The canoes used at Yakutat are each hewn from a single spruce log, and are good examples of the boats in use throughout southern Alaska. They are of all sizes, from a small craft scarcely large enough to hold a single Indian to graceful boats forty or fifty feet in length and capable of carrying a ton of merchandise with a dozen or more men. They have high, overreaching stems and sterns, which give them a picturesque, gondola-like appearance.
The village on the mainland is less picturesque, if such a term may be allowed, than the group of houses already described, but it is of the same type. Near at hand, along the shore to the southward, there are two log houses, one of which is used at present as a mission by Reverend Carl J. Hendriksen and his assistant, the other being occupied as a trading post by Sitka merchants.
The Yakutat Indians are the most westerly branch of the great Thlinket family which inhabits all of southeastern Alaska and a portion of British Columbia. In intelligence they are above the average of Indians generally, and are of a much higher type than the native inhabitants of the older portion of the United States. They are quick to learn the ways of the white man, and are especially shrewd in bargaining. They are canoe Indians par excellence, and pass a large part of their lives on the water in quest of salmon, seals, and sea-otter. During the summer of our visit, about thirty sea-otter were taken. They are usually shot in the primitive manner with copper-pointed arrows, although repeating rifles of the most improved patterns are owned by the natives, in spite of existing laws against selling breech-loading arms to Indians. The fur of the sea-otter is acknowledged to be the most beautiful, and is the most highly prized of all pelts. Those taken at Yakutat during our visit were sold at an average price of about seventy-five dollars. This, together with the sale of less valuable skins and the money received for baskets, etc., made by the women for the tourist trade in Sitka, brought a considerable revenue to the village. Improvident, like nearly all Indians, the Yakutat villagers soon spend at the trading post the money earned in this way.
The Yakutats belong without question to the Thlinket stock; but visits from tribes farther westward, who travel in skin boats, are known to have been made, and it seems probable that some mixture of Thlinket and Innuit blood may occur in the natives at Yakutat. But if such admixture has occurred, the Innuit element is so small that it escapes the notice of one not skilled in ethnology.
We found Mr. Hendriksen most kind and obliging, and are indebted to him for many favors and great assistance. Arrangements were made with him for reading a base-barometer three times a day during July and August. He also assisted us by acting as an interpreter, and in hiring Indians and canoes.
The weather continued thick and stormy after reaching Yakutat bay, and Captain Farenholt did not think it advisable to take his vessel up the main inlet, where many dangers were reported to exist. A canoe having been purchased from the trader and others hired from the Indians, a start was made from the head of Yakutat bay early on the morning of June 28, in company with two of the Pinta's boats loaded with supplies, under the command of Ensign C. W. Jungen.
CANOE TRIP UP YAKUTAT BAY.
Bidding good-bye to our friends on the Pinta, to whom we were indebted for many favors, we started for our trip up the bay in a pouring rain-storm. Our way at first led through the narrow, placid water-ways dividing the islands on the eastern side of the bay. The islands and the shores of the mainland are densely wooded, and appeared picturesque and inviting even through the veil of mist and rain that shrouded them. The forests consist principally of spruce trees, so dense and having such a tangle of underbrush that it is only with the greatest difficulty that one can force a way through them; while the ground beneath the forest, and even the trunks and branches of the living trees, are covered and festooned with luxuriant growths of mosses and lichens. Our trip along these wooded shores, but half revealed through the drifting mist, was novel and enjoyable in spite of discomforts due to the rain. We rejoiced at the thought that we were nearing the place where the actual labors of the expedition would begin; we were approaching the unknown; visions of unexplored regions filled with new wonders occupied our fancies, and made us eager to press on.
About noon on the first day we pitched our tents on a strip of shingle skirting the shore of the mainland to the east of Knight island. The Pinta's boats spread their white wings and sailed away to the southward before a freshening wind, and our last connection with civilization was broken. As one of the frontiersmen of our party remarked, we were "at home once more." It may appear strange to some that any one could apply such a term to a camp on the wild shore of an unexplored country; but the Bohemian spirit is so strong in some breasts, and the restraint of civilization so irksome, that the homing instinct is reversed and leads irresistibly to the wilderness and to the silent mountain tops.
The morning after arriving at our first camp, Kerr, Christie, and Hendriksen, with all the camp hands except two, went on with the canoes, and in a few hours reached the entrance of Disenchantment bay. They found a camping place about twelve miles ahead, on a narrow strip of shingle beneath the precipices of Point Esperanza, and there established our second camp.