Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the buildings. When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in the medicine man, or “shaman,” and also invite the friends of the family to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco; soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and purchased it from some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay or difficulty in getting one.

If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner as that indicated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be placed but a single body, then again it will contain several—all relatives, however. But should the deceased savage have been one of great importance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and seeking quarters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary, sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man. Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a distribution of property made by the deceased man’s brother, or that relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before.[20]

The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole through which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside. As you enter, the whole interior seems dark—everything, at first, indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portière over the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace, upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing; kettles of stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes, all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room, some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving in wood or slate; while others are idly staring into the fire, or, wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring. Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead, hang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life, such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs, cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon and halibut, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such people—blankets,[21] tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs of silk, are stowed away in the corners.

But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation swift, of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though a tempest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the Koloshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse—slops, bones, shells, fish-débris, and a medley of similar and worse nuisances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere hangs heavy around our heads—we move away.

On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with, unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basketware; they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are almost invariably bare—too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is a very common practice; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect; blue and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of meat-eating savages, who always paint themselves with great care as to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning; especially hideous are the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe smeared over the countenances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out upon them as they are fishing or paddling extended journeys in their canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in mourning by the same application.

Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style; and, until quite lately, the females all wore labrets in the lower lips—this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only among the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or copper, are inserted; and also the septum of the nose is perforated, of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or a pendant of haliotis shell.

Each village has its lex non scripta, and is a law unto itself everywhere within the confines of the Alexander archipelago; or, in different words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to any other village or savages—it is the largest unit in the Indian system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the individual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen—there are no strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other’s simple life, every move that they make, what they capture in the forest or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the rancheries over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimulates and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing in its detail—no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not acknowledged; but any action tending to the injury of another, in person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the sufferer—usually atoned for—and the village feud, thus aroused, is soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property, to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which, inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable manner; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male Indian able to bear arms; and although these savages are fearless and brave, yet they know no open, fair fight—taught to get his living by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and do.

Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet, and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work, hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has to hire them to labor by making the customary “potlatch,” just as any other man of the tribe would do—only he must give a little more. The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange features, for though every rancherie has its freely-acknowledged chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than there are houses, each one of which has its own regulations, and a subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.[22]

The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the interior country; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers and streams, are duly divided up among the different families. These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches—and they are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage inheritance; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of proprietary and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast, corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define the limits of such properties between savages, by savages; and furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such, for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter—berries, wreckage, or shell-fish.

The woods and the waters are teeming with animal life; the lofty semi-naked peaks harbor mountain goats in large flocks; the beautiful grouse of Sabine hides in the forest thickets; the land otter and the mule-eared deer haunt the countless ravines, valleys, and rivulet bottoms; salmon in fabulous numbers run up those streams, and big, brown and glossy black bears come down to fatten upon these spawning fish. But the Sitkan savage is indolent, and, though all this dietary abundance and variety is before him, he lives quite exclusively upon halibut and salmon, the former mostly fresh and the latter air-dried and smoked in the soot of his rancherie. Halibut he finds all the year round; salmon briefly run only at widely separated periods.