THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.
Juneau is far enough north to satisfy any reasonable summer ambition,
and with its latitude of 58° 16´ N., the young mining town and future
metropolis is but little above the line of Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Copenhagen, and Moscow. The deep waters of Gastineaux Channel are
obstructed by ledges just north of Juneau, and the eighteen feet fall of
the regular tides leaves islands and reefs visible in mid-channel. For
this reason the ship had to return on its course, and round Douglass
Island, before it could continue further north, and when that island of
solid gold quartz was left behind, the vessel entered a maze of smaller
islands and threaded its way into the grand reaches of Lynn Canal.
Vancouver named this arm of the sea for the town of Lynn, in Norfolk,
England, the place of his nativity, and his explorers began the song of
praise that is chanted by every summer traveller who follows their
course up the high-walled, glacier-bound fiord. The White Mountains
present bold barriers on the west, and along the eastern shores the
great continental range fronts abruptly on the water. Each point or peak
passed brought another glacier into view, nineteen glaciers in all being
visible on the way up the canal. The great Auk glacier was first seen,
and then the Eagle glacier, toppling over a precipice three thousand
feet in air, their frozen crests and fronts turning pinnacles of silver
and azure to the radiant sun.
Not even “the blue Canary Isles” could have offered a more “glorious
summer day” than the one that we enjoyed while the _Idaho_ steamed
straight up Lynn Canal, headed for the north pole. The sun shone so
warmly on deck that we laid aside wraps, and sat under the grateful
shade of an umbrella. There was a sparkle and freshness to the air, and
under an ecstatic blue sky fleecy white clouds drifted about the
mountain summits and mingled their vapory outlines with the fields of
snow. We revelled in the beauties of the scenes, and appreciated at the
moment that this passage leading to the Chilkat country is perhaps the
finest fiord of the coast. Lynn Canal slumbered as a sapphire sea
between its high mountain walls, with scarcely a ripple on its surface.
The blue expanse was streaked with a greenish gray where the turbid
streams poured in from the melting glaciers, and was marked with a
distinct line where the azure water changed to green, and then it faded
away into gray again, where the fresh waters of the Chilkat River flowed
in.
At the head of Lynn Canal a long point juts out into the current, with
the Chilkat Inlet opening at the left, and the Chilkoot Inlet at the
right. Opposite this tongue of land on the Chilkat side is the great
Davidson glacier, sweeping down a gorge between two mountains, and
spreading out like an opened fan. The glacier is three miles across its
front and twelve hundred feet high, where it slopes to reach the level
ground, and it is separated from the waters of the inlet by a terminal
moraine covered with a thick forest of pines. The symmetry of its
outlines and the grand slope of its broken surface are most impressive,
and this mighty torrent, arrested in its sweep, shows in every pinnacle
and crevice all the blues of heaven, the palest tints of beryl and
glacier ice, and the sheen of snow and silver in the sunshine. It is
worthily named for Professor George Davidson, the astronomer, and its
lower slopes were explored by him during his visits to the Chilkat
country on government and scientific missions.
Rounding a sharp point beyond the glacier, the _Idaho_ swept into a
circling, half-moon cove, where a picturesque Indian camp nestled at the
foot of the precipitous Mount Labouchere, not named for the witty editor
of the London _Truth_, but for one of the Hudson Bay Company’s steamers
that first penetrated these waters and anchored regularly in this
Pyramid Harbor. The cannon-shot, which was such an important feature in
the progress of the _Idaho_, gave a tremendous echo from mountain to
mountain, and glacier to glacier, and thundered and rolled down the
inlet for uncounted seconds, as the anchor dropped. The tents and bark
huts, and the trader’s store of the little settlement, showed finely
against the deep green mat at the foot of the vertical mountain, and in
the early afternoon all lay in clear shadow, and the mountain seemed to
almost overhang the ship as she swung round from her anchor chain. There
was an excited rushing to and fro on shore; dogs and Indians gathered at
the beach, and canoes put off before the ship’s boats were lowered to
take us ashore.
[Illustration: THE DAVIDSON GLACIER.]
The Northwest Trading Company’s large store and salmon cannery were
quite overlooked in the travellers’ hasty rush for the Indian tents,
that were scattered in groups along the narrow clearing between
tide-water and mountain wall. Before each tent and cabin were frames,
hung with what looked to be bits of red flannel at a distance, but
proved to be drying salmon when we reached them. It was a gaudy and
effective decoration, and a Chilkat salmon is as bright a color, when
caught, as a lobster after it has been boiled. Though a warlike and
aggressive people, the Chilkats practise many of the arts of peace, and
the wood-carvings and curios that they had for sale were eagerly bought.
Miniature totem poles and canoes, pipes, masks, forks, and spoons
changed ownership rapidly, and Indians and passengers regretted that
there were no more. Bone sticks, used for marten-traps by the Tinneh
tribes of the interior, were to be had, with every stick topped with
some totemic beast, and there were queer little fish and toys of
soapstone, made by the same peaceful natives. Copper bracelets, covered
with Chilkat designs, were offered by a lame rascal, who said, “Gold!
gold!” to the eager curio-seekers who snatched at his shining wares.
Copper knives and arrow-tips were also displayed, and articles of this
metal are distinctly Chilkat work, as the art of forging copper was long
a secret of theirs. Relics of the stone age were brought forth, and
granite mortars and axes, and leather dressers of slate, offered for
sale. Stone-age implements are being rapidly gathered up in this
country, and a trader, who has received and filled large orders for
eastern museums and societies, threatens to bring up a skilled
stonecutter to supply the increasing demands of scientists, now that the
Indians have parted with most of their heirloom specimens.
[Illustration: CHILKAT BLANKET.]
In one tent two women were at work weaving a large Chilkat blanket on a
primitive loom. These blankets, woven from the long fleece of the
mountain goat, have been a specialty of the Chilkats as long as white
men have known them. The chiefs who met Vancouver were wrapped in these
gorgeous totemic blankets or cloaks, and in early days they were
commonly worn by the chiefs and rich men. Since the traders have
introduced the woollen blankets of commerce, the native manufactures
have been neglected, and now that the art is dying out, the few that
remain in the possession of the natives are highly valued and only taken
from their cedar boxes on the occasion of great feasts and ceremonies.
These blankets are found among all the Thlinket tribes, and the Haidas
at Kasa-an Bay had many Chilkat cloaks and garments stored away in their
cabins. The blankets average two yards in width and about one yard in
depth, and are bordered at the ends and across the bottom with a deep
fringe. The colors are black, white, and yellow, with occasional touches
of a soft, dull blue. Soot, or bituminous coal, gives the base for the
black dye, and they get the pure, brilliant yellow from a moss that
grows on the rocks. The blue is made by boiling copper and seaweeds
together. They make fine trophies for wall decorations, or, as rugs or
lambrequins, are superior to the Navajo and Zuni blankets of the New
Mexico Indians. The totemic figures woven in these cloaks tell
allegories and legends to the natives, and the conventionalized whales,
eagles, and ravens are full of meaning, recording the great battles
between the clans, the incidents of family history, and deeds at arms.
The price of a blanket ranges from twenty to forty dollars; the fineness
of the work, the beauty of the design, and the anxiety of the purchaser
all helping to increase the price.
As in all Indian villages, the fierce, wolfish-looking dogs showed an
inclination to growl and snap at the white people, but the
hard-featured, strong-minded women of the Chilkat tribe silenced them
with a word, or a skilfully thrown brand snatched from the family camp
fire. The children and the dogs were always getting under foot and
crowding into each group, and in the Alpine valley, where the afternoon
shadows brought a pleasant sharpness to the air, the youngsters were as
scantily clad as in the tropics. They sat on the damp ground and stole
handfuls of rice from the pots boiling on the fires, or furtively dipped
the spoons into the mess one minute and hit the dogs with the table
utensil the next. One boy, who had sold a great many little carved toys
to the visitors, dashed off into a thicket of wild roses, and gallantly
brought back fragrant pink blossoms for his customers. Sitka Jack’s
carved canoe was drawn up on shore, and that grandee at last appeared to
us, and after selling his own pipe and carved possessions, he wandered
about and interfered in every one’s bargains by urging the natives to
ask more for their curios.
Of the white celebrities residing at Pyramid Harbor, there was one with
the enviable fame of being “the handsomest man in Alaska,” and when he
went gliding out to the ship in a swift native canoe, and appeared on
deck as if just stepped aside from a Broadway stroll, there was a
perceptible flutter in the ladies’ cabin. Another fine-looking man of
distinguished manner, found wandering on shore, proved to be a French
count, who, having dissipated three fortunes in the gayeties of a
Parisian life, has hidden himself in this remote corner of the world to
ponder on the philosophy of life, and wait for the favorable stroke that
shall enable him to return and shine once more among his gay comrades of
the boulevard, the Bois and the opera foyer.
At Pyramid Harbor the ship reached the most northern point on her course
and the end of the inside passage. At 59° 11´ N. we were many degrees
distant from the Arctic Circle, but, although it was mid-July, the sun
did not set until half past nine o’clock by ship’s time, and the clear
twilight lasted until the royal flush of sunrise was bathing the summits
of the higher mountains. At midnight fine print could be read on deck,
and at the hour when churchyards yawn the amateur photographers turned
their cameras upon the matchless panorama before them, and the full
witchery of that serene northern night was felt when the crescent of the
young moon showed itself faint and ethereal in the eastern sky.
We had been watching a rocky platform up on the mountain side, in the
hopes of seeing the bear with her cubs, who, living in some crevice near
there, was said to promenade on her airy perch at all hours of the day
and look down defiantly on the settlement. We were tiring of that
cuckoo-clock amusement, when a shaggy man came on the scene and said to
the photographers,—
“You ought to have been here in June, if you wanted to see long days.
You never would know when it was time to go to bed then.”
“Doesn’t it ever get dark here?” we yawned at him in chorus.
“Sometimes,” he answered. “’Bout long enough to get your overcoat off, I
reckon.”
A year later there was the same beautiful trip up Lynn Canal, and as a
mark of growth and progress the _Ancon_ found a large wharf to tie up to
at Pyramid Harbor. The cannery building had been enlarged, and the
Indian tents replaced with log and bark houses. The cannery, that had
been a losing venture in the first year, gave promise of better returns,
and Pyramid Harbor wore quite a prosperous air. The Indians and their
curios were again the sole distracting interest of the passengers, and
the Chilkats, as before, sold everything desirable that they owned.
A strapping young Indian seized upon us as we were wandering on shore,
rattled off the few words, “My papa, Sitka Jack, my papa heap sick,” and
soon we were chasing over grass and gravel, at the heels of this young
Hercules, to his neat log house. The son of Sitka Jack showed first the
curios he had for sale, and then his pretty wife, who wore a yellow
dress and a bright blue blanket, and had a clean face illuminated by
soft black eyes and rosy cheeks. Lastly he led us at a quickstep to the
place where his venerable papa sat crouched in a blanket. The son spoke
English well, but so rapidly, that he brought himself up breathless
every few minutes, and the docile, infantile way in which this
six-footed fellow spoke of his “papa” more than amused us.
The “papa” is one of the head chiefs of the Sitka tribe, but goes to
Chilkat Inlet every summer to visit his wife’s relations during the
salmon season. He is an arrant old rascal, and has made a great deal of
trouble at times; but in his feeble old age he has a kindly and pleasant
smile, and a quiet dignity that is in great contrast to his vehement,
impetuous young son. Mrs. Sitka Jack is the sister of Doniwak, the
one-eyed tyrant who rules the lower Chilkat village, and now that her
liege is becoming helpless, her influence is more supreme than ever. She
sat like a queen, kindly relaxing some of the grimness of her expression
when she saw that we had been buying from her son, but everything
indicated that she had the most eloquent and obstreperous chief of the
Sitkans completely disciplined. One of her Chilkat nephews was
introduced to us by her glib son, and the hulking young savage fairly
crushed our civilized hands in his friendly grasp, and critically
examined our purchases.
A wild-looking old medicine-man, with long red hair, hovered on the
outskirts of the group, and finally showed us, with innocent pride, a
naval officer’s letter of credentials, which testified to his having a
good ear for music, since he neither flinched nor winked, when a large
cannon was slyly touched off at his elbow, during one of his visits on
board a man-of-war.
Three-Fingered Jack, a celebrity of another order, wandered about the
camp arrayed in the cast-off uniform of a naval officer, with his breast
pinned full of tin and silver stars, like a German diplomat. Sitka
Jack’s son looked quite unconscious while the three-fingered lion passed
by; but when we directed his attention to him, the son of his papa gave
a pitying, contemptuous look and declared that he did not know who it
was. As well might we have asked one of the Capulets who Romeo was.
Kloh-Kutz, or Hole-in-the-Cheek, the head chief of the Chilkats,
appeared to us only in flying glimpses, as he ran up and down the steps
of the trader’s store. He is a wrinkled old fellow now, and the hole
left in his cheek by a wound is decorated by a large bone button similar
to those that the women wear in their cheeks. When Professor Davidson,
of the Coast Survey, went to the Chilkat country in 1867, on the revenue
cutter _Lincoln_, Capt. J. W. White commanding, to gather material for a
report upon the topography, climate, and the resources of Alaska, called
for by the Congressional committees having the matter of the purchase of
the territory in charge, he first made the acquaintance of Kloh-Kutz,
then in his prime.
In 1869 Professor Davidson revisited the Chilkat country to observe the
total eclipse of the sun, and, by invitation of Kloh-Kutz, established
his observatory at the village of Klu-Kwan, twenty miles up the Chilkat
River. The station was called Kloh-Kutz in honor of the distinguished
patron and protector of the scientists, who gave them the great
council-house for a residence. In the ardor of his hospitality Kloh-Kutz
was going to have the name “DAVIDSON” tattoed on his arm, but at the
suggestion of the astronomer gave up that elaborate design, and had
“SEWARD” traced across his biceps with a needle and thread dipped in
soot and seal oil and drawn through the flesh. He was quite willing to
wear his name when he learned that Seward was the great _Tyee_, or
chief, who bought the country of the Russians and thereby raised the
price of furs so greatly.
In advance of the eclipse, Professor Davidson told his host what would
happen; that the sun would be hidden at midday, and darkness fall upon
the land on the 7th of August, and that it would come as a great shadow
sweeping down the valley of the Chilkat. The Indians had always gathered
and silently watched the white men when they pointed their strange
instruments at the sun each day, but they fled in terror when the great
darkness began to come, and did not return until the eclipse was over.
They regarded Professor Davidson with the greatest awe, as a wonderful
medicine-man who could perform such great miracles at will; and
Kloh-Kutz, delighted with the great trick of his friend, made a serious
offer of all his canoes, blankets, and wives, if the astronomer would
tell him “how he did it,” and divulge the secret confidentially to a
brother conjurer.
The evening before the eclipse, word reached Professor Davidson that
Secretary Seward and his party were at the mouth of the Chilkat River,
to convey him back to Portland on their steamer, as soon as his
observations were completed. Kloh-Kutz was invited to come down and meet
the great _Tyee_, and hold a council with Gen. Jeff. C. Davis, the
military commandant, who had gone up from Sitka with the Seward party.
Kloh-Kutz chose the flower of Chilkat chivalry to go below with his
great war canoe and carry a letter from Professor Davidson to Mr.
Seward, urging him to “come up hither” and see the territory he had
bought; and luring on the ex-premier by saying that he had discovered an
iron mountain, the ore of which was seventy per cent iron. Referring to
this fact in a speech made at a public meeting in Sitka afterwards, Mr.
Seward said:
“When I came there I found very properly he had been studying the
heavens so busily that he had but cursorily examined the earth under his
feet; that it was not a single iron mountain he had discovered, but a
range of hills, the very dust of which adheres to the magnet, while the
range itself, 2,000 feet high, extends along the east bank of the river
thirty miles.”
Mr. Seward and his son, and General Davis, with two staff officers, and
others of the party, left the ship in three canoes early on the morning
of the day of the eclipse. They were half way up to Klu-Kwan village,
when the shadow began to cross the sun, and the weird, unearthly light
fell upon the land. The Indians in the canoe said the sun “was very sick
and wanted to go to sleep,” and they refused to paddle any further. The
canoes were beached quickly, and the visitors made a sociable camp-fire
for themselves, and cooked their dinner by its blaze. Late in the
afternoon they reached the village, and that evening Kloh-Kutz made a
call of ceremony upon the guests in the council-house. There was an
array of Chilkat chiefs and Chilkat women to witness the meeting of the
Tyees, and after a speech of welcome, Kloh-Kutz drew up his sleeve
dramatically and showed the “SEWARD” tattoed with his _totems_ on his
arm. The great diplomat was quite astonished and bewildered, and the
handwriting on the wall hardly made a greater sensation in Belshazzar’s
court.
The next morning the _wa-wa_, or official council, was held with the aid
of two interpreters, one to translate English into Russian, and the
other to translate Russian into Chilkat. Believing that if Mr. Seward
bought Alaska, he must still own it in person, Kloh-Kutz ignored Gen.
Davis, as being only the great Tyee’s servant, and addressed himself
directly to the supposed ruler of the whole country. His grievance was
that, ten years before, three Chilkats had been killed at Sitka, and
now, “What is the great Tyee going to do about it?” Kloh-Kutz was not to
be put off by the diplomatic answer that the murder had happened during
Russian days. He said that “the Tyee of the Russians was so poor that he
could not keep his land and had to sell it,” but for all that he must
have reparation for the loss of his three Chilkats. To his mind one
Chilkat was worth three Sitkans, and if the Tyee would let him kill nine
Sitkans, the account would be squared. With a finesse worthy of a
diplomat who had dealt with all the great nations of the earth, Mr.
Seward finally brought Kloh-Kutz down to accepting forty blankets as an
indemnity, and he and his sub-chief Colchica and their wives led the
guard of honor that escorted the great Tyee back to his ship. Captain C.
C. Dall, who commanded the steamer _Active_ during that memorable
cruise, gave a great entertainment to the chiefs on board, and fireworks
rounded off that memorable evening. Mr. Seward presented a flag to the
Chilkat chief, and at the banquet in the cabin, he and Professor
Davidson gave astronomy by easy lessons to their Chilkat visitors, and
disclaimed any agency in the eclipse as an accompaniment of the Tyee’s
visit.
Kloh-Kutz is delighted yet to show his Seward tattoo mark to any one,
and to tell of the visit of the great Tyee. He is a chief of advanced
and liberal notions, a high-strung, imperious old fellow, and has a fine
countenance, marred only by the wound in his cheek, which was received
at the hands of one of his own tribe during some internecine troubles.
His assailant held a revolver close to Kloh-Kutz’s head, and when the
chief looked scornfully at it, the trigger was snapped. Weak powder
prevented the ball from inflicting any more serious injuries than to
enter his cheek and tear away a few teeth. Kloh-Kutz swallowed his teeth
and handed the bullet back to his assailant with a fine gesture, saying:
“You cannot hurt me. See!”
A few years since a young German was sent up to establish the trading
post at Pyramid Harbor, and was introduced to Kloh-Kutz as a great Tyee.
When the agent failed to recognize, or understand the meaning of the
“SEWARD” on his arm, Kloh-Kutz was disgusted, and refused to treat with
him as anything but a mere trader.
“How can he be a Tyee, if he does not know the chief of all the Tyees?”
scornfully said Kloh-Kutz.
On the east shore of Chilkat Inlet, opposite Pyramid Harbor, is the
rival trading station of Chilkat, where Kinney, the Astoria salmon
packer, has another cannery. In the rivalry and competition of the first
year (1883) between the Pyramid Harbor and Chilkat canneries, the price
of salmon rose from two to fifteen cents for a single fish, and the
Indians, once demoralized by opposition prices, refused to listen to
reason when the canneries had to, and Chinese cheap labor was imported.
There has been wrath in the Chilkat heart ever since the Chinese cousins
went there, and old Kloh-Kutz indignantly said: “If Indian know how to
make _hoochinoo_ (whiskey) out of an oil can and a piece of seaweed, he
knows enough to can salmon.”
During its first year the Kinney cannery shipped sixty barrels of salt
salmon and 2,890 cases of canned salmon, working at a great disadvantage
for want of proper nets. In 1884 the amount of salmon shipped was
doubled.
Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor are rivals also in the fur trade, and at
Chilkat especially, the skins and furs shown were finer than had been
seen at any of the other trading places. The shrewd Chilkats are as hard
bargainers as the old Hudson Bay Company people ever were, and they get
the furs from the interior tribes for a mere trifle in comparison to
what they demand for the same pelts from the traders. In Hudson Bay
Company trades, the cheap flint-lock muskets used to be sold to the
Indians, by standing the gun on the ground and piling up marten skins
beside it, until they were even with the top of the gun-barrel. That
hoax is equalled now by the tricks of the Chilkats, who sell gunpowder
to the unsophisticated men of the interior tribes at an average rate of
twenty-five dollars a pound, and boast of their smartness at this kind
of bargaining which brings a profit of one hundred and even two thousand
per cent. Only one tourist was ever known to get the better of a Chilkat
at a bargain, and that was when a common red felt tennis hat, bought for
half a dollar at Victoria, was exchanged for a silver bracelet by a
Chicago man, who regretted for the rest of his trip that he had not
bought a box of hats to trade for curios.
Back of the Chilkat cannery a few miles, and facing on Chilkoot Inlet,
is the mission station of Haines, named for a benevolent lady of
Brooklyn, N. Y., who supports the establishment, presided over by the
Rev. E. S. Willard and his wife.
Either the Chilkat, or the Chilkoot Inlet gives entrance to a chain of
rivers and lakes, that, leading through gorges and mountain passes,
conducts the prospector by a final portage to Lewis River, one of the
head tributaries of the Yukon. The Chilkat Indians, with a fine sense of
the importance of their position, have always closely guarded these
approaches to the interior, and prevented the Indians of the back
country from ever coming down to the coast and the white traders. They
have thus held the monopoly of the fur trade of the region, and, while
keeping the interior Indians back, have been quite as careful not to let
any white men across.
On account of this guard, Vancouver’s men experienced some of the
hospitable attentions of the Chilkats when they were exploring the
channel in 1794. A canoe-load of natives bore down upon Whidby’s boat,
and urged the Englishmen to accompany them on up the Chilkat River to
the great villages, where eight chiefs of consequence resided.
Vancouver’s men declined the invitation, and the chief, commanding the
first canoe, made hostile flourishes with the brass speaking-trumpet and
other nautical insignia that he carried. They followed the boats out to
the mouth of the channel, and alarmed the Englishmen greatly, as they
feared an attack by the whole tribe at any moment.
The Russian and Hudson Bay Company’s ships traded with the Chilkats for
a half century without ever dealing directly with one of the natives of
the interior, from whom came the vast stores of furs that were exchanged
each year. The Chilkats met the men of the Tinneh (interior) tribes at
an established place many miles from the mouth of the river, and
occasionally, as a matter of diplomacy, they would bring a great Tinneh
chief down under escort, and allow him to look at the “fire ship” of the
traders.
The first man to run the gauntlet of the Chilkoot Pass was a red-headed
Scotchman in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, who left Fort Selkirk
in 1864 and forced his way alone through the unknown country to Chilkoot
Inlet. The Indians seized the adventurer and held him prisoner until
Captain Swanson, with the Hudson Bay Company steamer _Labouchere_, came
up and took him away. In 1872 one George Holt dodged through the
Chilkoot Pass, and went down the Lewis River to the Yukon. In 1874 Holt
again crossed the Chilkoot Pass, followed the Lewis River to the Yukon,
and then down that mighty stream to a place near its mouth, where he
crossed by a portage to the Kuskokquin River, and thence to the sea.
In 1877 a party of miners set out from Sitka under the leadership of
Edmund Bean, and attempted to cross by the Chilkoot Pass, but the
Indians obliged them to turn back.
In 1878 and in 1880, prospecting parties left Sitka for the head waters
of the Yukon, and the latter company, through the clever diplomacy and
active interest of Captain Beardslee, commanding the U. S. S.
_Jamestown_, were hospitably received by the Chilkats and guided through
their country, when convinced that they would not interfere with their
fur trade. They found indications of gold all the way, and large gravel
deposits. This party descended the Lewis River to Fort Selkirk and there
divided, one set of prospectors going down to Fort Yukon, and the others
up the Pelly River and thence to the head waters of the Stikine River
and the Cassiar region of British Columbia.
In the spring of 1882 a party of forty-five miners, all old Arizona
prospectors, left Juneau for the head waters of the Yukon. They returned
in the fall, and reported discoveries of gold, silver, copper, nickel,
and bituminous coal in the region between the Copper and Lewis Rivers.
In the spring of 1883 one Dugan led a party from Juneau over the divide.
In September they sent back by Indians for an additional supply of
provisions, intending to remain in the interior all winter. They
reported placer mines yielding one hundred and fifty dollars a day to
the man, but another party, that left Juneau soon after Dugan, returned
in September without having found any placers that yielded more than
twenty-five dollars a day.
Altogether more than two hundred prospectors crossed from Lynn Canal to
the Yukon country during the first three years after the Chilkats raised
their blockade. The Chilkats kept control of the travel, and charged six
and ten dollars for each hundred pounds of goods that they packed across
the twenty-four-mile portage intervening between the river and the chain
of lakes.
In May, 1883, Lieut. Schwatka and party crossed this same divide, and
made a quick journey of more than two thousand miles by raft down the
Lewis River to the Yukon, and down the Yukon to St. Michael’s Island in
Behring Sea, and thence to San Francisco by the revenue cutter _Corwin_.
In April, 1884, Dr. Everette, U. S. A., and two companions went over the
Chilkat Pass to work their way westward to Copper River and descend it
to its mouth. In June, Lieut. Abercrombie, U. S. A., and three
companions were landed at the mouth of Copper River, with orders to
ascend that stream and descend the Chilkat to Lynn Canal. These
expeditions were sent out by order of General Miles, commanding the
Department of the Columbia, who visited Alaska in 1882, and has since
manifested a great interest in the Territory.
The present maps of this upper region of the Yukon give only the general
courses of the rivers, and have not changed in any important details the
Russian charts. A unique map of the country is one drawn by Kloh-Kutz
and his wife for Professor Davidson, and which was made the basis and
authority for one official chart, the original remaining in Professor
Davidson’s possession at San Francisco. Kloh-Kutz has known the Yukon
route from childhood, and, lying face downward, he and his wife drew on
the back of an old chart all the rivers, with the profile of the
mountains as they appear on either side of the watercourses. The one
great glacier in which the Chilkat and the Lewis branch of the Yukon
River head, is indicated by snow-shoe tracks to show the mode of
progress, and the limit of each of the fourteen days’ journey across to
Fort Selkirk is marked by cross lines on this original Chilkat map. The
father of Kloh-Kutz was a great chief and fur-trader before him, and was
one of the party of Chilkats that went across and burned Fort Selkirk in
1851, in retaliation for the Hudson Bay Company’s interference with
their fur trade with the Tinnehs.
The Doctors Krause, of the Geographical Society of Bremen, who spent a
year at the mouth of the Chilkat lately, made some explorations of the
region about the portages of the Yukon, and their maps and publications
have been of great value to the Coast Survey. There are dangerous rapids
and cañons on the watercourses leading to the Yukon, and none but miners
and the most adventurous traders will probably ever avail themselves of
this route; although by going some six hundred miles up to Fort Yukon,
which is just within the Arctic Circle, the land of the midnight sun is
reached. Professor Dall, who spent two years on the Yukon, has fully
described the country below Fort Yukon in his “Resources of Alaska;” and
the Schiefflin Brothers, of Tombstone, Arizona, who followed his path on
an elaborately planned prospecting expedition in 1882, added little and
almost nothing more to the general knowledge of the region. The
Schiefflins found gold, but considered the remoteness from the sources
of supplies, and the long winters, too great obstacles for any mines to
be ever successfully worked there. There are fur-traders’ stations all
along the two thousand miles of the great stream, and within the United
States boundaries, the Alaska Commercial Company, and the Western Fur
Company of San Francisco, buy the pelts from the Indians, and divide the
great fur trade of this interior region.