BARTLETT BAY AND THE HOONIAHS.
From Pyramid Harbor the ship went south to Icy Straits and up the other
side of the long peninsula to Glacier Bay, so named by Captain Beardslee
in 1880. At the mouth of it, in unknown and unsurveyed waters, began the
search for a new trading station in a cove, since known as Bartlett Bay,
in honor of the owner of the fishery, a merchant of Port Townsend.
Vancouver’s boats passed by Glacier Bay during his third cruise on this
coast, and his men saw only frozen mountains and an expanse of ice as
far as the eye could reach. It is only within a decade that anything has
been known of the extent of the great bay at the foot of the Fairweather
Alps, and no surveys have been made of its shores to correct the
imperfect charts now in use. Revenue cutters, men-of-war, and traders’
ships had gone as far as the entrance, but were prevented from advancing
by adverse winds and currents, floating ice, and shoaling waters. The
old moraine left by the ice-sheet that once covered the whole bay forms
a bar and barrier at its mouth, and the channel has to be sought
cautiously.
Skirting the wooded shores and sailing through ice floes, every glass
was brought into requisition for signs of life on land. Towards noon a
white man and two Indians were sighted signalling from a canoe, and the
steamer waited while they paddled towards it. They had been off on an
unsuccessful hunt for the sea otter, and gladly consented to have their
canoe hauled up on deck and to impart all their knowledge of Bartlett
Cove. At three o’clock a resounding bang from the cannon announced to
the Hooniah natives on shore, that the first ship that had ever entered
that harbor was at hand. A canoe came rapidly paddling towards us, and a
wild figure rose in the stern and shouted to the captain to “go close up
to the new house and anchor in thirteen fathoms of water.” This was Dick
Willoughby, the first American pioneer in Alaska, a local genius, and a
far-away, polar variety of “Colonel Sellers,” most interesting to
encounter in this last region of No-Man’s Land. Dick Willoughby came to
this northwest coast in 1858, emigrating from Virginia by way of
Missouri. Since that time he has ranged the Alaskan shores from the
boundary line to Behring’s Straits, trading with the Indians, and
prospecting for all the known minerals. Willoughby’s mines and
possessions are scattered all up and down the coast, and there is not a
new scheme or enterprise in the territory in which he has not a share.
His mines, if once developed to the extent he claims possible, would
make him greater than all the bonanza men, and in crude and well-stored
gold, silver, iron, coal, copper, lead, and marble he is fabulously
rich. In all the twenty-five years he has spent here, Dick Willoughby
has gone down to San Francisco but once, and then was in haste to get
back to his cool northern home.
A little Indian camp edged the beach below Willoughby’s log house and
store, and the natives came out to look at us, with quite as much
interest as we went on shore to see them. A small iceberg, drifted near
shore, was the point of attack for the amateur photographers, and the
Indian children marvelled with open eyes at the “long-legged gun” that
was pointed at the young men, who posed on the perilous and picturesque
points of the berg. Icebergs drifting down the bay, and small cakes of
ice washing in shore with the rising tide, secured that luxury of the
summer larder to the Indians, and in every tent and bark house on shore
there was to be found a pail or basket of ice-water. In Willoughby’s
store there were curios and baskets galore, and after his long and quiet
life in the wilderness the poor man was nearly distracted, when seven
ladies began talking to him at once, and mixed up the new style nickel
pieces with the money they offered him.
The packing-house had just been built, and the ship unloaded more
lumber, nets, salt, barrel-staves and hoops, and general merchandise and
provisions for the new station. The small lighters and canoes in which
the freight was taken ashore made unloading a slow process, although the
whole native population assisted. The small boys joined in the carnival,
and little Indians of not more than six years trooped over the rocky
beach barefooted, and carried bundles of barrel-staves and shingles on
their heads.
We roamed the beach, hunting for the round, cuplike barnacles that the
whales rub off their tormented sides, and the children, quick to see
what we were looking for, trooped up the beach ahead of us, and soon
returned with dozens of them that they sold for a good price. Back in
the little valley and natural clearing, the ground was covered with wild
flowers and running strawberry vines, and the botanist was up to his
shoulders in strange bushes, up to his ankles in mire, and in wild
ecstacy at his finds. When we complimented Dick Willoughby upon the
promising appearance of his little vegetable garden, and the great crop
of strawberries coming on, he assured us that in a few weeks the ground
would be red with fruit, and that he did not know but that he would be
canning the wild strawberries by another year.
In one tent the best Indian hunter lay dying from the wounds received in
an encounter with a bear, his face being stripped of flesh by the
clawing of the fierce animal, and his body frightfully mangled. The
Indians, to whom remnants of their superstition cling, viewed him sadly
as one punished by the spirits. Their old shamans taught them that the
spirit of a man resided in the black bear, and it was sacrilege to slay
this animal, representing their great totem. The old men mutter prayers
whenever they find the tracks of a bear, and cannot be induced to bring
in the skin entire. It is rare to find an Alaska bear skin with the nose
on, the Indians believing that they have appeased the spirit if they
leave that sacred particle untouched. The black, the grizzly, and the
rare St. Elias silver bear are found in this Hooniah country, and their
skins at the trader’s store ranged in price from eight to twenty
dollars.
The mountain goat—_Aplocerus Montana_ by his full name—disports himself
on all the crags around Glacier Bay, and leaps through the glacial
regions of the Fairweather Alps. He has a long, silvery white hair, that
is not particularly fine, but his sharp, little black horns are great
trophies for the hunter, and are carved into spoon handles by the expert
craftsmen of all the Thlinket tribes.
[Illustration: THLINKET BIRD-PIPE (SIDE AND BOTTOM).]
The cool waters of Glacier Bay, filled with floating ice, are the great
summer resort for the wary sea otter and the hair seal. The fur seal is
occasionally found, but not in such numbers as to make it a feature of
the hunting season; and as the pelts are stretched and dried before
being brought in by the Indians, they are valueless to the furrier. The
Hooniahs inhabiting this bay and the shores of Cross Sound and Icy
Straits claim the monopoly of the seal and otter fisheries, and have had
great wars with the other tribes who ventured into their hunting
grounds. Indians even came up from British Columbia, and a few years ago
the Hooniahs invoked the aid of the man-of-war to drive away the
trespassing “King George men.”
The seal is food, fuel, and raiment to them, and square wooden boxes of
seal oil stand in every Hooniah tent. Age increases its qualities for
them, and rancid seal oil and dried salmon, salmon eggs, or herring roe,
mixed with oil, and a salad of seaweed dressed with oil, are the
national dishes of all the Thlinket tribes. Boiled seal flippers are a
great dainty, and in one Hooniah tent we peered into the family kettle,
and saw the black flippers waving in the simmering waters like human
hands. It looked like cannibalism, but the old man who was
superintending the stew said: “Seal! Seal all same as hog.” The Chinook
term for seal is _cocho Siwash_, or, literally, “Indian hog,” and it
quite corresponds to American pork in its universal use.
In one smoky tent, a native silversmith was hard at work, pounding from
half dollar pieces the silver bracelets which are the chief and valued
ornaments of the Thlinket women. This Tiffany of the Hooniah tribe
nodded to us amiably, carefully examined the workmanship of the
bracelets we wore, and then went on to show us how they were made. We
sat fascinated for nearly an hour in the thick smoke that blew in every
direction from the fire, to watch this artist make bracelets with only
the rudest implements. He first put the coin in an iron spoon and set it
on the coals for some minutes, and when he drew out the spoon, and took
the silver disk between a pair of old pincers, he nodded his head to us
and muttered _Klimmin_—the Chinook word for soft. Holding it with the
pincers, he hammered it on an old piece of iron, and heating it, turning
it, and pounding away vigorously, he soon laid a long slender strip of
silver before us. Another heating, a deft hammering and polishing, and
the bracelet was ready to be engraved with a clumsy steel point in
simple geometrical designs, or with the conventionalized dog-fish,
salmon, seals, and whales of Hooniah art. After that it was heated and
bent into shape to fit the wrist.
For these _Klickwillies_, or bracelets, the white visitors were asked
three dollars a pair, while the native rule is to pay the silversmith
just twice the value of the coins used. He was an amiable old fellow,
this Hooniah silversmith, and he kept no secrets of his art from us,
bringing out finger rings, nose rings, long silver lip pins, and
earrings to show us. The Indian women in his tent were well bedecked
with silver ornaments, and if all three of them were his wives, the
silversmith’s trade must be a profitable one. Each woman had her wrists
covered with rows of closely fitting bracelets, always in odd numbers,
and double rows of rings were on their fingers. The men of these tribes
sport the nose ring as well as the women, and are not satisfied with
wearing one pair of earrings at a time, but pierce the rim of the ear
with a succession of holes, and wear in each one a silver hoop, a bead,
or a charm, in memory of some particular deed.
The Hooniahs are next to the Haidas in skill and intelligence, and in
the graves of their medicine men are found carvings on bone, and fossil
ivory, mountain goat horns, and shells, that prove that they once
possessed even greater skill in these things. On the grave cloth of one
shaman buried near a village on Cross Sound, were lately found some flat
pieces of ivory and bone, four and six inches long, carved with faces
and totemic symbols. Age had turned them to a deep rich yellow and
brown, and a slight rubbing restored the brilliant polish, that enhanced
them when they were first sewed to the blankets and wrappings of the
dead shaman. His rattles, masks, drums, and implements of his
profession, buried with him, were of the finest workmanship, and proved
the superiority of the ancient carvers.
The Hooniah women weave baskets from the fine bark of the cedar and from
split spruce roots, and ornament them with geometrical patterns in
brilliant colors, but the weaving that we saw was not as fine as that of
some of the more southern tribes.