Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

FOOTNOTES:

[137] That the sea-lion bull should be so cowardly in the presence of man, yet so ferocious and brave toward one another and other amphibious animals, struck me as a line of singular contrast with the undaunted bearing of a fur-seal “seecatch,” which, though being not half the size or possessing muscular power to anything like its development in the “seevitchie,” nevertheless will unflinchingly face on its station at the rookery any man to the death. The sea-lion bulls certainly fight as savagely and as desperately one with another, as the fur-seal males do. There is no question about that, and their superior strength and size only makes the result more effective in the exhibition of gaping wounds and attendant bloodshed. I have repeatedly seen examples of these old warriors of the sea which were literally scarred from their muzzles to their posteriors so badly and so uniformly as to have fairly lost all the color or general appearance even of hair anywhere on their bodies.

[138] I recall in this connection the sight of an aged male sea-lion which had been defeated by a younger and more lusty rival, perhaps. It was hauled upon a lava shelf at Southwest Point, solitary and alone; the rock around it being literally covered with pools of pus, that was oozing out and trickling down from a score of festering wounds; the victim stood planted squarely on its torn fore flippers, with head erect and thrown back upon its shoulders; its eyes were closed, and it gently swayed its sore neck and shoulders in a sort of troubled, painful day-dreaming or dozing. Like the fur-seal, the sea-lion never notices its wounds to nurse and lick them, as dogs do, or other carnivora; it never pays the slightest attention to them, no matter how grievously it may be injured.

[139] Often when the fur-seal and sea-lion bulls haul up in the beginning of the season examples among them which are inordinately fat will be seen; their extra avoirdupois renders them very conspicuous, even among large gatherings of their kind; they seem to exhibit a sense of self-oppression then, quite as marked as is that subsequent air of depression worn when, later, they have starved out this load of surplus blubber, and are shambling back to the sea, for recuperation and rest.

[140] The sea-lion and hair-seals of Bering Sea, having no commercial value in the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of interest enough to the pioneers of those waters for mention in particular; such record, for instance, as that given of the walrus, the sea-otter, and the fur-seal. Steller was the first to draw the line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining their separation from the fur-seal; still his description is far from being definite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge of the animal.

In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiously confounded by many of our earliest writers with the sea-elephant, Macrorhinus leoninus, and its reference is inextricably entangled with the fur-seal at the Falklands, Kerguelen’s Land, and the Crozettes. The proboscidean seal, however, seems to be the only pinniped which visits the Antarctic continent; but that is a mere inference of mine, because so little is known of those ice-bound coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of the subject, saw no other animal there save that one.

[141] The winter of 1872-73, which I passed on the Pribylov Islands, was so rigorous that those shores were ice-bound, and the sea covered with floes from January until May 28th; hence I did not have an opportunity of seeing, for myself, whether the sea-lion remains about its breeding-grounds there throughout that period. The natives say that a few of them, when the sea is open, are always to be found, at any day during the winter and early spring, hauled out at Northeast Point, on Otter Island, and around St. George. They are, in my opinion, correct; and, being in such small numbers, the “seevitchie” undoubtedly find enough subsistence in local crustacea, pisces, and other food. The natives, also, further stated that none of the sea-lions which we observe on the islands during the breeding-season leave the waters of Bering Sea from the date of their birth to the time of their death. I am also inclined to agree with this proposition, as a general rule, though it would be strange if Pribylov sea-lions did not occasionally slip into the North Pacific, through and below the Aleutian chain, a short distance, even to travelling as far to the eastward as Cook’s Inlet. Eumetopias stelleri is well known to breed at many places between Attoo and Kadiak Islands. I did not see it at St. Matthew, however, and I do not think it has ever bred there, although this island is only two hundred miles away to the northward of the Seal Islands—too many polar bears. Whalers speak of having shot it in the ice-packs in a much higher latitude, nevertheless, than that of St. Matthew. I can find no record of its breeding anywhere on the islands or mainland coast of Alaska north of the fifty-seventh parallel or south of the fifty-third parallel of north latitude. It is common on the coast of Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, and the Commander group, in Russian waters.

There are vague and ill-digested rumors of finding Eumetopias on the shores of Prince of Wales and Queen Charlotte Islands in breeding rookeries; I doubt it. If it were so, it would be authoritatively known by this time. We do find it in small numbers on the Farallones Rocks, off the entrance to the harbor of San Francisco, where it breeds in company with, though sexually apart from, an overwhelming majority of Zalophus; and it is credibly reported as breeding again to the southward, on the Santa Barbara, Guadaloupe, and other islands of Southern and Lower California, consorting there, as on the Farallones, with an infinitely larger number of the lesser-bodied Zalophus.

There is no record made which shows that the fur-seals, even, have any regular or direct course of travel up or down the northwest coast. They are principally seen in the open sea, eight or ten miles from land, outside the heads of the Straits of Fuca, and from there as far north as Dixon Sound. During May and June they are aggregated in greatest numbers here, though examples are reported the whole year around. The only fur-seal which I saw, or was noted by the crew of the Reliance, in her cruise, June 1st to 9th, from Port Townsend to Sitka, was a solitary “holluschak” that we disturbed at sea well out from the lower end of Queen Charlotte’s Islands; then, from Sitka to Kadiak, we saw nothing of the fur-seal until we hauled off from Point Greville, and coming down to Ookamok Islet, a squad of agile “holluschickie” suddenly appeared among a school of humpback whales, sporting in the most extravagant manner around, under, and even leaping over the wholly indifferent cetacea. From this eastern extremity of Kadiak Island clear up to the Pribylov group we daily saw them here and there in small bands, or also as lonely voyageurs, all headed for one goal. We were badly outsailed by them; indeed, the chorus of a favorite “South Sea pirate’s” song, as incessantly sung on the cutter’s “‘tween decks,” seemed to have special adaptation to them:

“For they bore down from the wind’wiard,

A sailin’ seven knots to our four’n.”

[142] Choris: Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde.

[143] A curious, though doubtless authentic, story was told me in this connection illustrative of the strength and energy of the sea-lion bull when at bay. Many years ago (1847), on St. Paul Island, a drive of September sea-lions was brought down to the village in the usual style; but when the natives assembled to kill them, on account of a great scarcity at that time of powder on the island, it was voted best to lance the old males also, as well as the females, rather than shoot them in the customary style. The people had hardly set to work at the task when one of their number, a small, elderly, though tough, able-bodied Aleut, while thrusting his lance into the “life” of a large bull, was suddenly seen to fall on his back directly under that huge brute’s head. Instantly the powerful jaws of the “seevitchie” closed upon the waistband, apparently, of the native, and, lifting the yelling man aloft as a cat would a kitten, the sea-lion shook and threw him high into the air, away over the heads of his associates, who rushed up to the rescue and quickly destroyed the animal by a dozen furious spear-thrusts; yet death did not loosen its clinched jaws, in which were the tattered fragments of Ivan’s clothing.

[144] The natives appreciate this peculiarity of the sea-lion very keenly, for good and sufficient cause, though none of them have ever been badly injured in driving or “springing the alarm.” I camped with them for six successive nights of September, 1872, in order to witness the whole procedure. During the several drives made while I was with them I saw but one exciting incident. Everything went off in an orthodox manner, as described in the text above. The exceptional incident occurred during the first drive of the first night and rendered those natives so cautious that it was not repeated. When the alarm was sprung, old Luka Mandrigan was leading the van, and at that moment down upon him, despite his wildly gesticulating arms and vociferous yelling, came a squad of bull “seevitchie.” The native saw instantly that they were pointed for the water, and, in his sound sense, turned to run from under. His tarbosars slipped upon a slimy rock awash; he fell flat as a flounder just as a dozen or more big sea-lions plunged over and on to his prostrate form in the shallow water. In less time than this can be written the heavy pinnipeds had disappeared, while the bullet-like head of old Luka was quickly raised, and he trotted back to us with an alternation of mirth and chagrin in his voice. He was not hurt in the least.

[145] The curious behavior of sea-lions in the Big Lake when they are en route and driven from Novastoshnah to the village deserves mention. After the drove gets over the sand-dunes and beach between Webster’s house and the extreme northeastern head of the lake, a halt is called and the drove “penned” on the bank there. Then, when the sea-lions are well rested, they are started up and pell-mell into the water. Two natives in a bidarka keep them from turning out from shore into the broad bosom of Meesulkmahnee, while another bidarka paddles in their rear and follows their swift passage right down the eastern shore. In this method of procedure the drive carries itself nearly two miles by water in less than twenty minutes from the time the sea-lions are first turned in at the north end to that moment when they are driven out at the southeastern elbow of the Big Pond. The shallowness of the water here accounts probably for the strange failure of these sea-lions to regain their liberty, and it so retards their swimming as to enable the bidarka, with two men, to keep abreast of their leaders easily, as they plunge ahead; and, “as one goes, so all go sheep,” it is not necessary to pay attention to those which straggle behind in the wake. They are stirred up by a second bidarka, and none make the least attempt to diverge from that track which the swifter mark out in advance. If they did, they could escape “scot-free” in any one of the twenty minutes of this aquatic passage.

By consulting the map of St. Paul it will be observed that in a direct line between the village and Northeast Point there are quite a number of small lakes, including this large one of Meesulkmahnee. Into all of these ponds the sea-lion drove is successively driven. This interposition of fresh water at such frequent intervals serves to shorten the time of that journey fully ten days in warmish weather, and at least four or five under the best of climatic conditions.

This track between Webster’s house and the village killing-grounds is strewn with the bones of Eumetopias. They will drop in their tracks now and then, even when carefully driven, from cerebral or spinal congestion principally, and when they are hurried the mortality en route is very great. The natives when driving them keep them going day and night alike, but give them frequent resting-spells after every spurt ahead. The old bulls flounder along for a hundred yards or so, then sullenly halt to regain breath, five or ten minutes being allowed them; then they are stirred up again, and so on, hour after hour, until the tedious transit is completed.

The younger sea-lions and the cows which are in the drove carry themselves easily far ahead of the bulls, and, being thus always in the van, serve unconsciously to stimulate and coax the heavy males to travel. Otherwise I do not believe that a band of old bulls exclusively could be driven down over this long road successfully.

[146] When slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a fine adult bull sea-lion which the ball from Booterin’s rifle had just destroyed, an old “starooka” came up abruptly; not seeming to see me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted me to keep still, in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so that I might watch her choice and use of the animal’s carcass. She first removed the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an uncouth boy; she then cut off the palms to both fore flippers; the boy at the same time pulled out its mustache-bristles; she then cut out its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach, carefully divested it of all fleshy attachments and fat; she then cut out the stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly scraping its gastric walls free of copious biliary secretions, the inevitable bunch of ascaris; she then told the boy to take hold of the duodenum end of the small intestine, and, as he walked away with it, she rapidly cleared it of its attachments, so that it was thus uncoiled to its full length of at least sixty feet; then she severed it and then it was recoiled by the “melchiska,” and laid up with the other members just removed, except the skin, which she had nothing more to do with. She then cut out the liver and ate several large pieces of that workhouse of the blood before dropping it into her meat-pouch. She then raked up several handfuls of the “leaf-lard,” or hard, white fat that is found in moderate quantity around the viscera of all these pinnipeds, which she also dumped into the flesh-bag; she then drew her knife through the large heart, but did not touch it otherwise, looking at it intently, however, as it still quivered in unison with the warm flesh of the whole carcass. She and the boy then poked their fingers into the tumid lobes of the immense lungs, cutting out portions of them only, which were also put into the grimy pouch aforesaid; then she secured the gall-bladder and slipped it into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the urchin; then she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out of its back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum; all these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her back and supported it by a band over her head; she then trudged back to the barrabkie from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an old vulture to the slaughter. She made the following disposition of its contents: The palms were used to sole a pair of tarbosars, or native boots, of which the uppers and knee-tops were made of the gullets—one sea-lion gullet to each boot-top; the stomach was carefully blown up and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually to be filled with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber. The small intestine was carefully injected with water and cleansed, then distended with air, and pegged out between two stakes, sixty feet apart, with little cross-slats here and there between to keep it clear of the ground. When it is thoroughly dry it is ripped up in a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad band of parchment gut, which she cuts up and uses in making a water-proof “kamlayka,” sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The liver, leaf-lard, and lobes of the lungs were eaten without further cooking, and the little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a scrofulous sore. The mustache-bristles were a venture of the boy, who gathers all that he can, then sends them to San Francisco, where they find a ready sale to the Chinese, who pay about one cent apiece for them. When the natives cut up a sea-lion carcass or one of a fur-seal, on the killing-grounds for meat, they take only the hams and the loins. Later in the season they eat the entire carcass, which they hang up by its hind flippers on a “laabas” by their houses.

CHAPTER XII.
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.

“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 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.

NOOSHAGAK, OR ALEXANDROVSK

Old Russian Central Trading Post for the Innuits of the Bristol Bay Region—founded by Kolmakov, in 1834

“Nooshagak” is not a very euphonious name, yet it is employed in Alaska to express the whole of an immense area that backs the borders of Bristol Bay; but, when strictly applied, it is the designation of a small trading-post at the head of a large, brackish estuary of the sea, into which the Nooshagak River pours its heavy flood. A cruise of three hundred and eighty miles to the northeast from Oonalashka in a trim little trading-schooner, which alone can make the landing, takes you to this old and well-known Russian outpost; but the mariner who pilots that vessel must be well acquainted with those perilous shoals and tide-rips of Bristol Bay, or you will never disembark at the foot of that staircase which leads up to the doors of Alexandrovsk. The river here is a broad arm of the sea, full of shifting sand-bars and mud-flats which try the temper of the most patient and skilful navigator. It runs over these shallows at certain turns of the tide, like the ebb and flow in the Bay of Fundy, with a big, booming tidal wave, or “bore.” The current of this river may be discerned for a long distance out into Bristol Bay, easily traced at the season of high water by its turbidity.

Above the settlement of Nooshagak that river rapidly narrows into a width of half a mile between banks for a long distance up its winding course. It is very deep, with a succession of ripples, or bars, that prevent navigation. When the northern bend is reached, then it changes to a brawling, swift, and shoal current, with higher rocky banks up to its source in the big lake which bears its guttural name. It is clear and pure here, and is not muddy until it reaches the shelving, alluvial banks of its lower course, which precipitate, by their caving and washing out, large quantities of soil and timber into the stream. Its shores are, and all the country back is, thickly wooded by spruce forests, and parked with grassy slopes which reach out here and there, planted sparsely with thickets and clumps of graceful birch- and poplar-trees. These nod and wave their tremulous foliage as the summer gusts sweep now and then over them. Countless pools, ponds, and lakes nestle in the moors and in the forest hollows, upon which flocks of geese, ducks, and all other kinds of hardy water-fowl breed and moult their plumage during the short, hot summer. The traders say that this river is the only one in Alaska, of the least magnitude, which has banks on both sides of firm soil throughout its entire course.

This site of Nooshagak village was an initial point of Russian influence and trade among the great Innuit people of Alaska, who live extended in their numerous settlements from the head of Bristol Bay clear to the Arctic Ocean. Kolmakov established the post in 1834, and named it Alexandrovsk. A simple cylindrical wooden shaft, twenty feet high, surmounted with a globe, stands erected to his memory on a small hillock overlooking the post below. The village itself is located on the abrupt slopes of a steep, grassy hillside which rises from the river’s edge. The trading-stores and the residence of the priest, the church, log-huts of the natives and their barraboras are planted on a succession of three earthen terraces, one rising immediately behind the other. All communication from flat to flat is by slippery staircases, which are fraught with great danger to a thoughtless pedestrian, especially when fogs moisten the steps and darkness obscures his vision.

The red-roofed, yellow-painted walls of the old Russian buildings, the smarter, sprucer dwellings of our traders, with lazy, curling wreaths of bluish smoke, are brought into very picturesque relief by the verdant slopes of Nooshagak’s hillside, caught up and reflected deeply by the swiftly flowing current of the river below. The natives have festooned their long drying-frames with the crimson-tinted flesh of salmon; bleached drift-logs are scattered in profusion upon a bare sandy high-water bench that stretches like a buff-tinted ribbon just beneath them, and above, the dark, turbid whirl of flood and eddy so characteristic of a booming, rising river. A gleam of light falls upon a broad expanse of the estuary beyond that point under which the schooner lies at anchor, and brings out the thickly wooded banks of an opposite shore, causing us to note the fact that, for some reason or other, no timber seems ever to have spread down so far toward the sea on this side of the stream, or where the settlement stands, since nothing but scattered copses of alder- and willow-bushes grow on its suburbs or anywhere else as far as an eye can range up the valley.

We notice a decided difference in bearing and expression among the natives here—nothing like what we have studied at Oonalashka, Kadiak, or Sitka. They are Innuits, or representatives of the most populous savage family indigenous to Alaska, and are as nomadic as Bedouins. They are the least changed or altered by contact with our race. They are Eskimo, strictly speaking, and the natives of Kadiak are almost strictly related to them. In portraying the physique, physiognomy, and disposition of these people, we find in an average Innuit a man who stands about five feet six or seven inches in his heelless boots; his skin is fair, slightly Mongolian in its complexion and facial expression; a broad face, prominent cheek-bones, a large mouth with full lips, small black eyes, but prominently set in their sockets—not under a lowering brow, as in the case of true Indian faces. The nose is very insignificant and much depressed, having between the eyes scarcely any bridge at all. He has an abundance of coarse black hair; never any of a reddish hue, as frequently noted among the Aleutes when first discovered and described by the Russians. Up to the age of thirty years an Innuit usually keeps his hair cut pretty close to his scalp; some of them shave the occiput, so that it shines like a billiard-ball. After this period in life he lets it grow as it will, wearing it in ragged, unkempt locks. He sometimes will sport a well-developed mustache and chin-whisker, of which he is as proud as though a Caucasian. He has shapely hands and feet; his limbs are well made, formed, and muscled. An Innuit woman is proportionately smaller than the man, and, when young, sometimes she is not unpleasant to look at. The skin of her cheeks then will be faintly suffused with blushes of natural color, her lips pouting and red, with small, tapering hands and high-instepped feet. She rarely pierces her lips or disfigures her nose; she lavishes upon her child or children a wealth of affectionate attention—endows them with all her ornaments. She allows her hair to grow to its full length, gathers it up behind into thick braids, or else it is bound up in ropes lashed by copper wire or sinews. She seldom tattooes her skin in any place; a faint drawing of transverse blue lines upon the chin and cheeks is usually made by her best friend when she is married.

An Innuit Woman.

We are not reminded of the clothing stores of San Francisco when we meet Innuits everywhere between Point Barrow and Nooshagak; they are clad in the primitive garments of their remote ancestry, as a rule—a few exceptions to this generalization being those individuals who are living constantly about the widely scattered trading-posts, and the chapels, or missions, located in their territory, where they act as servants or interpreters. The conventional coat of these people is the “parka,” made of marmot and muskrat-skins, or of tanned reindeer-hides, with enormous winter hoods, or collars, of dog-hair or fox-fur. This parka has sleeves, and compasses the body of the wearer, without an opening either before or behind, from his neck to his feet. His head is thrust through an aperture left for it, with a puckering string which draws it up snugly around the neck. In winter the heavy hood-collar, or cowl, is fitted so as to be drawn over his entire head and pulled down to the eyes. This parka is worn with singular ease and abandon; frequently the arms are withdrawn from the big, baggy sleeves and stowed under the waist-slack of the garment, leaving these empty appendages to dangle. Natives, as they sit down, draw the parka out and over the knees, still keeping their arms underneath; or, when on the trail, and the wet grass and bushes make it imperative, the parka is gathered up and bound by a leather thong-strap or girdle of sinews, so as to keep its bottom border dry and as high as the knees of a tramping native; the baggy folds of it then give its wearer a grotesque and clumsy figure as they bulge out over his hips and abdomen. The most favored and valuable parka is that one made out of alder-bark tanned reindeer-skin, for winter use; the hair is worn inside, next to the skin. For summer styles those fashioned out of the breasts of water-fowl, of marmot- and mink-skins, are most common. The hood is never attached to the parka in the warmer months of the year. It is a very capacious pouch which, when not in service, is resting in thick folds back of the head and upon the shoulders. It is ornamented in a variety of ways, but usually a thick fringe of long-haired dog- or fox-fur forms its border, and when drawn into position encircles the wearer’s face and gives it a wild and unkempt air.

The only underwear which a Mahlemoöt affects is limited to that garment which we call a shirt, made of light skins or of cheap cotton drillings; if it is of skin, it is worn from father to son, and becomes a real heirloom highly polished and redolent. Their trousers are, for both sexes, a pair of thin skin or cotton drawers, puckered at the ankles and bound about with the uppers of their moccasons, or else enclosed by the tops to their reindeer-boots, which are the prevalent covering for their feet. Such are the characteristics of a costume worn by much more than half the entire aboriginal population of Alaska; but when we come to inspect their dwellings we find a greater variety of housing than indexed in dressing.

“CHAMI”
An Innuit Girl, about 14 years old

AFTER DINNER—GOOD DIGESTION
Favorite position of Innuits

A very great majority of the Innuits live in a house that outwardly resembles a circular mound of earth, seven or eight feet high, and thirty or forty feet in circumference. It is overgrown with rank grasses, littered with all sorts of utensils, weapons, sleds, and other Eskimo furniture. A small spiral coil of smoke rises from a hole in its apex, a dog or two are crouching upon it, and children climb up and roll down its sides, scattering bones and fragments of fish and meat as they eat in the irregular fashion of these people. A rude pole scaffolding stands close by, upon which, high above the reach of dogs, is a wooden cache, containing all winter stores of dried provision, “ukali,” and the like. This hut is usually right down upon the sea-beach, just above high tide, or high-water mark, on the river banks, for these savages draw their sustenance largely, even wholly in many instances, from the piscine life of those northern streams.

An Innuit Home on the Kuskokvim.

All these tribes have summer dwellings distinct from those used during the winter. For the winter houses a square excavation of about ten feet or more is made, in the corners of which posts of drift-wood or whale-ribs from eight to ten feet in height are set up; the walls are formed by laying posts of drift-wood one above the other against the corner-posts; outside of this another wall is built, sometimes of stone, sometimes of logs, the intervals being filled with earth or rubble; the whole of the structure, including the roof, is covered with sods, leaving a small opening on top, that can be closed by a frame over which a thin, transparent seal-skin is tightly drawn. The entrance to one of these houses consists of a narrow, low, underground passage from ten to twelve feet in length, through which an entrance can only be accomplished on hands and knees. The interior arrangement of such a winter house is simple, and is nearly the same with all these tribes. A piece of bear- or reindeer-skin is hung before an inner opening of the doorway; in the centre of the enclosure is a fireplace, which is a square excavation directly under that smoke-hole in the roof; the floor is rarely planked, and frequently two low platforms, about four feet in width, extend along the sides of the house from the entrance to the back, and covered with mats and skins which serve as beds at night. In the larger dwellings, occupied by more than one family, the sleeping-places of each are separated from each other by suspended mats, or simply by a piece of wood. All the bladders containing oil, the wooden vessels, kettles, and other domestic utensils, are kept in the front part of the dwelling, and before each sleeping-place there is generally a block of wood upon which is placed the oil-lamp used for heating and cooking.

The only ingress or egress is afforded by a small, low, irregularly shaped aperture (it cannot rightfully be called a door), through which the natives stoop and enter, passing down a foot or two through a short, depressed passage that is created by the thickness of the walls to the hut; the floor is hard-tramped earth, and the ground-plan of it a rude circle, or square, twelve, fifteen, or twenty feet in diameter, as the case may be, and in which the only light of day comes feebly in from a small smoke-opening at the apex of the roof, the ceiling of which rises tent-like from the floor. A faint, smouldering fire is always made directly in the centre, and the atmosphere of the apartment is invariably thick and surcharged with its combustion.

Hard and rude are the beds of the Innuit—a clumsy shelf of poles is slightly elevated above the earth, and placed close against the walls; upon this staging the skins of bears and reindeer, seals, and even walrus-hides, together with mats of plaited sedge and bark, are laid; sometimes these bedsteads are mere platforms of sod and peat. If the hut stands in a situation where it is exposed to the full force of boisterous storms, then the architect builds a rough hallway of earth and sods, with a bulging expansion, whereby room is given in which to shelter his dogs and keep many utensils and traps under cover. He also, in warm weather, lives outside of this winter hut, to a great degree, when at home; and, for that purpose, he builds a summer cook-house, or kitchen, which resembles the igloo itself, only it is not more than five or six feet square, and no higher than a stooping posture within warrants. This is also a great resort for his dogs, which renders the place very offensive to us.

The summer houses are erected above ground, and are generally slight pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front; fire is rarely made in them, and therefore they have no opening in the roof, all cooking being done in the open air during fine weather. They seldom have flooring, but otherwise the interior arrangements resemble those of the winter houses. The store-houses of all our Eskimo tribes are set on posts at a height of from eight to ten feet above the ground, to protect them from foxes, wolves, and dogs. They have generally a small square opening in front that can be closed with a sliding board, and which is reached by means of a notched stick of wood. These boxes are seldom more than eight feet square by three or four feet in height.

The routine of life which these natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim valleys and streams follow is one of much activity—they are on the tramp or are paddling up and down the rivers pretty much all of the time. A year is divided up by them about as follows: In February they prepare to go to the mountains, and go then most of them do, though some will be as late as April in getting away on account of their children, or of sheer laziness. They move with the entire family outfit, bag and baggage, dogs, sleds, and boats. They settle down along by the small mountain streams, trap martens, shoot deer, and dig out beaver. February and March are the best months for marten, April and May for the beaver, bear, and land-otter.

By June 10th they return to their winter villages and visit the trading-posts. They then begin their preparations for salmon-fishing, getting their traps into shape so as to be used effectively when those fish begin to run. They air-dry salmon on frames, and put the heads in holes and allow them to rot slightly before eating; also the spawn, which, however, is preserved in oil, and used as a great delicacy during their own festivals in the midwinter season. The salmon-fishing is all over about July 20th. By August 10th these nomads return to the mountains, leaving the old women and youngest children with their mothers in charge of the caches at the villages. This time they go for reindeer, which have just shed their hair and are in the full beauty of new, fine, sleek coats. They hunt these animals from that time until the middle of September, when the fur of the beaver is again in prime condition; then Castor canadensis receives their undivided attention. They catch these giant rodents in wooden “dead-falls,” and also by breaking open the dams, which causes the water to suddenly leave the beavers fully exposed to the spears of their savage human enemies.

When the first snow flies in October they rig up rude deer-skin boats, like the “bull-boats” on the Missouri, and float all their traps and rude equipage down the river back from whence they started. They all return for the winter by the middle of October; then, without going far from the vicinity of their settlements, they renew and set up fresh dead-fall traps for marten—they never go any distance from home for this little animal, and when ice forms on the rivers, about the end of October or early in November, they put their white-fish traps under it. The marten-trapping is abandoned in December, because the intense, stormy, and cold weather then drives these pine-weasels into winter holes, where they remain semi-dormant until the end or middle of February. During this period of severe wintry weather the Innuit gives himself up to unrestrained loafing and vigorous dancing festivals, which last until the year is again renewed by going out to the mountains in February.

These natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim regions have a large and varied natural food-supply. They have reindeer-meat, the flesh of moose, of bears, and of all the smaller fur-bearing animals found in this territory—the list is a full one, comprising land-otters, cross, red, and black foxes, the mink, the marten, the marmot, and the ground-squirrel, or “yeavrashka,” which last is the most abundant. The bears are all brown in this country—no black ones. They also secure large gray and white wolves, while those who live right on the coast of Bering Sea get walrus, the big “mahklok” seal, and a little harbor phoca, or “nearhpah.”

They have a great abundance of water-fowl, such as geese, ducks, and the small waders, and they occasionally kill a beluga, or white grampus, and at still more rare intervals they find a stranded whale, which is set upon and eaten. They save carefully all the oil which comes from marine mammals; they treasure it up in seal-skin bags that are placed high up above the reach of dogs and foxes on a frame scaffold which adjoins every hut. Fish-oil is also secured in the same manner; it answers a threefold purpose—it serves for food, for fuel, and for light, and it is a luxurious skin and hair dressing for them all, old and young.

Fish they capture in the greatest abundance, and the variety is quite fair. Salmon is the staff, and is found in all of the thousand and one lakes and sluggish or rapid streams that run from them into the greater rivers, where a mighty rush of the same fish is annually made up in June and July from Bering Sea. In all of the deeper lakes, and the big rivers, a variety of large white-fish and trout are found, especially prized and searched for by these people in midwinter, when they are trapped there in wicker-work baskets and pole weirs under ice.

The Big Mahklok.

In round numbers these Eskimo, or Innuits, of Alaska, number nearly eighteen thousand souls; they inhabit the entire coast-line of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, with an exception of the Aleutian chain and that portion of the peninsula west of Oogashik. The numerous subdivisions of this great family are based wholly upon dialectic differentiation, and as its elaboration would entail a dreary and uninteresting chapter upon any reader save a studious ethnologist, it will not be itemized here. These Eskimo are all hunters and fishermen; those land animals to which we have made allusion are pursued by them at the proper seasons of the year. They do not have much, in the aggregate, of value to a trader; it is chiefly oil and walrus-ivory. Their proximity to a relatively warm coast renders the furs which they get of small value comparatively, since these pelts are paler and lighter-haired than those brought in from the distant interior, where the winters are vastly colder and longer. But an Innuit does not require a great deal from the trader—he is very much more independent than is his semi-civilized Aleutian brother; his wants are only a small supply of lead and powder, of sugar and of tobacco, a little red cloth and a small sack of flour which suffice for a large Innuit family during the year. The flour he makes up into pancakes and fries them in rancid oil; but, as a rule, all cooking is a mere boiling or stewing of fish and meat in sheet-iron or copper kettles. In those huts where they can afford to use tea, a small number of earthenware cups and saucers will be found carefully treasured in a little cupboard; but they never set a table or think of such a thing, except those highly favored individuals who live as servants about the trading-posts and missions, where they do boil a “samovar” (tea-urn) and spread a cloth over the top of a box or rude table upon which to place their teacups.

Down here at Nooshagak these natives have earned a distinction of being the most skilful sculptors of the whole northern range. Their carvings in walrus-ivory are exceedingly curious, and beautifully wrought in many examples. The patience and fidelity with which they cut from walrus-tusks delicate patterns furnished them by the traders are equal in many respects to that remarkable display made in the same line by the Chinese, and so much admired. Time to them, at Nooshagak, is never reckoned, and it does not raise a ripple of concern in the Innuit’s mind when, as he carves upon a tusk of white ivory, he pauses to think whether he shall be six hours or six months engaged upon the task. Shut up as he is from December until the end of February in his dark and smoky hut, he welcomes the task as one which enables him to “kill time” most agreeably, and bring in a trifle, at least, to him from the trader in the way of credit or of direct revenue.

All of these people, when they go hunting, use firearms of modern patterns and many old flint-lock muskets; for fish and bird-capture they never waste any precious ammunition; they employ spears and arrows of most artful construction and effective service. But a large number of those very primitive Eskimo, the Togiaks, just west and north of Nooshagak, use nothing at all in the chase other than the same antique bows and spears of a remote ancestry. The disposition of these people is one of greater bonhomie than that evidenced by the Aleutes or the Koloshians, who are rather taciturn. The Innuit is very independent in his bearing, without being at all vindictive or ugly. He is light-hearted, enjoys conversation with his fellows, tells jokes with great gusto, sings rude songs with much animation, in excellent time but with no music, and dances with exceeding exhilaration during the progress of those savage festivals which he calls in to enliven a long dreary winter solstice.

The Kashga.

Such a man is naturally quite sociable. Hence we find in every Innuit settlement, big or little, a town hall, or “kashga.” This is a building put up after the pattern of all winter houses in the village, but of very much larger dimensions; some of the more populous hamlets boast of a kashga which will measure as much as sixty feet square, and be from twenty to thirty feet high under its smoky rafters. A raised platform from the earth, of rough-hewn planks, runs all around the walls of the interior, and in the largest council-houses a series of three tiers of such staging is observed. The fireplace in the centre is large, often three or four feet deep and eight feet square; on ordinary days in the spring, and during the summer and early fall, when no fire is wanted, it is covered with planks. An underground tunnel-entrance to the kashga is made just as it is into some of the family huts, only here it is divided at the end; one branch leads to a fireplace below the flooring, and the other rises to the main apartment. The natives are obliged to crawl on all fours when they enter that underground passage or leave the kashga through its dark opening.

This is the great and sole rendezvous of the men and older boys of most settlements. The bachelors and widowers sleep here and prepare their simple meals; the village guest and visitors of the male sex are all quartered here; the discussion of all the town affairs is conducted here; the tanning of skins, the plaiting and weaving of wicker-work fish-traps, and the manufacture of sleds and dog-harness, spear- and arrow-heads, and carving of wood and ivory—in fact, everything done by these people under shelter, of that kind, is executed on the platforms of a kashga. It is the theatre for the absurd and vigorous masked dances and mummery of their festivals, and above all, it is the spot chosen for that vile ammoniacal bath of the Eskimo, the most popular of all their recreations.

Section showing Subterranean Entrance and Interior of a Kashga.

The daily routine of living as practised by an Innuit family is exceedingly simple. The head of the household usually sleeps over night in the kashga, as do all of his peers. His wife in the early morning rolls out of her rude deer-skins, retucks her parka about her hips, and starts up the smouldering fire which she banked with ashes before going to sleep. A little meat or fish is soon half-boiled, and a small kantag of oil is decanted, a handful of dried berries thrown into it, and perhaps she has a modicum of rotten fish-roe to add. This she takes out to her husband in the kashga, rousing him, if he is not awake, with a gentle but firm admonition. A large bowl of fresh water is also brought by her, and then everything is before the husband for his breakfast. She returns to her hut after he has finished, and feeds her children and herself. If she or her husband has a male visitor, he is served in the same way. When the evening meal is ready, sometimes the men go home and dine with their families; but the women and children invariably eat at home, and when they wait upon the males in the town hall they always turn their backs to them while the men are dining, it being considered a gross breach of good manners for a woman to look at a man when he is eating.

After breakfast the male Innuits start out, if the weather permits, to hunt or fish, as the case may be. If a driving storm prevents them, then indoor work is resumed or recourse to sleep again assumed. At some time in the afternoon the fire is usually drawn from the hot stoves on the hearth, the water and a kantag of chamber-lye poured over them, which, arising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice (by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor) to the delighted inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation, it is full of smoke, and the outside men run in from their huts, with wisps of dry grass for towels, and bunches of alder-twigs to flog their naked bodies. They throw off their garments; they shout and dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and produces a lather which they rinse off with cold water; and, to cap the full enjoyment of this satanic bath, these naked actors rush out and roll in a snow-bank or plunge into the icy flood of some lake or river adjoining, as the season warrants. This is the most enjoyable occasion of an Innuit’s existence, so he solemnly affirms. Nothing else affords him a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this orgie gives him. To us, however, there is nothing so offensive about him as that stench which such a performance arouses.

When a bath is over, the smoke-hole is reopened (it was closed during the process!), and fresh air descends upon those men who sit around upon the platforms stupefied by that smoke and weak from their profuse perspiration. Slowly these terrible odors leave the kashga, and only the minor ones remain, rendering it quite habitable once more. Night comes on: the huge stone lamps are filled with seal-oil and lighted; the men soon lop down for sleep in their reindeer-skins or parkas, removing their trousers only, which they roll up and use as pillows, tucking the parka snugly over and around their bended knees, which are drawn up tightly to the abdomen. In the morning whoever happens to awake first relights the lamp, if any of the fluid remains over; if not, he goes to his own cache and gets a supply. If he is a bachelor, he attends then to making a fresh fire in the hearth below and prepares his coarse breakfast.

The women assist their husbands in harnessing and unharnessing the dogs; they go out and gather the firewood, and employ themselves in sewing, patching, and making thread from deer-tendons. They plait grass mats and weave grass stockings, because nearly all of the coast Innuits wear socks very skilfully made of dried grass. The boys and girls scatter about the vicinity looking after their snares and traps, or engage, in hilarious groups, playing at ball and leap-frog games, tag, and jumping matches. They harness up the young dogs and the pups, and sport for hours at a time with them.

“Tatlah,” an Innuit Dog.

These people are savages, and not at all affected by the earnest and persistent attempts of the Russian priests to Christianize them. They are even less influenced by the teachings of missionaries than the Siwashes of the Sitkan archipelago, and that is saying a great deal for their hardness of heart. They are a brave race, and have displayed the utmost physical courage in fighting their way up the great rivers, Yukon, Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak, whereby they displaced and destroyed the Indians who once lived there. The Koltchanes, or Ingaleeks of the interior, who disputed that privilege with them, bear cheerful witness to this fact. But all such strife between the two great families is only known to us by legends which they recite of ancient time. No trace of recent war can be found among them.

They have no ear for music; they are not fond of it like the Aleutes, yet they keep perfect time to cultivated tunes and melodies of our own order. The song of an Innuit is essentially like that of his Sitkan relative: it is usually a weird dirge, monotonous, and long-drawn out, accompanied by a regular and rhythmic beating of a rude drum, or a dry stick, or resonant bag. Some of the native Innuit chantings, when rendered intelligible to us, have a plaintive pathos running through them which is attractive and are simple in composition; but such ballads are very, very rare. The majority are tedious and boastful recitations of a singer’s achievements on land or water when engaged in hunting or fishing. Their mythology is the rudest and the least ornate of all savage races, unless it be that perfect vacuum of the Australasians and Terra del Fuegians.

These savages respect the dead, but they fear the sick. When death invades an Innuit family, taking the husband, or the wife, or a child, the survivors eat nothing, after the decease of the relative, but sour or last year’s food, and refrain from going out or from work of any sort for a period of twenty days. They seat themselves in one corner of the hut, or “kahsime,” with their backs toward the door. Every five days they wash themselves, otherwise death would promptly come to them again. The body of the dead native is composed in a sitting position, with its knees drawn up to the stomach and its arms clasped around them. It is placed in one corner, with its head against the wall. The inhabitants of that village where the dead man has lived voluntarily bring to the hut dresses of reindeer-skin, in one of which the corpse is shrouded. A coffin, or box, is prepared at some selected spot outside of the village, set up a few feet from the ground, on four stoutly driven posts, and in it the body is deposited. Near by is planted a square board or smoothly hewn plank, upon which rude figures are painted of the animals that the deceased was most fond of hunting, such as a beaver, a deer, a fish, or seal. A few of his most cherished belongings are laid in the coffin with him, but the balance of his property is divided among his family.[147]

A festival in honor of the spirits of land and sea, and in memory of deceased kinsmen, is celebrated annually in the month of October or November. Lieutenant Zagoskin,[148] who spent five years among these people exploring the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers, has given us full details of that strange mummery and capers which characterize Innuit festivals and dances. What he saw between 1842 and 1845, and so graphically narrated, is to be seen substantially the same now everywhere among these people, who are almost wholly unchanged from their primeval habits as they live to-day.

Of the tribal organization of these people but little is known: yet, there seems to be no recognized chieftainship—each isolated settlement generally contains one man who makes himself prominent by superintending all intercourse and traffic with visitors. The profits accruing to him from this position give him some slight influence among his people; but the oomailik (oomuialik of Zagoskin), as these middlemen or spokesmen are called, possess no authority over the people of their village, who pay far more attention to the advice or threats of sorcerers, shamans, or “medicine men.” In the festivals, consisting of feasting, singing, and dancing, with which these hyperboreans while away the long winter nights, the shamans also play a prominent part, directing the order of the performances and the manufacture of masks, costumes, etc., while the oomailik or spokesman sinks back into insignificance for the time being.

All these games, both private and public, take place in the kashga. At the public performances the dancers and singers, men and women, stand around the fire-hole; and the men, to the time of the drum and the singing, go through various contortions of the body, shifting from one foot to the other without moving from the spot, the skill of the dancer being displayed only in the endurance and flexibility of his muscles. The women, on the other hand, with their eyes cast down, motionless, with the exception of a spasmodic twitching of the hands, stand around in a circle, forming, we may say, a living frame to the animated picture within. The less motion a dancer displays the greater his skill. There is nothing indecent in the dances of our sea-board natives. The dancing dress of the men consists of short tight drawers made of white reindeer-skin and the summer boots of soft moose-hide, while the women on those occasions only add ornaments, such as rings and bracelets and bead-pendants, to their common dress, frequently weighting themselves down with ten or fifteen pounds of these baubles.

An entertainment of the women was described by Zagoskin as follows:

“We entered the kashga by the common passage and found the guests already assembled, but of the landladies nothing was to be seen. On three sides of the apartment stone lamps were lighted; the fire-hole was covered with boards, one of them having a circular opening, through which the women were to make their appearance. Two other burning lamps were placed in front of the fire-hole. The guests then formed a chorus and began to sing to the sound of the drum, two men keeping them in order by beating time with sticks adorned with wolfs’ tails and gulls’ wings. Thus a good half-hour passed by. Of the song my interpreter told me that it consisted of pleasantry directed against the women; that it was evident they had nothing to give, as they had not shown themselves for so long a time. Another song praised the housewifely accomplishments of some woman whose appearance was impatiently expected with a promised trencher of the mixed mess of reindeer-fat and berries. No sooner was this song finished than that woman appeared and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. The dish was set before the men, and she retreated amid vociferous compliments on her culinary skill. She was followed by another woman. The beating of drums increased in violence and the wording of the song was changed. Standing up in the centre of the circle this woman began to relate, in mimicry and gesture, how she obtained the fat, how she stored it in various receptacles, how she cleansed and melted it, and then, placing a kantag upon her head, she invited the spectators with gestures to approach. The song went on, while eagerness to partake of the promised luxury lighted up the faces of the crowd. At last the wooden spoons were distributed, one to each man, and nothing was heard for a time but the guzzling of the luscious fluid. Another woman advanced, followed still by another, and luxuries of all kinds were produced in quick succession and as quickly despatched, while the singers pointedly alluded to the praiseworthy Russian custom of distributing tobacco. When the desired article had been produced, a woman then represented with great skill all the various stages of stupefaction resulting from smoking and snuffing. The women dressed in men’s parkas.”

A man’s entertainment witnessed by Zagoskin took place in the same village. The preparatory arrangements were similar; one of the women, a sorceress, lead the chorus. Her first song on that occasion praised a propensity of the Russian for making presents of tobacco, rings, and other trifles to women, who, in their turn, were always ready to oblige them. This, however, was only introductory, the real entertainment beginning with a chorus of men concealed in the fire-hole. The gist of their chant was that trapping, hunting, and trade were bad, that nothing could be made, and that they could only sing and dance to please their wives. To this the women answered that they had long been aware of the laziness of their husbands, who could do nothing but bathe and smoke, and that they did not expect to see any food produced, such as the women had placed before them, consequently it would be better to go to bed at once. The men answered that they would go and hunt for something, and shortly one of them appeared through the opening. This mimic, who was attired in female apparel, with bead-pendants in his nose, deep fringes of wolverine tails, bracelets, and rings, imitated in a most admirable and humorous manner the motions and gestures of the women in presenting their luxuries, and then gave imitations of the various female pursuits and labor, the guests chuckling with satisfaction. Suddenly the parka was thrown off, and the man began to represent how he hunted the mahklok, seated in his kayak, which performance ended with the production of a whole boiled mahklok, of which Zagoskin received the throat as his portion. Others represented a reindeer-hunt, the spearing of birds, the rendering of beluga-blubber, the preparation of seal-intestines for water-proof garments, the splitting of deer-tendons into thread, and so forth. One young orphan who, possessing nothing wherewith to treat the guests, brought on a kantag filled with water, which was drunk by the women amid much merriment. It sometimes happens on these occasions that lovers of fun sprinkle the women with oil, or with that fluid which they use in place of soap, squirted from small bladders concealed about their persons; and such jokes are never resented.

Another festival, in honor of the spirits of the sea (ugiak), is celebrated by the coast tribes during a whole month. The preparations for this gathering begin early in the autumn. Every hunter preserves during an entire year the bladders from all such animals as he kills with arrows; the mothers also save with the greatest care the bladders of all rats, mice, ground-squirrels, or other small animals killed by their children. At the beginning of December all these bladders are inflated, painted in various colors, and suspended in the kashga; and among them the men hang up a number of fantastically carved figures of birds and fish. Some of the figures of birds are quite ingeniously contrived, with movable eyes, heads, and legs, and are able to flap their wings. Before the fireplace there is a huge block wrapped up in dry grass. From morning until night these carved figures are kept in motion by means of strings, and during the whole time a chanting of songs continues, while dry grass and weeds are burned to smoke the suspended bladders. This fumigating process ends the day’s performances, which are begun anew in the morning. In the evening of that culminating day of this festival those strings of bladders are taken down and carried by men upon painted sticks prepared for the occasion; the women, with torches in their hands, accompany them to the sea-shore. Arrived there, the bladders are tied to sticks and weighted with stones, and finally thrown into the water, where they are watched with the greatest interest to see how long they float upon the surface. From the time of sinking and the number of rings upon the water where a bladder has disappeared the shamans prophesy success or misfortune in hunting during the coming year.

A final memorial feast in honor of a distinguished ancestor is conducted as follows:

Eight old men clad in parkas enter the kashga, or council-house, each carrying a stone lamp, which they deposit around the fire-hole. They next produce three small mats and spread them upon the floor in three corners of the building, and from the spectators three men are selected who are willing to go to the grave. The three nearest relatives of the deceased then seat themselves on the mats and divest themselves of all their clothing, wash their bodies, and don new clothes, girding themselves with belts manufactured several generations back and preserved as heirlooms in the family. To each of these men a staff is given, and they advance together to the centre of the kashga, when the oldest among the invited guests sends them forth to call the dead. These messengers leave the building, followed by the givers of this feast. After an absence of ten minutes the former return, and through the underground passage the whole population of the village crowds in, from the old and feeble down to children at the breast, and with them come the masters of ceremonies, wearing long seal-skin gloves, and strings of sea-parrot bills hanging about the breast and arms, with elaborate belts nearly a foot in width, consisting of white bellies of unborn fawns trimmed with wolverine tails. All such ornaments are carefully preserved and handed down from generation to generation, some of them being made of white sable—an exceedingly rare skin—for which high prices are paid, as much as twenty or thirty beavers or otters for one small skin. The women hold in their hands one or two eagle-feathers, and tie around the head a narrow strip of white sable. Each family, grouping itself behind its own stone lamp, chants in turn in mournful measure a song composed for the occasion. These songs are almost indefinitely prolonged by inserting the names of all the relatives of the deceased, living and dead. The singers stand motionless in their places, and many of those present are weeping. When a “song of the dead” is concluded the people seat themselves, and their usual feasting and gorging ensues. The next morning, after a bath (indulged in by all the males), the multitude again assembles in this kashga. The chanting around the fire-hole is renewed in the same mournful tone, until one old man seizes a bladder drum and takes the lead, accompanied by a few singers, and followed in procession by all participants in the feast. They walk slowly to every sepulchre in succession, halting before each to chant a mourning song; all visitors not belonging to the bereaved families in the meantime crowd upon the sodded roofs of the houses and watch these proceedings. In the evening all that remains of food in the village is set before the people, and when every kantag is scraped of the last remnant of its contents the feast is ended; then those visitors at once depart for their homes.

Occasionally the giver of such a feast, desiring to do special honor to the object of it, passes three days sitting naked upon a mat in a corner of his kashga, without food or drink, chanting a song in praise of a dead relative. At the end of such a fast any or all visitors present gifts to him; the story of his achievement is carried abroad, and he is made famous for life among his fellows.

JEST OF AN INNUIT MOTHER
“Yes—me sell!—plenty tabak”

THE SON OF AHGAAN
An Innuit boy, 6 or 7 years old

It has already been mentioned that many individuals give away all their property on such occasions. If it happens that during such a memorial feast a visitor arrives from a distant village who bears the same name with the subject of a celebration, he is at once overwhelmed with gifts, clothed anew from head to foot with the most expensive garments, and returns to his home a wealthy man.

The country in which the Innuit lives is one that taxes the utmost hardihood of man when it is traversed by land or by sea. It is not likely that it will ever be much frequented by white men—it will remain to us as it has been to the Russians, an immense area of desolate sameness, almost unknown to us, or to its savage occupants, for that matter. The general contour of the great Alaskan mainland interior is that of a vast undulating plain with high rounded granitic hills and ridges scattered in all lines of projection; on the flanks of which, and by its countless lakes and water-courses, a growth, more or less abundant, of spruce, birch, willows, poplars, and a large number of hardy shrubs, will be encountered. Its summers are short, warm, and pleasant; its winters are long, and bitterly cold and inclement.

The tundra, however, which fronts the whole of that extensive coast-line of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, is indeed cheerless and repellant at any season. In the summer it is a great flat swale, full of bog-holes, shiny and decaying peat, innumerable sloughs, shallow and stagnant, and from which swarms of malignant mosquitoes rise to fairly torture and destroy a traveller unless he be clad in a coat of mail. In the winter and early spring fierce gales of wind at zero-temperature sweep over these steppes of Alaska in constant succession, making travel exceedingly dangerous, and as painful even as it is in the warmer months. During this period of the year all approach to the coast is barred in Bering Sea by a system of shoals and banks which extend so far seaward that a vessel drawing only ten feet of water will be hard aground, beyond the sight of land, sixty miles off the Yukon mouth.

At the head of the Bay of Bristol a small but deep and rapid river empties a flood of pure, clear water into an intricate series of sand and mud channels which belong there. The Kvichak is the name of this stream, and it rises less than forty miles away in the largest fresh-water lake known to Alaska—that inland sea of Ilyamna, over ninety miles in its greatest length, varying in width from fifteen to thirty. Those gusts and gales that sweep over its blue waters raise a heavy surf which beats sonorously upon its pebbly shores and under its cliffs, while the loud wailing cry of a great northern loon[149] echoes from one lonely shore to the other when disturbed by the unwonted passage of a native’s canoe. Against the eastern horizon there springs from its bosom an abrupt and mighty wall of Alpine peaks, which stand as an eternal barrier between its pure sweet waters and the salt surges of the Pacific.

The ruins of an old Russian trading-post stand in the midst of a small native village at the outlet of, and on the slope of, a lovely grassy upland which rises from the lake. Its people are all living in log houses like those we noticed in Cook’s Inlet; but nevertheless they are true Innuits. The two other small hamlets on these Ilyamna shores are all that exist. Their inhabitants live in the greatest peace and solitary comfort that savages can understand. Two trails over the divide are travelled by these natives, who trade with the Cook’s Inlet people, and who range over the mountain sides in pursuit of reindeer and of bears. A most noteworthy family of Russian Creoles lived here on the first portage. The father was a man of gigantic stature, and he reared four Anak-like sons, who are, as he was, mighty hunters, and of great physical power. This family lives all to itself in that beautiful wilderness of Ilyamna, a little way back from the lake on a hillside, where they command passes over to Cook’s Inlet. They control the trade of this entire region and rule without a shadow of disputation.

A tragedy occurred in one of these small villages of Ilyamna, which has been fitly memorized by the Russian Church. In 1796 a priest of the Greek faith came over from Kadiak, and, enchanted by the scenery and pleased by a warm, kindly welcome received from the natives, he determined to tarry here with them and save their souls. He[150] was a man of the most handsome presence and the sweetest address, and for a moment prevailed. Then, as the heathenish rites and festivals were postponed at his bidding, surly shamans fomented seeds of hate and fear. Finally an hour arrived when, at a preconcerted signal, the slumbering wrath of the savages was aroused, and they fell upon and slew this unsuspecting missionary and destroyed every vestige of his existence among them. The cause of Father Juvenal’s death was his strong opposition to polygamy. It is said that when he was attacked by savages he neither fled nor did he defend himself, either of which he might have successfully done; but he delivered himself unresistingly into the hands of his murderers, asking only for the safety of his subordinates, which was granted. The natives say, in their recitation of the event, that after the monk had been struck down and left by the mob as dead, he “rose up once more, walked towards them, and spoke.” They fell upon him again, and again, and again, for he repeated this miracle several times, until at last, in bewildered fury, they literally cut him into pieces.

Reindeer cross and recross the Kvichak River in large herds during the month of September, as they range over to and from the Peninsula of Alaska, feeding, and also to escape from mosquitoes. At the mouth of this stream is one of the broadest deer-roads in the country. The natives run along the banks of the river when reindeer are swimming across, easily and rapidly spearing those unfortunate animals as they rise from the water, securing in this way any number that fancy or want may dictate. At one time a trader counted seven hundred deer-carcasses as they lay here on the sands of the river’s margin, untouched save by a removal of the hides; not a pound of that meat out of the thousands putrefying had been saved by these lazy Innuits; who, improvident wretches as they are, would be living, less than five months later, in a state of starvation! But all this misery of famine in March will have been forgotten again next September, when the same surplus of food is within their reach, for they will not store up against the morrow—the labor is too great—the shiftless sentiment of a savage forbids that exertion.

There is a curious distinction drawn by nature between the Siberian and Alaskan reindeer. Everybody is familiar with the fact that on the Asiatic side these animals are domesticated and serve as a mainstay and support of large tribes, both savage and civilized. But the spirit of the Alaskan deer is such that it will not live under the control of man, or even within his presence. If confined, it refuses food, and then perishes of self-imposed starvation. The most patient and extended trials have been made at Nooshagak by imported Kamschadales, who were raised to the life of deer-driving over there; yet, in no instance whatsoever were these experts able to overcome the difficulty and accustom those timid animals to the sight, sound, and smell of man. The Alaskan species is much larger than its Asiatic cousin, but otherwise resembles it closely, being, if anything, more uniformly gray in tint and less spotted with white over the back and head.

Reindeer have a most extended range in Alaska, where an immense area of tundra and upland moors yield an abundance of those mosses and lichens which they most affect. Innumerable sloughs and lakes afford these deer a harbor of refuge from cruel torments of mosquitoes, when the wind does not blow briskly in summer; the wooded interior gives them shelter from the driving fury of wintry snow-storms. Big brown bears follow in the wake of travelling herds, and feed fat upon all sickly or weaker members and imprudent fawns of the drove; so do wolves and wolverines; and the lop-eared lynx is not missing.

Nooshagak is a trading centre for that entire Bristol Bay district, which comprises the coast of Bering Sea from Cape Newenham, in the north, to the peninsular extremity at Oonimak, in the south—an immense expanse in which some four thousand Innuits abide, and live largely upon fish and deer-meat. The Oogashik, Igageek, Nakneek, Kvichak, Nooshagak, Igoosheek, and Togiak Rivers all empty into this great shallow gulf. Up their swollen channels, after an opening of the ice during the last half of May, salmon run from the sea in irregular but constant travel until the end of August. Inferior salmon run even as late as November, while the various kinds of salmon-trout and white-fish exist under the ice of deep streams and lakes all winter. By the middle of September hard frosts in the mountains congeal all sources of innumerable rivulets which have helped to swell the volume and raise the level of a river’s summer flood, and then these streams which we have just named begin to fall rapidly in their channels. If we chance to travel anywhere along their banks at this time, we will find them covered with windrows and heaps of dead salmon two and three feet in height. The gravelly beaches of the lakes, the bars and shoals of every stream, are then lined with decaying and putrid bodies of these fish, while every overhanging bough and projecting rock is festooned with their rotting forms—ah! the stench arising absolutely forbids the pangs of hunger, even though we have no provision. These are the salmon that have died from exhaustion and from bruises received in struggling with swift and impetuous currents, and the rocks and snags that beset their paths of annual reproduction.

North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which, having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of sand and mud reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted hunter. Stragglers, however, are frequently surprised on the mainland shore opposite, and the southern coast of Hagenmeister Island toward Cape Newenham to the westward.

The muskrat catch of Alaska is secured almost wholly in the Nooshagak region—an immense number of these water-rodents are annually taken by Innuits here. Traders, however, do not prize them very highly, but to secure the natives’ custom they are obliged to appear satisfied with all that these people bring in to the post. These skins are, however, not sold in this country; they are all shipped to France and Germany, where they meet with a ready sale, since the poor people there are not above wearing them. Also, most of the good Alaskan beaver peltries are from this district, where they have the best fur and are consequently prized above all other catches outside of that region. Land-otter is also in large quantity and fine quality, but the mink and martens and foxes are inferior. During summer seasons, on many lakes, flocks of big, white, trumpeting swans will be found frequenting nearly every one of those bodies of water. The natives hunt them at night, and capture unsuspecting birds as they sleep upon the water, by paddling noiselessly upon them. The traders encourage this industry for the sake of the swan’s down which it produces. The most favored spot by swans is Lake Walker, which lies on the Nakneek portage over to Cook’s Inlet. Perhaps its rare, unique beauty charms these giant natatores as it does ourselves, for, without question, it is incomparably the most lovely sheet of water, set in a frame of glorious mountains, which the fancy of an artist could possibly devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language is utterly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from absolute grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its pebbly shores and yellow sands.

The immediate banks of the Nakneek River, through which Lake Walker empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and flat, and covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and amphibious plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. The timber on hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally clumps of birch and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of spruce as a higher ascent is made to the rolling uplands and mountain sides. An old, deserted settlement—ruins of Paugwik, marked by the decayed outlines of its cemetery, still is visible at the debouchure of the Nakneek. With a strange disrespect for the departed, those natives who live at an adjoining village come over here to excavate salmon-holes in that ancient graveyard, wherein they place their fish-heads, so that a process of moist rotting shall take place prior to eating them! The Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear of the “witching hour of night” in this burial site of their ancestors.

The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly marked “saddle-backed” seal are taken by these people in large numbers every year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those fur-bearing animals that belong to the land here are away below par when brought to a trader. The coast between their villages and the mouth of the Togiak River is one of a most remarkable series of bluffy headlands, seven of them, being all of sandstone which has weathered into queer, fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is washed at the sea-level into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the surf beats with a noise like the distant roar of artillery. Screaming flocks of water-fowl are breeding on their mural faces, and troops of foxes lurk in the interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs and unwary birds.

THE SADDLE-BACK, OR HARLEQUIN HAIR SEAL
[Histriophoca equestris]
Female Male

The Togiak River never was ascended by a white man until the summer of 1880.[151] It is a very remarkable region with respect to its people. Though the course of the river is only one hundred miles in length, yet we find upon it seven villages (one of them very large), having an aggregate population of 1,826 souls. No other one section of Alaska has so dense a population with reference to its inhabited area. The river is, however, a broad one, being a mile and a half in width, shoal and shallow, with deep pools and eddies here and there. Its banks are low, and the valley through which it runs is low and flat, with extensive bottom-lands that widen out at places to a distance of fifteen miles between the ridges and hills which direct its short course. Upon these flats grow most luxuriant and lofty grasses, high as the heads of natives—literally concealing, as it were, the dense human occupation of its extent.

The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska; they are the simplest and the most unpretending of all her people; they seem to live entirely to themselves, wholly indifferent as to what other folks have and they have not. They seldom ever view a white man, and then it is only when they go down to the river’s mouth and visit a trader in his sloop or schooner. He never goes up to see them, for the best of reasons to him—they never have anything fit for barter save a few inferior mink and ground-squirrel skins to trade. They have no chiefs; each family is a law unto itself, and it comes and goes with a sort of free and easy abandon that must resemble the life and habit of primeval time. What little these people want and cannot get from each other, they do not go farther in search of, but do without, unless it be small supplies of tobacco which they procure through other Innuits, second or third hand.

Entire families of them, during the summer, leave their winter huts and go out into the valley at such points as their fancy may indicate, where they pass two and three months with absolutely no shelter whatever erected during that entire lapse of time. When it rains hard they simply turn their skin boats bottom side up, stick their heads under, and consider themselves fully settled for protection from tempestuous wind and sleet-storms, or any other climatic unpleasantness. How insensible to extremes of weather do these bodies of the Innuits become—their whole external form is as insensible to heat or cold as their stolid features are! Were they living under Italian skies, they could not affect a greater disregard for the varying moods of that mild climate than they do for the chilly, boisterous weather of Alaska. The Togiakers never go far from the river upon which they build their rude winter villages, and never venture out from its mouth; hence they are not so happy in making the skin canoe or kayak, as their hardier brethren are: these boats on the Togiak are clumsy, broad of beam in proportion to length, and the hatch, or hole, so large that two persons can sit in it back to back. When a family concludes to go out for the summer camp, the man gets into his “kayak,” takes the children who are under four or five years in with him, then pulls and paddles his way up against the current, or floats down, as the case may be; the women—wife, mother, and daughters—are turned ashore and obliged to find their way up or down through long grass and over quaking bogs—to toil in this manner from camp to camp, and as they plod along they shout and sing at the top of their voices to apprise any bear or bears, which may be in their path, of such coming, and thus stampede them; otherwise they would be in continual danger of silently stepping upon bruin as he lurked or slept in dense grassy jungles. When a bear first takes notice of the approach of a human being it invariably slinks away, rarely ever displaying, by the faintest sound, its departure; but that same animal, if surprised suddenly at close quarters, will turn and fight desperately, even unto death.

The bold, far-projected headland of Cape Newenham forms the southern pier of that remarkable funnel-like sea-opening to the Kuskokvim River—a river upon which the human ichthyophagi of the north do most congregate: three thousand savages are living here in a string of scattered hamlets that closely adjoin each other, and are nearly all located on the right-hand bank of the river as we ascend it. They are more like muskrat villages than human habitations—water, water all around and everywhere: situated on little patches, or narrow dikes, at the rim of the high tides, on the edge of the river proper, which is here, and for a long distance up, bordered by a strikingly desolate and forlorn country. A glance at our map will show to the reader that great funnel-fashioned mouth of the Kuskokvim, through which its strong and turbid, clay-white current is discharged into Bering Sea. The tides, in this enormous estuary, run with a rise and fall that simply beggars description—reaching an amazing vertical flow and ebb of fifty feet at the entrance! Such extraordinary change in tide-level is carried up, but much modified as it progresses, until lost at Mumtrekhlagamute; the entire physical aspect of that region, in which this sweeping daily change in a level of the water prevails, is most repellant and discouraging.

THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER AND TUNTUH MOUNTAINS

Viewed from Toolookah, 30 miles below Kolmakovsky, a famous Moose and Reindeer Hunting Grounds for the Innuits of that Region

From the high-tide bank-rims of the Kuskokvim, as we go up, across to the hills and to their rear in the east, extends a dreary expanse of swale and watered moors forty to sixty miles in width, flat and low as the surface of the sea itself. At high tide it appears to be nearly all submerged. It shimmers then like an inland ocean studded with myriads of small mossy islets. Again, when the tide in turn runs out, great far-expanded flats of mud and ooze supplant the waters everywhere, giving in this abrupt manner a striking shift of scenic effect. The eastern river bank is a queer, natural dike, formed by a rank and vigorous growth of coarse sedges, bulrushes, and little sapling fringes of alders, willows, with birch and poplars interspersed. Upon this natural dike these native villages range in close continuity, each occupying all the dry land in its own immediate limits, and occupying it so thoroughly that a traveller cannot, without great difficulty, find bare land enough outside of their sites upon which to pitch his tent. Mud, mud everywhere—a whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a physical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the villages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, you are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries you forward and over to your destination.

On the Lower Kuskokvim the river width of itself is so great that the people living on its eastern banks never can see an opposite shore to the westward, for it is even more submerged there and swampy, if anything, than where they reside; hence we find them located here on the east bank, to a practical exclusion of all settlement over on those occidental swales and bogs. The current of this singular stream flows quite rapidly. It discharges a great volume of water, which is colored a peculiar whitish tone by the contribution of a roiled tributary that heads in the Nooshagak divide. At its source and down to this muddy junction it is clear. It is a rapid stream in the narrows, and dull and sluggish in flow through wide openings.

The density of aboriginal population so remarkably manifested as we observe it on the Lower Kuskokvim does not, however, give all the testimony, inasmuch as during every summer two thousand or more natives from the Yukon delta come over here to fish with the Kuskokvims, making a sum-total of six or seven thousand fish-eaters, who catch, consume, and waste an astonishing quantity of salmon, which would, if properly handled, be sufficient to handsomely feed the entire number of native inhabitants of Alaska, four times over, every year!

Snow lies deeply upon all this region, driven and packed in vast drifts and fields by the wrath of furious wintry gales, and the hunting of land animals is thus made impossible. Then a native of the Kuskokvim Valley turns his attention to trapping white-fish[152] just as soon as the ice becomes firmly established, usually early in November. The traps are made of willow and alder wicker-work, and nearly all in the same pattern as those employed for salmon, but of somewhat smaller dimensions, so as to be easier to handle, since they are not required to catch the huge “chowichie.” Every morning at dawn on the river the men of its many villages can be seen making their way out to these fish-traps, when it is not bitterly inclement, and even then, sometimes. They carry curiously shaped ice-picks, made or fashioned from walrus-teeth or deer-antlers, because every night’s freezing covers the trap anew with a solid cap of ice, which must be broken up and removed ere a savage can get at it, haul it out, and empty its “pot.” Think of the physical hardihood required of a man who goes out from his hut to visit such a trap when the wind, away below zero, is blowing over an icy plain of the broad river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, whirling snowy spiculæ, like hot shot, into the faintest exposure which he dares to make of his face or eyes! He does not often go when a “poorga” prevails in this boisterous manner. Sometimes he feels as though he must, since a storm may have raged in wild, bitter fury for a week without sign of abatement. His children or his wife may be sick and half-starved; then, only then, does he venture out to dare and endure the greatest hardship of savage life in Alaska.

It frequently happens after an unusually cold night that a trap, including its contents, is frozen solid. This is another dreaded accident, for it involves great labor, since the trap itself must be picked to pieces and built anew. In spite of all these difficulties, the natives get enough fresh fish during each winter by such method to eke out their scanty store of dried salmon and save themselves from starvation. On the lower river course, within the influence of that tremendous tidal action which has been described, a solid covering of ice never envelops the surface of the Kuskokvim. Here the natives hunt seals, the mahklok, and also the white whale or beluga, which furnishes them a full supply of oil[153] and blubber. A school of belugas puff and snort, like a fleet of tug-boats, as they push between and under tide-broken masses of ice in hot pursuit of fish that abound all over the broad estuary.

There is one particularly distressing and hideous feature that belongs to this entire area of the Alaskan coast tundra and marshy moors of the interior and its forests, its river-margins, and, in fact, to every place except those spots where the wind blows hard. It is the curse of mosquitoes—the incessant stinging of swarms of these blood-thirsty insects, which come out from their watery pupæ by May 1st (with the earliest growing of spring vegetation), and remain in perfect clouds until withered and destroyed by severe frosts in September and October. The Indians themselves do not dare to go into the woods at Kolmakovsky during the summer, and the very dogs themselves frequently die from effects of mere mosquito-biting about their eyes and paws only, for that thick woolly hair of these canines effectually shields all other portions of their bodies. Close-haired beasts, like cattle or horses, would perish here in a single fortnight at the longest, if not protected by man.

Universal agreement in Alaska credits the Kuskokvim mosquito as being the worst. They do not appear elsewhere in the same number or ferocity, but they are quite unendurable at the best and most-favored stations. Breeding here, as they do, in these vast extents of tundra sloughs and woodland swamps, they are able to rally around and embarrass an explorer beyond all reasonable description. Language is simply inadequate to portray that misery and annoyance which the Alaskan mosquito-swarms inflict upon us in the summer, whenever we venture out from the shelter of trading-posts, where mosquito-bars envelop our couches and cross the doors and windows to our living-room. Naturally, it will be asked, What do the natives do? They, too, are annoyed and suffer; but it must be remembered that their bodies are daily anointed with rancid oil, and certain ammoniacal vapors constantly arise from their garments which even the mosquito, venomous and cruel as it is, can scarcely withstand the repellant power of. When the natives travel in this season, they gladly avail themselves, however, of any small piece of mosquito-netting that they can secure, no matter how small. Usually they have to wrap cloths and skins about their heads, and they always wear mittens in midsummer. The traveller who exposes his bare face at this time of the year on the Kuskokvim tundra or woodlands will speedily lose his natural appearance; his eyelids swell up and close; his neck expands in fiery pimples, so that no collar that he ever wore before can now be fastened around it, while his hands simply become as two carbuncled balls. Bear and deer are driven into the water by these mosquitoes. They are a scourge and the greatest curse of Alaska.

Two hundred miles up from the Kuskokvim mouth is a focal centre of the trade in this district. It is Kolmakovsky, established by the Russians in 1839. It consists of seven large, roughly built frame dwellings and log warehouses, and a chapel, which stand on a flat, timbered mesa well above the river, on its right or southern shore. Here the current of the stream has narrowed, and flows between high banks over a gravelly bed. These terraces, which rise from the water, are flat-topped, and covered with a tall growth of spruce. Mossy tundras and grassy meadows roll in between forest patches. The timber is much larger here than it is anywhere else in the great Alaskan interior, and that scenery along this river is far wilder and more agreeable than any which is so monotonous and characteristic of the Upper Yukon. The desolate flatness and muddy wastes of the Lower Kuskokvim are now replaced by this pleasing change, which we have just mentioned, a short distance below Kolmakovsky.

KOLMAKOVSKY, ON THE KUSKOKVIM

Old Russian trading-post, established in 1839, two hundred miles up the River: these houses were once surrounded with a stockade, but such a defence has long been needless. This view is taken from the opposite bank of the River, looking over to the high hills of the Nooshagak divide, and Mount Tamahloopat in the distance

Back of that post, and clearly defined against the horizon, are the snowy-capped summits of those mountains that form a Nooshagak divide. One of them rises in an oval-pointed crest to a very considerable elevation[154] above all the rest, and is the landmark of every traveller who comes over the Yukon divide to Kolmakov. The river here, as it brawls swiftly in its course, is about seven hundred feet in width, with bends above and below where it expands to fully twice that distance.

While the Kuskokvim is the only considerable rival of the Yukon in this whole Alaskan country, yet when seriously contrasted with the great Kvichpak[155] itself, then the Kuskokvim bears about the same resemblance to it that the Ohio River does to the Mississippi.

Kolmakovsky marks the limit of inland migration allotted to the Innuit race on its banks, who are not permitted by those Tinneh tribes of the interior to advance farther up the river. It is also removed from that disagreeable influence of Bering Sea, where the prevalence of rain and of furious protracted gales of wind make life a burden to a white man on the Lower Kuskokvim. Its environing forests break the force of these storms, and there is also less fog, so that the sun usually shines out clear and hot, especially in July and August.

In the winter season, when frost has locked up miry swales and swamps, and snow lies in deep, limitless drifts, a white hunter at Kolmakov can join the Kuskokvamoots in trailing and shooting giant moose which come down from the mountains of the Nooshagak divide. This animal is quickly apprehended by the native dogs, so that whenever winter weather will permit, a native Innuit spends most of his time, not employed by ice-fishing on the Kuskokvim, in this sport.

The fur-trade at Kolmakovsky is quite active, but it is almost exclusively transacted with a few Indians up the river, and not with the numerous Innuits below. The latter are, commercially speaking, very poor, having not much of anything but little stores of “mahklok” seal-oil. These big phocaceans are almost as great fishermen as the Innuits are themselves, and find the mouth of the Kuskokvim as attractive as it is to their human foes. In this frame of mind the mahklok ventures on to those tidal banks of the estuary below, and this rash habit enables the natives to capture a great many of them there every year. Those Innuits below Kolmakovsky have no land-furs whatever, save a few inferior mink-skins; but they trade their surplus seal-oil with the Indians above and on the Yukon for that ground-squirrel parka and tanned moose-skin shirt which they universally wear. There is an exceeding rankness to an odor of rancid fish-oil, but the aroma from a bag of putrescent seal-oil is simply abominable and stifling to a Caucasian nose—an acrid funk, which pervades everything, and hangs to it for an indefinite length of time afterward in spite of every effort made to disinfect.

The Indians of the Upper Kuskokvim were once said to be a very numerous tribe; but the severity of successive cold winters has so destroyed them, as a people, that to-day they exist there as a feeble remnant only of what they once were. An intelligent trader, Sipari, who has traversed their entire country, in 1872-76, declares that “forty tents,” or one hundred souls is an ample enumeration of their number.

The Innuits of the Lower Kuskokvim are much better physical specimens of humanity than are those of their race living on the Lower Yukon. These latter are called by all traders the most clumsy and degraded of Alaskan savages. The portage from Kolmakovsky to the Kvichpak is only three days’ journey in winter, or five days by water in canoes, during summer. It is a trip made by large numbers of the natives of both streams, in the progress of their natural barter and moose-hunting.

The forests of the Kuskokvim and the Nooshagak mountains and uplands are frequently swept by terrible conflagrations, which utterly destroy whole areas of timber as far as the eye can reach. This ruin of fire, of course, absolutely extinguishes all trapping for any fur-bearing animal hitherto found in those brulé tracts, and entails much privation upon the natives who have been accustomed to gain their best livelihood largely by hunting in those sections. A burnt district presents a desolate front for years after; the fire does not, in its swift passage, do more, at first, than burn the foliage and smaller limbs of trees in a dense spruce forest; but it roasts the bark and kills a trunk, so that all sap-circulation is forever at an end in it. As the years roll by, these trunks gradually bleach out to almost a grayish white, the charred, blackened bark is all weathered off, and gradually such trees fall, as they decay at the stump, in every conceivable direction upon the ground, across one another, like so many jack-straws, making a perfectly impassable barricade to human travel without tedious labor. A brisk growth of small poplars, birch, and willow springs up in place of the original spruce forest, but none of these trees and shrubs ever grow to any great size. At rare intervals a young evergreen is seen to rise in sharp relief, towering over all deciduous shrubbery, and in the lapse of long years it will succeed in supplanting every growing thing around with its own kind again.

“Brulé” Desolation; Alaskan Interior.

[A view on the Stickeen Divide: bears, in search of larvæ, ripping open decayed logs.]

The traders at Kolmakovsky make up their furs into snug bales and descend the river in wooden and skin boats, every June, to a point below, about one hundred and fifty miles, where they meet their respective schooners, or go still lower to an anchorage of larger vessels, and renew their annual supplies. These river-boats are then poled and rope-walked up the river back to the post. The principal trade here is beaver, red foxes, mink, marten, land-otter, and brown and black bears.

The traders say it is exceedingly seldom that a white man ever comes in contact with the natives of the Lower Kuskokvim, and that there is nothing to call them there; also, that the labors of the Russian missionaries of the Yukon never extended to this region, though their registers and reports show quite a number of Christians on the Kuskokvim River. The only trace of Christianity among this tribe, outside of the immediate vicinity of a trading-station with its chapel, consists of a few scattered crosses in burial-places adjoining the settlement. At the village of Kaltkhagamute, within three days’ travel of the Russian mission on the Yukon, a graveyard there contains a remarkable collection of grotesquely carved monuments and memorial posts, indicating very clearly the predominance of old pagan traditions over such faint ideas of Christianity as may have been introduced for these people. Among monuments in this place the most remarkable is that of a female figure with four arms and hands, resembling closely a Hindoo goddess, even to its almond eyes and a general cast of features. Natural hair is attached to its head, falling over the shoulders. The legs of this figure are crossed in true oriental style, and two of the hands, the lower pair, hold rusty tin plates, upon which offerings of tobacco and scraps of cotton prints have been deposited. The whole is protected by a small roof set upon posts.

Other burial posts are scarcely less remarkable in variety of feature and coloring, and the whole collection would afford a rich harvest of specimens to any museum. Nearly all these figures are human effigies, though grotesque and misshapen, and drawn out of proportion. No images of animals or birds, which would have indicated the existence of totems and clans in the tribe, were to be seen; but here and there, over apparently neglected graves, a stick, surmounted by a very rude carving of a fish, a deer, or a beluga, indicative of the calling of the deceased hunter, could be discovered.

Petroff, who has made the only hand-to-hand examination ever conducted, by a white man, of the people of the Lower Kuskokvim, says that they resemble in outward appearance their Eskimo neighbors in the north and west, but their complexion is perhaps a little darker. The men are distinguished from those of other Innuit tribes by having more hair on the faces; mustaches being quite common, even with youths of from twenty to twenty-five, while in other tribes this hirsute appendage does not make its appearance until the age of thirty-five or forty. Their hands and feet are small, but both sexes are muscular and well developed, inclined rather to embonpoint. In their garments they differ but little from their neighbors hitherto described, with an exception of the male upper garment, or parka, which reaches down to the feet, even dragging a little upon the ground, making it necessary to gird it up for purposes of walking. The female parkas are a little shorter. Both garments are made of the skins of ground-squirrels, ornamented with pieces of red cloth and bits of tails of that rodent. The women wear no head-covering except in the depth of winter, when they pull the hoods of reindeer parkas over their heads. The men wear caps, made of the skin of an Arctic marmot, resembling in shape those famous Scotch “bonnets,” so commonly worn by Canadians.

AN INNUIT TOMB

Characteristic Method of Eskimo Burial on the Kuskokvim River: this Coffin contains the Bodies of a famous Reindeer Hunter, his Squaw, and two Children

Many young men wear a small band of fur around the head, into which they insert eagle and hawk-feathers on festive occasions. A former custom of this tribe, of inserting thin strips of bone or the quills of porcupines through an aperture cut in the septum, seems to have become obsolete, though the nasal slit can still be seen on all grown male individuals. Their ears are also universally pierced for an insertion of pendants, but these seem at present to be worn by children only, who discard them as they grow up. In fact, all ornamentation in the shape of beads, shells, etc., appears to be lavished upon their little ones, who toddle about with pendants rattling from ears, nose, and lower lip, and attired in frocks stiff with embroidery of beads or porcupine-quills, while the older girls and boys run almost naked, and the parents themselves are imperfectly protected against cold and weather by a single fur garment.

The use of the true Eskimo kayak is universal among the Kuskokvagmute, but in timbered regions of the upper river, in the vicinity of Kolmakovsky, the birch-bark canoe also is quite common. The latter, however, is not used for extended voyages or for hunting, but is reserved chiefly for attending to fish-traps, for the use of women in their berrying and fishing expeditions, and for crossing rivers and streams.

The only indigenous fruit which this large population of the Lower Kuskokvim can enjoy is that of the pretty little “moroshkie,” or red raspberry,[156] which grows in great abundance on its short, tiny stalks throughout all swales and over rolling tundra. These berries are saturated in rancid oil, however, before they are eaten to any great extent, being air-dried first and pressed into thin cakes; then, as wanted, they are pounded up in mortars and boiled, or simply thrown into a wooden basin (or kantag) of oil. Then the fingers, or rude horn spoons, are dipped in by happy feeders, who apparently relish this ill-savored combination just as keenly as one of our Gothamitic gourmands appreciates the flavor of a Chesapeake terrapin stewed in champagne.