These aborigines seem to anticipate a state of future happiness, but not one of rewards and punishments. All blessedness in this anticipated eternity is for man; woman, it seems, has no real inheritance in this world or the next! Slavery, vice, and misery would thus appear to be her portion in life, and she expects nothing beyond. This picture is not overdrawn. These natives are now as much a part of our population as are the people who live in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, and our manifest duty is to educate them. The light of reason will soon follow, and like the rising sun will burn away this mist of ignorance and superstition. Schools are the most potent missionaries that can be established among any savage race; reasonable religious convictions will follow as a natural result.
“When the missionary,” says W. H. Dall, “will leave the trading-post, strike out into the wilderness, live in the wilderness, live with the Indians, teach them cleanliness first, morality next, and by slow and simple teaching raise their minds above the hunt and the camp,—then, and not until then, they will be able to comprehend the simplest principles of right and wrong.” Though these Indians at the populous centres often pretend to yield to the religious teachings of the professional missionaries, still, like the Chinese religious converts, they are pretty sure to return to their idols and superstitions. When the Roman Catholic Bishop from San Francisco came among the natives of Alaska, and offered to baptize their children, the Indians told him that he might baptize them if he would pay them for it!
H. H. Bancroft, in his work upon the native races of the North Pacific, says: “Thick, black clouds, portentous of evil, hang threateningly over the savage during his entire life. Genii murmur in the flowing river, in the rustling branches of the trees are heard the breathings of the gods, goblins dance in the vapory twilight, and demons howl in the darkness. All these things are hostile to man, and must be propitiated by gifts, prayers, and sacrifices; while the religious worship of some of the tribes includes practices frightful in their atrocity.”
The Sitkans, like many other tribes, used to burn their dead before the missionaries partially dissuaded them from doing so, but some still adopt cremation as a final and most desirable resort. To one who has seen its universal application in India, there are many strong reasons in its favor. The Alaskan native idea of a hell in another world constituted of ice, it is said, causes them to reason that those buried in the earth may be cold forever after, while those whose bodies are burned will be forever warm and comfortable in the next sphere. After the funeral these aborigines, as we have shown, engage in a genuine “wake,” recklessly feasting and drinking to emphasize the importance of the occasion, and to demonstrate their unbounded grief.
The native women occasionally show some taste for music and ability in playing upon the accordion, almost the only instrument found in their possession. A young Indian girl was seen quite alone among the wild flowers just outside the town (Sitka) who had been taught a few pleasing airs, and who surprised us with a well-played strain from a familiar opera. She was a pretty, gypsy-like child of nature, evidently having white blood in her veins, and was not over sixteen years of age. The coarse, scanty clothing could not disguise her handsome form, bright, intelligent face, or hide the depth and splendor of her jet-black luminous eyes. When she discovered us the accordion was quickly thrust behind her, while her downcast eyes expressed mortification at being found alone by the white strangers, playing to the flowers beside the Indian River. She understood English and spoke it fairly well, but hesitated to receive the bright bit of silver offered to her. When we told her that in the East it was the custom to pay those who played to us upon musical instruments out-of-doors, and described the itinerant hand-organist with his monkey, and the brass bands which perambulate city streets, she laughed heartily, thrust the shining silver in her bosom, and held out her hand to greet us cordially. As we turned our steps back towards the town the innocent, winning face of the young girl haunted us with thoughts of hidden possibilities never to be fulfilled.
On the evening before we left Sitka a brass band consisting of twenty-one performers marched down to the wharf from the mission school, in good military order, headed by their teacher as band-master, and serenaded the passengers. The band was composed entirely of native boys, the oldest not over eighteen, not one of whom had ever seen a brass musical instrument two years ago. They performed eight or ten elaborate pieces of composition, not passably well, but admirably, in perfect time, and with real feeling for the music they expressed. It was a surprise to every one on board the Corona to hear such a performance by natives in this isolated spot in the far north. A liberal purse was handed to the teacher to be divided among them.
“Do you know what they will do with this money?” he asked, gratefully.
“Purchase some trifle, each one after his own fancy,” we replied.
“No, sir,” said the teacher, “they will tell me, every one of them, to purchase some new music with the money, which they can practice and learn to play together.”
Their means are of course quite circumscribed, and they have had but little variety afforded them, either in school-books or music. They look upon their musical tuition as a reward for good behavior, and the severest punishment to them is to be deprived of any favorite branch of instruction.