T'LINKET WAR CANOE.
“It is of this yarn that the famous Chilkat dancing-blanket is made. This is done by the women with great nicety and care. The warp, all white, is hung from a handsomely carved upright frame. Into it the bright colors are wrought by means of ivory shuttles. The work is protected during the tedious course of its manufacture by a covering resembling oiled silk, made from the dressed intestines of the bear. Bright striped stockings of this yarn are also knitted on little needles whittled from wood.”
An illustration of a dancing-blanket is given on page [81]. These are made by several of the T'linkit tribes; but the Chilkats so predominate in the manufacture, both in numbers and excellence, that you seldom hear them mentioned in Alaska, except as Chilkat blankets. Nearly all of the T'linkit tribes, as the tourist will have seen by this time, spend most of their out-of-door time in the water, in their canoes; and this constant semi-aquatic life has told on their physical development to the extent of giving them very dwarfed and illy developed lower limbs, although the trunk and arms are well developed. When walking, they seem to shamble along more like an aquatic fowl on land than a human being. The Chilkats are noticeable exceptions. Although their country is much more mountainous in appearance than others lower down, yet here are some of the most accessible of the few mountain passes by which the interior, a rich fur-bearing district, can be gained. The Chilkats have yearly taken trading goods from the white men, lashed them into packs of about a hundred pounds, and carried them on their backs through these glacier-clad passes, and traded them for furs, bringing them out in the same way. They monopolized the trade by the simple process of prohibiting the interior Indians from coming to the sea-coast to trade. The Chilkats therefore are probably the richest tribe of Indians in the Northwest, the chief having two houses full of blankets, their standard of value, at the village of Kluk-wan.
To those who find their greatest pleasure in a rough, out-of-door life, let them leave the steamer at this point, hire three or four Indians to carry their company effects on their backs, and make an Alpine journey to the head of the Yukon river, where lakes aggregating 150 miles in length can be passed over in a canoe. The route leads up the Dayay river, over the Perrier Pass in the Kotusk Mountains. The trip could be made between visiting steamers, and I will guarantee the persons will come back with more muscle than they took in.
Bidding good-bye to the picturesque country of the Chilkats, the steamer's head is turned south again; and, when just about ready to leave Lynn Canal, we entered an intricate series of channels bearing eastward, and which bring us to the great mining town of Juneau, where many Alaskan hopes are centred. This is what a correspondent of the Chicago Times, under date of February 23, 1885, says of this Alaskan town and its curious history:
“The centre from which radiates whatever of excitement and interest there is in Alaskan mines is Douglas Island. The history of the discovery of ore near this island, which eventually led to the location of the present much-talked-of property, is similar to that attending the finding of most of the large mines in the West. It seems that some half-dozen years ago two needy and seedy prospectors named Juneau and Harris arrived at an Indian village that still remains visible on the shore across the bay from Douglas Island, in search of ore. They prospected the country as thoroughly as they could, with but little success, and were about to return home when an Indian said that he knew where gold existed, and that he would reveal the place for a certain sum of money. Hardly believing, but yet curious, Harris and Juneau accepted the offer, and, with their guide, set out on a pilgrimage into the interior to a spot now known as ‘The Basin.’ After a long tramp through the forests, and up a deep valley, the Indian showed them a place where there were nuggets of free gold and dirt, which, when panned, yielded a handsome return. Claims were immediately staked out, and the adventurers began their work in earnest. Later, the fact of the discovery became known, and other miners entered the valley, and the region gained no little celebrity, and became the scene of much animation. Four years the work progressed, and a town, which to-day is of respectable size and great expectations, was founded, and christened Juneau.
“The Douglas Island mine is located within fifty yards of the waters of Juneau Bay, and was discovered by a man named Treadwell, who sold his claim a year or two ago to a San Francisco company. The new owners set up a fine stamp-mill to begin with, and made thorough tests of the ore. It is a 120-stamp mill, the largest in the world, and the company has refused, it is said, $16,000,000 for the mine.”
T'LINKET CARVED SPOONS.
(Made from the Horns of Mountain Goats.)
Since the above was written, and as late as last August, reports from there gave the astonishing showing of enough ore in sight to keep the 120-stamp mill “running for a lifetime.” The uninitiated in mining mills, ledges and lodes, may grasp the value of the mine by saying its output for a twenty-days run of the stamp-mill was $100,000 in gold, or at the rate of $1,800,000 per year; which, estimating its value on an income of five per cent. annually, would make the mine worth $36,000,000, or just five times the amount we paid for the whole Territory. There is no doubt whatever in the minds of many experts, that there are a number of such places as the Treadwell mine yet to be found, the great difficulty of prospecting in the dense, deep mass of fallen timber covered with wet moss and thick underbrush on the steepest mountain sides, coupled with the little probability of the Treadwell being an isolated case in such a uniformly Alpine country, amply justifying them in coming to such conclusions. A visit to the mines is one the tourists can readily make. At Juneau we find the Takoo band of T'linkits in a village near by, where nearly all that has been said regarding Alaskan Indians may be here repeated. The very curious spoons they carve from the horns of the mountain goat, which are figured on page [85], and beautifully woven mats, and the baskets shown on page [68], may be purchased; and, in leaving a few pieces of silver among them for their own handiwork, little as it is that we have thus done for them, it is far more than the extremists of either side in the Indian question have done, those who would exterminate, or those who would sentimentalize in print over their wrongs.