scourges, coming from the south, have been almost as great a blight among the native peoples as would be the sweeping southward of a wave of arctic temperature to the vegetation of tropical lands. The curse of contact, resulting when a civilized race invades a land inhabited by childlike aborigines, as has been seen in many parts of the world, has overtaken the Innuits in common with nearly all other tribes in Alaska, and decadence and the prolongation of a miserable existence, unless cut short by extermination through starvation, is all that seemingly can be hoped for.
The fur-bearing animals of Alaska have been greatly reduced in numbers during the last twenty-five years: the caribou and the moose have, to a marked degree, been killed or driven to remote regions; the larger whales, on account of overcapture by American whalers, have become scarce; the sea-lion and the walrus are nearly extinct; the fur-seal, of more importance to the Aleutians than the Innuits, is rapidly approaching extinction. Thus in many ways the food supply is greatly decreased. Recourse to agriculture is impossible. The one redeeming feature of the white man's aggression is the introduction of the domesticated reindeer from Asia and Lapland. With reindeer, the salmon, not as yet depleted in the streams emptying into Bering Sea, the white whale, the hair-seal, not as yet of commercial value, the countless birds of summer, the berries of the tundra, etc., the Innuits can survive, maintain their manhood, and become useful to civilization in certain ways if the curse of drink and the spread of imported diseases could be stopped. Such a change, however, for various reasons, is not to be hoped for. It may perhaps be said that the influence of missionaries, and, what is vastly more important, the work of the school-teacher, has opened to these children of the cold northern land a way to civilization, but the results up to the present time are not reassuring.
The census of 1890 showed that the Innuits of Alaska numbered 13,045. In the census of 1900 a separate enumeration of Eskimos and Indians was not made.
The dismal picture I have been compelled to sketch of the present condition and future prospects of the Innuits
of Alaska, in order to indicate their status at the opening of the twentieth century, applies also with variations in detail and some hopeful signs to a large majority of the other aboriginal tribes of North America.
The Aleutians.—The aboriginal inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands are termed Aleuts or Aleutians, a word of obscure and perhaps foreign derivation. As stated above, they belong to the Eskimo family, but are more widely separated from the parent stock than any other of its constituent tribes. Evidence advanced by W. H. Dall tends to show that they are of American continental origin. At the time of the first coming of the Russians, about 1750, they were at war with the Kaniagmuts, who inhabited the greater part of the Alaskan peninsula and were the nearest tribe of the Innuits.
When discovered by the Russians the Aleuts were an active, sprightly people, fond of the dance and of festivities. They are of lighter colour, but not perhaps in general more nearly white than the full-blooded Innuits. At present it is difficult to find even a single representative of unmixed descent, Russian occupation having stamped out or greatly modified nearly every native characteristic both of body and mind. They were originally a robust people, of about the average height found in civilized countries, with coarse black hair and scanty beards. Their island life, where no large game invited inland journeys, made them emphatically "canoe people." The habit of sitting in their kayaks and using the muscles of the upper portion of the body in paddling, throwing the spear, etc., while the lower portion of the body received but little exercise, led to a fine chest development and to undersized and comparatively weak legs. The women, to whom the use of the kayak was not intrusted, were better proportioned than the men, and many of them are pleasing in appearance. As stated by Dall, they were less determined than their neighbours on the mainland, the Kaniagmuts, but were by no means devoid of courage. Their mode of worship partook more of the character of a religion than that of any other of the Eskimo tribes in their native condition.
From what can be learned of the Aleuts in their uncontaminated native state, they seem to have been the most intelligent of all the Eskimo tribes and the one which gave the greatest promise, if treated humanely, of advancement when civilization was introduced. Less than a century of contact with Russian invaders, however, led to a depth of degradation that is only paralleled and possibly not exceeded by the shameful results of the Spanish invasion among the aborigines of the West Indies. One of the darkest chapters in American history, fortunately for the credit of Europeans now largely lost, is that containing an account of the brutal treatment the Aleuts received at the hands of the Russians. The childlike natives became worse than slaves. The debauchery of their oppressors was shameful. As stated by Dall, "the Aleuts were subjected to the most horrible outrages. The names of Glottoff and Solóvioff (two Russian explorers, 1764-'65) make them shudder to this day. Thousands perished under sword and fire. Long after those enormities were checked the Russians considered the Aleuts as beasts rather than men," etc. Their numbers, estimated at 10,000 in 1799, were, according to a Russian census, reduced to 5,238 in 1808, and, as stated by Dall, numbered not more than 1,500 in 1870. The census of 1890 gives it as 967.
The incentive to Russian oppression was the greed for furs and the lust of rude men at a distance from all centres of control. The Aleutian Islands and neighbouring waters is the home of the sea-otter, which is clothed with the most beautiful of all furs. Near at hand are the Pribilof Islands, to which the fur-seal formerly resorted each summer in countless numbers, and during its migrations traversed the passes separating the islands of the Aleutian chain, where they were easily taken; the commercial value of their skins previous to about 1867, however, was small. In addition, the land-otter and several species of foxes also inhabited the same region. These allurements tempted the Russians, and besides the Aleutian Islands, with their sheltered harbours, furnished favourable stations from which to extend the fur trade into the still greater region to the eastward,