A party of about sixty of a certain family returned in canoes from berrying while we were in Sitka. They went through uncouth motions while in the boats and then danced in savage grotesqueness on the shore, where they were received by the men and women of other families in wild glee. It was a berry "potlach" or feast. The women's voices could be heard singing in low, weird but sweet monotone. After dancing and distributing pieces of calico among certain of the berrying people, a party of over a hundred entered a large shack, closing the door to us white outsiders. There they went through some long ceremonies. I managed to get inside and for a few minutes was not disturbed. All were squatted around the great room, in the center of which was a fire, the smoke going out of an aperature in the roof. When I entered all were singing in so low a tone that it could almost be termed crooning. The whole thing was weird and wild, but the singing was not lacking in untutored melody. Some other tourists seeing me get in also entered, opening the door so widely that the wind drove the smoke back into the room. A sort of head man who was next the fire leading the song, got angry—gave the word, when all got up hurriedly, and each taking a large basket or bowl full of berries went off to their respective homes.
From what I could learn, a whole sub-tribe takes boats and visits some locality possibly a day or more's sail away, where the berry crop is known to be good. They remain until their canoes are well filled. When they return some of the men stand up in the canoes arrayed in showy colored calico or other bright stuff—and shout and sing and wildly gesticulate. By this, those in the village at once understand whether or not the excursion has been successful. In accordance therewith the returning party is met on the landing. If unsuccessful with dirges and lamentations. If successful with a "potlatch," a species of joyous fete.
The party we saw were in high feather. Bedizened fellows stood in the prows of the boats, going through gesticulations and contortions which, had they been white men, would have overturned the treacherous dugouts. They shouted and chanted in wild glee. Their songs were returned from the shore. There were forty to sixty in the returning party. As soon as their keels touched the strand, they poured out, a few in uncouth antics, but the bulk of them in solemn decorousness. When landed one two or more sang in wild weird tones, the women joining in the chorus. After going through certain formalities, presents were given to members of the returning party, of coin, and of strips or pieces one or more yards long of calico in red or other bright colors. Then the singing was continued, and the berries were removed from the canoes and carried into a large shack where other ceremonies were gone through. No white people were allowed to enter. A couple of natives stood guard at the door, and grufly if not angrily turned off all who attempted to gain ingress. The ceremonies were continued within for two or three hours. It was at the later end of this that I gained admission, as above stated, while the attention of the guards was removed.
The whole thing seemed very ridiculous, especially when one remembered that at best only a few bushels of huckleberries were the occasion of the rejoicing. Our Grecco-maniacs, however, should not deem the thing small. For according to Homer, the immediate success of the demigods of Greece—the heroes who gyrated in that wonderful tempest-in-a-tea-pot, the Trojan war, did quite as silly things over just as pitiful successes. After all, too, it is not the size of a thing which makes it valuable, but the size the possessor thinks it possesses. A bushel of huckleberries to an Alaskan is quite as large, as a schooner load of wheat would be to old Hutch, or a dozen car load of pigs would be to P.D.A.
THE DELICACIES OF THE TABLE.
I went into a house at Juneau; a woman and several children with one man were squatted around the fire taking their dinners. This consisted of a large dried salmon. A woman held it in her hand before the hot fire, screening her hand by a fold of the fish. When it was cooked on one side enough to burn her hand, she turned another fold and when satisfied with her culinary art, tore it apart in a large wooden bowl. The fish was in fact scarcely at all cooked, but was simply made very hot. This, however, seemed satisfactory to the feasters. Each member of the family tore a piece off with fingers or teeth. The hands of the young girls were soaked with the oil exuding from the hot and fat salmon. They wiped them clean several times during the meal upon their luxuriant tresses, which hung down their backs in massive braids. I think I must have a good-natured face, for I have never in any land offended when making such domiciliary visits. In this instance the woman wished me to join them in their feast, assuring me it was good. At least I so took the words with the expressions of face used. They had no bread of any sort. After they had sufficiently filled themselves, each took a long draught of water, from a native wooden pail.
Salmon is the staple article of food, and hangs drying by the scores and hundreds on racks in front of each shack or house and upon the walls within. The fish on the racks seemed small, possibly such are reserved for home consumption, while the larger ones had been sold to the canneries. The Alaskan salmon, however, is not a large one. It must be fattening food, for men and women are generally plump and the children as rounded as well-fed pigs. The little ones are as frisky and happy as in Japan, which I thought the paradise of babies. I was struck by the full rounded paunches of the little ones. This, too, is remarkable among their little cousins in the land of the rising sun; possibly a result of fish diet. During the summer season the Indians consume large quantities of berries—blue or huckleberries and salmon berries. The English call the latter, cloud berry in Norway. I saw a basket full of a white clustered root in front of a shack; a sort of bunch of small seed like bulbs compacted into a single bulb, very white, not unlike a mass of snow-drops glued together into a ball walnut-sized. I asked a woman who was washing them if they were good. She grinned and put a handful into her mouth as answer, at the same time handing me some. They tasted like a starchy paste made from impalpable flour. I asked the name. She replied "Chinook (Indian) lice." They cannot pronounce the "r," but Chinese-like substitute "l" for it.
Another delicacy is a kind of very small fish egg, deposited by a sort of herring on fine twigs of hemlock placed by the natives in certain places in the sea for the purpose. The eggs are clustered on the twigs until they are as big as one's thumb, thousands upon thousands, upon a small branched limb. The branches are hung up to dry. When used they are soaked in fresh water and the eggs stripped off by the hand. The eggs when soaked swell till they seem perfectly fresh. I asked the woman I saw soaking them if they were good. A smile from ear to ear illumined her face; she offered me some and then opened her capacious mouth into which she threw a handful which she crushed with evident delight. Though of an enquiring mind, I abstained heroically from accepting the proffered hospitality. Had the eggs been fried I doubt not they would have made a good dish. The dry ones were shriveled and as dead looking as the roe in a smoked herring, yet when soaked they seemed as plump and fresh as if just taken from the mother fish.
GUM-CHEWING AMONG THE NATIVES.
When selling berries to the ship passengers the women are either all the while eating of their goods or are chewing some kind of gum, generally the latter. Why should not Alaska's 400 chew gum as well as our own. One of their fashions is very grotesque. We saw several women with their faces, necks, arms and hands stained almost black. Whether this was done for ornamentation, or as a sort of mourning badge, I could not definitely learn. Both solutions were given us by people residing among them. If the latter, it furnished another evidence of Japanese origin. A Japanese married woman blackens her teeth, and plucks her eye brows and lashes to make herself unattractive, as a proof of her love for her lord. These women carry out the same idea when in sorrow. Their grief is certainly much more economical than in politer lands where, robes de deul are both nobby and costly.