Cook’s Inlet.—Manufacture of Quass.—Native Piety.—Mummies.—The North Coast.—Geographical Position.—Shallowness of Behring Sea.—Alaskan Peninsula.—Size of Alaska.—A “Terra Incognita.”—Reasons why Russia sold it to our Government.—The Price Comparatively Nothing.—Rental of the Seal Islands.—Mr. Seward’s Purchase turns out to be a Bonanza.
Cook’s Inlet, which lies to the north of the island of Kodiak, was esteemed by the Russians to be the pleasantest portion of Alaska in the summer season, with its bright skies and well wooded shores. It stretches far inland in a northeasterly direction, and is quite out of the region of the fogs which prevail on the coast. Gold has been profitably mined for some years on the Kakny River, which empties into the eastern side of this extensive inlet, and good coal abounds in the neighborhood.
When the Russians first came to this region they taught the natives to make what they called quass, a cooling and comparatively harmless acid drink. To produce this article rye meal is mixed with water, in certain proportions, and allowed to remain in a cask until fermentation takes place and it is sour and lively enough to draw. Latterly the natives have learned to add sugar, and thus to produce a fermented liquor of an intoxicating nature. Progress in this direction has been made until now they mix a certain portion each of sugar, flour, dried apples, and a few hops, when they can be obtained, putting the whole into a close barrel or cask. When fermentation has taken place and the mixture has worked itself clear, it forms a strong intoxicant. This article proves the cause of a thousand ills among the aborigines. In each of the scattered villages among the islands there is sure to be seen a few broken-down victims of this active poison, who have impoverished their families and wrecked their own constitutions.
In each of these Aleutian islands there is found a Russian-Greek chapel and a regularly appointed priest, this religion being preferred by the natives to that of all other sects, captivating their simple minds by its gorgeous show and its mystery. Their honest devotion, however, to a religion which they cannot comprehend may be reasonably questioned. There can be no doubt that their idolatrous customs and original pantheism have been almost entirely abandoned,—ceremonies which were elaborately described by the early voyagers, and which involved strange incantations and even human sacrifices. Intercourse with the whites has at least had the effect of abolishing the most objectionable features of their early superstitions. The bishop of the organization is a Russian and resides in San Francisco, whence he controls these parishes, which he occasionally visits, being amply supplied with pecuniary means by the home government at St. Petersburg. The piety of these Aleuts is very pronounced, so far as all outward observances go, and we were told that they never sit down to their meals without briefly asking a blessing upon their rude repast. Golovin, a Russian who lived many years among the Aleuts, says: “Their attention during religious services is unflinching, though they do not understand a word of the whole rite.” The same author goes on to say, “During my ten years’ stay in Unalaska not a single case of murder happened among the Aleutians. Not an attempt to kill, nor fight, nor even a considerable dispute, although I often saw them drunk.” Hunting is the principal source of their support, and to get the sea-otter they often make long, exposed trips in their undecked boats, and experience many trying hardships. When they return to their homes at the close of the season, having been nearly always reasonably successful, the quass barrel is brought into requisition, and its contents partaken of to excess, drunken orgies following with all their attendant evils.
The Aleuts are a very honest people, quite unlike the Eskimos of the north, who are natural pilferers. They are also possessed of a certain stoicism which compels admiration. When they are sick or suffering great pain they utter no complaint, and outwardly are always content, no matter what the future may send as their lot. An Aleut is never known to sigh, groan, or shed a tear. If he feels it, he never evinces immoderate joy, but is always quiet, moderate, and grave. They are in a great degree fatalists, and believe that which is decreed by the power in the sky will come to pass, whatever they may do to prevent it. It is Kismet.
It is an interesting fact that before these islands were discovered by the Russians, the natives were in the practice of preserving their dead in the form of mummies, and this had probably been their habit for centuries. Satisfactory evidence is afforded by what is found upon the islands to show that they have been the residence of populous tribes for over two thousand years. Mr. Dall, in his indefatigable researches, was able to secure several examples of the mummified dead on these outlying islands, eleven of which came from one cave on the south end of Unalaska, but none were ever found or known to have existed upon the mainland. This fact is looked upon by ethnologists as an important addition to our knowledge of the prehistoric condition of these peculiar people of the far Northwest, now part and parcel of our widespread population. The mummies of Peru and those of Alaska are now arranged side by side in the cases of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, and what is very singular is that they seem, in their general appearance, to be almost identical.
The interior of Alaska and its more Arctic regions north of the valley of the Yukon remain still only partially explored. No more is actually known of it than of Central Africa. It would be anything but a pleasure excursion, at present, to penetrate the extreme northern harbors of the extended coast line, which are mostly uninhabited, and which are tempest-swept for a large portion of the year. Northwestern Alaska shares with northeastern Siberia the possession of the coldest winter climate in the world, but we must remember it is not always winter, and thousands of Eskimos here find life quite tolerable. Beyond 70° of north latitude no trees are to be found; even shrubs have disappeared, giving place to a scanty growth of lichens and creeping wood-plants. Even here, however, Nature asserts her prerogative and brings forth a few bright flowers and blooming grasses in the brief midsummer days. Point Barrow is what might be termed, in common parlance, “the jumping-off place;” the beginning of that mysterious ocean where the compass needle, which lies horizontal at the equator, attracted by an unexplained influence dips and points straight downward. There is no lack of animal life in this frozen region, the sea is as full as in the tropics; the whale here finds its birthplace, and herring issue forth in countless columns to seek more southern seas, while the air is darkened by innumerable flocks of sea-fowl. The wolves, the polar bear, and other fur-bearing animals afford meat and clothing to the Eskimo to an extent far exceeding his requirements. Only thoroughly organized expeditions and a few adventurous whalers attempt to pass Point Barrow, a long reach of low barren land, and the most northerly portion of the Territory, which projects itself into the great Arctic Ocean very much after the fashion of the North Cape of Norway, in the eastern hemisphere, at latitude 71° 10′.
There is a village at Point Barrow containing about a hundred and fifty people, living in houses partly under ground as a protection against the cold. The roofs are supported by rafters of whale jaws and ribs. This people we call the Eskimo proper. They have a severe climate to contend with, but are abundantly supplied with food and oil from the sea. They have a strange aversion to salt, and any food thus cooked or preserved they will not eat unless driven to it by dire necessity. Our government is just about to erect a comfortable structure here as a sort of refuge to shipwrecked navigators of the Polar Sea, this being the verge of those unknown waters which guard the secret of the Pole.
A peninsula makes out from near the centre of the western coast of Alaska, the terminus of which is the nearest point between this continent and Asia, the two being separated by Behring Strait, where the East and the West confront each other, and where the extreme western boundary of our country is the line which separates Asia from America. This is called. Cape Prince of Wales, a rocky point rising in its highest peak to twenty-five hundred feet above the sea. Here is a village of Eskimos numbering between three and four hundred souls, who do not bear a good reputation. They are skilled as fishermen on the sea and hunters on the land, to which it may be added that they are professional smugglers. Here it is quite possible in clear weather to see the Asiatic coast—Eastern Siberia—from United States soil, the distance across the strait being about forty miles. There are two islands in the strait, known as the Diomedes, almost in a direct line between Cape Prince of Wales on one side and East Cape on the other; stepping-stones, as it were, between the two continents. Occasional intercourse between the natives of the two opposite shores is maintained to-day by means of sailing craft, and doubtless has been going on for hundreds, if not for thousands, of years. So moderate are the seas, and so calm the weather hereabouts at some portions of the year, that the passage is made in open or undecked boats.
On King’s Island, fifty miles south of Cape Prince of Wales, there is a tribe of veritable cave-dwellers. The island is a great mass of rock, with almost perpendicular sides rising seven hundred feet above the sea. On one side, where the angle is nearly forty-five degrees, the Eskimos have excavated homes in the rock, about half a hundred of which are two hundred feet above the sea. These people openly defy the revenue laws, and are the known distributers of contraband articles, especially of intoxicants.