IN THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.
[Illustration: CHILEAT BRACELET MADE FROM SILVER COIN.]
The Chilkat country was reached on the morning of the 2d of June and we
dropped anchor in a most picturesque little port called Pyramid Harbor,
its name being derived from a conspicuous conical island that the
Chilkats call Schlay-hotch, and the few whites, Pyramid Island, shown
on page 43. There were two salmon canneries just completed, one on
each side of the inlet, awaiting the "run" or coming of salmon, which
occurred about two weeks later. Each cannery was manned by about a half
dozen white men as directors and workmen in the trades departments,
the Chilkats doing the rougher work, as well as furnishing the fish.
They differed in no material respect from the salmon canneries of the
great Columbia River, so often described. Just above them comes in the
Chilkat river, with a broad shallow mouth, which, at low water (sixteen
feet below high water) looks like a large sand flat forming part of the
shores of the harbor. On these bars the Indians spear the salmon when
the water is just deep enough to allow them to wade around readily.
Up this Chilkat river are the different villages of the Chilkat
Indians, one of fifteen or twenty houses being in sight, on the east
bank, the largest, however, which contains four or five times as many
houses, called Klukwan, being quite a distance up the river. These
Chilkats are subdivided into a number of smaller clans, named after the
various animals, birds and fishes. At about the time of my arrival the
chief of the Crow clan had died, and as he was a very important person,
a most sumptuous funeral was expected to last about a week or ten days.
These funerals are nothing but a series of feasts, protracted according
to the importance of the deceased, and as they are furnished at the
expense of the administrators or executors of the dead man's estate,
every Indian from far and wide, full of veneration for the dead and a
desire for victuals, congregates at the pleasant ceremonies, and gorges
to his utmost, being worthless for work for another week afterward. As
I urgently needed some three or four score of these Indians to carry my
effects on their backs across the Alaskan coast range of mountains to
the head waters of the Yukon river, this prolonged funeral threatened
seriously to prevent my getting away in good time. Ranking me as a
chief, I was invited to the obsequies and promised a very conspicuous
position therein, especially on the last day when the body was to be
burned on a huge funeral pyre of dry resinous woods. Cremation is the
usual method of disposing of the dead among these people, the priests
or medicine men being the only ones exempt. The latter claim a sort
of infallibility and all of their predictions, acts, and influences
capable of survival, live after them so long as their bodies exist,
but should these be lost by drowning, devouring, or cremation, this
infallibility ceases. Therefore these defunct doctors of savage
witch-craft inhabit the greatest portion of the few graveyards that
one sees scattered here and there over the shores of the channels and
inlets that penetrate the country. Cremation is not always resorted to,
however, with the laity, for whenever convenience dictates otherwise,
they too may be buried in boxes, and this practice, I understand, is
becoming more common. Cremation is a savage honor, nevertheless, and
slaves were not entitled to the rite. All the Indians were extremely
anxious that I should attend the obsequies of their dear departed
friend, for if I did they saw that they might also be present and
yet feel sure of employment on my expedition over the mountains. I
declined the invitation, however, and by being a little bit determined
managed to persuade enough strong sturdy fellows away to do my proposed
packing in two trips over the pass, which had the effect of inducing
the others to come forward in sufficient numbers to accomplish the
work in a single journey, and preparations were commenced accordingly.
These preparations consisted mostly in assorting our effects with
reference to every thing that we could possibly leave behind, taking
as little as we could make our way through with, and putting that
little into convenient bags, boxes, and bundles of about one hundred
pounds each, that being the maximum load the Indians could well carry
over such Alpine trails. Some boys, eight or ten, even came forward
to solicit a share in the arduous labor, and one little urchin of
not over fourteen, a son of the Chilkat chief, Shot-rich, manfully
assumed the responsibility of a sixty-eight pound box, the distance he
had to carry it being about thirty miles, but thirty miles equal to
any one hundred and thirty on the good roads of a civilized country.
There were a few slaves among my numerous Indian packers, slavery
having once flourished extensively among the Chilkats, but having
diminished both in vigor and extent, in direct ratio to their contact
with the whites. Formerly, slaves were treated in the many barbarous
ways common to savage countries, sacrificed at festivals and religious
ceremonies, and kept at the severest tasks. They were often tied in
huge leathern sacks stretched at full length on the hard stony ground
and trodden to death. The murderers, great muscular men, would jump up
and down on their bodies, singing a wild death chant, with their fists
clinched across their breasts, every cracking of a rib or bone being
followed by loud shouts of derisive laughter. Sometimes the slave was
bound to huge bowlders at the water's edge at low tide, and as the
returning waves came rolling in and slowly drowned the wretch, his
cries were deafened by the hideous shouts from the spectators on the
land. Of course, as with all slave-holders, an eye was kept open toward
mercenary views, and the sacrifices were nearly always of the aged,
infirm, or decrepit; those who had ceased to be useful as interpreted
by their own savage ideas of usefulness. Entering a Chilkat house
nowadays, one can hardly distinguish a slave from the master, unless
one is acquainted with the insignificant variations in dress which
characterize them, and while the slaves are supposed to do all the
work the enforcement of the rule appears to be very lax. Still it is
interesting to know that the fourteenth amendment to the United States
constitution is not held inviolable in all parts of that vast country.
As among nearly all savages, the women are brutalized, but they appear
to have one prerogative of the most singular character, that is well
worth relating. Nearly every thing descends on the mother's side, yet
a chattel may be owned, or at least controlled, by the men, although a
traveler will notice many bargains wherein the woman's consent is first
obtained. The royal succession is most oddly managed with reference
to women's rights. The heir-apparent to the throne is not the oldest
or any other child of the king and queen, but is the queen's nearest
blood relative of the male persuasion, although the relationship may
be no closer, perhaps, than that of cousin. As this curiously chosen
king may marry any woman of the tribe, it is easy to see that any one
may in this indirect way become the sovereign of the savages, and with
the help of luck alone, may acquire royal honors. One rich Indian woman
of Sitka who took a fancy to a slave, purchased him for the purpose of
converting him into a husband, at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars
in goods and chattels, and if he was not very expensive thereafter
he may have been cheaper than the usual run of such bargains. When a
couple of Chilkats tie the nuptial knot, they at once, if possible,
adopt a boy and a girl, although these can hardly be said to stand in
the place of adopted children, when it is understood that they are
really a conjugal reserve corps for the bride and bridegroom in case of
death. Should the man die the boy becomes the widow's husband without
further ceremony, and _vice versa_. Of course such conjugal mixtures
present the most incongruous aspects in the matter of age, but happily
these examples are infrequent.
This Chilkat country is most thoroughly Alpine in character, and in
the quiet, still evenings, far up on the steep hillsides, where the
dense spruce timber is broken up by natural clearings, one could
often see a brown or black bear come out and nose around to get at
some of the many roots and berries that there abound, and more than
once I was a spectator of a bear hunt, for as soon as Bruin put in an
appearance there was always some Indian hunter ambitious enough to
toil up the steep mountain sides after him. I have spoken of their
extreme fear of the great brown or cinnamon bear, which they seldom
attack. So great indeed is the Chilkats' respect for him that the most
aristocratic clan is called the Cinnamon Bears. Another high class
clan is the Crows, the plebeian divisions being the Wolves and Whales,
and the division line is so strong that it leads to feuds between the
clans that, in respect of slaughter, are almost entitled to the name
of wars, while between the high and low caste intermarriage is almost
unknown. As the Brown Bears, or Cinnamon Bears as they are generally
called, are the highest clan, so copper is their most highly prized
metal. With copper the Chilkats have always been familiar, gold and
silver coming with the whites; and therefore a brown bear's head carved
in copper is their most venerated charm. In regard to engraving and
sculpture it is not too much to say that the Chilkats stand well in
the front rank of savage artists. When civilization first came in
contact with these people they were in the Paleolithic stone age of
that material, and their carvings were marvels of design and execution,
although subserving the simplest wants of a simple people. Of metals
they possessed only copper, and that in such small quantities as to
be practically out of the account. With the whites came gold and
silver, and the latter from its comparative cheapness became their
favorite metal. Coins were hammered out into long slender bars, bent
into bracelets, and then beautifully engraved, some of their designs
having been borrowed from civilization and copied faithfully in detail,
although the old savage ideas of workmanship are for obvious reasons
preferred by most purchasers. Some of their women wear a dozen or more
bracelets on each arm, covering them up to the elbows and beyond, but
this seems to be only a means of preserving them until the arrival of
white customers, when they are sold at from one to five or six dollars
a pair according to their width. The initial piece of this chapter
is sketched from one in the possession of the author and made by one
of his hired Indians. Ear-rings, finger-rings, beads and ornamental
combs for the hair are made of silver and gold, mostly of silver; and
the Chilkats seem to be as imitative in respect to ideas and designs
as the Mongolians, whose talents are so much better known. It is in
wood and horn, however, that their best examples of this art have
been displayed, and so unique and intricate are they that language
is inadequate to describe them. Of wood carvings their "totem" poles
show the cleverest workmanship and variety of design. The exact
significance of these totem poles remains still undetermined, and the
natives themselves seem averse to throwing much light on the subject.
This fact alone would appear to indicate a superstitious origin. Some
say the totem poles represent family genealogies, life histories, and
tribal accounts, all of which conjectures may be well founded. They
are simply logs of wood standing on end in front of the houses, and
facing the water. This face is covered from top to bottom, for a
height of from five to thirty feet, with the most curious carvings, as
shown to a limited extent on page 19. The "totem" or tribal symbol,
which may be a wolf, a bear, a raven, or a fish, often predominates,
while representations of crouching human figures are favorite designs.
The making of totem poles has ceased among the Indians, although they
carefully preserve those that still exist. Still many of them fall
into the clutches of white men in compensation for a few dollars,
and hardly a museum of note in the country but displays a Tlinkit
totem pole or two, while some possess extensive collections. The best
carving is shown in the isolated poles standing in front of the houses,
but frequently the houses themselves are fantastically carved in
conspicuous places to suit the owner's fancy.
[Illustration: PYRAMID HARBOR, CHILKAT INLET. (Chilkat Indian Canoe in
the foreground.)]
Some of these houses are quite respectable for savage house-making,
the great thick puncheon planks of the floor being often quite well
polished, or at any rate neatly covered with white sand. Attempts at
civilization are made in the larger and more aristocratic abodes by
partitioning the huge hovel into rooms by means of draperies of cloth
or canvas. In some the door is made as high as it can be cut in the
wall and is reached by steps from the outside, while a similar flight
inside gives access to the floor. The fire occupies the center of the
room, enough of the floor being removed to allow it to be kindled
directly on the ground, the smoke escaping by a huge hole in the roof.
The vast majority of the houses are squalid beyond measure, and the
dense resinous smoke of the spruce and pine blackens the walls with a
funereal tinge, and fills the house with an odor which, when mingled
with that of decayed salmon, makes one feel like leaving his card at
the door and passing on. It takes no stretch of the imagination to
conceive that such architecture provides the maximum of ventilation
when least needed, and it is a fact that the winter hours of the
Chilkats are cold and cheerless in the extreme. They sit crouched
around the fire with their blankets closely folded about them and
even drawn over their heads, the house serving indeed as a protection
from the fierce wind and deep snow drifts, but no more. They look
on all this foolishness, however, with a sort of Spartan fortitude
as necessary to toughen them and inure them to the rough climate,
and at times, impelled by this belief, they will deliberately expose
themselves with that object in view. When the rivers and lakes are
frozen over the men and boys break great holes in the ice and plunge
in for a limited swim, then come out, and if a bank of soft snow is
convenient roll around in it like so many polar bears; and when they
get so cold that they can't tell the truth they wander leisurely
back to the houses and remark that they have had a nice time, and
believe they have done something toward making themselves robust
Chilkat citizens able to endure every thing. There is no wonder that
such people adopt cremation; and in fact one interpretation of its
religious significance is based on the idea of future personal warmth
in the happy hunting grounds, which they regard as a large island,
whose shores are unattainable except by those whose bodies have been
duly consumed by fire. Unless the rite of cremation has been performed
the unhappy shade shivers perpetually in outer frost. It is the
impossibility of cremation which makes death by drowning so terrible to
a Chilkat.
The reason that the _shamans_, or medicine men (whose bodies are not
cremated) have no such dread, is that their souls do not pass to the
celestial island, but are translated into the bodies of infants, and
in this way the crop of medicine men never diminishes, whatever may
be the status of the rest of the population. Dreams and divinations,
or various marks of the child's hair or face, are relied upon to
determine into which infant the supreme and mysterious power of the
defunct doctor of Tlinkit divinity has entered. To enumerate all of
these signs would consume more of my space than the subject is worth.
When a Chilkat dies the body is burned at sunrise, having first been
dressed for the ceremony in a costume more elaborate than any which
it ever wore in life. The corpse must not be carried out at the door,
which is deemed sacred, a superstition very common among savage races.
A few boards may be taken from the rear or side of the hovel, or the
body may be hoisted through the capacious chimney in the roof; but when
the Chilkat in his last illness sought his house to lie down and die
in it he passed over its threshold for the last time. Demons and dark
spirits hover around like vultures, and are only kept out of doors by
the dreaded incantations of the medicine men, and these may seize the
corpse as it passes out. So fiendishly eager are they to secure and
stab their prey that all that is needed is to lead out a dog from the
house, which has been brought into it at night, when the witches fall
upon it and exhaust their strength in attacking it before they discover
their mistake. The cremation is seldom perfect, and the charred bones
and remnants are collected and put into a small box standing on four
posts in the nearest graveyard. In the burial of medicine men, or
before cremation with others, the bodies are bent into half their
length, the knees drawn up to the breast and secured by thongs and
lashings.
A walk into the woods around Chilkat shows the traveling to be somewhat
better than in equally mountainous country near the coast, and where
paths had been cut through the dense timber to the charcoal pits formed
and maintained by the canneries, the walking was exceedingly agreeable
and pleasant, especially by way of contrast. As one recedes from the
coast and gets beyond the influence of the warm Japanese current with
its ceaseless fogs, rains and precipitation generally, the woods and
marshes become more and more susceptible of travel, and by the time the
Alaska coast range of mountains is crossed and the interior reached,
one finds it but little worse than the tangle-woods and swamps of
lower latitudes. The waters swarm with life, which is warmed by this
heat-bearing current, and I think I do not exaggerate in saying that
Alaska and its numerous outlying islands will alone, in the course of
a short time, repay us annually more than the original cost of the
great territory. By means of these industries the wedge has begun
to enter, and we may hope it will be driven home by means of a wise
administration of government, a boon which has been denied to Alaska
since the Russians left the territory.
The principal fisheries will always be those of salmon and cod, since
these fish are most readily prepared for export, while halibut, Arctic
smelt or candle-fish, brook trout, flounders and other species will
give ample variety for local use. The salmon has long been the staple
fish food of the Chilkats, but this is slowly giving way to the
products of civilization which they acquire in return for services at
the canneries and for loading and unloading the vessels which visit
the port. The salmon season is ushered in with considerable ceremony
by the Chilkats, numerous festivals mark its success and its close is
celebrated by other feasts. A Chilkat village during the salmon fishing
season is a busy place. Near the water, loaded with the fish, their
pink sides cut open ready for drying, are the scaffoldings, which are
built just high enough, to prevent the dogs from investigating too
closely; while out in the shallow water of the shoals or rapids, which
often determine the site of a village, may be seen fish-weirs looking
like stranded baskets that had served their purpose elsewhere and been
thrown away up the stream, and which had lodged here as they floated
down. Many of the salmon are converted into fish-oil, which is used
by the Chilkats as food, and resembles a cross between our butter and
the blubber of the Eskimo. Taking a canoe that is worn out, yet not
so badly damaged as not to be completely water-tight, it is filled
some six to eight inches deep with salmon, over which water is poured
until the fish are well covered. This being done on the beach there
are always plenty of stones around, and a number of these are heated
to as high a temperature as possible in an open fire alongside of the
canoe, and are then rapidly thrown into the water, bringing it to a
boiling heat, and cooking the mass. As the oil of the fat fish rises
to the surface it is skimmed off with spoons, and after all has been
procured that it is possible to obtain by this means, the gelatinous
mass is pressed so as to get whatever remains, and all is preserved
for winter food. The salmon to be dried are split open along the back
until they are as flat as possible, and then the flesh is split to
the skin in horizontal and vertical slices about an inch to an inch
and a half apart, which facilitates the drying process. Each little
square contracts in drying and makes a convenient mouthful for them
as they scrape it from the skin with their upper canine teeth like
a beaver peeling the bark from a cottonwood tree. In packing over
the Alaska coast range of mountains, a task which keeps the Indians
absent from three to five days, a single salmon and a quart of flour
are considered a sufficient ration per man for even that severe
trip. If they are working for white men the employers are supposed
to furnish the flour and the Indians the fish. While these Tlinkits
of south-eastern Alaska, of which the Chilkats and Chilkoots are
the most dreaded and war-like band, are a most jolly, mirth-making,
and oftentimes even hilarious crowd of people, yet any thing like a
practical joke played upon one of them is seldom appreciated by the
recipient with the sheepish satisfaction so common to civilization.
An army officer, Lieut. C. E. S. Wood, who spent some time among them
sketching and drawing something besides his pay, relates in the Century
Magazine the story of an Indian who laboriously crawled up on a band of
decoy ducks that somebody had allowed to remain anchored out near the
water's edge, and wasted several rounds of ammunition on them before
he discovered his mistake. Instead of sneaking back into the brush,
dodging through out-of-the-way by-paths to his home, and maintaining
a conspicuous silence thereafter, as we of a more civilized country
would have done under like circumstances, he sought out the owner of
the decoys and demanded direct and indirect damages for the injuries he
had suffered and the ammunition he had wasted, and was met by laughter,
which only increased his persistency until his demands were satisfied
to get rid of him.
At one of the two salmon canneries of which I have spoken as being
in Chilkat Inlet, there was also kept a trading store, and here
the Indians would bring their furs and peltries and barter for the
articles that were so temptingly displayed before their eyes; and
if the skins were numerous and valuable this haggling would often
continue for hours, as the Indian never counts time as worth any thing
in his bargains. While we were there an Indian brought in a few black
fox skins to barter for trading material, a prime skin of this kind
being worth about forty dollars in goods from the store, and grading
from that down to nearly one-fourth of the amount. At the time when
the Chilkats learned the great value of the black fox skins, not many
years back, they also learned, in some unaccountable way, the method of
making them to order by staining the common red fox or cross fox skin
by the application of some native form of blacking, probably made from
soot or charcoal. Many such were disposed of before the counterfeit was
detected, and even after the cheat was well known the utmost vigilance
was needed to prevent natives playing the trick in times of great
business activity. The method of detection was simply to place the skin
on any hard flat surface like the counter of a trader's store, and rub
the clean hand vigorously and with considerable pressure backward and
forward over the fur side of the skin, when, if the skin were dyed, the
fact would be shown by the blackened hand. This fact had been explained
to us by the trader, and the Doctor entering just as the conversation
as to the price became animated, and perceiving that the palmar surface
of his hand was well soiled and blackened, owing to his having been
engaged assorting packs for our Indians, he playfully stepped up to
the counter, ran his hand jauntily through the skin once or twice and
displayed to the two traders his blackened palm, to the surprise of
the white man and absolute consternation of the Indian. The former
rapidly but unavailingly tried to verify the Doctor's experiment, when
the latter broke out into a hearty laugh, in which the trader joined.
Not so with the Indian; when he recovered his senses he was furious
at the imputation on his character; and the best light he could view
it in, after all the explanations, was that it had been a conspiracy
between the two white men to get the skin at low rates, and the plot
having failed, according to their own confession, and he himself having
received his own price to quiet him, ought to be satisfied. The Doctor
remarked as he finished the story, that he did not believe there was
the remotest sense of humor among the whole band of Chilkat or Chilkoot
Indians. The constant life of the Tlinkits in their canoes when
procuring food or at other occupations on the water has produced, in
conformity with the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of
the fittest, a most conspicuous preponderating development of the chest
and upper limbs over the lower, and their gait on land, resembling that
of aquatic birds, is scarcely the poetry of motion as we understand
it. The Chilkats, however, are not so confined to a seafaring life,
and their long arduous trading journeys inland have assisted to make
this physical characteristic much less conspicuous among them than
among other tribes of Tlinkits, although even the Chilkats can not be
called a race of large men. While they may not compare with the Sioux
or Cheyennes, or a few others that might be mentioned, yet there are
scores of Indian tribes in the United States proper which are greatly
inferior to the Chilkats both in mental, physical, and moral qualities.
In warfare they are as brave as the average Indians of the United
States, and have managed to conduct their own affairs with considerable
order, in spite of governmental interference at times. I quote from a
correspondent writing from there as late as August, 1884, to the _New
York Times_ of November 23d: "The Indians have a great respect for a
man-of-war, with its strict discipline and busy steam launches that
can follow their canoes to the remote creeks and hiding places in the
islands, and naval rule has been most praiseworthy. The army did no
good for the country or the natives, and its record is not a creditable
one. The Tlinkits sneered openly at the land forces, and snapped their
fingers at challenging and forbidding sentries, and paddled away at
their pleasure."