpää 1996.
 3

of available funds and the need to finish his expedition reports (Mathiassen to
Jenness 03/18/26). In several of his following letters, Jenness kept trying to
persuade Mathiassen to come to Canada and work for the Canadian National
Museum (e.g., Jenness to Mathiassen 04/13/26, 06/02/27, 10/21/27), and for a time
Mathiassen was genuinely interested in the idea, since his work for the expedition
was coming to an end and he had a wife and three daughters to support but as of
yet no permanent post in Denmark. Mathiassen’s distress over the future at its most
acute is reflected in one of his letters to Jenness, where he wonders whether there
would be a future for him in Canada if the Danish government proved unwilling to
take care of him (Mathiassen to Jenness 09/03/27). Regardless of mundane
concerns, however, Mathiassen and Jenness agreed on the importance of studies
in Alaska, and once the former had his reports well under way, he too started to
think about an Alaskan expedition, suggesting that Jenness might join him on an
expedition to Alaska in the summer of 1928 (Mathiassen to Jenness 10/06/26).

Looking back at what happened in Eskimo archaeology in the 1930s, ’40s, and even
’50s, the possibility that Mathiassen and Jenness might have excavated together in
Alaska in 1928 raises a number of intriguing “what if” questions, but perhaps even
more intriguing is the reason why this never came to pass. Mathiassen, eagerly
anticipating a chance to work in his proposed Thule homeland, received a surprising
and discouraging cold shower with Jenness’ reply. Jenness informed Mathiassen
that he had been corresponding with Alfred Kidder and Aleš Hrdliçka, the former
being the chairman of the section of Anthropology of the National Research Council
in the U.S. and the latter the curator of the Division of Physical Anthropology at the
Smithsonian and also that Institution’s leading expert on Alaskan anthropology. The
correspondence with Hrdliçka – said Jenness – contained "nothing of importance"
except for the fact that the Smithsonian planned to send one or two young men to
dig in Alaska1. The Kidder correspondence, on the other hand, was a grimmer story.
Jenness appended a copy of a letter he had recently received from Kidder, as well
as his own reply, noting that the United States seemed to be waking up to the
importance of fieldwork in Alaska and that "we" (apparently the Canadian National
Museum) did not want any "jealousy or ill-will" (Jenness to Mathiassen 11/06/26).
The gist was that Jenness thought Kidder was laying claim to the Alaskan territory
and warning foreigners to stay out; consequently, Jenness felt that he could not join
Mathiassen in Alaska and implied that Mathiassen should stay out as well.

Kidder’s letter was actually merely a polite note informing Jenness that the National
Research Council was discussing plans for research in the Bering Sea region, and
inquiring as to what the Canadians had done and were planning to do in “the
northern field,” whether they had considering cooperation with other agencies, and
what Jenness thought of arranging a committee or conference on circumpolar
research (Kidder to Jenness 10/27/1926). Jenness either seems to have read much

1
Aleš Hrdliçka did indeed send Henry Collins to excavated on St. Lawrence Island, where
he found evidence that - contrary to Mathiassen’s assumptions - both Jenness’ Bering
Sea culture and Birnirk were older than Thule.
 4

more into this apparently innocent communication than is obvious to an outsider, or

else the questions it brushed upon were sensitive points to him for some other
reason, for his answering letter to Kidder is both long and emphatic. After noting the
dependence of the advancement Eskimo archaeology on the cooperation of the
various organizations concerned with Arctic research, Jenness brings up
Mathiassen’s suggestion of a joint Danish-Canadian expedition to Alaska. This
leads him to his main point, which is essentially that in his opinion, each country
should concentrate on its own portion of the Arctic and that he himself would not
consider cooperating with Mathiassen on an archaeological expedition to Alaska if
some American organization were prepared to undertake the same research - an
obvious reference to Hrdliçka's plans. Jenness again states his fear of international
misunderstanding or ill-will, noting that limited cooperation would of course be
beneficial and had proven successful in, e.g., the Pan-Pacific conferences, which he
considers to be another field where international rivalry was greatly in evidence
(Jenness to Kidder 11/5/1926).

Jenness’ apparent fear of international ill-will is also touched upon in his earlier
letter to Hrdliçka, where he states that he is inclined to agree with the latter that
institutions and organizations should work independently though sharing plans and
results, and that each country should concentrate on its own section of the Arctic.
Jenness even stresses the point by asserting that common enterprises nearly
always lead to jealousy and suspicion, as they had in the case of the polar airship
flight of Amundsen and Nobile (Jenness to Hrdliçka 10/19/1926).

Mathiassen’s reply to Jenness is characteristically restrained and polite, even

resigned, but his disappointment is obvious. He states that he does not wish to
compete with the Americans over Alaska, emphasizing that his decision to go there
was influenced by Boas' complaining to him in 1924 of having been unable to
secure funding for archaeological work in Alaska for 16 years. Mathiassen notes
that, like Jenness, he has the feeling that the most important Eskimo problems are
to be solved in Alaska, but admits that Greenland is closer for the Danes and asks
Jenness to inform Kidder that he has given up on his Alaskan plans (Mathiassen to
Jenness 11/24/26).

Jenness also commented on the Alaskan situation in a letter to Birket-Smith, with

whom he seems to have been on slightly closer personal terms and thus also more
free with his words. After mentioning that he is to meet with Hrdliçka and Kidder,
Jenness divulges what he refers to as his private impression that the Americans
were just beginning to realize the importance of archaeological work in Alaska and
wished to have their finger or perhaps their whole hand in the pie (Jenness'
metaphor). He notes that he would hesitate to visit Alaska again at least without an
invitation from a leading American institution or organization, and mentions having
sent Mathiassen copies of his correspondence on the subject because he was
planning an expedition to Alaska (Jenness to Birket-Smith 12/23/26).
 5

Birket-Smith did not comment on the Alaska problem in his answering letter. Not a
man to be deterred, however, he arranged to work in South Alaska in 1930 with
Frederica de Laguna (then of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania),
who had worked as Mathiassen’s assistant on the Inugsuk excavation in West
Greenland in 19291. At the last minute, Birket-Smith was prevented from traveling
by a stomach ulcer and had to postpone his trip to 1933, when he and de Laguna
worked together in Prince William Sound and the Copper River Delta (Birket-Smith
to Jenness 10/11/30; 03/27/33; De Laguna 1934:7; Birket-Smith & De Laguna
1938).

Like Birket-Smith, Helge Larsen – the only other European professional

archaeologist to do notable fieldwork in Alaska before World War II – was
connected with American research institutions and individual American researchers.
When he excavated the Ipiutak site at Pt. Hope in 1939-43, it was together with
Froelich Rainey and later as a staff member of the American Museum of Natural
History (Larsen & Rainey 1948:5), and when he excavated the Trail Creek caves in
1949-50, he was sponsored by both the University of Alaska and the University of
Pennsylvania Museum (Larsen 1968:8). The apparent crackdown on foreign
research in Alaska in the late 1920's and the almost simultaneous sally into the field
by Hrdliçka and Collins from the Smithsonian and O.W. Geist and Rainey from the
Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines (later the University of Alaska)
finally established an actual fieldwork basis for the “American school” of Eskimo
archaeology, which so far had mainly produced only laboratory analyses of material
collected by non-professionals (e.g., Wissler 1916 &1918, Mason 1930).

To return to Jenness’ correspondence, however, this sudden bout of territorialism is

somewhat surprising, especially in view of the fact that the most significant
collection of anthropological data to come out of the whole North American Arctic –
that of the Fifth Thule Expedition itself – was the result of international cooperation.
His attempt in the letter to Birket-Smith to lay the blame on the Americans seems
rather lame. Unless there had been some talk about national territories between
Jenness and Hrdliçka when they met in Alaska the previous summer, there is no
indication in the correspondence that either Hrdliçka or Kidder was trying to divide
up the Arctic. What, then, could have given cause for this outburst of concern over
possible international ill-will?

Shortly before the exchange with Kidder, Jenness received a letter from Hrdliçka in
which the latter stated that he had presented the idea of forming a ”Committee on
‘Prehistoric Migrations into America’” to the National Research Council’s
Anthropological Section (chaired by Kidder), and that Boas had suggested that such
a committee join interests with the Swedes and Norwegians to form an international
committee on circumpolar studies. Hrdliçka noted to Jenness that though he was
not averse to the cooperation of others (not with others, note!), he “would rather see

1
. . . and whom Mathiassen had unsuccessfully recommended to Jenness! (Mathiassen
to Jenness 12/12/29, Jenness to Mathiassen 04/08/30.)
 6

our own work, that is yours and ours, proceed independently, that is, unhampered
and uncomplicated” and asked for Jenness’ opinion on the subject (Hrdliçka to
Jenness 10/11/1926). It was to this question that Jenness replied with the
Amundsen-Nobile example, and his answer seems to have been to the liking of
Hrdliçka, who thanked him for his “frank and good letter” and commented, “I agree
with everything you say” (Hrdliçka to Jenness 10/25/1926). Whether Hrdliçka was
actually fishing for precisely the kind of reply he received from Jenness, or whether
he got more than he had wagered for, is not clear, since we do not know the
contents of their discussions in Alaska. However, it does seem clear that Jenness
himself was by no means averse to dividing the Arctic into national areas of interest,
at least as far as the Americans were concerned.

Vilhjalmur Stefánsson’s Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18 (which had brought

Jenness himself to the Arctic for the first time) had been a relative success in spite
of the loss of the Karluk in the ice off Wrangell Island, but that was the only time so
far that the Canadian government had funded a major anthropological expedition to
the Arctic.1 Canada could not compete with the United States in financing
anthropological research, and Jenness noted to Birket-Smith that though he
regretted seeing Danes or Americans doing work that Canadians should be doing
themselves, he would also regret the former refraining from working in Canada
since the Canadians couldn't manage all the necessary work alone. Jenness
emphasized that he wished Mathiassen in particular to be aware of this attitude,
because he thought that the sudden zeal of the United States regarding Alaska had
been something of a rebuff to the archaeologist (Jenness to Birket-Smith
12/23/1926).

Considering his previous letters to the United States, Jenness seems to have been
playing something of a double game. On the one hand, he welcomed Birket-Smith
and Mathiassen to Canada, while simultaneously trying to convince Hrdliçka and
Kidder that what they really wanted was a mutual hands-off policy with only a limited
exchange of plans and results. Apparently, Jenness did not consider the Danes to
be a threat to Canadian sovereignty but the Americans very much so. The
Americans, of course, had been encroaching on what the Canadians considered
“their” Arctic (Levere 1993:340-41) for quite some time, beginning with the New
England whalers in Hudson Bay and the Franklin search expeditions of De Haven,
Kane, Hall, and Schwatka in the mid-1800's and continuing with American mineral
rights claims on Baffin Island in 1874 (Levere 1993:263) and the ill-fated U.S. Army
expedition under Greely to northern Ellesmere Island in 1881-83. Also, already by
the late 1850's, American naturalists and Hudson’s Bay Company managers under
their patronage were collecting specimens for the Smithsonian all over the
Canadian Arctic; as Levere notes, “Given [the] lack of aggressive territoriality on the
part of Canada, on the mainland as well as in the archipelago, American collectors

1
The earlier naval expeditions up to 1880 (when the Arctic Archipelago was transferred to
Canada) had of course been under the sponsorship of the British Admiralty, not the
Dominion government.
 7

for museums tended to regard the entire continental arctic sweep as their preserve”
(Levere 1993:341, 344-56).

In a sense, this activity culminated in Vilhjalmur Stefánsson’s “Stefánsson -

Anderson Arctic Expedition” of 1908-12, which was sponsored primarily by the
American Museum of Natural History although the Geological Survey of Canada
(which at the time was also responsible for ethnology) shouldered part of the
financial burden in exchange for a part of the specimens and ethnological results
(Richling 1995:112). Canada itself had been stingy indeed in allocating funds for
anthropological research1, and consequently the national collections were small.
Even Stefánsson, who was best known for his discovery of the “Blond Eskimos”,
succeeded in convincing the Canadian government to fund his Canadian Arctic
Expedition primarily on the grounds that he could expect to find new lands rather
than new people2 (Levere 1993:390-92). The anthropological studies he planned
were more or less a side issue from the government’s point of view, but it was
nevertheless Jenness’ work as a member of this expedition that provided the first
professionally excavated archaeological collections from the Canadian Arctic and
also the most notable Canadian contributions to Eskimo anthropology thus far in the
form of his studies on the Copper Eskimo.

The practically unbridled collecting of anthropological material from the Canadian

Arctic by agents of rich foreign museums like the Smithsonian undoubtedly created
resentment among the Canadians, and Jenness’ intentions certainly gain a clear
purpose in this light. So far, there had been no major organized American incursion
with specifically anthropological goals into the Canadian Arctic, but Hrdliçka’s
allusion to planned research on prehistoric migrations into America did not bode
well. The previous major enterprise in that direction had resulted in Boas’ Jesup
Expedition, which had seen a notable amount of Canadian Northwest Coast Indian
ethnography end up in American museums and publications while Canada itself
received little of the proceeds - obviously one of the examples of the “international
rivalry” that Jenness was referring to in connection with the Pan-Pacific Conference.
Being a representative of the Canadian government but having little or no political
power himself, Jenness could not presume to dictate policy in an internationally
touchy question concerning a powerful neighbor. His best option therefore was to
set an example in honoring territorial rights himself, hoping that Kidder and Hrdliçka
would feel morally obliged to follow suite. The latters’ suggestion of a conference
and Hrdliçka’s hint about “independence” - by which he could well have simply

1
Richling (1995:110) notes that up to the founding of the Geological Survey’s
Anthropological Division in 1910, the only government funds directed toward
anthropological purposes were five annual stipends of $500, voted to the Geological
Survey between 1890 and 1895 for the purchase of ethnographic specimens.
2
Laying actual claim to Arctic lands had become a topic of some importance in Canada
after Otto Sverdrup claimed for Norway the new islands he had found west of Ellesmere
Island during the Second Fram Expedition.
 8

meant that the Smithsonian and the Canadian National Museum should not
entangle themselves in international politics - offered Jenness a marvelous chance
to take up the subject and treat it (rightly or wrongly) as an American proposal for
territorial delineation with which he was only too happy to agree.

Thus, in a sense, the Mathiassen-Jenness Alaskan expedition was sacrificed on the

altar of Canadian sovereignty. By convincing Mathiassen to abandon the prospect,
Jenness could offer the Americans a concrete demonstration of the seriousness of
his own intentions and oblige them to reciprocate. Jenness seems to have had a
bad conscience over the matter, as can be gathered from the letter to Birket-Smith
quoted above, and his continued efforts to convince Mathiassen to come over and
work for the National Museum of Canada may be seen partly as an attempt to make
amends. However, Jenness did not, and naturally could not, admit to either
Mathiassen or Birket-Smith that he was using them as pawns in a larger game, so
the blame had to be shifted to the Americans’ wish to have their whole hand in what
was admittedly their own pie.

Thus collapsed the plan for a Danish-Canadian expedition to Alaska. Where it

would have excavated and what it might have achieved must remain an object of
speculation, but a few possible sites come readily to mind. Point Barrow, Cape
Smythe (Utkiavik), and Birnirk were known to Mathiassen from Stefánsson’s and
Wissler’s reports and Rasmussen’s collection (Mathiassen 1927/II:174), and in any
case the Barrow Eskimos were in his opinion closest to the original Thule culture
(ibid. pp. 175-76). Mathiassen also noted that “rather more pronounced Thule
culture” was to be found in a small collection from Cape Prince of Wales and the
Diomede Islands that the National Museum had obtained in 1926 (ibid. p. 176), and
Jenness himself had also excavated in these areas that same year (Jenness
1928b). Finally, there was Rasmussen’s report on the ancient village at Point Hope
(e.g., Rasmussen 1927:329-330), which would probably have attracted
Mathiassen's attention with its sheer size.

As it turned out, of course, it was Larsen and Rainey who finally excavated on
Rasmussen’s hunch at Pt. Hope in 1939-41and published their report in 1948. Ford
worked at Barrow in 1931-32 but didn’t publish until 1959, and Collins excavated at
Wales in 1936 without ever publishing a full report. Had Mathiassen excavated at
Barrow or Wales, he might have become convinced of the correct temporal order of
Birnirk and Thule and averted at least that argument with Collins. Living for a while
on the North Alaskan coast might also have caused him to rethink his ethnographic
parallels and the interpretations they produced concerning the Thule culture’s
subsistence pattern. Finally, it would have been interesting indeed to see what
would have happened if Mathiassen and Jenness had discovered the Ipiutak site at
Point Hope.

But Mathiassen never did get to North Alaska, and for better or for worse, the study
of that area fell for a while to men such as Collins and Ford, who were steeped in
the methods of the classificatory-chronological “culture history” approach that
 9

dominated archaeology in the American Southwest. Masters of typology, they were

nevertheless far removed from the more comprehensive Scandinavian approach to
archaeology as pre-ethnography. Ford’s report (1959) in particular comes across as
essentially a study of objects rather than the people who made them, something
very different from Mathiassen’s attempt to actually reconstruct the living culture (or
at least its practical aspects) from the archaeological record. Perhaps somewhat
ironically, an approach clearly related to Mathiassen’s and intentionally contrasting
with Ford’s was advocated for American archaeology in general and Southwestern
archaeology in particular by Walter Taylor (1948) some twenty years after
Mathiassen decided against going to Alaska and Collins completed his first field
season on St. Lawrence Island.

Jarmo Kankaanpää, Ph.D.

National Board of Antiquities,
Finland

References:

Birket-Smith, Kaj 1929

The Caribou Eskimos. Material and Social Life and their Cultural Position. I. Descriptive
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Copenhagen.

Birket-Smith, Kaj & De Laguna, Frederica 1938

The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta. Copenhagen.

Ford, James A. 1959

Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska. Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History Vol. 47 Pt. 1. New York.

Jenness, Diamond 1928

Archæological Investigations in Bering Strait. -National Museum of Canada Bulletin No.
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Jenness, Diamond (unpublished)

Correspondence on file at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa.

Kankaanpää, Jarmo 1996

Thule Subsistence. Ph.D. dissertation, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.

De Laguna, Frederica 1934

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Ipiutak and the Arctic Whale Hunting Culture. Anthropological Papers of the American
Museum of Natural History Vol. 42. New York.
 10

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