Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

"Hello, Sally," said one; "what's the matter?"

Laughing too heartily to reply, she pointed at the wooden dish, which I was vainly trying to hide. They all looked, saw, and laughed with the Indians.

For a week afterward they smiled every time they looked at me; and I do believe that every man, woman, and child on the steamer came, smiling, to my cabin to see my "buy." But the ridicule of my kind was as nothing compared to that of the Indians themselves. To be "taken in" by the descendant of a Koloshian, and then jeered at to one's very face!

The only possession of an Alaskan Indian that may not be purchased is a rosary. An attempt to buy one is met with glances of aversion.

"It has been blessed!" one woman said, almost in a whisper.

But they have most beautiful long strings of big, evenly cut, sapphire-blue beads. They call them Russian beads, and point out certain ones which were once used as money among the Indians.

Their wares consist chiefly of baskets; but there are also immense spoons carved artistically out of the horns of mountain sheep; richly beaded moccasins of many different materials; carved and gayly painted canoes and paddles of the fragrant Alaska cedar or Sitka pine; totem-poles carved out of dark gray slate stone; lamps, carved out of wood and inlaid with a fine pearl-like shell. These are formed like animals, with the backs hollowed to hold oil. There are silver spoons, rings, bracelets, and chains, all delicately traced with totemic designs; knives, virgin charms, Chilkaht blankets, and now and then a genuine old spear, or bow and arrow, that proves the dearest treasure of all.