About fourteen miles to the southwest, across the bay and facing Edgecumbe, with a beautiful view of the peak and islands, is the Hot Springs, well known for their medicinal properties by the natives before the advent of the Russians, and frequently resorted to by both as a panacea for many ills. In the Place of Islands (Chasti Ostrova) is reputed to be a spring with a sour taste, while almost within the limits of the town of Sitka, Dr. Scheffer, a German physician who made a sojourn in the place about 1815, claimed to have found a medical spring whose waters were equal to some of the famed watering places of Germany.

CHAPTER IV
NATIVES

Most of the Sitkan Kolosh kept aloof from the Russian settlement after the establishment of the new fort on Chatham Strait, near the entrance of Peril Strait. All the kwans, the Khootznoos, the Hoonahs, the Chilkats, the Auks, Stikines, Kakes and others, joined with the Sitkas in the hatred of the Russians. Parties going out from the fort at Sitka for hunting expeditions, for cutting of wood, for traveling to the Hot Springs, had to be on their guard and with arms at hand prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.[[9]] Small groups were often cut off and murdered. As it was impossible to decide which of the many kwans did the act, and as there were those in each kwan who were peaceable, with whom it was desired to keep the peace, revenge against any village was inadvisable. Even as late as the date of the lease to the Hudson's Bay Co. the Russian ships that sailed among the islands to trade with the Kolosh were compelled to act with the strictest caution. Only a few natives were admitted on board at a time, the trading was done in a space near the stern, and was conducted under the muzzles of loaded cannon concealed in the fore part of the ship.[[10]] The conditions were thus until 1821, when the Sitkas were invited to reoccupy the site of the old village and to live in what is now known as the “Ranche,” under the guns of the redoubt.

The Thlingit nation is a strange, warlike, shrewd people, physically strong and enduring, and possessed of many excellent qualities. Hunters and fishermen by nature and training, they are skillful boatmen, and in those days they built wonderfully beautiful canoes of the red cedar, some of them large enough to carry sixty men at the paddles. Each spring more than a thousand men gathered together in Sitka Bay, coming from the different villages, to fish for herring at the spawning time, when those fish run in countless myriads in those waters. Hemlock boughs were placed in the water, and on them the herring roe collected until they were encrusted with the eggs which were then stripped off and dried for future use.

The “Ranche”–Looking north from the top of the Baranof Castle.
The Steamer at the left is the “Coquitlam,” noted for her participation in pelagic sealing
and she was under seizure by the U. S. Government.

In 1807 there were over 2,000 hostile natives gathered in the harbor at the herring season and they threatened an attack on the settlement. Kuskof, the most trusted and able lieutenant of Baranof, was in charge, and it put his wisdom and watchfulness to the test to avert disaster. The strictest discipline was maintained. The tribesmen waited outside day after day, hoping for news of some relaxation of the precautions of the defenders to be brought to them by the women of the tribe who were married to the Russian promishleniki (hunters). Day and night the sentinels paced the beats on the stockade and along the waterfront, till, weary of waiting, the Kolosh finally dispersed to their homes.

In the great tribal houses several families lived, sometimes as many as fifty or sixty persons. Over the door of the house was painted the family totem, for the Sitkas did not raise the house totem in a pole in front as did many of the kwans of the Thlingits, and as the Hydahs do. In these houses were held the potlatches, or gift parties, which were made by the wealthy chiefs.