The potlatches were of different kinds, although all partook of the nature of a feasting or merrymaking and were distinguished by the giving of gifts. In the ordinary visiting potlatches, or in the berry potlatches, the visitors came in their canoes with which they formed a line off shore opposite the houses, put planks from one canoe to another and on these planks danced the tribal dance. Those on shore danced the welcome dance and invited the guests ashore. Then the visitors disembarked and each family became the guest of their kinsmen of their totem or they went to the guesthouse of the kwan. All the people of the same totem are supposed to be blood relations, so all those of the wolf totem go to the Gooch-heat, or the dwelling blazoned by the rude heraldry with the wolf rampant. In the great social potlatches a wealthy chief invites his friends from many villages and entertains them for a week or more with dancing and feasting and makes presents varied and valuable, from Hudson’s Bay blankets to bolts of calico or of flannel, and in primitive days, copper tows,[[11]] Chilkat blankets, and even slaves were handed over with a lavish hospitality.

On special occasions in the olden time, with great ceremony the visitors landed at a distance from the village, drew their canoes ashore and proceeded to the village dressed in festive garments adorned with sealion heads or other strange headdresses, in which they danced the rare and picturesque “Beach Dance,” in acknowledgement to the Spirit of the Sea for the bountiful supply of salmon and herring of the past season–for the native American is a thankful being and omits not to show it when occasion offers to acknowledge it to the Giver of all good and perfect gifts.

During the earlier years of the colony the Kolosh were implacable enemies. War parties of young men constantly haunted the islands of the bay, lying in wait for any unwary hunter or fisherman from the fort. Later, when they were settled under the walls of the fort they became more tractable, for their homes and families were commanded by the guns of the fortress, but on the least provocation the savagery in their blood would boil, from their great tribal houses they issued forth, faces blackened to the semblance of devils, war masks grinning, and the howling mob shouted defiance at their neighbor over the stockade. Many a bloody tragedy was enacted in the “Ranche” for their code was primitive, “an eye for an eye,” and a life for a life.

Feuds raged between the different totemic families. About 1853 a party of Wrangell Indians (Stikines) visited Sitka, and while being entertained in the guest-house were murdered and their bodies piled into a canoe which was then paddled to Japonski Island. On striking the shore it was so heavily laden with the bodies of the dead that tradition says the canoe split from end to end. It is said that the bones of the dead are still to be seen in the undergrowth along the shore. In retaliation, about 1855, the Wrangell Kolosh made an attack on the Hot Springs settlement, burned the buildings, stripped the inhabitants of property and clothing and left them to make their way over the mountains around the head of Silver Bay to Sitka, where they arrived more dead than alive from hunger and exhaustion. This feud was not settled until 1918, when a peace treaty was consummated between the kwans on Armistice Day, a coincidence which is much made of by the tribesmen.

The Kolosh were as firm believers in witchcraft as any of the more civilized nations. They resorted to their shamans (ekhts) or medicine men in case of illness. If his weird incantations failed to relieve the sufferer, his resort was that the victim was bewitched and some poor unfortunate paid the penalty by enduring the most fiendish torture.

One March day in 1855 a commotion arose in the Kolosh village. A sentry caught an Indian who was stealing and punished him, for which the tribe called for vengeance. Some rushed to the stockade and began to cut away the palisades. Other forced their way into the Koloshian Church through the outer door. From this vantage point they fired on the garrison and in return the batteries of the fort blazed back with solid shot and shrapnel. For two hours the fight continued, when the Kolosh gave up all hope of success, and ceased the battle. The Russian loss in killed and wounded was 20 men, while the Kolosh loss was estimated at 60. This was the last attempt of the natives to destroy the Russian stronghold.

At times during the later days of the colony the Kolosh were employed as seamen and as workers in the ice trade by the Russians and thus they occupied a place in the industrial life. Etolin was the most successful in conciliating them of any of the chief managers, and he at one time held a fur fair at Sitka to which peltry was brought from far and near, modeled somewhat upon the idea of the great fur mart of Nizhni Novgorod. Most of them, however, hunted and fished, lived in their tribal houses, carved their canoes, wove their baskets, and practiced their witchcraft, while their civilized neighbors gathered the furs and built ships.

Under the walls of the fort, in the old tribal houses of the Kolosh which had not been destroyed, lived the Aleuts. Properly speaking the name belongs to the natives of the Aleutian Islands, but the term was also applied to the natives of Kodiak Island and the surrounding islets. These speak a different language from the true Aleuts, but otherwise resemble them closely. During the hunting season they scoured the seas in their skin bidarkas, in the pursuit of fur animals. In winter many of them remained at Sitka instead of returning to their homes. Their time was spent in idleness, spending the summer’s earnings in the pleasures and vices of the white man. One who saw them in their kazhims, as their dwellings were often called, describes them: “Morally, the Aleut is not bloodthirsty. He delights in simple rejoicings and will play you a game of chess with walrus ivory pieces–a duck for a pawn and a penguin for a king–with the greatest of good humor. Even when squabbles arrive the argument is carried on in poetry to the accompaniment of dancing, and one would be inclined to prefer the Aleut angry to the Aleut amiable, did he not know he also dances when festive and when religious.

“Among them the social duty of visiting has its drawbacks. Several families live together in the kazhims, and during one’s visit they all lie around in every conceivable posture, jolly and genial, naked and unashamed. The fumes of the blubber oil lamps and stoves, the stores of raw meat, the many naked bodies, well smeared with grease and scented with primitive unguents, combine to make an atmosphere difficult to tolerate and not easy to describe. Yet, if you will, you may enjoy the warmest hospitality, and have heaped upon you the most assiduous attentions.”