INGELETES.
The Ingeletes speak a dialect entirely different from that of the Malemutes,—one nearly allied to the Co-yukon. They are a stout, noble-looking race, good-natured, and having considerable intelligence.
Polygamy, though allowed, is not very common, and marriage is a permanent relation, except occasionally, when the wife is barren or has too many daughters. Female children not being prized so highly as sons, in such instances the wife is sometimes dismissed. They live in underground houses, such as have been described, and in mild, wet weather, the passage-way is nothing but a sewer. The entrance being covered with a skin, the mixture of foul smells inside, arising from stale fish and meat, old skins, dogs, dirt and smoke, is sickening and unendurable by any but an Indian. Mr. Whymper testifies to the good temper of the children and the honesty of the people. “At their villages our goods lay unguarded in our absence, and I cannot recall a single case of proved dishonesty among them, although we found them becoming more greedy in their demands for payment.”
THE CO-YUKONS.
The Co-yukons are an interior tribe, and the largest on the Yukon, which is the great river of the north, being 2,000 miles long, and navigable 1,000 miles. They may be found on the banks of the Co-yukuk, and other interior rivers. These Indians resemble the Ingeletes, already mentioned, but have a more ferocious countenance. Their dress is a double-tailed coat, one tail before, the other behind, and this style, with some modifications, prevails for a thousand miles on the Yukon.
The dress of the women is cut more squarely, and they wear an ornament of Hy-a-qua shells on the nose, which runs through a hole made in the cartilage between the nostrils. It is a singular fact that higher up the river it is the men only who wear this ornament.
Among these tribes the period of mourning for the dead is one year, the women during this time often gathering to talk and cry over the deceased. At the end of the year, they have a feast or “wake,” which is generally a queer compound of jollity and grief. One such scene, to commemorate the death of a child, was witnessed by Mr. Whymper at Nulato. “The poor old mother and some of her friends wept bitterly, while the guests were gayly dancing round a painted pole, on which strings of beads and some magnificent wolf skins were hung. They kept up singing and dancing to a fashionable hour of the morning, and one little savage, who had been shouting at the top of his lungs for hours, got up the next day without any voice at all, a case of righteous retribution. The decorations of the pole were divided among those who took part in the ‘wake.’”
Their method of disposing of the dead is not interment, but enclosure in oblong boxes, raised on posts. These are sometimes ornamented with strips of skin, and the possessions of the deceased, as the canoe, paddles, &c., are placed on the top of the box. Smaller articles are placed within the box. This four-post coffin is a custom also among the coast tribes already described. The women are quite prepossessing in appearance, are affectionate toward their children, and especially fond of their first-born. They are good-natured and playful, snowballing and rolling each other in the snow, sliding down hill on sledges or snow-shoes, with the enthusiasm of children.