Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

The recent rapid development of Alaska, and the appropriation of the native food-supplies by miners, traders, canners, and settlers, present a problem that must be solved at once. In regard to the Philippines, we were like a child with a new toy; we could not play with them and experiment with them enough; yet for forty years these dark, gentle, uncomplaining people of our most northern and most splendid possession—beautiful, glorious Alaska—have been patiently waiting for all that we should long ago have given them: protection, interest, and the education and training that would have converted them from diseased and wretched beings into decent and useful people.

According to Lieutenant Emmons, the condition of the Copper River Indians is exceptionally miserable; and of all the native people, either coastal or of the interior, they are most needy and in want of immediate assistance. Reduced in number to barely two hundred and fifty souls, scattered in small communities along the river valleys amidst the loftiest mountains of the continent and under the most rigid climatic conditions, their natural living has been taken from them by the white man, without the establishment of any labor market for their self-support in return.

Prior to 1888 they lived in a very primitive state, and were, even then, barely able to maintain themselves on the not over-abundant game life of the valley, together with the salmon coming up the river for spawning purposes. The mining excitement of that year brought several thousand men into the Copper River Valley, on their way to the Yukon and the Klondike.

They swept the country clean of game, burnt over vast districts, and frequently destroyed what they could not use. About the same time the salmon canneries in Prince William Sound, having exhausted the home streams, extended their operations to the Copper River delta, decreasing the Indians' salmon catch, which had always provided them with food for the bitter winters.

These Indians are simple, kind-hearted, and have ever been friendly and hospitable to the white man. They respect his cache, although their own has not always been respected by him.

At Copper Centre, which is connected by military wagon road with the coast at Valdez, flour sells for twenty-four dollars a hundredweight, and all other provisions and clothing in proportion; so it may be readily understood that the white people of the interior cannot afford to divide their provisions with the starving Indians, else they would soon be in the same condition themselves. Therefore, for these Indians, too,—fortunately few in number,—the government must provide liberally and at once.