Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The superficial area of Alaska is 512,000 square miles; or, in round numbers, just one sixth of the entire extent of the United States and Territories. Population in 1880: Whites, 430; Creole, 1,756; Eskimo, 17,617; Aleut, 2,145; Athabascan, 3,927; Thlinket, 6,763—total, 33,426.

[7] When the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were prosperous, Wrangel was a very busy little transfer-station—the busiest spot in Alaska; then between four and five thousand miners passed through every spring and fall as they went up to and came down from the diggings on the Stickeen tributaries above; they left a goodly share, if not most, of their earnings among the store and saloon keepers of Wrangel. The fort is now deserted—the town nearly so; the whole place is rapidly reverting to the Siwashes. Government buildings erected here by the U. S. military authorities, which cost the public treasury $150,000, were sold in 1877, when the troops were withdrawn, for a few hundreds. The main street is choked with decaying logs and stumps. A recent visitor declares, upon looking at the condition of this place in the summer of 1883: “Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction to Alaska. It is most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to the sublime and lonely scenery of the north. It is situated at the foot of conical hills, at the head of a gloomy harbor, filled with gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling crags, stretch away on all sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, backed by range after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost against lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that in the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in the lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it—not in its straggling lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside it, nor in the fort, for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into decay.”

[8] 14,708 feet.

[9] 13,400 feet.

[10] I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view, which was the doctrine of Agassiz.

[11] The chief signal officer of the U. S. Army has had a number of meteorological observers stationed at half a dozen different posts in Alaska, and has had this service fully organized up there during the last ten years; the inquirer can easily gain access to a large amount of published data touching this subject.

The mean temperature of the year will run throughout the months in the Sitkan region about as follows—an average, for the time, of 44° 7’ Fah.

January,	29° 2’	May,	45° 5’	September,	51° 9’
February,	36° 4’	June,	55° 3’	October,	49° 2’
March,	37° 8’	July,	55° 6’	November,	36° 6’
April,	44° 7’	August,	56° 4’	December,	30° 2’

[12] Zarenbo Island—it blocks the northern end of Clarence Strait, and affords many varied vistas of rare scenic beauty.

[13] Sitka port is on the west coast of Baranov Island; north latitude 57° 02’ 52”; west longitude 135° 17’ 45”.

[14] Not “Peril,” as it is translated by American geographers and printed on all of our Alaskan maps.

[15] This building, as it stands upon its foundations, is 140 feet in length by 70 feet in width—two stories with lofts, capped with the light-house cupola; these foundations rest upon the summit of the rock, 60 feet above tide-water.

CHAPTER III.
ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.

The White Man and the Indian Trading.—The Shrewdness and Avarice of the Savage.—Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade of Alaska.—The Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to Influence the Sitkan Indians.—The Reason why Missionary Work in Alaska has been and is Impotent.—The Difference between the Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and the Meat-eating Savage of the Plains.—Simply One of Physique.—The Haidahs the Best Indians of Alaska.—Deep Chests and Bandy Legs from Canoe-travel.—Living in Fixed Settlements because Obliged To.—Large “Rancheries” or Houses Built by the Haidahs.—Communistic Families.—Great Gamblers.—Indian “House-Raising Bees.”—Grotesque Totem Posts.—Indian Doctors “Kill or Cure.”—Dismal Interior of an Indian “Rancherie.”—The Toilet and Dress of Alaskan Siwashes.—The Unwritten Law of the Indian Village.—What Constitutes a Chief.—The Tribal Boundaries and their Scrupulous Regard.—Fish the Main Support of Sitkan Indians.—The Running of the Salmon.—Indians Eat Everything.—Their Salads and Sauces.—Their Wooden Dishes and Cups, and Spoons of Horn.—The Family Chests.—The Indian Woman a Household Drudge.—She has no Washing to Do, However.—Sitkan Indians not Great Hunters.—They are Unrivalled Canoe-builders.—Small-pox and Measles have Reduced the Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty Number.—Abandoned Settlements of these Savages Common.—The Debauchery of Rum among these People.—The White Man to Blame for This.

“Think you that yon church steeple

Will e’er work a change in these wild people?”

Our people living now in the Sitkan district are engaged either in general trading with the Indians, in prospecting for “mineral,” or actively mining; and, also, in a small fashion, in canning salmon and rendering dog-fish and herring oil. Perhaps we can give a fair idea of the traders by introducing the reader to one of them and his establishment just as we find him at Sitka. In a small frame one-story house, not usually touched by paint, the trader shelters a general assortment of notions and groceries, but principally tobacco, molasses, blankets of all sizes and colors, cotton prints and cheap rings, beads, looking-glasses, etc.; he stands behind a rude counter, with these wares displayed to best advantage on the rough shelves at his back; a wood-burning stove diffuses a genial glow, but no chairs or benches are convenient. A “Siwash”[16] and his squaw deliberately and gravely enter. The Indian slowly looks up and down the room, and then proceeds to price every object within his vision, no matter whether he has the least idea of purchasing or not; this is the prelude and invariable habit of a Sitkan Indian, and it arouses an immense amount of suppressed profanity on the part of the outwardly courteous trader. But our savage has come in this time bent upon buying, and selling also; his female partner has a bundle carefully done up under her blanket, and which she wholly concealed when she squatted down on her haunches the moment after entering the door; she also has a number of small silver coins in her mouth, for, funny as it may seem, this worthy pair have carefully agreed upon what they shall spend in the store before coming in; so the woman has taken out from the leathern purse which hangs on her breast and under her chemise, the exact amount, and, returning the pouch to the privacy of her bosom, she places the available coin in her mouth for safe keeping ad interim.

Finally the Indian, in the course of half an hour, or perhaps a whole half-day in preliminary skirmishing, boldly reaches down for his bundle in the squaw’s charge; then having, by so doing, given the trader to fully understand that he has something to sell, as well as desiring to buy, he reaches out for the groceries, the cloth, the tobacco, or whatever he may have fully decided to purchase; a long argument at once ensues as to the bottom cash price, and in every case of doubt the squaw decides; all the articles are done up in brown paper and neatly tied with attractive parti-colored twine. Then the dusky woman arises, with an indescribably vacant stare, bends over the counter and lets the jingling silver drop upon it, pausing just a moment until the tired but triumphant trader counts and sweeps it, still moist, into his till.

Now the Siwash, having bought, proceeds to sell, and he does it in his own peculiar way. He unrolls his package of furs; he eloquently discourses as he strokes each pelt out on the counter, in turn praising its size and its quality; the trader in the meanwhile sharply keeps one eye on the savage and one eye on the furs, and, after the story of their capture and quality has been told over the third or fourth time, he asks, “How much?” The crafty hunter promptly demands more than they would retail at in London; the trader answers with great emphasis and a most disgusted head-shake, “no;” he then offers just half or one-third the sum named, whereupon the Indians, affecting great contempt, both shout out “klaik!” which sounds like Poe’s “Raven”—roll up their furs and hustle out in a huff, still repeating, in sonorous unison, “klaik, klaik”—(no, no). Then they go to the rival trader’s establishment, and to all of them in turn, even if there are half a dozen, not leaving one of them unvisited; they finally finish the rounds in the course of a week or two, and then quietly march back to that trader who offered the most, and laying their peltries down in perfect silence on his counter, hold out a grimy hand for the exact sum he had previously proffered.

In this shrewd and aggravating manner does the simple untutored savage of the northwest coast deal with white traders—are they swindled, do you think? From the beginning to the end of any transaction you may have with an Alaskan Indian you will be met with the keenest understanding on his part of the full value in dollars and cents of whatsoever he may do for you or sell. When, however, the Hudson Bay or the Russian Company held an exclusive franchise in this district, then the Indian had no alternative but the single post-trader’s terms; and then the white man’s profits were enormous. But now, with the keen rivalry of competing stores, the trader barely makes a living anywhere in Alaska to-day, while the Indian gets the best of every bargain—vastly better compared with his former experience.

The Sitkan Chimes.

The fur trade, however, in the whole Sitkan district is now of small commercial importance; thirty or forty thousand dollars annually will more than express its gross value. This great shrinkage is due to the practical extermination of the sea-otter in these waters, while the brown and black bears, the mink and marten, the beaver and the land-otter skins secured in this archipelago and its mainland coast are not highly valued by furriers, inasmuch as the climate here is never cold enough to give them that depth and gloss of fur desired and so characteristic of those animals which are taken, away back in the interior, where the temperature ranges from 20° to 40° below zero for months at a time. In early days, the Sitkan savages acted as middlemen, receiving these choice peltries from the back-country Indians, who were never permitted by the coast tribes to come down to the sea—and then trading the stock anew in their own right over to the Russian and English posts, they reaped a large advance. Now, however, the independent white trader penetrates to the interior himself, and the Alaskan Siwashes mourn the loss of those rich commissions which once accrued to their emolument and consequence. The irruption, also, of the restless, tireless, wandering miners throughout Alaska and British Columbia, who, prospecting in every ravine and cañon, never let an opportunity pass to trade and trap for good furs, has also contributed to this total stagnation of the business in the Sitkan region.

The finest structure in Sitka to-day is the Greek church, which alone did not pass from the custody of its original owners at the time of the transfer. This building has been kept in repair, so that its trim and unique architecture never fails to arrest the visitor’s attention and challenge inspection, especially of the interior. We find the service of the church rich and profuse in silverware, candelabra, ornately framed pictures—oil-paintings of the saints—and rich vestments; two priests officiate, a reader chants rapid automatism, and a choir of small boys respond in shrill but pleasing orisons; instrumental music is banished from the services of the Greek Church, and so are pews, chairs, and hassocks; the Creole congregation, men, women, and children, stand and kneel and cross themselves, erect and bowed, for hours and hours at a time during certain festivals, never moving a step from their positions. The men stand on the right side of the vestibule, facing the altar, while the women all stand by themselves, on the left, the children at option as they enter. No one looks to the one side or the other, but every face is riveted upon the priest, who says little, and is busily engaged in symbolic worship.

The Indians do not enter here, nor did they ever; for them the Russians erected a small chapel, which still stands on the site of its first location; it is built against the inner side of the stockade, and, like the old Lutheran church lower down in the town, it is fast going to ruin; the door is secured by one of those remarkable Muscovitic padlocks—it is eight or ten inches long, five or six wide, and three deep; these singular locks must be seen to be appreciated in all of their clumsy strength. This little faded place of savage worship was the scene in 1855 of the second and last stand ever made by the Sitkan Indians in revolt against the Russians. Those savages, brooding over some petty indignities received from the whites, became suddenly inflamed with passion, and a swarm of armed warriors from the adjacent rancheries rushed, one dusky evening, upon the fortified palisade surrounding the village, and began to cut and tear it down. The Russians opened their brass batteries of grape and round-shot upon the infuriated, yelling natives from the several block-houses which commanded the stockade, but the Siwashes returned the fire fearlessly with their smoothbore muskets, and succeeded in getting possession of this chapel, behind the stout logs of which they were sheltered and able to do deadly execution with their rifles in picking off the Russian officers and men, as they hurried to and from the bastions and through the streets of the town. When, however, one of the company’s vessels hauled off the beach opposite the Indian village, and trained her guns upon it and its people, the savages humbly sued for mercy, and have remained in abasement ever since.

Old Indian Chapel at Sitka.

[Greek Catholic Church, June 9, 1874.]

Contemplating this Indian church at Sitka, which has stood here for nearly three quarters of a century, and then glancing over it and into the savage settlement that nestles in its shadow, it is impossible to refrain from expressing a few thoughts which arise to my mind over the subject of the Indian in regard to his conversion to the faith and practices of our higher civilization. Nearly a whole century has been expended, here, of unflagging endeavor to better and to change the inherent nature of these Indians—its full result is before our eyes. Go down with me through the smoky, reeking, filthy rancheries and note carefully the attitude and occupation of these savages, and contrast your observation with that so vividly recorded of them by Cook, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and many other early travellers, and tell me in what manner have they advanced one step higher than when first seen by white men full a hundred years ago. You cannot escape the conclusion with this tangible evidence in your grasp, that in attempting to civilize the Alaskan Indian the result is much more like extermination, or lingering, deeper degradation to him than that which you so earnestly desire. The cause of this failure of the missionary and the priest is easy to analyze: it is due to the demoralizing precept and example of those depraved whites who always appear on the field of the Indian mission, sooner or later; if they could be shut out, and the savage wholly uninfluenced by their vicious lives, then the story of Alaskan Indian salvage might be very different. Still, the thought will always come unbidden and promptly—these savages were created for the wild surrounding of their existence; expressly for it, and they live happily in it: change this order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and the domestication of animals.

The Indians of Alaska, however, will never call upon the Government for food and reservations—there is a great abundance on the earth and in the waters thereof for them; living as they do all down at tide-water, at the sole source of their subsistence, they are within the quick reach of a gunboat; the overpowering significance of that they fully understand and fear. There is a huge wilderness here for them which the white man is not at all likely to occupy, even in part, for generations of his kind to come, yet unborn.

Sitka is the seat of that Alaskan civil government[17] which Congress, after much deliberation, ordered in 1884; but the governor lives here in much humbler circumstances than did his Slavonian predecessors. As it would require a small fortune to rehabilitate the “castle,” the present chief-magistrate resides in one of those neatly built houses which the military authorities erected shortly after they took charge in 1867-68; it is not at all commanding, but has a pleasant vista from its windows over the parade ground, and the steamers’ landing.

While the most impressive feature of the Sitkan archipelago is unquestionably that of the awe-inspiring solemnity and grand beauty of its strange wilderness, yet the most interesting single idea is the Indian and the life he leads therein; with the single exception of the substitution of a woollen blanket and a cotton shirt for his primitive skin garments, he is living here to-day just as he has lived away back to the time when his legends fail to recite, and centuries before the bold voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and the savage sea-otter fleet of Baranov, first discovered him and then made his existence known to the civilized world. True, some of the young fellows who have labored upon vessels and in the fish-canneries wear an every-day workingman’s shirt and trousers, and speak a few words of English, understanding much more, yet the primeval simplicity of all Indian life in this district is substantially preserved.

These savages are fish-eaters, and as such they have a common bond of abrupt contrast in physique with their meat-eating brethren of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains; but the traits of natural disposition are the same, the heart and impulse of the Haidah or the Tongass, are the heart and the impulse of the Sioux or the Cheyenne—the former moves nowhere except squatted in his shapely canoe, the other always bestrides a pony or mustang. This wide divergence in every-day action gives alone to these savages their strongly marked bodily separation; the fish-eater is stooping as he stands, and though he has a deep chest and sinewy arms, yet his lower limbs are bowed, sprung at the knees, and imperfectly muscled; while the meat-eater is erect and symmetrical, in fine physical outline from the crown of his head to his heels.

The various divisions or bands of the Indian population of the Sitkan archipelago and mainland[18] differ but little in their manner of life and customs, and speak closely related dialects of the same language. The Haidahs are the best dispositioned and behaved. They have been from the earliest times constantly in the habit of making long and incessant canoe voyages; and, taking into account the ease with which all parts of this region can be reached on water, it is rather surprising that any marked difference in language should be found at all; still, when we recall the knowledge which we have of their fierce inter-tribal wars, it is not so strange; this warfare, however, was of the same barbarous character as that recognized in all other American savages—it was the surprise and massacre of helpless parties, never sparing old women, children or decrepit men. These internecine family wars have undoubtedly been the sole cause of the present subdivisions of the savages as we note them to-day.

In drawing the picture, faithfully, of any one Alaskan Indian, I may say candidly that in so doing I give a truthfully defined image of them all throughout the archipelago. Physically the several tribes of this region differ to some extent, but not near so much as our colored people do among themselves; the margin of distinction up here between the ten or eleven clans, which ethnologists enumerate, is so slight that only a practised eye can declare them. The Haidahs possess the fairest skins, the best temper, and the best physique; while the ugly Sitkans and Khootznahoos are the darkest and the worst. But the coarse mouth, the width and prominence of the cheek bones, and the relatively large size of the head for the body, are the salient main departures from our ideal symmetry.

The body is also long and large, compared with the legs, brought about by centuries of constant occupation in canoes and the consequent infrequent land travel; their hair is black and coarse, unkempt, and never allowed, by the males, to fall below their shoulders except in the case of their “shamans,” or doctors. A scattered, straggling mustache and beard is sometimes allowed to grow upon the upper lip and chin, generally in the case of the old men only, who finally grow weary of plucking it out by the roots, which in youth they always did in sheer vanity.

Once in a while a face is turned upon you from a canoe, or in a rancherie, which arrests your attention, and commands comment as good-looking; these instances are, however, rare—very, very rare. I think the Haidahs give more evidence in average physiognomy of possessing greater intelligence than that presented in the countenances of their brethren; while I deem the Sitkas and Khootznahoos to be the most insensible—if they are as bright they conceal the fact with astonishing success. Again, the ferocity and exceptionally savage expression of their faces, which Captain Cook and Vancouver saw and so graphically recorded, has faded out completely; but in all other respects they agree to-day perfectly with those descriptions of these early voyagers. In those days firearms had not destroyed their faith in elaborate armaments of spear and bow and body armor-shields of wood and leather, so that they then appeared in much more elaborate costumes and varied pigments than they do now.

Each tribe has one or more large “rancheries,” or villages, in which it lives, and which are always located at the level of the sea, just above tide and surf, at river-mouths, or on sheltered bays of the islands, or the mainland; these rancheries, or houses, are built of solid, heavy timbers in the permanent villages, or thrown loosely together of lighter material in their temporary or camping stations. The general type of construction is the same throughout the archipelago, the most substantial houses being those of the Haidahs, who give more care to the accurate fitting together and ornamentation of their edifices than is shown elsewhere. They certainly show a greater constructive facility and mechanical dexterity, not only in the better style of house-building but in the greater number of, greater size of, and excessively elaborate carved totem posts. These peculiar adjuncts to Alaskan Indian architecture are small and shabby everywhere else when compared with the Prince of Wales exhibition.

All permanent villages are generally situated with regard to one great idea—easy access to halibut-fishing banks and such coast fisheries, which occupy the greater proportion of the natives’ time in going to and coming from them when not actually engaged in fishing upon these chosen grounds; therefore it happens that, occasionally, a village will be located on a rocky coast, bleak and exposed, though carefully placed at the same time so as to permit of the safe landing of canoes in rough water. These houses always face seaward, and stand upon some flat of soil, elevated a few feet above the high-tide mark, where below there is usually a sandy or gravelly beach upon which the fleet of canoes is drawn out, or launched from, as the owners come and go at all hours of the day and night. The houses are arranged side by side, either in close contact, or else a space of greater or less width between. A promenade or track is always left between the fronts of the houses and the edge of the bank, from ten to thirty feet in width; it constitutes a street, and in which the carved posts and temporary fish-drying frames, etc., are usually planted. Also those canoes that are not in daily use, or will not be used for some time, are invariably hauled up on this street, and carefully covered by rush-mats or spruce-boughs, so as to protect them from the weather, by which they might be warped or cracked.

The rancheries are themselves never painted by their rude architects and builders; they, however, soon assume a uniform, inconspicuous, gray color, and become yellowish-green in spots, or overgrown with moss and weeds owing to the dampness of the climate. If it were not for the cloud of bluish smoke that hovers over these villages in calm weather, they would never be noticed from any considerable distance.

A Haidah Rancherie.

In localities where the encroachment of mountain and water make the village area very scant, two rows of houses are occasionally formed, but in no instance whatever is any evidence given in these Koloshian settlements of special arrangement of dwellings, or of any set position for the house of the chief man of the village: he may live either in the centre or at the extreme end of the row. Each house usually shelters several families, in one sense of the term; these are related to each other and under the tacitly acknowledged control of some elder, to whom the building is reputed to belong, and who is a person of greater or less importance in the tribe or village according to the amount of his property or cunning of his intellect.

Before some of these Siwash mansions a rude porch or platform is erected, upon which, in fair weather, a miscellaneous group of natives will squat in assembly, conversing, if squaws, or gambling, if men. The houses themselves are usually square upon their foundations, and vary much in size, some of them being a hundred feet square, while most of them are between fifty and sixty feet, the smaller rancheries being less than twenty. The gable end, and the entrance right under its plumb, always faces the street and beach-view; the roof slopes down at a low pitch or angle on each side, with a projecting shelter erected right over the hole left in the roof-centre, intended for the escape of smoke—no chimneys were ever built. This shelter, or shutter, is movable, and is shifted by the Indian just as the wind and rain may drive; the floor is oblong or nearly square, and, in the older and better constructed examples, is partly sunk in the earth, i.e., the ground has been excavated to a depth of six or eight feet in a square area, directly in the centre, with one or two large earthen steps or terraces left running around the sides of the cellar. A small square of bare dirt is left in the exact centre, again, of this hole, while the rest of the floor is covered with split planks of cedar; the earthen steps which environ the lower floor are in turn faced and covered with cedar-slabs, and these serve not only for sleeping and lounging places, but also for the stowage, in part, of all sorts of boxes and packages of property and food belonging to the family; the balance of these treasures usually hangs suspended, in all manner of ingenious contrivances, from the heavy beams and roof-poles overhead. The rancheries which are built to-day by Alaskan Indians nearly all stand on the surface of the ground without any excavation—a decided degeneracy.

The pattern of the Koloshian house is maintained with little variation throughout the archipelago, and has been handed down from remote antiquity. When, after extended confabulation, a number of Indians agree to build a house, several months are passed first in the forest by them, where they are engaged in felling the trees and dressing the timbers necessary; when these logs and planks are finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is done with axes and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), they are tumbled into the water and towed around to the contemplated site of the new edifice. The great size of the beams and planks used in a big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a large number of hands co-operate in the work. The erection, therefore, of such a structure in all its stages, the cutting and hewing in the woods, the launching and towing of the timbers to the foundations, and their subsequent elevation and fitting, forms the occasion of a regular gathering, or “bee,” that generally calls in whole detachments from neighboring villages, which is always the precursor to a grand “potlatch,” or giving away of the portable property of the savage for whom the labor is undertaken.

Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a Rancherie.

Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assembling of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time ere completion in all details, because the Siwash for whom the work has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as it may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable property, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of the labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more than two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect babel of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the entire combination of men, women, and children, as the great beams are placed in position.[19]

In the construction of these dwellings the savage uses no iron or wooden spikes, he “mortices” and “tenons” rudely but solidly everything that requires binding firmly; in the lighter and temporary summer rancheries much use is made of cedar-root and bark-rope lashings to the same end. Within the last fifteen or twenty years the common use of small windows has been employed, the glazed sashes being purchased from the whites either at Victoria or else brought up to order by the traders; these are inserted in the most irregular manner, usually on the sides under the eaves.

The oddly-carved totem posts, which appear in every village, sometimes like a forest of dead trees at distant sight, are, broadly speaking, divisible into two classes: that is to say, the clan or family pillars, and those erected as memorials of the dead. There has been too much written in regard to these grotesque features seeking to endow them with idolatry, superstitions, and other fancies of the savage mind. Nothing of the kind, in my opinion, belongs to the subject; the image posts of the totem order are generally from 30 to 50 feet in height, with a diameter of 3 to 5 feet at the base, tapering slightly upward. They are often hollowed at the back, after the fashion of a trough, so that they can be the easier handled and put into position. Those grotesque figures which cover these posts from top to bottom, closely grouped together, have little or no serious significance whatever: they always display the totem of the owner, and a very marked similarity runs through the carvings of this character in each village, though they have a wide range of variation when one settlement is contrasted with another. I am unable to give any definite explanation, that is worthy of attention, of the real meaning of all those strange designs—perhaps, in truth, there is none; they are simply ornamental doorways.

The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the buildings. When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in the medicine man, or “shaman,” and also invite the friends of the family to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco; soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and purchased it from some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay or difficulty in getting one.

If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner as that indicated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be placed but a single body, then again it will contain several—all relatives, however. But should the deceased savage have been one of great importance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and seeking quarters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary, sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man. Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a distribution of property made by the deceased man’s brother, or that relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before.[20]

The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole through which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside. As you enter, the whole interior seems dark—everything, at first, indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portière over the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace, upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing; kettles of stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes, all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room, some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving in wood or slate; while others are idly staring into the fire, or, wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring. Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead, hang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life, such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs, cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon and halibut, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such people—blankets,[21] tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs of silk, are stowed away in the corners.

But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation swift, of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though a tempest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the Koloshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse—slops, bones, shells, fish-débris, and a medley of similar and worse nuisances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere hangs heavy around our heads—we move away.

On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with, unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basketware; they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are almost invariably bare—too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is a very common practice; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect; blue and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of meat-eating savages, who always paint themselves with great care as to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning; especially hideous are the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe smeared over the countenances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out upon them as they are fishing or paddling extended journeys in their canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in mourning by the same application.

Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style; and, until quite lately, the females all wore labrets in the lower lips—this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only among the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or copper, are inserted; and also the septum of the nose is perforated, of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or a pendant of haliotis shell.

Each village has its lex non scripta, and is a law unto itself everywhere within the confines of the Alexander archipelago; or, in different words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to any other village or savages—it is the largest unit in the Indian system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the individual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen—there are no strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other’s simple life, every move that they make, what they capture in the forest or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the rancheries over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimulates and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing in its detail—no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not acknowledged; but any action tending to the injury of another, in person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the sufferer—usually atoned for—and the village feud, thus aroused, is soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property, to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which, inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable manner; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male Indian able to bear arms; and although these savages are fearless and brave, yet they know no open, fair fight—taught to get his living by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and do.

Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet, and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work, hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has to hire them to labor by making the customary “potlatch,” just as any other man of the tribe would do—only he must give a little more. The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange features, for though every rancherie has its freely-acknowledged chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than there are houses, each one of which has its own regulations, and a subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.[22]

The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the interior country; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers and streams, are duly divided up among the different families. These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches—and they are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage inheritance; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of proprietary and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast, corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define the limits of such properties between savages, by savages; and furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such, for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter—berries, wreckage, or shell-fish.

The woods and the waters are teeming with animal life; the lofty semi-naked peaks harbor mountain goats in large flocks; the beautiful grouse of Sabine hides in the forest thickets; the land otter and the mule-eared deer haunt the countless ravines, valleys, and rivulet bottoms; salmon in fabulous numbers run up those streams, and big, brown and glossy black bears come down to fatten upon these spawning fish. But the Sitkan savage is indolent, and, though all this dietary abundance and variety is before him, he lives quite exclusively upon halibut and salmon, the former mostly fresh and the latter air-dried and smoked in the soot of his rancherie. Halibut he finds all the year round; salmon briefly run only at widely separated periods.

The halibut fishery is the one systematic regular occupation of the natives. These fish may be taken in all waters of the archipelago at almost any season, though on certain banks, well known to the Indians, they are more numerous at times. When the halibut are most active and abundant, the Koloshians take them in large quantities, fishing with a hook and line from their canoes, which are anchored over the favored spots by stones attached to cedar-bark ropes or cables. They still employ their own primitive, clumsy-looking hook in decided preference to using our own make. When the canoe is loaded to the gunwale by an alert fisherman, these halibut are brought in to some convenient adjacent point on the shore, where they are handed over to the women, who are there to take care of them, usually living in a temporary rancherie. They squat around the pile, rapidly clean the fish, removing the larger bones, head, fins, and tail, and cut it into broad, thin flakes. These are then hung on the poles of a wooden frame trellis, where, without salt, and by the wind and sun alone, sometimes aided by a slow fire underneath the suspended fish-meat, the flakes are sufficiently cured and dried; then they are packed away in those characteristic cedar boxes for future use.

A group of old and young squaws, half-nude, flecked with shining scales and splashed with blood, as they always are when at work upon a fine run of halibut or salmon—such a group is to be vividly remembered ever afterward, if you see it even but once. The little pappooses, entirely naked, with big heads and bellies, slender necks and legs, are running hither and thither in infantile glee and sport, always with a mouthful of raw ova or a handful of stewed fish from the kettle near by, while the babies, propped up in their stiff-backed lashings, croon and sleep away the time.

There are no rivers of any size flowing on the islands of the Sitkan archipelago; but there are rapid rivulets and broad brooks in great numbers. Many of these are large enough to be known as “salmon rivers.” The first run of those attractive fish usually takes place up some of the longest island-streams and the mainland rivers about July 10th to 20th. A month later a larger species begins to arrive from the depths of the ocean outside, and this run sometimes lasts, in a desultory manner, until January. These salmon, when they first appear, are fat and in superb condition and color; but as they leave the salt water and take up their persistent, tireless ascent of fresh-water channels they become hook-jawed, lean, and pale-fleshed. They ascend very small streams in especially great numbers when these rivulets are swollen by the heavy rains of October, and, being easily caught and very large, they constitute the chief harvest of the Alaskan Indian—his meat and bread, in fact. They are either speared in the shallow estuaries or trapped in brush and split-stick weirs, which are planted in the streams. Everyone of the little salmon brooks has its owner in the Indian law. They are the private property of the several families or subdivisions of the clans. Those people always come out of their permanent village houses during the fishing period, and camp upon the banks of their respective water claims.

It is quite unnecessary to itemize all the species of food-fishes in the Alexander archipelago, for anything and everything that is at all abundant in the vicinity of an Indian rancherie is sure to be eaten; trout, herring, flounders, rock-cod, and the rosy, glittering sebastines constitute minor details of the savage dietary. Codfish are taken in these waters, but not in great numbers, nor are they especially sought for. The spawn of the herring[23] is collected on spruce boughs, which the Indians carefully place at low-water on the spawning grounds; then, when taken up, it is smoke-dried and stored away.

But the “loudest” feast of these savages consists of a box, just opened, of semi-rotten salmon-roe. Many of the Siwashes have a custom of collecting the ova, putting it into wooden boxes, and then burying it below high-water mark on the earthen flats above. When decomposition has taken place to a great extent, and the mass has a most penetrating and far-reaching “funk,” then it is ready to be eaten and made merry over. The box is usually uncovered without removing it from its buried position; the eager savages all squat around it, and eat the contents with every indication on their hard faces of keen gastronomic delight—faugh!

Indians Raking Oolochans and Herring.—Stickeen River.

The same ill-favored and heartily-hated “dog-fish”[24] of our Cape Cod fishermen is also very abundant in these far-away waters. Recently, the demand created for its oil by the tanneries of Oregon and California has made its capture by the Indians an important source of revenue to them; the oil rendered from its liver is readily sold by them to the white traders, who also have established a fishery for the purpose on Prince of Wales Island. These traders also are making good use of herring-oil, which is to be secured here in unfailing, abundant supply, to any quantity required.

The most grateful condiment to the Sitkan palate is rancid fish-oil, or oolachan “butter”—a semi-solid grease, with a fetid smell and taste; into this they always dip or rub their flakes of dried fish, their berries, in fact everything that they eat. A little wooden trencher or tub, grotesquely carved, always is to be seen (and smelled), placed alongside of the monotonous kettle of stewed fish, or pile of dried fish, which constitutes the regular spread for a full meal. And again, a very curious, soap-like use of this oil is made by the younger and more comely savages. An Indian never washes in water up in this wet and watery wilderness. I never have seen an attempt made to wash the face or hands with water, but they do rub oil vigorously over, and scrub it off bright and dry with a towel, or mop, of cedar-bark shreds or dry sedge-grass. The constant presence of this strong-flavored oil renders it a physical impossibility for a white man, not long-accustomed to its odor, to enter a rancherie and eat with the inmates, unless the pangs of starvation make him ravenous.

Whether from taste itself, or sheer indolence, the culinary art of these people is confined to the incessant simmering and boiling of everything which is not eaten raw, or ripe; copper, sheet-iron, and brass kettles being now universally used, are the only decided innovation made by contact with ourselves in their aboriginal cooking outfit, though the introduction of tin and cheap earthenware dishes is growing more general every day. Most of the Indian household utensils are made of wood; they are fashioned in several forms or types, which appear to have been faithfully copied from early time. The berry and the food-trays are cut out of solid pieces of wood, the length being about one and one-third times as great as the width, while the depth is relatively small. In some of the large rancheries these trays, or troughs, are six to ten feet long; the outer ends of those receptacles are generally carved richly in all sorts of fancy relief; and, sometimes, the sides are grotesquely painted. A common form, and smaller in size, and a great favorite with the family, is boat-shaped, the hollow of the dish being oval; the ends are provided with odd prow-shaped projections that serve as handles—one of these ends being usually carved into the head and fore-feet of some animal or bird, the other to represent its hind-feet and tail. These dishes are seldom more than eight or ten inches in length, and curve upward from the middle each way, like the “sheer,” or the gunwale, of a clipper ship.

A STICKEEN SQUAW

Boiling Berries and Oil, Toasting Herrings, etc.

Water-dippers, pot-spoons and ladles are made from horns of the mountain sheep. They are steamed, bent, and pared down thin, carved and shaped so as to be exceedingly symmetrical, and well finished. The stew and berry-spoons in ordinary use are made from the stiff, short black horns of the mountain goat, the handles often carved to represent a human form, animal, or bird. Knives of all sorts are now in use. Much ingenuity is often exhibited by the adaptation of old blades to new handles—in converting the large, flat blacksmithing files into keen weapons, and making fish-cleaning knives out of pieces of iron; thin, square or oblong sheets of this metal are so fitted into oblong wooden handles as to resemble the small hash-knives used in our kitchens.

But the Sitkan housekeeper glories in her boxes—great chests and little ones—in which she stores everything of value belonging to the family, except the dogs and the canoes. The big boxes, corded up with bark ropes, are her blanket and fur treasuries; the smaller ones contain her oolachan “butter” and dried fish and meat. The larger chests are from two and a half to four feet square; the lesser are between a foot to two feet. The sides of such a box are made of a single piece of thinly shaven cedar board, which by steaming is bent three times at a right angle, and pegged tightly and very neatly up to the fourth corner. The bottom is a separate solid plank, keyed in with little pegs very solidly, and water-tight; the cover is cut out of a thick slab, and fits over and sets down heavily on the upper edge of the chest. Those boxes are all decorated in designs of the peculiar type so common among these savages, painted in black and white. The next desideratum of the squaw is a full supply of cedar-bark mats, which she plaits from strips of this material, and which are always spread out on the ground or rude plank floor when the Indian prepares to roll up in his blanket for slumber. Such mats are the pride of all Thlinket squaws, and vary much in texture and in pattern.

But the daily routine of the dusky housekeeper is a very different one indeed from that characteristic of woman’s labor in caring for our homes. No sweeping or dusting in the Indian rancherie; no bed-chambers to change the linen in and tidy up; no kitchen or servants to look after; nothing whatever of the kind. Yet the Indian matron is always busy. She has to hew the firewood and drag it in; she has to carry water and attend to all of the rude cooking and filling of the trenchers; she looks after the mats and the sewing of the children’s fur and other garments—not much to be sure in the way of dressmaking—she has to make all of the tedious berry-trips, picking and drying of the fruit, as well as attending to the preservation, in the same manner, of the fish and game which the man brings in. She has an infinite amount of drudgery to do in the line of gathering certain herbs, bark, and shell-fish. Many small roots indigenous to the country, containing more or less starch, are eagerly sought after, dried, and stored away by the women. The inner sap-layer of the spruce and also that of the hemlock—the cambium layer—is collected by cutting the trees down and then barking the trunks for that object. It is shaved off in ribbons and eaten in great quantities, both fresh and dried, and is considered very wholesome. It is sweet, mucilaginous, but distinctly resinous in flavor. The rank-growing seeds, shoots, and leaf-stalks of the Epilobium heracleum, and many others, are plucked and carried by the squaws in huge bundles to the family fire, and there eaten by all hands, the stalks being dipped, mouthful after mouthful, in oil.

She has, however, no washing whatever of clothes to do for anybody, except what little she may see fit to do for herself; she never treats the dishes even to that ordeal. With all this, however, it seems rather strange that the clothes of the Indians, consisting of dresses, shirts and blankets for the men; and for women, petticoats, chemises, dresses (sometimes), and blankets also—that these articles usually appear neat and tolerably clean—the children excepted, as they are always dirty beyond all adequate description. Every individual attends to his or her own washing—if the husband wants a clean shirt, he washes it himself.

Before the introduction of the potato through early white fur-traders, the only plant cultivated by the Alaskan savages was a potent weed which they grew as a substitute for tobacco—the importation of the latter, however, has taken its place entirely to-day, because the Virginian weed is far more pleasant. But the old stone mortars and pestles that are still to be found knocking around the most venerable town-sites, bear evidence to the industry of making native tobacco here ages ago. This plant was prepared for use by drying over a fire on a little frame stretcher, then bruised to a powder in the stone mortars, then moistened and pressed into cakes. It was not smoked in a pipe, but, mixed with a little clamshell lime (burnt for the purpose), it was chewed or held in the cheek, just as the Peruvian Indians use coca.[25] Everybody knows how fond Indians are of tobacco—there is no exception to the rule in Alaska, and no excuse for attempting to recite in these pages the well-worn story anew.

No domesticated animals, except dogs, are to be found with the Alaskan Indians—no cats or fowls. The original breed of curs has been very much disguised by imported strains; the present natives are gray and black, shaggy, wolfish beasts, about the size of a large spitz dog. These cowardly, treacherous animals alone make a white man’s stay in an Indian village a burden to his existence.

The work bestowed by several of the Sitkan clans upon their so-called potato gardens is hardly to be designated as the “cultivation” of that tuber. It forms to-day, this vegetable does, a very important part of the food-supply, and where a white man takes hold of such a garden the result, in a small way, is very satisfactory; but the Siwash finds that the greater part of the low, flat, rich soil in this country is so thickly wooded that the task of clearing the ground is altogether too much for him to even consider, much less undertake. But when he can find a place where an old settlement once existed, though long abandoned—there the sites of decayed rancheries are sure to be of rich, warm soil—such are the spots which the Siwash calls his garden, and where his potatoes are rudely planted, little or no attention being paid to the hoeing and drilling which we deem essential, therefore the variety in use has been run down so that the size and yield is very small, and the quality watery and poor.

While we observe the very general possession of firearms in every rancherie, and we hardly ever see a canoe-load of savages unless the barrels of several muskets or rifles project over the gunwale, yet these Sitkan Indians are not great hunters; but the potent fact that there is no place in all this region where foot travel is practicable into the interior, or even along the coast margin itself, affords an excellent reason; they do, however, kill a very considerable number of black bears every year, at two special seasons therein, i.e., when these brutes are found prowling upon the sea-beach. But they never follow bruin into the mountainous recesses, where he invariably retreats.

In the early spring, during that brief period when the weeds and grasses first grow green along the outskirts of the timber in warm sheltered nooks down by the tide-level, black bears come below from the cold, gloomy cañons above and feed upon the sprouting skunk-cabbage[26] and other succulent shoots, browsing here and rooting up there, these tender growths, just as hogs do in our orchards and clover-fields. Again, late in autumn, when the salmon rush up into the estuaries and through the shallows by countless myriads, bruin is once more tempted down to the sea-beaches, and again gets into trouble. In the same manner the Indians secure the beautiful little mule-deer,[27] which also loves tender vegetation, and in this love falls an easy prey to the silent approach of a canoe with its skulking crew. Geese and ducks, during winter months, spend much time on the quiet fiörds in large flocks, and constitute the chief gunning of the Siwashes, who shoot them from their canoes with the same old flint-lock trade-muskets first used by the whites a hundred years ago. The Indian admires this pattern still above all other patterns—despises the percussion-cap, which in this damp region often fails him, and the trader, knowing this weakness of the savage, always has a stock of these flint-lock muskets, newly made, on hand. A supply is steadily furnished by the Hudson’s Bay Company at Victoria.

But the one thing of joy, of delight, and of infinite use to the native of the Sitkan archipelago is his canoe. Life, indeed, would be a sad problem for him were it not for this adjunct of his own creation. Upon its construction he lavishes the best of his thought, the height of his manual skill, and his infinite patience. The result of this attention is to fashion from a single cedar log a little vessel which challenges our admiration invariably, for its fine outline and its seaworthiness and strength.

All the canoes of this region have a common model, and are similar in type, though they differ much in details of shape and size. They are all made from the indigenous pine[28] and giant cedar,[29] the wood of which is light, durable, and worked very readily; but it is apt to split parallel to its grain. This constitutes the only solicitude of the Indian’s mind. He keeps the canoe covered with mats and brush whenever it is hauled out, even for a few days, to avoid this danger, for whenever a canoe is heavily laden, and working, as it will do, in a rough channel, it is in constant danger of splitting at the cleavage lines of its grain, and thus jeopardizing its living as well as dead freight.

With an exception of the bow and stern-pieces, each canoe, no matter how large or how small, is made in the same manner and from a single log, which is roughed out in the forest, then towed around to the permanent village, where it is hauled up in front of the architect’s house. Here he works upon it during winter months, usually in odd hours, employing nothing but his little adze-like hatchet and fire to assist in giving it shape and fine lines. The requisite expansion amidships, to afford that beam required, is effected by steaming with water and hot stones and the insertion of several thwart sticks. Canoes are smoothed outside and painted black, with a red or white streak under the gunwale in most cases; inside they bear the regular fine tooth-marks of the excavating adze, and are smeared with red-ochre. The paddles are usually made of yellow cypress, and a great variety of small wooden baling dippers are also provided, one or two for each canoe, because the water often slops over the gunwales in bad weather. The canoe itself is never suffered to leak. The average size is one of fifteen to twenty feet in length, which will carry from eight to ten savages, with baggage. One having a length of from thirty to thirty-five feet carries as many men. The smaller canoes of from twelve to thirteen feet are usually used by one or two savages in their quick, irregular trips to and from the village, and are easily launched and hauled out by one man.

It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the Sitkan ever took or takes any real enjoyment in hunting or fishing. If he does, it is never exhibited on his countenance or evidenced by his language. It is, in fact, the serious business of his life, and the steady routine of its prosecution has robbed him of every enjoyable sporting sensation which we love to experience when after fish or game. Perhaps, however, he may recall the thrill of that feeling which he felt when, as a boy, he was first taken out in his father’s canoe to the halibut banks, and there permitted to bait a huge wooden hook and haul away upon the taut kelp-line when the “kambala” had swallowed it; but the necessity of going out to this shoal in all sorts of disagreeable weather every summer and winter of his subsequent existence, at very frequent intervals, soon destroyed pleasurable emotions. Therefore, he fashions his acute-angled wooden hooks, his iron-tipped fish and seal spears, and polishes up his musket with none of those enjoyable anticipations which possess the soul of a white sportsman.

In 1841-42 the best understanding of the Russian and English traders agreed in reporting a population of over twenty thousand Indians within the limits of the Alexander archipelago; to-day the same country can show no more than a scant seven thousand. The inroads that small-pox and measles have made, by which these savages were destroyed even as fire sweeps through and burns drought-withered thickets, leave little doubt as to the great numerical superiority of earlier days as compared with the present. This decay and abandonment is everywhere exhibited now even in the permanent villages, where houses have been deserted completely: some are shut up, mouldering, and rotting away upon their foundations; others, large and fit for the shelter of fifty or sixty natives, will be found tenanted by only two or three Siwashes. All the standing carved posts in this entire region, with rare exceptions, are, as a rule, more or less advanced into decay. A rank growth of weeds, dark and undisturbed in some cases, presses up close to inhabited houses, the traffic not being sufficient to keep them down. The original features of these settlements, in a few years more of this unchecked neglect and decay, will have entirely disappeared as they have already at Sitka. At the present hour, however, we can go among them, and readily call up to our minds what they once were when they were swarming with occupants who were dressed in tanned-leather shirts and sea-otter cloaks, as they thronged about the ships of Cook and Vancouver.

Slavery, which was originally firmly interwoven with the social fabric of these people, has been about abolished—slaves themselves to-day are very scarce, and are not much more so than in name. They were the captives taken in savage warfare between opposing clans, and were most horribly tortured and cruelly treated by their masters.

As a rule the young people marry young, after the stolid fashion of Indians. They approve of polygamy, but seldom do you find a man with more than one squaw, simply because the women do not contribute materially and primarily to the support of the family, and attend only to the accessory duties of it; thus it becomes an increased tax upon the dull energies of the savage whenever he adds an extra woman to his household. The squaws are all well treated everywhere up here; they have just as much to say as their lords and masters whenever the occasion of buying, selling, or hiring arises; as to the children (we will not see many of them to-day), they are always kindly cared for by both parents, and the whole tribe is as indulgent, since they are constantly roaming about the village, after the custom of youngsters universally.

A candid verdict will result, in view of the surroundings of the Koloshian, that the only vice which can be legitimately charged up against him, or his kind, is the sin of gambling. To this dissipation the Alaskan savage is desperately prone; the monotonous chant of the stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These worthies sit on the ground, in a circle usually, in the centre of which a mat is spread; six or seven small wooden pins about as large as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting a deep guttural hah-hah-ee-nah-hah! the others watch him with lynx-like eyes for a few moments, when one of the players suddenly orders the shuffler to show his hands, in which the sticks are firmly clinched, and at the same time endeavors to guess the value of these sticks in either one hand or the other, which have been held up—he pauses a moment, then makes his decision, the clinched hand designated is opened, the little sticks fall to the mat, and the caller wins or loses just as he happens to hit the value expressed by the markings on these pins: if he guesses correctly he wins everything in the pot or pool, and takes up the wooden dice in turn, to shuffle, shout, and repeat for the rest of the circle. This game is usually sustained night and day, until some one of the party remains the winner of everything that the others started in with.

That wretched debauchery which an introduction of rum into the rancheries of these natives has caused, cannot be justly laid at the Indian’s door; this intense morbid craving for liquor among the Alaskan savages of this region is most likely due to the climate—it is not near so strong in the appetite of the natives who live east of the coast range. Although Congress has legislated, and our officials have endeavored to carry out the prohibition statutes, yet the matter thus far is wholly beyond control—the savage cannot only smuggle successfully within these intricate watery channels, but he now thoroughly understands the distillation of rum itself from sugar and molasses.

There is something in this atmosphere which enables a white man to drink a great deal more with impunity than he can in any other section of the United States or Territories—the quantities of strong tea, the nips of brandy, wine, and cordials which he will swallow with perfect physical indifference, in the course of every day of his life, at Sitka for instance, would drive him to delirium in an exceedingly short time if repeated at San Francisco. Naturally enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected by Indian stomachs; and now that they have fully grasped the understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate extinction of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our combined virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence.