FORT WRANGELL AND THE STIKINE.
Those who believe that all Alaska is a place of perpetual rain, fog,
snow, and ice would be quickly disabused could they spend some of the
ideal summer days in that most lovely harbor of Fort Wrangell. Each time
the sky was clearer and the air milder than before, and on the day of my
third visit the fresh beams of the morning sun gave an infinite charm to
the landscape, as we turned from Clarence Straits into the narrower pass
between the islands, and sailed across waters that reflected in
shimmering, pale blue and pearly lights the wonderful panorama of
mountains. Though perfectly clear, the light was softened and subdued,
and even on such a glorious sunny morning there was no glare nor
harshness in the atmosphere. This pale, soft light gave a dreamy, poetic
quality to the scenery, and the first ranges of mountains above the
water shaded from the deep green and russet of the nearer pine forests
to azure and purple, where their further summits were outlined against
the sky or the snow-covered peaks that were mirrored so faithfully in
the long stretches of the channel. The sea water lost its deep green
tints at that point, and was discolored and tinged to a muddy tea green
by the fresh current of the Stikine River, which there reaches the
ocean.
The great circle of mountains and snow-peaks, and the stretch of calm
waters lying in this vast landlocked harbor, give Fort Wrangell an
enviable situation. The little town reached its half-century of
existence last summer, but no celebrations stirred the placid,
easy-going life of its people. It was founded in 1834 by order of Baron
Wrangell, then Governor of Russian America and chief director of the fur
company, who sent the Captain-Lieut. Dionysius Feodorovich Zarembo down
from Sitka to erect a stockade post on the small tongue of land now
occupied by the homes, graves, and _totem_ poles of the Indian village.
It was known at first as the trading post of St. Dionysius, and, later,
it assumed the name of Wrangell, the prefix of Fort being added during
the time that the United States garrisoned it with two companies of the
21st Infantry. The Government began building a new stockade fort there
immediately after the transfer of the territory in 1867, and troops
occupied it until 1870, when they were withdrawn, the post abandoned,
and the property sold for $500. The discovery of the Cassiar gold mines
on the head waters of the Stikine River in 1874 sent a tide of wild life
into the deserted street of Fort Wrangell, and the military were ordered
back in 1875 and remained until 1877, when General Howard drew off his
forces, and the government finally recalled the troops from all the
posts in Alaska.
During the second occupation of the barracks and quarters at Fort
Wrangell, the War Department helped itself to the property, and,
assigning a nominal sum for rent, held the fort against the protest of
the owner. The Cassiar mines were booming then, and Fort Wrangell took
on something of the excitement of a mining town itself, and being at the
head of ocean navigation, where all merchandise had to be transferred to
small steamers and canoes, rents for stores and warehouses were
extravagantly high. Every shed could bring a fabulous price. The unhappy
owner, who rejoices in the euphonious name of W. King Lear, could only
gnash his teeth and violently protest against the monthly warrants and
vouchers given him by the commandant of the post. Since the troops have
gone, the Government has done other strange things with the property
that it once sold in due form, and Mr. Lear has a just and plain claim
against the War Department for damages. The barracks and hospital of the
old fort are now occupied by the Presbyterian Mission. No alteration,
repairs, or improvements having been made for many years, the stockade
is gradually becoming more ruinous, weather-worn, and picturesque each
year, and the overhanging block-house at one corner is already a most
sketchable bit of bleached and lichen-covered logs.
The main street of Fort Wrangell, untouched by the hoof of horse or mule
for these many years, is a wandering grass-grown lane that straggles
along for a few hundred feet from the fort gate and ends in a foot-path
along the beach. The “Miners’ Palace Restaurant,” and other
high-sounding signs, remain as relics of the livelier days, and listless
Indian women sit in rows and groups on the unpainted porches of the
trading stores. They are a quiet, rather languid lot of _klootchmans_,
slow and deliberate of speech, and not at all clamorous for customers,
as they squat or lie face downward, like so many seals, before their
baskets of wild berries. In the stores, the curio departments are well
stocked with elaborately carved spoons made of the black horns of the
mountain goat; with curiously-fashioned halibut hooks and halibut clubs;
with carved wooden trays and bowls, in which oil, fish, berries, and
food have been mixed for years; with stone pipes and implements handed
down from that early age, and separate store-rooms are filled with the
skins of bears, foxes, squirrels, mink, and marten that are staple
articles of trade. Occasionally there can be found fine specimens of a
gray mica slate set full of big garnet crystals, like plums in a
pudding, or sprinkled through with finer garnets that show points of
brilliancy and fine color. This stone is found on the banks of a small
creek near the mouth of the Stikine River, and great slabs of it are
blasted off and brought to Fort Wrangell by the boat-load to be broken
up into small cabinet specimens in time for the tourist season each
summer. None of the garnets are clear or perfect, and the blasting fills
them with seams and flaws. The best silver bracelets at Fort Wrangell
are made by a lame Indian, who as the chief artificer and silversmith of
the tribe has quite a local reputation. His bracelets are beautifully
chased and decorated, but unfortunately for the integrity of Stikine art
traditions, he has given up carving the emblematic beasts of native
heraldry on heavy barbaric wristlets, and now only makes the most
slender bangles, adapted from the models in an illustrated jeweller’s
catalogue that some Philistine has sent him. Worse yet, he copies the
civilized spread eagle from the half-dollar, and, one can only shake his
head sadly to see Stikine art so corrupted and debased. For all this,
the lame man cannot make bracelets fast enough to supply the market, and
at three dollars a pair for the narrower ones he pockets great profits
during the steamer days.
On the water side of the main street there is a queer old flat-bottomed
river-boat, stranded high and dry, that in its day made $135,000 clear
each season that it went up the Stikine. It enriched its owner while in
the water, and after it went ashore was a profitable venture as a hotel.
This Rudder Grange, built over from stem to stern, and green with moss,
is so settled into the grass and earth that only the shape of the bow
and the empty box of the stern wheel really declare its original
purpose. There is a bakeshop in the old engine-room, and for the rest it
is the Chinatown of Fort Wrangell. A small cinnamon-bear cub gambolled
in the street before this boat-house, and it stood on its hind legs and
sniffed the air curiously when it saw the captain of the ship coming
down the street, bestowing sticks of candy on every child in the way.
Bruin came in for his share, and formed the centre for a group that
watched him chew up mint sticks and pick his teeth with his sharp little
claws.
The houses of the Indian village string along the beach in a
disconnected way, all of them low and square, built of rough hewn cedar
and pine planks, and roofed over with large planks resting on heavy log
beams. One door gives entrance to an interior, often twenty and forty
feet square, and several families live in one of these houses, sharing
the same fireplace in the centre, and keeping peacefully to their own
sides and corners of the common habitation. Heraldic devices in outline
sometimes ornament the gable front of the house, but no paint is wasted
on the interior, where smoke darkens everything, the drying salmon drip
grease from the frames overhead, and dogs and children tumble carelessly
around the fire and over the pots and saucepans. The entrances have
sometimes civilized doors on hinges, but the aborigine fashion is a
_portière_ of sealskin or walrus hide, or of woven grass mats. When one
of the occupants of a house dies he is never taken out by the door where
the others enter, but a plank is torn off at the back or side, or the
body is hoisted out through the smoke hole in the roof, to keep the
spirits away.
Before many of the houses are tall cedar posts and poles, carved with
faces of men and beasts, representing events in their genealogy and
mythology. These tall _totems_ are the shrines and show places of Fort
Wrangell, and on seeing them all the ship’s company made the hopeless
plunge into Thlinket mythology and there floundered aimlessly until the
end of the trip. There is nothing more flexible or susceptible of
interpretations than Indian traditions, and the Siwash himself enjoys
nothing so much as misleading and fooling the curious white man in these
matters. The truth about these _totems_ and their carvings never will be
quite known until their innate humor is civilized out of the natives,
but meanwhile the white man vexes himself with ethnological theories and
suppositions. These _totems_ are for the most part picture writings that
tell a plain story to every Siwash, and record the great events in the
history of the man who erects them. They are only erected by the wealthy
and powerful members of the tribe, and the cost of carving a cedar log
fifty feet long, and the attendant feasts and ceremonies of the raising,
bring their value, according to Indian estimates, up to one thousand and
two thousand dollars. The subdivisions of each tribe into distinct
families that take for their crest the crow, the bear, the eagle, the
whale, the wolf, and the fox, give to each of these sculptured devices
its great meaning. The _totems_ show by their successive carvings the
descent and alliances of the great families, and the great facts and
incidents of their history. The representations of these heraldic beasts
and birds are conventionalized after certain fixed rules of their art,
and the grotesque heads of men and animals are highly colored according
to other set laws and limitations. Descent is counted on the female
side, and the first emblem at the top of the totem is that of the
builder, and next that of the great family from which he is descended
through his mother.
In some cases two _totem_ poles are erected before a house, one to show
the descent on the female side, and one to give the generations of the
male side, and a pair of these poles was explained for us by one of the
residents of Fort Wrangell, who has given some study to these matters.
The genealogical column of the mother’s side has at the top the eagle,
the great _totem_ or crest of the family to which she belonged. Below
the eagle is the image of a child, and below that the beaver, the frog,
the eagle, the frog, and the frog for a third time, show the generations
and the sub-families of the female side. By some interpreters the frog
is believed to indicate a pestilence or some great disaster, but others
maintain that it is the recognized crest of one of the sub-families. The
male _totem_ pole has at the top the image of the chief, wearing his
conical hat, below that his great _totem_, the crow. Succeeding the crow
is the image of a child, then three frogs, and at the base of the column
the eagle, the great _totem_ of the builder’s mother.
[Illustration: TOTEM POLES AT FORT WRANGELL.]
In front of one chief’s house a very natural-looking bear is crouched on
the top of a pole, gazing down at his black foot-tracks, which are
carved on the sides of the column. A crossbeam resting on posts near
this same house used to show three frogs sitting in line, and other
grotesque fantasies are scattered about the village. With the advance of
civilization the Indians are losing their reverence for these heraldic
monuments, and some have been destroyed and others sold; for the richest
of these natives are so mercenary that they do not scruple to sell
anything that belongs to them. The disappearance of the _totem_ poles
would rob these villages of their greatest interest for the tourists,
and the ethnologist who would solve the mysteries and read the pictures
finally aright, should hasten to this rich and neglected field.
In their mythology, which, as now known, is sadly involved through the
medium of so many incorrect and perverted explanations, the crow or
raven stands supreme as the creator and the first of all created things.
He made everything, and all life comes from him. After he had made the
world, he created woman and then man, making her supreme as
representative of the crow family, while man, created last, is the head
of the wolf or warrior’s family. From them sprang the sub-families of
the whale, the bear, the eagle, the beaver, and the frog. The Stikine
Indians have a tradition of the deluge, in which the chosen pair were
given the shape of crows until the water had subsided, when they again
returned to the earth and peopled it with their descendants. No
alliances are ever made within the great families, and a crow never
marries a crow, but rather a member of the whale, bear, or wolf
families. The man takes the _totem_ of his wife’s family, and fights
with them when the great family feuds arise in the tribe.
[Illustration: GRAVE AT FORT WRANGELL.]
On many of the _totem_ poles the chiefs are represented as wearing tall,
conical hats, similar to those worn by certain classes in China, and
this fact has been assumed by many ardent ethnologists to give certain
proof of the oriental origin of these people, and their emigration by
way of Behring’s Straits. Others explain the storied hats piled one on
top of another, as indicating the number of _potlatches_, or great
feasts, that the builder has given. Over the graves of the dead, which
are square log boxes or houses, they put full-length representations of
the dead man’s totemic beast, or smooth poles finished at the top with
the family crest. One old chief’s tomb at Fort Wrangell has a very
realistic whale on its moss-grown roof, another a bear, and another an
otter. The Indians cremated their dead until the arrival of the
missionaries, who have steadily opposed the practice. The Indian’s idea
of a hell of ice made him reason that he who was buried in the earth or
the sea would be cold forever after, while he whose ashes were burned
would be warm and comfortable throughout eternity.
These Thlinket Indians of the coast have broad heavy faces, small eyes,
and anything but quickness or intelligence in their expression. They are
slow and deliberate in speech, lingering on and emphasizing each
aspirate and guttural, and any theories as to a fish diet promoting the
activity of the brain are dispersed after watching these salmon-fed
natives for a few weeks. Many of their customs are such a travesty and
burlesque on our civilized ways as to show that the same principles and
motives underlie all human action. When those expensive trophies of
decorative art, the _totem_ poles, are raised, the event is celebrated
by the whole tribe. A common Indian can raise himself to distinction and
nobility by giving many feasts and setting up a pole to commemorate
them. After he owns a _totem_ pole he can aspire to greater eminence.
That man is considered the richest who gives most away, and at the great
feasts or _potlatches_ that accompany a house-warming or pole-raising,
they nearly beggar themselves. All the delicacies of the Alaska market
are provided by the canoe-full, and the guests sit around the canoes and
dip their ancestral spoons into the various compounded dishes. Blankets,
calico, and money are distributed as souvenirs on the same principle as
costly favors are given for the German. His rank and riches increase in
exact ratio as he tears up and gives away his blankets and belongings;
and the Thlinket has satisfied pride to console himself with while he
struggles through the hard times that follow a _potlatch_.
In the summer season Fort Wrangell is a peaceful, quiet place; the
climate is a soothing one, and Prof. Muir extolled the “poultice-like
atmosphere” which so calms the senses. The Indians begin to scatter on
their annual fishing trips in June, and come back with their winter
supplies of salmon in the early fall. Many of the houses were locked or
boarded up, while the owners had gone away to spend the summer at some
other watering-place. One absentee left this notice on his front door:—
LET NO ONE OPEN OR SHUT THIS
HOUSE DURING MY ABSENCE.
Over another locked door was this name and legend, which combines a
well-witnessed and legal testament, together with the conventional
door-plate of the white man:—
ANATLASH.
Let all that read know that I
Am a friend to the whites. Let no
One molest this house. In case of my
Death it belongs to my wife.
Thus wrote Anatlash, a man of tall _totems_ and many blankets; and
stanzas in blank verse after the same manner decorated the doorway of
many Thlinket abodes.
The family groups within the houses were as interesting and picturesque
as the _totem_ poles without; and strangers were free to enter without
formality, and study the ways of the best native society without
hindrance. These people nearly all wear civilized garments, and in the
baronial halls of Fort Wrangell there are imposing heaps of red-covered
and brass-bound trunks that contain stores of blankets, festal garments,
and family treasures. In all the houses the Indians went right on with
their breakfasts and domestic duties regardless of our presence; and the
white visitors made themselves at home, scrutinized and turned over
everything they saw with an effrontery that would be resented, if
indulged in in kind by the Indians. The women had the shrewdest eye to
money-making, and tried to sell ancient and greasy baskets and broken
spoons when they had nothing else in the curio line. In one house two
giggling damsels were playing on an accordeon when we entered, but
stopped and hid their heads in their blankets at sight of us. An old
gentleman, in a single abbreviated garment, crouched by the fireside,
frying a dark and suspicious-looking dough in seal oil; and the coolness
and self-possession with which he rose and stepped about his habitation
were admirable. He was a grizzled and surly-looking old fellow, but from
the number of trunks and fur robes piled around the walls, he was
evidently a man of wealth, and his airy costume rather a matter of taste
than economy. Many of the men showed us buckskin pouches containing
little six-inch sticks of polished cedar that they use in their great
social games. These gambling sticks are distinguished by different
markings in red and black lines, and the game consists in one man taking
a handful, shuffling them around under his blanket, and making the
others guess the marks of the first stick drawn out. These Indians are
great gamblers, and they spend hours and days at their fascinating
games. They shuffle the sticks to see who shall go out to cut and gather
firewood in winter, and if a man is seen crawling out after an armful of
logs, his neighbors shout with derision at him as a loser.
[Illustration: SILVER BRACELETS.]
[Illustration: LABRETTES.]
In addition to their silver bracelets, their silver earrings and finger
rings, many of the women keep up the old custom of wearing nose rings
and lip rings, that no amount of missionary and catechism, seemingly,
can break them of. The lip rings used to be worn by all but slaves, and
the three kinds worn by the women of all the island tribes are marks of
age that take the place of family records. When a young girl reaches
marriageable age, a long, flat-headed silver pin, an inch in length, is
thrust through the lower lip. After the marriage festival the Thlinket
dame assumes a bone or ivory button a quarter or half inch across. This
matronly badge is a mere collar-button compared to the two-inch plugs of
wood that they wear in their under lips when they reach the sere and
yellow leaf of existence. This big labrette gives the last touch of
hideousness to the wrinkled and blear-eyed old women that one finds
wearing them, and it was from the Russian name for this trough in the
lip—_kolosh_—that all the tribes of the archipelago were known as
Koloshians, as distinguished from the Aleuts, the Innuits, and Esquimaux
of the northwest.
Far less picturesque than the natives in their own houses were the
little Indian girls at the mission-school in the old fort. Combed,
cleaned, and marshalled in stiff rows to recite, sing, and go through
calisthenic exercises, they were not nearly so striking for studies and
sketches aboriginal, but more hopeful to contemplate as fellow-beings.
Clah, a Christianized Indian from Fort Simpson, B. C., was the first to
attempt mission work among the Indians at Fort Wrangell. In 1877 Mrs.
McFarland was sent out by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, after
years of mission work in Colorado and the west, and, taking Clah on her
staff, she labored untiringly to establish the school and open the home
for Indian girls. Others have joined her in the work at Fort Wrangell,
and everyone on the coast testifies to good results already attained by
her labors and example. She is known and reverenced among all the
tribes, and the Indians trust in her implicitly, and go to her for
advice and aid in every emergency. With the establishment of the new
industrial mission-school at Sitka, Mrs. McFarland will be transferred
to the girls’ department of that institution. The Rev. Hall Young and
his wife have devoted themselves to the good cause at Fort Wrangell, and
will continue there in charge of the church and school. The Presbyterian
missions have the strongest hold on the coast, and the Catholics, who
built a church at Fort Wrangell, have given up the mission there, and
the priest from Nanaimo makes only occasional visits to his dusky
parishioners.
The steep hillside back of Fort Wrangell was cleared of timber during
military occupancy, and on the lower slopes the companies had fine
gardens, which remain as wild overgrown meadows now. In them the wild
timothy grows six feet high, the blueberry bushes are loaded with fruit,
salmon berries show their gorgeous clusters of gold and scarlet, and the
white clover grows on long stems and reaches to a fulness and perfection
one can never imagine. This Wrangell clover is the common clover of the
East looked at through a magnifying glass, each blossom as large and
wide-spread as a double carnation pink, and the fragrance has a strong
spicy quality with its sweetness. The red clover is not common, but the
occasional tops are of the deepest pink that these huge clover blossoms
can wear. While the hillside looked cleared, there was a deep and
tangled thicket under foot, the moss, vines, and runners forming a
network that it took some skill to penetrate; but the view of the curved
beach, the placid channel sleeping in the warm summer sunshine like a
great mountain lake, and the ragged peaks of the snowy range showing
through every notch and gap, well repaid the climb through it. It was a
most perfect day when we climbed the ridge, the air as warm and mellow
as Indian summer, with even its soft haze hung round the mountain walls
in the afternoon, and from those superior heights we gazed in ecstasy on
the scene and pitied all the people who know not Alaska.
When Professor Muir was at Fort Wrangell one autumn, he climbed to the
summit of this first mountain on a stormy night to listen to the fierce
music of the winds in the forest. Just over the ridge he found a little
hollow, and gathering a few twigs and branches he started a fire that he
gradually increased to quite a blaze. The wind howled and roared through
the forest, and the scientist enjoyed himself to the utmost; but down in
the village the Indians were terrified at the glow that illuminated the
sky and the tree-tops. No one could explain the phenomenon, as they
could not guess that it was Professor Muir warming himself during his
nocturnal ramble in the forest, and it was with difficulty that the
minister and the teachers at the mission could calm the frightened
Indians.
On a second visit to Fort Wrangell on the _Idaho_, there was the same
warm, lazy sunshine and soft still air, and as connoisseurs we could the
better appreciate the fine carvings and ornamental work of these
æsthetic people, who decorate every household utensil with their symbols
of the beautiful. Mr. Lear, or “King Lear,” welcomed us back to his
comfortable porch, and as a special mark brought forth his great horn
spoon, a work of the highest art, and a bit of bric-a-brac that cost its
possessor some four hundred dollars. Mr. Lear is that famous man, who
“swears by the great horn spoon,” and this elaborately carved spoon,
made from the clear, amber-tinted horn of the musk ox, is more than
eighteen inches long, with a smooth, graceful bowl that holds at least a
pint. This spoon constituted the sole assets of a bankrupt debtor, who
failed, owing Mr. Lear a large sum; and the jocose trader first
astonished us by saying that he had a carved spoon that cost him four
hundred dollars. The amateur photographers on shipboard raved at sight
of the beautiful amber spoon with its carved handle inlaid with abalone
shell, and, rushing for their cameras, photographed it against a gay
background of Chilkat blankets. Mr. Lear has refused all offers to buy
his great horn spoon, routing one persistent collector by assuring him
that he must keep it to take his medicines in.
The skies were as blue as fabled Italy when the _Idaho_ “let go” from
Fort Wrangell wharf that glorious afternoon, and we left with genuine
regret. The Coast-Survey steamer _Hassler_ came smoking around the point
of an island just as we were leaving Fort Wrangell; and our captain, who
would rather lose his dinner than miss a joke, fairly shook with
laughter when he saw the frantic signals of the _Hassler_, and knew the
tempestuous frame of mind its commander was working himself up to. After
giving the _Hassler_ sufficient scare and chase, the _Idaho_ slowed up,
and the mails that she had been carrying for three months were
transferred to the Coast-Survey ship, while the skippers, who are close
friends and inveterate jokers, exchanged stiff and conventional
greetings, mild sarcasm, and dignified repartee from their respective
bridges. The pranks that these nautical people play on one another in
these out-of-the-way waters would astonish those who have seen them in
dress uniforms and conventional surroundings, and such experiences rank
among the unique side incidents of a trip.
A boat-race of another kind rounded off the day of my third and last
visit to Fort Wrangell, and the Indians who had been waiting for a week
made ready for a regatta when the _Ancon_ was sighted. It took several
whistles from our impatient captain to get the long war-canoes manned
and at the stake-boat; and, in this particular, boat-races have some
points in common the world round. Kadashaks, one of the Stikine chiefs,
commanded one long canoe in which sixteen Indians sat on each side, and
another chief rallied thirty-two followers for his war-canoe. It was a
picturesque sight when the boatmen were all squatted in the long
dug-outs, wearing white shirts, and colored handkerchiefs tied around
their brows. While they waited, each canoe and its crew was reflected in
the still waters that lay without a ripple around the starting-point
near shore. When the cannon on the ship’s deck gave the signal, the
canoes shot forward like arrows, the broad paddles sending the water in
great waves back of them, and dashing the spray high on either side.
Kadashaks and the other chief sat in the sterns to steer, and encouraged
and urged on their crews with hoarse grunts and words of command, and
the Indians, paddling as if for life, kept time in their strokes to a
savage chant that rose to yells and war whoops when the two canoes
fouled just off the stake-boat. It was a most exciting boat-race, and
bets and enthusiasm ran high on the steamer’s deck during its progress.
The money that had been subscribed by the traders in the town was
divided between the two crews, and at night there was a grand
_potlatch_, or feast, in honor of the regatta.
The trade with the Cassiar mines at the head of the Stikine River once
made Fort Wrangell an important place, but the rival boats that used to
race on the river have gone below, and the region is nearly abandoned.
As early as 1862 the miners found gold dust in the bars near the mouth
of the river; but it was twelve years later before Thibert and another
trapper, crossing from Minnesota, found the gold fields and quartz veins
at the head-waters of the stream, three hundred miles distant from Fort
Wrangell, within the British Columbia lines. Immediately the army of
gold-seekers turned there, leaving California and the Frazer River
mines, and in 1874 there were two thousand miners on the ground, and the
yield was known to have been over one million dollars. Light-draught,
stern-wheel steamers were put on the river, and the goods and miners
transferred from ocean steamers at Fort Wrangell were taken to Glenora
at the head of navigation, one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth.
From that point there was a steep mountain trail of another one hundred
and fifty miles, and pack trains of mules carried freight on to the
diggings. Freights from Fort Wrangell to the mines ranged at times from
twenty to eighty and one hundred and sixty dollars per ton; and in
consequence, when the placers were exhausted, and machinery was
necessary to work the quartz veins, the region was abandoned.
The official returns as given by the British Columbia commissioners are
not at hand for all of the years since the discovery of these mines, but
for the seven years here given they show the great decrease in the
bullion yield of the Cassiar fields:—
Years. Number of Gold
miners. product.
1874 2,000 $1,000,000
1875 800 1,000,000
1876 1,500 556,474
1877 1,200 499,830
1879 1,800 .......
1883 1,000 135,000
During this year of 1884 the steamers have been taken off the river, and
Indian canoes are the only means of transportation. There are few
besides Chinamen left to work the exhausted fields, and another year
will probably find them in sole possession. While the mines were at
their best, Fort Wrangell was the great point of outfitting and
departure; and after the troops were withdrawn, the miners made it more
and more a place of drunken and sociable hibernation, when the severe
weather of the interior drove them down the river. They congregated in
greatest numbers early in the spring, many going up on the ice in
February or March, before the river opened; although no mining could be
done until May, and the water froze in the sluices in September.
The Cassiar mines being in British Columbia, the rush of trade on the
Stikine River caused many complications and infractions of the revenue
laws of both countries, and great license was allowed. The exact
position where the boundary line crosses the Stikine has not yet been
determined by the two governments, and in times past it has wavered like
the isothermal lines of the coast. The diggings at Shucks, seventy miles
from Fort Wrangell, were at one time in Alaska and next time in British
Columbia; and the Hudson Bay Company’s post, and even the British custom
house, were for a long time on United States soil before being removed
beyond the debatable region. The boundary, as now accepted temporarily,
crosses the river sixty-five miles from Fort Wrangell at a distance of
ten marine leagues from the sea in a direct line, and, intersecting the
grave of a British miner, leaves his bones divided between the two
countries; his heart in the one, and the boots in which he died in the
other.
Vancouver failed to discover the Stikine on his cruise up the
continental shore, and, deceived by the shoal waters, passed by the
mouth. It then remained for the American sloop _Degon_, Captain
Cleveland, to visit the delta and learn of the great river from the
natives in 1799. The scenery of the Stikine River is the most wonderful
in this region, and Prof. John Muir, the great geologist of the Pacific
coast, epitomized the valley of the Stikine as “a Yosemite one hundred
miles long.” The current of the river is so strong that while it takes a
boat three days at full steam to get from Fort Wrangell up to Glenora,
the trip back can be made in eight or twelve hours, with the
paddle-wheel reversed most of the time, to hold the boat back in its
wild flight down stream. It is a most dangerous piece of river
navigation, and there have been innumerable accidents to steamboats and
canoes.
Three hundred great glaciers are known to drain into the Stikine, and
one hundred and one can be counted from the steamer’s deck while going
up to Glenora. The first great glacier comes down to the river at a
place forty miles above Fort Wrangell, and fronting for seven miles on a
low moraine along the river bank, is faced on the opposite side by a
smaller glacier. There is an Indian tradition to the effect that these
two glaciers were once united, and the river ran through in an arched
tunnel. To find out whether it led out to the sea, the Indians
determined to send two of their number through the tunnel, and with fine
Indian logic they chose the oldest members of their tribe to make the
perilous voyage into the ice mountain, arguing that they might die very
soon anyhow. The venerable Indians shot the tunnel, and, returning with
the great news of a clear passageway to the sea, were held in the
highest esteem forever after. This great glacier is from five hundred to
seven hundred feet high on the front, and extends back for many miles
into the mountains, its surface broken and seamed with deep crevices.
Two young Russian officers once went down from Sitka to explore this
glacier to its source, but never returned from the ice kingdom into
which they so rashly ventured. Further up, at a sharp bend of the river
called the Devil’s Elbow, there is the mud glacier, which has a width of
three miles and a height of two hundred or three hundred feet where it
faces the river from behind its moraine. Beyond this dirt-covered,
boulder-strewn glacier, there is the Grand Cañon of the Stikine, a
narrow gorge two hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, into which
the boiling current of the river is forced, and where the steamboats
used to struggle at full steam for half an hour before they emerged from
the perpendicular walls of that frightful defile. A smaller cañon near
it is called the _Klootchman’s_, or Woman’s Cañon, the noble red man
being always so exhausted by poling, paddling, and tracking his canoe
through the Grand Cañon as to leave the navigation of the second one
entirely to his wife. The Big Riffle, or the Stikine Rapids, is the last
of these most dangerous places in the river; and at about this point,
where the summit line of the mountain range crosses the river, the
mythical boundary line is supposed to lie. The country opens out then
into more level stretches, and at Glenora and Telegraph Creek, the
steamboats leave their cargoes and start on the wild sweep down the
river to Fort Wrangell again. As the boats are no longer running on the
river, future voyagers who wish to see the stupendous scenery of this
region will have to depend on the Indian canoes that take ten days for
the journey up, or else feast and satisfy their imaginations with the
thrilling tales of the old Stikine days that can be picked up on every
hand, and study the topography of the region from the maps of Prof.
Blake.