Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The inherent propensity of man to gamble is developed here to a very appreciable degree, but it in no way whatever suggests the strange gaming love and infatuation with which all Indians and Eskimo elsewhere of Alaska are possessed. The chief delight of men and boys in the two villages is to stand on the street corners “pitching” half-dollars. So devoted, indeed, have I found the native mind to this hap-hazard sport, that frequently I would detect groups of them standing out in pelting gales of wind and of rain, “shying” silver coins at the little dirt-driven pegs. A few of them, men and women, play cards with much skill and intelligence.

One of the peculiarities[104] of these people is that they seldom undress when they go to bed—neither the men, women, nor children; and also that at any and all hours of the night during the summer season, when I have passed in and out of the village to and from the rookeries, I always found several of the natives squatting before their house-doors or leaning against the walls, stupidly staring out into the misty darkness of the fog, or chatting one with the other over their pipes. A number of the inhabitants, by this disposition, are always up and around throughout the settlement during the entire night and day. In olden times, and even recently, these involuntary sentinels of the night have often startled the whole village by shouting at the top of their voices the pleasant and electric announcement of the “ship’s light!” or they have frozen it with superstitious horror at daybreak by then reciting some ghostly vision that had appeared to them.

The urchins play marbles, spin tops, and fly kites, intermittently, with all the feverish energy displayed by such youth of our own surroundings; they frolic at base-ball, and use “shinny” sticks with great volubility and activity. The girls are, however, much more repressed, and, though they have a few games, and play quietly with quaintly dressed dolls, yet they do not appear to be possessed of that usual feminine animation so conspicuously marked in our home-life.

The attachment which the natives have for their respective islands was well shown to me in 1874. Then a number of St. George people were taken over to St. Paul, temporarily, to do the killing incidental to a reduction of the quota of twenty-five thousand for their island and a corresponding increase at St. Paul. They became homesick immediately, and were never tired of informing the St. Paul natives that St. George was a far handsomer and more enjoyable island to live upon; that walking over the long sand reaches of “Pavel” made their legs grievously weary, and that the whole effect of this change of residence was “ochen scootchnie.” Naturally the ire of the St. Paul people rose at once, and they retorted in kind, indicating the rocky surface of St. George and its great inferiority as a seal-island. I was surprised at the genuine feeling on both sides, because, as far as I could judge from a residence on each island, it was a clear case of tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum between them as to opportunities and climate necessary for a pleasurable existence. The natives themselves are of one and common stock, though the number of Creoles on St. George is relatively much larger than on St. Paul. Consequently the tone of the St. George village is rather more sprightly and vivacious.

The question is naturally asked, How do these people employ themselves during the long nine months of every year after the close of the sealing season and until it begins again, when they have little or absolutely nothing to do? It may be answered that they simply vegetate, or, in other words, are entirely idle, mentally and physically, during most of this period. But, to their credit, let it be said that mischief does not employ their idle hands. They are passive killers of time, drinking tea and sleeping, with a few disagreeable exceptions, such as the gamblers. There are a half-dozen of these characters at St. Paul, and perhaps as many at St. George, who spend whole nights at their sittings, even during the sealing season, playing games of cards taught by Russians and persons who have been on the island since the transfer of the territory; but the majority of the men, women, and children, not being compelled to exert themselves to obtain any of the chief or even the least of the necessaries of life, such as tea and hard bread, sleep the greater portion of the time, when not busy in eating and in the daily observances of that routine belonging to the Greek Catholic Church. The teachings, pomp, and circumstance of the religious observances of this faith alone preserve these people from absolute stagnation. In obedience to its promptings they gladly attend church very regularly. They also make and receive calls on their saints’ days, and such days are very numerous. The natives add to these entertainments of their saints’ day and birth-festivals, or “Emannimiks,” the music of accordions and violins. Upon the former and its variation, the concertina, they play a number of airs, and are real fond of the noise. A great many of the women in particular can render indifferently a limited selection of tunes, many of which are the old battle-songs, so popular during the rebellion, woven into weird Russian waltzes and love-ditties, which they have jointly gathered from their former masters and our soldiers, who were quartered here in 1869. From the Russians and the troops also they have learned to dance various figures, and have been taught to waltz. These dances, however, the old folks do not enjoy very much. They will come in and sit around and look at the young performers with stolid indifference; but if they manage to get a strong current of tea setting in their direction, nicely sugared and toned up, they revive and join in the mirth. In old times they never danced here unless they were drunk, and it was the principal occupation of the amiable and mischievous treasury agents and others in those early days to stimulate this beery fun.

Seal-meat is their staple food, and in the village of St. Paul they consume on an average fully five hundred pounds a day the year round, and they are, by the permission of the Secretary of the Treasury, allowed occasionally to kill five thousand or six thousand seal-pups, or an average of twenty-two to thirty young “kotickie” for each man, woman, and child in the settlements. The pups will dress ten pounds each. This shows an average consumption of nearly six hundred pounds of seal-meat by each person, large and small, during the year. To this diet the natives add a great deal of butter and many sweet crackers. They are passionately fond of butter. No epicure at home or butter-taster in Goshen knows or appreciates that article better than these people do. If they could get all that they desire, they would consume one thousand pounds of butter and five hundred pounds of sweet crackers every week, and indefinite quantities of sugar. The sweetest of all sweet teeth are found in the jaw of the ordinary Aleut. But it is of course unwise to allow them full swing in this matter, for they would turn their stomachs into fermenting-tanks if they had free access to an unlimited supply of saccharine food. The company issues them two hundred pounds a week. If unable to get sweet crackers, they will eat about three hundred pounds of hard or pilot bread every week, and, in addition to this, nearly seven hundred pounds of flour at the same time. Of tobacco they are allowed fifty pounds per week; candles, seventy-five pounds; rice, fifty pounds. They burn, strange as it may seem, kerosene-oil here to the exclusion of that seal-fat which literally overruns the island. They ignite and consume over six hundred gallons of kerosene-oil a year in the village of St. Paul alone. They do not fancy vinegar very much; perhaps fifty gallons a year are used up there. Mustard and pepper are sparingly used, one to one pound and a half a week for the whole village. Beans they peremptorily reject; for some reason or other they cannot be induced to use them. Those who go about the vessels contract a taste for split-pea soup, and a few of them are sold in the village-store. Salt meat, beef or pork, they will take reluctantly, if it is given to and pressed upon them; but they will never buy it. I remember, in this connection, seeing two barrels of prime salt pork and a barrel of prime mess salt beef opened in the company’s store shortly after my arrival in 1872, and, though the people of the village were invited to help themselves, I think I am right in saying these three barrels were not emptied when I left the island in 1873. They use a very little coffee during the year—not more than one hundred pounds—but of tea a great deal. I do not know exactly—I cannot find among my notes a record as to that article—but I can say that they each drink not less than a gallon of tea per diem. The amount of this beverage which they sip from the time they rise in the morning until they go to bed late at night is astounding. Their “samovars,” and latterly the regular tea-kettles of our American make, are bubbling and boiling from the moment the housewife bestirs herself at daybreak until the fire goes out when she sleeps. It should be stated in this connection that they are supplied with a regular allowance of coal every year by the company, gratis, each family being entitled to a certain amount, which alone, if economically used, keeps them warm all winter in their new houses; but for those who are extravagant, and are itching to spend their extra wages, an extra supply is always kept in the store-houses of the company for sale. Their appreciation of and desire to possess all the canned fruit that is landed from the steamer is marked to a great degree. If they had the opportunity, I doubt whether a single family on that island to-day would hesitate to bankrupt itself in purchasing this commodity. Potatoes they sometimes demand, as well as onions, and perhaps if these vegetables could be brought here and kept to an advantage the people would soon become very fond of them. Most of these articles of food mentioned heretofore are purchased by the natives in the company’s store at either island. This food and the wearing apparel, crockery, etc., which the company bring up here for the use of the people, is sold to them at the exact cost price of the same, plus the expenses of transportation, and many times within my knowledge they have bought goods here at these stores at less rates than they would have been subjected to in San Francisco. The object of the company is not, under any circumstances, to make a single cent of profit out of the sale of these goods to the natives. They aim only to clear the cost and no more. Instructions to this effect are given to its agents, while those of the Government are called upon to take notice of the fact.

The store at St. Paul, as well as that at St. George, has its regular annual “opening” after the arrival of the steamer in the spring, to which the natives seem to pay absorbed attention. They crowd the buildings day and night, eagerly looking for all the novelties in food and apparel. These slouchy men and shawl-hooded women, who pack the area before the counters, appear to feel as deep an interest in the process of shopping as the most enthusiastic votaries of that business do in our own streets. It certainly seems to give them the greatest satisfaction of their lives on the Pribylov Islands.

With regard to ourselves up here in so far as a purely physical existence goes, the American method of living on and in the climate of the Pribylov Islands is highly conducive to strength and health. Tea and coffee, seasoned with condensed milk and lump sugar; hot biscuits, cakes and waffles; potatoes, served in every method of cookery; salt salmon, codfish, and corned beef; mess pork, and, once a week, a fresh roast of beef or steaks; all the canned vegetables and fruits; all the potted sauces, jams and jellies; pies, puddings and pastries; and the exhaustive list of purely seafaring dishes, such as pea and bean, barley and rice soups, curries and maccaroni; these constitute the staples and many of the luxuries with which the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company prolong their existence while living here in the discharge of their duties, and to which they welcome their guests for discussion and glad digestion.

A piano on St. Paul, in the company house; an assorted library, embracing over one thousand volumes, selected from standard authors in fiction, science, and history, together with many other unexpected adjuncts of high comfort for body and soul, will be found on these islands, wholly unlocked for by those who first set foot upon them. A small Russian printed library has also been given by the company to the natives on each island for their special entertainment. The rising generation of sealers, however, if they read at all, will read our own typography.

Before leaving the consideration of these people, who are so intimately associated with and blended into the business on these islands, it may be well to clearly define the relation existing between them, the Government, and the company leasing the islands. When Congress granted to the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco the exclusive right of taking a certain number of fur-seals every year, for a period of twenty years on these islands, it did so with several reservations and conditions, which were confided in their detail to the Secretary of the Treasury. This officer and the president of the Alaska Commercial Company agreed upon a code of regulations which should govern their joint action in regard to the natives. It was a simple agreement that these people should have a certain amount of dried salmon furnished them for food every year, a certain amount of fuel, a school-house, and the right to go to and come from the islands as they chose; and also the right to work or not, understanding that in case they did not work, their places would and could be supplied by other people who would work.