The scenery of the Stickeen River is pronounced by Professor Muir to be superb and grand beyond description. Three hundred glaciers are known to drain into its swift running waters, over one hundred of which are to be seen between Fort Wrangel and Glenora. Near the mouth of the river is the curious ledge of garnet crystals, which furnishes stones of considerable beauty and brilliancy, though not sufficiently clear to be used as gems. Choice pieces are secured by visitors as cabinet specimens, however, and can be had, if desired, by the bushel, at a trifling cost. They occur in a matrix of slate-like formation, some so large as to weigh two or three ounces, and diminishing from that size they are found as small as a pin-head. It requires three days of hard steaming against the current to ascend the river as far as Glenora from the mouth, whereas the same distance returning, down stream, has frequently been made in eight or ten hours. So necessarily rapid is the descent of the Stickeen as to make the downward trip quite hazardous, except in charge of a careful pilot. In the neighborhood of Fort Wrangel there are some very active boiling springs, which the natives utilize, as do the New Zealanders at Ohinemutu, by cooking their food in them.
In the crater of Goreloi, on Burned Island, is a vast boiling spring, or rather a boiling lake, which has never been intelligently described, and which is represented by those who have seen it to be unique. This strange body of water is eighteen miles in circumference. The natives are well supplied with legends relating to these remarkable natural phenomena, including the extinct and active volcanoes. Genii and dreaded spirits are supposed by them to dwell in the extinct volcanoes, and to make their homes in the mountain caves. They believe that good spirits will not harm them, and therefore do not address themselves to such, but the evil ones must by some active means be propitiated, and to them their sole attention is given, or, in other words, their religious ceremonies when analyzed are simply devil worship. All of the tribes, if we except the Aleuts, are held in abject fear by their conjurers or medicine-men, who seemed to us to be the most arrant knaves conceivable, not possessing one genuine quality to sustain their assumptions except that of bold effrontery. This seems particularly strange, as the aborigines of the Northwest are more than ordinarily intelligent, compared with other half-civilized races, both in this and other lands.
They are firm believers in signs and omens. When Rev. Mr. Willard and wife first came to the Chilcat country the winter was one of deep snows and stormy weather. The natives said that the weather-gods were angry at the new ways of the missionaries. A child had been buried instead of burned on the funeral pyre in accordance with their customs. The mother of the child became alarmed and felt that her life was in jeopardy for permitting her child to be buried, so she kindled a fire over the grave in order to appease the gods and bring fair weather. At school the children had played new games and mocked wild geese. So the girls of the Sitka Training School brought on a very cold spell of weather by playing a game called “cat’s-back,” and which caused a commotion at the native village. A white man out with some natives picked up some large clam-shells on the beach to bring home with him; the natives remonstrated with him, saying that “a big storm may overtake us, our canoe might capsize, and all be drowned the next time we go on the water.”
In tempestuous weather the native propitiates the spirit of the storm by leaving a portion of tobacco in the rock-caves alongshore, but in calm weather he smokes the weed himself. It was noticed, however, that the aboriginal Alaskans were little given to the use of tobacco, less, indeed, than any semi-civilized race whom the writer has ever visited.
Governor Swineford, in his annual report to the department at Washington, dated 1886, says: “I have no reason to change or modify the estimate I had formed on very short acquaintance of the character of the native Alaskans. They are a very superior race intellectually as compared with the people generally known as North American Indians, and are as a rule industrious and provident, being wholly self-sustaining. They are shrewd and natural-born traders. Some are good carpenters, others are skillful workers in wood and metals. Not a few among them speak the English language, and some of the young men and women have learned to read and write, and nearly all are anxious for the education of their children.”
Our government should act upon this hint and freely establish the means of education among the Alaskans. True, it is systematically engaged in promoting the cause in various ways, though not very energetically, Congress having voted forty-five thousand dollars to be expended for the purpose during the year 1889. “School-houses are the republican line of fortifications,” said Horace Mann. “Among those best known,” says Dr. Sheldon Jackson, speaking of the native tribes, “the highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living, and be American citizens. They ask no special favors from the American government, no annuities or help, but simply to be treated as other citizens, protected by the laws and courts, and in common with all others furnished with schools for their children.” It was made the duty of the Secretary of the Interior, by the act providing a civil government for Alaska, to make needful and proper provision for the education of all children of school age without reference to race or color, and all true friends of progress and humanity will urge the matter until a common school is established in every native tribe and settlement having a sufficient number of children.
We were told that there is good hunting inland a short distance from Fort Wrangel; winter, however, is the only season when this can be successfully pursued near to the coast in the wild districts. The marshy “tundra” is then frozen and covered with snow, making it possible to cross. This is the period of the year also when the natives of the interior prosecute their most successful trapping and hunting, coming down to the coast by the river in the summer to sell their pelts and to purchase stores of the white traders. The Russians have long since taught the aborigines to depend much upon tea, but they care very little for coffee. Rifles are greatly prized by them, and though they are contraband nearly every Indian manages to possess one and knows how to use it most effectually. They are very economical of ammunition, and never throw away a shot by carelessness.
The pestiferous and ubiquitous mosquito is not absent from these high latitudes. They are very troublesome during the short summer season in northern Alaska as well as among the islands of the Alexander Archipelago. Strange that so frail an insect should have reached as far north as man has penetrated. Even while climbing the frosty glaciers the excursionist will find both hands required to prevent their biting his face from forehead to chin. If they are a persistent pest in equatorial latitudes, they are ten times more venomous and voracious in these regions during certain seasons. The author has experienced this fact also in Norway at even a much higher latitude than he visited in the western hemisphere. The bites of these mosquitoes fortunately, like all flesh wounds in this northern region, heal quickly, venomous as they are, owing to the liberally ozonized condition of the atmosphere as well as the absence of disease germs and organic dust.
It is said that when the otter hunters or others among the aborigines get wounded in any way, their treatment is simple and efficacious, and however severe the wound may be, it is nearly always quickly healed. The victim of the accident puts himself uncomplainingly on starvation diet, living upon an astonishingly small amount of food for a couple of weeks, and the cure follows rapidly.
Frederick Schwatka, in his excellent book entitled “Along Alaska’s Great River,” tells how the mosquitoes conquer and absolutely destroy the bears, and it seems that the native dogs are sometimes overcome by them in some exposed districts of the Yukon valley. The great brown bear, having exhausted the roots and berries on one mountain side, cross the valley to another range, or rather makes the attempt to do so, but is not always successful. Covered by a heavy coat of hair on his body, his eyes, nose, and ears are the only vulnerable points of attack for the mosquitoes, and hereon they congregate, surrounding the bear’s head in clouds. As he reaches a swampy spot they increase in vigor and numbers, until the animal’s forepaws become so occupied in striving to keep them off that he cannot walk. Then Bruin becomes enraged, and, bear-like, rises on his hind legs to fight. It is a mere question of time after this stage is reached until the bear’s eyes become so swollen from the innumerable bites that he cannot see, and in a blind condition he wanders helplessly about until he gets mired and starves to death. The cinnamon and black bears are most common, the grizzly being less frequently met with. The great white polar bears are not found south of Behring Strait, though they are numerous on the borders of the Arctic Ocean.