Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

Up to the time of the transfer of the territory and leasing of the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, in August, 1870, these native inhabitants all lived in huts or sod-walled and dirt-roofed houses, called “barrabkies,” partly under ground. Most of these huts were damp, dark, and exceedingly filthy: it seemed to be the policy of a short-sighted Russian management to keep them so, and to treat the natives not near so well as they treated the few hogs and dogs which they brought up there for food and for company. The use of seal-fat for fuel, caused the deposit upon everything within doors of a thick coat of greasy, black soot, strongly impregnated with a damp, moldy, and indescribably offensive odor. They found along the north shore of St. Paul and at Northeast Point, occasionally scattered pieces of drift-wood, which was used, carefully soaked anew in water if it had dried out, split into little fragments, and, trussing the blubber with it when making their fires, the combination gave rise to a roaring, spluttering blaze. If this drift-wood failed them at any time when winter came round, they were obliged to huddle together beneath skins in their cold huts, and live or die, as the case might be. But the situation to-day has changed marvellously. We see here now at St. Paul, and on St. George, in the place of the squalid, filthy habitations of the immediate past, two villages, neat, warm, and contented. Each family lives in a snug frame-dwelling; every house is lined with tarred paper, painted, furnished with a stove, with out-houses, etc., complete; streets laid out, and the foundations of these habitations regularly plotted thereon. There is a large church at St. Paul, and a less pretentious but very creditable structure of the same character on St. George; a hospital on St. Paul, with a full and complete stock of drugs, and skilled physicians on both islands to take care of the people, free of cost. There is a school-house on each island, in which teachers are also paid by the company eight months in the year, to instruct the youth, while the Russian Church is sustained entirely by the pious contributions of the natives themselves on these two islands, and sustained well by each other. There are eighty families, or eighty houses, on St. Paul, in the village, with twenty or twenty-four such houses to as many families at St. George, and eight other structures. The large warehouses and salt-sheds of the Alaska Commercial Company, built by skilful mechanics, as have been the dwellings just referred to, are also neatly painted; and, taken in combination with the other features, constitute a picture fully equal to the average presentation of any one of our small eastern towns There is no misery, no downcast, dejected, suffering humanity here to-day. These Aleutes, who enjoy as a price of their good behavior, the sole right to take and skin seals for the company, to the exclusion of all other people, are known to and by their less fortunate neighbors elsewhere in Alaska as the “Bogatskie Aloutov,” or the “rich Aleutes.” The example of the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, on both islands, from the beginning of its lease, and the course of the Treasury agents during the last eight or nine years, have been silent but powerful promoters of the welfare of these people. They have maintained perfect order; they have directed neatness, and cleanliness, and stimulated industry, such as those natives had never before dreamed of.[101] The chief source of sickness used to arise from the wretched character of the barrabkies in which they lived; but it was, at first, a very difficult matter to get frame-houses to supplant successfully the sod-walled and dirt-roofed huts of the islands.

Many experiments, however, were made, and a dozen houses built, ere the result was as good as the style of primitive housing, when it had been well done and kept in best possible repair. In such a damp climate, naturally, a strong moldy smell pervades all inclosed rooms which are not thoroughly heated and daily dried by fires; and, in the spring and fall, frost works through and drips and trickles like rain adown the walls. The present frame-houses occupied by the natives owe their dryness, their warmth, and protection from the piercing “boorgas” to the liberal use of stout tarred paper in the lining. An overpowering mustiness of the hallways, out-houses, and, in fact, every roofed-in spot, where a stove is not regularly used, even in the best-built residences, is one of the first disagreeable sensations which the new arrivals always experience when they take up their quarters here. Perhaps, if it were not for the nasal misery that floats in from the killing-grounds to the novice, this musty, moldy state of things up here would be far more acute, as an annoyance, than it is now. The greater grief seems to soon fully absorb the lesser one; at least, in my own case, I can affirm the result.

As they lived in early time, it was a physical impossibility for them to increase and multiply;[102] but, since their elevation and their sanitary advancement are so marked, it may be reasonably expected that those people for all time to come will at least hold their own, even though they do not increase to any remarkable degree. Perhaps it is better that they should not. But it is exceedingly fortunate that they do sustain themselves so as to be, as it were, a prosperous corporate factor, entitled to the exclusive privilege of labor on these islands. As an encouragement for their good behavior the Alaska Commercial Company, in pursuance of its enlightened treatment of the whole subject, so handsomely exhibited by its housing of these people, has assured them that so long as they are capable and willing to perform the labor of skinning the seal-catch every year, so long will they enjoy the sole privilege of participating in that toil and its reward. This is wise on the part of the company, and it is exceedingly happy for the people. They are, of all men, especially fitted for the work connected with the seal-business—no comment is needed—nothing better in the way of manual labor, skilled and rapid, could be rendered by any body of men, equal in numbers, living under the same circumstances, all the year round. They appear to shake off the periodic lethargy of winter and its forced inanition, to rush with the coming of summer into the severe exercise and duty of capturing, killing, and skinning the seals, with vigor and with persistent and commendable energy.

To-day only a very small proportion of the population are descendants of the pioneers who were brought here by the several Russian companies in 1787 and 1788; a colony of one hundred and thirty-seven souls, it is claimed, principally recruited at Oonalashka and Atkha.

The Aleutes on the islands as they appear to-day have been so mixed in with Russian, Koloshian, and Kamschadale blood that they present characteristics, in one way or another, of all the various races of men from the negro up to the Caucasian. The predominant features among them are small, wide-set eyes, broad and high cheek-bones, causing the jaw, which is full and square, to often appear peaked; coarse, straight, black hair, small, neatly-shaped feet and hands, together with brownish-yellow complexion. The men will average in stature five feet four or five inches; the women less in proportion, although there are exceptions to this rule among them, some being over six feet in height, and others are decided dwarfs. The manners and customs of these people to-day possess nothing in themselves of a barbarous or remarkable character aside from that which belongs to an advanced state of semi-civilization. They are exceedingly polite and civil, not only in their business with the agents of the company on the seal-islands, but among themselves, and they visit, the one with the other, freely and pleasantly, the women being great gossips; but, on the whole, their intercourse is subdued, for the simple reason that the topics of conversation are few: and, judging from their silent but unconstrained meetings, they seem to have a mutual knowledge, as if by sympathy, as to what may be occupying each other’s minds, rendering speech superfluous. It is only when under the influence of beer or strong liquor that they lose their naturally quiet and amiable disposition. They then relapse into low, drunken orgies and loud, brawling noises.[103] Having been so long under the control and influence of the Russians, they have adopted many Slavic customs, such as giving birthday-dinners, naming their children, etc. They are remarkably attached to their church, and no other form of religion could be better adapted or have a firmer hold upon the sensibilities of the people. Their inherent chastity and sobriety cannot be commended. They have long since thrown away the uncouth garments of Russian rule—those shaggy dog-skin caps, with coats half seal and half sea-lion—for a complete outfit, cap-à-pie, such as our own people buy in any furnishing house, the same boots, socks, underclothing, and clothing, with ulsters and ulsterettes; but the violence of the wind prevents their selecting the hats of our fashion and sporting fraternity. As for the women, they, too, have kept pace and even advanced to the level of the men, for in these lower races there is usually more vanity displayed by the masculine element than the feminine, according to my observation. In other words, I have noticed a greater desire among the young men than among the young women of savage and semi-civilized people to be gaily dressed, and to look fine; but the visits of the wives of our treasury officials and the company’s agents to these islands during the last ten years, bringing with them a full outfit, as ladies always do, of everything under the sun that women want to wear, has given the native female mind an undue expansion up there and stimulated it to unwonted activity. They watch the cut of the garments and borrow the patterns, and some of them are very expert dressmakers to-day. When the Russians controlled affairs, the women were the hewers of drift-wood and the drawers of water. At St. Paul there was no well of drinking-fluid about the village, nor within half a mile of the village. There was no drinking-water unless it was caught in reservoirs, and the cistern-water, owing to those particles of seal-fat soot which fall upon the roofs of the houses, is rendered undrinkable, so that the supply for the town until quite recently used to be carried by women from two little lakes at the head of the lagoon, a mile and a half as the crow flies from the village, and right under Telegraph Hill. This is quite a journey, and when it is remembered that they drink so much tea, and that water has to go with it, some idea of the labor of the old and young females can be derived from an inspection of the map. Latterly, within the last four or five years, the company have opened a spring less than half a mile from the “gorode,” which they have plumbed and regulated, so that it supplies them with water now and renders the labor next to nothing, compared with all former difficulty. But to-day, when water is wanted in the Aleutian houses at St. Paul, the man has to get it—the woman does not; he trudges out with a little wooden firkin or tub on his back and brings it to the house.

Some of the natives save their money; yet there are very few among them, perhaps not more than a dozen, who have the slightest economical tendency. What they cannot spend for luxuries, groceries, and tobacco they manage to get away with at the gaming-table. They have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they have the usual small proportion who know how to make money, and then how to spend it. A few among them who are in the habit of saving have opened a regular bank-account with the company. Some of them have to-day two or three thousand dollars saved, drawing an interest of nine per cent.

When the ships arrive and go, the severe and necessary labor of lightering their cargoes off and on from the roadsteads where they anchor is principally performed by these people, and they are paid so much a day for their labor: from fifty cents to one dollar, according to the character of the service they render. This operation, however, is much dreaded by the ship-captains and sea-going men, whose habits of discipline and automatic regularity and effect of working render them severe critics and impatient coadjutors of the natives, who, to tell the truth, hate to do anything after they have pocketed their reward for sealing; and when they do labor after this, they regard it as an act of very great condescension on their part.

As they are living to-day up there, there is no restraint, such as the presence of policemen, courts of justice, fines, etc., which we employ for the suppression of disorder and maintenance of the law in our own land. They understand that if it is necessary to make them law-abiding, and to punish crime, such officers will be among them, and hence, perhaps, is due the fact that from the time that the Alaska Commercial Company has taken charge, in 1870, there has not been one single occasion where the simplest functions of a justice of the peace would or could have been called in to settle any difficulty. This speaks eloquently for their docile nature and their amiable disposition.

These people are singularly affectionate and indulgent toward their children. There are no “bald-headed” tyrants in our homes as arbitrary and ruthless in their rule as are those snuffly babies and young children on the Seal Islands. While it is very young, the Aleut gives up everything to the caprice of his child, and never crosses its path or thwarts its desire; the “deetiah” literally take charge of the house; but as soon as these callow members of the family become strong enough to bear burdens and to labor, generally between twelve and fifteen years of age, they are then pressed into hard service relentlessly by their hitherto indulgent parents. The extremes literally meet in this application.

They have another peculiarity: when they are ill, slightly or seriously, no matter which, they maintain or affect a stolid resignation, and are patient to positive apathy. This is not due to deficiency of nervous organization, because those among them who exhibit examples of intense liveliness and nervous activity behave just as stolidly when ill as their more lymphatic townsmen do. Boys and girls, men and women, all alike, are patient and resigned when ailing and under treatment; but it is a bad feature after all, inasmuch as it is well-nigh impossible to rally a very sick man who himself has no hope, and who seems to mutely deprecate every effort to save his life. The principal cause of death among the people, by natural infirmity, on the Seal Islands is the varying forms of consumption and bronchitis, always greatly aggravated by that inherited scrofulous taint or stain of blood which was, in one way or another, flowing through the veins of their recent progenitors, both here and throughout the Aleutian Islands. There is nothing worth noticing in the line of nervous diseases, unless it be now and then the record of a case of alcoholism superinduced by excessive quass drinking. The “makoolah” intemperance among these people, which was not suppressed until 1876, was a chief factor to an immediate death of infants; for, when they were at the breast, their mothers would drink quass to intoxication, and the stomachs of newly-born Aleutes or Creoles could not stand the infliction which they received, even second-hand. Had it not been for this wretched spectacle, so often presented to my eyes in 1872-73, I should hardly have taken the active steps which I did to put the nuisance down; for it involved me, at first, in a bitter personal controversy, which, although I knew at the outset was inevitable, still it weighed nothing in the scales against the evil itself. A few febrile disorders are occurring, yet they yield readily to good treatment.