•HI -, S "I LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE ALASKA AND THE SEAL ISLANDS HENRY W. ELLIOTT ILLUSTRATED BY KANT DRAWINGS FROM NATURE IfAPS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1906 CHARLES SCRIBNEK'S SONS fROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY. INTRODUCTION. IF the writer could materialize in the reader's mind that large aggregate of printed matter now stacked on book-shelves and filed in newspaper columns, which has been published to the world during the last eighty years upon Alaska, the effect would cer- tainly be startling. Scores of weighty volumes, hundreds of pamphlets and mag- azine articles, and a thousand newspaper letters, have been devoted to the subject of Alaskan life, scenery, and value. In contempla- tion of this, viewed from the author's standpoint of extended per- sonal experience, he announces his determination to divest him- self of all individuality in the following chapters, to portray in word, and by brush and pencil, the life and country of Alaska as it is, so clearly and so truthfully, that the reader may draw his or her own inference, just as though he or she stood upon the ground itself. How differently a number of us are impressed in the viewing of any one subject, by which observation we utterly fail to agree as to its character and worth ! This variance is handsomely illustrated by the diverse opinion of Alaskan travellers. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, February 2G, 1886. 258603 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER pp. 1-12 The Legend of Bering's Voyage. — The Discovery of Russian America, or Alaska, in July, 1741. — The Return Voyage and Shipwreck of the Discoverer. — The Escape of the Survivors. — They Tell of the Furs and Ivory of Alaska. — The Rush of Russian Traders. — Their Hardy Exploration of the Aleutian Chain, Kadiak, and the Mainland, 1760-80, inclusive. — Fierce Competi- tion of the Promyshlineks finally Leads to the Organization and Domina- tion of the Russian American Company over all Alaska, 1799. — Its Remark- able Success under Baraiiov's Administration, 1800-18, inclusive. — Its Rapid Decadence after Baranov's Removal. — Causes in 1862-64 which Led to the Refusal of the Russian Government to Renew the Charter of the Russian American Company. — Steps which Led to the Negotiations of Seward and Final Acquisition of Alaska by the U. S. Government, 1867. CHAPTEK H. FEATURES OP THE SITKAN REGION pp. 13-35 The Vast Area of Alaska. — Difficulty of Comparison, and Access to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region. — Many Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders, Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska during the last Eighteen Years. — Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now on Record. — Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan Archipelago. — The Decaying Town of Wrangel. — The Wonderful Glaciers of this Region. — The Tides. Currents, and Winds. — The Forests and Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago. —Indigenous Berries. — Gloomy Grandeur of the Canons. — The Sitkan Climate. — Neither Cold nor Warm — Excessive Humidity. — Stickeen Gold Excitement of 1862 and 1875. — The Decay of Cassiar. — The Picturesque Bay of Sitka. — The Romance and Terror of Baranov's Establishment there in 1800-1805.— The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka.— The Contrast between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One. Vi CONTENTS. CHAPTEE m. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS pp. 36-66 The White Man and the Indian Trading. — The Shrewdness and Avarice of the Savage. — Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade of Alaska.— The Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to Influence the Sitkan In- dians.— The Reason why Missionary Work in Alaska has been and is Impotent. The Difference between the Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and the Meat-eating Savage of the Plains.— Simply One of Physique. — The Haidahs the Best Indians of Alaska. —Deep Chests and Bandy Legs from Canoe-travel. — Living in Fixed Settlements because Obliged To. — Large "Rancheries" or Houses Built by the Haidahs. — Communistic Families. — Great Gamblers. — Indian "House-Raising Bees." — Grotesque Totem Posts. — Indian Doctors "Kill or Cure." — Dismal Interior of an Indian " Rancherie." — The Toilet and Dress of Alaskan Si washes. — The Unwrit- ten Law of the Indian Village.— What Constitutes a Chief.— The Tribal Boundaries and their Scrupulous Regard.— Fish the Main Support of Sitkan Indians. — The Running of the Salmon. — Indians Eat Everything. — Their Salads and Sauces.— Their Wooden Dishes and Cups, and Spoons of Horn.— The Family Chests. — The Indian Woman a Household Drudge. — She has no Washing to Do, However. — Sitkan Indians not Great Hunters. — They are Unrivalled Canoe-builders. — Small-pox and Measles have Reduced the Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty Number. — Abandoned Settlements of these Savages Common. — The Debauchery of Rum among these People. — The White Man to Blame for This. CHAPTER IV. THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS pp. 07-81 The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka. — The Value and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska. — The Old ' ' Redoubt " or Russian Jail.— The Tread well Mine. — Futility of Predicting what may, or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery. — Coal of Alaska not fit for Steam- ing Purposes. — Salmon Canneries. —The Great "Whaling Ground'' of Fairweather. —Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant. — Mount Fairweather so named as the Whale- men's Barometer. — The Storm here in 1741 which Separated Bering and his Lieutenant. — The Grandeur of Mount St. Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet. — A Tempestuous and Forbidding Coast to the Mariner. —The Brawling Copper River. — Mount Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North American Continent. — In the Forks of this Stream. — Exaggerated Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives. — Frigid, Gloomy Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound. — The First Vessel ever built by White Men on the Northwest CONTENTS. Vll Coast, Constructed here in 1794. — The Brig Phoenix, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint or Tar — Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil, Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Dea- cons of the Greek Church on Board. — Every Soul Lost. — Love of the Natives for their Rugged, Storm-beaten Homes. CHAPTER V. COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE pp. 82-97 Cook's "Great River." — The Tide-rips, and their Power in Cook's Inlet. — The Impressive Mountains of the Inlet. — The Glaciers of Turnagain Canal. — Old Russian Settlements. — Kenai Shore of the Inlet, the Garden-spot of Alaska. — Its Climate best Suited to Civilized Settlement. — The Old "Colonial Citizens'' of the Russian Company. — Small Shaggy Siberian Cattle. — Burning Volcano of Ilyamna. — The Kenaitze Indians. — Their Primitive, Simple Lives. — They are the Only Native Land-animal Hunt- ers of Alaska.— Bears and Bear Roads.— Wild Animals seek Shelter in Volcanic Districts.— Natives Afraid to Follow Them. — Kenaitze Archi- tecture.— Sunshine in Cook's Inlet. — Splendid Salmon. — Waste of Fish as Food by Natives. — The Pious Fishermen of Neelshik. — Russian Gold- mining Enterprise on the Kaknoo, 1848-55. — Failure of our Miners to Discover Paying Mines in this Section. CHAPTER VL THE GREAT ISLAND OP KADIAK pp. 98-126 Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska. — Site of the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company. — Shellikov and his Remark- able History, 1784. — His Subjection of the Kaniags. — Bloody Struggle.— He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago. — Kadiak, a Large and Rugged Island. — The Timber Line drawn upon it. — Luxuriant Growth of Annual and Biennial Flowering Plants. — Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned for Sitka. — The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company on Wood Island.— Only Road and Horses in Alaska there. — Creole Ship and Boat Yard. — Tough Siberian Cattle. — Pretty Greek Chapel at Yealovuie. — Afognak, the Larg- est Village of "Old Colonial Citizens. "—Picturesque and Substantial Vil- lage.— Largest Crops of Potatoes raised here. — No Ploughing done ; Earth Prepared with Spades. — Domestic Fowls. — Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at Kolma. — What a "Creole" is. — The Kaniags or Natives of Ka- diak; their Salient Characteristics.— Great Diminution of their Num- bers.— Neglect of Laws of Health by Natives. — Apathy and Indifference to Death. — Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska ; Measles equally deadly. — Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters. — The Penal Vlll CONTENTS. Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska.— The Wild Coast of the Peninsula. — Water-terraces on the Mountains. — Belcovsky, the Rich and Profligate Settlement. — Kvass Orgies. — Oouga, Cod-fishing Rendezvous. —The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741,— The Coal Mines here Worthless. CHAPTER VH. THE QUEST OF THE OTTER pj* 127-144 Searching for the Otter. — Exposure and Danger in Hunting Sea-otters. — The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the Captor. — Altasov and his Band of Cruel Cossacks. — Feverish Energy of the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders. — Their Shameful Excesses. — Greed for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Ex- plore the Entire Alaskan Coast, 1760-1780.— Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they were First Discovered in Alaska. — Their Partial Extermina- tion in 1836-40. — More Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the Twenty Years Preceding. — What is an Otter? — A Description of its Strange Life. — Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500. — The Typical Sea- otter Hunter. — A Description of Him and his Family. — Hunting the Sea- Cotter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians. — Gloomy, Storm- beaten Haunts of the Otter. — Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous of the Hunters.— The "Surround" of the Otter.— " Clubbing" the Otter.— " Netting " the Otter.— " Surf -shooting " Them. CHAPTER VHI. THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN pp. 145-187 The Aleutian Islands. — A Great Volcanic Chain. — Symmetrical Beauty of Shishaldin Cone. — The Banked Fires in Oonimak. — Once most Densely Populated of all the Aleutians ; now Without a Single Inhabitant. — Sharp Contrast in the Scenery of the Aleutian and Sitkan Archipelagoes. — Fog, Fog, Fog, Everywhere Veiling and Unveiling the Chain Inces- santly.—Schools of Hump-back Whales. — The Aleutian Whalers.— Odd and Reckless Chase. — The Whale-backed Volcano of Akootan. — Striking Outlines of Kahlecta Point and the " Bishop." — Lovely Bay of Oonalashka. — No Wolf e'er Howled from its Shore. — Illoolook Village. — The "Curved Beach." — The Landscape a Fascinating Picture to the Ship- weary Trav- eller.— Flurries of Snow in August. — Winds that Riot over this Aleutian Chain.— The Massacre of Drooshinnin and One Hundred and Fifty of his Siberian Hunters here in 1762-63.— This the only Desperate and Fatal Blow ever Struck by the Docile Aleutes.— The Rugged Crown and Noisy Crater of Makooshin.— The Village at its Feet.— The Aleutian People the Best Natives of Alaska. — All Christians. — Quiet and Respectful. — Fash- ions and Manners among them. — The "Barrabkie." — Quaint Exterior and Interior. —These Natives Love Music and Dancing. — Women on the CONTENTS. ix Wood and Water Trails.— Simple Cuisine. —Their Remarkable Willing- ness to be Christians. — A Greek Church or Chapel in every Settlement. — General Intelligence. — Keeping Accounts with the Trader's Store. — They are thus Proved to be Honest at Heart.— The Festivals or "Praz- niks."— The Phenomena of Borka Village.— It is Clean. —Little Ceme- teries.— Faded Pictures of the Saints. — Atto, the Extreme Western Set- tlement of the North American Continent. — Three Thousand Miles West of San Francisco !— The Mummies of the " Cheetiery Sopochnie." — The Birth of a New Island.— The Rising of Boga Slov. CHAPTER IX. WONDERFUL, SEAL. ISLANDS pp. 188-253 The Fur-seal Millions of the Pribylov Islands. — Marvellous Exhibition of Massed Animal-life in a State of Nature. — Story of the Discovery of these Remarkable Rookeries, July, 1786. — Previous Knowledge of them Unknown to Man. — Sketch of the Pribylov Islands. — Their Character, Climate, and Human Inhabitants. — A Realm of Summer-fog. — The Seal- life here Overshadows Everything, though the Bird Rookeries of Saint George are Wonderful. — No Harbors.— The Roadsteads. — The Attractive Flora. — Only Islands in Alaska where the Curse of Mosquitoes is Re- moved.— Natives Gathering Eggs on Walrus Islet. — A Scene of Confusion and Uproar. — Contrast very Great between Saint Paul and Saint George. — Good Reason of the Seals in Resorting to these Islands to the Exclusion of all other Land in Alaska.— Old-time Manners and Methods of the Rus- sians Contrasted with Our Present Control. — Vast Gain and Improvement for Seals and Natives. — The Character of the Present Residents. — Their Attachment to the Islands. — The History of the Alaska Commercial Com- pany.— The Wise Action of Congress. — The Perfect Supervision of the Agents of the Government. — Seals are more Numerous now than at First. — The Methods of the Company, the Government, and the Natives in Taking the Seals. CHAPTER X. AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS pp. 254-353 Difference between a Hair-seal and a Fur-seal. — The Fur-seal the most Intelli- gent of all Amphibians. — Its singularly Free Progression on Land. — Its Power in the Water. — The Old Males the First Arrivals in the Spring. — Their Desperate Battles one with Another for Position on the Breeding Grounds. — Subsequent Arrival of the Females. — Followed by the " Bach- elors."— Wonderful Strength and Desperate Courage of the Old Males.— Indifference of the Females. — Xoise of the Rookeries Sounds like the Roar of Niagara.— Old Males fast from May to August, inclusive ; neither Eat X CONTENTS. nor Drink, nor Leave their Stations in all that Time. — Graceful Females. — Frolicsome " Pups." — They have to Learn to Swim ! — How they Learn.— Astonishing Vitality of the Fur-seal. — "Podding" of the Pups.— Beauti- ful Eyes of the Fur-seal. — How the " Holluschickie," or Bachelor Seals, Pass the Time. — They are the only ones Killed for Fur. — They Herd alone by Themselves in spite of their Inclination; Obliged to. — They are the Champion Swimmers of the Sea. — A Review of the Vast Breeding Rook- eries.— Natives Gathering a Drove. — Driving the Seals to the Slaughter- ing Fields.— No Chasing— no Hunting of Seals.— The Killing Gang at •Work: Skinning, Salting, and Shipping the Pelts.— All Sent Direct to London. — Reasons Why. — How the Skins are Prepared for Sacks, Muffs, etc. CHAPTER XL THE ALASKAN SEA-LION pp. 354-373 A Pelagic Monarch. — Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and the Fur- seal. — The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the "Sea-king." — Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls. — Cowardly in the Presence of Man, however. — Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury of Ocean Surf.— It has no Fur on its Huge Hide. — Valuable only to the Natives, who Cover their "Bidarrah" with its Skin.— Its Sweet Flesh and Inodorous Fat.— Not such Extensive Travellers as the Fur-seals. — The Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions. — How the Natives Corral them. — The Sea-lion " Pen '' at North- east Point. — The Drive of Sea-lions. — Curious Behavior of the Animals. — Arrival of the Drove at the Village. — A Thirteen -mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.— Shooting the old Males.— The Bloody " Death- whirl."— The Extensive Economic Use made of the Carcass by the Natives. — Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with Sea-lion Mustache bristles. CHAPTER XH. INNUIT LIFE AND LAND pp. 374-411 " Nooshagak ;" Wide Application of an Innuit Name. — The Post and River. — Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District bordering Bristol Bay. — The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast. — The Features and Form of Alaskan Innuits. — Light-hearted, Inconstant, and Independent. — Their Dress, Manners, and Rude Dwellings.— Their Routine of Life. — Large and Varied Natural Food-supplies. — Indifferent Land Hunters, but Mighty Fishermen. — Limited Needs from Traders' Stores. — Skilful Carvers in Ivory.— Their Town Hall, or " Kashga. "— They Build and Support no Churches here. — Not of a real Religious Cast, as the Aleutians are.— The Dogs and Sleds ; Importance of Them here. — Great Interest of the Innuit in Savage Ceremonies.— The Wild Alaskan Interior. — Its Repellent Features alike Avoided by Savage and Civilized Man. —The Indescribable Misery CONTENTS. XI of Mosquitoes. — The Desolation of Winter in this Region. — The Reindeer Slaughter-pen on the Kvichak River. — Amazing Improvidence of the Innuit. —The Tragic Death of Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great Ilyamna Lake, 1796. — The Queer Innuits of Togiak. — Immense Muskrat Catch.— The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska. — The Kuskokvim Mouth a Vast Salmon-trap. — The Ichthyophagi of Alaska. — Dense Population. — Daily Life of the Fish-eaters. — Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskokvim ; the Worst in Alaska. — Kolmakovsky ; its History. CHAPTER LONELY NORTHERN WASTES pp. 412-435 The Mississippi of Alaska : the Yukon River, and its Thorough Exploration. — Its vast Deltoid Mouth. — Cannot be Entered by Sea-going Vessels.— Its Valley, and its Tributaries. — Dividing Line between the Eskimo and the Indian on its Banks. — The Trader's Steamer ; its Whistle in this Lone Waste of the Yukon.— Michaelovsky, the Trading Centre for this Exten- sive Circumpolar Area. — The Characteristic Beauties of an Arctic Land- scape in Summer. — Thunder-storms on the Upper Yukon ; never Experi- enced on the Coast and at its Mouth. — Gorgeous Arches of Auroral Light; Beautiful Spectacular Fires in the Heavens. — Unhappy Climate. — Saint Michael's to the Northward. — Zagoskin, the Intrepid Young Russian Ex- plorer, 1842. — Snow Blizzards. — Golovin Bay; our People Prospecting there for Lead and Silver. — Drift-wood from the Yukon Strews the Beaches of Bering Sea. — Ookivok, and its Cliff-cave Houses.— Hardy Walrus-hunters. — Grantley Harbor ; a Reminder of a Costly American Enterprise and its Failure. — Cape Prince of Wales — facing Asia, thirty-six miles away. — Simeon Deschnev, the first White Man to see Alaska, 1648. His Bold Journey. — The Diomede Islands ; Stepping-stones between Asia and America in Bering Straits.— Kotzebue Sound; the Rendezvous for Arctic Traders ; the Last Northern Station Visited by Salmon.— Interest- ing Features of the Place. CHAPTER XIV. MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT pp. 436-465 The Monotonous Desolation of the Alaskan Arctic Coast. — Dreary Expanse of Low Moorlands. — Diversified by Saddle-backed Hills of Gray and Bronze Tints. — The Coal of Cape Beaufort in the Arctic. — A Narrow Vein. — Pure Carboniferous Formation. — Doubtful if these Alaskan " Black Dia- monds" can be Successfully Used. — Icy Cape, a Sand- and Gravel-spit. — Remarkable Land-locked Lagoons on the Beach. — The Arctic Innuits. — Point Barrow, Our Extreme Northern Land, a Low Gravel-spit. — The But- Xll CONTENTS. tercup and the Dandelion Bloom here, however, as at Home. — Back to Bering Sea. — The Interesting Island and Natives of St. Lawrence. — The Sea-horse. — Its Uncouth Form and Clumsy Life. — Its Huge Bulk and Impo- tency on Land. — Lives entirely by Clam-digging. — Rank Flavor of its Flesh. — The Walrus is to the Innuit just as the Cocoa-palm is to the South Sea Islander. — Hunting the Morse. — The Jagged, Straggling Island of St. Matthew. — The Polar Bears' Carnival.— Hundreds of them here. — Their Fear of Man. — "Over the Hills and Far Away," whenever Approached.— Completion of the Alaskan Circuit. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. SITKA SOUND, Frontispiece. SEA-COW, Facing page 4 GRAND GLACIER, ICY BAY, " 19 KOOTZNAHOO INLET, " 23 GLIMPSE OF SITKA, " 32 STICKEEN SQUAW BOILING BERRIES AND OIL, . " 58 MOUNT ST. ELIAS, 19,500 FEET, *« 73 MOUNT WRANGEL, 20,000 FEET, , " 77 VALDES GLACIER, PRINCE WILLIAM'S SOUND, . . "78 MOUNT ILYAMNA, 12,060 FEET, *« 87 KENAITZE SALMON TRAP, COOK'S INLET, ... " 95 CREOLES AND ALEUTES, PENCIL PORTRAITS, . " 108 BELCOVSKY, VILLAGE OF, " 120 SEA -OTTER SURROUND, 140 CLUBBING SEA-OTTERS, ....... " 143 A GLIMPSE OF SHISHALDIN, " 146 ALEUTES WHALING, " 152 VILLAGE OF OONALASHKA, " 156 VOLCANO OF MAKOOSHIN, 5,475 FEET, .... " 160 OONALASHKAN NATIVES CODFISHING, .... " 168 VILLAGE AND HARBOR OF ATTOO, .... " 179 NORTH SHORE OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND, ... " 200 NETTING CHOOCHKIES, " 209 APPROACH TO ST. GEORGE ISLAND, .... * 227 HAIR-SEALS, GROUP OF, " 255 FUR-SEALS, " 258 "OLD JOHN," PORTRAIT OF AN AGED FUR-SEAL, . " 262 OLD FUR-SEAL BULLS FIGHTING " 266 SUNDRY SEAL SKETCHES, FROM AUTHOR'S PORTFOLIO, " 277 X1T LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ARRIVAL OP THE FUR-SEAL MILLIONS, .... Facing page 296 NATIVES GATHERING A DRIVE, " 333 NATIVES DRIVING FUR-SEALS, " 336 KILLING GANG AT WORK, u 339 GROUP OP SEA-LIONS, " 354 SEA-LION ROOKERY AT TOLSTOI, " 358 NATIVES CREEPING UPON SEA-LIONS, .... " 364 THE SEA-LION PEN AT NOVASTOSHNAH, ... " 365 SPRINGING THE ALARM, 366 NOOSHAGAK, " 374 PORTRAIT OP "CHAMI," AND THE FAVORITE POSITION OP INNUITS, " 378 PORTRAITS OP A JESTING INNUIT MOTHER AND THE SON OP AHGAAN, " 395 THE SADDLE-BACKED HAIR-SEAL, Hwtriophaca, . . 400 THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER BELOW KOLMAKOVSKY, . . " 403 KOLMAKOVSKY, 406 TOMB OP INNUITS, . . 410 CAPE PRINCE OP WALES, " 429 POONOOK WINTER VILLAGE, " 443 GROUP OP WALRUS, " 447 PINNACLE ISLET, NEAR ST. MATTHEW ISLAND, . " 461 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT. PAGE VIGNETTE: HAIDAHS HUNTING HAIR-SEALS, .... Title LODGES IN A VAST WILDERNESS, 16 BARANOV'S CASTLE (1817-26), 30 SITKAN CHIMES, -39 OLD INDIAN CHAPEL, SITKA, 41 HAIDAH RANCHERIE, 46 SECTION SHOWING INTERIOR, . .48 RAKING OOLOCHANS, STICKEEN RIVER, 57 KENAITZE CHIEF, 88 BEAR ROADS, OONIMAK ISLAND, 90 KENAITZE RANCHERIE, COOK'S INLET, 92 OOGASHIK, VILLAGE OP, 119 SEA-OTTER, 131 BARRABKIE, OR ALEUTIAN HUT, 135 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XV PAOH ALEUTIAN MUMMY, 185 ALEUTES CATCHING HALIBUT, 212 BOBROVIA, OR OTTER ISLAND, 219 FUR-SEALS SCRATCHING, 271 FUR-SEALS RISING TO BREATHE AND SURVEY, 300 PORTRAIT OP A PRIBYLOV SEALER, . . . . . . . 338 A SKINNED CARCASS, AND SKIN THEREFROM, 342 INTERIOR OF A FUR-SEAL SALT-HOUSE, 345 NATIVES DRIVING SEA-LIONS, 368 SEA-LION BIDARRAH, 371 INNUIT WOMAN, 377 INNUIT HOME ON THE KUSKOKVIM, 379 THE BIG MAHKLOK, OR Erignathus, 383 THE INNUIT KASHGA, 385 SECTION OF THE KASHGA, 386 INNUIT DOG, "TATLAH," . . . .388 "BRULE," OR BURNT DISTRICTS, 409 STEAMER ON THE YUKON, 414 MlCHAELOVSKY, 419 OOKIVOK, OR KING'S ISLAND, 426 THE DIOMEDES, 430 IXNUIT WHALING CAMP, 439 RINGED SEAL, Phoca fcetida, 441 WALRUS-HUNTER, 444 SECTION OF INNUIT WINTER HOUSE AT POONOOK, .... 446 NEWACK'S BROTHER, 455 XEWACK AND OOGACK, PEN PORTRAITS OF, 457 NATIVES GIVING THE WALRUS A DEATH-STROKE, .... 459 "DOUBLE PURCHASE" OF THE INNUITS, 461 MAPS. SPECIAL MAP OF ST. PAUL ISLAND, .... Facing page 215 SPECIAL MAP OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND, ... «• 226 SPECIAL MAP OF NOVASTOSHNAH ROOKERY, . " 314 SPECIAL MAP OF LAGOON ROOKERY, .... " 315 GENERAL MAP OF ALASKA, At end of Volume. OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. CHAPTEK I. DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. The Legend of Bering's Voyage. — The Discovery of Russian America, or Alaska, in July, 1741. — The Return Voyage and Shipwreck of the Discoverer. — The Escape of the Survivors. — They Tell of the Furs and Ivory of Alaska. — The Rush of Russian Traders. — Their Hardy Exploration of the Aleutian Chain, Kadiak, and the Mainland, 1760-80, inclusive. — Fierce Competi- tion of the Promyshlineks finally Leads to the Organization and Domina- tion of the Russian American Company over all Alaska, 1799. —Its Remark- able Success under Barauov's Administration, 1800-18, inclusive. — Its Rapid Decadence after Baranov's Removal. — Causes in 1862-64 which Led to the Refusal of the Russian Government to Renew the Charter of the Russian American Company. — Steps which Led to the Negotiations of Seward and Final Acquisition of Alaska by the U. S. Government, 1867. THE stolid, calm intrepidity of the Russian is not even yet well understood or recognized by Americans. No better presentation of this character of those Slavic discoverers of Alaska can be made than is the one descriptive of Veit Bering's voyage of Russian- American fame, in which shipwreck and death robbed him of the glory of his expedition. No legend of the sea, however fanciful or horrid, surpasses the simple truth of the terror and privation which went hand-in-hand with Bering and his crew. Flushed with the outspoken favor of his sovereign, Bering and his lieutenant, Tschericov, sailed east from Petropaulovsky, Kam- chatka, June 4, 1741 ; the expedition consisted of two small sail- vessels, the St. Peter and the St. Paul. They set their course S. S. E., as low as the 50th degree of north latitude, then they decided to steer directly east for the reported American continent. A few days later a violent storm arose, it separated the rude ships, and the two commanders never met in life again. PROVINCE. Whilf groping .in* Jog: qftd^ tempest on the high seas, Bering drifte'd one Sunday (July'l^th) upon or about the Alaskan mainland coast ; he disembarked at the foot of some low, desolate bluffs that face the sea near the spot now known to us as Kayak Island, and in plain view of those towering peaks of the St. Elias Alps. He passed full six weeks in this neighborhood, while the crew were busy getting fresh food-supplies, water, etc., when, on the 3d of Septem- ber, a storm of unwonted vigor burst upon them, lasted seven days, and drove them out to sea and before it, down as far as 48° 8' north latitude, and into the lonely wastes of the vast Pacific. Scurvy began to appear on board the St. Peter; hardly a day passed without recording the death of some one of the ship's com- pany, and soon men enough in health or strength sufficient to work the vessel could not be mustered. A return to Kamchatka was resolved upon. Bering became surly and morose, and seldom appeared on deck, and so the second in command, " Stoorman" Vachtel, directed the dreary cruise. After regaining the land, and burying a sailor named Shoomagin on one of a group of Alaskan islets that bear his name to-day, and making several additional capes and landfalls, they saw two islands which, by a most unfortunate blunder, they took to be of the Kurile chain, and adjacent to Kamchatka. Thus they erred sadly in their reckoning, and sailed out upon a false point of departure. In vain they craned their necks for the land, and strained their feeble eyes ; the shore of Kamchatka refused to rise, and it finally dawned upon them that they were lost — that there was no hope of making a port in that goal so late in the year. The wonderful discipline of the Russian sailors was strikingly exhibited at this stage of the luckless voyage : in spite of their debilitated and emaciated condition, they still obeyed orders, though suffering frightfully in the cold and wet ; the ravages of scurvy had made such progress that the steersman was conducted to the helm by two other invalids who happened to have the use of their legs, and who supported him under the arms ! When he could no longer steer from suffering, then he was succeeded by another no better able to execute the labor than himself. Thus did the unhappy crew waste away into death and impotency. They were obliged to carry few sails, for they were helpless to reef or hoist them, and such as they had were nearly worn out ; and even in this case they OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. 3 were unable to renew them by replacing from the stores, since there were no seamen strong enough on the ship to bend new ones to the yards and booms. Soon rain was followed by snow, the nights grew longer and darker, and they now lived in dreadful anticipation of shipwreck ; the fresh water diminished, and the labor of working the vessel became too severe for the few who were able to be about. From the 1st to the 4th of November the ship had lain as a log on the ocean, helpless and drifting, at the sport of the wind and the waves. Then again, in desperation, they managed to control her, and set her course anew to the westward, without knowing absolutely any- thing as to where they were. In a few hours after, the joy of the distressed crew can be better imagined than described, for, looming up on the gray, gloomy horizon, they saw the snow-covered tops of high hills, still distant however, ahead. As they drew nearer, night came upon them, and they judged best, therefore, to keep out at sea " off and on " until daybreak, so as to avoid the risk of wrecking themselves in the deep darkness. When the gray light of early morning dawned, they found that the rigging on the star- board side of the vessel was giving way, and that their craft could not be much longer managed ; that the fresh water was very low, and that sickness was increasing frightfully. The raw humidity of the climate was now succeeded by dry, intense cold ; life was well- nigh insupportable on shipboard then, so, after a brief consulta- tion, they determined to make for the land, save their lives, and, if possible, safely beach the St. Peter. The small sails were alone set ; the wind was north ; thirty-six fathoms of \tater over a sand bottom ; two hours after they de- creased it to twelve ; they now contrived to get over an anchor and run it out at three-quarters of a cable's length ; at six in the even- ing this hawser parted ; tremendous waves bore the helpless boat on in toward the land through the darkness and the storm, where soon she struck twice upon a rocky reef. Yet, in a moment after, they had five fathoms of water ; a second anchor was thrown out, and again the tackle parted ; and while, in the energy of wild de- spair, prostrated by sheets of salty spray that swept over them in bursts of fury, they were preparing a third bower, a huge comb- ing wave lifted that ark of misery — that band of superlative human suffering — safely and sheer over the reef, where in an instant the tempest-tossed ship rested in calm water ; the last anchor was 4 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. dropped, and thus this luckless voyage of Alaskan discovery came to an end. Bering died here, on one of the Commander Islands,* where he had been wrecked as above related ; the survivors, forty-five souls in number, lived through the winter on the flesh of sea-lions, the sea-cow,f or manatee, and thus saved their scanty stock of flour ; they managed to build a little shallop out of the remains of the St. Peter, in which they left Bering Island — departed from this scene of a most extraordinary shipwreck and deliverance — on August 16, 1742, and soon reached Petropaulovsky in safety the 27th following. In addition to an authentic knowledge of the location of a great land to the eastward, the survivors carried from their camp at Bering Island a large number of valuable sea-otter, blue-fox, and other peltries, which stimulated, as no other induce- ment could have done, the prompt fitting out and venture of many new expeditions for the freshly discovered land and islands of Alaska. So, in 1745, Michael Novidiskov first, of all white men, pushed over in a rude open wooden shallop from Kamchatka, and landed on Attoo, that extreme western islet of the great Aleutain chain which forms upon the map a remarkable southern wall to the green waters of Bering Sea. No object of geographical search was in this hardy fur-hunter's mind as he perilled his life in that adventure — far from it ; he was after the precious pelage of the * Bering's Island — he was wrecked on the east coast, at a point under steep bluffs now known as " Kommandor." Scarcely a vestige of this shipwreck now remains there. f That curious creature is extinct. It formerly inhabited the sea-shores of these two small islands. The German naturalist Steller, who was the sur- geon of Bering's ship, has given us the only account we have of this animal's appearance and habits; it was the largest of all the Sirenians ^attained a length sometimes of thirty feet. When first discovered it was extremely abundant, and formed the main source of food-supply for the shipwrecked crew of Be- ring's vessel. Twenty-seven years afterward it became extinct, due to the merciless hunting and slaughter of it by the Russians, who, on their way over to Alaska from Kamchatka, always made it an object to stop at Bering or Cop- per Island and fill up large casks with the flesh of this sea-cow. Its large size, inactive habits, and clumsy progress in the water, together with its utter fear- lessness of man, made its extinction rapid and feasible. I make the restoration from a careful study of the details of Steller's description. if & I CC O o - < 1 Z 'J DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. O sea-otter, and like unto him were all of the long list of Russian ex- plorers of Alaskan coasts and waters. These rough, indomitable men ventured out from their headquarters at Kamchatka aud the Okotsk Sea in rapid succession as years rolled on, until by the end of 1768-69 a large area of Russian America was well determined and rudely charted by them.* The history of this early exploration of Russian America is the stereotyped story of wrongs inflicted upon simple natives by ruth- less, fearless adventurers — year in and year out — the eager, persist- ent examination of the then unknown shores and interior of Alaska by tireless Cossacks and Muscovites, who were busy in robbing the aborigines and quarrelling among themselves. The success of the earliest fur-hunters had been so great, and heralded so loudly in the Russian possessions, that soon every Siberian merchant who had a few thousand rubles at his order managed to associate him- self with some others, so that they might together fit out a slovenly craft or two and engage in the same remunerative business. The records show that, prior to the autocratic control of the old Russian American Company over all Alaska in 1799, more than sixty dis- tinct Russian trading companies were organized and plying their vocation in these waters and landings of Alaska. They all carried on their operations in essentially the same man- ner : the owner or owners of the shallop, or sloop, or schooner, as it might be, engaged a crew on shares ; the cargo of furs brought back by this vessel was invariably divided into two equal subdivis- ions— one of these always claimed by the owners who had fur- nished the means, and the other half divided in such a manner as the navigator, the trader, and the crew could agree upon between themselves. Then, after this division had been made, each partici- pant was to give one-tenth part of his portion, as received above, to the Government at St. Petersburg, which, stimulated by such gen- erous swelling of its treasury, never failed to keep an affectionate eye upon its subjects over here, and encouraged them to the ut- most limit of exertion. * The order of this search and voyaging has been faithfully recorded by Ivan Petroff in his admirable compendium of the subject. (See Tenth Census U. S. A., Vol. VIII.) While this narrative may be interesting to a historian, yet I deem it best not to inflict it upon the general reader. Also in " Bancroft's History of Alaska," recently published at San Francisco, it is graphically and laboriously described. 6 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. This Imperial impetus undoubtedly was the spur which caused most of that cruel domination of the Russians over a simple people whom they found at first in possession of their new fur- bearing land ; the thrifty traders managed to do their business with an ex- ceedingly small stock of goods, and, where no opposition was offered, these unscrupulous commercial travellers ordered the natives out to hunt and turn over all their booty, not even condescending to pay them, except a few beads or strips of tobacco, " in return for their good behavior and submission to the crown ! " Naturally enough, the treacherous Koloshes of Sitka, the dogged Kadiakers, the vivacious Eskimo or Innuits, and even the docile Aleutes, would every now and then arise and slaughter in their rage and despair a whole trading post or ship's crew of Russians ; but these outbreaks were not of preconcerted plan or strength, and never seriously interrupted the iron rule of Slavonian oppression. The rapidly increasing number of competitors in the fur trade, however, soon began to create a scarcity of the raw material, and then the jealousies and rivalries of the trading companies began in turn to vent themselves in armed struggles against each other for possession and gain. This order of affairs quickly threw the whole region into a reign of anarchy which threatened to destroy the very existence of the Russians themselves. Facing this deplorable con- dition, one of the leading promoters of the fur-trading industry in Alaska saw that, unless a bold man was placed at the head of the conduct of his business, it would soon be ruined. This man he picked out at Kargopol, Siberia, and on August 18, 1790, he con- cluded a contract with Alexander Baranov, who sailed that day from the Okotsk, and who finally established that enduring basis of trade and Russian domination in Alaska which held till our pur- chase in 1867 of all its vested rights and title. The wild savage life which the Russians led in these early days of their possession of this new land — their bitter personal antago- nisms and their brutal orgies — actuaUy beggar description, and seem well-nigh incredible to the trader or traveller who sojourns in Alaska to-day. It is commonly regarded as a rude order of exist- ence up there among ourselves now ; and when we come to think back, and contrast the stormy past with the calm present, it is diffi- cult to comprehend it ; yet it is not so strange if it be remem- bered that they were practically beyond all reach of authority, and lived for many consecutive years in absolute non-restraint. DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. 7 It is easy to trace the several steps and understand the motives which led to our purchase of Alaska. There was no subtle state- craft involved, and no significance implied. The Russian Govern- ! ment simply grew weary of looking after the American territory, which was an element of annually increasing cost to the Imperial treasury, and was a source of anxiety and weakness in all European difficulties. It became apparent to the minds of the governing coun- cil at St. Petersburg that Russians could not, or at least, would not settle in Russian America to build up a state or province, or do any- thing else there which would redound to the national honor and strength. This view they were well grounded in, after the ripe ex- perience of a century's control and ownership. One period in that history of Russian rule afforded to the au- thorities much rosy anticipation. This interval was that season in the affairs of the Russian American Company which was known as Baranov's administration, in which time the revenues to the crown were rich, and annually increasing. But Baranov was a prac- tical business man, while every one of his successors, although dis- tinguished men in the naval and army circles of the home govern- ment, was not. Comment is unnecessary. The change became marked ; the revenues rapidly declined, and the conduct of the operations of the company soon became a matter of loss and not of gain to the stockholders and to the Imperial treasury. The history, however, of the rise and fall of this great Russian trading associa- tion is a most interesting one ; much more so even than that of its ancient though still surviving, but decrepit rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. Those murderous factional quarrels of the competing Russian traders throughout Alaska in 1790-98 finally compelled the Em- peror Paul to grant, in 1799, much against his will, a charter to a consolidation of the leading companies engaged in American fur- hunting, which was named the Russian American Company. It also embraced the Eastern Siberian and Kamchatkau colonies. That charter gave to this company the exclusive right to all the ter- ritory in Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Siberian Okotsk, and Kurile districts, and the privileges conferred by this charter were very great and of the most autocratic nature ; but at the same time the company was shrewdly burdened with deftly framed obligations, being compelled to maintain, at its own expense, the new govern- ment of the country, a church establishment, a military force, and, 8 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. at various points in the territory, ample magazines of provisions and stores to be used by the Imperial Government for its naval vessels or land troops whenever ordered. At a time when all such stores had to be transported on land trails over the desolate wastes of Si- beria from Kussia to the Okotsk, this clause in the franchise was most burdensome, and really fatal to the financial success of the company. The finesse of the Russian authorities is strikingly manifested in that charter, which ostensibly granted to the Russian American Com- pany all these rights of exclusive jurisdiction to a vast domain with- out selfishly exacting a single tax for the home treasury ; but in fact it did pay an immense sum annually into the royal coffers in this wa}r. The entire fur trade in those days was with China, and all the furs of Alaska were bartered by the Russians with the Mon- gols for teas, which were sold in Russia and Europe. The records of the Imperial treasury show that the duties paid into it by this company upon these teas often exceeded two millions of silver rubles annually.* The company was also obliged, by the terms of their charter, to make experiments in the establishment of agricultural settlements wherever the soil and climate of Alaska would permit. The natives of Alaska were freed from all taxes in skins or money, but were *The Russian currency is always expressed in kopecks and in rubles. Gold coinage there is seldom ever seen, and was never used in Alaska. The following table explains itself : 1 copper kopeck = 1 silver kopeck. 15 silver kopecks = 1 peteealtin. 2 copper kopecks = 1 grosh. 20 silver kopecks = 1 dvoogreevenik. 3 copper kopecks = 1 alteen. 25 silver kopecks = 1 chetvertak. 5 copper kopecks = 1 peetak. 50 silver kopecks = 1 polteenah. 5 silver kopecks — 1 peetak. 100 silver kopecks = 1 ruble. 10 silver kopecks = 1 greevnah. The silver ruble is nearly equal to seventy-five cents in our coin. The paper ruble fluctuates in Russia from forty to fifty cents, specie value ; in Alaska it was rated at twenty cents, silver. Much of the "paper" currency in Alaska during Russian rule was stamped on little squares of walrus hide. A still smaller coin, called the 4i polooshka," worth i kopeck, has been used in Russia. It takes its name from a hare-skin, " ooshka," or "little ears," which, before the use of money by the Slavs, was one of the lowest articles of exchange, pol signifying half, and pohoshka, half a hare's skin. From an- other small coin, the "deinga" (equal to £ kopeck in value), is derived the Russian word for money, deingah or deingie. DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. 9 obliged to furnish to the company's order certain quotas of sea- otter hunters every season, all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty being liable to this draft, though not more than one-half of any number thus subject could be enlisted and called out at any one time. The management of this great organization was vested in an ad- ministrative council, composed of its stockholders in St. Petersburg, with a head general office at Irkutsk, Siberia — a chief manager, who was to reside in Alaska, and was styled "The Governor," and whose selection was ordered from the officers of the Imperial navy not lower in rank than post-captain. That high official and Alaskan autocrat had an assistant, also a naval officer, and each received pay from the Russian Company, in addition to their regular govern- mental salaries, which were continued to them by the Crown. In cases of mutiny or revolt the powers of the governor were ab- solute. He had also the fullest jurisdiction at all times over offend- ers and criminals, with the nominal exception of capital crimes. Such culprits were supposed to have a preliminary trial, then were to be forwarded to the nearest court of justice in Siberia. Some- thing usually " happened " to save them the tedious journey, how- ever. The Russian servants of the company — its numerous retinue of post-traders, factors, and traders, and laborers of every class around the posts — were engaged for a certain term of years, duly indentured. When the time expired the company was bound to furnish them free transportation back to their homes, unless the unfortunate individuals were indebted to it ; then they could be re- tained by the employer until the debt was paid. It is needless to state in this connection that an incredibly small number of Russians were ever homeward bound from Alaska during these long years of Muscovitic control and operation. This provision of debtor vs. cred- itor was one which enabled the creditor company to retain in its service any and all men among the humbler classes whose services were desirable, because the scanty remuneration, the wretched pit- tance in lieu of wages, allowed them, made it a matter of utter im- possibility to keep out of debt to the company's store. Even among the higher officials it is surprising to scan the long list of those who, after serving one period of seven years after another, never seemed to succeed in clearing themselves from the iron grasp of indebted- ness to the great corporation which employed them. As long as the Russian Company maintained a military or naval 10 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. force in the Alaskan territory, at its own expense, these forces were entirely at the disposal of its governor, who passed most of his time in elegant leisure at Sitka, where the finest which the markets and the -vineyards of the world afforded were regularly drawn upon to supply his table. No set of men ever lived in more epicurean com- fort and abundance than did those courtly chief magistrates of Alaska who succeeded the plain Baranov in 1818, and who estab- lished and maintained the vics-regal comfort of their physical ex- istence uninterruptedly until it was surrendered, with the cession of their calling, in 1867. The charter of the Kussian American Company was first granted for a period of twenty years, dating at the outset from January 1, 1799. It also had the right to hoist its own colors, to employ naval officers to command its vessels, and to subscribe itself, in its procla- mation or petition, "Under the highest protection of his Imperial Majesty, the Kussian American Company." It began at once to attract much attention in Russia, especially among moneyed men in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Nobles and high officials of the Gov- ernment eagerly sought shares of its stock, and even the Emperor and members of his family invested in them, the latter making their advances in this direction under the pretext of donating their portions to schools and to charitable institutions. It was the first enterprise of the kind which had ever originated in the Russian Empire, and, favored in this manner by the Crown, it rose rapidly into public confidence. A future of the most glowing prosperity and stability was prophesied for it by its supporters — a prosperity and power as great as ever that of the British East India Company — while many indulged dreams of Japanese annexation and portions of China, to- gether with the whole American coast, including California. But that clause in the charter of the company, which ordered that the chief manager of its affairs in Alaska should be selected from the officers of the Imperial navy, had a most unfortunate ef- fect upon the successful conduct of the business, as it was prose- cuted throughout Russian America. After Baranov's suspension and departure, in the autumn of 1818, not a single practical mer- chant or business man succeeded him. The rigid personal scrutiny and keen trading instinct which were so characteristic of him, were followed immediately by the very reverse ; hence the dividends be- gan to diminish every year, while the official writing, on the other hand, became suddenly more voluminous, graphic, and declared a 7 DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. 11 steady increase of prosperity. Each succeeding chief manager, or governor, vied with the reports of his predecessors in making a record of great display in the line of continued explorations, erec- tion of buildings, construction of ships of all sizes, and the estab- lishment of divers new industries and manufactories, agriculture, etc. The second term of the Russian American Company's charter expired in 1841, and the directors and shareholders labored most industriously for another renewal ; the Crown took much time in consideration, but in 1844 the new grant was confirmed, and rather increased the rights and privileges of the company, if any- thing ; still matters did not mend financially, the affairs of the large corporation were continued in the same reckless management by one governor after the other — with the same extravagant vice-regal display and costly living — withjuseless and abortive experiments in agriculture, in mining and in shipbuilding, so that by the approach v of the lapsing of the third term of twenty years' control, in 1864, the company was deeply in debt, and though desirous of continuing the business, it now endeavored to transfer the cost of maintaining its authority in Alaska to the home Government ; to this the Impe- rial Cabinet was both unwilling and unable to accede, for Russia had just emerged from a disastrous and expensive war, and was in no state of mind to incur a single extra ruble of indebtedness which she could avoid. In the meantime, pending these domestic difficulties between the Crown and the company, the charter ex- pired ; the Government refused to renew it, and sought, by send- ing out commissioners to Sitka, for a solution of the vexed prob- lem. Now, if the reader will mark it, right at this time and at this juncture, arose the opportunity which was quickly used by Seward, as Secretary of State, to the ultimate and speedy acquisition of Russian America by the American Union. Those difficulties which the situation revealed in respect to the affairs of the Russian Com- pany conflicting with the desire of the Imperial Government, made much stir in all interested financial circles. A small number of San Francisco capitalists had been for many years passive stock- holders in what was termed by courtesy the American Russian Ice Company — it being nothing more than a name really, inasmuch as very little ever was or has been done in the way of shipping ice to California from Alaska. Nevertheless these gentlemen quickly con- 12 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. ceived the idea of taking the charter of the Russian Company them- selves, and offered a sum far in excess of what had accrued to the Imperial treasury at any time during the last forty years' tenure of the old contract. The negotiations were briskly proceeding, and were in a fair way to a successful ending, when it informally be- came known to Secretary Seward, who at once had his interest ex- cited in the subject, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that if it was worth paying $5,000,000 by a handful of American merchants for a twenty years' lease of Alaska, it was well worthy the cost of buying it out and out in behalf of the United States ; inasmuch as leasing it, as the Russians intended to, was a virtual surrender of it absolutely for the period named. In this spirit the politic Seward approached the Russian Government, and the final consummation of Alaska's purchase was easily effected,* May, 1867, and formally transferred to our flag on the 18th of October following. If the Russian Government had not been in an exceedingly friendly state of mind with regard to the American Union, this some- what abrupt determination on its part to make such a virtual gift of its vast Alaskan domain would never have been thought of in St. Petersburg for a moment. Still, it should be well understood from the Muscovitic view, that in presenting Russian America to us, no loss to the glory or the power of the Czar's Crown resulted ; no sur- render of smiling hamlets, towns or cities, no mines or mining, no fish or fishing, no mills, factories or commerce — nothing but her good will and title to a few thousand poor and simple natives, and a large wilderness of mountain, tundra-moor and island-archipelago wholly untouched, unreclaimed by the hand of civilized man. Rus- sia then, as now, suffered and still suffers, from an embarrassment of just such natural wealth as that which we so hopefully claim as our own Alaska. * $7,200,000 gold was paid by the United States into the Imperial treasury of Russia for the Territory of Alaska ; it is said that most of this was used in St. Petersburg to satisfy old debts and obligations incurred by Alaskan enter- prises, attorneys' fees, etc. So, in short, Russia really gave her American pos- sessions to the American people, reaping no direct emolument or profit whatso- ever from the transfer. CHAPTER II. FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. The Vast Area of Alaska. — Difficulty of Comparison, and Access to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region. — Many Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska during the last Eighteen Years. — Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now on Record. — Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan Archipelago. — The Decaying Town of Wrangel. — The Wonderful Glaciers of this Region. — The Tides. Currents and Winds. — The Forests and Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago. —Indigenous Berries. — Gloomy Grandeur of the Canons. — The Sitkau Climate. — Neither Cold nor Warm. — Excessive Humidity. — Stickeen Gold Excitement of 1862 and 1875. — The Decay of Cassiar. — The Picturesque Bay of Sitka. — The Romance and Terror of Baranov's Establishment there in 1800-1805.— The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka.— The Contrast between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One. " For hot, cold, moist and dry, four champions fierce Strive here for mastery."— MILTON. THE general contour of Alaska is correctly rendered on any and all charts published to-day ; but it is usually drawn to a very much reduced scale and tucked away into a corner of a large conven- tional map of the United States and Territories, so that it fails, in this manner, to give an adequate idea of its real proportion — and does not commonly impress the eye and mind, as it ought to, at first sight But a moment's thoughtful observation shows the vast landed extent between that extreme western point of Attoo Island in the Occident, and the boundary near Fort Simpson in the orient, to be over 2,000 miles ; while from this Alaskan initial post at Simpson to Point Barrow, in the arctic, it covers the limit of 1,200 geographical miles.* The superficial magnitude of this region *The superficial area of Alaska is 512,000 square miles; or, in round numbers, just one sixth of the entire extent of the United States and Terri- tories. Population in 1880: Whites, 430; Creole, 1,756; Eskimo, 17,617; Aleut, 2,145; Athabascan, 3,927 ; Thlinket, 6,763— total, 33,426. 14 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. is at once well appreciated when the largest States or Territories are each held up in contrast. The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and tower- ing peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a com- parison of Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere super- ficial area, wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North American continent. Barred out as she is from close communion with her new relationship and sisterhood in the Ameri- can Union by her remote situation, and still more so by the un- happiness of her climate, she is not going to be inspected from the platforms of flying express trains ; and, save the little sheltered jaunt by steamer from Puget Sound to Sitka and immediate vicin- ity, no ocean-tourists are at all likely to pry into the lonely nooks and harbors of her extended coasts, surf-beaten and tempest-swept as they are every month in the year. But, in the discharge of official duty, in the search for precious metals, coal and copper, in the desire to locate profitable fishing ventures, and in the interests of natural science, hundreds of ener- getic, quick-witted Americans have been giving Alaska a very keen examination during the last eighteen years. The sum of their knowledge throws full understanding over the subject of Alaskan life and resources, as viewed and appreciated from the American basis ; there is no difficulty in now making a fair picture of any section, no matter how remote, or of conducting the reader into the very presence of Alaska's unique inhabitants, anywhere they may be sought, and just as they live between Point Barrow and Cape Fox, or Attoo and the Kinik mouth. In going to Alaska to-day, the traveller is invariably taken into the Sitkan district, and no farther ; naturally he goes there and no- where beyond, for the best of all reasons : he can find no means of transportation at all proper as regards his safety and comfort which will convey him outside of the Alexander archipelago. To this southeastern region of Alaska, however, one may journey every month in the year from the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound, in positive pleasure, on a seaworthy steamer fitted with every marine adjunct conducive to the passenger's comfortable existence in transit ; it is a landlocked sea-trip of over eighteen hundred miles, made often to and from Sitka without tremor enough on the part of the vessel even to spill a brimming glass of FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 15 water upon the cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip of eight or nine hundred miles up, and then down again, when the fog is not omnipotent and rain not incessant, the tourist will record a vision of earthly scenery grander than the most vivid imagination can devise, and the recollection of its glories will never fade from his delighted mind. If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the west- ward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka — no communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever takes place, except accidentally ; the traveller starts from San Fran- cisco either in a codfishing schooner, a fur-trader's sloop, or steamer, and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for Kadiak or Oonalashka ; and, from these two chief ports of arrival and depart- ure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing the country, constantly interrupted and continually beset with all manner of hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea. These physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of interest in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district, will bar out and deprive thousands from ever beholding the striking natural characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook's Inlet and the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive in the dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of steamers in regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this most in- teresting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite satisfaction be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird and the sublime in nature ; meanwhile, visits to that region in small sailing- craft are highly risky and unpleasant — boisterous winds are chronic and howling gales are frequent. The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel up the British Columbia coast will have prepared the mind for a full enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. If you are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the officer in charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the low wooded crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, are speedily left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. To the left, as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence Straits, the abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of Wales Island rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and sphagnous, shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great Pacific rollers afforded in the Sound ; while on the right hand you 16 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. turn to a delighted contemplation of those snowy crests of the towering coast range which, though thirty and fifty miles distant, seem to fairly be in reach, just over and back of the rugged tree- clad elevations of mountainous islands that rise abruptly from the sea-canal in every direction. Not a gentle slope to the water can be seen on either side of the vessel as you glide rapidly ahead ; the passage is often so narrow that the wavelets from the steamer's Lodges in a Vast Wilderness. wheel break and echo back loudly on your ear from the various strips of ringing rocky shingle at the base of bluffy intersections. If, by happy decree of fate, fog-banks do not shut suddenly down upon your pleased vision, a rapid succession of islands and myriads of islets, all springing out boldly from the cold blue-green and whitish-gray waters which encircle their bases, will soon tend to confuse and utterly destroy all sense of locality ; the steamer's path seems to be in a circle, to lead right back to where she started from, into another equally mysterious labyrinthine opening : then FEATURES OF THE SITKAX REGION. 17 the curious idiosyncrasy possesses you by which you seem to see in the scenery just ahead an exact resemblance to the bluffs, the sum- mits and the cascades which you have just left behind. Your em- phatic expression aloud of this belief will, most likely, arouse some fellow-passenger who is an old voyageur, and he will take a guiding oar : he will tell you that the numerous broad smooth tracks, cut through the densely wooded mountain slopes from the snow lines above abruptly down to the very sea below, are the paths of ava- lanches ; that if you will only crane your neck enough so as to look right aloft to a certain precipice now almost hanging 3,000 feet high and over the deck of the steamer, there you will see a few small white specks feebly outlined against the grayish-red back- ground of the rocks — these are mountain goats ; he tells you that those stolid human beings who are squatting in a large dug-out canoe are " Siwashes," halibut-fishing — and as these savages stu- pidly stare at the big " Boston " vessel swiftly passing, with uplifted paddles or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with in- terest, and the next turn of the ship's rudder most likely throws into full view a "rancherie," in which these Indians permanently reside ; your kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with much vehemence upon the frailties and short- comings of " Siwashes " in general — at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still, unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland — then rapidly shooting out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long, unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares that Wrangel* town lies just * When the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were prosperous, Wrangel was a very busy little transfer-station — the busiest spot in Alaska ; then be- tween four and five thousand miners passed through every spring and fall as they went up to and came down from the diggings on the Stickeen tributaries above ; they left a goodly share, if not most, of their earnings among the store and saloon keepers of Wrangel. The fort is now deserted — the town nearly so ; the whole place is rapidly reverting to the Siwashes. Government buildings erected here by the U. S. military authorities, which cost the pub- lic treasury $150,000, were sold in 1877, when the troops were withdrawn, for a few hundreds. The main street is choked with decaying logs and stumps. A recent visitor declares, upon looking at the condition of this place 2 18 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. around it, and you speedily make your inspection of an Alaskan hamlet. Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen, only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle, do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about three to six feet above present high-water mark ; they become, in most cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the In- dians love to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions. In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and Lynn Canal down to the north end of Vancouver's Island, marks, or glacial scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, are to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of the passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preserva- tion ; and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one time, reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders on the beaches are plainly glaciated ; and, as they are often bunched in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have not been disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are in the summer of 1883 : "Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction to Alaska. It is most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to the sublime and lonely scenery of the north. It is situated at the foot of conical hills, at the head of a gloomy harbor, filled with gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling crags, stretch away on all sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, backed by range after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost against lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that in the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in the lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it — not in its straggling lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside it, nor in the fort, for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into decay." * i : 'i. If M FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 19 everywhere abrupt and the water deep. The entire front of this lofty coast-range chain, that forms the eastern Alaskan boundary from the summit of Mt. St. Elias to the mouth of Portland Canal, ts glacier-bearing to-day, and you can scarcely push your way to the head of any canon, great or small, without finding an eternal ice- sheet anchored there : careful estimation places the astonishing ag- gregate of over 5,000 living glaciers, of greater or less degree, that we silently but forever travelling down to the sea, in this region. Those congealed rivers which take their origin in the flanks of Mt. Fair weather * and Mt. Crillonf are simply unrivalled in frigid grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Hima- layas, though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not even feebly approximated by them ; the waters of the channels which lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size — a detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments, giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of ar- tillery ; but, of course, these bergs are very, very small compared with those of Greenland, and only a few ever escape from the intri- cate labyrinth of fiords which are so characteristic of this Sitkan district. An ice-sheet comes down the canon, and as it slides into the water of the canal or bay, wherever it may be, the pressure ex- erted by the buoyancy of the partially submerged mass causes it to crack off in the wildest lines of cleavage, and rise to the surface in hundreds and thousands of glittering fragments ; or again, it may slide out over the water on a rocky bed, and, as it advances, break off and fall down in thundering salvos, that ring and echo in the gloomy canons with awe-inspiring repetition. At the head and around the sides of a large indentation of Cross Sound there are no less than five immense, complete glaciers, which take their origin between Fairweather and Crillon Mountains, each one reaching and discharging into tide-water : here is a vast, a colossal glacier in full exhibition, and so easy of access that the most delicate woman could travel to, and view it, since an ocean-steamer can push to its very sea-walls, without a moment's serious interruption, where from her decks may be scanned the singular spectacle of an icy river from three to eight miles wide, fifty miles long, and varying in depth * 14,708 feet. f 13,400 feet 20 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick ! Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the en- tire northern continent — a vivid picture of the actual process of degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of death just about half of the globe.* This startling exhibition of a mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to be- hold it, and it alone. There is not room in this narrative for fur- ther dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of such a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume. Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest tidal currents prevail : they flow at places like mill-races, and again they scarcely interfere with the ship or canoe. The flood-tides usu- ally run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon's Entrance ; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and the best indication of these tidal currents is afforded by the stream- ing fronds of kelp that grow abundantly' in all of these multitudi- nous fiords, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a few feet to that of seventy fathoms : when the tide is running through some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the whip-like stems of seaweed, a true rapid with much white water, boiling and seething in its wild rushing ; these alternations between high and low water here are exceedingly variable — the spring-tides at some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than three or four feet. Those baffling tides and the currents they create, together with gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render the navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for sailing- vessels — they gladly seek the open ocean where they can haul and fill away to advantage even if it does blow "great guns ;" the high mural walls of the Alexander fiords on both sides, usually, of the * I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view, which was the doctrine of Agassiz. FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 21 channels, cause the wind to either blow up them, or down : it liter- ally funnels through with terrific velocity when the " southeaster's " prevail, and nothing, not even the steamer, braves the fury of such a storm. The great growth of trees everywhere here, and the practical impenetrability of these forests on foot, owing to brush and bushes, all green and growing in tangled jungle, is caused by the compara- tive immunity of this country from the scourge of forest fires : this is due to a phenomenal dampness of the climate — it rains, rains, and drizzles here two-thirds of the time. The heaviest rains are local, usually occurring on the western or ocean slopes of the islands where the sea-winds, surcharged with moisture, first meet a barrier to their flow and are thrown up into the cooler regions of the atmosphere. It will be often noticed, from the steamer, that while heavy rain is falling on the lofty hills and mountains of Prince of Wales Island, it is clear and bright directly over the Strait of Clarence to the eastward, and not far distant. June and July are the most agreeable seasons of the year in which to visit the Sitkan district, as a rule. Many thoughtful observers have questioned the truth of the exuberant growth of forestry peculiar to this region, as being due to that incessant rainfall mentioned above ; no doubt, it is not wholly so; but yet, if the ravages of fire ran through the islets of the archipelago, as it does in the interior slightly to the east- ward, the same order of vegetation here would be soon noted as we note it there to-day ; everywhere that you ascend the inlets of the mainland, the shores become steep and rocky, with no beach, or very little ; the trees become scrubby in appearance, and are mingled with much dead wood (brule). Scarcely any soil clothes the slopes, and extensive patches of bare rock crop out frequently everywhere. Although the forest is omnipresent up to snow-line in this great land-locked Sitkan district, yet it difiers much in rankness of growth and consequent value; it nowhere clothes the ridges or the summits, which are 1,500 to 2,000 feet above tide-level; these peaks and rocky elevations are usually bare, and show a characteristically green-gray tint due to the sphagnous mosses and dwarfed brier and bushes peculiar to this altitude, making an agreeable and sharp con- trast to that sombre and monotonous line of the conifers below. The variety is limited, being substantially confined to three evergreens, 22 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. the spruce (Abies sitkensis and menziesii), the hemlock (Abies merten- siana), and the cedar (Thuja gigantea). The last is the most valu- able, is found usually growing near the shores, and never in great quantities at any one place; wherever a sheltered flat place is found, there these trees seem to grow in the greatest luxuriance. In the narrower passages, where no seas can enter, the forest seems almost to root in the beach, and its branches hang pendent to the tides, and dip therein at high water. Where a narrow beach, capped with warm sands and soil, occurs in sheltered nooks, vividly green grass spreads down until it reaches the yellow seaweed " tangle " that grows everywhere in such places reached by high tide, for, owing to the dampness of the climate, a few days exposure at neap- tides fails to injure this f ucoid growth. Ferns, oh ! how beautiful they are ! — also grow most luxuriantly and even abundantly upon the fallen, rotting tree-trunks, and even into the living arboreal boughs, and green mosses form great club-like masses on the branches. Large trunks of this timber, overthrown and dead, become here at once perfect gardens of young trees, moss, and bushes, even though lying high above the ground and supported on piles of yet earlier windfall. Similar features characterize the littoral forests of the entire landlocked region of the northwest coast, from Puget Sound to the mouth of Lynn Canal. In addition to these overwhelmingly dominant conifers already specified, a few cottonwoods and swamp-maples and alders are scat- tered in the jungle which borders the many little streams and the large rivers like the Stickeen, Tahko, and Chilkat. Crab-apples (Pyrus rivularis) form small groves on Prince of Wales Island, where the beach is low and capped with good soil. Then on the exposed, almost bare rocks of the western hilltops of the islands of the archi- pelago, a scrub pine (Pinus contorta) is found ; it also grows in small clumps here and there just below the snow-line on the moun- tains generally. Berries abound ; the most important being the sal-lal (Gaultheria shallow) — they are eaten fresh in great quantities, and are also dried for use in winter — and another small raspberry (Eubus sp.), a currant (Ribes sp.), and a large juicy whortleberry. Of course these berries do not have the flavor or body which we prize at home in our small fruits of similar character — but up here they, in the absence of anything better or as good, are eaten with avidity and relish, even by the white travellers who happen to be II 11 .5 g n2 2 1 1 •a « SI O M e 0 be <3 1 2 Ml ! sr ri S = « FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 23 around when the fruit is ripe ; wild strawberries appear in sheltered nooks ; a wild gooseberry too is found, but it, like the crab-apple of Prince of Wales Island, is not a favorite — it is drastic. We find in many places throughout this district highland moors, which constitute the level plateau-summits of ridges and mountain foothills ; these areas are always sparsely timbered, covered by a thick carpet of sphagnous heather, and literally brilliant in June and July with the spangled radiance of an extensive variety of flowering annuals and biennials. In these moorland mantles, which are usually soaked full of moisture so as to be fairly spongy under foot, cranberries flourish, of excellent flavor, and quite abundant, though, compared with our choice Jersey and Cape Cod samples, they are very small. Certainly the scenery of this Venetian wilderness of Lower Alaska is wonderful and unrivalled — the sounds, the gulfs, bays, fiords, and river-estuaries are magnificent sheets of water, and the snow- capped peaks, which spring abruptly from their mirrored depths, give the scene an ever-changing aspect. At places the ship seems to really be at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of sye- nite, slate, and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging scrapes, and the passenger's hand may almost touch — a hundred thousand sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep arms. Probably no one point in the Sitkan archipelago is invested by nature with a grander, gloomier aspect than is that region known as the eastern shore of Prince Frederick's Sound, where the moun- tains of the mainland drop down abruptly to the seaside ; here a spur of the coast range, opposite Mitgon Islet, presents an unusu- ally dreadful appearance, for it rises to a vast height with an inclin- ation toward and over the water : the serrated, jagged summits are loaded with an immense quantity of ice and snow, which, together with the overhanging masses of rock, seems to cause its sea-laved base to fairly totter under that stupendous weight overhead ; the passage beneath it, in the canoe of a traveller, is simply awful in its dread suggestion, and few can refrain from involuntary shuddering as they sail by and gaze upward. A word about the Sitkan climate : you are not going to be very cold here even in the most severe of winters, nor will you complain 24 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. of heat in the most favorable of summers ; it may be best epitomized by saying in brief that the weather is such that you seldom ever find a clean cake of ice frozen in the small fresh-water ponds six inches thick ; and you never will experience a summer warm enough to ripen a head of oats. The first impression usually made upon the visitor is that it is raining, raining all the time, not a pouring rain or shower, then clearing up quickly, but a steady " driz-driz-driz- zle " ; it rained upon the author in this manner seventeen consecu- tive days in October, 1866, accompanied by winds from all points of the compass. Therefore, by contrast, the relatively clear and dry months of June and July in the archipelago are really delightful — clear and pleasant in the sun, and cool enough for fires indoors — then you have about eighteen hours of sunshine and six hours of twilight. It is very seldom that the zero-point is ever recorded at tide-level during winter here, though in January, 1874, it fell to —7° Fah. ; the thermometer at no time in the winter preceding registered lower than 11° above. A late blustering spring and an early, vigorous winter often join hands over a very backward summer — about once or twice every five years ; these are the backward seasons ; then the first frost in the villages and tidal bottoms occurs about the 28th to 31st of October, soon followed by the rain turning to snow, being as much as three feet deep on the level at times. Severe thunder- storms, with lightning, often take place during these violent snow- falls in the winter — strange to say they are not heard or seen in the summer ! Snow and rain and sleet continue till the end of April — sometimes as late as the 10th of May, before giving way to the en- joyable season of June and July. Then again the mild winters are marked by no frost to speak of — perhaps the coldest period will have been in November, little or no snow, six or seven inches at the most, and much clear and bracing weather. The average rainfall in the Sitkan district is between eighty-four and eighty-six inches annually — it is a very steady average, and makes no heavier showing than that presented by the record kept on the coast of Oregon and Vancouver's Island. A pleasant season in the archipelago will give the observer about one hundred fair days ; the rest of the year will be given over to rain, snow, and foggy- shrouds, which wet like rain itself.* A most careful search during * The chief signal officer of the U. S. Army has had a number of meteoro* logical observers stationed at half a dozen different posts in Alaska, and has FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 25 the last hundred years has failed to disclose in all the extent of this Sitkan region an arable or bottom-land piece large enough to rep- resent a hundred-acre farm, save in the valley of the Tahkoo River, where for forty or fifty miles a low, level plateau extends, varying in width from a few rods to half a mile, between the steep mountain walls that compass it about. Bed-top and wild timothy grasses grow here in the most luxuriant style, as they do for that matter every- where else in the archipelago on little patches of open land along the streams and sea-beaches ; the humidity of the climate makes the cost of curing hay, however, very great, and prevents the profit- able ranging of cattle. We have strayed from the landing which we made at "Wrangel, and, returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an exclamation of disappointment — it is not inviting, for we see nothing but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just above the beach-level ; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which are sup- plemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the beach just beyond, and hug the point ; this place, however, though now in sad decline, was a place of much life and importance during 1875- 79, when the Cassiar gold-excitement in British Columbia, via the Stickeen River, drew many hundreds of venturesome miners up here, and through Wrangel en route. This forlorn spot was still earlier a centre of even greater stir and activity, for, in 1831, the Russians, fearing that they would be forced into war with the Hudson's Bay people, made a quick movement, came down here from Sitka, and built a bastioned log fortress right where the present Siwash ranch- eries stand. Lieutenant Zarenbo, who engineered the construction, called his work " R^doute Saint Dionys," and had scarcely got un- der cover when he was attacked by several large bateaux, manned had this service fully organized up there during the last ten years ; the in- quirer can easily gain access to a large amount of published data touching this subject. The mean temperature of the year will run throughout the months in the Sitkan region about as follows — an average, for the time, of 44° 7' Fah. January, 29" 2' May, 45° 5' September, 51° 9' February, 36° 4' June, 55° 3' October, 49° 2' March, 37C 8' July, 55° 6' November, 36° 6' April, 44° 7' August, 56° 4' December, 30° 2' 26 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. by employes of the great English company ; he fired upon them, beat them off, and held his own so well that the grateful Baron Von Wrangel, who then was governor-in-chief, bestowed the name of the plucky officer upon the large, rugged island which overshadows the scene of the conflict, and which it bears upon every chart to- day.* Again, in 1862, the solitude of Wrangel was broken by the sudden eruption of over two thousand British Columbia and Cali- fornian miners, who rushed up the Stickeen River on a gold "excitement." Quite a fleet of sail and steam-vessels hung about the place for a brief season, when the flurry died out, and the rest- less gold-hunters fled in search of other diggings, taking all their belongings with them. The steamer does not tarry long at Wrangel ; a few packages fall upon the shaky wharf, the captain never leaves the bridge, and in obedience to his tinkling bell, the screw scarce has paused ere it starts anew, and the vessel soon heads right about and west, out to the open swell of the great Pacific ; but it takes six or seven hours of swift travel over the glassy surface of Clarence Strait to pass the rough heads of Kuprianov Island on the right, flanked by the sombre, densely wooded elevations of Prince of Wales on the left. The lower, yet sharper spurs of the straggling Kou forests force our course here directly to the south. It is said that more than fifteen hundred islands, big and little, stud this archipelago from Cape Disappointment to Cross Sound. You will not attempt to count them, but readily prefer to believe it is so. From the great bulk of Vancouver's Land to the tiny islet just peeping above water, they are all covered to the snow-line from the sea-level with an olive-green coniferous forest — islands right ahead, islands on every side, islands all behind. You stand on deck and wonder where the egress from the unruffled inland lake is to be as you enter it ; no possible chance to go ahead much faster, is your con- stant thought, which keeps following every sharp turn of the vessel as she rapidly swings right about here, there, and everywhere, in following the devious path of this weird course to her destination. Unless the fog shuts down very thick, the darkness of night does not impede the steamer's steady progress, for the pilot sees * Zarenbo Island— it blocks the northern end of Clarence Strait, and af« fords many varied vistas of rare scenic beauty. FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 27 the mountain tops loom up darker against the blue-black sky, and with unerring certainty he guides the helm. When the ship is running through tide-rapids in the night, the boiling phosphores- cence of the foaming waters, as they rush noisily under our keel, gives a fresh zest to the novelty of the cruise, and the pilot's cries of command ring out in hoarse echoes over the surging tumult below ; meanwhile, the passengers anxiously and nervously watch the unquiet turns of the trembling vessel — then suddenly the helm is put up, and the steamer fairly bounds out of still water and the leeward of Coronation Island, into the rhythmic roll of the vast bil- lows of the Pacific, which toss her in strange contrast to the even keel that has characterized our long, land-locked sea-voyage up to this moment. The wrinkled, rugged nose of Cape Ommaney looms right ahead in the north, and soon we are well abreast of the moun- tainous front to the west coast of Baranov Island, running swiftly into Sitka Sound.* Cape Ommaney is a very remarkable promontory ; it is a steep, bluffy cliff, with a round, high rocky islet, lying close by and under it. The eastern shore of that cape takes a very sharp northerly di- rection, and thus makes this southern extremity of Baranov Island an exceedingly narrow point of land. An unlucky sailor, Isaac Wooden, fell overboard from Vancouver's ship the Discovery, when abreast of it and homeward bound, Sunday, August 24, 1794, and —was drowned, after having safely passed through all the perils of that most remarkable voyage, extended as it was over a period of four consecutive years' absence from home. The rock bears the odd name "Wooden " in consequence. The location of New Archangel, or Sitka village, is now con- ceded to be the one of the greatest natural beauty and scenic effect that can be found in all Alaska. The story of its occupation by the Russians is a recitation of violent deeds and unflinching courage on the part of the iron-willed Baranov and his obedient servants : he led the way down here from Kadiak first, of all white men, in 1799, after hearing the preliminary report of exploration made two years previously by his lieutenant, Captain James Shields, an Eng- lish adventurer and shipbuilder, who entered the service of the Russian Company in the Okotsk. Baranov, though small in stature, * Sitka port is on the west coast of Baranov Island ; north latitude 57 3 02' 52"; west longitude 135 D 17' 45". 28 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. was possessed of unusual physical endurance and muscular strength. He was absolutely fearless ; he never allowed any obstacle, no mat- ter how serious, which the elements or savage men were perpetually raising, to check his advances. He loved to travel and explore, and possessed rare executive or governing power over his rude and boisterous followers. He soon realized that the establishment of the headquarters of the company at St. Paul, Kadiak Island, was disadvantageous, and quickly resolved to settle himself perma- nently in the Bay of Sitka, or Norfolk Sound, where he could com- municate with the vessels of other nations and purchase supplies of them. Late in the autumn of 1799 he sailed to this port in the brig Catherine, accompanied by a large fleet of Aleutian and Ka- diak sea-otter hunters with their bidarkas, or skin-canoes. So abundant were sea-otters then, now so rare, that, with the assist- ance of these native hunters, he secured over fifteen hundred prime otter-skins in less than a month ; then satisfied with the trading re- sources of the locality, Baranov began the construction of a stock- aded post, the site selected for which was on the main island, about six miles to the northward of the Sitkan town-site of to-day. During the winter of 1799-1800 he and his whole force were busily engaged in the erection of substantial log houses and the surrounding stockade at this location. In the spring, two American fur-trading vessels made their appearance here, and the owners began to carry on a brisk traffic with the native Sitkans, right under the eyes of Baranov. Knowing that this must be stopped, the energetic Rus- sian hastened back to Kadiak and set the machinery in motion to that end. But his absence in the meantime from Sitka was im- proved upon by the Koloshians, who, acting in preconcerted plan, utterly destroyed the post. These savages on a certain day, when most of the garrison was far outside of the stockade, hunting and fishing, rushed in, several thousand of them, upon a few armed men, surrounded the block-house, assailed it from all sides at once, and soon forced an entrance. They massacred the defenders to a man, including the commander, Medvaidniekov, and carried off more than three thousand sea-otter pelts from the warehouses. During this wild and bloody fight an English ship was lying at anchor far down the harbor, some ten miles from the scene ; three Russians and five Aleutes only, out of the hunting parties absent at the time of the attack, managed to secrete themselves in the woods, and hide until they could gain the decks and protection of this vessel, FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 29 and thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage ; he contrived to entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, plied them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and then, having quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own terms for their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen women (captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins was made to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the British seaman demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 rubles for rescuing his men and women and property ; with this demand the Kussian could not or would not comply ; but, after many days in amicable argument, Captain Barber received and accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement. While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan post was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points in the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple natives perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating poisonous mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait that sep- arates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still bears the name commemorative of this dreadful accident — it is called "Po- geebshie "* or " Destruction " Strait The enraged Russian manager was unable, by reason of a compli- cated flood of troubles with his subordinates elsewhere, to revisit Sitka until the spring of 1804 ; he then came down from Kadiak in a squadron consisting of three small sloops, in all considerably less than 100 tons burden ; these craft he had built and fitted out in Prince William Sound and Yakootat Bay during the preceding winter. He had with him forty Russians and three hundred Aleu- tian sea-otter hunters. With this small force the indomitable man resolved to attack and subjugate a body of not less than five or six thousand fierce, untamed savages, who were flushed with their cruel successes, and eager to shed more blood. He was unexpectedly strengthened by the sudden appearance in the bay of the Neva, 400 tons, which had sailed from London to Kadiak, and arrived just after Baranov's departure, but Captain Lissiansky, learning of the object of his trip, determined to assist in rebuilding the * Not " Peril," as it is translated by American geographers and printed on all of our Alaskan maps. 30 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. Sitkan post and to punish the Indians, so he sailed at once for the place. Baranov found the Sitkans all entrenched behind a huge stock- ade that was thrown up on the same lofty rocky site of the gov- ernor's castle in the town to-day. They reviled him and defied him, taunted him with his misfortunes, and easily succeeded in ex- citing him to a ferocious attack, in which, despite his demoniacal bravery, he was beaten off at first with the loss of eleven white sailors and hunters, he himself badly wounded, together with Lieutenants Arbuzov and Povalishin. The darkness of a violent rain The Castle of Baranov: 1809-1827. [Wholly remodelled and rebuilt by his successors.} and sleet storm, with night close at hand, caused a cessation, for the time, of further hostilities, but in the morning the ship and the little sloops approached the beach and opened upon the startled savages a hot bombardment — the splintering of their log bastions and the terrible, unwonted noise accompanying, was too much for their self-control, and though, during the whole day they refused to fly, yet when night again came round they abandoned their fortifica- tion, and retreated silently and quickly in canoes to Chatham Strait. The Russians then took possession of the present town-site of Sitka. The rocky eminence which the savages had so bravely held FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 31 was cleared of their rude barricades, and the foundations were laid then to the castle that still stands so conspicuous. Around this nucleus the Russian settlement soon sprang up in a few months, a high stockade was then erected between the village and the Indian rancheries, which still stands in part to-day; it was bastioned and fortified with an armament of three-pounder brass guns. From this time on the supremacy of the Russians was never questioned by the Indians of the Sitkan archipelago. The reckless daring of Baranov, evinced by his personal bearing at the head of a handful of men in repeated attacks upon the castle-rock encampment was exag- gerated by the savages in repetition among themselves, until his name to them became synonymous with a charmed life and supreme authority. Baranov himself called this spot the final headquarters of the Russian American Company, and henceforth it became so, and it was officially known as New Archangel ; but the tribal name of the savages who lived just outside the stockade fence was " Seet-kah," and soon the present designation was used by all visit- ors and Russians alike, brevity and euphony making it " Sitka." It is not probable that the beautiful vistas of this sound influ- enced Baranov in the slightest when he selected it for his base of operations ; but there must have been mornings and evenings when this hardy man looked at them with some responsive pleasure, for certainly the human being who could remain insensible to their scenic glories must be one without a drop of warm blood in his veins. Those high-peaked summits of the Baranov Mountains, which over- shadow the town on the east, destroy, in a great measure, the effects of sunrise ; but the transcendent glow of sundown colors is the glow that floods the crown and base of Mt. Edgecumb on the western horizon of the bay, and repeats its radiance in tipping with golden gild the host of tiny islets which stud the flashing waters, to burn in lingering brightness on the peaks of Verstova and her sister hills, when all else is in darkness or its shades around about. The most characteristic and expressive single view of Sitka is that one afforded from Japan Island, which is close by and right oppo- site the town : the place was in its greatest architectural grandeur prior to the departure of the Russians, in 1866. The lofty peak which rises abruptly back of the village is Verstova, to the bald summit of which a champagne picnic by the Russians was relig- iously made every summer. Although the mountain is slightly under three thousand feet in altitude and seemingly right at hand, 32 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. yet the journey to its crest is one that taxes the best physical ener- gies of strong men. The forest is so dense, so damp, the under- brush so thick and so tangled, that the walk requires a supreme bodily effort, if the trip be made up there and back in the same day. This view from " Yahponskie " gives an exceedingly good idea of the ultra-mountainous character of Baranov Island, much better than any power of verbal description can. It also illustrates the futility of land travel in the Sitkan archipelago, and affords ample reason for the utter absence of all roads, even footpaths, in that en- tire region ; it also preserves the somewhat imposing front which the extensive warehouses and official quarters of the Russian Ameri- can Company presented in 1866, before their transfer to us, and the ravages of fire and that decay which has since well-nigh de- stroyed them ; it recalls the shipyards and the brass and iron foun- dries and machine-shops that have not even a vestige of their ex- istence on that ground to-day, and it outlines a larger Indian village than the one we find there now. For the objects of self -protection and comfort the Russians built large apartment-houses or flats, and lived in them at Sitka. Several of these dwellings were 150 feet in length by 50 to 80 feet in depth, three stories high, with huge roof-attics. They were constructed of big spruce logs, smoothly trimmed down to 12' x 12' timbers. These were snugly dovetailed at the corners, and the expansive roof covered with sheet-iron. The exteriors were painted a faint lemon-yellow, while the iron roof everywhere glistened with red-ochre. The windows were uniformly small, but fitted very neatly in tasteful casemates, and usually with double sashes. Within, the floors were laid of whipsawed planks, tongued and grooved by hand and highly polished. The inner walls were " ceiled " up on all sides and overhead by light boards, and usually papered showily. The heavy, unique Russian furniture was moved in upon rugs of fur and tapestry, and then these people bade defi- ance to the elements, no matter how unruly, and led therein the most enjoyable of physical lives. The united testimony of all trav- ellers, who were many, and who shared the hospitality of the Rus- sians at Sitka, is one invariable tribute to the excellence and the comfort of their indoor living at New Archangel. The shipyard of Sitka was as complete as any similar establish- ment in the Russian Empire. It was actively employed in boat and sail-vessel building, being provided with all sorts of workshops and I! li be1-* Jl .2 * s s I! FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 33 materials. Experiments were also instituted and prosecuted, to some extent, in making bricks, so much prized in the construction of the big conventional Russian "stoves," the turning of wooden- ware, the manufacture of woollen stuffs from the crude material brought up from California ; but the great cost of importing skilled labor from far-distant Russia, and the relative expense of maintain- ing it here, caused the financial failure of all these undertakings. Much money was also wasted in attempting to make iron out of the different grades of ore found in many sections of the country. The only real advantage that the company ever reaped from the work- shops at Sitka was that which accrued to it from the manufacture of agricultural implements, which it sold to the indolent rancheros of California and Mexico. Thousands of the primitive ploughshares and rude hoes and rakes used in those countries then were made here ; also axes, hatchets, and knives were turned out by industri- ous Muscovites for Alaskan post-trading. The foundry was engaged most of the time in making the large iron and brazen bells which every church and mission from Bering's Straits to Mexico called for. Most of these bells are still in use or existence, and give am- ple evidence of skilful workmanship, and of this early development of a unique industry on our northern coast. Naturally enough the contrast of what the Russian Sitka was, with what the American Sitka is to-day, is a striking one : then a force of six or eight hundred white men, with wives and families, busily engaged as above sketched, directed by a retinue of fifty or sixty subalterns of the governor, lived right under the windows of his castle and within the stockade ; then the Greek-Catholic Bishop of all Alaska also resided there, with a staff of fifteen ordained priests and scores of deacons all around him, maintained regardless of expense, at this time, by the Imperial Government in that eccle- siastical pomp so peculiar to this Oriental Church — then a fleet of twelve to fifteen sailing-vessels, from ships in size to mere sloops, with two ocean-going steamers, made the waters of the bay their regular rendezvous, their hardy crews assisting to give life and stir to the town, shore, and streets — all this ordered by the concentra- tion of the entire trade and commerce of Alaska at New Archangel. Now, how different ! As you step ashore you scarcely pause to notice the handful of whites who have assembled on the wharf, but at once the impression of general decay is made upon your mind ; the houses, mostly the original Russian buildings, are settling here, 3 34 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. there, and everywhere, rotting on their foundations, and scarcely more than half of them even occupied, while the combined popula- tion of some three hundred souls in number peers at you from every corner. The great majority of these people are the half-breeds, or " Creoles," or the descendants of Indians and Russians ; some of them are tall and well-formed, and a few of them good-looking, but they are nearly all short-statured, abject, and apathetic. Yet in one respect Sitka has vastly improved under American supremacy — she has become clean ; for although the Russian officers kept the immediate surroundings of their residences in good order, still they never looked after the conduct of the rest of the town. There were, in their time, no defined streets or sidewalks, and mud and filth were knee-deep and most noisome. Our military authorities, however, who first took charge immediately after the transfer, and who are proverbial for cleanliness and neatness in garrison life, made the sanitary reformation of Sitka an instant and imperative duty ; the slimy walks were soon planked, the muddy streets were gravelled and curbed, the main street especially widened, the oldest houses were repainted, and where dilapidated, repaired, and things put into shape most thoroughly ; they also graded and sauntered over the first wagon-road ever opened in Alaska, which they con- structed, from the steamers' landing under the castle, back border- ing the bay to Indian River, over a mile in length. But the pomp and circumstance of the old castle — still the most striking artificial feature now in all Alaska — will never wake to the echoes of that proud and lavish hospitality which once reigned ^within its walls, and when the flashing light in its lofty cupola carried joy out over the dark waters of the sound to the hearts of inbound mariners, who came safely into anchor by its gleaming — the elegant breakfasts and farewell dinners given to favored guests, where the glass, the plate, viands, wines and ap- pointments were fit for regal entertainment itself — all these have vanished, and naught but the uneven, slowly settling floors, warped doors, and general mouldiness of the present hour greets the in- quiring eye. So heavy are its timbers, and so faithfully were they keyed together, that in spite of neglect, the ravages of decay and frequent vandalism, yet, in all likelihood, an age will elapse ere the structure is removed by these destroying agencies now so actively at work upon it. Moved by the desire to preserve the salient features of this historical structure, the author made, during one FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 35 clear June day, a pre-Raphaelitic drawing of it,* as his vessel swung at anchor under its shadows ; in it the reader will observe that the rocky eminence which it crowns is covered to the very foundations and to the promenade cribbing that surrounds them, with a thick growth of alders, stunted spruces, and other indigenous vegeta- tion. That walk around the castle, which was artificially reared thereon, gives a most commanding view of everything, over all objects in the town and Indian village, and sweeps the landscape and the sound. Another picture from the promenade walk under the flagstaff is also given, in order that a faint effect may be con- veyed to the reader of the exceeding beauty of the island-studded Bay of Sitka. Descending and standing immediately under the castle on the beach, to the right you have a perfect Alpine scene as you look east along the pebbly shore to the living green flanks of Mount Verstova, which carry your gaze up quickly over rolling purplish curtains of fog to the snowy crest of it, and other lofty crests ad inftrritum, over far beyond. The little trading stores on the left in this view hide the track so well known in Sitka as the " Governor's Walk," for this is the only direction out to the saw- mill in the middle distance, in which the earth lies smooth and dry enough in all this archipelago for a clean mile-jaunt. These still blue and green waters are alive with food-fishes, while the dense coverts on the mountains harbor grouse and venison in lavish supply ; the oyster and the lobster you have not, but the clam and the crab are here in overwhelming abundance and excel- lence. "Ah! " you exclaim, "if it were not for this eternal rain, this everlasting damp precipitation, how delightful this place would be to live in ! " * This building, as it stands upon its foundations, is 140 feet in length by 70 feet in width — two stories with lofts, capped with the light-house cupola ; these foundations rest upon the summit of the rock, 60 feet above tide-water. CHAPTER III. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. The White Man and the Indian Trading. — The Shrewdness and Avarice of the Savage. — Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade of Alaska. — The Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to Influence the Sitkan In- dians.— The Reason why Missionary Work in Alaska has been and is Impotent. — The Difference between the Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and the Meat-eating Savage of the Plains. — Simply One of Physique. — The Haidahs the Best Indians of Alaska. — Deep Chests and Bandy Legs from Canoe-travel. — Living in Fixed Settlements because Obliged To. — Large "Rancheries" or Houses Built by the Haidahs. — Communistic Families. — Great Gamblers. — Indian " House -Raising Bees." — Grotesque Totem Posts. — Indian Doctors "Kill or Cure." — Dismal Interior of an Indian " Rancherie." — The Toilet and Dress of Alaskan Siwashes. — The Unwrit- ten Law of the Indian Village.— What Constitutes a Chief.— The Tribal Boundaries and their Scrupulous Regard. — Fish the Main Support of Sitkan Indians. — The Running of the Salmon. — Indians Eat Everything. — Their Salads and Sauces. — Their Wooden Dishes and Cups, and Spoons of Horn. — The Family Chests. — The Indian Woman a Household Drudge. — She has no Washing to Do, However. — Sitkan Indians not Great Hunters. — They are Unrivalled Canoe-builders. — Small-pox and Measles have Reduced the Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty Number. — Abandoned Settlements of these Savages Common. — The Debauchery of Rum among these People. — The White Man to Blame for This. ' ' Think you that yon church steeple Will e'er work a change in these wild people ? " OUR people living now in the Sitkan district are engaged either in general trading with the Indians, in prospecting for "mineral," or actively mining ; and, also, in a small fashion, in canning salmon and rendering dog-fish and herring oil. Perhaps we can give a fair idea of the traders by introducing the reader to one of them and his establishment just as we find him at Sitka. In a small frame one-story house, not usually touched by paint, the trader shelters a general assortment of notions and groceries, but princi- ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 37 pally tobacco, molasses, blankets of all sizes and colors, cotton prints and cheap rings, beads, looking-glasses, etc.; he stands behind a rude counter, with these wares displayed to best advan- tage on the rough shelves at his back ; a wood-burning stove diffuses a genial glow, but no chairs or benches are convenient. A " Si wash " * and his squaw deliberately and gravely enter. The Indian slowly looks up and down the room, and then proceeds to price every object within his vision, no matter whether he has the least idea of purchasing or not ; this is the prelude and invariable habit of a Sitkan Indian, and it arouses an immense amount of suppressed profanity on the part of the outwardly courteous trader. But our savage has come in this time bent upon buying, and selling also ; his female partner has a bundle carefully done up under her blanket, and which she wholly concealed when she squatted down on her haunches the moment after entering the door ; she also has a number of small silver coins in her mouth, for, funny as it may seem, this worthy pair have carefully agreed upon what they shall spend in the store before coming in ; so the woman has taken out from the leathern purse which hangs on her breast and under her chemise, the exact amount, and, returning the pouch to the privacy of her bosom, she places the available coin in her mouth for safe keeping ad interim. Finally the Indian, in the course of half an hour, or perhaps a whole half-day in preliminary skirmishing, boldly reaches down for his bundle in the squaw's charge ; then having, by so doing, given the trader to fully understand that he has something to sell, as well as desiring to buy, he reaches out for the groceries, the cloth, the tobacco, or whatever he may have fully decided to purchase; a long argument at once ensues as to the bottom cash price, and in every case of doubt the squaw decides ; all the articles are done up in brown paper and neatly tied with attractive parti-colored twine. Then the dusky woman arises, with an indescribably vacant stare, bends over the counter and lets the jingling silver drop upon it, pausing just a moment until the tired but triumphant trader counts and sweeps it, still moist, into his till Now the Si wash, having bought, proceeds to sell, and he does it in his own peculiar way. He unrolls his package of furs ; he * All savages are called by this name up here — the sex being indicated by "buck" and "squaw." Children are called " pappooses." 38 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. eloquently discourses as he strokes each pelt out on the counter, in turn praising its size and its quality ; the trader in the meanwhile sharply keeps one eye on the savage and one eye on the furs, and, after the story of their capture and quality has been told over the third or fourth time, he asks, " How much ? " The crafty hunter promptly demands more than they would retail at in London ; the trader answers with great emphasis and a most disgusted head- shake, " no ; " he then offers just half or one-third the sum named, whereupon the Indians, affecting great contempt, both shout out " klaik ! " which sounds like Poe's " Raven " — roll up their furs and hustle out in a huff, still repeating, in sonorous unison, " klaik, klaik " — (no, no). Then they go to the rival trader's establishment, and to all of them in turn, even if there are half a dozen, not leaving one of them unvisited ; they finally finish the rounds in the course of a week or two, and then quietly march back to that trader who offered the most, and laying their peltries down in perfect silence on his counter, hold out a grimy hand for the exact sum he had previously proffered. In this shrewd and aggravating manner does the simple untu- tored savage of the northwest coast deal with white traders — are they swindled, do you think? From the beginning to the end of any transaction you may have with an Alaskan Indian you will be met with the keenest understanding on his part of the full value in dollars and cents of whatsoever he may do for you or sell. When, however, the Hudson Bay or the Russian Company held an ex- clusive franchise in this district, then the Indian had no alterna- tive but the single post-trader's terms ; and then the white man's profits were enormous. But now, with the keen rivalry of com- peting stores, the trader barely makes a living anywhere in Alaska to-day, while the Indian gets the best of every bargain — vastly better compared with his former experience. The fur trade, however, in the whole Sitkan district is now of small commercial importance ; thirty or forty thousand dollars an- nually will more than express its gross value. This great shrinkage is due to the practical extermination of the sea-otter in these waters, while the brown and black bears, the mink and marten, the beaver and the land-otter skins secured in this archipelago and its mainland coast are not highly valued by furriers, inasmuch as the climate here is never cold enough to give them that depth and gloss of fur desired and so characteristic of those animals which ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 39 are taken, away back in the interior, where the temperature ranges from 20° to 40° below zero for months at a time. In early days, the Sitkan savages acted as middlemen, receiving these choice pelt- ries from the back-country Indians, who were never permitted by the coast tribes to come down to the sea — and then trading the The Sitkan Chimes. stock anew in their own right over to the Russian and English posts, they reaped a large advance. Now, however, the indepen- dent white trader penetrates to the interior himself, and the Alas- kan Si washes mourn the loss of those rich commissions which once accrued to their emolument and consequence. The irruption, also, of the restless, tireless, wandering miners throughout Alaska and 40 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. British Columbia, who, prospecting in every ravine and canon, never let an opportunity pass to trade and trap for good furs, has also con- tributed to this total stagnation of the business in the Sitkan region. The finest structure in Sitka to-day is the Greek church, which alone did not pass from the custody of its original owners at the time of the transfer. This building has been kept in repair, so that its trim and unique architecture never fails to arrest the visitor's attention and challenge inspection, especially of the interior. We find the service of the church rich and profuse in silverware, can- delabra, ornately framed pictures — oil-paintings of the saints — and rich vestments ; two priests officiate, a reader chants rapid au- tomatism, and a choir of small boys respond in shrill but pleasing orisons ; instrumental music is banished from the services of the Greek Church, and so are pews, chairs, and hassocks ; the Creole congregation, men, women, and children, stand and kneel and cross themselves, erect and bowed, for hours and hours at a time during certain festivals, never moving a step from their positions. The men stand on the right side of the vestibule, facing the altar, while the women all stand by themselves, on the left, the children at option as they enter. No one looks to the one side or the other, but every face is riveted upon the priest, who says little, and is busily engaged in symbolic worship. The Indians do not enter here, nor did they ever ; for them the Russians erected a small chapel, which still stands on the site of its first location ; it is built against the inner side of the stockade, and, like the old Lutheran church lower down in the town, it is fast going to ruin ; the door is secured by one of those remarkable Muscovitic padlocks — it is eight or ten inches long, five or six wide, and three deep ; these singular locks must be seen to be appreciated in all of their clumsy strength. This little faded place of savage worship was the scene in 1855 of the second and last stand ever made by the Sitkan Indians in revolt against the Eussians. Those savages, brooding over some petty indignities received from the whites, became suddenly inflamed with passion, and a swarm of armed warriors from the adjacent rancheries rushed, one dusky evening, upon the fortified palisade surrounding the village, and began to cut and tear it down. The Russians opened their brass batteries of grape and round-shot upon the infuriated, yelling natives from the several block-houses which commanded the stock- ade, but the Siwashes returned the fire fearlessly with their smooth- ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 41 bore muskets, and succeeded in getting possession of this chapel, behind the stout logs of which they were sheltered and able to do deadly execution with their rifles in picking off the Russian officers and men, as they hurried to and from the bastions and through the streets of the town. When, however, one of the company's vessels hauled off the beach opposite the Indian village, and trained her guns upon it and its people, the savages humbly sued for mercy, and have remained in abasement ever since. Contemplating this Indian church at Sitka, which has stood here for nearly three quarters of a century, and then glancing over it and into the savage settlement that nestles in its shadow, it is im- Old Indian Chapel at Sitka. [Greek Catholic CAwrcA, June 9, 1874.] possible to refrain from expressing a few thoughts which arise to my mind over the subject of the Indian in regard to his conversion to the faith and practices of our higher civilization. Nearly a whole century has been expended, here, of unflagging endeavor to better and to change the inherent nature of these Indians — its full result is before our eyes. Go down with me through the smoky, reeking, filthy rancheries and note carefully the attitude and occu- pation of these savages, and contrast your observation with that so vividly recorded of them by Cook, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and many other early travellers, and tell me in what manner have they advanced one step higher than when first seen by white men full a hundred years ago. You cannot escape the conclusion with 42 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. this tangible evidence in your grasp, that in attempting to civilize the Alaskan Indian the result is much more like extermination, or lingering, deeper degradation to him than that which you so ear- nestly desire. The cause of this failure of the missionary and the priest is easy to analyze : it is due to the demoralizing precept and example of those depraved whites who always appear on the field of the Indian mission, sooner or later ; if they could be shut out, and the savage wholly uninfluenced by their vicious lives, then the story of Alaskan Indian salvage might be very different. Still, the thought will always come unbidden and promptly — these savages were created for the wild surrounding of their existence ; expressly for it, and they live happily in it : change this order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and the domestication of animals. The Indians of Alaska, however, will never call upon the Gov- ernment for food and reservations — there is a great abundance on the earth and in the waters thereof for them ; living as they do all down at tide-water, at the sole source of their subsistence, they are within the quick reach of a gunboat ; the overpowering significance of that they fully understand and fear. There is a huge wilderness here for them which the white man is not at all likely to occupy, even in part, for generations of his kind to come, yet unborn. Sitka is the seat of that Alaskan civil government* which Con- gress, after much deliberation, ordered in 1884 ; but the governor lives here in much humbler circumstances than did his Slavonian predecessors. As it would require a small fortune to rehabilitate the " castle," the present chief -magistrate resides in one of those neatly built houses which the military authorities erected shortly after they took charge in 1867-68 ; it is not at all commanding, but has a pleasant vista from its windows over the parade ground, and the steamers' landing. While the most impressive feature of the Sitkan archipelago is unquestionably that of the awe-inspiring solemnity and grand * This Act wisely does not establish a full-fledged form of territorial gov- ernment in Alaska, because the lack of a suitable population to maintain it reputably was conclusively shown by the census returns of 1880 : it creates an executive and a judiciary ; it extends certain laws of the United States relating to crimes, customs, and mining, over Alaska, and provides for their enforcement. The land laws of the United States should also be made opera- tive in Alaska, they are expressly omitted in the present act. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 43 beauty of its strange wilderness, yet the most interesting single idea is the Indian and the life he leads therein ; with the single ex- ception of the substitution of a woollen blanket and a cotton shirt for his primitive skin garments, he is living here to-day just as he has lived away back to the time when his legends fail to recite, and centuries before the bold voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and the savage sea-otter fleet of Baranov, first discovered him and then made his existence known to the civilized world. True, some of the young fellows who have labored upon vessels and in the fish- canneries wear an every-day workingman's shirt and trousers, and speak a few words of English, understanding much more, yet the primeval simplicity of all Indian life in this district is substantially preserved. These savages are fish-eaters, and as such they have a common bond of abrupt contrast in physique with their meat-eating breth- ren of the Kocky Mountains and the great plains ; but the traits of natural disposition are the same, the heart and impulse of the Haidah or the Tongass, are the heart and the impulse of the Sioux or the Cheyenne — the former moves nowhere except squatted in his shapely canoe, the other always bestrides a pony or mustang. This wide divergence in every-day action gives alone to these savages their strongly marked bodily separation ; the fish-eater is stooping as he stands, and though he has a deep chest and sinewy arms, yet his lower limbs are bowed, sprung at the knees, and imperfectly muscled ; while the meat-eater is erect and symmetrical, in fine physical outline from the crown of his head to his heels. The various divisions or bands of the Indian population of the Sitkan archipelago and mainland * differ but little in their manner of life and customs, and speak closely related dialects of the same * I. ChiUkahte: Lynn Canal and Glacier Bay. II. HooniaJis : Chichagov Island and islets. III. Aw ks : North end Admiralty Island. IV. Tahkoos: Mainland, Stephen's Passage and Juneau City. V. Khootznahoos : South end Admiralty Island. VI. Sitkas : Baranov Island. VII. Kakho : Kou and Kuprianov Islands, Prince Frederick Sound, mainland coast VIII. Stickeem : Wrangel, Zarenbo and Etholin Islands, Stickeen River mouth. IX. Haidah : Prince of Wales Island. X. Tongass : Mainland, Cape Fox to Cape Warde, and contiguous islands. 44 OUK AECTIC PROVINCE. language. The Haidahs are the best dispositioned and behaved. They have been from the earliest times constantly in the habit of making long and incessant canoe voyages ; and, taking into account the ease with which all parts of this region can be reached on water, it is rather surprising that any marked difference in language should be found at all ; still, when we recall the knowledge which we have of their fierce inter-tribal wars, it is not so strange ; this warfare, however, was of the same barbarous character as that recognized in all other American savages — it was the surprise and massacre of helpless parties, never sparing old women, children or decrepit men. These internecine family wars have undoubtedly been the sole cause of the present subdivisions of the savages as we note them to-day. In drawing the picture, faithfully, of any one Alaskan Indian, I may say candidly that in so doing I give a truthfully defined image of them all throughout the archipelago. Physically the several tribes of this region differ to some extent, but not near so much as our colored people do among themselves ; the margin of distinction up here between the ten or eleven clans, which ethnologists enume- rate, is so slight that only a practised eye can declare them. The Haidahs possess the fairest skins, the best temper, and the best physique ; while the ugly Sitkans and Khootznahoos are the darkest and the worst. But the coarse mouth, the width and prominence of the cheek bones, and the relatively large size of the head for the body, are the salient main departures from our ideal symmetry. The body is also long and large, compared with the legs, brought about by centuries of constant occupation in canoes and the consequent infrequent land travel ; their hair is black and coarse, unkempt, and never allowed, by the males, to fall below their shoulders except in the case of their "shamans," or doctors. A scattered, straggling mustache and beard is sometimes allowed to grow upon the upper lip and chin, generally in the case of the old men only, who finally grow weary of plucking it out by the roots, which in youth they always did in sheer vanity. Once in a while a face is turned upon you from a canoe, or in a rancherie, which arrests your attention, and commands comment as good-looking ; these instances are, however, rare — very, very rare. I think the Haidahs give more evidence in average physiog- nomy of possessing greater intelligence than that presented in the countenances of their brethren ; while I deem the Sitkas and Khootznahoos to be the most insensible — if they are as bright they ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 45 conceal the fact with astonishing success. Again, the ferocity and exceptionally savage expression of their faces, which Captain Cook and Vancouver saw and so graphically recorded, has faded out com- pletely ; but in all other respects they agree to-day perfectly with those descriptions of these early voyagers. In those days firearms had not destroyed their faith in elaborate armaments of spear and bow and body armor-shields of wood and leather, so that they then appeared in much more elaborate costumes and varied pigments than they do now. Each tribe has one or more large "rancheries," or villages, in which it lives, and which are always located at the level of the sea, just above tide and surf, at river-mouths, or on sheltered bays of the islands, or the mainland ; these rancheries, or houses, are built of solid, heavy timbers in the permanent villages, or thrown loosely together of lighter material in their temporary or camping stations. The general type of construction is the same throughout the archi- pelago, the most substantial houses being those of the Haidahs, who give more care to the accurate fitting together and ornamen- tation of their edifices than is shown elsewhere. They certainly show a greater constructive facility and mechanical dexterity, not only in the better style of house-building but in the greater num- ber of, greater size of, and excessively elaborate carved totem posts. These peculiar adjuncts to Alaskan Indian architecture are small and shabby everywhere else when compared with the Prince of Wales exhibition. All permanent villages are generally situated with regard to one great idea — easy access to halibut-fishing banks and such coast fish- eries, which occupy the greater proportion of the natives' time in going to and coming from them when not actually engaged in fishing upon these chosen grounds ; therefore it happens that, occasionally, a village will be located on a rocky coast, bleak and exposed, though carefully placed at the same time so as to permit of the safe landing of canoes in rough water. These houses always face seaward, and stand upon some flat of soil, elevated a few feet above the high-tide mark, where below there is usually a sandy or gravelly beach upon which the fleet of canoes is drawn out, or launched from, as the owners come and go at all hours of the day and night. The houses are arranged side by side, either in close contact, or else a space of greater or less width between. A promenade or track is always left between the fronts of the houses and the edge of the bank, from 46 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. ten to thirty feet in width ; it constitutes a street, and in which the carved posts and temporary fish-drying frames, etc., are usually planted. Also those canoes that are not in daily use, or will not be used for some time, are invariably hauled up on this street, and carefully covered by rush-mats or spruce-boughs, so as to protect them from the weather, by which they might be warped or cracked. The rancheries are themselves never painted by their rude archi- tects and builders ; they, however, soon assume a uniform, incon- spicuous, gray color, and become yellowish-green in spots, or Over- A Haidah Rancherie. grown with moss and weeds owing to the dampness of the climate. If it were not for the cloud of bluish smoke that hovers over these villages in calm weather, they would never be noticed from any con- siderable distance. In localities where the encroachment of mountain and water make the village area very scant, two rows of houses are occasion- ally formed, but in no instance whatever is any evidence given in these Koloshian settlements of special arrangement of dwellings, or of any set position for the house of the chief man of the village : he may live either in the centre or at the extreme end of the row. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 47 Each house usually shelters several families, in one sense of the term ; these are related to each other and under the tacitly ac- knowledged control of some elder, to whom the building is reputed to belong, and who is a person of greater or less importance in the tribe or village according to the amount of his property or cunning of his intellect. Before some of these Siwash mansions a rude porch or platform is erected, upon which, in fair weather, a miscellaneous group of natives will squat in assembly, conversing, if squaws, or gambling, if men. The houses themselves are usually square upon their founda- tions, and vary much in size, some of them being a hundred feet square, while most of them are between fifty and sixty feet, the smaller rancheries being less than twenty. The gable end, and the entrance right under its plumb, always faces the street and beach- view ; the roof slopes down at a low pitch or angle on each side, with a projecting shelter erected right over the hole left in the roof- centre, intended for the escape of smoke — no chimneys were ever built. This shelter, or shutter, is movable, and is shifted by the Indian just as the wind and rain may drive ; the floor is oblong or nearly square, and, in the older and better constructed examples, is partly sunk in the earth, i.e., the ground has been excavated to a depth of six or eight feet in a square area, directly in the centre, with one or two large earthen steps or terraces left running around the sides of the cellar. A small square of bare dirt is left in the exact centre, again, of this hole, while the rest of the floor is cov- ered with split planks of cedar ; the earthen steps which environ the lower floor are in turn faced and covered with cedar-slabs, and these serve not only for sleeping and lounging places, but also for the stowage, in part, of all sorts of boxes and packages of property and food belonging to the family ; the balance of these treasures usually hangs suspended, in all manner of ingenious contrivances, from the heavy beams and roof-poles overhead. The rancheries which are built to-day by Alaskan Indians nearly all stand on the surface of the ground without any excavation — a decided degen- eracy. The pattern of the Koloshian house is maintained with little variation throughout the archipelago, and has been handed down from remote antiquity. When, after extended confabulation, a number of Indians agree to build a house, several months are passed first in the forest by them, where they are engaged in fell- 48 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. ing the trees and dressing the timbers necessary ; when these logs and planks are finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is done with axes and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), they are tumbled into the water and towed around to the contem- plated site of the new edifice. The great size of the beams and planks used in a big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a large number of hands co-operate in the work. The erection, therefore, of such a structure in all its stages, the cutting and hew- ing in the woods, the launching and towing of the timbers to the foundations, and their subsequent elevation and fitting, forms the occasion of a regular gathering, or "bee," that generally calls in whole detachments from neighboring villages, which is always the Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a Rancherie. precursor to a grand " potlatch," or giving away of the portable property of the savage for whom the labor is undertaken. Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assem- bling of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time ere completion in all details, because the Siwash for whom the work has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as it may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable property, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of the labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more than two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect babel of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 49 entire combination of men, women, and children, as the great beams are placed in position.* In the construction of these dwellings the savage uses no iron or wooden spikes, he " mortices " and "tenons " rudely but solidly everything that requires binding firmly ; in the lighter and tempo- rary summer rancheries much use is made of cedar-root and bark- rope lashings to the same end. Within the last fifteen or twenty years the common use of small windows has been employed, the glazed sashes being purchased from the whites either at Victoria or else brought up to order by the traders ; these are inserted in the most irregular manner, usually on the sides under the eaves. The oddly-carved totem posts, which appear in every village, sometimes like a forest of dead trees at distant sight, are, broadly speaking, divisible into two classes : that is to say, the clan or family pillars, and those erected as memorials of the dead. There has been too much written in regard to these grotesque features seeking to endow them with idolatry, superstitions, and other fancies of the savage mind. Nothing of the kind, in my opinion, belongs to the subject ; the image posts of the totem order are generally from 30 to 50 feet in height, with a diameter of 3 to 5 feet at the base, tapering slightly upward. They are often hol- lowed at the back, after the fashion of a trough, so that they can be the easier handled and put into position. Those grotesque figures which cover these posts from top to bottom, closely grouped to- gether, have little or no serious significance whatever : they always display the totem of the owner, and a very marked similarity runs through the carvings of this character in each village, though they have a wide range of variation when one settlement is contrasted with another. I am unable to give any definite explanation, that is worthy of attention, of the real meaning of all those strange designs —perhaps, in truth, there is none; they are simply ornamental doorways. The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the * The exact measurements of such a rancherie, and of which the author submits a careful drawing, were : Breadth in front of house, 54 feet 6 inches ; depth from front to back, "in the clear," 47 feet 8 inches ; height of ridge of roof, 16 feet 6 inches ; height of eaves, 10 feet 8 inches ; girth of main ver- tical posts and horizontal beams, 9 feet 9 inches ; width of outer upright beams, 2 feet 6 inches, thickness, about 6 inches ; width of carved totem post in front of house, 3 feet 10 inches, height, (?) 50 feet. 4 50 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the building^. When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in the medicine man, or " shaman," and also invite the friends of the fam- ily to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco ; soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and pur- chased it from some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay or difficulty in getting one. If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner as that indi- cated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be placed but a single body, then again it will contain several — all relatives, .how- ever. But should the deceased savage have been one of great im- portance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and seeking quar- ters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary, sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man. Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a distribution of property made by the deceased man's brother, or that relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before.* The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole * Whole volumes have been written upon this subject of the totem and consanguinity among these savages of the northwest coast. Further descrip- tion or discussion, in this instance, is superfluous. ABORIGINAL LIFE OP THE SITKANS. 51 through which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside. As you enter, the whole interior seems dark — everything, at first, indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portiere over the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace, upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing ; kettles of stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes, all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room, some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving in wood or slate ; while others are idly staring into the fire, or, wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring. Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead, hang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life, such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs, cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon and hali- but, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such people —blankets,* tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs of silk, are stowed away in the corners. But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation swift, * The blanket is now, however, the general recognized currency among these people. It is the substitute among them of that unit of value, the beaver skin, which has been for so long the currency of the great Hudson Bay region. The blankets used in Alaskan trade are of all colors — green, blue, yellow, red, and white— of the very best woollen texture, none others will do. They are rated in value by the "points" or line-marks woven into the edge, the best and largest being a " four-point," the smallest and poorest being " one- point." The unit of value is a single " two and a half point" blanket, worth a little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large four- point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. Traders not infrequently buy in blankets, taking them, when in good order, from the Indians as money, and selling them out again as trade demands. 52 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though a tem- pest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the Ko- loshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse — slops, bones, shells, fish-debris, and a medley of similar and worse nui- sances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere hangs heavy around our heads — we move away. On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with, unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basket- ware; they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are almost invariably bare — too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is a very common practice ; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect ; blue and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of meat-eating savages, who always paint them- selves with great care as to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning ; especially hideous are the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe smeared over the counte- nances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out upon them as they are fish- ing or paddling extended journeys in their canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in mourning by the same application. Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style ; and, until quite lately, the females all wore labrets in the lower lips — this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 63 among the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or copper, are inserted ; and also the septum of the nose is perforated, of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or a pendant of haliotis shell. Each village has its lex non scripta, and is a law unto itself every- where within the confines of the Alexander archipelago ; or, in differ- ent words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to any other village or savages — it is the largest unit in the Indian system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the indi- vidual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen — there are no strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other's sim- ple life, every move that they make, what they capture in the for- est or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the ranch- eries over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimu- lates and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing in its detail — no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not acknowledged ; but any action tending to the injury of another, in person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the suf- ferer— usually atoned for — and the village feud, thus aroused, is soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property, to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which, inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable manner ; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male Indian able to bear arms ; and although these savages 54 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. are fearless ancl brave, yet they know no open, fair fight — taught to get his living by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and do. Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet, and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work, hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has to hire them to labor by making the customary "potlatch," just as any other man of the tribe would do — only he must give a little more. The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange features, for though every rancherie has its freely- acknowledged chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than there are houses, each one of which has its own regu- lations, and a subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.* The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the inte- rior country ; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers and streams, are duly divided up among the different fami- lies. These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches — and they are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage inheritance ; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of pro- prietary and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast, corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define the limits of such properties between savages, by savages ; * There are naturally in every clan certain individuals of hereditary Indian wealth and a long pedigree, who speak in better language, who have a fine physical presence, a more dignified bearing, and the self-possession and pride of incarnate egotism. From these men the chiefs are selected, and although the chieftainship is not necessarily hereditary, yet it is often retained in this manner for many generations in one family. The covers of this volume, however, cannot be expanded wide enough to permit the further discussion and enumeration of a thousand and one singular points in this connection which rise in the author's mind. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 55 and furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such, for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter — ber- ries, wreckage, or shell-fish. The woods and the waters are teeming with animal life ; the lofty semi-naked peaks harbor mountain goats in large flocks ; the beau- tiful grouse of Sabine hides in the forest thickets ; the land otter and the mule-eared deer haunt the countless ravines, valleys, and rivulet bottoms ; salmon in fabulous numbers run up those streams, and big, brown and glossy black bears come down to fatten upon these spawning fish. But the Sitkan savage is indolent, and, though all this dietary abundance and variety is before him, he lives quite exclusively upon halibut and salmon, the former mostly fresh and the latter air-dried and smoked in the soot of his rancherie. Hali- but he finds all the year round ; salmon briefly run only at widely separated periods. The halibut fishery is the one systematic regular occupation of the natives. These fish may be taken in all waters of the archipelago at almost any season, though on certain banks, well known to the Indians, they are more numerous at times. When the halibut are most active and abundant, the Koloshians take them in large quan- tities, fishing with a hook and line from their canoes, which are an- chored over the favored spots by stones attached to cedar-bark ropes or cables. They still employ their own primitive, clumsy-look- ing hook in decided preference to using our own make. When the canoe is loaded to the gunwale by an alert fisherman, these halibut are brought in to some convenient adjacent point on the shore, where they are handed over to the women, who are there to take care of them, usually living in a temporary rancherie. They squat around the pile, rapidly clean the fish, removing the larger bones, head, fins, and tail, and cut it into broad, thin flakes. These are then hung on the poles of a wooden frame trellis, where, without salt, and by the wind and sun alone, sometimes aided by a slow fire underneath the suspended fish-meat, the flakes are sufficiently cured and dried ; then they are packed away in those characteristic cedar boxes for future use. A group of old and young squaws, half-nude, flecked with shining scales and splashed with blood, as they always are when at work upon a fine run of halibut or salmon — such a group is to be vividly remembered ever afterward, if you see it even but once. The lit- 56 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. tie pappooses, entirely naked, with big heads and bellies, slender necks and legs, are running hither and thither in infantile glee and sport, always with a mouthful of raw ova or a handful of stewed fish from the kettle near by, while the babies, propped up in their stiff-backed lashings, croon and sleep away the time. There are no rivers of any size flowing on the islands of the Sit- kan archipelago ; but there are rapid rivulets and broad brooks in great numbers. Many of these are large enough to be known as " salmon rivers." The first run of those attractive fish usually takes place up some of the longest island-streams and the mainland rivers about July 10th to 20th. A month later a larger species begins to arrive from the depths of the ocean outside, and this run sometimes lasts, in a desultory manner, until January. These salmon, when they first appear, are fat and in superb condition and color ; but as they leave the salt water and take up their persistent, tireless ascent of fresh-water channels they become hook-jawed, lean, and pale- fleshed. They ascend very small streams in especially great num- bers when these rivulets are swollen by the heavy rains of October, and, being easily caught and very large, they constitute the chief harvest of the Alaskan Indian — his meat and bread, in fact. They are either speared in the shallow estuaries or trapped in brush and split-stick weirs, which are planted in the streams. Everyone of the little salmon brooks has its owner in the Indian law. They are the private property of the several families or subdivisions of the clans. Those people always come out of their permanent village houses during the fishing period, and camp upon the banks of their respective water claims. It is quite unnecessary to itemize all the species of food-fishes in the Alexander archipelago, for anything and everything that is at all abundant in the vicinity of an Indian rancherie is sure to be eaten ; trout, herring, flounders, rock-cod, and the rosy, glittering sebastines constitute minor details of the savage dietary. Codfish are taken in these waters, but not in great numbers, nor are they especially sought for. The spawn of the herring * is collected on spruce boughs, which the Indians carefully place at low- water on the spawning grounds ; then, when taken up, it is smoke-dried and stored away. But the "loudest" feast of these savages consists of a box, just * Clnpea mirabilis. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 57 opened, of semi-rotten salmon-roe. Many of the Siwashes have a custom of collecting the ova, putting it into wooden boxes, and then burying it below high-water mark on the earthen flats above. When decomposition has taken place to a great extent, and the mass has a most penetrating and far-reaching " funk," then it is ready to be eaten and made merry over. The box is usually un- covered without removing it from its buried position ; the eager savages all squat around it, and eat the contents with every indica- tion on their hard faces of keen gastronomic delight — faugh ! The same ill-favored and heartily-hated " dog-fish "* of our Cape Cod fishermen is also very abundant in these far-away waters. Indians Raking Oolochans and Herring. — Stickeen River. Recently, the demand created for its oil by the tanneries of Oregon and California has made its capture by the Indians an important source of revenue to them ; the oil rendered from its liver is readily sold by them to the white traders, who also have established a fishery for the purpose on Prince of Wales Island. These traders also are making good use of herring-oil, which is to be secured here in unfailing, abundant supply, to any quantity required. The most grateful condiment to the Sitkan palate is rancid fish- oil, or oolachan "butter" — a semi-solid grease, with a fetid smell and taste ; into this they always dip or rub their flakes of dried fish, Squalua acanthia*. 58 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. their berries, in fact everything that they eat. A little wooden trencher or tub, grotesquely carved, always is to be seen (and smelled), placed alongside of the monotonous kettle of stewed fish, or pile of dried fish, which constitutes the regular spread fora full meal. And again, a very curious, soap-like use of this oil is made by the younger and more comely savages. An Indian never washes in water up in this wet and watery wilderness. I never have seen an attempt made to wash the face or hands with water, but they do rub oil vigor- ously over, and scrub it off bright and dry with a towel, or mop, of cedar-bark shreds or dry sedge-grass. The constant presence of this strong-flavored oil renders it a physical impossibility for a white man, not long-accustomed to its odor, to enter a rancherie and eat with the inmates, unless the pangs of starvation make him ravenous. Whether from taste itself, or sheer indolence, the culinary art of these people is confined to the incessant simmering and boiling of everything which is not eaten raw, or ripe ; copper, sheet-iron, and brass kettles being now universally used, are the only decid- ed innovation made by contact with ourselves in their aboriginal cooking outfit, though the introduction of tin and cheap earthen- ware dishes is growing more general every day. Most of the In- dian household utensils are made of wood ; they are fashioned in several forms or types, which appear to have been faithfully copied from early time. The berry and the food-trays are cut out of solid pieces of wood, the length being about one and one-third times as great as the width, while the depth is relatively small. In some of the large rancheries these trays, or troughs, are six to ten feet long ; the outer ends of those receptacles are generally carved richly in all sorts of fancy relief ; and, sometimes, the sides are grotesquely painted. A common form, and smaller in size, and a great favorite with the family, is boat-shaped, the hollow of the dish being oval ; the ends are provided with odd prow-shaped projections that serve as handles — one of these ends being usually carved into the head and fore-feet of some animal or bird, the other to represent its hind-feet and tail. These dishes are seldom more than eight or ten inches in length, and curve upward from the middle each way, like the "sheer," or the gunwale, of a clipper ship. Water-dippers, pot-spoons and ladles are made from horns of the mountain sheep. They are steamed, bent, and pared down thin, carved and shaped so as to be exceedingly symmetrical, and well finished. The stew and berry-spoons in ordinary use are made A STICKEEN SQUAW Boiling Berries and Oil, Toasting Herrings, etc. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 59 from the stiff, short black horns of the mountain goat, the handles often carved to represent a human form, animal, or bird. Knives of all sorts are now in use. Much ingenuity is often exhibited by the adaptation of old blades to new handles — in converting the large, flat blacksmithing files into keen weapons, and making fish- cleaning knives out of pieces of iron ; thin, square or oblong sheets of this metal are so fitted into oblong wooden handles as to re- semble the small hash-knives used in our kitchens. But the Sitkan housekeeper glories in her boxes — great chests and little ones — in which she stores everything of value belonging to the family, except the dogs and the canoes. The big boxes, corded up with bark ropes, are her blanket and fur treasuries ; the smaller ones contain her oolachan " butter " and dried fish and meat. The larger chests are from two and a half to four feet square ; the lesser are between a foot to two feet. The sides of such a box are made of a single piece of thinly shaven cedar board, which by steaming is bent three times at a right angle, and pegged tightly and very neatly up to the fourth corner. The bottom is a separate solid plank, keyed in with little pegs very solidly, and water-tight ; the cover is cut out of a thick slab, and fits over and sets down heavily on the upper edge of the chest. Those boxes are all decorated in designs of the peculiar type so common among these savages, painted in black and white. The next desideratum of the squaw is a full supply of cedar-bark mats, which she plaits from strips of this material, and which are always spread out on the ground or rude plank floor when the Indian prepares to roll up in his blanket for slumber. Such mats are the pride of all Thlinket squaws, and vary much in texture and in pattern. But the daily routine of the dusky housekeeper is a very dif- ferent one indeed from that characteristic of woman's labor in car- ing for our homes. No sweeping or dusting in the Indian ranch- erie ; no bed-chambers to change the linen in and tidy up ; no kitchen or servants to look after ; nothing whatever of the kind. Yet the Indian matron is always busy. She has to hew the firewood and drag it in ; she has to carry water and attend to all of the rude cooking and filling of the trenchers ; she looks after the mats and the sewing of the children's fur and other garments — not much to be sure in the way of dressmaking — she has to make all of the tedi- ous berry-trips, picking and drying of the fruit, as well as attending to the preservation, in the same manner, of the fish and game which 60 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. the man brings in. She has an infinite amount of drudgery to do in the line of gathering certain herbs, bark, and shell-fish. Many small roots indigenous to the country, containing more or less starch, are eagerly sought after, dried, and stored away by the women. The inner sap-layer of the spruce and also that of the hemlock — the cambium layer — is collected by cutting the trees down and then barking the trunks for that object. It is shaved otf in ribbons and eaten in great quantities, both fresh and dried, and is considered very wholesome. It is sweet, mucilaginous, but dis- tinctly resinous in flavor. The rank-growing seeds, shoots, and leaf-stalks of the Epilobium heracleum, and many others, are plucked and carried by the squaws in huge bundles to the family fire, and there eaten by all hands, the stalks being dipped, mouth- ful after mouthful, in oil. She has, however, no washing whatever of clothes to do for any- body, except what little she may see fit to do for herself ; she never treats the dishes even to that ordeal. With all this, however, it seems rather strange that the clothes of the Indians, consisting of dresses, shirts and blankets for the men ; and for women, petticoats, chemises, dresses (sometimes), and blankets also — that these articles usually appear neat and tolerably clean — the children excepted, as they are always dirty beyond all adequate description. Every indi- vidual attends to his or her own washing — if the husband wants a clean shirt, he washes it himself. Before the introduction of the potato through early white fur- traders, the only plant cultivated by the Alaskan savages was a po- tent weed which they grew as a substitute for tobacco — the impor- tation of the latter, however, has taken its place entirely to-day, be- cause the Virginian weed is far more pleasant. But the old stone mortars and pestles that are still to be found knocking around the most venerable town-sites, bear evidence to the industry of making native tobacco here ages ago. This plant was prepared for use by drying over a fire on a little frame stretcher, then bruised to a powder in the stone mortars, then moistened and pressed into cakes. It was not smoked in a pipe, but, mixed with a little clam- shell lime (burnt for the purpose), it was chewed or held in the cheek, just as the Peruvian Indians use coca.* Everybody knows * This accounts for the puzzling appearance of ancient stone mortars and pestles iii Alaska, throughout the Sitkan region. Ethnologists have endear* ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 61 how fond Indians are of tobacco— there is no exception to the rule in Alaska, and no excuse for attempting to recite in these pages the well-worn story anew. No domesticated animals, except dogs, are to be found with the Alaskan Indians — no cats or fowls. The original breed of curs has been very much disguised by imported strains ; the present natives are gray and black, shaggy, wolfish beasts, about the size of a large spitz dog. These cowardly, treacherous animals alone make a white man's stay in an Indian village a burden to his existence. The work bestowed by several of the Sitkan clans upon their so- called potato gardens is hardly to be designated as the " cultiva- tion " of that tuber. It forms to-day, this vegetable does, a very important part of the food-supply, and where a white man takes hold of such a garden the result, in a small way, is very satisfac- tory ; but the Siwash finds that the greater part of the low, flat, rich soil in this country is so thickly wooded that the task of clear- ing the ground is altogether too much for him to even consider, much less undertake. But when he can find a place where an old settlement once existed, though long abandoned — there the sites of decayed rancheries are sure to be of rich, warm soil — such are the spots which the Siwash calls his garden, and where his potatoes are rudely planted, little or no attention being paid to the hoeing and drilling which we deem essential, therefore the variety in use has been run down so that the size and yield is very small, and the quality watery and poor. While we observe the very general possession of firearms in every rancherie, and we hardly ever see a canoe-load of savages unless the barrels of several muskets or rifles project over the gunwale, yet these Sitkan Indians are not great hunters ; but the potent fact that there is no place in all this region where foot travel is practicable into the interior, or even along the coast margin it- self, affords an excellent reason ; they do, however, kill a very con- siderable number of black bears every year, at two special seasons therein, i.e., when these brutes are found prowling upon the sea- beach. But they never follow bruin into the mountainous re- cesses, where he invariably retreats. ored to reason that certain extinct tribes must have cultivated grain up here of some kind and used it as food. I am indebted to the venerable Dr. W. F. Tolmie for this fact, he showing me the mortars and giving the reason of their use in December, 1866, at Victoria, B. C. 62 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. In the early spring, during that brief period when the weeds and grasses first grow green along the outskirts of the timber in warm sheltered nooks down by the tide-level, black bears come below from the cold, gloomy canons above and feed upon the sprouting skunk-cabbage * and other succulent shoots, browsing here and rooting up there, these tender growths, just as hogs do in our orchards and clover-fields. Again, late in autumn, when the salmon rush up into the estuaries and through the shallows by countless myriads, bruin is once more tempted down to the sea- beaches, and again gets into trouble. In the same manner the Indians secure the beautiful little mule-deer, f which also loves tender vegetation, and in this love falls an easy prey to the silent approach of a canoe with its skulking crew. Geese and ducks, dur- ing winter months, spend much time on the quiet fiords in large flocks, and constitute the chief gunning of the Siwashes, who shoot them from their canoes with the same old flint-lock trade-muskets first used by the whites a hundred years ago. The Indian admires this pattern still above all other patterns — despises the percussion- cap, which in this damp region often fails him, and the trader, knowing this weakness of the savage, always has a stock of these flint-lock muskets, newly made, on hand. A supply is steadily furnished by the Hudson's Bay Company at Victoria. But the one thing of joy, of delight, and of infinite use to the native of the Sitkan archipelago is his canoe. Life, indeed, would be a sad problem for him were it not for this adjunct of his own creation. Upon its construction he lavishes the best of his thought, the height of his manual skill, and his infinite patience. The re- sult of this attention is to fashion from a single cedar log a little vessel which challenges our admiration invariably, for its fine out- line and its seaworthiness and strength. All the canoes of this region have a common model, and are simi- lar in type, though they differ much in details of shape and size. They are all made from the indigenous pine J and giant cedar, § the wood of which is light, durable, and worked very readily ; but it is apt to split parallel to its grain. This constitutes the only solici- m sp. f Ceniis columbianm — a well-grown specimen weighs about one hundred and fifty pounds. Great numbers are taken in the Tahkoo region, though it is found everywhere. \ Abies sitkeiisis. § Thuja gigantea. ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 63 tude of the Indian's mind. He keeps the canoe covered with mats and brush whenever it is hauled out, even for a few days, to avoid this danger, for whenever a canoe is heavily laden, and working, as it will do, in a rough channel, it is in constant danger of splitting at the cleavage lines of its grain, and thus jeopardizing its living as well as dead freight. With an exception of the bow and stern-pieces, each canoe, no matter how large or how small, is made in the same manner and from a single log, which is roughed out in the forest, then towed around to the permanent village, where it is hauled up in front of the architect's house. Here he works upon it during winter months, usually in odd hours, employing nothing but his little adze-like hat- chet and fire to assist in giving it shape and fine lines. The requi- site expansion amidships, to afford that beam required, is effected by steaming with water and hot stones and the insertion of several thwart sticks. Canoes are smoothed outside and painted black, with a red or white streak under the gunwale in most cases ; inside they bear the regular fine tooth-marks of the excavating adze, and are smeared with red-ochre. The paddles are usually made of yel- low cypress, and a great variety of small wooden baling dippers are also provided, one or two for each canoe, because the water often slops over the gunwales in bad weather. The canoe itself is never suffered to leak. The average size is one of fifteen to twenty feet in length, which will carry from eight to ten savages, with baggage. One having a length of from thirty to thirty-five feet carries as many men. The smaller canoes of from twelve to thirteen feet are usually used by one or two savages in their quick, irregular trips to and from the village, and are easily launched and hauled out by one man. It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the Sitkan ever took or takes any real enjoyment in hunting or fishing. If he does, it is never exhibited on his countenance or evidenced by his language. It is, in fact, the serious business of his life, and the steady routine of its prosecution has robbed him of every enjoyable sporting sensa- tion which we love to experience when after fish or game. Per- haps, however, he may recall the thrill of that feeling which he felt when, as a boy, he was first taken out in his father's canoe to the halibut banks, and there permitted to bait a huge wooden hook and haul away upon the taut kelp-line when the "kambala" had swallowed it ; but the necessity of going out to this shoal in all 64 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. sorts of disagreeable weather every summer and winter of his sub- sequent existence, at very frequent intervals, soon destroyed pleas- urable emotions. Therefore, he fashions his acute-angled wooden hooks, his iron-tipped fish and seal spears, and polishes up his mus- ket with none of those enjoyable anticipations which possess the soul of a white sportsman. In 1841-42 the best understanding of the Russian and English traders agreed in reporting a population of over twenty thousand Indians within the limits of the Alexander archipelago ; to-day the same country can show no more than a scant seven thousand. The inroads that small-pox and measles have made, by which these savages were destroyed even as fire sweeps through and burns drought-withered thickets, leave little doubt as to the great numer- ical superiority of earlier days as compared with the present. This decay and abandonment is everywhere exhibited now even in the per- manent villages, where houses have been deserted completely : some are shut up, mouldering, and rotting away upon their foundations ; others, large and fit for the shelter of fifty or sixty natives, will be found tenanted by only two or three Siwashes. All the standing carved posts in this entire region, with rare exceptions, are, as a rule, more or less advanced into decay. A rank growth of weeds, dark and undisturbed in some cases, presses up close to inhabited houses, the traffic not being sufficient to keep them down. The original features of these settlements, in a few years more of this unchecked neglect and decay, will have entirely disappeared as they have already at Sitka. At the present hour, however, we can go among them, and readily call up to our minds what they once were when they were swarming with occupants who were dressed in tanned- leather shirts and sea-otter cloaks, as they thronged about the ships of Cook and Vancouver. Slavery, which was originally firmly interwoven with the social fabric of these people, has been about abolished — slaves themselves to-day are very scarce, and are not much more so than in name. They were the captives taken in savage warfare between opposing clans, and were most horribly tortured and cruelly treated by their masters. As a rule the young people marry young, after the stolid fashion of Indians. They approve of polygamy, but seldom do you find a man with more than one squaw, simply because the women do not contribute materially and primarily to the support of the family, ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS. 65 and attend only to the accessory duties of it ; thus it becomes an increased tax upon the dull energies of the savage whenever he adds an extra woman to his household. The squaws are all well treated everywhere up here ; they have just as much to say as their lords and masters whenever the occasion of buying, selling, or hir- ing arises ; as to the children (we will not see many of them to- day), they are always kindly cared for by both parents, and the whole tribe is as indulgent, since they are constantly roaming about the village, after the custom of youngsters universally. A candid verdict will result, in view of the surroundings of the Koloshian, that the only vice which can be legitimately charged up against him, or his kind, is the sin of gambling. To this dissipa- tion the Alaskan savage is desperately prone ; the monotonous chant of the stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These worthies sit on the ground, in-a circle usually, in the centre of which a mat is spread ; six or seven small wooden pins about as large as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting a deep guttural hah-hah-ee-nah-hah ! the others watch him with lynx-like eyes for a few moments, when one of the players suddenly orders the shuffler to show his hands, in which the sticks are firmly clinched, and at the same time endeavors to guess the value of these sticks in either one hand or the other, which have been held up — he pauses a moment, then makes his decision, the clinched hand designated is opened, the little sticks fall to the mat, and the caller wins or loses just as he happens to hit the value expressed by the markings on these pins : if he guesses correctly he wins everything in the pot or pool, and takes up the wooden dice in turn, to shuffle, shout, and repeat for the rest of the circle. This game is usually sustained night and day, until some one of the party remains the winner of everything that the others started in with. That wretched debauchery which an introduction of rum into the rancheries of these natives has caused, cannot be justly laid at the Indian's door ; this intense morbid craving for liquor among the Alaskan savages of this region is most likely due to the climate —it is not near so strong in the appetite of the natives who live east of the coast range. Although Congress has legislated, and 5 66 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. our officials have endeavored to carry out the prohibition statutes, yet the matter thus far is wholly beyond control — the savage can- not only smuggle successfully within these intricate watery chan- nels, but he now thoroughly understands the distillation of rum it- self from sugar and molasses. There is something in this atmosphere which enables a white man to drink a great deal more with impunity than he can in any other section of the United States or Territories — the quantities of strong tea, the nips of brandy, wine, and cordials which he will swallow with perfect physical indifference, in the course of every day of his life, at Sitka for instance, would drive him to delirium in an exceedingly short time if repeated at San Francisco. Naturally enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected by Indian stomachs ; and now that they have fully grasped the understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate ex- tinction of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our com- bined virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence. CHAPTER IV. THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka. — The Value and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska. — The Old "Redoubt '» or Russian Jail. —The Tread well Mine. — Futility of Predicting what may, or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery. — Coal of Alaska not fit for Steam- ing Purposes. — Salmon Canneries. — The Great "Whaling Ground" of Fairweather. — Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant. — Mount Fairweather so named as the Whale- men's Barometer. — The Storm here in 1741 which Separated Bering and his Lieutenant. — The Grandeur of Mount St. Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet. — A Tempestuous and Forbidding Coast to the Mariner. —The Brawling Copper River. — Mount Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North American Continent. — In the Forks of this Stream. — Exaggerated Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives. — Frigid, Gloomy Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound.— The First Vessel ever built by White Men on the Northwest Coast, Constructed here in 1794.— The Brig Phoenix, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint or Tar.— Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil, Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Dea- cons of the Greek Church on Board. — Every Soul Lost. — Love of the Natives for their Rugged, Storm-beaten Homes. A BRONZED humming-bird* lies upon the author's table, that once hovered and darted over the waters of Sitka Sound. Its torn and rudely stuffed skin was given to him at Fort Simpson with the re- mark that it came from the hot springs just below New Archangel ; and that nowhere else in all of a vast wilderness, outside of the immediate vicinity of these springs, ever did or could a humming- bird be found. Should, therefore, a visitor to this Alaskan solitude chance to travel within it during the months of April and May, if * Sdasphorw rufus—ii is common in California, Oregon, and parts of Washington Territory, and Southern British Columbia— never found north of Victoria on the coast, except as above stated : it winters in Central America. 68 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. he will but follow the path of that wee brave bird, he will be led into a veritable green and fragrant oasis, encircled all round about with savage icy mountains and snowy forests. Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, in a pretty little bay sheltered by a score of tiny islets, there — from the slop- ing face of a verdant bank, the finest hot springs known to Alaska flow up and out to the sea. Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat ; the lux- uriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here, when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it, create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure — the waters of the bay in front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse, secluded in the jungle. The Indians, from time immemorial, have resorted to these hot waters of Baranov Island ; four distinct and freely flowing springs take their origin in those crevices and fissures of the f eld- spathic granite foundation of the earth hereabouts ; the tempera- ture of the largest spring, at its source, is 150° to 160° Fah. ; the waters are charged with sulphur to a very great extent. So jealous were the savages of any attempt among themselves which might savor of a monopoly of the use of these healing, beneficent warm streams, that no one tribe ever dared to build a village upon the site ; but, by tacit consent, all were allowed to camp thereon. Some Indians often came from a distance of three hundred miles away to enjoy the sanitary result of bathing here, a few days or a few weeks, as their troubles might warrant. Naturally the Russians, burdened at Sitka with all diseases which flesh is heir to, turned their attention very promptly to this sanitarium ; they erected a small hospital and two spacious bath- houses over the springs, keeping everything in the strictest order and cleanliness, without and within doors. A sad change con- fronts us to-day — in so far as care of human hands ; but the savage Sitkan is here, exulting in his renewed supremacy. The occurrence, however, of hot springs is quite frequent every- where in this archipelago ; yet their extent and volume of outflow is not so great as evidenced by those we have just noticed of Baranov Island. Indians love to immerse their entire bodies in pools and eddies of these hot rivulets, which are cooled suffi- THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 69 ciently by flowing a dozen or fifty yards from their origin over peb- bly bottoms ; Siwashes will soak themselves in this manner for hours at a time, with nothing but their heads visible. Though the Koloshian, like all others of his kind, never verbally complains, yet he is subject to acute rheumatism, to fevers, and to divers malig- nant cutaneous diseases ; these springs, wherever known to him, are always well regarded as his happy relief and hope. Certain it is that when you behold the parboiled skin of a native, after bathing here, the fair almost white complexion really startles, for, prior to the immersion, he was a coppery brown or black. Midway between these thermal fountains and Sitka is the site of an old Russian jail or prison ; in a deep inlet, with no land in sight, but lofty mountains rising abruptly from the water's edge, is the "Redoubt." Here a small alpine lake empties itself in a foaming cascade channel of a few yards in width, that quickly plunges into a canon, the perpendicular walls of which are a full thousand feet in mural height. The Russians erected mills of various kinds along the rapids to avail themselves of such abundant water-power ; the buildings stood upon a bare rocky portion of the channel, and were kept in order by an old veteran in command ; a squad of soldiers aided him ; the fish, dried and salted salmon, which were required for the use of the company, were annually caught here as they swarmed up the cascade from the sea, into Gloobaukie Lake. The great facility of travel afforded by these sheltered canals of the Alexander archipelago, has enabled and facilitated a most energetic and persistent search for gold and silver by our miners, but the rugged features of the country and its dense timber and jungle have rendered the progress of such investigation slow, and one of great physical difficulty. In the sands of every stream flow- ing between Calif ornia and Cook's Inlet the " color "of gold can be found, but the paying quantities therein seldom warrant a mining camp or settlement. To-day the only mining rendezvous which we find in Alaska is a little village of rough cabins called " Juneau City," located on the north side of Gastineaux Channel, at a point near the upper end of that passage ; near by, and adjacent, is established a large gold-quartz stamp-mill* on Douglas Island, * The Treadwell Mine— free-milling gold ore ; 130 stamps ; employs 150 to 250 men — situated right at the tide-level. 70 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. where the mining experts feel justified in predicting a steady and inexhaustible yield of paying ore — it is paying handsomely at present. This subject of what is, or what is not, a good mining region or investment is one to which no rational man can well afford to com- mit himself. Those who have had extended experience in these matters know that it is a topic which baffles the best investigator, and returns no safe answer to the most intelligent cross-examina- tion. The true advice which can be honestly given is that which prompts every man interested to look and resolve wholly for him- self, for he, in fact, knows just as much as anybody else. At the most, the finding of a rich or desirable lead of gold or silver in a new country is an accident or sheer opportunity of chance. Whether it will hold out, or end in a " pocket," is also only to be determined by working it for all it is worth. Once in a while a man makes a rich find, and is rewarded ; but an overwhelming majority of prospect- ors are ever wandering in fruitless, restless, tireless search for those golden ingots which are still hidden in the recesses of mountain ledges, or buried in the alluvium of river bottoms. The miners in O " Alaska embrace various nationalities — Australians and Canadians, Cornishmen and Californians, Oregonians and British Columbians predominate — but the number aggregated is not large.* If gold or silver-quartz mines of free-milling ore (no matter how low the grade) can be located anywhere on the shores of these mountainous fiords of the Alexander archipelago, their wealth will be great, because the transportation to them and from them is prac- tically without cost. The expense of working such valuable quartz mines up a hundred or more miles from the sea, will result in aban- donment, where reaching them involves frequent transfers of sup- plies, and the working season is cut by the rigor of winter to less than half or one-third of every year. The same mines, down within the dockage of an ocean-steamer in the Sitkan district would be a steady source of wealth and industry all the year round. The coal which is found here is not satisfactory for steamers' use — too heavily charged with sulphur. Copper ore is well-known, but not worked in competition with the Lake Superior and Arizona cheap outputs. At the present writing there are no active indus- * Eight hundred, or a thousand, perhaps. They come and go suddenly, alternating in travel as the rumors relative to their occupation circulate. THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 71 tries whatsoever in the Sitkan archipelago beyond the energetic stamp-mill of the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island, and the limited placer diggings of Juneau City. Until a market is created for its large natural resources of food-fishes, the little canneries which our people have started here will not develop ; nor will the timber be of much commercial importance until the great reser- voirs of the lower coast are exhausted. Statisticians and political economists can easily figure out the time when a population of twenty-five or thirty millions of our own people will be living upon the Pacific coast alone ; then the real value of those latent re- sources * of the Sitkan watery wilderness must be patent to a most indifferent calculator. With this survey of the Alexander archipelago fixed on our minds, we pass from it through the bold Cross Sound headlands that loom above those storm-churned swells of an open ocean, which break here in unceasing turmoil, and we sail out into an area that charts tell us is the " Fairweather ground," over which that superb peak itself and sister, Crillon, stand like vast sentinel- towers, rearing their immense bulk into many successive strata of clouds, until the elevation of thirteen thousand and fourteen thou- sand feet is reached, sheer and bold above the sea. This great ex- panse of the Pacific Ocean between us and Kadiak Island, five hundred and sixty miles to the west, and again down to Victoria, nine hundred miles farther to the south, was the rendezvous of the most successful and numerous whaling fleet that the history of the business records. In these waters the large " right " whale did most congregate, and the capture of it between 1846 and 1851 drew not less than three and four hundred ships with their hardy crews to this area backed by the Alaskan coast They never landed, how- ever, unless shipwrecked, which was a rare occurrence, but cruised " off and on " with the majestic head of Mount Fairweather as their point of arrival and departure. * A few small saw-mills have been erected at several points in this Sitkan district to supply the local demand of trading-posts and mining-camps. With reference to quality or economic worth, the timber found herein may be classified as follows, in the order of its value: 1. Yellow cedar (Cupressm nutkaen&is) and Thuja gigantea, the red variety. 2. Sitkan spruce (Abies sit- kensis). This is the most abundant. 3. Hemlock (Abies mertensiana). 4. Balsam fir (Abies canaden&is). The finest growth of this timber is found upon Prince of Wales Island, Admiralty, and Kou Islands, within the Alaskan lines. 72 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak un- veiled by clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consec- utive days afterward, hence the name. Early one June morning Captain Baker, of the Reliance, called the author up to see a moun- tain which was sharply denned in the warm> hazy glow of the dawn- ing sunrise on the horizon — there, bearing N.N.E.,* was the image of Mount Fairweather, just as clear cut as a cameo, and lofty as the ship's spars, though one hundred and thirty-five miles distant ! Closely associated and fully as impressive and quite as high, was the heavier form of the snowy Crillon. That long stretch of more than four hundred miles of bare Alas- kan coast, between Prince William's Sound and Cape Spencer, which stands at the northern entrance to the Sitkan waters, is one that sustains very little human or animal life, and is so rough and is so bleak, that from September until May it is feared and avoided by the hardiest navigator. The flanks of Mounts Fairweather and Cril- lon rise boldly from the ocean at their western feet, and this sheer- ness of elevation undoubtedly gives them that effect of cloud-com- pelling, which does not lose its awe-inspiring power even when a hundred miles away. To the northward and westward of Fair- weather, however, the alpine range which it dominates abruptly sets back from the coast some forty or fifty miles, then turns about and faces the sea in an irregular, lofty half-moon of more than three hundred miles in length. A low table-land, or rolling shelf, is ex- tended at its base, intervening between the mountains and the wash of the Pacific. It is timbered with spruce quite thickly, and re- ported by the Indians to be the best berrying ground in all Alaska. The Fairweather shore is a steep, woody one, much indented with roadstead coves or bays ; the coast line is hilly and uneven, with some rocks and rocky islets scattered along not far out from the surf. The sand-beaches which extend from Fairweather toward the feet of those under St. Elias are remarkably broad and exten- sive ; so much so that, from the ship's mast-head, large lagoons within the outer swell of the open ocean are frequently seen. These beach-locked estuaries communicate with the ocean by shal- * Tuesday, June 13, 1874. It did not seem possible at first that the officer's observations were accurate, but the captain verified the ship's position anew, and confirmed the correctness of Lieutenant Glover's entry and sights : ' ' bear ing N.N.E., 135 m." D W |1 w> S> g I H- ,c — l| £j ^s ^ ' 2 r. c « s- . 3 il s2 c % II THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 73 low breaks in the outer beach-wall of sand and gravel, across all of which the sea rolls with great violence. Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St. Elias, is a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind, except the brown and russet mosses and lichens ; huge, rugged masses of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction — an old prehistoric lava-flood, perhaps. The coast, from the head of Cross* Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy, but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range of magnificent Alpine peaks. In the centre of the arc of this grand crescent-range is the superb body and hoary crest of Mount St. Elias, which is, save Mount Wrangel, now known to be the loftiest peak on the North American coast ; the latter is slightly higher. Triangulated from a base line in Yakootat, in 1874, by one * of the most accomplished mathematicians of the U. S. Coast Survey, the summit of that royal mountain was determined to be more than nineteen thousand feet above the level of the tide at the observer's feet. It was under the shadow of this " bolshoi sopka " that Bering first saw the Continent of North America on the 18th of July, 1741, and undoubtedly he discerned it from a long distance, ere his boat landed. Two days before anchoring, he records the fact that " the country had ter- rible high mountains, which were covered with snow." When he finally landed (it was St. Elias' day), near a point that he named as he named the lofty central peak, Cape St. Elias, he found the temporary summer-houses of a band of natives ; those people themselves had fled in terror from an unwonted invasion, but the Russians soon had reason to regret their subsequent better understanding. After the storm which parted Bering, early in June, from the company of the second vessel of his expedition, he had hoped to fall in with her ever afterward, and while eagerly scanning the coast and horizon about him for some sign of his lost comrades, the hand of fate caused him to turn to the northward, when, had his helm been set south, he would have met the object of his search. For the other vessel, the St. Paul, had proceeded on its solitary * Marcus Baker. Unfortunately no one connected with this Coast Sur- vey Party was able to make an adequate drawing of the mountains, and it was so enveloped in clouds as to be partially invisible when the author cruised un- der its lee. 74 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. course, and anxiously sought the commander, until it, too, had sighted this same coast, three days earlier than had its storm- separated consort. Tschericov came to anchor off some distance from " steep and rocky cliffs "* in "lat. 56°," July 15. Weary and expectant, the captain sent his mate with the long-boat and a crew of ten or twelve of his best men away to the shore for the purpose of inquiry and for a fresh supply of water. The ship's boat dis- appeared behind the point sheltering a small wooded inlet ; it and its men were never seen again by their shipmates. Troubled in mind, but thinking that the surf, perhaps, had stove the boat in landing, the captain sent his boatswain in the dingy with five men and two carpenters, all well armed, to furnish the necessary assist- ance. The small boat disappeared also, and it, too, was never seen again. At the same time a great smoke was constantly ascending from the shore. Shortly afterward two huge canoes, filled with painted, yelling savages, paddled out from the recesses of the bay, and lying at some distance from the ship, all howled, in standing chorus, " Agai — agai ! " then, flourishing their rude arms, they rapidly returned to the shore. Sorrowfully the disturbed and dis- tressed Tschericov turned his ship's course about and hurried home,f not knowing the fate of his men, unable to help them, and, to this day, no authentic inkling of what became of these Slavonian sea- men has ever been produced. Unquestionably, they were tortured and destroyed. The rains caught in the ship's sails filled the casks of the Saint Paul, since Tschericov, deprived of his boats and thoroughly alarmed, made no further attempts to land ; but he had not the faintest idea of the presence, at that moment, of his superior officer in the same waters, and only a few leagues to the northward, who also, like himself was eagerly looking for his storm-parted consort. What a most remarkable voyage, this voyage of the discovery of * That point, most likely, was Kruzov Island, and the bay into which the unhappy Russians were decoyed was Klokachev Gulf. This island forms the western shore of Sitka Sound. f He reached Kamchatka on the 9th October following, with only forty- nine survivors out of his original crew of seventy. Bering never did ; he was shipwrecked and died on a bleak island, of the Commander group, December 8, 1741. They seem to have really sailed over this course of six thousand miles almost together, anxiously searching for each other, yet unconscious of their proximity. THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 75 the Alaskan region — what a chapter of disappointment, of hardship, and of death ! That bluffy sea-wall which forms a face to the low coast pla- teau at the feet of the St. Elias Alps is cut by no great river, nor indented by any noteworthy gulf or inlet, except at Yakootat Bay. Here a succession of precipitous glaciers sweep down from the lofty cradles of their birth to the waters of the sea, making an icy cliff of more than fifteen miles in breadth, where it breaks in constant rever- beration and repetition. At the mouth of Copper River all silt car- ried down from old eroded glacial paths has been deposited for thou- sands and thousands of years, until a big deltoid chart of sea- water channels in muddy relief of bank and shoal has been formed, and through which the flood of an ice-chilled river takes its rapid course. The gloomy, savage wildness of this region of supreme moun- tainous elevation, with its vast gelid sheets and precipitous canons, its sombre forests and eternal snows, all as yet wholly unexplored, and only faintly appreciated as we can from the remote distance of shipboard observation — this region cannot remain much longer untrodden by the geologist and the naturalist, while the artist must accompany them if an adequate presentation is ever to be given of its weird, titanic realities. The Mount St. Elias shore-line is made up of small projecting points, awash. These alternate with low cliffy or else white sandy beaches, which border a flat, rolling woodland country that extends back from the sea ten to thirty miles, where it suddenly laps and rises upon the lofty flanks of the Elias Alps. Into the ocean many rocky shoals and long sandy bars stretch for miles, and streams of white muddy glacial or snow waters rush into the surf at frequent intervals — hundreds of them. There are sand-beaches and silt-shoals which extend from Cape Suckling, up seventy-five miles to Hinchinbrook Island, that stands as a gate-post to the entrance of Prince William's Sound : here is a long sand-ridge which is more than sixty miles in length and from three to seven miles broad, lying between the ocean and the mainland, which in turn is composed of low wooded uplands and of steep abrupt cliffs and hills that are quickly lost in the lofty snowy range of the Choogatch Alps. Through a section of this dreary sand-wall the impetuous flood of the Copper or Atna River forces its way, carrying its heavy load of glacial mud and silt far 76 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. into the ocean. How the winds do blow here ! How the trader dreads to tarry " off and on " this coast ! There are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the great Alaskan interior are the loneliest of them all. Those of Sibe- ria are traversed occasionally by wandering bands, but those of Alaska, never. The severe exigencies of climate there are such as to substantially eliminate savage life, and to rear an impregnable barrier to that of civilization. When Alaska was first transferred, an estimate of many thou- sands of Indians inhabiting its vast interior was gravely made and as gravely accepted by us ; but a thorough investigation made by our traders and officers of our Government during the last fifteen years has exposed that error. Hundreds only live where thousands were declared to exist. The Indians who live on the banks of the Copper River are, perhaps, the most poverty-stricken of all their kind in Alaska. Their shiftless spruce-bark rancheries and rude be- longings are certainly the most primitive of their race, and render that weird Russian legend of the massacre of Seribniekov in 1848, which declared them so numerous and savage, absolutely grotesque. They are perfectly safe as they live in their wild habitat. The cu- pidity of savage or civilized man never has and never will molest them. But if half is true as to what they relate of huge glaciers which empty into their river, then those that have been described in Cross Sound have formidable rivals, which may yet prove to be superiors, perhaps, although it seems incredible. The Suchnito or Copper River has long been a bugbear, for the Russians* years ago have returned from several unsuccessful at- * When the surveying parties of the War Department were ascending Cop- per River last summer, certain Indians, who had been instrumental in slaying the Russian party of Seribniekov in 1848, were very much alarmed. They were sure that the fates had come for them at last. One of these natives, an aged man, now wholly blind, was reported as saying that he was ready to die, and knew what the white men wanted. This old fellow, Lieutenant Allen says, was one of the finest-looking savages that he ever saw. The face of the blind man was one of remarkable character — a large, massive head, high aquiline nose, with a full, thin-lipped mouth and broad forehead. He was totally blind and his hair white as snow. The Russian party were sleeping in their sledges, which they compelled the natives to draw while ascending the river. At a preconcerted signal the unwilling Indians turned and brained their taskmasters with hatchets. These natives had welcomed the Russians ; but when they were made to perform UJ C QJ 3 S" s i ! 1 ^ si :? THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 77 tempts to ascend it, and gave the excuse of being driven out of the valley by savage and warlike natives. Recently it has been thor- oughly explored, and the " savages " are found to be less than two hundred inoffensive natives, who constitute the whole population of this mysterious Atna or Maidnevskie region. But navigating the river is terrific labor, inasmuch as it is a continuous, swift rapid throughout its entire course. This river is a short, turbulent, brawling stream, less than two hundred and fifty miles in length, but rising in the heart of a lofty and mighty mass of volcanic mountains. It receives a score of im- posing glaciers, which almost rival those of Icy Bay in Cross Sound. The silt that these gelid rivers pour into its channel has given it a deltoid mouth of extended and most intricate area. Triangulations made by an officer* of the Army last year de- clare that Mount Wrangel is the loftiest peak on the North Ameri- can continent. The feet of this magnificent volcanic dome are washed by the forks of Copper River, which is eighteen thousand six hundred and forty feet below the apex of its smoking cap. Then the river at this point is more than two thousand feet above sea-level, so the vast altitude of more than twenty thousand feet for Mount Wrangel seems to be truthfully claimed. The soil which borders the abrupt banks of the Copper River is entirely composed of glacial silt and gravel. It is moist and boggy in the driest seasons, covered with rank growing grasses and dense thickets of poplars, birches, and willows, that line the margins of the stream. The higher lands, as they rise from the narrow valley, are in turn clothed with a dense growth of spruce-forest, which gradually fades out into russet-colored areas of rock-sphagnum as the altitude increases to that point where nothing but the cold and frost-defying lichen can cling alive to the weather-splintered sum- mits of alpine heights above. Fish (salmon) are the chief reliance of these natives of Cop- per River ; they depend almost wholly upon the annual running of those creatures. The difficulty of hunting is so great that the the labor of dogs they turned upon their white oppressors, naturally. The massacre of Seribniekov and his party in this manner made the Indians very restless and determined in their opposition to further intercourse with the Russians. The memory of hostility has, however, died out, and nothing of the kind was shown to our people last year as they charted the valley and river. Lieutenant H. T. Allen. 78 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. savage is content with shooting a few mountain sheep, a wandering moose or two, and, perhaps, a stray bear in the course of the year. Also, huckleberries and salmon berries are abundant on the sun- shiny slopes of the high glacial river-terraces during August and September. West of the Copper Eiver mighty masses of the Choogatch Mountains rise directly from the sea without any intervening low- land, save at three tiny points upon which savage man has hastened to fix his abode. Many crests to this range on the north side of Prince William's Sound must have a mean elevation of over ten thousand feet, densely wooded with semper-virent coniferous for- ests up to a height of one thousand feet above sea-level, and covered with everlasting snowy blankets to within three or four thousand feet of the ocean at their bases. The body of Prince William's Sound is so forbidding in its dark grandeur that even the stolid Russians never tired of narrating its stirring impression upon their senses. Although the interior of this gulf is completely landlocked, being sheltered from the south by the islands of Noochek and Mon- tague, yet it is by no means a safe or pleasant sheet of water to navigate, inasmuch as furious gales and " woollies " sweep down upon it from the steep mountain sides and canons, so that, without even a moment's warning, the traveller's craft is suddenly stricken, and compelled to instantly run for shelter under the lee of some one of the hundreds of islands and capes which stud its waters or point its coast. Immense glaciers are descending from the cavern- ous inlets of the northern and eastern shores, and shedded frag- ments of ice, large and small, are cemented by the tide into large sheets, which are finally swept out and lost in the ocean. The shores of these canals are formed of high, stupendous moun- tains that rise abruptly from the water's edge perpendicularly, and often overhanging. The dissolving snow upon their summits gives rise to thousands upon thousands of little cataracts, which fall with great impetuosity down their seamed sides and over sheer and rug- ged precipices. This fresh water, clear as crystal and cold as win- ter, thus descending into the green and blue salt sea, changes that tone to one of a strange whitish hue in its vicinity, as it also does in many fiords of the Sitkan region. This peculiar flood always arrests attention and excites the liveliest curiosity in the mind of him who beholds it for the first time. Everywhere, save to the southward, mountains can be seen looming up in the background VALDES GLACIER View at the head of Valdes Inlet, Prince William's Sound : typical study of hundreds of such gelid rivers which discharge into the waters of this gloomy sound. A September sketch, made at low-tide THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 79 with snowy peaks and guttered ridges, and they attest the wild legends of their sullen grandeur which the first white men related who ever beheld them. These hardy sailors, when sent out in the ship Three Saints from Kadiak, in 1788, arrived in the Gulf of Choogatch, or this Sound of Prince William, during the month of May. They anchored in a little bay of Noochek Island, and there established a trading-station. This is the only post, Fort Constan- tine, or "Noochek," that has ever been located by our people in all this section of a vast wilderness ; to-day it is but little changed — a couple of trading-stores standing on the foundations of Ismailov's * erection, in which the only three white men now known to reside in all that region of alpine wonder are living, surrounded by a small village of sixty natives. The large size of those spruce-trees on the southern slopes of Kenai Peninsula, Montague, and Noochek Islands of Prince Will- iam's Sound, so impressed the Kussians that they established a shipyard at Kesurrection Bay as early as 1794 ; by the close of that year they actually built and launched a double-decker, 73 feet long by 23 feet beam, of 180 tons burden — the first three-masted, full- rigged ship ever constructed on the west coast of the North Ameri- can continent ; she was named the Phoenix, and as she slid from her ways into the unruffled waters of this far-away place the exultation and delighted plaudits f of her builders echoed in strange discord with the wild surrounding. Baranov had no paint or even tar, so that this pioneer ship was covered with a coat of spruce-gum, ochre, and whale-oil. A few small vessels only were built after this, inas- much as the company found it much more economical to purchase in European yards the sailing-craft and steamers which it was obliged to employ : but, to-day the traces of the Eussian ship-carpenter's * Ivan Ismailov and Gayorgi Bochorov ; they went in the dual capacity of explorers and traders, lured into the undertaking by rumors which had pre- vailed at Kadiak respecting great numbers of sea-otters in this bay. f Had these enthusiastic builders then been able to have foreseen the tragedy which this vessel precipitated, five years later, they would have scarcely thus expressed themselves, but rather have stood in silence, with bowed heads, as the work of their hands swept into the flood that embraced her. In 1799 she sailed from the Okotsk, bound for Sitka, with the newly-ordained Bishop Joasaph and twenty priests and deacons of the Greek Church; she was never seen or heard of afterward, nor was anything seen or heard of her passengers and crew— she took them with her to the bottom of the sea. 80 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. axe can be still plainly recognized at many points of the western coast of the sound, and on Montague Island huge logs, as roughed out nearly a full century ago, are lying now, as they lay then, slightly decayed in many instances ; the anticipation which felled them was never realized, and they have never been disturbed con- sequently. In these early colonial Alaskan days, Fort St. Constantine, or Noochek Island, was a very important trading-centre ; it was visited by all the tribes living on the Mount St. Elias sea-wall to the eastward as far as Yakootat, and also by the Copper Indians. Then the sea-otter was abundant, and in its ardent chase those Choogatch savages captured, incidentally, large numbers of black and brown bears, marten, and mink. Now, with the practical ex- termination of the sea-otter, we find a very poor lot of natives at this once flourishing post ; but, for the means of a simple phys- ical existence, they have no lack of an abundant supply of salmon, seal-blubber and flesh — meat of the marmot, porcupine, and bear, varied by the frequent killing of mountain sheep, which are found all over this alpine range ; fine foxes are plentiful too. These Indians live in houses partly underground, which we shall describe as we visit Kadiak, and in purely race-characteristics those people also closely resemble the Kadiak Eskimo. From the north of the Copper River, however, toward the Sitkan archipelago, the Koloshian or Thlinket is dominant in the form and features of those savages which we find in a few small and widely separated villages that exist on the narrow table-land between the high mountains and the unbroken swell of the ocean. These natives all, however, agree in describing their country as an excellent hunting- ground, well timbered, and traversed by numerous small streams which take their rise in the glaciers and eternal snows of the St. Elias Alps. By some happy dispensation of the Creator every savage is so constituted that here in Alaska, at least, he believes in his own par- ticular area of existence as the very best 'realm of the earth — he becomes homesick and refuses to be comforted if taken to Cali- fornia or Oregon, enters into a slow decline, and soon dies if not returned to the dreary spot of, his birth — a sad illustration of fatal nostalgia. An Alaskan Indian or Innuit has very little of what may be styled true slavish superstition ; certainly he is credulous, but he THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 81 rather encourages it for the sake of the romance. He gives slight attention to augurs or omens ; he ventures out in search of food alike under all sorts of varying conditions of health and weather ; he has a few charms or amulets, but does not surrender to them by any means. Shamans, or sorcerers, never have had the influence with him that they have exerted in the barbarism of our own ances- try, and which they possess among the savages of Central and South America and Africa to-day. It is no solution of this difference in disposition to call him stupid, for it is not true ; he is far more alert, mentally, than the ghost-ridden Australian, or fetich-slave of Africa ; and, again, the sun-worshipping and intensely superstitious Incas were far superior, intellectually, to him. Most of the Innuits give hardly a thought to the subject, yet they are exceedingly vivacious and social among themselves ; much more so than the Indians. They relate a great many supernatural stories, but it is only in amusement, and it seldom ever provokes serious attention. CHAPTEE Y. COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. Cook's "Great River." — The Tide-rips, and their Power in Cook's Inlet. — The Impressive Mountains of the Inlet. — The Glaciers of Turnagain Canal. — Old Russian Settlements. — Kenai Shore of the Inlet, the Garden-spot of Alaska. — Its Climate best Suited to Civilized Settlement. — The Old "Colonial Citizens" of the Russian Company. — Small Shaggy Siberian Cattle. — Burning Volcano of Ilyamna. — The Kenaitze Indians. — Their Primitive, Simple Lives. — They are the Only Native Land-animal Hunt- ers of Alaska. — Bears and Bear Roads. — Wild Animals seek Shelter in Volcanic Districts. — Natives Afraid to Follow Them. — Kenaitze Archi- tecture.— Sunshine in Cook's Inlet. — Splendid Salmon. — Waste of Fish as Food by Natives. — The Pious Fishermen of Neelshik. — Russian Gold- mining Enterprise on the Kaknoo, 1848-55. — Failure of our Miners to Discover Paying Mines in this Section. THAT volcanic energy and amazing natural variation of the region known as Cook's Inlet, and the Peninsula of Alaska, endow it with a certain fascination which it is hard to adequately define in words, and difficult to portray. The rugged, uninviting bold- ness of the Kenai Mountains turn us abruptly, after our departure at Noochek, to the southward, where, in an unbroken frowning cordon of one hundred and fifty miles in length, they bar us out from the waters of that striking estuary — the greatest on the north- west coast, which is so well exhibited by the map to everybody as Cook's Inlet. But it is known only in name — not by the faintest appreciation, even, of its real character and of its strange belong- ings. Two and three hundred miles still farther north than Sitka it does not in itsejf present that increased wintry aspect at any season of the year which would be most naturally looked for — but it does offer, in physical contour and phenomena, a most marked contrast to the Alexander archipelago and its people. It is an exceedingly dangerous and difficult arm of the sea to navigate, and prompts an COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 83 involuntary thought of admiration for the nautical genius, skill, and courage of Captain Cook, who sailed up to the very head of this entirely unknown gulf, in 1778, seeking that mythical northwest passage round the continent — his dauntless exploration to the utter limit of Turnagain Canal — his extraordinary retreat in his clumsy ships, and safe threading of his way out and through the hundreds of then absolutely nameless and chartless islets and reefs to the shoals of Bering Sea — all this, viewed to-day, seems simply marvel- lous, that he should have escaped all these dangers which the best sailor now hesitates to undertake, even with excellent courses laid down and determined for him. The ship's entrance to this great land-locked gulf, which the Russians named, for many years, the Bay of Kenai, lies between the extreme end of that peninsula called Cape Elizabeth, and Cape Douglas, which is a bold promontory jutting out from the Alaskan mainland. Nearly half-way between the two points is a group of bleak, naked islets, the Barren Islands : around them the tide-rips of this channel, which they obstruct, boil in savage fury, and are the dread of every navigator, civilized or Innuit, who is brought near to them ; these violent and irregular tidal currents here, even in perfectly calm weather, will toss the waters so that the wildest fury of a tempest elsewhere cannot raise so great a disturbance over the sea, or one which will so quickly wash a vessel under. When your ship, bound in, passes this Alaskan "Hell Gate," she enters into a broad and ample expanse of water caused by the widening effect of two large bays which are just opposed to each other on the opposite shores. The coast of the Kenai Peninsula is low, the mountains contiguous are not high, though toward the interior the ridges become much loftier ; but everywhere between them and this coast-line is that characteristic marshy tundra of the Arctic — a low, flat, broad strip, varying in width from forty to fifty miles, through which sluggishly flow a multitude of streams and brooks, wooded with birch, poplar, and spruce everywhere on the banks, but bare of timber over the great bulk of its expanse. As the inlet contracts still further, especially at the point between the two headlands of East and "West Foreland, the tide again in- creases in velocity and violence of action until it attains a speed of eight and nine knots an hour, with an average vertical rise and fall of twenty-four to twenty-six feet. The northeastern extremity of this large arm of the sea, which Cook entered with the confident 84 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. hope of finding a watery circuit of a continent, and, being disap. pointed, applied to it the name of "Turnagain," presents a tidal phenomena equal to that so well recognized in the Bay of Fundy. Here the tide comes in with a thundering roar, raising a " bore " wave that advances like an express train in rapidity, carrying every- thing before it in its resistless onward, upward sweep. High banks of clay and gravel, which at low-tide seem as though they were far removed from submersion, are flooded instantly, to remain so until the ebb takes place. The natives never fail to remember the angry warning of this incoming tide ; they always hurriedly rush out of their huts, scan quickly everything surrounding, lest some utensil, some canoe, or basket-weir be thoughtlessly left within the remorseless rush of that swift-coming flood. Those glacial sheets which fill countless ravines and canons in the mountain ridges at the head of Cook's Inlet, especially of Turnagain Canal, and avalanches of snow, from their lofty cradles thereon, all sweep down together upon the wooded flanks below, and are thus destroying great belts of forest and piling up innumerable heaps of rocky debris to such an extent as to often change the superficial aspect of an entire section of country from season to season ; mean- while the tide rushing up and down over this drift of avalanches and glaciers, carries the debris hither and thither, so as to con- stantly alter the channels, and the very outlines of the coast itself. One of the oldest and best of Russian posts was early estab- lished on the Kenai Peninsula, a few miles to the southward of that narrowing of Cook's Inlet, caused by the two Forelands. On the low banks of the Kinik River, and facing the gulf, the ruins of the "Redoubt St. Nicholas" are still to be plainly seen, though at the time of the transfer of the Territory, this old post was yet fortified with a high stockade and octagonal bastions. But both stockade and bastions have disappeared since then ; a number of new frame buildings have been erected close by, and quite a colony of Russian half-breeds are living here now, trading, and growing, to better ad- vantage than anywhere else in Alaska, fair crops of potatoes and turnips. They keep a few hardy cattle, and it is said that as much as ten or twelve acres of ground are under cultivation by them. The aspect of the country surrounding this settlement is much more suggestive of farming and cattle-raising than is that presented anywhere else in the Alaskan Territory. The land is rolling and hilly, the higher eminences being covered with thick spruce forests ,• COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 85 but as you advance into the interior, great swamps of tangled heather, fir, jungle, and sphagnum are prevalent. The soil every- where, not covered with grass and forest, is mossy, with a little grass and many bushes. The trees are large, fifty to sixty feet high, and eighteen inches to twenty-four in diameter, mostly spruce —no cedar or hemlock. That district adjoining the East Foreland Head is, perhaps, the best with reference to dry, fertile soil, for, in its vicinity, there are broad plains where wild timothy and red- top grasses grow to the height of your waist and shoulders. An extended experience of the Russians taught them to locate their agricultural operations here ; that the coast-line belt of the Kenai Peninsula, between the Forelands and Kooshiemak Bay, a belt of low and semi-prairie uplands some eighty miles in length, and vary- ing in depth from ten to twenty, was the most eligible base of agricultural effort afforded anywhere in Alaska, the quality of the crops always being best near the coast, the soil being drier, and the danger of little nipping summer-frosts wholly abated. The several small settlements which we find upon this pastoral strip to-day have a curious history, as to the origin of their inhabi- tants. About the period of 1836-38, the expenses of the Russian American Company in maintaining their trading stations in Alaska were increasing to an alarming degree, while the receipts remained stationary, or fell off. An enquiry into its cause revealed it. The fact was, that hundreds of superannuated employes were drawing their salaries and subsistence, rendering no adequate return for the same. These persons had grown old, and had lost their health in serving the company ; were, nearly all of them, infirm survivors of Shellikov and Baranov's parties, whose daring and energy had established the company. It would be inhuman to discharge these aged and crippled Russians, and throw them upon their own re- sources in such a region. After much deliberation the company was authorized by the Crown to make the following terms of settle- ment and relief, and thus locate them as permanent pensioners and settlers in the country. Therefore all of the old employes who had married or lived with native or half-breed women, and who were unable to successfully engage in the trading avocations of the com- pany, by reason of age and other infirmities, were, upon their writ- ten or witnessed request, after being stricken from the pay-rolls, provided for in this manner. The company was obliged to select and donate a piece of ground, 86 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. build a comfortable dwelling, furnish agricultural tools, seeds, cat- tle and fowls, and supply the pensioner receiving all this with pro- visions enough to support him and his wife for one year. These "old colonial citizens" (as they were called), thus established, were then exempted from all taxation, military duty, or molestation whatsoever, and a list of their names was annually forwarded in the reports of the company. The children of those settlers were at lib- erty to enter or not, as they pleased, the service of the company at stated salaries. The company, furthermore, was commanded to pur- chase all the surplus produce of these pensioners, furs, and dried fish, etc. This order of the Crown, thus fixing the status of those old servants, also included the half-breeds who were equally infirm by reason of such service. Such whites, or Russians, were officially designated "colonial citizens," the half-breeds were styled " colonial settlers." The descendants of these pensioned servants of the Russian Company are the men and women you observe to-day in those little hamlets scattered along the east coast of Cook's Inlet, or the Kenai Peninsula. They are bright, clean, and, though very, very poor, still appear wholly independent. They are engaged in small trad- ing with the Kenai tze savages and in their limited agricultural efforts, whereby they have potatoes, turnips, and other hardy vege- tables. The cattle, of which they have a few in each settlement, are of the small, shaggy Siberian breed, not much larger than Shetland ponies, and capable of living in the rigors of a winter which would destroy or permanently injure our breeds of neat cat- tle. These people make butter by laboriously shaking the milk in bottles. They are obliged to shelter their cattle during winters from the driving fury of heavy snow-storms, and when the herd ranges in the grass-season, the boys and old men always have to guard it from the deadly attention of the big brown bears which infest the entire region. They have a regular " round-up " in each hamlet every night. Everywhere on the west coast of Cook's Inlet the mountains rise steeply and rugged from the sea, a wild and uninviting contrast with the park-like terraces of the Kenai coast just opposite. Here are the same lofty ridges and smoking peaks which startled and oppressed the brave heart of Captain Cook, as they muttered and trembled in volcanic throes when he sailed by. The two cones • r COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 87 which rise dominant are the summits of Mount Hyamna and the " Redoute," from which columns of brownish smoke ascend by day and ruddy fire-glowings by night So precipitous is this main- land shore of Cook's Inlet that at only two small points of the most limited area is there any low land to be found, and these spots have been promptly utilized by the Kenaitze Indians as sites for their villages of Toyonok and Kustatan. The dense, sombre coni- ferous forest which we have become so familiar with, clothes the flanks of those grim mountain walls with the thickest of all cover- ings to a height of one thousand feet above the beaches below. Here and there we glance into the recesses of a canon or a gorge where the naked, mossy surface of immense rocky declivities ar- rests and fixes the eye, while the glittering caps of ice and snow far away above fit down snugly upon long, rough, treeless intervals, covered with heather, lichens, and varied arctic sphagnum. The upper waters of Cook's Inlet are said to be quite remarka- ble for their barrenness of fish — salmon only being plenty in the running season, ascending all the numerous rivers and rivulets ; the reason most likely is due to the turbid upheaval of the bottoms everywhere by that violent tidal bore which prevails, recurring twice every twenty-four hours. The Indians here employ a curious trestle or staging of poles, which they use in spearing salmon, and netting them from its support. An extensive spread of the largest fresh-water lake in Alaska just over the divide from Cook's Inlet, early led the Russians to ex- plore it, and to find a portage via its waters to the sea of Be- ring. But, though this barrier can be passed by an active man in a single day, yet it has divided, and continues to absolutely separate, two distinct races of savages — the Innuits from the Indians ; for the Kenaitze are Indians, as we understand them, based upon our types of the great plains and foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains ; and, living here as they do on the shores of Cook's Inlet, they live, perhaps, in the most romantic and picturesque region of Alaska. Burning volcanoes, smoking and grumbling, a large inland sea roll- ing for miles and miles therein, and lay at their feet ; wide watery moors, tundra, timber and lakes, and rivers rising in the snow-white peaks everywhere visible, all combine to make the most striking lights and shades of natural scenery that human thought can real- ize in fancy. These natives of Cook's Inlet are strongly denned from those of 88 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. Kadiak as a separate people, both in language (which no white man has ever been able to repeat), in appearance, and in disposition. They are true Athabascans, or exactly like the meat-eating Indians of our great North American interior. An average man here is an Indian of medium height, say five feet seven or nine inches, well built and symmetrical, lithe and sinewy. The cold glint of his small, jet-black eyes is not relieved by any expression of good humor A Kenaitze Chief: Cook's Inlet. in his taciturn features and physical bearing. His nose will pre- sent, as a rule, the full aquiline or Julius Caesar outline. Their skin is darker than that of the Innuit, though now and then a comely young person will show perceptible blood-mantlings to the cheeks. The mouth is large — lips rather full ; beardless faces are the rule. Their women are much better-looking than either the Si wash squaws of the Sitkan region, or the females of the Aleutian and Innuit races. Their hair is worn in clubbed bunches and 89 braids, hanging upon their backs, thickly larded over with grease, and often powdered with feathers and geese-down. In the immediate vicinity of the shores of Cook's Inlet the primitive habits of these savages have been very much changed by their daily intercourse with the Creoles ; but at the head of the gulf, especially in the Sooshetno and Keknoo valleys, they are still dressed in their deer-skin shirts and trousers, men and women alike. They work those garments with a great variety of beads, porcupine quills stained in bright colors, and grass plaitings. These Kenaitze are the only real hunters in all Alaska. They place little or no dependence on fish like the other tribes, unless we except the walrus-eating Eskimo, who hunt, however, in water-craft entirely. And were they not natural Nimrods, the abundance of game which abounds in their district would stimulate such ambi- tion alone in itself. The brown bear * of Alaska is found almost everywhere ; but it seems to prefer an open, swampy country to that dense timber most favored by its ursine relative, the black bear. It attains its greatest size, and exhibits the most ferocity, on the Kenai Peninsula. It should be called the grizzly, because it is fre- quently shot here fully as large, if not larger, f than those examples recorded in Oregon and California. This wide-ranging brute is found away up beyond the Arctic Cir- cle, though never coming down to the coast of the icy ocean except at Kotzebue Sound. It is a most expert fisherman, and a terror to the reindeer and cariboo of those hyperborean solitudes. It fre- quents, during the salmon season, all the Alaskan rivers and their tributaries which empty into Bering Sea and the North Pacific, as far as the fish can ascend. When the run for the year is over, then the animal retires into the thick recesses of semi-timbered uplands and tundra, where berries and small game, deer especially, are most abundant. Everywhere throughout this large extent of Alaska the foot-paths, or roads, of that omnipresent ursine traveller arrest your attention. The banks of all streams are lined by the well-trodden trails of these heavy brutes, and offer far better facilities for progress than those afforded by the paths of men. Not only are the swampy * Ursus richardsonii. f One shot at Kenai Mission in 1880 measured nine feet two inches in length. 90 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. plains intersected by such well-worn routes of travel, but the mountains themselves and ridges, to the very summits thereof, are thus laid out ; and the judgment of a bear in traversing a rough, mountainous divide is always of the best — his track over is sure to be the most practicable route. On the steep, volcanic uplands of the mountainous coast of the west shore in Cook's Inlet, groups of twenty, and even thirty, of these huge bears can be seen together feeding upon the berries and roots which are found there in season. Their skins are not valuable, however, being "patched" Bear "Roads" over the Moors of Oonimak Islands. and harsh-haired. Then they are very fierce, so that they are not commonly hunted anywhere except by the Kenaitze, who, like all other aboriginal hunters, respect them profoundly, and invariably address a few eulogistic words of praise to a bear before killing or attempting to kill it.* A peculiar dread which all the natives of this region have, of visiting those areas where volcanic energy manifests itself, is taken advantage of by those dumb beasts upon which the savage wages relentless warfare ; the immediate vicinity of craters, of steaming * Perhaps fully half the brown-bear skins taken by the Alaskan natives are retained by them, used as bedding, and hung up as portieres over the entrance- holes or doors to their houses ; the smaller skins are tanned and then cut into straps and lines to use in sledge-fastenings, snowshoe network bottoms, be- cause this leather does not stretch when moist like deer and moose skin. COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 91 hot springs and solfataras, will always be a rendezvous for game, especially bears, which seem to fully understand that in staying there they will never be disturbed. But the Kenaitze are ardent hunters, nevertheless, and spend most of their time and energy in the chase of land animals — making long journeys into the interior, and gloomy recesses of mountainous canons and defiles, to follow and find the fur-bearing quarry peculiar to their country. They have regular tracks of main travel, where, like stage sta- tions on our frontier post-roads, at intervals they have erected shelter-huts, in which they often live with their families for months of the year at a time ; they make birch-bark canoes for their river and lake transit, but in navigating Cook's Inlet, they buy skin bidarkas of the Kadiak model and use them altogether. They are fairly independent of salt water, and seldom pass many hours upon it, except in travelling and trading one with another, and the Creoles ; they are, however, very expert at fresh-water fishing through holes in the ice for trout in the thousand and one lakes, large and small, which are so common in their country.* As these natives live in their permanent settlements, we find them distinguished by a peculiar architecture. Their houses are fashioned out of logs, and set above ground resting upon its sur- face ; the logs are hollowed out on one side so as to fit one upon the other in true spoon-fashion, and make a really air and water- tight wall ; an enclosure of these walls will hardly ever be larger than 20 feet square, and most of them never go over 12 or 15 feet ; they have regularly laid cross-rafters, with a low, or half-pitch, over which spruce-bark shells are so spread as to shed rain and drifting snow ; these shingle slabs are kept in place by a number of heavy poles, lashed transversely across ; a fireplace is always in the cen- tre with a very small smoke-hole opened in the roof just above it ; * The greatest number of different mammals found wild in any one region of Alaska is to be recorded here : bears, brown and black ; deer, reindeer and the woodland cariboo ; big-horn mountain sheep, a long-haired variety. These animals are all shot. The trapped varieties are: beaver, land-otter, por- cupines, whistling marmot or woodchuck, large gray wolves, lynx, wolverine, marten, mink, ermine, weasels, and muskrats. Wild-fowl : grouse both white and ruffled, geese, ducks, sandhill cranes, and the great northern swan. Berries : whortleberries, salmonberries, gooseberries, and cranberries ; all gathered in season and mixed with the everlasting rancid oil used by every native in every section of Alaska. 92 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. the door is a square aperture cut through the logs at the least ex- posed front, about large enough to easily admit the ingress and egress of a crouching Indian. It is stopped in stormy weather by a bear-skin, hung so as to fall directly over it from the inside. When the door is thus closed the naturally dark interior becomes almost wholly so ; but the howling of a tempest, laden with rain, sleet or snow, as the case may be, renders this gloomy indoor perfectly radiant to the senses of its sheltered inmates, and they loll in robes and blankets and doze away the time on the rude wooden platform which surrounds the walls and keeps their bodies from the cold damp earth. Upon this staging they spread grass mats and skins, and, in fact, it is a catchall for everything. The Bedroom Annex of a Kenaitze Rancherie. An odd feature seen in some of the most pretentious houses of those inlet savages, is the presence of a little kennel-like bedroom annex, which many of the most wealthy or important have built up against the main walls. These boxlike additions are tightly framed and joined to the houses, the only entrance being from the inside of the main structure by a small hole cut directly through the logs of the wall ; they are sleeping chambers, and are furnished with a rough plank floor, and sometimes a window made of a piece of translucent bladder-gut. They are also reserved and special apartments during the occasion of those visits of ceremony which Indians often pay, one to each other. But the main idea is to have these tight little dormitories so snug and warm that they will insure the comfortable rest of the owner therein without much burdensome bed-clothing — in many cases the Kenaitze can sleep COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 93 here in the coldest weather without any covering at all, and do. Such a bed is a great and priceless luxury to them. No furniture annoys the Kenai housekeeper, unless the small square blocks of wood used occasionally as stools or seats can be so styled ; the grease and fire-boxes which we have seen in Sitkan households are also duplicated here, but though made of wood they are not so neatly put together. The traders recently have introduced a very novel feature to the interior of nearly every Kenaitze house ; it is the common, cheap, box-imitation, in minia- ture, of a Saratoga trunk with lock and key. Those oddly contrasted articles will be found everywhere among these people, who keep in them all their valuables, such as charms, and toys for the children, flashy handkerchiefs, small tools fashioned out of bits of iron and steel, bags of thread and stripped sinews, needles, ammunition, and their percussion-caps, which are to them as pearls without price — nothing so precious. Outside of this trunk-craze, and their odd sleeping-rooms, these Indians do not live together or act differently from the usual habit and manner of savages proper, so familiar to us by reason of repeated descriptions published of our own meat-eaters who live near by. They crave nothing from the white trader save powder, lead, good rifles, percussion-caps, tobacco, calico, and the sham trunks alluded to. The sun shines out over Cook's Inlet much more than it does in the Sitkan region and the Aleutian Islands. The proportion of fair, bright weather is larger than that experienced anywhere else in all Alaska or its coast. The winter months here are not excessively cold ; snow falls in December — sometimes as late as 3d of Jan- uary before the first flakes of the season arrive. By the first to middle of May it has usually melted away on the lowlands, and the grass springs up anew, green and luxuriant. Summer, and even winter storms, are drawn along the lofty ranges of the Kenai Penin- sula when all is serene and pleasant at the same time on the moors and lowlands of the inlet shores. Often, too, the people of that coast can look up to a continued falling of heavy rain and snow on the mountain summits of the steep ridges across the inlet, while they bask in unclouded sunshine, and have no interruption of its comfort. We ourselves have as yet made but slight use of the natural resources and advantages of Cook's Inlet. A party of San Fran- cisco merchants have established at the mouth of the Kassilov 94 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. River a salmon cannery, which has been worked to the full limit of demand ; and a smaller, similar factory is located at the head of this inlet, in the Kaknoo estuary. The finest salmon known to man, savage or civilized, both in flavor and size combined, is that giant fish which runs in especial good form and number into Cook's Inlet, and which the Russians called the " chowichah ; " * they are most abundant during the sum- mer neap-tides, but they are not as numerous as are the several other varieties of smaller and far less palatable salmonidse, which also run up here with them. The average length of these superb chowichah fish is four feet, and a weight of fifty pounds is a low medium. They appear regularly on the 20th and 22d of every May, running in pairs, refusing the hook, though hugging the shore lines. Our people catch them in floating gill-nets, and in weirs of brush and saplings of wicker-work woven with spruce-roots and bark, which are erected on the mud-flats at the river mouth, during low tide. The king salmon, however, is erratic in running to any one spawning spot, and in this respect differs from all the rest of its family, which is remarkably constant in annually returning to the same spawning ground. But the abundance of salmon which we see in their reproductive periods of each year, ascending every river and possible rivulet that communicates with the sea in Alaska south of Bering's Straits, is a never-failing source of wonder and de- light to the white visitor and a measure of infinite creature-comfort to his physical being while sojourning here. Also, the pleasant thought constantly arises that when we shall have a populous em- pire on the Pacific slope, as we have now in the Mississippi Valley and east of the Alleghanies, what a handsome use we will make of this waste of fish-food wealth f which we now observe in the vast * Oncorynchus chouicTia — examples of this species have a recorded weight of one hundred pounds each, and six feet in length ; it is also abundant in the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers. f Dr. T. H. Bean, who, as a trained ichthyologist, passed the season of 1880 investigating the fish of Alaska by cruising throughout its waters, says : "The greatest fish-wealth of Alaska, so far as the shore fisheries are con- cerned, lies in the abundance of salmon of the genus Oncorhynchus, which is represented by five species — chouicJia, beta, kisutch, nerka, and gorbuscha. The first three of these are the largest, the whole series being named in the order of their size. 0. chouiclia is the giant of the group, and is the most important commercially ; it attains to its greatest size in the large rivers, •s 95 realm of its indulgence throughout Alaska. Also in another, but wholly correct sense, the natives themselves shamefully waste the flesh of those fine salmon. To illustrate the extraordinary nature of this suggestion, let the following statements of fact be recalled : The native population of Cook's Inlet is not large — it is embraced in about one hundred and sixty-eight families, averaging four souls to each household ; everyone of these families prepares at least seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred pounds of dried salmon for its own specific consumption during the winter months. That amount of cured fish, therefore, is about one hundred and twenty-six thou- sand pounds, and as every pound weight of dried meat is equal to an original weight of at least eight or nine pounds of fresh, or un- dried, then this cured total gives us an immense aggregate of which it ascends long distances in its spawning season. In Alaska it is known to extend as far north as Bering Strait, and it is especially abundant in Cook's Inlet and in the Yukon. Individuals weighing nearly one hundred pounds are occasionally reported from these waters, and even in the Columbia. The finest product of this salmon is the salted bellies, which are prepared prin- cipally on the Kenai, Kassilov, and Yukon Rivers ; the fame of this luxury once extended to the centre of government in Russia. The well-known ' quinnat salmon ' is the same species ; its importance, as evidenced by the efforts of the United States Fish Commission and other commissions toward its propagation and distribution, is too well understood to require additional mention. The great bulk of the salted salmon exported from Alaska are the small 'red fish,' 0. nerka ; and this species is sought after simply on account of the beautiful color of the flesh and not for its intrinsic value, which is far below that of most of the other species. All the salmon extend northward to Bering Strait, but only one, (jorbuscha, is reported as occurring north of the Arctic Circle ; gorbuscha is said by trustworthy parties to reach the Colville River. In the early part of its run the flesh of this little ' humpback ' seems to me to be particularly good. Other members of the family of Salmonida>, and very important ones, are the species of Salmo (purpuratiis and gairdneri) and Salvelinus malma, two of which reach a large size in Alaska. The first two are not known to exist much to the northward of Unalashka, while malma is believed to extend to the Colville. S. gairdneri resembles the Atlantic salmon in size and shape, but its habits are different ; it is found filled with mature eggs in June. I have not seen any very large examples of S. pur- puratus from the Territory, but the species is extremely abundant and valuable for food. The red-spotted char, S. malma, is everywhere plentiful and is highly esteemed as a food-fish ; it grows much larger in Northern Alaska than in California, and has some commercial value as an export in its sea-ran con- dition under the name of 'salmon trout.' Natives of Alaska make water- proof clothing from the skins of this fish." 96 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 1,000,000 pounds of fresh salmon ; this, figured down, shows that a single Indian uses, during the winter solstice — five months — the enormous amount of 1,430 pounds of this rich-meated article of diet, or about ten pounds every day, in addition to the bear-meat, deer, and sheep-meat, seal and beluga oil, berries and roots which he is constantly consuming, at the same time, in the greatest free- dom, and which are always in abundant supply. The full thought of my presentation will be better understood when it is remembered that a pound of fresh salmon has more nourishing and sustaining quality than the same amount dried. The salt-dried codfish with which we are so familiar is very different in its texture, and weighs many times more than it would if it were cured by the air and smoke-exposure to which the natives of Alaska are driven in pre- serving their fish. An exceedingly happy illustration of the singular force of habit which the salmon have in returning every recurring season to the exact localities of their birth was afforded near the Creole settle- ment of Neelshik on the Kenai Inlet coast. A small stream runs down to the gulf from the mountains and moors of the interior. Its mouth had been closed by a barrier of surf-raised sand and gravel during storms in the winter of 1879-80, and through which the sluggish stream filtered in its course without overflowing. When the salmon, which had descended the year previously from the upper waters of the stream in the course of their reproductive circuit, again returned to renew such labors in the following season, this unexpected wall barred their ingress. They did not turn away, but actually leaped out upon this sandy spit, and many of them suc- ceeded, by spasmodic springs and wriggling, while on the dry gravel, in getting across and into the river-water beyond ! the Creoles, in the meantime, having nothing to do except to walk down from their houses and gather up the self -stranded salmon as they fancied their size and condition. Inasmuch as these " old colonial settlers " are very pious, as well as very indolent, they were profuse in giving thanks to their patron saints for this unexpected bounty. The color of gold everywhere found by washing the sands of Cook's Inlet on the Kenai shore early aroused the cupidity of the Eussians. They made systematic examinations here under the lead of experienced men, between 1848 and 1855, and the Eussian Ameri- can Company spent a great deal of money in the same time by sus- taining a large force of forty miners, directed by Lieutenant Doro- COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 97 shin, in active operations at the head of the inlet on the Kaknoo River, and in the Kenai Mountains and Prince William or Choogatch Alps. Gold was found, but in such small quantities, compared with the labor of getting it, that the ardor of the Russians soon cooled, and nothing as yet has resulted from the prospecting of our own miners in this district, who have been all over these Slavonian trails since the transfer. 7 CHAPTER YL THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska. — Site of the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company. — Shellikov and his Remark- able History, 1784. — His Subjection of the Kaniags. — Bloody Struggle. — He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago.— Kadiak, a Large and Rugged Island. — The Timber Line drawn upon it. — Luxuriant Growth of Annual and Biennial Flowering Plants. — Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned for Sitka. — The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company on Wood Island. — Only Road and Horses in Alaska there. — Creole Ship and Boat Yard. — Tough Siberian Cattle. Pretty Greek Chapel at Yealovnie.— Afognak, the Larg- est Village of "Old Colonial Citizens. "—Picturesque and Substantial Vil- lage.— Largest Crops of Potatoes raised here. — No Ploughing done ; Earth Prepared with Spades. — Domestic Fowls. — Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at Kolma. — What a "Creole" is. — The Kaniags or Natives of Ka- diak; their Salient Characteristics.— Great Diminution of their Num- bers.— Neglect of Laws of Health by Natives. — Apathy and Indifference to Death. — Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska ; Measles equally deadly. — Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters. — The Penal Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska. — The Wild Coast of the Peninsula. — Water-terraces on the Mountains. — Belcovsky, the Rich and Profligate Settlement. — Kvass Orgies. — Oonga, Cod-fishing Rendezvous. — The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741. — The Coal Mines here Worthless. THE boldest and the most striking cape in this wilderness of bluffy headlands and jutting promontories is that point which marks the dividing line between the Kadiak region and Cook's Inlet — Cape Douglas. It is a lofty alpine ridge or spur, abruptly thrust out at a right angle to the coast, and into and over the sea for a distance of three miles, where it drops suddenly with a sheer precipitous fall of over one thousand feet into the waves that thunder on its everlasting foundations. Baffling winds here, and turbulent tide- rips distress that navigator who, coming down from the inlet, seeks the harbor of St. Paul's village. He hardly regards this seared and rugged headland with that admiration which the geologist and THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 99 the crtist always will. The "woollies," which blow fiercely off from it, worry him and challenge all his nautical skill. Kadiak Island is the centre, geographical and commercial, of a most interesting and wide-extended district, perhaps the most so, of the Alaskan Territory, and Kadiak village, or Saint Paul Harbor is, in turn, the central and all-important settlement of this district.* It was the site of the first grand depot of the old Russian American Company, and also the location of the first missionary establish- ment and day-school ever founded on the northwest coast of the continent. From the quiet moorings of this beautiful Kadiak bay hundreds of shallops and vessels bearing courageous monks and priests have set out in every direction over all Alaska, carrying scores of them to preach the gospel among its savage inhabitants, who then were savage indeed to all intents and purposes. The first visit ever made by white men to the great Island of Kadiak was the landing here in the autumn of 1763, at Alikitak Bay, of Stepan Glottov, a Russian sea-otter trader, who went into winter- quarters at the southeastern extremity of the island, on a spot now called Kahgooak settlement. The natives were ugly, hostile, re- fused all intercourse, and ke-ot the Russians in a chronic state of fear. Scurvy broke out in their camp and nearly destroyed the in- vaders, leaving less than one-third of them alive in the spring. They managed then, with the greatest effort, to launch their vessel and get away, the savages meanwhile constantly attempting to fin- ish that destruction which bodily disease had so well-nigh effected. The beginning of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century is a true date of the real epoch of Russian domination in Alaska. All history of white exploration in this country prior to that is sim- ply the cruel legend of an eager, heartless band of outraging Mus- covites, doing everything just for the gain of the present moment, sowing so badly that they dared not remain and reap. One of those big-brained, cool, and indomitable Russians, who gave then as they give now, the stamp of high character to the race, was for several years prior to 1780 prominently engaged in the American fur trade. Grigor Ivan Shellikov was this man. He was a citizen of the Sibe- rian town of Roolsk. He resolved to survey in person those scenes * With the exception of Prince of Wales Island in the Sitkan archipelago, Kadiak is the largest Alaskan island. There is not much difference between these two islands in landed area ; the former, however, is the bigger. 100 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. of rapid demoralization and ruin to the profitable prosecution of his Alaskan business, and, if possible, to attempt a change for the bet- ter. An evident decrease in furs, together with the hostile atti- tude of the natives, provoked altogether by their inhuman treatment at the hands of the " promishlyniks," called for reform in the most emphatic manner. After a carefully deliberated plan of action had been determined upon between himself and his partners, the broth- ers Gollikov, he at once proceeded to the Okotsk Sea and fitted out three small vessels for his expedition.* He did not reach Kadiak until 1784, two years after starting out, when two of his vessels came to anchor in the harbor now known, as it was then christened by him, Three Saints Bay. Shellikov was a ready and willing cor- respondent. His numerous letters to his Siberian partners and his own published "Journeys" give us a clear idea of the hardihood of his enterprise, and they have a rare ethnographic value. From them we learn of the great liking which Shellikov's party took to the Island of Kadiak, and how they resolved, soon after making a short reconnoissance, to establish themselves permanently if they could gain the confidence of its savage inhabitants. Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with pres- ents and kindness, then sent him back to his people ; but the native, though won wholly over himself, f could not prevail upon his hostile countrymen, who soon gave the Eussians ample evidence of their enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships' boats were exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the ap- pearance of a " perfect cloud " of natives that were encamped on rough and precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He ex- * These ' ' galiots " where characteristically named by Shellikov's spiritual advisers, viz. : The Three Saints; The Archangel Michael and Simeon, the Friend of God ; and Anna the Proplietess. Bad weather and poor navigation caused the vessels to separate, so that Shellikov was compelled to winter on Bering Island ; but during the following year the little fleet was reorganized, and it reached Oonalashka, where repairs again were necessary. f Shellikov says that this man returned the following day and refused to leave the Russian camp ; that he not only accompanied and served him in all his voyages thereafter, but often warned the party of hostile ambuscades and hidden dangers by land and sea. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADiAK. 101 hausted every art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up in the liveliest recollection those outrages and in- dignities which they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov's Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected over day a rude stockade — none too quick, for these Kaniags approached the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw themselves with fren- zied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians. The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instincf of self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and, considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this terrible midnight strug- gle, they would have been overpowered and exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the assailing ranks of those dusky hosts. Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and com- mercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete subju- gation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat of the hostiles, armed one of his vessels and followed them up to their rocky for- tresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a position that was well- nigh impregnable, and to which savage reinforcements were rapidly flocking from the main islands. Unable to reach the entrenched camp of those defiant natives with the small ship's-cannon, Shel- likov picked a party of sixty men out of his company, went ashore with them, and, with his little iron two-pounders, he stormed the enemy with such impetuosity that the rapid discharges of these guns and small fire-arms of the charging Russians utterly demoralized an immensely superior force of the savages, who became panic- stricken, and actually jumped by scores off the high bluffs of Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below ; the rest of them, more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the Russians, who took and located them on a rocky islet, several miles from the harbor of Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with provisions ; and then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and liberally paid for 102 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. their peltries. Twenty or thirty of their leaders were kept as host- ages on the vessels, and the result was entire submission every- where afterward to the Russians in this region. Occasional at- tacks and massacres would now and then be made upon far-distant hunting parties of the Russians, it is true, but the moral effect of the Oogak victory and slaughter was such among the Kadiakers that no further combined organized resistance or opposition was ever given again. Shellikov soon realized that he was in no further danger from savage attacks. He began a most extensive and thorough explora- tion of the great island, and organizations of trading-posts at every eligible point. He sent a large party around to the north side and located it at Karlook, where we now find quite a salmon-canning establishment. Here, during the winter of 1785-86 fifty-two Rus- sians and as many natives ranged all over the water of Shellikov Straits in eager search of the sea-otter ; in the meantime the whites under Shellikov's immediate command were actively examining the recesses and fiords which are so numerous and deep on the south side of Kadiak. So well and so thoroughly was this work carried out, that by the beginning of 1786 Shellikov had made him- self well acquainted with the whole region — had established his trading-posts at every point between Shooak, in the north, and Trinity Islands, at the extreme south; and had even made himself tolerably familiar with the coast of Cook's Inlet, having chastised the ugly Kenaitze in a most summary manner. Again, this remarkable man is distinguished by the successful and sensible effort which he made in substituting for the orgies of Kadiak demonology the practices of the Greek Church, which, he wisely foresaw, if effected, would bind the natives closer to the Russians than any other power. He was aided in this by the per- sonal labors and example of his wife, who accompanied him at the outset. She instructed the girls and women in needle-work, and acquired an influence over them that was very great. Feeling certain that he had established his trade on a secure foundation, Shellikov and his wife sailed for home on May 22, 1786, in the same vessel which brought them out, leaving an impress of endur- ing character upon Alaska of the greatest good and worth. During the first years of the existence of the Shellikov Company, thus established here in Kadiak, it enjoyed the partial protection of the Crown and many exclusive privileges, by which advantages THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 103 nearly all the smaller trading companies had been fairly crowded out of the country. But it was not always the power conferred upon a great firm by its favor at Court and larger capital that gained supremacy in Alaska during those early days — it frequently occurred that the employes of one association resorted to physical force of arms in dispossessing those of another, and then, this order initiated, the strongest organization was sure to eventually dominate the coveted region. This commercial anarchy led to the autocratic monopoly of the Russian American Company in a very few years — it was the best thing that could then have transpired for Alaska and its people. The approach to Kadiak from the ocean is striking, because it and the numerous islets and islands that join it closely are mountainous and hilly, with many lofty peaks that have plateaux and ravines full of eternal snow. It is not often seen clearly, how- ever, along its full extent of wild topography, on account of clouds, fog and boisterous weather, which terrifies the navigator, driving him from its vision. It is, however, an island that affords the greatest number of safe and snug harbors, and has no rival as the most enjoyable place for the traveller to visit. It so justifies us in our mind to-day, just as it warranted the Russians in expressing their preference for it a full hundred years ago. Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbi- trary and capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered with spruce-forest ; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in defini- tion ; you pass from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into leather of the moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite, and runs right up north to Bering's Straits' latitude, avoid- ing the coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton's Sound. There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large island itself ; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling, with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great extent A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from 104 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. their mountain sources, but none of them are navigable — they are mere rapids and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits of the hilly ridges of the interior. Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to house the merchandise, furs, and his employes. The harbor, too, is ample, and so situated that sailing-craft . can come and go in all winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on file show ; but the menacing encroachments of for- eign traders in the far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action. To-day many of the ancient Russian structures are still pointed out in the village here which commands the harbor of Saint Paul, and in which some three hundred Creoles are living in well-built log and frame houses. Everything is clean* and orderly, but very, very quiet, inasmuch as no commerce, no monthly steamer, no tramping miners invade the solitude of its location. It supports a large Greek church and the priest attendant. Its people, as a rule, are wholly engaged in the business of trading fur and hunting sea- otters. Small codfish schooners often rendezvous here, and thfc * Cleanliness and comfort, however, were but little regarded by the Rus- sian fur-traders, who gave their surroundings of residence no sanitary atten- tion whatever. Even Baranov himself was supremely indifferent, and when the Imperial Commissioner, Resanov, called on him at Sitka in 1805, the chief manager of the Russian American Company was living in a mere hut, " in which the bed was often afloat," and a leak in the roof too small a matter to notice I THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 105 natives also cut considerable cord-wood, for the use of such fur- traders who ply to the treeless districts westward, and fuel for fishing canneries at Karlook and Kassilov. Several little mountain rivulets flow through the limits of this settlement, which is everywhere well drained, and therefore dry in the streets by rea- son of its position on the rising slopes of the lofty hills which make a bold background, when the picture is viewed from the ship's deck as you sail up to the anchorage. The presence here of some thirty white men, pure Kussian Creoles, and several of our own people who have really settled in the country, many of them mar- ried, and who call the place home, makes Kadiak unique in this re- spect. Elsewhere, if we find a white man living at the trading- posts, or plying his vocation as a cod-salmon fisherman, or miner, he always draws himself up and emphatically denies any idea of permanent residence in Alaska. Looking down the bay, we observe a thickly timbered and a somewhat more level island than usual — it is the famous Wood Island, where the largest spruce-trees in all this section grow ; upon it is a small village of one hundred and fifty-six souls, living in thirteen log houses, thickly clustered together ; they are all sea- otter hunters during the summer. This village is also the depot of that mysterious San Francisco corporation which has regularly cut up and stored tons of ice here every winter since 1856, and never has shipped a pound of it away ! and when the bright, hearty agent of this corporation asks you to come out with him to the stable and advises you to mount one of the three or four horses sheltered therein, so that you can gallop round the island with him, your astonishment is perfect. Sure enough, there is a road, incredible as it first seemed ; for, in order that the horses might be exercised, a good track has been made upon the entire tide-level circuit of the island, about twelve miles in length, over which the ice company's stock is trotted every summer at frequent intervals ; in the winter these unwonted animals are busy hauling ice. You may well improve this oppor- tunity, for it will not occur again as you travel in Alaska — you will not be able to ride elsewhere on a road worthy of the name. A number of small trading-sloops and schooners have been built here in a boatyard, fashioned by the skill of some Creole ship- carpenters, who were trained in the yards at Sitka when Russian authority was dominant, and who have taken up their permanent 106 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. abode in this " Leesnoi " settlement. A few small, tough Siberian cattle, such as we saw at Neelshik, Cook's Inlet, are roaming about here, cared for by the natives who prize milk ; also several of these same bovines are to be seen at Kadiak, where they are limited also to a few head, on account of the trouble of winter attendance and loss from bears in the summer pasturage. An odd, weather-beaten faded little building is pointed out by the natives with pride and animation, as the house in which a " soul-like man " — a Russian monk made his abode for thirty con- secutive years, teaching the children of the village and those of the neighboring towns, who flocked here in great numbers to be instructed. He taught the Russian alphabet, so that the church service might be intelligible ; also rudimentary .art-principles, gardening and divers useful habits for such youth. This unique shrine is in the heart of the next village closely adjoining, and which is located on Spruce Island, or " Yealovnie," as the seventy odd Russian Creoles who live there call it. It is a little hamlet of only fifteen small log houses, very neat and clean ; and the pret- tiest of flower-pots within the scant windows give you a far-away thought as you observe them. Here is also one of the tiniest of Greek chapels, in which the natives are regularly joined by the small number of those of Oozinkie village (a little way off) and just across the straits ; these people, who have no church, are also pure Creoles, and unite in perfect accord with those of Spruce town. Near by, on the southern shore of Afognak Island, is the largest settlement of the " old colonial citizens " in the Territory • three hundred and thirty of these people are living here in a very pictur- esque and substantial village ; a large chapel, which is also used as a school-house, is the distinguishing architectural feature, while a number of newly-built row-boats for fishermen, on the stocks, in a miniature shipyard, point to an industry worthy of attention. The town is spread over a large landed extent, which in many places between the dwellings is devoted to vegetable gardens. More land is under cultivation here than all the rest so treated in Alaska to-day ; the crops of potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and garden- salads, like radishes, etc., seldom fail except in very backward years. No ploughing* is done ; the earth prepared for potatoes is * On Wood Island, however, a small field of rye, oats, or barley, is planted every year for the use of the horses kept there ; here a plough is employed. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 107 thrown with spades, picks, and hoes up as small ridges or tumuli, into the surface of which the seed is planted. A few of those shaggy little bulls and cows, which we have noticed before at Wood Island and Kadiak, are also roaming about, and a great many domestic fowls, such as chickens and ducks, are raised by the women and children, who take the poultry into the attics or lofts above their living rooms during the inclemencies of winter. The desire of the Russians to have beef, milk, and butter, led to a very general importation of Siberian cattle from Petropaulovsk so that every post in Alaska, at one time, had at least a pair of these useful animals to start with. The greatest care was given to them at first, everywhere ; they were especially fostered at Sitka, where the demand for their flesh and milk was most urgent, but at Kadiak and the Kenai mission on Cook's Inlet, the only partial success in causing an increase to the stock was achieved. Impressed with an idea that certain sections of the Kadiak region would serve admira- bly for sheep-husbandry, a San Francisco merchant-firm shipped a flock of rams and ewes — one hundred and fifty of them — sheep of the hardiest breed, to Kolma, a spot not far from St. Paul's Harbor, Kadiak. They were in charge of a trained Scotch shepherd ; but while the flock did remarkably well in the summer, yet most of them perished during the following winter, not from exposure nor want of food, but the long-continued and frequent intervals when the sheep are obliged to be shut up tightly from the fury of wintry gales laden with sleet and rain and snow, causes their wool to "sweat" and fall from the skin in large patches, producing an emaciation and debility which the animal seldom fully recovers from. Also, the general dampness everywhere under foot during the summer season in many good grazing sections of Alaska, is such as to cause an abnormal increase of the hoofs, so that the horny toes turn and grow upward, destroying the peace and comfort of a sheep and literally confine its movements and destroy its thrifty life.* These cereals never ripen, but are cut green, and fed as fodder. Corn is a total failure everywhere, even as fodder. No cereals have been ripened in Alaska ; the attempt, however, has been made a thousand times. * The first cattle brought into Alaska were taken to Kadiak in 1795, and from this central station the stock was distributed — so that by 1833 it had increased to a herd of over two hundred and twenty. At the present writing it is very doubtful whether there are sixty head in the whole region. Every 108 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. Since these little villages of Kadiak, Leesnoi, Yealova, and Af- ognak embrace within their limits a large majority of the sixteen or seventeen hundred Creoles who are residents and natives of Alaska, it may be interesting if a sketch be given of the physical and mental characteristics which distinguish them broadly from the aboriginal types. The original Creole was the offspring of a Rus- sian father and an Aleutian or Kaniag mother. He inherited the strong thickset frame and bushy, curly beard and brown hair of his father ; in many cases his eyes were as blue (and his hair some- times red), his skin as white, and his bearing just as good as was his Russian progenitors'. The aggressive energy, however, of the sire seldom was transmitted, the Creole being indolent and very pa- cific in disposition. If this original Creole, in his time and turn, married a full-blooded Aleutian or Kaniag girl, then the offspring would show a marked dominance of the mother's race — indeed, the child would be as much like other Aleutian babies as they are re- lated in looks among themselves ; but if this original Creole mar- ries an original Creole girl, sired like himself, then we have a type which cannot be distinguished at all from the full-blooded Sla- vonian, only much less demonstrative, alert, and pugnacious. Most of these old colonial citizens of this district of Kadiak are therefore full-blooded Russian quadroons and octoroons, and in every physi- cal aspect are as much like Russians as if of pure origin. Those early Creoles, male and female, who mated, as they matured, with the native males and females, in so doing caused all their offspring, long ago, to revert to the savage types, and we cannot distinguish them to-day. Some of the Creole girls and women whom we observe in these settlements are exceedingly handsome, modest, and the only fault we can find with them is their absolute speechlessness — they can- not be induced to chat with us, though they seem to enjoy our presence. Most of them live in scrupulously clean houses, the floors scrubbed and sanded like a well holystoned ship's deck, walls papered and decorated with pictures of saints and other pious subjects ; old Russian furniture, chairs, settees, bureaus, and season it is the habit of traders and others to send upon steamers as they go, a few head of beef-steers, which are turned out at Sitka, Kadiak, and Oonalashka to fatten during the summer, and then are slaughtered when winter ensues. Pigs thrive here, but live too much on the sea-refuse for the good of their flesh. So they are not favored. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 109 clocks of our own make ; the bright, omnipresent " samovar" in which the boiling water for tea is never allowed to get cool ; little curtains over the small windows, and big curtains puckered around the beds — everything is usually clean, tidy, and quiet within the Creole's home. The wants of the Creole are very few outside of what the coun- try in which he li ves affords him. He manages to so deal in sea-otter, and fox and bear skins as to get from the trader's store what tea, sugar, flour, and cloth are required for his family. Beyond this exertion and that displayed in his gardening he rests wholly at peace with himself and all the rest of the world. The Kaniags or Kadiakers, who are the natives of this island and contiguous islands, are in much greater numbers, and are to be found everywhere here in small hamlets that nestle in the deep fiords and bays of Kadiak. They resemble the Aleutes so closely in outward form and characteristics that the full description given in a following chapter of those people will cover the whole ground of this inquiry, only let it be remembered that the Kaniag is a trifle taller than his Aleutian cousin, has a fairer skin, a somewhat broader face, and is considerably more muscular. Like the Aleutes, he has small feet and hands, small black eyes set in deep sockets, little or no beard, and an abundance of coarse, straight, black hair, which he cuts off roughly just above his shoulders ; he has a trifle more beard and a better mustache, but this is a very fine distinc- tion. He is lighter-hearted, freer, and more jovial, but has less patience during seasons of privation or epidemic disease. "When the Kaniags gather together they are exceedingly talka- tive, abounding in jokes, in the recitation of funny legends, and stories of every imaginable nature associated with their simple li ves. As they paddle their bidarkas and bidarrahs in making long journeys, they enliven the labor by continuous songs, snatches from church tunes, or lively airs taught them by the Russians and later by our soldiers and traders. They are in every respect much more susceptible of emotional impulses than are the Aleutes. This greater sociability is well exhibited by the invariable erection, in every settlement, of a "kashima," or public dance and work-house, or, in fact, a town-hall as we have it : — the Aleutes have nothing of the sort. They pass a good deal of their time on the land, travers- ing mountain trails in quest of bears, wolves, foxes, the land-otter, and the marmot, or " yeavrashkie," which is made into that famous 110 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. skin coat called the " parkie " all over this Alaskan country outside of the Sitkan archipelago. As these natives exist to-day there are only eighteen hundred, a few more or less, of them, which is an immense shrinkage from the Russian enumeration of six thousand five hundred made by actual count of Baranov. They seem to be declining even now, year by year, even as the Koloshians of the Sitkan region do, so that the native population of the Kadiak district, if decreased * in the next two decades as it has in the last, will hardly have a living representative. No one can well avoid a train of fast-crowding thought when he stops in contemplation of sickness and death as it appears and is treated in savage settlements — the only medical counsel that they ever have is their own individual instinct. Ignor- ant as they are of the simplest anatomical details of their structure, it is not surprising that they should surrender to disorders and disease with that remarkable passive apathy which is so distinctive of the sick everywhere in such communities. Indians, and these Aleutes and Kaniags, as they grow up, have no parental supervision whatever as to details of diet, of warm or cool clothing, or of any of those many attentions which our children receive from their parents. For the first ten or twelve years of their lives they literally run wild, and are semi-naked or wholly so, both male and female ; f this is their condition, then, at all seasons of the year. Exposed as they are, in their manner of living, to draughts, to insufficient covering, and damp, cold nooks for slum- ber, in which the air reeks with odors too vile for the power of language to express, naturally they lay a foundation, at the very outset of their existence, for pulmonic troubles in all the varied degrees of that dread disease. Consumption is, therefore, the simple and broad term for that single ailment which alone destroys the greatest number of these people, every season, in Alaska ; all the natives, the Eskimo, the Aleut, the Kaniag, and the Indians suffer from it alike, and they all exhibit that same stolid indifference to its stealthy but fatal advancement — no extra care, no attempt to * The church records show that the people of the Kadiak district have decreased as follows : 1796—6,510; 1818—3,430; 1819—3,252; 1822—2,819; 1863—2,217 ; 1880—1,813. Small-pox, measles, and other imported diseases have caused this. f The little girls, as a rule, receive the earliest garments, generally nothing but a cotton shift and a torn blanket. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. Ill shelter, to protect or to ward off in the slightest manner this trouble, until the very moment of supreme dissolution calls in a shaman and the sorrowing relatives. After lung diseases, the next destroying factor of greatest power is embodied in the virulence of scrofulous affections, which take the form of malignant ulcers that eat into the vitals and slough away the walls of the large arteries. This most loathsome blood- poisoning renders a few settlements entirely leprous, especially so to our startled eyes when we visit them. And in this regard it is hard to find a village in the whole Alaskan boundary where at least one or more of the families therein has not got upon some one of its members the singularly prominent scars that attest this dis- ease. Often a comely young girl or man will, in turning suddenly, reveal under the jaws or on the neck and throat, a disgusting, livid eruption which a scrofulous ancestry has cursed the youth with. Since most of this complaint is on the surface, as it were, we naturally would look for some care on the part of the afflicted native, even if for no other end than self-contentment and the ready alleviation of this cutaneous misery ; but we will look in vain, the patient never gives it. On the contrary, it is utterly neglected, and by reason of the filthy habit of these people, it is immensely aggra- vated and made infinitely more violent. In regard to consumption this apathy on the part of the victim is not, in contrast, so very remarkable, since it is more concealed and not near so disagreeable both to the native and his associates. Though consumption and scrofula are the two great indigenous sources of disease and death among the natives, yet there is still a list — quite a long one — of other ills, such as paralysis, inflamma- tory rheumatism and peritonitis, fits, and an abrupt ending of life in the middle-aged, called most graphically " general debility." As might be inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal life in Alaska, these natives do not survive to any great age ; rarely, indeed, will an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years be recorded or observed — an overwhelming majority of them are old at thirty-five and forty. When a man or a woman in a set- tlement rounds the fiftieth year of his or her lif e, a noted example of the tribe is afforded ; but should this age be attained, and the man then be free from rheumatic troubles or the death-grasp of scrofu- lous or pulmonic disease, he is sure to be afflicted with injured and defective vision, if not totally blind ; the glint of snow and the in- 112 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. tensely smoky interiors of every style of native dwelling so affect the eyes of these people that those organs of sight, in the middle- aged, are seldom without signs of decay — showing some one of the various stages of granular ophthalmia, as a rule. Snow-blindness can be remedied and its pain abated by the use of peculiar goggles, which the savages know well how to make and use, but the greater evil of smoke-poison to the optic nerve is not obviated at all by any action on their part, though it would be easy so to do. They actually seem determined to live on so as to live as wretchedly in the future as they have in the past. Another singular characteristic of these Alaskan savages is the fact that none of the many tribes have any medicine whatever ; nor have they any knowledge, so far as we can find out, of any medici- nal herb or mineral, and this again is the most extraordinary item of it all. Every less or great indisposition is treated by a uni- versal resort to the sweat-bath ; this is the sole specific, and this is the only relief, except when the shaman is called in to worry the last hours of the unhappy patient to death, or, perhaps, in rare cases, to prolong his wretched existence for a longer period, by stimulating an undue or extra nervous tension, which then causes, at times, the usually languid and resigned sufferer to rally, as it were, before the flame flickers out. Truly these people are predes- tinarians ; they are wonderful in their patience when suffering long and acutely, as they lie stretched out or squatted in their gloomy, noisome hovels. All the traders, and every vessel that sails in Alaskan waters, have medicine-chests, and to their credit be it said that, as far as they can, they do everything in their power to aid the natives when sick ; but the aborigines have not the right idea of taking physic, since they appreciate nothing but forcible treatment — large doses of something that acts immediately, or nothing at all. For instance, if the trader gives an Indian a dose of Epsom-salts, the amount given must be at least four or five times as much as would do for himself, or there will be no effect on the patient whatever. Consequently, the simplest remedies known are the only ones which the white man dare give to these people, and they have, as a matter of course, very little power to relieve them. During the last six or seven years a violent form of typhoid-pneumonia has been wasting whole settlements on the Kadiak and Aleutian coasts ; the Creoles and the natives alike yield at once to the disease, making scarcely THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 113 an effort to save themselves. The traders everywhere became seriously alarmed, as the force of sea-otter hunters was rapidly decreasing, and exerted themselves to their utmost in staying the epidemic, which seemed to be carried from one village to the other in vessels and by canoes. But the only medicines which can be used in the safe and successful treatment of this complaint were regarded as unworthy of notice by the suffering natives, who, not feeling immediately relieved after taking them, would then totally ignore their further use. Bad enough are the indigenous ills of the savages in Alaska. They were, however, nothing to the horrors which followed the im- portation of small-pox by the Russians in 1838-39. This terrible scourge swept like wildfire up from its initial point at Sitka, over the whole length of the Alaskan mainland and island coast, until it faded out in the far north where it had nothing to prey upon. It actually earned in its grim grasp one-half of the whole population then living in that large area to an abrupt and violent death — sev- eral districts were so afflicted that not a soul escaped — every human being was exterminated ; it was exceedingly fatal and viru- lent in the Sitkan archipelago. We, knowing the filth and expos- ure of the lives of these people, can readily understand how they fell down and were crushed under the march of this disease.* As might be supposed the Russians lost no time in thoroughly vacci- nating the survivors ; and they have been faithfully followed, in this duty, by our own sailors and traders who now live in the coun- try. Another imported evil, the measles, is almost as deadly up here among the natives as small-pox. While it is a simple trouble arous- ing no especial anxiety with us, yet in this climate, together with the careless methods of life, it assumes a black form and becomes malignant and fatal. The last extended attack took place princi- pally in the villages of the Kadiak district in the winter of 1874- 75, where it so alarmed and impressed the sojourning members of an Icelandic Commission as to shake their desire to emigrate to * La Perouse, who touched on this coast in 1786 at Litooya Bay, under the flanks of Mount Fairweather, declares that he saw marks of the small-pox on the savages who were there then ; most likely what he saw was the scar of scrofulous sores. In 1843-44 another small-pox outbreak on the Aleutian Islands took place, but the people had been vaccinated in the meantime, and nothing serious came of it. 8 114 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. that region — at least, when they returned to their country, they were never heard from in favor of Alaska. A very natural question arises in this connection as to whether or no the savages of Alaska will ever increase in numbers or dimin- ish to actual extermination as time advances. It appears very plain, however, that the inhabitants of the Aleutian chain, the Peninsula, and Cook's Inlet are nearly as numerous to-day as they have been ever since the small-pox decimation of 1838-39. But all author- ities agree in declaring that these people have never regained their numerical force represented in the settlement prior to the advent of the scourge which depopulated them. As to the Eskimo of the Bering Sea coasts and the Koloshians of the Sitkan region, it seems well established, from what we can learn, that they have re- gained their former strength in part, and were they only provident they might live by hundreds where they now exist in tens. Indif- ferent, wholly indifferent when living, they are as apathetic when they face death. After reading the quaint yet strong narrative of the ferocity and strength of the Kaniags which Shellikov * has given us, it is hard, indeed, to realize that bold pioneer's feeling as we now look in upon the steep slopes of Three Saints Bay, where, at the head of it, within the sweep of a sand-spit, he erected the first permanent white habitation ever planted on Kadiak with the aid of the one hundred and fifty or sixty Russians who formed his company. Here, to-day, we see a cluster of sod-walled barraboras and two small, frame trading-houses, in which live one hundred and ninety of the descendants of those hardy savages who terrified and nearly annihilated the party of Shellikov one hundred years ago in this very spot. Nothing else is left, for Baranov in 1796 removed the post itself to the present site of Kadiak village. As we scan the settlement of Three Saints we notice that the most prominent ob- ject is the rough-hewn walls and thatched roof of an old Greek chapel, in front of which is a rude trestle ; from the upper frame of this a bell hangs. Now a stooping figure emerges from the church door ; he seizes the clapper, or bell tongue, with both hands and swings it vigorously. Promptly the villagers emerge from their huts ; trotting and shambling in single file, they all troop into the chapel. * Grigoria Shellikova Stransvovania, or Shellikov's Journeys, from 1783 to 1787. Published, St. Petersburg, 1792-93. 12mo. 2 vols. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 115 Meanwhile the dusky sub-deacon still tolls and chimes away long after every inhabitant has been gathered in. These men and women who, with bowed heads and fervent crossings, bend and kneel as they enter that place of worship, are the children of the " blood-thirsty and implacable " Kaniags of whom Shellikov gave so vivid a picture to the Empress of all the Eussias just a century ago. They are hunting sea-otters, however, just as they did then, and living in precisely the same manner, save the variations of out- ward demeanor and intercourse due to the teachings of the Greek Church. But if you go among them and strive to have them tell you of the heroic battle made by their ancestors on the Oogak "kekour," you will be rewarded by either a stupid stare of vacancy or a muttered "Bogue ezniet" (God knows) ! The deep recess of Eagle Harbor, which lies between this point of earliest Russian occupation and Kadiak village, affords the location of another large native village, and its region is called the best grazing ground in all Alaska. On the surf-beaten islets at the mouth of the inlet a great many sea-lions are always found, and thus yield to these hunters of Orlova a rich return in hides and sinews so essential for the construction of the " bidarka." A few families of Creoles also reside here, who attend to a small herd of cattle, keep fowls, and generally look after their commissions as middle-men in the sea-otter revenues. From the earliest colonial time to the present the little village of Karlook, on the north side of the island, has been the busiest spot in the country. Here is a salmon-fishing settlement right on the coast at the mouth of a small river, where from the ancient date of Russian occupation there has been a salt house and packing es- tablishment, in which the salt and dried fish used throughout the entire Alaskan region was annually secured and prepared. To-day we find two large canning establishments set up and sustained by San Francisco merchants. The run of salmon into this river of Karlook at the height of the season is so great that it interferes with the free movement of canoes in crossing the stream ; while the fishermen of long experience in such matters say that twenty thousand barrels of the red-meated flesh could be easily secured and packed away at Karlook every summer and autumn. This salmon,* so * Oncorynchus nerka. The fishing is done entirely with seines, floating across the river twenty to twenty-five fathoms in length, three fathoms in 116 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. abundant here, is much smaller in average size than is the one com- mon in Cook's Inlet — it does not average ten pounds in weight. But the rich red color of its flesh is an object of the canner, who soon finds out what public taste prefers. The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the ex- treme southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting range, reaching far away down to the westward and south- ward as low as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated " Botany Bay," of the old Russian regime, was es- tablished. That lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely appreciable — elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry's marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called " parkies " by them. Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in self- defence to kill time as well. In 1870 the descendants of the original convicts, and survivors of recent transportation by Russian order, learned in some way or other that they might lead a free life ; so they then actually removed en masse in two large skin bidarrahs, loaded to the gunwales, and made in safety that long sea-voyage which inter- venes between Ookamok and Kadiak Island. They had about one chance in a hundred of getting over the route alive, for the least of those chronic gales and storms that prevail here would have swept depth, with a three-and-a-half-inch mesh. The whole native population is also employed in this fishery during the summer. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 117 them to the bottom of the ocean had it arisen in the time of their passage.* A great expanse of tide-troubled and wind-tossed water is bound between the northern coast of Kadiak and the volcanic ridges of the mainland opposite. The Straits of Shellikov are fair to see on the chart, but the mariner who has once sailed into them, lured there by the false promise of a sheltered passage, never fails to avoid the track afterward — he gladly makes the open detour of the broad Pacific. That same precipitous mountain range which we have gazed upon as it rose in sullen grandeur from the waters of Cook's Inlet, still fronts us, just as boldly, as it sweeps down the entire three hundred miles of the peninsula, forming the southern coast of that land. The sombre green and blue timber-cloak, so characteristic of its northern range, is here replaced by the russet- grays and brownish-yellows of that sphagnum and moss which now supplant the coniferous forests of Cook's Inlet, giving to the picture a much richer tone. Several of these peaks in this chain of mountains thus extended down the south coast of the peninsula are five and seven thousand feet in altitude, their summits much eroded and broken. They hold in their lofty solitudes a great many little glaciers, that, however, never come down to the sea as they habit- ually do in the Choogatch and Elias Alps. The feet of these pen- insular mountains are washed by the direct roll of the ocean waves, which dash into innumerable fiords and coves, studded with small, * The true reason for this hegira of the convicts is a most amusing one. It is as follows : Shortly after the transfer, in 1869, General Thomas made an ex- tended inspection of the Alaskan posts on a steamer detailed for that work. He was accompanied by a certain representative of a Protestant Board of Mis- sions. The vessel accidentally ran across Ookamok Island when making her way to the westward from Kadiak and touched there, where, ignorant of the fact that the people were convicts and their descendants, moved by their piti- ful tales of privation, a large amount of ship's stores were landed upon the beach to satisfy the " suffering " natives : they ate, drank, and were merry, and lived sumptuously for several months afterward. But an end to these good things came at last ; the reaction in the settlement was terrible. So, urged by its pangs, the penal colony determined to pack up and move to the nearest point possible, where, when living, they could again meet, and often too, their kind benefactors ! Hence that startling journey to find those generous Ameri- cans. Lately, however, the traders at Kadiak have taken many of these peo- ple back to Ookamok, where they begged to be allowed to go and end their lives. This is the most desolate island, perhaps, in all the range of that vast Aleutian archipelago. 118 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. rocky islets and reefs awash. A beautiful geological demonstration of the effect which surf-beating waves of the ocean have made upon these mountains ages ago, is shown by the plainly evident lines traced on their flanks fully one thousand feet above the present level of the tide ; and again, another terrace is sculptured in par- allel relief just above it, some five hundred feet higher — a silent, but conclusive showing of the truth that the entire Aleutian chain has been lifted out, at two successive periods, and up from the sea. This range of the peninsula is in itself quite peculiar from the others which we have hitherto noticed thus far. It differs from their physiognomy in one respect — the mountains and ridges them- selves are interrupted in one continuity down the line of their extension by abrupt depressions. These passes, as they appear to be, are not so in fact, but are either low or elevated marshy plains, which extend clear across the peninsula ; they create an impression in the mind of the observer that at a not very remote period, geo- logically speaking, the peaks of this peninsula range were then islands, and the marshy portages, now elevated, were the bottoms of the straits then between them. The natives are continually going to and fro between the waters of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean over these areas of swampy level, engaged in hunt- ing reindeer, bear, or in friendly intercourse with the settlements. The most signal mountain groups on the peninsula are those of Morshovie, of Belcovsky, and the Pavlosk volcanic cluster — all joined by low, wet isthmian swales. The Shoomagin volcano of Venia- minov is also a noteworthy peak. The peninsula is almost bisected between Moller and Zakharov Bays, where the natives cross from water to water in a half-day's portage, and again at Pavlov Harbor. All these isolated or nearly detached mountain sections have a striking resemblance in every respect to the first large island, Oonimak, that is separated from the mainland by the narrow and unnavigable Krenitzin Straits. The Bering Sea coast line of the great Alaskan Peninsula pre- sents a most radical contrast to that of the Pacific — the unbroken, rocky abruptness and roughness there is here suddenly transformed right at the very turn in the Straits of Krenitzin, to low, sandy reaches and slightly elevated moorland tundra, which cover a wide interval between the mountains and the waters of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea. The huge masses of lava, of breccia and conglomer- ate tufa, that everywhere rear their black-ebony shoulders above THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 119 the Pacific surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogash- ik, where we find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, hunting walrus and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks of granite and quartz-porphyries appear, every evidence of that character to the westward being purely and essentially igneous. Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the great- est rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly skins of the " bobear," * and which constitutes the only traffic worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our an- The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik. chorage a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up be- hind it, usually so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and earthen barraboras ; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as the most attractive single object within the lim- its of the place, f The rival traders have run up their flags very * Literally "beaver." The Russians always called this animal the "sea- beaver," but shortened from "morskie-bobear '' to the simple name. f This church was finished in 1882— begun in 1880, it cost $7,000, every cent being freely contributed by the natives. 120 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. smartly on the poles that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawl- ing brook runs down through the town, and we cross it by a lit- tle foot-bridge on our way. We observe cord- wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast from Vancouver's Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the "chicksa " * vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides. Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation, for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries is se- cured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and extrava- gant, they would be a really wealthy community ; but the notoriety of the debauches here has become a by- word and a reproach over the whole region between Cook's Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the vile " quass " or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when loung- ing about the village, and their women wear cloth garments and hats cut after a fashion not very remote in San Francisco. The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak and Cook's Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot re- sist intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the * Trailing tendrils of the Empetrum nigrum. c ( v > i o -5 1 s THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 121 Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capt- ure of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders' money and supplies into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying which declares that riches alone do not bring con- tentment to the human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low. A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous. The little schooner is rapidly put under way, " beating out " in the freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska. Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula, twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up en- tirely of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regu- lar intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the north- east, travelling on a well-beaten "road" or track, which leads clear to the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road- makers plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and mountain sides of Oonimak Island. With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the far end of the peninsula — the extreme west end, where a much smaller community exists, though equally opulent and just as disso- lute. Here is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect 122 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. of abject physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These people, in addition to their fine natural advan- tages of position for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands else- where on the Bering shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain seasons of the year. The flesh, skins, blubber, and sinews are both articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes close by the village, so that those desiderata of food- supply and trade are very accessible. Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned espe- cially by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur- springs which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief, if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Govern- ment declares that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of the healing waters — " It was too far to walk ! " When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge, and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one bar- rabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large. This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more than it comforts their existence. The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest — a THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 123 north wind is always warmer ! These south winds bring to Oon- ga its foggiest weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years on the Grand Banks and "Georges," for the Gloucester and Boston markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November, until next April, all sailing- craft are practically driven from the fishing grounds. The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our Gloucester men, in only one respect, however : the long, buoyed lines are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and fish with hand-lines, using what is known as "11- inch" and "12-inch" hooks. Halibut, and "squid," or cuttle-fish, make the best bait. A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred codfish in a day's steady labor, but this is an ex- traordinary streak of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so ; but a patient trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile, and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time. Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubt- edly be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare that they would bring their wives and children into the country, to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be 124 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no de- sire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was — it does not trouble them now. The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoom- agin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfac- torily established ; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and apprehension.* When the St. Peter, six days later, hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon fol- lowed— and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the bluffs at "Kommandor" — this may have caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage. The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and * From the record made in the ship's log it would seem most likely that he landed on either Popov Island, or else Nogai ; the description will fit either locality. THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 125 lofty ridges ; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock- ribbed break-waters against the full sweep of the mighty uninter- rupted roll of a vast ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring. Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook's Inlet near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor. Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic series of mining operations ; they brought machinery and ran it by steam-power ; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka. In 1857 the work had been so ener- getically pushed that shafts had been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet ; during this period, and three following years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the value of which was forty-six thou- sand rubles, but the result was a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the steamers — that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars — even melting down the smoke- stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.* As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to * Captain F. W. Beechey in his voyage of the Blossom, 1825-27, discov- ered and located at Cape Beaufort, in the Arctic Ocean and on the Alaskan coast, a vein of coal ; this has been subsequently revisited and mined to a small extent by the officers of the Revenue marine cutters of our Government, who pronounce it very satisfactory for steaming purposes. Its situation, how- ever, is so remote that it has no economic significance, and no harbor is there for a vessel of any kind. 126 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. be laid directly south. ; so much so, that for once we express our surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart and calls us to the table. A moment's inspection shows the wisdom of the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour to clear the path of our progress from all dan- ger, we will give the reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea- otter, which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district. CHAPTER VII. THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. Searching for the Otter. — Exposure and Danger in Hunting Sea-otters. — The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the Captor. — Altasov and his Band of Cruel Cossacks. — Feverish Energy of the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders. — Their Shameful Excesses. — Greed for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Ex- plore the Entire Alaskan Coast, 1760-1780.— Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they were First Discovered in Alaska. — Their Partial Extermina- tion in 1836-40.— More Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the Twenty Years Preceding. — What is an Otter? — A Description x>f its Strange Life.— Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500.— The Typical Sea- otter Hunter. — A Description of Him and his Family. — Hunting the Sea- otter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians. — Gloomy, Storm- beaten Haunts of the Otter. — Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous of the Hunters.— The "Surround" of the Otter.— " Clubbing" the Otter.— 41 Netting '' the Otter.—" Surf - shooting " Them. LITTLE does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new sealskin sacque, that the quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme dar- ing, and does to-day — that the possession of the the sea-otter's coat calls for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur- bearing or economic animal known to savage or civilized man. No wonder that it is costly ; what abundant reason that it should be rare ! The rugged, storm-beaten resorts of the sea-otter, its wariness and cunning, and the almost incredible fortitude and patience, skill and bravery, of its semi-civilized captor, have so impressed the writer that he feels constrained to rearrange his notes and touch up his field-sketches made upon the subject-matter of this chapter sev- eral years ago, while cruising in Alaskan waters, so that he may give to the readers of this work the first full or fair idea of the topic ever put into type and engraving. 128 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. Feodor Altasov, with a band of Russian Cossacks * and Tartar " promishlyniks," were the pioneers of civilized exploration in East- ern Siberia, and finally arrived at the head of the great Kamchatkan Peninsula, toward the end of the seventeenth century. Here they found, first of all their race, the rare, and to them the exceedingly valuable, fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing this pelage then was abundant on that coast, and not prized above the seals and sea- lions by the natives who displayed their peltries to the ardent Rus- sians, and who in barter asked little or nothing extra from the white men in return. The feverish eagerness of the Slavonians, quickly displayed, to secure these choice skins, so excited the natives as to result very soon in the practical extirpation of the "kahlan," as they termed it, from the entire region of the Kamschadales. The greedy fur-hunters then rifled graves and stripped the living of every scrap of the precious object of their search, and, for the time being, searched in vain for other haunts of the otter. Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering's second voy- age of exploration and Tscherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian and Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans or the Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty re- sources at the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude wooden shallops and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tem- pestuous seas to the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. In this manner and by this impulse the discovery of the Aleutian Islands and the mainland of Alaska was fully determined, between 1745 and 1763. In this enterprise some twenty-five or thirty differ- ent individuals and companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels and hundreds of men, were engaged ; and so thorough and energetic * The Cossacks who came with Altasov were rough-looking fellows of small size, lean and wiry, with large, thin-lipped mouths and very dark skins. Most of them were the offspring of Creole Russian Tartars and women from the native tribes of Siberia. They were filthy in their habits. Naturally cruel, they placed no restraint upon their actions when facing the docile Aleutes, and indulged in beastly excesses at frequent intervals. The custom of the Cossack hunters after establishing on an island, was to divide the command into small parties, each of which was stationed in or close by a native settlement. The chief or head Aleut was induced by presents to assist in compelling and urging his people to hunt. When they returned, their catch was taken and a few trifling presents made, such as beads and tobacco- leaf. THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 129 were they in their search and stimulated capture of the coveted animal, that, along by the period of 1772-74, the catch of this un- happy beast had dwindled down from thousands and tens of thou- sands at first, to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. When the Russian traders opened up the Aleutian .Islands they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, which they willingly parted with at first for trifles, not placing any especial value upon the otter, as they did upon the bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which were vastly more palatable to them and serviceable. But the fierce competition and raised bidding of the greedy traders soon fired the savages into hot and incessant hunting. During the first decade or two of pursuit the numbers of these animals taken all along the Aleutian chain and down the entire northwest coast as far as Oregon, were so great that they appear fabulous in comparison with the exhibit made now.* The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and startling diminution set in ; so much so, that it soon became diffi- cult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska came into our possession, the Russians were taking between four and five hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and South of the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and fifty more from Cook's Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkan district, the Hudson Bay traders and others getting some two hundred more from the coasts of Queen Charlotte's and Vancouver's Islands, and Gray's Harbor, Washington Territory. Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred skins taken as above specified, our traders have secured more than four thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of a proportionate increase of sea-otters — that is not evident — but it is due to the keen competition of our people, who have reanimated the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the * In 1804 Baranor (the Colonial Governor) went from Sitka to the Okotsk with fifteen thousand sea-otter skins, that were worth as much then as they are now, viz., fully $1, 000,000. Last year the returns from Alaska and the north- west coast scarcely foot up four thousand skins; but they yielded at least $200,000 directly to the native hunters, being ten times better pay than they ever brought under Russian rule to these people. 9 130 OUE ARCTIC PROVINCE. style of Baranov's bateaux. As matters are now conducted, the hunting-parties do not let the sea-otter have a day's rest during the whole year : parties relieve each other in orderly, steady succession, and a continual warfare is maintained. Stimulated by our people, this persistence is rendered still more deadly to the kahlan by the use of rifles of our best make, which, in the hands of the young and ambitious natives, in spite of the warnings of their old sires, must result in the virtual extermination of that marine beast* This is the more important because all the world's supply comes from the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled to live beyond simple barbarism ; its chase and the proceeds of its capture furnish the only employment offered by their country, and the revenue by which they can feed and clothe themselves as they do, and, by so doing, appear to all intents and purposes much superior to their Indian neighbors of Southeast- ern Alaska, or their Eskimo cousins of Bering Sea. The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another striking illustration of an animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world, yet respecting the life and habits of which nothing definite has been ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvious, for, save the natives who hunt them, no one properly qualified to write has ever had an opportunity of observing the Enhydra so as to study it in a state of nature, inasmuch as of all the shy, sensitive beasts upon the capture of which man sets any value whatever, this creature is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain ; and, also, like the fur-seal, it possesses, to us, the enhancing value * It is a fact, coincident with the diminution of the sea-otter life under the pressure of Russian greed, that the population of the Aleutian Islands fell off at the same time and in the same ratio. The Slavonians regarded the lives of these people as they did those of dogs, and treated them accordingly. They impressed and took, under Baranov's orders, in 1790-1806, and his subordinates, hunting-parties of five hundred to one thousand picked Aleutes, eleven or twelve hundred miles to the eastward from their homes at Oonalashka, Oom- nak, Akoon, and Akootan. This terrible sea-journey was made by these natives in skin "baidars" and bidarkies, traversing one of the wildest and roughest of coasts. They were used not only for the drudgery of otter-hunting in Cook's Inlet and the Sitkan archipelago, but forced to fight the Koloshians and other savages all the way up and down those inhospitable coasts. That soon destroyed them— very few ever got back to the Aleutian Islands alive- THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 131 and charm of being principally confined in its geographical distri- bution to our own shores of the Northwest. A truthful account of the strange, vigilant life of the sea-otter, and the hardships and the perils of its human hunters, would surpass, if we could give it all, the novelty and the interest of a most weird and attractive work of fiction. The sea-otter is widely removed from close relationship to our common land-otter. Unlike this latter example, it seldom visits the shore, and then only when the weather is abnormally stormy at sea. Instead of being a fish-eater, like Lutra canadensis, it feeds almost wholly upon clams, crabs, mussels, and echinoderms, or "sea- urchins," as might be inferred from its peculiar flat molars of den- The Kahlan or Sea-otter. tition. It is, when adult, an animal that will measure from three and a half to four and a half feet in length from nose to root of its short, stumpy tail. The general contour of the body is strongly suggestive of the beaver, but the globose shape and savage expres- sion of the creature's head are peculiar to it alone. The small, black, snaky eyes gleam with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled ; the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. This pelt, when removed in skinning, is cut only at the posteriors, and the body is drawn forth, turning the skin inside out, and in that shape it is partially stretched, air-dried, and is so lengthened by this process that it gives the erroneous impres- sion of having been taken from an animal the frame of which was 132 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. at least six feet in length, with the proportionate girth and shape of a mink or weasel. There is no sexual dissimilarity in color or size, and both male and female manifest the same intense shyness and aversion to man, coupled with the greatest solicitude for their young, which they bring into existence at all seasons of the year, for the natives capt- ure young pups in every calendar month. As the hunters never have found the mothers and their offspring on the rocks or beaches, they affirm that the birth of a sea-otter takes place on the numer- ous floating kelp-beds which cover large areas of the ocean south of the Aleutian chain and off the entire expanse of the northwest coast. Here, literally " rocked in the cradle of the deep," the young kahlan is brought forth and speedily inured to the fury of fierce winds and combing seas. Upon these algoid rafts the Aleutes often surprise them sporting one with the other, for they are said to be very playful, and one old hunter told the writer that he had watched a sea-otter for half an hour as it lay upon its back in the rollers and tossed a bit of sea-weed up into the air from paw to paw, ap- parently taking great delight in catching it before it fell into the water. The sea-otter mother clasps her young to her breast between her fore-paws, and stretches herself at full length on her back in the ocean when she desires to sleep, and she suckles it also in this po- sition. The pup cannot live without its mother, though frequent attempts have been made by hunters to raise them, for the lit- tle animals are very often captured alive and wholly uninjured ; but, like some other animals, they seem to be so deeply imbued with fear or dislike of man that they invariably die of self-imposed starvation. The enhydra is not polygamous, and it is seldom, in- deed, that the natives, when out in search of it, ever see more than one animal at a time. The flesh is very unpalatable, highly charged with a rank taste and odor. A single pup is born, as the rule, about fifteen inches in length and provided with a natal coat of coarse, brownish, grizzled hair and fur, the head and nape being rather brindled, and the nose and cheeks whitish-gray, with the roots of the hair everywhere much darker next to the skin. From this poor condition of fur at birth the otter gradually improves as it grows older, shading darker, finer, thicker, and longer by the time they are two years of age. Then they rapidly pass into prime skins of the most lustrous softness and ebony shimmering, though the creat- THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 133 ure is not full-grown until it has passed its fourth season. The rufous-white nose and mustache of the pup are not changed in the pelage of the adult, but remain constant through life. The whis- kers are short, white, and fine. So much for the biology of the sea-otter. Now we turn to the still more interesting one of its captors. The typical hunter is an Aleutian Islander or a native of Kadiak. He is not a large man — rather below our standard — say five feet five or six inches in stature. There are notable exceptions to this rule, for some of them are over six feet, while others are veritable dwarfs — resemble gnomes more than anybody else. He wears the peculiar expression of a Japanese more than any other. His hair is long, coarse, and black ; face is broad ; high, prominent cheek bones, with an insignificant flattened nose ; the eyes are small, black, and set wide in his head under faintly marked eye- brows, just a faint suggestion of Mongolian obliquity ; the lips are full, the mouth large, and the lower jaw square and prognathous ; the ears are small, likewise his feet and hands ; his skin in youth is often quite fair, with a faint flush in the cheeks, but soon weathers into a yellowish-brown that again seams into deep flabby wrinkles with middle and old age. He has a full, even set of good teeth, while his body, as might be inferred from his habit of living so much of his life in the cramped "bidarka"* or skin boat, is well developed in the chest and arms, but decidedly sprung at the knees, and he is slightly unsteady in his pigeon-toed gait. The mate of this hunter was when young a very good-looking young woman, who never could honestly be called handsome, yet she was then and is now very far from being hideous or repulsive. * The " bidarka '' is a light framework of wooden timbers and withes very tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my illustrations. It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are sewed on over it while they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out they contract, and bind the frame, and are as taut as the parchment of a well-strung bass-drum. Then the native smears the whole over with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water out of the pores of the skin for quite a long period and prevents the slacken- ing of the taut binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry off in the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them are made with two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have but one. The otter- hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words, use two-holed bidurkies. 134 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. She partakes, somewhat mellowed down, of the same characteristics which we have just sketched in the face and form of her husband. As they live to-day, they are married and sustain this relation, shel- tered in their own hut or "barrabkie." They have long, long ago ceased to dress themselves in skins, and now appear in store clothes and cotton gowns, retaining, however, their characteristic water- proof garment known as the "kamlayka" and the odd boots known as "tarbosars," in which they are always enveloped in wet weather, or whenever they venture out to sea in their bidarka. They dress themselves up on Sundays, when at home, in boots and shoes and stockings of San Francisco make. He wears a conventional " beaver " or plug hat often, and she affects a gay worsted hood, although, on account of the steady persistence of high winds, he prefers a smart marine-band cap, such as our soldiers on fatigue- duty wear. He is, however, inclined to be quite sober, not giving much attention to display or color, as is the habit of semi-civilized people everywhere else ; but he does lavish the greatest care and labor over the decoration of his bidarka, and calls upon his wife to ornament the seams of his water-repellant kamlayka and tarbosars with the gayest embroidery, and tufts of bright hair and feathers, and lines of cunning goose-quill work. Mrs. Kahgoon, however, is a true woman. She naturally desires all the bright ribbons and cheap jewellery which the artful trader exhibits to her longing eyes in his store, that stands so near and so handy to her barrabkie, and her means only limit the purchase which she makes of these prized desiderata. She dresses her hair in braids, as a rule, and twists them up behind. She seldom wears a bonnet or hat, but has a handkerchief, generally of cotton, some- times silken, always tied over her head, and when she goes, as she often does, out to call on a neighboring spinster or madam, or to the store, she throws a small woollen shawl over head and shoul- ders, holding it drawn together under her chin by one hand. As we have intimated, she dresses principally in cotton fabrics, with skirts, overskirts, white stockings, etc. ; but when she was a girl, and much more than that, she usually went, with her legs and feet bare, into the teeth of biting winds and over frosty water and wood-paths. The domestic life of this hunter and his wife is all bound up within the shelter of their "barrabkie." This hut or house of the Aleutian hunter is half under ground, or, in other words, it is an THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 135 excavation on the village site of a piece of earth ten or fifteen feet square, three or four feet deep, which is laid back up and over upon a wooden frame or whalebone joisting, which is securely built up within and above this excavation, so that a rafter-ceiling is made about six feet in the clear from the earthen floor. A wallspf peaty sod is piled up around outside, two and three feet thick. The nat- ive architect enters this dwelling through a little hall patched on to that leeward side from the winds prevalent in the vicinity. The door is low, even for Kahgoon, and he stoops as he opens and A Barrabkie. ( The characteristic dwelling ofAleutes and Kadiakers.) closes it. If he has been a successful hunter, he will have the floor laid with boards secured from the trader ; but if he has been un- lucky, then nothing more to stand upon than the earth is afforded. This barrabkie is divided into two rooms, not wholly shut out one from the other, by a half-partition of mats, timber, or some hanging curtains, which conceal the bedroom or "spalniah" from the direct gaze of the living and cook-room. They are very fond of comforta- ble beds, having adopted the feather-ticks of the Russians. Soap is an. expensive luxury, so Rangoon's wife is economical of its use for washing in her laundry ; and, though she may desire to spread over her sleeping couch the counterpane and fluted shams of our own choice, she has nothing better than a colored quilt which the 136 OUK ARCTIC PROVINCE. traders bring up here especially to meet this demand. A small deal-table, two or three empty cracker-boxes from the store, and a rude bench or two constitute all the furniture, while a little cast-iron stove, recently introduced, stands in one corner, and the heating and cooking is created and performed thereon. The table-ware of a hunter's wife and the household utensils do not require much room or a large cupboard for their reception. A few large white crockery cups, plates, and saucers, with gaudy red and blue designs, and several pewter spoons, will be found in sufficient quantity to enter- tain with during seasons of festivity. She manifests a marked dis- like to tin dishes, probably due to the fact that it is necessary to take care of this ware, or it rusts out. Then, above all the strange odors which arise here in this close, hot little room, we easily de- tect the smell of kerosene, and, sure enough, it is the oil which is burned in the lamp. Such a barrabkie built and furnished in this style and occupied by Kahgoon, his wife, two or three children, and a relative or so, is a warm and a thoroughly comfortable shelter to him and his, as long as he keeps it in good repair. It is true that the air seems to us, as we enter, oppressively close, and, in case of sickness, is posit- ively foul ; yet on the whole the Alaskan is very comfortable. He never stores up much food against the morrow — the sea and its piscine booty is too near at hand. Whatever he may keep over he does not have in a cellar, but hangs it up outside of his door on an elevated trestle which he calls a " laabas," beyond the reach of the village dogs, while there is no thought of theft from the hands of his neighbors. He lives chiefly upon fresh fish — cod, halibut, salmon and other varieties, which he secures the year round as they rotate in the sea and streams. He varies that diet according to the suc- cess of his hunting, by buying at the store tea, sugar, hard-bread, crackers, flour and divers canned fruits or vegetables. Nature sends him in season the flesh and eggs of sea-fowl, geese, ducks, and a few land birds like willow-grouse. In this fashion the sea-otter hunter appears to us as we view him now ; his children come, grow up, and branch out, to repeat his life and doing, as they show themselves capable of living by their own exertions as hunters and fishermen. He is a peaceful, affectionate, and thoroughly undemonstrative parent, a kind husband, and he imposes no burden upon his wife that he does not fully share, un- less he becomes a drunkard, when, in that event, a sad change is THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 137 made in the man. He gets drunk, and his wife too, by taking sugar, flour, and dried-apples, rice or hops, if he can get them, in certain proportions, puts them into a barrel or cask, with water, bungs it up and waits for fermentation to do its work. Before it has worked entirely clear he draws off a thick, sour liquid wjiich in- toxicates him most effectually — he beats his spouse and runs her and children from the house, smashes things, and for weeks after- ward the barrabkie is desolate and open as the result of such orgies. If he continues, his health is shattered, he rapidly fails as a hunter, and he suffers the pangs of poverty with his family. It is said upon good authority that the brewing of this liquor was taught to these people by the earliest Russian arrivals in their country, who made it as an anti-scorbutic ; but it certainly has not proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it has brought upon them nearly all the misery that they are capable of understanding. In concluding this brief introduction to the life of the otter- hunter, we may fitly call attention to the fact that Kahgoon and his family are devout members of the Greek Catholic Church, as are all of his people, without a single exception, between Attoo and Kadiak Islands — nearly five thousand souls to-day, living in scat- tered hamlets all along between. The subtle acumen displayed by the sea-otter in the selection of its habitat can only be fully appreciated by him who has visited the chosen land, reefs, and water of its resort. It is a region so gloomy, so pitilessly beaten by wind and waves, by sleet, rain and persistent fog, that the good Bishop Veniaminov, when he first came among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered the curriculum of hell to be omitted from the church breviary, saying, as he did so, that these people had enough of it here on this earth ! The fury of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate currents in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer, the black- ness of the fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud, so alarm and discomfit the white man that he willingly gives up the entire chase of the sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, who alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these ob- stacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who, in turn, have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day. So we find the sea-otter-hunting of the present, as it was in the past, entirely confined to the natives, with white traders here and there vieing in active competition one with the other in bidding for 138 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders erect small frame dwellings as stores in the midst of the otter-hunting settlements, places like Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Oonga, and Kadiak villages, which are the chief resorts of population and this trade in Alaska. They own and employ small schooners, between thirty and one hundred tons burthen, in conveying the hunting parties to and from these hamlets above mentioned as they go to and return from the sea-otter hunting-grounds of Saanak and the Chernaboor rocks, where five-sixths of all the sea-otters annually taken in Alaska are secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality for this region between the Straits of Oonimak and the west end of Kadiak Island is somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the great sea-otter hunting-ground of the country. Saanak Island, itself, is small, with a coast-circuit of less than eighteen miles. Spots of sand-beach are found here and there, but the major por- tion of the shore is composed of enormous water-worn boulders, piled up high by the booming surf. The interior is low and roll- ing, with a central ridge rising into three hills, the middle one some eight hundred feet high. There is no timber here, but an abun- dant exhibit of grasses, mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little fresh-water ponds in which multitudes of ducks and geese are found every spring and fall. The natives do not live upon the island, because the making of fires and scattering of food-refuse, and other numerous objectionable matters connected with their settlement, alarm the otters and drive them off to parts unknown. Thus the island is only camped upon by the hunting-squads, and fires are never made unless the wind is from the southward, since no sea-otters are ever found to the northward of the ground. The sufferings — miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which the Aleutes subject themselves here every winter, going for weeks and weeks at a time without fires, even for cooking, with the thermometer below zero in a wild, northerly and westerly gale of wind, is better imagined than portrayed. To the southward and westward of Saanak, stretching directly from it out to sea, eight or ten miles, is a succession of small, sub- merged islets, rocky, and bare most of them, at low water, with numerous reefs and stony shoals, beds of kelp, etc. This scant area is the chief resort of the kahlan, together with the Chernaboor Islets, some thirty miles to the eastward, which are identical in character. The otter rarely lands upon the main island, but he THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 139 is, when found ashore, surprised just out of the surf-wash on the reef. The quick hearing and acute smell possessed by this wary brute are not equalled by any other creatures in the sea or on land. They will take alarm, and leave instantly from rest in a large sec- tion, over the effect of a small fire as far away as four or five miles distant to the windward of them. The footstep of man must be washed from a beach by many tides before its trace ceases to scare the animal and drive it from landing there, should it approach for that purpose. The fashion of capturing the sea-otter is ordered entirely by the weather. If it be quiet and moderately calm, to calm, such an in- terval is employed in " spearing surrounds." Then, when heavy weather ensues, to gales, " surf-shooting " is the method ; and if a furious gale has been blowing hard for several days without cessa- tion, as it lightens up, the hardiest hunters "club" the kahlan. Let us first follow a spearing party ; let us start with the hunters, and go with them to the death. Our point of departure is Oonalashka village ; the time is an early June morning. The creaking of the tackle on the little schooner out in the bay as her sails are being set and her anchor hoisted, cause a swarm of Aleutes in their bidarkies to start out from the beach for her deck. They clamber on board and draw their cockle-shell craft up after them, and these are soon stowed and lashed tightly to the vessel's deck-rail and stanchions. The trader has arranged this trip and start this morning for Saanak, by beginning to talk it over two weeks ago with these thirty or forty hunters of the village. He is to carry them down to the favored otter-resort, leave them there, and return to bring them back in just three months from the day of their departure this morning. For this great accommodation the Aleutes interested agreed to give the trader-skipper a refusal of their entire catch of otter-skins — in- deed many of them have mortgaged their labor heavily in advance by pre-purchasing at his store, inasmuch as the credit system is worked among them for all it is worth. They are adepts in driv- ing a bargain, shrewd and patient. The traders know this now, to the grievous cost of many of them. If everything is auspicious, wind and tide the next morning, after sailing, bring the vessel well upon the ground. The headlands are made out and noted ; the natives slip into their bidarkies as they are successively dropped over the schooner's side while she jogs 140 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. along under easy way, until the whole fleet of twenty or thirty craft is launched. The trader stands by the rail and shakes the hand of each grimy hunter as he steps down into his kyack, calling him, in pigeon-Kussian, his "loobaiznie droog," or dear friend, and bids him a hearty good-by. Then, as the last bidarka drops, the ship comes about and speeds back to the port which yesterday morn- ing she cleared from, or she may keep on, before she does so, to some harbor at Saanak, where she will leave at a preconcerted rendezvous a supply of flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco for her party. If the weather be not too foggy, and the sea not very high, the bidarkies are deployed into a single long line, keeping well abreast, at intervals of a few hundred feet between. In this manner they paddle slowly and silently over the water, each man peering sharply and eagerly into the vista of tumbling water just ahead, ready to catch the faintest evidence of the presence of an otter, should that beast ever so slyly present even the tip of its blunt head above for breath and observation. Suddenly an otter is discovered, ap- parently asleep, and instantly the discoverer makes a quiet signal, which is flashed along the line. Not a word is spoken, not a paddle splashes, but the vigilant, sensitive creature has taken the alarm, and has turned on to its chest, and with powerful strokes of its strong, webbed hind feet, has smote the water like the blades of a propeller's screw, and down to depths below and away it speeds, while the hunter brings his swift bidarka to an abrupt standstill directly upon the bubbling wake of the otter's disappearance. He hoists his paddle high in the air, and holds it there, while the others whirl themselves over the water into a large circle around him, varying in size from one-quarter to half a mile in diameter, according to the number of boats engaged in the chase. The kahlan has gone down — he must come up again soon some- where within reach of the vision of that Aleutian circle on the waters over its head ; fifteen or twenty minutes of submergence, at the most, compel the animal to rise, and instantly as its nose appears above the surface, the native nearest it detects the movement, raises a wild shout, and darts in turn toward it; the yell has sent the otter down again far too quickly for a fair respiration, and that is what the hunter meant to do, as he takes up his position over the spot of the animal's last diving, elevates his paddle, and the circle is made anew, with this fresh centre of formation. In this method the otter is continually made to dive and dive again without scarcely / THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 141 an instant to fully breathe, for a period, perhaps, of two or even three hours, until, from interrupted respiration, it finally becomes so filled with air or gases as to be unable to sink, and then falls at once an easy victim. During this contest the Aleutes have been throwing their spears whenever they were anywhere within range of the kahlan, and the hunter who has stricken the quarry is the proud and wealthy possessor, beyond all question or dispute. In this manner the fleet moves on, sometimes very fortunate in finding the coveted prey ; again, whole weeks pass away without a single surround. The landings at night are made without any choice or selection, but just as the close of the day urges them to find the nearest shore. The bidarkies are hauled out above surf- wash, and carefully inspected ; if it is raining or very cold, small A-tents are pitched, using the paddles and spears for poles and pegs, into which the natives crowd for sleep and warmth, since they carry no blankets or bed-clothes whatever, and unless the wind is right they dare not make a fire, even to prepare the cherished cup of tea, which they enjoy more than anything else in the world, not excepting tobacco. After ninety or a hundred days of such em- ployment, during which time they have been subjected to frequent peril of life in storm, and fog-lost, they repair to the rendezvous agreed upon between the trader and themselves, ready and happy to return for a resting-spell, to their wives, children, and sweethearts in the village whence we saw them depart. They may have been so lucky as to have secured forty or fifty otters, each skin worth to them at least fifty to sixty dollars, and if so, they will have a pro- longed season of festivity at Oonalashka, when they get back. Per- haps the weather has been so inclement that this party will not have taken a half-dozen pelts ; then gloomy, indeed, will be the reception at home. While the "spearing surround" of the Aleutian hunter is ortho- doxy, the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders, who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors, are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter's head is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards 142 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. out, the expert, patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark, he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet : nine times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head, which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually heave the prized carcass within his ready reach. Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of "clubbing." You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to under- stand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We can- not walk, for the wind blows too hard — note the heavy seas foam- ing, chasing and swiftly rolling by, one after the other — hear the keen whistle of the gale as it literally tears the crests of the break- ers into tatters, and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in this tremendous fashion, coming from the west- ward, during the last three or four days without a moment's cessa- tion. Look at those two Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you see them launch a bidarka, seat them- selves within and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes ? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fear- ful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a dream in our eyes ! Yes, it looks to you like suicide ; but there is this method to their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer at the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty miles away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-con- tinued fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that have been so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to crawl there above the wash of the surf, and, burying their glo- bose heads in heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the wind, are sleeping and resting in great physical peace until the weather shall change : then they will at once revive and plunge ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 143 back into the ocean without the least delay. So our two hunters, perhaps the only two souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale, run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its unconscious head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than that made by the stealthy movements of these venturesome natives, who, plying their heavy, wooden blud- geons, despatch the animals one after another without alarming the whole number. In this way, two Aleutian brothers are known to have slain seventy-eight otters in less than one hour ! If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Saanak in that gale, had deviated a paddle's length from their true course for the islet which they finally struck, after scudding twenty or thirty miles before the fury of wind and water, they would have been swept on and out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaus- tion. They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand yards ! Still, if they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters would all be back in the water ere they could even reach the scene. By doing what we have just seen them do they fairly challenge our admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit cal- culation, under the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue of their venture. In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the Aleutian otter-hunters of Attoo, who live on the extreme west- ernmost island of the grand Alaskan archipelago. Here the kahlan is captured in small nets,* which are spread out over the floating kelp-beds or "otter-rafts," the natives withdrawing and watching from the bluffs. The otters come out to sleep or rest or sport on these places, get entangled in the meshes, and seem to make little or no effort to escape, being paralyzed, as it were, by fear. Thus they fall an easy prey into the hands of the captors, who say that * Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes ; made nowadays of twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews. 144 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. they have caught as many as six at one time in one of these nets, and that they frequently get three. The natives also watch for surf- holes or caves awash below the bluffs : and, when one is found to which a sea-otter is in the habit of going, they set this net by spreading it over the entrance, and usually capture the creature, sooner or later. No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the sea- otters, strong animals as they are ; only stray sea-lions and hair- seals destroy them. There is no driving an otter out upon land if it is surprised on the beach by man between itself and the water ; it will make for the sea with the utmost fearlessness, with gleaming eyes, bared teeth and bristling hair, not paying the slightest regard to the hunter. The Attoo and Atkah Aleutes have never been known to hunt sea-otters without nets, while the people of Oona- lashka, and those eastward of them, have never been known to use such gear. Salt-water and kelp appear to act as disinfectants for the meshes, so that the smell of them does not repel or alarm the shy, suspicious animal. CHAPTER YIII. THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. The Aleutian Islands. — A Great Volcanic Chain.— Symmetrical Beauty of Shishaldin Cone. — The Banked Fires in Oonimak. — Once most Densely Populated of all the Aleutians ; now Without a Single Inhabitant. — Sharp Contrast in the Scenery of the Aleutian and Sitkan Archipelagoes. — Fog, Fog, Fog, Everywhere Veiling and Unveiling the Chain Inces- santly.— Schools of Hump-back Whales. — The Aleutian Whalers. — Odd and Reckless Chase. — The Whale-backed Volcano of Akootan. — Striking Outlines of Kahlecta Point and the " Bishop." — Lovely Bay of Oonalashka. —No Wolf e'er Howled from its Shore.— Illoolook Village.— The u Curved Beach." — The Landscape a Fascinating Picture to the Ship- weary Trav- eller.—Flurries of Snow in August. — Winds that Riot over this Aleutian Chain.— The Massacre of Drooshinniu and One Hundred and Fifty of his Siberian Hunters here in 1762-63.— This the Only Desperate and Fatal Blow ever Struck by the Docile Aleutes. — The Rugged Crown and Noisy Crater of Makooshin.— The Village at its Feet— The Aleutian People the Best Natives of Alaska. — All Christians.— Quiet and Respectful. — Fash- ions and Manners among Them. — The " Barrabkie. '' — Quaint Exterior and Interior. — These Natives Love Music and Dancing. — Women on the Wood and Water Trails. — Simple Cuisine. — Their Remarkable Willing- ness to be Christians. — A Greek Church or Chapel in every Settlement. — General Intelligence. — Keeping Accounts with the Trader's Store. — They are thus Proved to be Honest at Heart. — The Festivals, or " Praz- niks."— The Phenomena of Borka Village. — It is Clean. — Little Ceme- teries.—Faded Pictures of the Saints. — Attoo, the Extreme Western Set- tlement of the North American Continent. — Three Thousand Miles West of San Francisco! — The Mummies of the "Cheetiery Sopochnie." — The Birth of a New Island. — The Rising of Boga Slov. AFTER "lying-to " in a fierce southwester for three whole days and nights, in which time the fury of the gale never abated for an hour, our captain had so husbanded his resources that, when the weather moderated, he was able to clap on sail and get under swift head- way ; then we quickly left the watery area of our detention and soon opened up a splendid vista of Oonimak Island, in the early dawning of a clear June day. This is the largest one of that long- 10 146 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. extended archipelago which stretches as an outreaching arm for Asia from America ; it presents to our delighted gaze a sweep of richly-colored, rolling uplands, which either slope down gently to the coast at intervals, or else terminate in chocolate-brown and reddish cliffs abruptly stopped to face the sea breaking at their feet. Very high ridges, with summits entirely bare of vegetation, traverse the centre of the island from east to west, while the tower- ing snowy cone of Shishaldin and the lower, yet lofty, head of Po- gromnia — two volcanoes — rear themselves over all in turn. There are a multitude of huge and cloud-compelling mountains in Alaska, but it is wholly safe to say that Shishaldin is the most beautiful peak of vast altitude known upon the North American continent ; it rears its perfectly symmetrical apex over eight thou- sand feet in sheer height above those breakers which thunder and incessantly roll against its flanks, as these precipitous slopes fall into the great Pacific Ocean on the south, and Bering Sea to the north. A steamy jet of vapor curls up lazily from its extreme summit, but it has not been eruptive or noisy at any time within the memory of the Russians. No foothills, that crowd up against and dwarf the presence of most high mountains, embarrass your view of Shishaldin ; from every point of the compass it presents the same perfect cone-shape ; rising directly from the water and lowlands of Oonimak, it holds and continues long to charm your senses with its rare magnificence ; the distance of our vessel, ten or twelve miles away, serves to soften down its lines of numerous seared and blackened paths of prehistoric lava overflow, so that they now softly blend their purplish tones into those of the rich- hued mantle of golden-green mosses and sphagnum which cover the rolling lower lands. As we draw into Oonimak Pass — it is the gateway for all sail- ing vessels bound to Bering Sea from American ports, we, in closing up with the land, almost lose sight of Shishaldin, and come into the shadow of the rougher and less attractive volcano of Pogromnia. It shows ample evidence of its origin by the streams of blackened frost-riven basalt and breccia which are ribbed upon its rugged sides ; great masses of eruptive rock and pumice lie here and there scattered all over the broad-stubbed head of the mountain ; tons and tons of this material have rolled from thence in lavish profu- sion and disorder, clear down for miles to the very waters of the sea and straits, strewing that entire route with huge debris. Seams H .£ &, -o I II = •* •f. •f. O ° I! THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 147 of snow and ice lacquer, in white, thread the bold black crown of this, the " booming " or " noisy " volcano of the Eussians. It has not been in action since 1820, when it then threw showers of ashes and pumice ; but those fires in its furnace are only banked, as it has been smoking in inky brown and black clouds at irregular and frequent intervals ever since ; loud mutterings, deep rumblings and wide-felt tremors of land and sea are aroused by it constantly. This Island of Oonimak has been always regarded by the Russians as the roof of a subterranean smelting furnace with many chim- neys through which telluric forces ascended from the molten masses beneath. It has been, and is still, the theatre of the greatest plutonic activity in Alaska. Eussian eye-witnesses have described violent earthquakes here where whole ridges of the interior and coast have been rent asunder, cleft open, from which torrents of lava poured and columns of flame and clouds of ashes, steam and smoke, have risen so as to be viewed and noticed for a circuit of hundreds of miles around. These manifestations were always accompanied by violent earthquakes, and tidal-waves which often submerged adjacent villages on the sea-level, and also whole native settlements were swept away in mountain floods caused by the sudden melting of those big banks of ice and snow on such vol- canic summits and their foothills, upon which the hot breccia from a vomiting crater fell.* This great island in olden times was the one most densely populated by the Aleutes. The excesses and terrible outrages of Eussian promishlyniks, followed by the wholesale work of death wrought by small-pox, have utterly eliminated every human settle- ment from the length and breadth of Oonimak, upon which no one has resided since 1847. Euins on the north shore show the aban- doned sites of numerous large hamlets ; one was over four thousand * Bishop Veniaminov, who witnessed one of these eruptions in 1825, describes the occurrence: "On the 10th March, 1825, after a prolonged sub- terranean noise resembling a heavy cannonade, that was plainly heard on the islands of Oonalashka, Akoon, and the southern end of the Aliaska Peninsula, a low ridge at the northwestern end of Oonimak opened in five places with violent emissions of flames and great masses of black ashes, covering the coun- try for miles around ; the ice and snow on the mountain tops melted and descended in a terrific torrent five to ten miles in width, on the eastern side of the island. The Shishaldin crater, which up to that time had also emitted flames, continued to smoke only.'' 148 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. two hundred feet in its frontage on the beach. The fear and superstition which those tragedies of early Eussian intercourse produced in the simple minds of the natives, who belonged by birth to this great island, became at length so potent as to cause the entire and permanent abandonment of their desolated villages, which were once so populous and well satisfied. The craters, and outflow therefrom, on Oonimak have been, from time immemorial, resorted to by the natives as their storehouses for sulphur, and that shining obsidian with which they tipped their bone-spear and arrow-heads ; of it, also, they made their primitive knives, and traded the surplus stock to those Aleutes living else- where. They used the sulphur with dried moss in making fires, which they started with the fire-stick and by rocky concussions.* Before entering the straits of Oonimak, we had a fine view of the entire sweep of the Krenitzin group, that presents a succession of the wildest and most irregular peaks and bluffs, everywhere seem- ing to jut up and fall into the sea, without a gentle slope for a human landing, as they face the Pacific billows dashing so inces- santly upon their basaltic bases ; the extreme eastern islet of the group is Oogamok, and it forms the opposite land from Cape Heet- hook on Oonimak, directly across the straits. A swarm of sea- parrots fly out from its rocky bluffs on the south shore, stirred into unwonted activity and curiosity by the near approach of our vessel, while a dozing herd of sea-lions suspiciously stretch their long necks into the air, smell us, then simultaneously and precipitately plump themselves into the foaming breakers just below their basking- place above the surf-wash. It is very difficult to adequately define or express those varying impressions which are inspired by a panorama of these Aleutian Islands, such as unfolds itself to your eye when rapidly sailing along under their lee on a clear day. The scene is one of rare beauty. The water is blue and dancing until it strikes in heavy waves upon the rocky curbing of the islands, dashing up clouds of spray in white, fleecy masses against the dark-brown and reddish cliff-walls rising over all. The slopes and the summits of everything on land, *A flat, flinty rock — upon it a layer of dried moss or eider-down was spread, then a sprinkling of powdered sulphur was cast over the moss or feathers, then a large quartzite stone was grasped in the native's hand, who struck it down with all his force upon this preparation. The concussion pro- duced fire, and, when feathers were used, a terrible smell. THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 149 save the very highest peaks, are clothed in an indescribably rich green and golden carpet of circumpolar sphagnum ; exquisitely- colored lichens* adorn the stony sea-bluffs and precipices inland. Every minute of the ship's progress in a free, fair wind shifts the fascinating scene — a new peak, another bold headland, a narrow pass, unfolds now between two islets that just before apparently were solid and as united as one island could be ; a steamy jet of hot-spring vapor rises from a deeper, richer mass of green and gold than that surrounding it, and a dark-brownish column of smoke that issues from a lofty, cloud-encircled summit in the distance is the burning crater of Akootan. Everything is so open here, is so plain to see, that when you try to find some points of resemblance to that picture which has chal- lenged your admiration in the Sitkan archipelago, you find noth- ing— absolutely nothing — in common effect. It is, nevertheless, * The range and diverse beauties of the numerous mosses and lichens on these islands must serve as an agreeable and interesting study to anyone who lias the slightest love for nature. They undoubtedly formed the first covering to the naked rocks, after these basaltic foundations had been reared upon and above the bed of the sea— bare and naked cliffs and boulders, which with calm intrepidity presented their callous fronts to the powerful chisels of the Frost King. Rain, wind, and thawing moods destroyed their iron-bound strongness ; particles larger and finer, washed down and away, made a surface of soil which slowly became more and more capable of sustaining vegetable life. "In this virgin earth," says an old author, "the wind brings a small seed, which at first generates a diminutive moss, which, spreading by degrees, with its tender and minute texture, resists, however, the most intense cold, and extends over the whole a verdant velvet carpet. In fact, these mosses are the medicines and the nurses of the other inhabitants of the vegetable king- dom [in the North]. The bottom parts of the mosses, which perish and moulder away yearly, mingling with the dissolved but as yet crude parts of the earth, communicate to it organized particles, which contribute to the growth and nourishment of other plants. They likewise yield salts and un- guinous phlogistic particles for the nourishment of future vegetable colonies, the seeds of other plants, which the sea and winds, or else the birds in their plumage, bring from distant shores and scatter among the mosses.'' Then the botanist needs no prompting when he observes the maternal care of these mosses, which screen the tender new arrivals from the cold and imbue them with the moisture which they have stored up, and " nourish them with their own oily exhalations, so that they grow, increase, and at length bear seeds, and afterward dying, add to the unguinous nutritive particles of the earth ; and at the same time diffuse over this new earth and mosses more seeds, the earnest of a numerous posterity." 150 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. just as attractive, just as grand ; but how different ! All is laid perfectly bare to inspection here— no dense forests and tangled thickets to conceal the surface of the diversified uplands and moun- tain slopes, or to hide the innermost recesses of the deep ravines and narrow valleys. While there is a vast variation in the islands, yet there is, to the mind of him who views them for the first time, the most helpless inability on his part to distinguish or even recog- nize them apart when he happens to revisit them. They are seldom ever clearly defined, being more or less obscured in fog and heavy rifts of cloud. The top of a headland peeps aloft, sharply out- lined, while all below is lost in the mists and banks of fog that roll up there from the sea. Then, in remarkable contrast, only a few miles beyond, the rocks at sea-level and foothills of the next island will be entirely plain to your sight ; while everything above is con- cealed, in turn, by a curtain of the same moist and vanishing misty fog. Fog, fog, fog everywhere, rising and descending with the force of wind-currents that bear it — now veiling, now revealing the startling and impressive beauties of this vast sea-girt chain of the Aleutian archipelago. These majestic blue swells of the great Pacific join with those cold green waves of that lesser, shallower ocean of the North in holding with firm embrace the most impres- sive range of fire-eaten mountains known to the geographer. This cordon of smoking, grumbling, quaking hills and peaks, when once surveyed, leaves an enduring image, grand and superb, on the retina of that eye which has been so fortunate as to behold it. As the little schooner bears up to the westward for our port of Oonalashka, after we have well passed the Straits of Oonimak, we sail into the shorter, choppy waters of Bering Sea — into its charac- teristic light gray-green hue of soundings. The precipitous walls of Akoon Island, rising like so much Titanic sandstone masonry everywhere abruptly from the surf, carry a broad green plateau, that rolls and extends high above the surrounding tide-level. Here, under their lee, on the north shore, we encounter one of those large schools of humpback whales * which are so common and so frequently met with in the Aleutian straits and passages. These animals rise and sink alongside of the vessel, in utter disre- gard of its presence ; and even volleys and bullets of our breech- loading rifles rapidly fired into their broad, glistening, gray-black * Megaptera versabilis. THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 151 backs and sides do not seem to arouse or alarm them in the least. Down they lazily go, to soon rise again with a sonorous whistle as they " blow." A cloud of whale -birds hover over and settle on the watery area occupied by the feeding whales, ever and anon rising, to alight again as the cetacean fleet leaves its feathered convoy tossing behind on the wavelets of the sea. Our skipper, who has been a whaler in his youth, tells us, with a quaint air of contempt for what we so much admire, that these fish-like monsters are of no consequence in the eyes of a wise whal- ing captain, for though they are large enough, it is true, yet they are the wrong breed of whales — they are lean, fighting humpbacks, which, if struck with a harpoon, will run like an express engine for fifty miles or more, carrying a boat and crew of our species, either down in its rapid rush, or else diving in the shoals, over which it feeds, it rolls the death-dealing iron out or breaks it off on the bottom. A stiff head-wind causes the course of the vessel to frequently lie close in to the shore where the massive bluffs of Akoon and Akootan rise in grim defiance, and from the shelves and interstices of which flocks of sea-parrots and little auks fly out in circling flights of curiosity and inspection around the schooner. As we watch the lazy motions of the whales, we recall the fact that on the summits of these bluffs and headlands now before us, the natives of Oonimak, as well as those to the country born, were in the habit of standing through long vigils of daily and nightly watch, as they went whale-fishing long ago after their own primitive fashion. Nothing fit to eat is, or was, so highly prized by the Aleutes or Kaniags, as the blubber and gristle of a whale. To secure this luxury these savages were in the habit of subjecting themselves to infinite hardship and repeated bitter disappointment. The chase of the " ahgashitnak " * and the little "akhoaks"f was the impor- tant business of their lives in times of peace. The native hunter used, as his sole weapon of destruction, a spear-handle of wood about six feet in length ; to the head of this he lashed a neatly- polished socket of walrus ivory, in which he inserted a tip of ser- rated slate that resembled a gigantic arrow-point, twelve or fourteen inches long and four or five broad at the barbs, and upon the point of which he carved his own mark. * Yearling whale. f Calf whales. 152 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. In the months of June and July the whales begin to make their first inshore visits to the Aleutian bays, where they follow up schools of herring and shoals of Amphipoda, or sea-fleas, upon which they love to feed. These bays of Akootan and Akoon were and are always resorted to more freely by those cetaceans than are any others in Alaska, and here the hunt is continued as late as August. When a calm, clear day occurs the natives ascend the bluffs and locate a school of whales ; then the best men launch their skin-canoes, or bidarkas, and start for the fields. " Two-holed " bidarkas only are used. The hunter himself sits forward with nothing but his whale-spear in his grasp ; his companion, in the after hatch, swiftly urges the light boat over the water in obedi- ence to his order. Carefully looking the whales over, the hunter finally recognizes that yearling, or the calf, which he wishes to strike ; for it is not his desire to attack an old bull or angry cow- whale. He calculates to a nice range where the " akhoak " will rise again from its last point of disappearance, and directs the course of the bidarka accordingly. If he is fortunate he will be within ten or twenty feet of the rising calf or yearling, and as it rounds its glistening back slowly and lazily out from its cover of the wavelets the Aleut throws his spear with all his physical power, so as to bury the head of it just under the stubby dorsal fin of that marine monster ; the wooden shaft is at once detached, but the contortions of the stricken whale only assist to drive and urge the barbed slate- point deeper and deeper into its vitals. Meanwhile the canoe is paddled away as alertly as possible, before the plunging flukes of the tortured animal can destroy it or drown its human occupants. As soon as the whale is thus wounded it makes for the open sea, where " it goes to sleep " for three days, as the natives believe ; then death intervenes, and the gases of decomposition cause its carcass to float, and, if the waves and currents are favorable, it will be so drifted as to lodge on a beach at some locality not so very remote from the place where it was struck by the hunter. The business of watching for these expected carcasses then became the great object of everyone's life in that hunters' village ; dusky sentinels and pickets were ranged over long intervals of coast-line, stationed on the brows of the most prominent headlands, where they commanded an extensive range of watery vision. But the caprices of wind and tides are such in these highways and byways of the Aleutian Islands, that on an average not more than one whale : o s Z 60 -i .S 2 1 * g '-v\ ,1 W^ \%' THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 153 in twenty, struck in this manner by native hunters, was ever secured ; nevertheless, that one alone (when cast ashore) amply repaid the labor and the exposure incurred chiefly by watching day after day, in storm and fog, from the bluffs of Akoon and Akootan. The lucky hunter who successfully claimed, by his spear-head mark, the credit of slaying such a stranded calf or yearling, was then an object of the highest respect among his fellow-men, and it was remembered well of him even long after death.* Also, the greatest expression of respect for the size and ability of a native village and its people was the statement that it was so populous as to be able to eat all the meat and blubber of a large whale's carcass in a single day ! As we " put about " under the frowning walls at Cape North, of Akootan, our captain says that the next tack will carry us into Oonalashka Harbor. Meanwhile, as we stand out into the waters of Bering Sea, we have a superb vista of the rugged, seared, and smoking summit of Akootan itself, which rears its hot head high above the rough, rocky island that bears its name. The beaches are few and far between, and there is but little land upon this island to invite a pedestrian, since masses of dark basalt, vesicular and olivine, are scattered in wild profusion everywhere. Over the northeast side steamy clouds arise from the path of a hot spring, which gushes out of the mountain, so hot that meat and fish are cooked in its scalding flood by the natives. On the very crest, as it were, of this whale-backed volcano, are two small, deep lakes that once were the vent-holes of subterranean fires. In olden times seven settlements, with a population of more than six hundred Aleutes, lived on the coast of this island, which, with Akoon, was then the whale-hunter's paradise. To-day we find it utterly deso- late, inhabited by a poverty-stricken hamlet of sixty-five natives, who are located on the southwest shore. The able-bodied men of * Then it was the custom to cut up the dead body of a celebrated native whale-hunter into small pieces, each of which was kept by the survivors to rub over their spear-heads, being carefully dried and preserved for that pur- pose. Again, in ancient times, the pursuit of the whale was the prelude to many secret and superstitious observances by the hunters. These primitive whalers preserved the bodies of distinguished hunters in caves, and before going out on a whale-chase would carry those remains into the water of streams so as to drink of that which flowed over them. The tainted draught conveyed the spirit and luck of the departed ! 154 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. this place spend the greater part of their time, however, far awaj from home on the sea-otter grounds of Saanak, being carried, like their brethren of Akoon and Avatanak, to and from that spot by a trader's vessel. Closely joined to them is the village of Akoon, in which fifty-five or sixty of their countrymen live on the northwest shore, who hunt and deport themselves as do those of Akootan. The Akoonites, however, enjoy the satisfaction of being nearer than their neighbors to that small, rugged islet of Oogamak, which stands in the path, as it were, of the great Pass of Oonimak ; here on the low rocks a comparatively large number of sea-lions repair, and the little hair- seal also. For some reason or other, more of these last-named seals are found here than elsewhere in the entire large extent of this gigantic island chain. Akoon used to boast of many mighty whalers among its prehistoric population of five or six hundred natives, who, in fading away, have left the ruins only of eight settlements to attest their previous proud existence. While we have noticed the poverty of the Akootans, yet, as we contemplate the wretched little village on Avatanak, close by and facing the straits, we must call this the most abject human settle- ment, perhaps, that we shall or can find throughout the archipelago — only nineteen souls living here in the most abandoned squalor and apathy, principally upon the sea-castings of the beach and mussels. Yet this island in olden days was the happy home for a busy little fishing community which then had three settlements on the banks of a beautiful stream that empties its clear waters into the sea on its north side. The most revolting chapter in all the long story of. Russian outrage and oppression of Aleutian natives is devoted to a recital of the savage brutality of Solovaiyah and Notoorbin, who lived here during the winter of 1763. Steam-vessels usually make the jagged headlands and peaks of Tigalda Island as their first land-fall en route from San Francisco to Oonalashka and Bering Sea. They then shape their course into Akootan Straits very easily and safely. The currents and winds, which always cause a variation of the ship's course, never carry the vessel much to the right of Tigalda, or to the left of Avatanak, so that an experienced Alaskan mariner has but little difficulty — even though dense fog prevails, which only gives him fitful gleams of the rude landscape — in recognizing some one of the characteristic peaks or bluffs of these Krenitzin islands ; then, with a known THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 155 point of departure, he can literally feel his way into Oonalashka Harbor. He almost always has to do so, for seldom indeed does he enjoy as fair a sweep of these coasts of Avatanak and Tigalda as that viewed by the author, who scanned this rocky group in a calm, clear September afternoon of 1876. To-day, Tigalda is an utterly abandoned island, given over during the summer to the undisturbed possession of foxes and those flocks of " tundra " geese which settle on the uplands to breed and preen in safety. When moulting here, they have the shelter of several lakes, upon which they swim in mocking security, even if crafty, lurking Reynard attempts to capture them. Near the largest lake on this island a settlement once throve. The inhab- itants had control of a mine of red and golden-yellow chalk, which formed the base of a pigment highly prized by all Aleutes, far and near, for painting their ancient grass, and wooden hats, and other work of the same materials. On the north side of this island is a singular cluster of needle rocks which rise, as twenty-eight points, abruptly from the sea. On them, in positive security, the big burgomaster gull breeds, and the eagle-like pinions of this bird bear thousands of heavy bodies in stately flight over and around these nesting-places. The shrill, hawk-like screams of those " chikies " can be heard far out at sea, over the noise of the surf. Oogalgan rock, which stands up boldly, and defies that fury of an ocean in the mouth of Oonalga Straits, is another striking head- land which the mariner should be well acquainted with, for in times of arrival, when fog prevails, it is often the first land-fall made after leaving California or Oregon, when bound in for Oona- lashka. It is a bleak, tempest-swept islet, presenting to the Paci- fic a black, reddish front of abrupt precipitous cliffs, without a sign of vegetation in the crevices ; but, from the inside passages of Akootan and Oonalga, it exhibits two or three saddle-backed slopes covered with green mosses and lichens. Flocks of those comical shovel-billed sea-parrots breed upon it, and skurry in their rapid, noiseless manner all around. At last our little schooner " comes about," to make that " reach " which is to take us into the peace and quiet of a beautiful harbor, and, with every sail drawing hard, she fills away, and we glide swiftly ahead. That richly banded waterfall bluff on our right, and the striking outline of Kahlechta Point, over the " Bishop " rock under it, on our left, are eagerly scanned as we dash through the 156 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. heavy roll of Akootan Straits and its violent tide-rips, the surf break- ing on the " Bishop " and the point beyond it most grandly. A short hour, and the rough water is passed. We have entered Captain's Harbor, and are " fanning " along over a glassy surface up to our anchorage off from, but close by, the village of Oonalashka.* What San Francisco is to California, so is Oonalashka to all Alaska west of Kadiak. It is the point of all arrivals and all de- partures for and from this vast area. It is most fitly chosen, and beautifully located. From earliest time, an Aleutian legend never failed in its rendition to the dusky people then living in their yourts and kazarmies to vividly impress upon the native mind a full sense of those pleasures of life and hope at Dloolook ; not, how- ever, as expressed so sadly by our own bard, whose inimitable poem declares that the wolf howled long and dismally from this lovely shore of Eloolook. Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow From wastes that slumber in eternal snow, And waft across the wave's tumultuous roar The wolfs long Jiowlfrom Ounalaska's shore. If Campbell had only substituted "Akoon" for " Oonalashka" in this much-admired verse descriptive of savage desolation, he would not have marred a famous passage by the slightest error — but, at Oonalashka, never, never was a wolf ever known to be. In 1830, however, two of these animals got over from Oonimak as far west as Akoon— on drifting ice-floes, most likely. They were speed- ily noticed by the natives, who killed them at once, so Veniaminov says, for they were cordially hated by the Aleutes, since these beasts "kill foxes and spoil the traps." The panorama of land and water here in summer is an exceed- ingly attractive one — in its effect fully as charming as is the lovely spread of Sitka Sound ; but its character is widely opposed. If we chance to view Oonalashka in clear sunshine during a day in the summer months, we will recall this picture to our mind's eye often with positive pleasure. Here, strung along for half a mile just back of a curved and pebbly beach, is an irregular row of frame, single-story cottages, a large Greek church, and a fine parsonage, * The natives always called this settlement " Illoolook," or "curved beach.'* 2 I I r.