The United States Grand Jury recently recommended that medical men be sent by the government to attend the disease-stricken creatures, and that a system of inspection and education along sanitary lines—with special stress laid upon domestic sanitation—should be established.
This system should be extended to the last island of the Aleutian Chain, and in the interior down the Yukon to Nome. The fur trade and the canneries depend largely upon the labor of Indians. The former industry could scarcely be made successful without them. The Indians are rapidly becoming a "vanishing race" in the North, as elsewhere. For the vices that are to-day responsible for their unfortunate condition they are indebted to the white men who have kept them supplied with cheap whiskey ever since the advent of the first American traders who taught them, soon after the purchase of Alaska by the United States, to make "hootchenoo" of molasses, flour, dried apples, or rice, and hops. This highly intoxicating and degrading liquor was known also as molasses-rum. During the latter part of the seventies, six thousand five hundred and twenty-four gallons of molasses were delivered at Sitka and Wrangell.
The loss of their help, however, is not so serious—being merely a commercial loss—as the danger to civilized people by coming in contact with these dreaded diseases. An Indian in Alaska whose eyes are not diseased is an exception, while the ravages of consumption are very frequently visible to the most careless observer. Both diseases are aggravated by such conditions as those existing at Belkoffski. A physician should be stationed there for a few years at least, to teach these poor, kind-hearted people what the Russian priest has not taught them—the science of sanitation.
Bishop Rowe reports that if there were no missionaries to protect the Eskimo and Indians from unscrupulous white whiskey-traders, they would survive but a short time. When they can obtain cheap liquors they go on prolonged and licentious debauches, and are unable to provide for their actual physical needs for the long, hard winter. Their condition then becomes pitiable, and many die of hunger and privation. Prosecutions are made entirely by missionaries. One Episcopal missionary post is conducted by two young women, one of whom was formerly a society woman of Los Angeles. The post is more than a thousand miles from Fairbanks, the nearest city, and one hundred and twenty-five miles from the nearest white settler. It is owing to the reports and the prosecutions of missionaries in all parts of Alaska that the outrages formerly practised upon Eskimo women by licentious white traders are on the decrease.
Federal Commissioner of Education Brown advocates a compulsory school law for Alaska. He favors instruction in modern methods of fishing and of curing fish; in the care of all parts of walrus that are merchantable; in the handling of wooden boats, the tanning and preparing of skins, in coal mining and the elements of agriculture.
In 1907 fifty-two native schools were maintained in Alaska, with two thousand five hundred children enrolled. Ten new school buildings have recently been constructed.
The reindeer service has been one of Alaska's grave scandals, but it has greatly improved during the past year.
The Eskimo, or Innuit, inhabit a broad belt of the coast line bordering on Behring Sea and the Arctic Ocean, as well as along the coast "to Westward" from Yakutat; also the lower part of the Yukon.
Lieutenant Emmons, who is one of the highest authorities on the natives of Alaska and their customs, has frequently reported the deplorable condition of the Eskimo, and the prevalence of tuberculosis and other dread diseases among them.
In 1900 an epidemic of measles and la grippe devastated the Northwestern Coast. Out of a total population of three thousand natives about the mouth of the Kuskokwim, fully half died, without medical attendance or nursing, within a few months.