Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The fact that among all the savage races found on the northwest coast by Christian pioneers and teachers, the Aleutians are the only practical converts to Christianity, goes far, in my opinion, to set them apart as very differently constituted in mind and disposition from our Indians and our Eskimo of Alaska. To the latter, however, they seem to be intimately allied, though they do not mingle in the slightest degree. They adopted the Christian faith with very little opposition, readily exchanging their barbarous customs and wild superstitions for the rites of the Greek Catholic Church and its more refined myths and legends.

At the time of their first discovery, they were living as savages in every sense of the word, bold and hardy, throughout the Aleutian chain, but now they respond, on these islands, to all outward signs of Christianity, as sincerely as our own church-going people. The question as to the derivation of those natives is still a mooted one among ethnologists, for in all points of personal bearing, intelligence, character, as well as physical structure, they seem to form a perfect link of gradation between the Japanese and Eskimo, notwithstanding their traditions and their language are entirely distinct and peculiar to themselves; not one word or numeral of their nomenclature resembles the dialect of either. They claim, however, to have come first to the Aleutian Islands from a “big land in the westward,” and that when they came there first they found the land uninhabited, and that they did not meet with any people, until their ancestors had pushed on to the eastward as far as the peninsula and Kadiak. Confirmatory of this legend, or rather highly suggestive of it, is the fact that repeated instances have occurred within our day where Japanese junks have been, in the stress of hurricanes and typhoons, dismantled, and have drifted clear over and on to the reefs and coasts of the Aleutian Islands. Only a short time ago, in the summer of 1871, such a craft was so stranded, helpless and at the mercy of the sea, upon the rocky coast of Adak Island, in this chain; the few surviving sailors, Japanese, five in number, were rescued by a party of Aleutian sea-otter hunters, who took care of them until the vessel of a trader carried them back, by way of Oonalashka, to San Francisco, and thence they returned to their native land.

A number of the males in every Aleutian village will be found who can read and write with the Russian alphabet. This education they get in the line of church exercises, inasmuch as they are all conducted in the Russian language, though the responses for the congregation usually are made by Aleutian accents. An Aleut grammar and phonetic alphabet, adapted to the expression of the Russian language, is used in all of these hamlets. It was prepared by that remarkable man, Veniaminov, in 1831: a large number of the books were printed, and they have been in use ever since. The young men and boys are taught as they grow up, by the church deacon usually, to read, first in the Aleut dialect, then in the Russian. The traders take advantage of this understanding among these people, and facilitate their bartering very materially. They give every hunter a pass, or grocer’s book, in which he keeps a regular account, charging what he may need, in advance of payment, so enabling his family to get what it requires during his long absence on the hunting-grounds. In short, that book is a regular letter of credit at the store, and the traders have found it the best way of influencing the natives in their favor, and also of aiding the superior hunters.

This method of credit has developed, and made manifest the truth of a strong statement in which Veniaminov declared his belief that these people were really honest at heart, totally unlike all other savages in Alaska, or elsewhere on the American continent, for that matter. Many of the hunters, when they are about to depart for a long four or five months’ sea-otter chase, and consequent absence for such length of time from home, go to the trader and tell him to restrict their wives from overdrawing a certain pecuniary limit, which they fix of their own idea as to what they can afford. This action, however, is the purpose of true honesty only, for those same hunters, when they get back, after first religiously settling every indebtedness in full, make at once a heavy draft upon any surplus that they may have, going so far in the line of extravagance and singular improvidence, in some instances, as to purchase, on the spur of the moment, music-boxes worth two hundred dollars each, or whole bolts of silk and costly packages of handkerchiefs, neckties, and white linen, and many other things of a like nature, wholly unwarranted by the means of the hunter, or of any real service to him or his family.

The church “prazniks,” or festivals, are very quiet affairs, but when the Aleut determines to celebrate his birthday or “eman nimik,” he goes about it in full resolution to have a stirring and vociferous time. Therefore he brews a potential beer by putting a quantity of sugar, flour, rice, and dried apples (if he can get the latter) into a ten or twenty-gallon barrel, which is filled with water. He sends invitations out to his friends so dated as to bring them to the barrabkie when a right degree of fermentation in the kvass-barrel shall have arrived; sometimes the odor of that barrel itself is sufficient to gather them in all on time. Some one of the natives who is famous for natural and cultivated skill in playing the accordion or concertina, is given the post of honor and the best of the beer; he or she, as the case may be, soon starts the most hilarious dancing, because Aleutes are exceedingly fond of this amusement, especially so when stimulated by beer. If the apartment is large enough, the figures of an old Russian quadrille are gone through with, accompanied by indescribable grimaces and grotesque side-shuffles of the dancers, the old women and young men being the most demonstrative. Usually, however, a single waltzing couple has the floor at one time, whirling around with the liveliest hop-waltz steps, and as it settles down out of breath, a fresh pair springs up from the waiting and watching circle. The guests rapidly pass from their normal sedateness into the varying stages that rotate between slight and intense drunkenness.

These kvass orgies, on such occasions, are the only exhibitions of disorder that the people of the Aleutian Islands and Kadiak ever afford. At Belcovsky, and at every point where the sea-otter industry is most remunerative to the native hunter, there you will find the greatest misery, due wholly to those beery birthday celebrations as sketched above.

Some traders often give entertainments to the natives, in which they wisely offer plenty of strong tea, with white sugar-lumps, and nothing else; these parties are quite reputable and highly enjoyed by all concerned. The floor of the warehouse, or the living-rooms of the trader himself, are cleared, and this allows ample space for a full-figured cotillon or quadrille, or a dozen or two of dancing couples. The ball-room of the chief trading-firm at Oonalashka is a very animated and extensive prospect when an evening-party of this sort is in fine motion. The familiar strains of “Pinafore,” the “Lancers,” “John Brown,” and “Marching through Georgia,” rise in piercing strength from the vigorous men and women who are squeezing the accordions, and every now and then a few of the young Aleutes break out into a short singing refrain, using English words to suit the music, as they caper in the high-tide of this festivity. It is the young men, however, only, who thus vocalize; the women, when sober, old and young, are always silent, with downcast eyes, and are very abject in demeanor.

The great feminine solace in a well-to-do native hut is recourse to a concertina or accordion, as the case may be. These instruments are especially adapted to the people. Their plaintive, slow measure, when fingered in response to native tunes and old Slavonian ballads, always rise upon the air in every Aleutian hamlet, from early morning until far into night. An appreciation of good music is keen: many of the women can easily pick up strains from our own operas, and repeat them correctly after listening a short while to the trader or his wife play and sing. They are most pleased with sad, wailing tunes, such as “Lorena,” the “Old Cabin Home,” and the like.

Thus we note those salient characteristics of Aleutians, who are the most interesting and praiseworthy inhabitants of Alaska. There are not a great many of them, however, when contrasted numerically with the Indians and the Eskimo of this region; but they come closer, far nearer to us in good fellowship and human sympathy. We turn, therefore, from them again to resume our contemplation of the country in which they live. The sun is burning through a gray-blue bank of sea-swept fog, ever and anon shining down brilliantly upon the beautiful, vividly green mountains, and glancing from the clear waters of Oonalashka’s harbor. It tempts us to walk, to stroll, when the trader tells us that we can easily cross over to Beaver Bay, where Captain Cook anchored and refitted in 1778. So we go, and a patient, good-humored native trots ahead to keep us on the road and bring us back safely, lest the fog descend and shut all in darkness which is now so light and bright. A narrow foot-trail that is deeply worn by the pigeon-toed Aleutes into moss and sphagnum, or fairly choked by rank-growing grasses and annuals in low warm spots, winds around and over the divide between Oonalashka village and Borka. As we reach the rippling, rocky strand of Beaver Bay, a cascade arrests our attention on account of its exceeding beauty. Tumbling down from the brow of a lofty bluff of brown and reddish rocks, a rivulet falls in a line of snowy spray, which reflects prismatic colors from the rocks and sunlight as it drops into the cold embrace of the sea. While we, resting on the grassy margin of the beach, enjoy this charming picture, our native turns his face to the bay, and he points out to us the pebbly shore where Captain Cook “hove down” his vessel, more than a century ago, and then scraped those barnacles and sea-weed growths from that ship’s bottom. Here the English discoverer first came in contact with the natives of Oonalashka, and there are people over on Spirkin or “Borka” Island, just across the bay from us, who will recite the legend of this early visit of that Englishman with great earnestness, circumspection, and detail, so faithfully has the story been transmitted from father to son. Their own name of Samahgaanooda was changed voluntarily to English Bay, or “Anglieeski Bookhta,” by which designation they themselves call the harbor to-day.

A broad expanse of this bay lies directly between us on the north side and the village of Borka, which is perched on a narrow beach-level shelf of an island that rises bold and abruptly, high from the sea. This hamlet is the most remarkable native settlement in all Alaska with respect to a strange and unwonted cleanliness which is exhibited in this community of one hundred and forty Aleutes, who are living here to-day in twenty-eight frame houses, barraboras, and a chapel. What makes it still more remarkable is the fact that these people are in close communication with their kindred of Oonalashka, who are distant only a few hours’ journey by canoe and portage, and who are not especially cleanly to the slightest noteworthy degree. Those people of Borka are living in the cleanest and neatest of domiciles. They are living so without an exceptional instance, every hut being as tidy and as orderly as its neighbor. They have large windows in the small frame houses and barraboras, scrub and sand the floors, and keep their simple furniture, their beds, and window-panes polished and bright. Glass tumblers, earthen pots, and wooden firkins filled with transplanted wild-flowers stand on the tables and deep window-sills to bloom fresh and sweet all the year round. A modest, unassuming old Russian Creole trader, who has lived there all his life, and who was living recently, is credited with this influence for the better with the natives. Certainly he is the only one who has ever succeeded in working such a revolution in the slovenly, untidy household habits of these amiable but shiftless people.