Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

Although 269,400 sealskins are said to have been exported from the islands from 1868 to 1869, it is claimed that the company had up-hill work for three years in getting themselves established and introducing their goods to the market. Since that time they have ridden on fortune’s topmost wave, and been the envy of all the short-sighted rivals who might have done the same thing had they been shrewd enough. None of the original members have left the company, save by death, and, it being a close corporation, they keep their financial statements, their books, their profits, and affairs to themselves; and the outer world, compelled to guess at things, puts a fabulous estimate upon the sum annually divided among the stockholders. The officers of the company only smile with annoyance, and shrug their shoulders, if one repeats to them the common gossip of San Francisco, about each of the twelve shares of the stock paying an annual dividend of $90,000, and they laugh aloud if one appeals to them for the confirmation of it. There will be a great scramble and competition among rival traders in 1890, when the present lease of the islands terminates, and by the bids and statements made then, more light may be cast upon the value of the franchise, unless fickle woman puts sealskin out of fashion by that time, and the tanners, instead of the furriers, apply for the lease.

By a contract with the Russian government, dating some years later, this same Alaska Commercial Company, in the name of two of its members, has a monopoly of the fur trade on Bering and Copper Islands, and at points on the Kamschatka coast. By the terms of this contract one of the members had to be a Russian, and the ships engaged in this trade on the Asiatic side have to carry the Russian flag. Out of the company’s fleet of a dozen vessels, two steamers fly the Muscovite colors, and, on their regular trips up, carry large cargoes of flour and provisions to Petropaulovski, as well as to their own stations.

Besides the Seal Islands, the Alaska Commercial Company has thirty-five other trading posts in the Territory, and its agents are established along the Yukon, and at many points in the interior. The trade in seal skins from the Pribyloff Islands amounts to about one half of the general business transacted by this corporation. At their offices on Sansome Street, in San Francisco, the company has a museum, crowded with specimens and curios. Seal life is represented at all ages, and all the birds and fishes and minerals of the country are shown. There are mummies and petrifactions, reindeer horns, canoes, albino otter skins, stone-age instruments, costumes and household utensils of the natives, and needles, books, pipes, toys, and oddities carved out of bone and ivory, and decorated in black outlines with sketches of men and animals in profile. A ponderous old silver watch is supposed to have belonged to some one of the early Russian governors, and there is a curious bronze cannon, with an inscription in ancient Slavonic lettering that no one has yet read. The company has been very generous in giving specimens and collections to different museums and societies, and its agents are instructed to gather[gather] such things and send them to the company’s headquarters. In an upper room, where there were sixty thousand fox skins, hanging tail downwards from the rafters, thousands of mink and marten skins, and piles of bear, beaver, lynx, and deer skins, we were shown the skeleton of the extinct sea-cow. The exact number of bones in the sea-cow’s body has been a matter of contention and uncertainty to scientists, and there was once a wordy war over it. Prof. Elliott, who made a long and careful study of seal life for the Smithsonian Institution, and whose monograph on that subject has been included in the census reports of 1880, was a leading combatant in the battle over the sea-cow’s bones. This fossil skeleton, sent down by one of the company’s agents, was presented to the California Academy of Sciences, and the palæontologists’ war is over. Captain Niebaum, one of the vice-presidents of the company, is a great authority in matters pertaining to Arctic and polar navigation, and he was consulted about the details of the cruise by Captain De Long of the Jeannette expedition, and the Alaska company freely supplied that ship with provisions, clothing, dogs, and other necessaries when it reached St. Michael’s Island. For his own use, Captain Niebaum has had made a large map of the polar regions, which is the most complete and unique chart in the country. On it are traced the courses of all the exploring ships, and the dates of their reaching important positions, and the artist, who worked at this circumpolar chart for more than one hundred days, is obliged, for a certain number of years, to add to it each discovery or incident of exploration in the arctic world.

The company’s ships usually stop at Unalashka Island on their way to St. Paul, and that chief trading post of the old Russian-American company has become an even more important place under the new régime. Unalashka is one of the largest of the seventy Aleutian islands that stretch out in line towards Japan, and on it was made the earliest Russian settlement on the northwest coast. All of the Aleutian islands are volcanic, and occasionally another peak thrusts its head up out of the water, flames and cinders come from the mountain tops, and earthquakes and tidal waves create disturbances in honor of a new island added to the chain. The climate is rather mild, and the temperature varies little from the average at Sitka. There is almost constant fog and rain during the summer months, and the islands, though treeless, are covered with luxuriant grasses. Cattle were successfully kept by the Russians, and lately there have been several plans laid for raising cattle and sheep on these grassy islands on a large scale; Lieut. Schwatka, the hero of Arctic and Yukon adventures, being a promoter of one of these schemes. At this time, instead of cattle ranches, there are fox ranches on several of the Aleutian Islands; and even from far-away Attu, the most western point in the United States, a shipment of two hundred or more blue-fox skins is regularly made each year, and care taken to protect and increase the numbers of the foxes. Sea otters are hunted all along the Aleutian shores; and in the group of Shumagin Islands, northeast of Unalashka, the cod fisheries have become an important industry. A small fleet of schooners from San Francisco make one or two trips every year to the headquarters on Popoff Island, where from 500,000 to 600,000 fish are dried and salted each season. The Alaska Commercial Company has also a trading station and a salmon cannery on Kadiak Island, beyond the Shumagins, and the sea otter is also hunted around Kadiak, by native hunters in their tight skin canoes or bidarkas. Two men from Kadiak acquired a certain fame in 1884 by journeying from that place to San Francisco in one of these canoes, nineteen feet long. They were Danes,—Peter Müller and Nils Petersen by name,—and, following the general line of the shore, they made the sixteen hundred miles to Victoria in one hundred and five days. It is considered quite a feat in these times, but, a century ago, the natives thought nothing of such a journey.

Although Unalashka has a custom house and is a port of delivery, the collector at Sitka only hears from his Unalashka deputy by way of San Francisco, and a prisoner arrested at Unalashka has to be taken first to San Francisco in order to reach the authorities at the capital of the Territory. The culprit travels three thousand nine hundred and ten miles to reach the Sitka jail, while the distance straight across is but twelve hundred and seventy-eight miles. Unalashka is a headquarters for the whaling fleet of the North Pacific, which now numbers thirty-eight vessels. The whalers call there for mail, water, and supplies, and stop on their way up each season to learn how the ice is beyond Bering Straits. They leave word as to the condition of the bergs and floes, the positions of the remaining ships and their catches, as they come down each fall.

At the Pribyloff Islands, two hundred and twenty and two hundred and seventy miles further north, neither whalers nor other trading ships are ever seen. The heaviest fogs rest upon them in summer, and ice floes beleaguer them in winter, stilling the heavy roar of the surf, and putting one and two miles of broken ice between the shores and the open water. The shallow waters, and the upward current through Bering Straits, prevent icebergs from floating down from the Arctic Ocean, and that element of danger does not threaten the navigators in those foggy waters. During the breeding season each summer, United States officers are stationed on the two smaller islands, Copper and Walrus, to prevent any seal pirates from unlawfully killing the animals, and on St. Paul and St. George islands special treasury and revenue agents watch closely that none of the regulations are disregarded.

The three hundred and ninety-eight natives who inhabit the two islands are mostly half breeds of the Aleut tribe. They live now after a certain civilized way, in neat and comfortable houses provided for them by the company, but it was at first difficult to get them to leave their filthy underground hovels. They are nearly all members of the Greek Church, and, with the help of the company, support a chapel on either island. Bishop Nestor used to include these little parishes on his annual visits, and celebrated the mass in his richest vestments before their altars. To prevent the evils of intemperance, the company is careful that no intoxicants are sent up with their stores, and sugar and molasses are sold to the natives, only in the smallest quantities, for fear that they might distil the same hoochinoo as the Thlinkets. Failing these luxuries, the poor Aleut satisfies his sweet tooth with other substitutes. The greatest quantities of condensed milk are sold them each year, the seal hunters drinking a can of milk at a time, or spreading it thickly on their daily bread. The large sums they receive during the few weeks of the sealing season enable them to live in idleness and plenty for the rest of the year. They are inveterate gamblers, as well as feasters and idlers, and after the long hibernation and pleasuring of the winter they are anxious and ready for the summer’s work.

It has not been learned yet where Callorhinus ursinus stays for the rest of the year; but early in June the desolate shores of the Pribyloff Islands become vocal with the hoarse voices of the seal, which have made this their gathering-place during the breeding season for unnumbered years. It is estimated that three million seals congregate on the rookeries of St. Paul Island each summer, and those who have looked down upon these rookeries at the height of the season report it as a most astounding spectacle. Acres of the rocky shore are alive with seals of all sizes and kinds, and the very ground seems to be writhing and squirming as the ungainly creatures drag themselves over the rocks, or pause to fan themselves with their flippers. Great battles are waged between the heads of seal families from June to August, and the harsh chorus of their voices is heard at sea above the roar of the breakers, and is the sailors’ guide in making the islands during the heavy summer fogs. Only the male seals from two to four years of age are killed, and the skins of the three-year-olds have the finest and closest fur. The method of killing them has nothing heroic or huntsmanlike about it. The natives start out before dawn, and, running down the shore, get between the sleeping seals and the water, and then drive them, as they would so many sheep, to the killing-ground, a half mile inland. They drive them slowly, giving them frequent rests for cooling, and gradually turning aside and leaving behind all seals that are not up to the requisite age and condition. When the poor, tame things have reached their death-ground, the natives go round with heavy clubs and kill them with one blow on the head. The skins are quickly stripped from them and taken to the salting-house, where they are covered with salt and laid in great piles. The natives receive forty cents for each skin taken in this way. After a few weeks in the salting-house the company’s steamer brings them down to San Francisco. The special agent of the United States Treasury at the islands counts the skins before they are shipped, and, accompanying them to San Francisco, they are again counted in his presence by the inspectors at that port. The tax of $2.62-1/2 is paid on each skin, the dirty yellow pelts treated to more salt, rolled into bundles, and packed in tight casks ready to ship to London. Of these one hundred thousand sealskins, eighty thousand come from the island of St. Paul, which is sixteen miles long and from three to six miles wide, and twenty thousand skins come from the island of St. George, which is not even as large. On one trip in 1883, the steamer St. Paul brought down sixty-three thousand sealskins, valued at $630,000, and the tax paid to the government on them amounted to $165,375.

When Callorhinus ursinus has thus delivered up his skin, and been salted and packed into barrels, he is sent on by railroad and steamship to London, where the Alaska Commercial Company controls the sealskin market of the world. Over seven firms in London are now engaged in the dyeing and dressing of sealskins, although there is a fiction still passed around about the secret of dyeing being held by one family of London furriers. Smiths, Oppenheimers, and other great firms buy the sealskins, dress them, pluck them, and give them the deep velvety brown and black dye that constitutes them such articles of luxury and fashion. A firm of Paris furriers has been setting the fashion of dyes for several years, and in accordance with their behests the color has been made darker and darker, until it is now nearly black. The old London furriers shake their heads at this change, as the strong nut gall and acids used to obtain this rich dark tone are liable to eat and destroy the leather. Cheap labor is the only answer to the question why this dressing and dyeing is done in Europe instead of America. The long, coarse hairs that overlay the fine fur have all to be removed by hand, and is best accomplished by that “pauper labor” at which emigrated demagogues rail. In New York there is one furrier who attempts to rival the London and Paris houses, but the results have so far proved his inability to outdo them in price and quality of work. If well dyed, a sealskin will never fade, spot with rain, nor mat together with dust, and it is even told that one London dyer put one of his sealskins in a tub and washed it with soap as a proof that they would lose neither lustre nor color by such treatment. It takes many handlings to turn the coarse long hair of these skins into a short, velvety, and glossy fur. Hot sand baths and chemicals are used to get the grease and oil out of the skins, and if this process is not thoroughly done at the time, the dull and matted furs have to be put through hot sand again after they have been made up into garments and worn. Six and more coats of dye are necessary, and it is applied to the surface only, so as to leave the roots of the fine hairs a golden yellow. Like the manufacture of gunpowder and so many other things, the art of dyeing sealskin originated with the Chinese, to whom the Russians used to sell nearly all of their furs. It is most probable that it was their intention to imitate the costly, purplish brown fur of the sea otter, which in Russia, as well as China, was formerly a badge of rank, and is still the most expensive fur sold, single skins being shown at the San Francisco warehouse, worth $100 and $300. The otter skins are brought down dried, and require only to be dressed and plucked of the coarser hairs before being ready to use.

After being dressed and dyed, the sealskins pay a duty of 20 per cent when they return to this country, and the cost of sealskin garments may be wondered at when one counts the items. The raw and unsightly skins in their salt are worth from $10 to $18 each, according to quality. There is to be added to this a tax of $2.62-1/2 each to the government; a charge of $6 or $8 for the dyeing and dressing; a duty of 20 per cent when they are returned to this country; and a fair charge for all the transportation the skins undergo, and the insurance on them during this time. This gives a dressed sealskin ready for the furrier to make up into garments, at an average value of from $15 to $30. It takes three skins to make a sacque of medium size, and the furriers always charge well for the making, as the greatest skill and nicety are required in sewing the skins. That furriers reap a profit of one hundred per cent on each sealskin garment is quite evident.