Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

A wild-looking old medicine-man, with long red hair, hovered on the outskirts of the group, and finally showed us, with innocent pride, a naval officer’s letter of credentials, which testified to his having a good ear for music, since he neither flinched nor winked, when a large cannon was slyly touched off at his elbow, during one of his visits on board a man-of-war.

Three-Fingered Jack, a celebrity of another order, wandered about the camp arrayed in the cast-off uniform of a naval officer, with his breast pinned full of tin and silver stars, like a German diplomat. Sitka Jack’s son looked quite unconscious while the three-fingered lion passed by; but when we directed his attention to him, the son of his papa gave a pitying, contemptuous look and declared that he did not know who it was. As well might we have asked one of the Capulets who Romeo was.

Kloh-Kutz, or Hole-in-the-Cheek, the head chief of the Chilkats, appeared to us only in flying glimpses, as he ran up and down the steps of the trader’s store. He is a wrinkled old fellow now, and the hole left in his cheek by a wound is decorated by a large bone button similar to those that the women wear in their cheeks. When Professor Davidson, of the Coast Survey, went to the Chilkat country in 1867, on the revenue cutter Lincoln, Capt. J. W. White commanding, to gather material for a report upon the topography, climate, and the resources of Alaska, called for by the Congressional committees having the matter of the purchase of the territory in charge, he first made the acquaintance of Kloh-Kutz, then in his prime.

In 1869 Professor Davidson revisited the Chilkat country to observe the total eclipse of the sun, and, by invitation of Kloh-Kutz, established his observatory at the village of Klu-Kwan, twenty miles up the Chilkat River. The station was called Kloh-Kutz in honor of the distinguished patron and protector of the scientists, who gave them the great council-house for a residence. In the ardor of his hospitality Kloh-Kutz was going to have the name “Davidson” tattoed on his arm, but at the suggestion of the astronomer gave up that elaborate design, and had “Seward” traced across his biceps with a needle and thread dipped in soot and seal oil and drawn through the flesh. He was quite willing to wear his name when he learned that Seward was the great Tyee, or chief, who bought the country of the Russians and thereby raised the price of furs so greatly.

In advance of the eclipse, Professor Davidson told his host what would happen; that the sun would be hidden at midday, and darkness fall upon the land on the 7th of August, and that it would come as a great shadow sweeping down the valley of the Chilkat. The Indians had always gathered and silently watched the white men when they pointed their strange instruments at the sun each day, but they fled in terror when the great darkness began to come, and did not return until the eclipse was over. They regarded Professor Davidson with the greatest awe, as a wonderful medicine-man who could perform such great miracles at will; and Kloh-Kutz, delighted with the great trick of his friend, made a serious offer of all his canoes, blankets, and wives, if the astronomer would tell him “how he did it,” and divulge the secret confidentially to a brother conjurer.

The evening before the eclipse, word reached Professor Davidson that Secretary Seward and his party were at the mouth of the Chilkat River, to convey him back to Portland on their steamer, as soon as his observations were completed. Kloh-Kutz was invited to come down and meet the great Tyee, and hold a council with Gen. Jeff. C. Davis, the military commandant, who had gone up from Sitka with the Seward party. Kloh-Kutz chose the flower of Chilkat chivalry to go below with his great war canoe and carry a letter from Professor Davidson to Mr. Seward, urging him to “come up hither” and see the territory he had bought; and luring on the ex-premier by saying that he had discovered an iron mountain, the ore of which was seventy per cent iron. Referring to this fact in a speech made at a public meeting in Sitka afterwards, Mr. Seward said:

“When I came there I found very properly he had been studying the heavens so busily that he had but cursorily examined the earth under his feet; that it was not a single iron mountain he had discovered, but a range of hills, the very dust of which adheres to the magnet, while the range itself, 2,000 feet high, extends along the east bank of the river thirty miles.”

Mr. Seward and his son, and General Davis, with two staff officers, and others of the party, left the ship in three canoes early on the morning of the day of the eclipse. They were half way up to Klu-Kwan village,[village,] when the shadow began to cross the sun, and the weird, unearthly light fell upon the land. The Indians in the canoe said the sun “was very sick and wanted to go to sleep,” and they refused to paddle any further. The canoes were beached quickly, and the visitors made a sociable camp-fire for themselves, and cooked their dinner by its blaze. Late in the afternoon they reached the village, and that evening Kloh-Kutz made a call of ceremony upon the guests in the council-house. There was an array of Chilkat chiefs and Chilkat women to witness the meeting of the Tyees, and after a speech of welcome, Kloh-Kutz drew up his sleeve dramatically and showed the “Seward” tattoed with his totems on his arm. The great diplomat was quite astonished and bewildered, and the handwriting on the wall hardly made a greater sensation in Belshazzar’s court.

The next morning the wa-wa, or official council, was held with the aid of two interpreters, one to translate English into Russian, and the other to translate Russian into Chilkat. Believing that if Mr. Seward bought Alaska, he must still own it in person, Kloh-Kutz ignored Gen. Davis, as being only the great Tyee’s servant, and addressed himself directly to the supposed ruler of the whole country. His grievance was that, ten years before, three Chilkats had been killed at Sitka, and now, “What is the great Tyee going to do about it?” Kloh-Kutz was not to be put off by the diplomatic answer that the murder had happened during Russian days. He said that “the Tyee of the Russians was so poor that he could not keep his land and had to sell it,” but for all that he must have reparation for the loss of his three Chilkats. To his mind one Chilkat was worth three Sitkans, and if the Tyee would let him kill nine Sitkans, the account would be squared. With a finesse worthy of a diplomat who had dealt with all the great nations of the earth, Mr. Seward finally brought Kloh-Kutz down to accepting forty blankets as an indemnity, and he and his sub-chief Colchica and their wives led the guard of honor that escorted the great Tyee back to his ship. Captain C. C. Dall, who commanded the steamer Active during that memorable cruise, gave a great entertainment to the chiefs on board, and fireworks rounded off that memorable evening. Mr. Seward presented a flag to the Chilkat chief, and at the banquet in the cabin, he and Professor Davidson gave astronomy by easy lessons to their Chilkat visitors, and disclaimed any agency in the eclipse as an accompaniment of the Tyee’s visit.

Kloh-Kutz is delighted yet to show his Seward tattoo mark to any one, and to tell of the visit of the great Tyee. He is a chief of advanced and liberal notions, a high-strung, imperious old fellow, and has a fine countenance, marred only by the wound in his cheek, which was received at the hands of one of his own tribe during some internecine troubles. His assailant held a revolver close to Kloh-Kutz’s head, and when the chief looked scornfully at it, the trigger was snapped. Weak powder prevented the ball from inflicting any more serious injuries than to enter his cheek and tear away a few teeth. Kloh-Kutz swallowed his teeth and handed the bullet back to his assailant with a fine gesture, saying: “You cannot hurt me. See!”