A few years since a young German was sent up to establish the trading post at Pyramid Harbor, and was introduced to Kloh-Kutz as a great Tyee. When the agent failed to recognize, or understand the meaning of the “Seward” on his arm, Kloh-Kutz was disgusted, and refused to treat with him as anything but a mere trader.
“How can he be a Tyee, if he does not know the chief of all the Tyees?” scornfully said Kloh-Kutz[Kloh-Kutz].
On the east shore of Chilkat Inlet, opposite Pyramid Harbor, is the rival trading station of Chilkat, where Kinney, the Astoria salmon packer, has another cannery. In the rivalry and competition of the first year (1883) between[between] the Pyramid Harbor and Chilkat canneries, the price of salmon rose from two to fifteen cents for a single fish, and the Indians, once demoralized by opposition prices, refused to listen to reason when the canneries had to, and Chinese cheap labor was imported. There has been wrath in the Chilkat heart ever since the Chinese cousins went there, and old Kloh-Kutz indignantly said: “If Indian know how to make hoochinoo (whiskey) out of an oil can and a piece of seaweed, he knows enough to can salmon.”
During its first year the Kinney cannery shipped sixty barrels of salt salmon and 2,890 cases of canned salmon, working at a great disadvantage for want of proper nets. In 1884 the amount of salmon shipped was doubled.
Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor are rivals also in the fur trade, and at Chilkat especially, the skins and furs shown were finer than had been seen at any of the other trading places. The shrewd Chilkats are as hard bargainers as the old Hudson Bay Company people ever were, and they get the furs from the interior tribes for a mere trifle in comparison to what they demand for the same pelts from the traders. In Hudson Bay Company trades, the cheap flint-lock muskets used to be sold to the Indians, by standing the gun on the ground and piling up marten skins beside it, until they were even with the top of the gun-barrel. That hoax is equalled now by the tricks of the Chilkats, who sell gunpowder to the unsophisticated men of the interior tribes at an average rate of twenty-five dollars a pound, and boast of their smartness at this kind of bargaining which brings a profit of one hundred and even two thousand per cent. Only one tourist was ever known to get the better of a Chilkat at a bargain, and that was when a common red felt tennis hat, bought for half a dollar at Victoria, was exchanged for a silver bracelet by a Chicago man, who regretted for the rest of his trip that he had not bought a box of hats to trade for curios.
Back of the Chilkat cannery a few miles, and facing on Chilkoot Inlet, is the mission station of Haines, named for a benevolent lady of Brooklyn, N. Y., who supports the establishment, presided over by the Rev. E. S. Willard and his wife.
Either the Chilkat, or the Chilkoot Inlet gives entrance to a chain of rivers and lakes, that, leading through gorges and mountain passes, conducts the prospector by a final portage to Lewis River, one of the head tributaries of the Yukon. The Chilkat Indians, with a fine sense of the importance of their position, have always closely guarded these approaches to the interior, and prevented the Indians of the back country from ever coming down to the coast and the white traders. They have thus held the monopoly of the fur trade of the region, and, while keeping the interior Indians back, have been quite as careful not to let any white men across.
On account of this guard, Vancouver’s men experienced some of the hospitable attentions of the Chilkats when they were exploring the channel in 1794. A canoe-load of natives bore down upon Whidby’s boat, and urged the Englishmen to accompany them on up the Chilkat River to the great villages, where eight chiefs of consequence resided. Vancouver’s men declined the invitation, and the chief, commanding the first canoe, made hostile flourishes with the brass speaking-trumpet and other nautical insignia that he carried. They followed the boats out to the mouth of the channel, and alarmed the Englishmen greatly, as they feared an attack by the whole tribe at any moment.
The Russian and Hudson Bay Company’s ships traded with the Chilkats for a half century without ever dealing directly with one of the natives of the interior, from whom came the vast stores of furs that were exchanged each year. The Chilkats met the men of the Tinneh (interior) tribes at an established place many miles from the mouth of the river, and occasionally, as a matter of diplomacy, they would bring a great Tinneh chief down under escort, and allow him to look at the “fire ship” of the traders.
The first man to run the gauntlet of the Chilkoot Pass was a red-headed Scotchman in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, who left Fort Selkirk in 1864 and forced his way alone through the unknown country to Chilkoot Inlet. The Indians seized the adventurer and held him prisoner until Captain Swanson, with the Hudson Bay Company steamer Labouchere, came up and took him away. In 1872 one George Holt dodged through the Chilkoot Pass, and went down the Lewis River to the Yukon. In 1874 Holt again crossed the Chilkoot Pass, followed the Lewis River to the Yukon, and then down that mighty stream to a place near its mouth, where he crossed by a portage to the Kuskokquin River, and thence to the sea.