Among the Indians.
Along the southern shores of Alaska and on the banks of the rivers of the inland country are many Indian villages. They belong to several different tribes, but their way of living is much the same. Their huts are generally built of logs and bark, and they like best to dress in the bright-colored blankets, with red and yellow handkerchiefs on their heads, which they get in barter from the white traders. The red children have broad faces, black eyes, and black hair. Long ago, before the white men lived among them, these little Indians believed that they could make themselves more beautiful by tattooing their bodies. As these poor children grew up, they suffered many an hour of pain while the red or blue lines were marked on their chins by threads drawn along under the skin. Now, however, as the red men learn more and more of the ways of the white people, this cruel fashion is passing away. Many of the little Indians of Alaska go to school, where they take delight in learning to read and write. They are rather slow, but they are very patient, and proud indeed are they when they have mastered a hard lesson.
Most of them, however, are still in Mother Nature’s school alone, but their bright eyes are continually learning new things about the trees and the flowers, and the wild animals that roam through the forests and over the snowfields. These children of the red men delight in the water. The rivers of Alaska are the roadways, and here as well as on the coast, the boys paddle in their canoes for many a mile, hunting, fishing, and racing. Many an Indian has a morning bath in the ice-cold river, or in the ocean. “It will make my child strong,” his mother thinks, and so, whether it be a bright summer day, or a dark and freezing winter morning, in he goes for his daily plunge.
In front of many homes of the red children are tall, straight posts. Horrible-looking faces are carved upon these posts, as well as the figures of birds, fishes and wild animals.
“It is the totem-pole,” the Indian child will tell you with pride. The totem is the mark of his family. It is even more to him than is the coat-of-arms to many an Englishman. Suppose a wolf is the principal carving upon the pole. The child’s parents tell him it is their guardian, and the child learns to look upon it with reverence. Perhaps his grandfather or his great-grandfather dreamed of the wolf while he was fasting alone in the forest. He thought it was a vision from heaven, and he chose it henceforth to be the totem of his tribe or of his family.