Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

There is a curious distinction drawn by nature between the Siberian and Alaskan reindeer. Everybody is familiar with the fact that on the Asiatic side these animals are domesticated and serve as a mainstay and support of large tribes, both savage and civilized. But the spirit of the Alaskan deer is such that it will not live under the control of man, or even within his presence. If confined, it refuses food, and then perishes of self-imposed starvation. The most patient and extended trials have been made at Nooshagak by imported Kamschadales, who were raised to the life of deer-driving over there; yet, in no instance whatsoever were these experts able to overcome the difficulty and accustom those timid animals to the sight, sound, and smell of man. The Alaskan species is much larger than its Asiatic cousin, but otherwise resembles it closely, being, if anything, more uniformly gray in tint and less spotted with white over the back and head.

Reindeer have a most extended range in Alaska, where an immense area of tundra and upland moors yield an abundance of those mosses and lichens which they most affect. Innumerable sloughs and lakes afford these deer a harbor of refuge from cruel torments of mosquitoes, when the wind does not blow briskly in summer; the wooded interior gives them shelter from the driving fury of wintry snow-storms. Big brown bears follow in the wake of travelling herds, and feed fat upon all sickly or weaker members and imprudent fawns of the drove; so do wolves and wolverines; and the lop-eared lynx is not missing.

Nooshagak is a trading centre for that entire Bristol Bay district, which comprises the coast of Bering Sea from Cape Newenham, in the north, to the peninsular extremity at Oonimak, in the south—an immense expanse in which some four thousand Innuits abide, and live largely upon fish and deer-meat. The Oogashik, Igageek, Nakneek, Kvichak, Nooshagak, Igoosheek, and Togiak Rivers all empty into this great shallow gulf. Up their swollen channels, after an opening of the ice during the last half of May, salmon run from the sea in irregular but constant travel until the end of August. Inferior salmon run even as late as November, while the various kinds of salmon-trout and white-fish exist under the ice of deep streams and lakes all winter. By the middle of September hard frosts in the mountains congeal all sources of innumerable rivulets which have helped to swell the volume and raise the level of a river’s summer flood, and then these streams which we have just named begin to fall rapidly in their channels. If we chance to travel anywhere along their banks at this time, we will find them covered with windrows and heaps of dead salmon two and three feet in height. The gravelly beaches of the lakes, the bars and shoals of every stream, are then lined with decaying and putrid bodies of these fish, while every overhanging bough and projecting rock is festooned with their rotting forms—ah! the stench arising absolutely forbids the pangs of hunger, even though we have no provision. These are the salmon that have died from exhaustion and from bruises received in struggling with swift and impetuous currents, and the rocks and snags that beset their paths of annual reproduction.

North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which, having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of sand and mud reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted hunter. Stragglers, however, are frequently surprised on the mainland shore opposite, and the southern coast of Hagenmeister Island toward Cape Newenham to the westward.

The muskrat catch of Alaska is secured almost wholly in the Nooshagak region—an immense number of these water-rodents are annually taken by Innuits here. Traders, however, do not prize them very highly, but to secure the natives’ custom they are obliged to appear satisfied with all that these people bring in to the post. These skins are, however, not sold in this country; they are all shipped to France and Germany, where they meet with a ready sale, since the poor people there are not above wearing them. Also, most of the good Alaskan beaver peltries are from this district, where they have the best fur and are consequently prized above all other catches outside of that region. Land-otter is also in large quantity and fine quality, but the mink and martens and foxes are inferior. During summer seasons, on many lakes, flocks of big, white, trumpeting swans will be found frequenting nearly every one of those bodies of water. The natives hunt them at night, and capture unsuspecting birds as they sleep upon the water, by paddling noiselessly upon them. The traders encourage this industry for the sake of the swan’s down which it produces. The most favored spot by swans is Lake Walker, which lies on the Nakneek portage over to Cook’s Inlet. Perhaps its rare, unique beauty charms these giant natatores as it does ourselves, for, without question, it is incomparably the most lovely sheet of water, set in a frame of glorious mountains, which the fancy of an artist could possibly devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language is utterly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from absolute grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its pebbly shores and yellow sands.

The immediate banks of the Nakneek River, through which Lake Walker empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and flat, and covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and amphibious plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. The timber on hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally clumps of birch and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of spruce as a higher ascent is made to the rolling uplands and mountain sides. An old, deserted settlement—ruins of Paugwik, marked by the decayed outlines of its cemetery, still is visible at the debouchure of the Nakneek. With a strange disrespect for the departed, those natives who live at an adjoining village come over here to excavate salmon-holes in that ancient graveyard, wherein they place their fish-heads, so that a process of moist rotting shall take place prior to eating them! The Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear of the “witching hour of night” in this burial site of their ancestors.

The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly marked “saddle-backed” seal are taken by these people in large numbers every year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those fur-bearing animals that belong to the land here are away below par when brought to a trader. The coast between their villages and the mouth of the Togiak River is one of a most remarkable series of bluffy headlands, seven of them, being all of sandstone which has weathered into queer, fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is washed at the sea-level into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the surf beats with a noise like the distant roar of artillery. Screaming flocks of water-fowl are breeding on their mural faces, and troops of foxes lurk in the interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs and unwary birds.

THE SADDLE-BACK, OR HARLEQUIN HAIR SEAL
[Histriophoca equestris]
Female Male

The Togiak River never was ascended by a white man until the summer of 1880.[151] It is a very remarkable region with respect to its people. Though the course of the river is only one hundred miles in length, yet we find upon it seven villages (one of them very large), having an aggregate population of 1,826 souls. No other one section of Alaska has so dense a population with reference to its inhabited area. The river is, however, a broad one, being a mile and a half in width, shoal and shallow, with deep pools and eddies here and there. Its banks are low, and the valley through which it runs is low and flat, with extensive bottom-lands that widen out at places to a distance of fifteen miles between the ridges and hills which direct its short course. Upon these flats grow most luxuriant and lofty grasses, high as the heads of natives—literally concealing, as it were, the dense human occupation of its extent.