Mr. Frederick Whymper, who wrote about the Northwest some twenty years ago, speaking upon this subject, refers to the experience of a Mr. Sproat, a resident of the region near Puget Sound, who employed large numbers of natives as well as whites in manufacturing lumber. Mr. Sproat conducted his large business and the place where it was established on temperance principles; no violence or oppression of any sort was permitted towards the natives. They were in fact better fed, better clothed, and better taught than they had ever been before. It was only after a considerable time that any symptom of a change was observed among the Indians. By and by a listlessness seemed to creep over them, and they “brooded over silent thoughts.” At first they were surprised and bewildered by the presence of the white men, and the machinery and steam vessels which they brought with them. They seemed slowly to acquire a distrust of themselves, and abandoned their old practices and tribal habits, until at last it was discovered that a higher death-rate was prevailing among them. “No one molested them,” says Mr. Sproat; “they had ample sustenance and shelter for the support of life, yet the people decayed. The steady brightness of civilized life seemed to dim and extinguish the flickering light of savageism, as the rays of the sun put out a common fire.”
Upon the same subject and people, H. W. Elliott says: “These savages were created for the wild surroundings of their existence; expressly fitted for it, and they live happily in it; change the order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and the domestication of animals.” We shall not comment upon these remarks, though to us it is an extremely interesting subject; the reader must draw his own inference.
The men of these native tribes are strong and vigorous; the women are, however, forced to perform most of the domestic labor, and all of the drudgery, yet it was observed that they held the purse strings. That is to say, a native buck always defers to his wife in any matter of trade as to the price either to ask or to pay. The women of Alaska are certainly in a better condition and are better treated than those belonging to any of our Western Indian tribes, with whom we are acquainted. Though they are called upon to do much menial work, they do not seem to be actually abused. The male Alaskan performs a certain liberal share of domestic duties, but not so with the Indian of our Western reservations. The latter makes his wife a beast of burden. They are generally clothed in the garments of civilization, though of coarse material and of the cheapest manufacture. The ready-made clothing store has reached even the islands of the North Pacific. Polygamy is common among the aborigines, chastity is little heeded, and young girls are sold by their mothers for a few blankets, she and not the father having the acknowledged right of disposing of them. Dr. Sheldon Jackson writes most feelingly as follows: “Despised by their fathers, sold by their mothers, imposed upon by their brothers, and ill-treated by their husbands, cast out in their widowhood, living lives of toil and low sensual pleasure, untaught and uncared for, with no true enjoyment in this world and no hope for the world to come, crushed by a cruel heathenism, it is no wonder that many of them end their misery and wretchedness by suicide.”
It was found on inquiry that the ratio of births among the Alaskan shore tribes was considerably greater than among civilized communities, but the death-rate is, on the other hand, excessive. The wretched ignorance of the mothers as to the observance of the simplest sanitary laws, as well as the gross exposure of their infants, is the principal cause of this needless mortality.
The aborigines, where not brought in contact with the government schools and missionaries, still retain their system of fetich worship, being very much under control of their medicine-men, who pretend to influence the demons of the spirit world, so feared by the average savage. Their moral degradation is extreme, and their practices in too many instances are terrible to relate. Slaves are sacrificed, as already stated, at the owner’s death, that they may go before and prepare for his arrival in the future state. Vile witchcraft is still believed in among most of the tribes, and murderous consequences follow in many cases. All kinds of barbarity are inflicted upon women, children, and slaves. We are told by Dr. Sheldon Jackson that it was surprising to see how quickly these savage practices yielded to the power of Christian teachings, and how rapidly they faded away before the influence of association with a few intelligent, conscientious white teachers. What these people need is education and Christian influence, which will work a great and rapid reform among them in a single generation.
The canoes of the tribes about the Alexander Archipelago are dug out of well-chosen cedar logs, and are given the really fine lines for which they are remarkable by means of hot water and steam, together with the use of cunningly devised braces and clamps. The wood being once thoroughly dried in the desired shape, will retain it. Wondering how the exquisite smoothness was produced in forming their boats without a carpenter’s plane, it was found by inquiry that the natives dry the coarse skin of the dogfish and use it as we do sandpaper. The time spent upon the construction and ornamentation of these canoes is apparently of no consideration to the native, and the market value of the best will average one hundred dollars. It is the Alaskan’s most necessary and most prized piece of property. Some which we saw were eighty feet in length, and capable of holding one hundred men. It must be remembered that almost the entire population live on the coast or river banks in a country where there are no roads. These canoes have no seats in them; the rower places himself on the bottom, and thus situated uses his paddles with great dexterity. They are quite unmanageable by a white man who is not accustomed to them, as much so at least as a birch canoe, such as the Eastern Indians build on the coast of Maine. But the Alaskan boat is far superior to the birch-bark canoe in every respect. We saw one paddled by a boy at Pyramid Harbor, neat and new, which the lad, say twelve years of age, had dug out of a spruce log with his own hands, quite unaided. Its lines were admirable, and the finish was excellent. When the sun beats down upon these boats, the owner splashes water upon the sides about him to prevent their warping, and for this purpose carries a thin wooden scoop. When not in use they are carefully covered up to shelter them from the sun’s rays. Some tribes use a double paddle, that is, an oar with a blade at each end, which they dip on one side and the other alternately; other tribes use the single-bladed paddle. Each one of the males among the natives has his canoe, for the water is his only highway, and without his boat he would be as helpless as one of our Western Indians on the plains without his pony. When the “dug-outs” are drawn up upon the shore in scores, they present a curious appearance, packed with grass and covered with matting to keep them from being cracked and warped by the sun. The bows and stern of many of them are elaborately carved totem-fashion, and also painted in strange designs with a black pigment. The fore part of the boat rises with an upward sheer, and is higher at the prow than at the stern. There is another form of boat used by the Eskimos and natives of the outlying islands, being a simple frame of wood, covered with sea-lion skin from which the hair has been removed. These boats are covered over the tops as well as the bottoms, being almost level with the sea, leaving only a hole for the occupant to sit in, thus making them absolutely water-tight, a life-boat, in fact, which will float in any water so long as they will hold together. The waves may dash over them but cannot enter them. These skin-covered boats, admirably adapted to their legitimate purpose, are known on the coast as “bidarkas,” in the management of which the natives evince great skill, making long journeys in them, and braving all sorts of weather. Like the Madras surf-boats, no nails are used in their construction, either in the skeleton frame or in putting on the covering, the several parts being lashed and sewed together in the most artistic fashion with sinews and leather thongs, which enables them to bear a greater strain than if they were held together by any other means. The thongs admit of a certain degree of flexibility when it is required, an effect which cannot be got with nail fastenings.
CHAPTER XV.
Still sailing Northward.—Multitudes of Water-Fowls.—Native Graveyards.—Curious Totem-Poles.—Tribal and Family Emblems.—Division of the Tribes.—Whence the Race came.—A Clew to their Origin.—The Northern Eskimos.—A Remarkable Museum of Aleutian Antiquities.—Jade Mountain.—The Art of Carving.—Long Days.—Aborigines of the Yukon Valley.—Their Customs.
Still sailing northward, large numbers of ebon-hued cormorants are seen feeding on the low, kelp-covered rocks, contrasting with the snowy whiteness of the gulls. Big flocks of snipe, ducks, and other aquatic birds line the water’s edge, or rise in clouds from some sheltered nook to settle again in our wake. Higher up in air a huge bald-headed eagle is in sight nearly all the while, as we sail along the winding watercourse. The eagles of Alaska, unlike those of other sections of the globe, are not a solitary bird, but congregate in considerable numbers, and residents told us they had seen a score of them roasting together on the branches of the same tree, but we must confess to never having seen even two together. Elsewhere the eagle is certainly a bird whose solitary habits are one of its marked characteristics. We observe here and there near native villages, more square boxes and totem-poles indicating the resting-places of the dead. Some tribes continue to burn their dead, and these boxes contain only the ashes, but the missionaries and the whites generally have so opposed the idea of cremation that many of the natives have abandoned it. The burial above-ground in the square boxes referred to is a peculiar idea. These coffins, if they may be so called, are about three feet and a half long by two and a half wide, and are often elaborately carved and painted with grotesque figures. The corpse is disjointed and doubled up in order to get it into this compass, though why this is done when a longer box would so much simplify matters, no one seems to know. We were told that some of the Alaskan tribes used to place their dead in trees, or on the top of four raised poles, a similar practice to that which once prevailed among certain tribes of our Western Indians, but the mode just described is that which most generally prevails. There seems to be some difference of opinion as regards the real significance of the totem-poles. They appear to be designed in part to commemorate certain deeds in the lives of the departed, near whose grave they are reared, as well as to indicate the family arms of those for whom they are erected. Thus, on seeing one special totem-post surmounted by a wolf carved in wood, beneath which a useless gun was lashed, inquiry was made as to its significance, whereupon we were told that the deceased by whose grave it stood had been killed while hunting wolves in the forest. This was certainly a very literal way of recording the fate of the hunter.