Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The Aleutian men dress very plainly, young and old alike, little or no attention being given by them to details of color or ornamentation, as is the common usage and practice of most semi-civilized races; but they do lavish a great deal of care and skill in the decoration of their antique “kamlaykas,” “tarbosars,” and their bidarkas: the seams of these garments and the boats are frequently embellished with gay tufts of gaily colored sea-bird feathers and lines of goose-quill embroidery.

True feminine desire for all the bright ribbons and cheap jewelry that a trader spreads before her consumes the heart of the Aleutian woman, especially if she be young and admired by her people. The women are, therefore, only limited by their means, when it comes to bedecking themselves with all of these trinkets and gewgaws of the kind which the artful trader exhibits for that purpose. They braid their hair up in two queues usually and let them hang down behind upon their backs. They never wear bonnets, or hats, for that matter; but as they go to church or from hut to hut they tie cotton handkerchiefs over their heads. When hasty little errands out of doors, or sudden gossiping trips are undertaken, a shawl is thrown over the woman’s head and held there, with the gathered ends together, under her chin by one hand. The shawls are of bright colors, and supply the place of woollen garments, though ready-made cloaks and dolmans are not uncommon at those points where the sea-otter-hunting harvest is the best: her skirts, overskirts, waists, and stockings are all of cotton.

As these people have really but one idea and no variation of occupation, they all live alike, in the same general manner. The difference between the families is only that of relative cleanliness and thrift. The most important and serious business of their shore-life is that embodied in the construction and repair of their huts, or barrabkies. If it is well built it makes a warm, dry shelter, and answers every requirement of a comfortable domicile. An excavation is made in the earth on the spot selected in the village site, ten or twelve feet square, and three or four feet deep. A wooden frame and lining is then put into this sub-cellar, and the excavated earth is then thrown back against and over it, with an outer wall of carefully-cut sod and boggy peat, being laid up two and three feet thick, sloping down to which is a well-thatched roof of grass and sedge, that abounds everywhere on the sandy margins of the sea-shore. Some of these huts are made very much larger than this pattern just defined, having regularly spread wings, like a Maltese cross, on the floor. The entrance to the barrabkie is usually through a low doorway that is made to a small annex or storm hallway, also built of sod and peat. This shields another little door, which opens into the living-room that the architect steps down into as he enters. A single window is put at the opposite end of the room from the door, in which a small glazed sash is usually employed. The floor is either covered with boards which the native has purchased from the trader, or else it is the hard-trodden earth itself, upon which the women strew grass and spread mats of the same texture.

A diminutive cast-iron stove is now very generally used by the Aleutes. It commonly stands right in the centre of the room, and upon it the cooking can be done, instead of being driven to the hallway fireplace, or “povarnik,” of the olden time, when the smoke then stifled them from the burning of that fat of seals, fish and birds, which was used very largely for fuel Therefore, they were obliged to stew and broil on a special fireplace constructed outside of the living-room. A great many old-style “peechka” stoves of the Russians are still in use, but no new ones are being made any more, since the introduction of our little iron stoves. This living-room of the hut is usually curtained or partitioned into two sections, one of which is the bedchamber, or “spalniah.” They have a great variety of beds and bedsteads, or bunks rather. They are proud of a well-stuffed couch of feathers, and take more real, solid comfort in sleeping thereon than in anything else that transpires of an enjoyable nature in their lives. The dealers sell a series of the most gaudily printed spreads for these beds, and sometimes you will be much surprised to see a white counterpane and fluted pillow-shams spread over an Aleutian couch. Those beds are always raised well up from the floor, and sometimes a curtain is specially hung around them—a borrowed Russian idea, unquestionably. A rude table, two or three empty cracker-boxes from the trader’s store for chairs, and a rough bench or two, is about all the furniture ever seen in a barrabkie. The table-ware and household utensils do not require a large cupboard for their reception. Cups and saucers of white crockery, highly decorated in flaring blue and red floral designs, plates to match, a few pewter teaspoons, will usually be found in sufficient quantity for the daily use of the family; and these are loaned out to a neighbor also, on occasions of festivity, when an entire circle of chosen friends join under the roof of some one barrabora in tea-drinking and “praznik” feasting.

The traders say that recently a great desire has come upon the natives to possess granite ware cooking utensils and drinking cups, or those porcelain or silicon-plated iron vessels which we designate by that name; they do not require washing, and can be easily wiped out and never rust. Tin-ware is at a great discount among them—it rusts. The odor of coal-oil will be noticed among many others in the barraboras of the Aleutians and Kadiaks in these days, for the general use of this fluid has been established. The glass lamps and the smell suggestive of that illuminant can be plainly detected by any stranger who goes into a village up there now, in spite of the fishy and other indigenous strong aromas, which are in themselves equally odious and penetrating. However, an old Aleutian fogy will occasionally insist upon using a primitive stone lamp, with a wicking of moss or strips of cotton cloth.

A marked fondness for pictures, old engravings, chromos, in fact anything that goes in the line of caricature or illustration, is manifested by the Aleutes. They paste all sorts of scraps from newspapers, magazines, and theatrical posters, which the traders give them, upon the walls of the barrabora. The Russians early took notice of this trait, and the priests of the Greek Church made good use of it by distributing richly-colored and gilded portraits of holy men and women, the Imperial family, and mythological church groups.

As the Aleut, his wife and children, and a relative or two, perhaps, are living in the barrabora, he enjoys a warm and comfortable shelter as long as he keeps it in good repair. He does not place what he has of surplus supply in a cellar—such fish, fowl, or meat as he may have in excess of immediate consumption is hung up outside of his door on a wooden frame, or “laabaas.” Here it is beyond the reach of dogs, and is quite secure, inasmuch as he lives in no danger or dread of theft from the hands of his neighbors.

He is a fish-eater, like a vast majority of the rest of native Alaskans. He has cod, halibut, salmon, trout, and herrings in overflowing abundance, and all swim close to his door. He hooks and nets his piscine food-supply all the year round as it rotates with the seasons. He varies this steady diet with all the tea, sugar, and hard bread, or flour, that he can purchase from the trader’s store; some other little articles in the grocery line, such as canned California fruits, are especially agreeable to his palate. These natives call on the trader for biscuits, or sea-crackers, not because they like this hard bread best, but on account of the scarcity of fuel wherewith to properly bake up flour.

While fish is the staff of Aleutian daily life, yet nature has vouchsafed many simple luxuries to those people: these are sea-urchins, or echinoderms, and the eggs and flesh of the several species of water-fowl peculiar to and abundant in such latitudes. Then, in August and September, the valleys, hillsides, and margins of the sea are resorted to by the natives for the huckleberries, the “moroshkies,” the crowberries, and giant umbelliferous stalks of the Archangelica, found ripe and ripening there. The Aleutian huckleberries are much better than those of the Sitkan district, and are really the only good indigenous fruit, according to the evidence of our palates.