PERIL STRAITS AND KOOTZNAHOO.
When the steamer gets ready to leave Sitka, there is always regret that
the few days in that port could not have been weeks. There are always
regrets, too, at not seeing Mount St. Elias, when the passengers realize
that the ship has begun the return voyage. Mr. Seward was most desirous
of seeing Mount St. Elias from the sea, but was deterred from carrying
out his plan by the stories of the rough water to be crossed, and the
certainty of fogs and clouds obscuring his view when he reached the bay
at the base of the great mountain. There are seldom any passengers or
freight billed for Mount St. Elias, and the mail contract does not
require the steamer to run up that three hundred miles to north-westward
of Sitka and call at the mountain each month. The U. S. S. _Adams_
carried some prospectors up to Yakutat Bay in 1883, and its officers
took that opportunity of visiting the great glacier that fronts for
seventy miles on the coast at the foot of the giant peak of North
America. One of the officers made a series of admirable water-color
sketches, but no angles were taken to determine the exact height of the
mountain, and the elevation of the untrodden summit is not yet
determined with precision.
In June, 1884, the _Idaho_ went up to the mouth of Copper River to land
Lieutenant Abercrombie, U. S. A., and his exploring party, and the
pilot’s story of the radiantly clear sky, and the view of Mount St.
Elias, one hundred and fifty miles away, added poignancy to the regrets
of the July passengers. From a height of 17,500 feet, the mountain has
now risen to 19,500 feet, according to the latest “Coast Pilot,” and
somewhere it has been given an elevation of 23,000 feet above the sea.
Fame and glory await the mountain-climber who reaches its top, and every
American who rides up the Righi, or has a guide pull him up other Alpine
summits, should blush that a grander mountain in his own country, the
highest peak of the continent, too, has never yet been accurately
measured, or explored, or ascended.
When, as the log says, “the ship lets go from Sitka wharf,” there are
two routes to choose in starting southward. One leads out through the
beautiful Sitka Sound, and past Mount Edgecumbe, to the open sea, and
then the course is down the shore of Baranoff Island and around Cape
Ommaney to the inside waters. The mountain outlines of the Baranoff
shore are particularly fine from the ocean, but a landsman finds more
beauty in the peaks and ranges as seen from the quiet waters of Chatham
Strait on the other side of the island. Cape Ommaney, in rough weather,
is more dreaded by mariners than the Columbia River bar, and wits and
punsters take liberties with its name when they round Cape Ommaney in a
head wind and chop sea. The Pacific raises some mighty surges off that
point, and there are small islands and hidden rocks on all sides of it.
Vancouver had to anchor for several days in a little bight before he
could venture around the cape, and in later times it has been a place of
peril and anxiety to the navigators of the coast.
The other route from Sitka leads around the north end of Baranoff
Island, and through Peril Straits across to Chatham Strait. Peril
Straits is a narrow gorge or channel between the two mountainous islands
of Chicagoff and Baranoff, and is strewn through all of its tortuous way
with rocks and ledges over which the rushing tides pour in eddies and
rapids. Several wrecks have occurred in this dangerous passage, and in
May, 1883, the freight steamer _Eureka_ struck a rock, and was beached
near shore in time to save it from complete destruction. All lives were
saved, and the crew and salvage corps had a camp near the wreck for
three weeks, before the ship was raised and taken to San Francisco for
repairs.
It was aptly named Peril, or Pogibshi, Strait, by the Russians, though
Petroff says that it was called that on account of the death of one
hundred of Baranoff’s Aleut hunters, who were killed by eating poisonous
mussels there, rather than on account of its reefs and furious tides. It
takes a daring and skilful navigator to carry a ship through that
dangerous reach, and it is something fine to watch Captain Carroll, when
he puts extra men at the wheel and sends his big steamer plunging and
flying through the rapids. The yard-arms almost touch the trees on the
precipitous shores, and the bow heads to all the points of the compass
in turn, as “the salt, storm-fighting old captain” stands on the bridge,
with his hands run deep in his great-coat pockets, and drops an
occasional “Stab’bord a bit!” “Hard a stab’bord!” or “Port your helm!”
down the trap-door to the men at the wheel. Aside from its evil fame, it
is a most picturesque and beautiful channel, the waters a clear, deep
green, and the shores clothed with dense forests of darker green.
Captain Coghlan made a survey of Peril Straits before leaving Alaska,
and marked off the channel with buoys. He found so many rocks and reefs
that had been unsuspected, that the mariners said that they would never
dare to venture through Peril Straits again, after learning how
rock-crowded and dangerous it was.
Down Chatham Strait, green and snow-covered mountains rise on either
side, and on the shores of Admiralty Island marble bluffs show like
patches of snow on the long shore line of eternal green. The old Indian
village of Kootznahoo, the “Bear Fort” of the natives, lies in a cove on
the Admiralty shore, and, from first to last, the Kootznahoo tribe have
proved an unruly set. They made hostile demonstrations to Vancouver’s
men when they explored the strait, and in 1869 the authorities had to
deal severely with them, destroying a village and carrying the chief
away as hostage, or prisoner, on the U. S. S. _Saginaw_. In October,
1882, the shelling of this Kootznahoo village by Captain Merriman, U. S.
N., made a great stir, and editors six thousand miles away heaped
vituperation and invective upon the head of that officer, without
waiting to know of anything but the bare fact of the shelling. The
docility of the Indians since then, and the expressed approval of the
Tyee’s action by the chiefs of the tribe, prove how efficacious his
course was at the battle of Kootznahoo. In Alaska, where the history of
that bombardment is still fresh, and the survivors are walking about in
paint and nose rings, the whole thing wears a different aspect, and
fragments that one remembers of those blazing editorials appear now as
most laughable. Every scribe brought in a ringing sentence about the
“eternal ice and snows of an arctic winter;” but they don’t have arctic
winters in this part of Alaska, as a study of the Japan Current and the
isothermal lines will show, and while the battle raged the thermometer
stood higher than it did in New York. Other errors were bound to creep
in where the fires of enthusiasm were kindled with so little
information, and to the officers and people of Sitka the newspapers were
a source of unending entertainment when the bombardment of Kootznahoo
began to reach their columns.
As related on the spot, that Kootznahoo story of the torpedo and the
whale is Homeric in its simplicity. Some Indians went out in a canoe
with the white men employed by the Northwest Trading Company at
Killisnoo. While paddling towards a whale, one of the bombs attached to
a harpoon exploded and killed an Indian. If it had been a common Indian,
nothing would ever have been heard of the incident, but when the natives
saw their great medicine man laid low, they raised an uproar. Going back
to first causes, they demanded two hundred blankets from the trading
company as compensation for their loss. The company naturally ignored
this tax levied by the coroner’s jury, and straightway there were signs
of war.
The Indians’ demand for blood or ransom was made stronger by their
capturing one of the white men and holding him as hostage, but when they
found that he was one-eyed they tried to send him back for exchange.
They claimed that he was _cultus_ (worthless), and demanded a whole and
sound man for their dead shaman. They made ready to murder all the white
men at the adjoining station, intending, however, to spare the agent’s
wife and children, as they afterwards confessed. As the signs of the
coming trouble were more apparent, the little steamer _Favorite_ was
sent to Sitka with the agent’s family, and an appeal made for help to
the _Adams_. Captain Merriman returned in the _Favorite_, accompanied by
the revenue cutter _Corwin_.
A great _wa-wa_ was held with the ringleaders and marauders, and to
their bold demand for the two hundred blankets, Captain Merriman
responded with a counter-demand, that the Indians should bring him four
hundred blankets, and forever after keep the peace, or he would shell
their village. Mistaking his word for that of a common Indian agent, the
red men went their riotous way, and at dusk of a November afternoon the
_Corwin_ anchored outside the reef and sent the shot hurtling through
the village. The Indians gathered up their blankets and their stores of
winter provisions, and took to the woods, but the bombardment was not so
severe, but that a few rascally Kootznahoos stayed in the village and
plundered the abandoned houses. The tribute of blankets was paid, the
Kootznahoos humbled themselves before the big Tyee, or their “good
father,” and a more docile, penitent, and industrious community does not
exist than those same obstreperous Indians.
The liquor that the Hudson Bay Company and the Russian traders furnished
to the Indians was very weak and very expensive, and the Kootznahoos
rest some of their claims to distinction on the fact that the native
drink, or _hoochinoo_, was first distilled by their people. A deserter
from a whaling-ship taught them the secret, and from molasses or sugar,
with flour, potatoes, and yeast, they distil the vilest and most
powerful spirit. An old oil can and a musket barrel, or a section of the
long, hollow pipe of the common seaweed (_nereiocistum_) furnish the
apparatus, and the _hoochinoo_, quickly distilled, can be used at once.
After any quantity of it has been made, its presence is soon declared,
and the Indians are frenzied by it. _Hoochinoo_ is the great enemy of
peace and order, and the customs officers can much easier detect a white
man smuggling whiskey than catch the Indians in the distilling act. It
is apparent enough when they have imbibed the rank and fiery spirit, but
it is impossible to watch all the illicit stills that they set up in
their houses, or hide in lonely coves and places in the woods. The
man-of-war is always on the lookout for indications of _hoochinoo_, and
at the first signs a raid is made on a village, the houses and the woods
searched, and the stills and supplies destroyed. With the cunning of a
savage race they have wonderful ways of hiding it in underground and
up-tree warehouses, and many exciting stories are told by the naval
officers of the great _hoochinoo_ raids they have taken part in.
_Lumme_ or rum, these children of nature sometimes call the forbidden
fluid, as, like their Chinese cousins, the Thlinkets are unable to
pronounce the letter _r_, and give the _l_-sound as its equivalent in
every case. There are many points of resemblance between the Kootznahoos
and the Orientals; and in writing of the origin of these Thlinket tribes
of the archipelago, Captain Beardslee, in his official report, says:—
“All of the tribes mentioned except the Kootznahoos seem to have sprung
from a common origin; they speak the same language and have similar
customs and superstitions, and from these the Kootznahoos differ so
slightly that a stranger cannot detect the difference. Their legend is
that originally all lived in the Chilkat country; that there came great
floods of ice and water, and the country grew too poor to support them,
and that many emigrated south; that the Auks are outcasts from the
Hoonah tribes, and the Kakes from the Sitkas, and both tribes deserve to
be still so considered; that the Kootznahoos came from over the sea, and
the Haidas, who live on Vancouver’s Island, from the south. I have
imbibed an impression, which, however, I could not obtain much evidence
to support, that all of the tribes except the Haidas are Oriental,—in
every respect they resemble the Ainos of Japan far more than they do our
North American Indians,—and that the Kootznahoos are of Chinese origin;
while the Haidas, who are superior to all of the others in intelligence
and skill in various handicrafts, are the descendants of the boat-loads
whom Cortez drove out of Mexico, and who vanished to the north.”
All this part of Admiralty Island is a coal field, and veins and
outcroppings of lignite have been found on every side of it, and along
the inlets and creeks leading to the interior. A good coal mine would be
worth more than a gold mine, in Alaska, and though seams have been
discovered with regularity since 1832, none of the explorers seem to
have found just the thing yet. In 1868 Lieutenant-Commander Mitchell
explored Kootznahoo Inlet, leading into the heart of Admiralty Island,
and at the head of the perilous channel opened a coal seam. In the
following year, Mr. Seward’s party went up to the Mitchell mine, and
they were enthusiastic over its promises. The coal burned beautifully in
the open air, but when the real tests were put to it, and it was tried
in the boiler-room of the ship, it was found to contain so much crude
resin that it was destruction to boiler iron. Geologically, the country
is too young to have even any very good lignite beds, but the
archipelago is now swarming with coal prospectors and coal experts, and
there is such a general craze for coal that it may yet be forthcoming.
At present the Nanaimo coal is depended upon entirely for steaming
purposes, and the mail-steamer has to carry its own supply for the whole
round trip, and take as freight the coal needed for the government ships
at Sitka.
After Captain Hooper’s mine of true coal at Cape Lisburn, on the Arctic
coast, the most promising indications are at Cook’s Inlet and around the
Kenai peninsula. Although irrelevant in this connection, it perhaps
naturally follows in this lignite vein to mention a coal mine
accidentally discovered by an English yachtsman, Sir Thomas Hesketh,
while cruising about Kenai. He treed an eagle on a hunting trip, and,
other means failing to dislodge it, the sportsman set fire to the tree.
The roots ran down into a coal seam, that, taking fire, was burning two
years later, when the last ship touched there. Another escapade of the
yachting party was to set a dead monkey adrift in a box, and when it
washed ashore near Kodiak, the Indians, who had had a tradition that the
evil spirit would come to earth in the shape of a little black man, fled
that part of the island in terror and never went back.