CHAPTER XVII.
Schools in Alaska.—Natives Ambitious to learn.—Wild Flowers.—Native Grasses.—Boat Racing.—Avaricious Natives.—The Candle Fish.—Gold Mines Inland.—Chinese Gold-Diggers.—A Ledge of Garnets.—Belief in Omens.—More Schools required.—The Pestiferous Mosquito.—Mosquitoes and Bears.—Alaskan Fjords.—The Patterson Glacier.
The general plan of this school at Wrangel struck us as being the most promising means of improvement that could possibly be devised and carried forward among the aborigines of Alaska. We were informed that fourteen government day schools were in operation in the Territory, under the able supervision of that true philanthropist, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, United States General Agent for Education in the Territory. The natives almost universally welcome and gladly improve the advantages afforded them for instruction, especially as regards their children. Many individual cases with which the author became acquainted were of much more than ordinary interest; indeed, it was quite touching to observe the eagerness of young natives to gain intellectual culture. Surely such incentive is worthy of all encouragement. One could not but contrast the earnestness of these untutored aborigines to make the most of every opportunity for learning with the neglected opportunities of eight tenths of our pampered children of civilization. Here is the true field of missionary work, the work of education.
In the neighborhood of Fort Wrangel plenty of sweet wild flowers were observed in bloom, some especially of Alpine character were very interesting,—“wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers,”—while the tall blueberry bushes were crowded with wholesome and appetizing fruit, with here and there clusters of the luscious salmon-berry, yellow as gold, and so ripe as to melt in the mouth. At the earliest advent of spring the flowers burst forth in this latitude with surprising forwardness, a phenomenon also observable in northern Sweden and Norway. Such white clover heads are rarely seen anywhere else, large, well spread, and fragrant as pinks. Among the ferns was an abundance of the tiny-leaved maiden’s hair species, with delicate, chocolate stems. The soil also abounds in well-developed grasses, timothy growing here to four feet and over in height, and the nutritious, stocky blue grass even higher. Vegetation during the brief summer season runs riot, and makes the most of its opportunity. Although south of Sitka, Fort Wrangel is colder in winter and warmer in summer, on account of its distance from the influence of the thermal ocean current already described.
Sometimes a purse is made up among the visitors here and offered as a prize to the natives in boat-racing. A number of long canoes, each with an Indian crew of from ten to sixteen, take part in the aquatic struggle, which proves very amusing, not to say exciting. The native boats are flat-bottomed, and glide over the surface of the water with the least possible displacement. An Alaskan is seen at his best when acting as a boatman; he takes instinctively to the paddle from his earliest youth, and is never out of training for boat-service so long as he lives and is able to wield an oar. No university crew could successfully compete with these semi-civilized canoeists. Well-trained naval boat-crews have often been distanced by them.
The avariciousness of the natives is exhibited in their readiness to sell almost anything they possess for money, even to parting with their wives and daughters to the miners for base purposes; though, as we have seen, they do draw the line at totem-poles. It should be understood that these queerly carved posts are emblems mostly of the past; that is to say, although the natives carefully preserve those which now exist, few fresh ones are raised by them. Toy effigies representing these emblems are carved and offered for sale to curio-hunters at nearly all of the villages on the coast, and as a rule are readily disposed of.
There is very little if any use in Alaska for artificial light during the summer season, while nature’s grand luminary is so sleepless; but when these aborigines do require a lamp for a special purpose, they have the most inexpensive and ingenious substitute ever ready at hand. The water supplies them with any quantity of the ulikon or candle-fish, about the size of our largest New England smelts, and which are full of oil. They are small in body, but over ten inches in length. They are prepared by a drying process and are stored away for use, serving both for food and for light. When a match is applied to one end of the dried ulikon, it will burn until the whole is quite consumed, clear and bright to the last, giving a light equal to three or four candles. So rich are these fishes in oil that alcohol will not preserve them, a discovery which was made in preparing specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. When the Indians of the interior visit the coast, as many of them do annually, they are sure to lay in a stock of candle-fish to take back with them for use in the long Arctic night. This fish runs at certain seasons of the year in great schools from the sea, invading the fresh-water rivers near their mouths, when the natives rake them on shore by the bushel and preserve them as described. When boiled they produce an oil which hardens like butter, and which the Alaskans eat as we do that article, with this important difference, that they prefer their oil-butter to be quite rancid before they consider it at its best, while civilized taste requires exactly the opposite condition, namely, perfect freshness. Putrid animal matter would certainly poison a white man, but the Alaskan Indians seem to thrive upon it.
Some inland districts, which are most easily reached from this point, are rich in gold-bearing quartz and placer mines, but especially in the latter. We were credibly informed that over three million dollars’ worth of gold was shipped from here in a period of five years, though no really organized and persistent effort at mining had been made, or rather we should say no modern facilities had been employed in bringing about this result. The machinery for reducing gold-bearing quartz has not yet been carried far inland because of the great difficulty of transportation. Gold quartz ledges are numerous and quite undeveloped in the neighborhood of Wrangel. The well-known Cassiar mines are situated just over the Alaska boundary on the east side in British Columbia, but the gold discoveries in Alaska proper are proving so much more profitable that those of the Cassiar district have ceased to attract the miners. There is a curious fact connected with these deposits of the precious metal in the region approached by the way of Wrangel. In more than one instance, as reported by Captain White of the United States Revenue Service, placer gold, which is usually sought for in the dry beds of river courses and in lowlands, is here found on the tops of mountains a thousand feet high, where the largest nuggets of the precious metal yet found in the Northwest have been obtained. Many of the lumps of pure gold picked up in this region have weighed thirty ounces and over. The idea of finding placer deposits on the tops of mountains is a novelty in gold prospecting.
The Stickeen River, which is the largest in the southern part of the Territory, has its mouth in the harbor of Fort Wrangel, discoloring the waters for a long distance with its chalk-like, frothy flow, a characteristic of all Alaska streams into which the waters of the snowy mountains and glaciers empty. The river is navigable for light-draft stern-wheel steamers to Glenora, a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. After reaching this place, the way to the Cassiar mines is overland for an equal distance by a difficult mountain trail, it being necessary to transport all provisions and material on the backs of natives, who have learned to demand good pay for this laborious service. The interior upon this route is broken into a succession of sharply-defined mountains, separated by narrow and deep valleys, similar to the islands off the mainland. This is so decided a feature as to lead Mr. George Davidson of the United States Coast Survey to remark: “The topography of the Alexander Archipelago is a type of the interior. A submergence of the mountain region of the mainland would give a similar succession of islands, separated by deep narrow fjords.” The sandy bed and banks of the Stickeen are heavily charged with particles of gold, ten dollars per day each being frequently realized by gangs of men who manipulate the sand only in the most primitive fashion. Numbers of Chinamen availed themselves of this opportunity until they were expelled by both the whites and the natives. The poor “Heathen Chinee” is unwelcome everywhere outside of his own Celestial Empire, and yet close observation shows, as we have already said, that these Asiatics have more good qualities than the average foreigners who seek a home on our shores.