William B. Van Valin Expedition Records

William Blair Van Valin (1878-1951) was a teacher at U.S. Government schools in Alaska and self-taught anthropologist. The University Museum initially reached out to Van Valin in 1912 at the recommendation of Ernest William Hawkes to acquire Van Valin's collection of Alaskan curios, which included a whaling outfit discovered by one of his students. In 1917, Van Valin returned to the Arctic with his family and traveled to Point Barrow (Nuvuk) with a stipend from the Museum (sponsored by John Wanamaker, then Vice-President of the Museum's Board of Managers) and an assignment to make ethnographic observations, collect antiquities, and document Native Alaskans and their customs. Van Valin spent much of his time near Point Barrow participating in activities such as whaling, which he documented in photographs and motion-pictures.

As word of Van Valin's expedition spread, many Native Alaskans in the area conducted their own searches for artifacts to sell to Van Valin. In 1918 one such individual, Ootoyuk, discovered human remains in an earthen mound near Barrow (now Utqiagvik) and reported them to Van Valin. Van Valin centered his excavation on this mound and others in its vicinity, uncovering over 80 bodies from six buried "igloos." Van Valin determined that the remains were ancient due to the lack of oral tradition among the Inupiaq regarding a settlement at the site, which is called Kugusugaruk. Additional remains were uncovered at another site called Nunavak. Van Valin believed the Kugusugaruk remains to be a part of the Thule culture, though more recent scholarship has indicated that the remains fit more closely with the earlier Birnirk people. Upon his arrival in Nome on his way back to the mainland in 1919, Van Valin attracted national attention for his finds, with newspapers across the U.S. reporting on his expedition. Van Valin's finds were sent to the University Museum upon the expedition's conclusion. In 1941 Van Valin published a book about his time in the Arctic titled .

In 1928, the human remains in the Van Valin Collection were transferred to the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology. Aleš Hrdlička, biological anthropologist and curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, measured the skeletons and determined that their physical characteristics closely resembled those of skeletons from Greenland and Labrador rather than those of modern Alaskans. John Alden Mason, curator of the American Section at the University Museum as of 1926, was intrigued by Hrdlička's assessment of the human remains and wrote a report on the Van Valin collection. Based on Hrdlička's measurements and harpoon typology developed by Danish archaeologist Therkel Mathiassen, Mason concluded that the sites excavated by Van Valin were the first in Alaska to contain human remains and artifacts congruent with Thule culture. Mason presented his report, at the Twenty-Third International Congress of Americanists in New York in September of 1928, the proceedings of which were published in 1930. Hrdlička published his analysis of the Point Barrow specimens in his in 1930.

Also in 1928, Hrdlička conferred with Charles Brower, a trader in Barrow, about the sites excavated by Van Valin. Brower expressed doubts that the mounds Van Valin excavated were igloos or dwellings, and believed that they were instead burial mounds. Brower was also concerned that the remaining mounds in the area would be looted by local Alaskans searching for artifacts to sell. Hrdlička forwarded this information to Mason, who initiated another expedition on behalf of the University Museum, which was eventually carried out by Alfred Hopson. Records from the Hopson expedition are contained in its own collection.

The Van Valin collection has attracted the interest of many over the years. In 1935, Van Valin's materials (and presumably Hopson's) were recataloged by Frederica de Laguna, an archaeologist, and Geraldine Bruckner, the University Museum's first registrar. In 1956 James Ford, and archaeologist unaffiliated with the University Museum, excavated near Barrow and shared some of his findings with the Museum, including pinpointed locations of Van Valin and Hopson's excavation sites.

The material in the Van Valin collection includes correspondence and results of his archaeological and ethnographic work as well as Van Valin's notes and collection inventories. Of special interest are Van Valin's original floor plans he drew for the igloos he excavated. Other original Van Valin maps and diagrams are in a folder in an oversize drawer. Two folders containing prints of photos taken by Van Valin are housed with other photos from the North American section. The archives also has an extensive collection of Van Valin's negatives. The collection also includes correspondence, notes, and drafts relating to Hrdlička's and Mason's research on Van Valin's materials. The third box in the collection contains index cards of notes made by de Laguna and Bruckner when recataloging the material in 1935. Van Valin's motion picture films are not housed at the Penn Museum. They were retained by Van Valin and donated by his descendants to the Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution (no. 86.5.1). The materials in the Van Valin collection are divided into the following series: Correspondence; Financial Records; Notes and Observations; Inventories; J. Alden Mason; Recataloging Notes; and Photographs.

Correspondence

The correspondence series includes letters concerning the Van Valin expedition and subsequent publications spanning primarily from 1916-1923, with additional correspondence from 1930, 1945, and 1957. The series primarily contains letters from Van Valin to Professor George Byron Gordon, the Museum's director (1910-1927).

Financial Records

Financial Records includes expense vouchers and receipts for supplies, artifacts, and transport purchased by Van Valin during his expedition for the Museum.

Notes and Observations

The Notes and Observations series contains Van Valin's notes from his expedition. This includes his excavation notes, Van Valin's hand drawn plans of the "igloos" he excavated, and descriptions of Native Alaskan cultural practices and transcriptions of Inupiaq stories. There are also oversize maps and drawings by Van Valin, including a map of the coast surrounding Barrow with Inupiaq place names, igloo plans, and artifact drawings.

Inventories

Inventories contains lists of artifacts and human remains collected by Van Valin and sent to the University Museum. There are also lists of artifacts with accompanying Inupiaq translations of item names. This series includes the original inventories written by Van Valin while preparing the artifacts for shipment to the Museum as well as inventories conducted by museum staff in the 1930s.

J. Alden Mason

The J. Alden Mason series includes correspondence and research conducted by John Alden Mason, the curator of the American Section at the University Museum from 1926 to 1958, for his report on Van Valin's finds. Mason's notes and drafts of the report are included in the series.

Recataloging Notes

The Recataloging Notes series includes notes made by Frederica de Laguna and Geraldine Bruckner when recataloging the Van Valin and Hopson materials in 1935.

Photographs

Van Valin took over 370 photographs while working for the Museum, in the form of nitrate negatives (transferred to safety film in 1984). The negatives have been numbered and catalogued individually in the Museum's image database. There are also two folders of prints, the first made from the Museum's negatives and the second from photographs belonging to the Van Valin family and acquired in 1987.time in Alaska before and during his work for the Museum. One of the folders contains prints donated by Van Valin's family in 1987.

Publication Information: University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives,

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Preferred Citation:

Hopson Expedition Records

George B. Gordon Director's Office Records

J. Alden Mason American Section Records