TOTEM POLES AT FORT WRANGELL.
Here was another totem pole belonging to the chief of the Bear tribe. It had simply the figure of a crouching bear on the top, with prints of his feet carved in the wood leading up to it. Another had a raven in the same way. There was a huge wooden wolf set on the tomb of a prominent member of the “Wolves”—once a powerful Alaskan tribe.
“Do you suppose they would let us go inside their house?” whispered Adelaide to her brother, glancing timidly in at one of the open front doors.
“I’ll see,” he replied, and soon returned, laughing. “They don’t object in the least,” he said. “They seem used to visitors.”
Entering the door, the party found themselves in a large square room, which comprised the whole interior of the house. The floor was of earth, beaten hard, but a wooden platform, raised about two feet, ran around three sides. In the exact center was a smouldering fire of logs, the smoke finding its way out through a hole in the roof.
“Where do you sleep?” asked Rossiter.
Only one of the half-dozen natives who were seated around the fire could understand English.
“Bed,” she said, pointing to a heap of blankets lying on the raised platform in one corner of the room.