TANANA CROSSING TO FORTYMILE AND DOWN THE YUKON--A PATRIARCHAL
CHIEF--SWARMING CARIBOU--EAGLE AND FORT EGBERT--CIRCLE CITY AND FORT
YUKON
FAIRBANKS was a different place in 1910 from the centre of feverish
trade and feverish vice of 1904-5, when the stores were open all day and
half the night and the dance-halls and gambling dens all night and half
the day; when the Jews cornered all the salt and all the sugar in the
camp and the gamblers all the silver and currency; when the curious
notion prevailed that in some mysterious way general profligacy was good
for business, and the Commercial Club held an indignation meeting upon a
threat of closing down the public gaming and refusing liquor licences to
the dance-halls, and voted unanimously in favour of an "open town"; when
a diamond star was presented to the "chief of police" by the enforced
contributions of the prostitutes; when the weekly gold-dust from the
clean-ups on the creeks came picturesquely into town escorted by
horsemen armed to the teeth. The outward and visible signs of the Wild
West are gone; the dance-halls and gambling tables are a thing of the
past; the creeks are all connected with Fairbanks by railway and
telephone; an early closing movement has prevailed in the shops; and
the local choral society is lamenting the customary dearth of tenors for
its production of "The Messiah."
Despite the steady decline in the gold output of late years, a drop of
from twenty millions down to four or five, there is little visible decay
in its trade, and despite stampedes to new diggings all over Alaska,
there is no marked visible diminution in its population, though as a
matter of fact both must have largely fallen off. The thing that more
than any other has sustained the spirits and retained the presence of
the business men is the expectation that seems to grow brighter and
brighter, of the development of a quartz camp now that the placers are
being exhausted. And in that hope lies the chance of Fairbanks to become
the one permanent considerable town of interior Alaska. It is a
substantial place, with good business houses and many comfortable homes
electric-lit, steam-heated, well protected against fire--better than
against flood--and, though it does not display the style and luxury of
the palmy days of Nome, it has amenities enough to make disinterested
visitors and passers-by wish that its hard-rock hopes may be realised.
[Sidenote: FAIRBANKS]
The little log church that is still, as a local artist put it, "the only
thing in Fairbanks worth making a picture of," no longer stands open all
day and all night as the town's library and reading-room, but has
withdrawn into decorous Sabbath use in favour of the commodious public
library built by a Philadelphia churchman; the hospital adjoining it,
that for two or three years cared for all the sick of the camp, is
supplemented by another and a larger across the slough; young
birch-trees have been successfully planted all along the principal
streets, and the front yards everywhere are ablaze with flowers the
summer through. You may eat hot-house lettuce and radishes in March;
hot-house strawberries (at about ten cents apiece) in July and August;
while common outdoor garden-truck of all kinds is plentiful and good in
its short season.
We had another canine misfortune while we lay there. Doc, one of our
leaders, got his chain twisted around his foot the night before we were
to leave, and, in pulling to free it, stopped the circulation of the
blood and the foot froze. It was as hard as wood and sounded like wood
when it hit the sidewalks, from which the snow had been cleared, as the
dog came limping along. An hour's soaking in cold water drew the frost
out of the foot, and we swathed it in cotton saturated with carron oil,
upon which it swelled so greatly that it was impossible to tell the
extent of the injury or to determine whether or not the dog would ever
be of use again. A kindly nurse at the hospital undertook his care, and
we left him behind. One does not buy a dog so late in the season, with
all the idle summer to feed him through, if any shift can be made to
avoid it, and there was a Great Dane pup at the Salchaket, forty miles
away, that I might pick up as I passed and perhaps make some use of for
the remainder of the winter.
That mission was the next stop on our journey, and we reached it over
the level mail trail, the chief winter highway of Alaska, connecting
Fairbanks with Valdez on the coast. Three times a week there is a horse
stage with mail and passengers passing over this trail each way,
together with much other travel. The Alaska Road Commission has lavished
large sums of money upon it, and the four hundred miles or thereabout is
made in a week.
[Sidenote: THE SALCHAKET]
A day and a half brought us to the Salchaket, one of a chain of missions
along the Tanana River, established by the energy and zeal of the
Reverend Charles Eugene Betticher, Jr., during his incumbency at
Fairbanks, that have already brought a great change for the better in
native conditions. Five years had elapsed since last I visited this
tribe, a reconnoitring visit on one of the first steamboats that ever
went up the Tanana River above Fairbanks, and it was a delight to see
the new, clean village with the little gardens round the cabins, and to
note the appreciative attitude which the Indians showed. So highly do
they value the missionary nurse in charge that however far afield their
hunting may lead them, one of their number is sent back every week to
see that the mission does not lack wood and water and meat; a simple,
docile, kindly people that one's heart warms to.
This mission was our last outpost to the south. My farther journey had
for its prime object the visiting of the natives of the upper Tanana as
far as the Tanana Crossing, some two hundred and fifty miles beyond the
Salchaket, the inquiring into their condition and into the desirability
of establishing a post amongst them.
[Sidenote: THE UPPER TANANA]
The upper Tanana is probably one of the most difficult streams in the
world to navigate that can by any stretch of the term be called
navigable. The great Alaskan range begins to approach the Tanana River
so soon as one gets above Fairbanks. Its prominent peaks, ten thousand
to twelve thousand feet high, are continually in view from one angle to
another as one pursues the river trail, and come constantly nearer and
nearer. All the streams that are confluent with the Tanana on its left
bank are glacial streams draining the high ice of these mountains. They
come down laden thick with silt, at times foaming torrents, at times
merely trickling watercourses that seam with numerous small runnels the
wide deltas at their mouths. The tributaries of the right bank flow for
the most part through heavily wooded country, and come out cleanly into
the river. So the glacial waters form shoals and bars, and the woodland
waters during freshets pile them high with driftwood. Such is the chief
characteristic of the upper Tanana; a multiplicity of swift, narrow
channels amidst bars laden with drift. It is subject to sudden rises of
great violence; the attempt to stem a freshet on the upper Tanana is a
hair-raising experience as the log of the _Pelican_ would show, but does
not come within this narrative. Owing to the origin of much of its
water, the Tanana is often in flood in dry, hot seasons, when other
rivers run meagrely, as well as in times of rain. It cannot be stemmed
in flood; its shoals deny passage in drouth; there must be just the
right stage of water to permit its navigation, and that stage, "without
o'erflowing, full," is not often found of duration to serve the voyage
after the month of June.
A river difficult to navigate in summer is usually a river difficult to
travel upon in winter, and the upper Tanana is notoriously dangerous and
treacherous. Scarce a winter or a summer that it does not claim victims.
It is emphatically a "bad river." Therefore, as far as there is any
travel to speak of, land trails parallel the river. Past Richardson
where the next night is spent, a decayed mining and trading town that
dates back to the stampedes of 1905-6 when it was thought the upper
Tanana would prove rich in gold, past Tenderfoot Creek on which the
discoveries were made, past the mouth of the Big Delta with the great
bluff on the opposite shore and the rushing black water at its foot that
never entirely closes all the winter, and on the other hand the wide
barrens of the Big Delta itself giving the whole fine sweep of the
Alaskan range, we came at length to McCarthy's, the last telegraph
station on the river,--for the line strikes across country thence to
Valdez following the government trail,--and there spent another night,
and here we leave the government-made trail and take to the river
surface and the wilderness.
[Illustration: A PLEASANT WOODLAND TRAIL.]
[Illustration: AN ALASKAN CHIEF AND HIS HENCHMAN.]
Twelve miles through the woods along the left bank of the river brought
us to the aptly named Clearwater Creek, a tributary that comes only from
the foot-hills and carries no glacial water. This stream by reason of
hot springs runs wide open all the winter and must be crossed by a
ferry--a raft on a heavy wire. The man who owned the ferry and the house
adjacent was gone from home, so we proceeded to cross as best we could.
The raft was so small that first we took the dogs across then unloaded
the sled and took part of the load, and returned for the remainder
and the sled itself. Finally a canoe was loaded on the raft and, when it
had been moored on the side we found it, Arthur paddled himself back. It
was a strange scene, rafting and paddling a canoe in interior Alaska on
the 2d of March, with the thermometer at -15 deg.. Some eight miles farther
along the portage trail we came to a little cabin about dusk, but
disdaining its dirt and darkness we pitched our tent.
Another eighteen miles the next day is noted in my diary for pleasant
woodland travel and for the particular interest of the numerous animal
tracks we passed. Here a moose had crossed the trail, ploughing through
the snow like a great cart-horse; here for two or three miles a lynx had
urgent business in the direction of the Healy River. A lynx will always
follow a trail if there be one, and will pick out the best going on the
ice or snow in the absence of trail. I once followed a lynx track from
the head of the Dall River to its mouth, and, save for turning aside
occasionally to investigate a clump of willows or brush, the lynx was an
excellent guide. Here were rabbit tracks and every now and then the
little sharp tracks of a squirrel. We stopped for lunch under a tall
cottonwood-tree, and Arthur pointed out that the trunk, up to a high
crotch, was all seamed by bear claws. He said that the black bear
climbed the same tree season after season, and told me that, according
to the Indians, this was chiefly done when first he came from his winter
den,--for the purpose of getting his bearings, as the boy suggested with
a chuckle. A fox, a marten, and a weasel had all passed across lately,
and of course then came the exclamation that scarce fails from native
lips when a fox track is seen: "I wonder if it were a black fox!" A
black fox means sudden wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to an Indian,
and any fox track may be the track of a black fox.
The end of that portage brought us out on the Tanana River opposite the
little trading-post at the mouth of the Healy--the last post of any kind
we should see.
[Sidenote: INDIAN TRADERS]
The trader, by whom we were hospitably entertained, had heard of our
projected occupation of the upper Tanana, and alert to his own
interests, was anxious to know the plans for the establishment of a
mission--plans which were yet all to make. He naturally favoured this
spot, which it was already plain was quite out of the question, but
professed his readiness to move to any place that we might decide upon,
and his entire sympathy and co-operation.
The question of the trader, which always arises upon the establishment
of a new mission site, is an important and sometimes a vexatious one,
for he wields an influence amongst the Indians second only to that of
the mission itself, and may be either a great help or a great hindrance.
There is a natural desire to secure a man of character for the new post,
and at the same time a natural reluctance to disturb vested interests
and arouse bitter enmity by diverting trade. The suggestion has often
been made that the mission should itself undertake a store in the
interest of the natives, but those with most experience in such matters
will agree that it is the wisdom of the bishop that sets his face
against mission trading. The two offices are so essentially dissimilar
as to be almost incompatible with one another; either the person in
charge is a missionary first and a trader afterwards, in which case the
store suffers, or he is a trader first and a missionary afterwards, in
which case he is not a missionary at all. A clean, sober, and honest
trader, content to take his time about getting rich, is a blessing to an
Indian community. There are some such, one thinks, but they are not
numerous. The profits are large, though the turnover is but one a year;
the capital required is small; it is a life with much leisure; but in
the main it attracts only a certain class of men.
A band of Indians to whom word of our visit had been sent had come down
the river this far to meet us and escort us, but dog food was scarce and
our arrival was delayed, and they had been compelled to return to their
hunting camp whither we must follow them. We were now farther up the
Tanana River than either of us had ever been before; the country had the
fascination of a new country; every bend of the river held unknown
possibilities, and the keenness and elation that only the penetration of
a new country brings were upon the boy as well as upon myself.
The river and the mountains were already drawn much closer together, and
as we pursued our journey upon the one we had continual fine views of
the other. The going was good--too good--for much of it was new ice and
spoke of recent overflow, and all too soon we came upon the water. At
the mouth of the Johnson River, one of the glacial streams, the whole
river was overflowed, and we waded for a mile through water that
deepened continually until there was risk of wetting our load. Then we
were compelled to take to the woods and to cut a portage around the
worst and deepest of it, and so passed beyond it to good ice and to an
empty cabin where we spent the night, glad to be sheltered from an
exceedingly bitter wind that had blown all day and had taken all the
pleasure out of travel.
[Sidenote: THE THERMOS BOTTLES]
It is in such weather particularly that the thermos flasks prove such a
boon to the musher. To stop and build a fire in the wind means to get
chilled through. There is no pleasure in it at all, and I would rather
push on until the day's journey is done. But the native boy must have
his lunch, and will build a fire in any sort of weather and make a pot
of tea. The thermos bottle, with its boiling-hot cocoa, gives one the
stimulation and nourishment that are desired without stopping for more
than a few moments. I have carried a pair of these bottles all day at
60 deg. below zero, and, when opened, snow had to be put into the cocoa
before it was cool enough to drink. Of course it is perfectly
simple--all the astonishing things are--but I never open one of those
bottles in the cold weather and pour out its contents without marvelling
at it.
We left the river and struck inland towards the foot-hills of the
Alaskan range, a long, rough journey over a trail that had been made by
the band that came out to the Healy to meet us, and had been travelled
no more than by their coming and going. The snow in this region had been
as much lighter than usual as the snow in the Koyukuk had been heavier.
Through the tangle of prostrate trunks of a burned-over forest and the
dense underbrush that follows such a fire, with not enough snow to give
smooth passage over the obstacles, we made our toilsome way, the labour
of the dogs calling for the continual supplement of the men, one at the
gee pole and one at the handle-bars. Some twenty miles, perhaps, a long
day's continuous journey, we pushed laboriously into the hills and then
pitched our tent; but in a few miles, next morning, we had struck the
main Indian trail from the village near the Tanana Crossing, by which
the hunting party had come, and what little was left of the journey went
easily enough until we reached the considerable native encampment.
The men were all gone after moose save one half-naked, blear-eyed old
paralytic, a dreadful creature who shambled and hobbled up asking for
tobacco. The women were expecting us, however, and took the encamping
out of our hands entirely, setting up the tent, hauling stove wood and
splitting it up, making our couch of spruce boughs, starting a fire, and
bringing a plentiful present of moose and caribou meat for ourselves and
our dogs. Nothing could have been kinder than our reception; the full
hospitality of the wilderness was heaped upon us. It was not until dark
that the men returned, and we had all the afternoon to get acquainted
with the women and children. Already the chief difficulty we had to
encounter presented itself. These people did not speak the language of
the lower Tanana and middle Yukon--Arthur's language--at all. Their
speech had much more affinity with the upper Yukon language, and it
dawned upon me that they were not of the migration that had pushed up
the Tanana River from the Yukon, as all the natives as far as the
Salchaket certainly did, were not of that tribe or that movement at all,
but had come across country by the Ketchumstock from the neighbourhood
of Eagle--the route we should return to the Yukon by--and were of the
Porcupine and Peel River stock. This was certainly a surprise; I had
deemed all the Tanana River Indians of the same extraction and tongue,
but the stretch of bad water from the Salchaket to the Tanana Crossing
was evidently the boundary between two peoples.
[Sidenote: CHIEF ISAAC]
That night we met Chief Isaac and the principal men of his tribe. At
first it seemed that such broken English as three or four of them had
would be our only medium of intercourse, but later one was discovered
who had visited the lower Tanana and the Yukon and who understood Arthur
indifferently well, and by the double interpretation, halting and
inefficient, but growing somewhat better as we proceeded, it was
possible to enter into communication. These preliminaries arranged, the
chief made a set speech of dignity and force. He thanked me for coming
to them, and regretted he had not been able to wait longer at the Healy
River to help us to his camp. When he was a boy he had been across to
the Yukon and had seen Bishop Bompas, and had been taught and baptized
by him, but he was an old man now and he had forgotten what he had
learned. I was the first minister most of his people had ever seen. They
heard that Indians in other places had mission and school, and they had
felt sorry a long time that no one came to teach them; for they were
very ignorant, little children who knew nothing, and when they heard a
rumour that a mission and school would be brought to them their hearts
were very glad. Wherever we should see fit to "make mission," there he
and his people would go, and would help build for us and help us in
every way; but he hoped it would be near Lake Mansfield and the
Crossing, where most of them lived at present. Farther down the river
was not so good for their hunting and fishing, but they would go
wherever we said. That was the burden of the chief's speech.
I took a liking to the old man at once. He was evidently a chief that
was a chief. The chieftainship here was plainly not the effete and
decaying institution it is in many places on the Yukon. He spoke for all
his people without hesitation or question, and one felt that what he
said was law amongst them.
There followed for two days an almost continuous course of instruction
in the elements of the Christian faith and Christian morals, all day
long and far into the night, with no more interval than cooking and
eating required. In the largest tent of the encampment, packed full of
men and women, the children wedged in where they could get, myself
seated on a pile of robes and skins, my interpreters at my side, my
hearers squatted on the spruce boughs of the floor, the instruction went
on. As it proceeded, the interpretation improved, though it was still
difficult and clumsy, as speaking through two minds and two mouths must
always be. Whenever I stopped there was urgent request to go on, until
at last my voice was almost gone with incessant use. Over and over the
same things I went; the cardinal facts of religion--the Incarnation, the
Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension; the cardinal laws of
morality--the prohibition of murder, adultery, theft, and falsehood;
that something definite might be left behind that should not be lost in
the vagueness of general recollection, and always with the insistence
that this was God's world and not the devil's world, a world in which
good should ultimately prevail in spite of all opposition.
[Sidenote: SAVAGE, HEATHEN, PAGAN]
It is at once a high privilege and a solemn responsibility to deal with
souls to whom the appeal of the Christian religion had never before been
made, as were most of my hearers. One cannot call them "heathen." One
never thinks of these Alaskan natives as heathen. "Savage" and "heathen"
and "pagan" all meant, of course, in their origin, just country people,
and point to some old-time, tremendous superciliousness of the
city-bred, long since disappeared, except, perhaps, from such places as
Whitechapel and the Bowery. A savage is simply a forest dweller, a
heathen a heath dweller, and for a large part of each year I come,
etymologically, within the terms myself. But with its ordinary
implication of ferocity and bloodthirstiness it is absurd to apply the
word "savage" to the mild and gentle Alaskan Indian, and, with its
ordinary implication of bowing down to wood and stone, it is misleading
to apply the term "heathen" to those who never made any sort of graven
image.
Much has been written, and cleverly written, about the Alaskan Indian
that is preposterously untrue. Arthur, my half-breed boy, had recently
been reading a story by Jack London, dealing with the Indians in the
vicinity of Tanana, where he was bred and born, and his indignation at
the representation of his people in this story was amusing. The story
was called _The Wit of Porportuk_, and it presented a native chief in
almost baronial state, with slaves waiting upon him in a large
banqueting hall and I know not what accumulated wealth of furs and gold.
Such pictures are far more flagrantly untrue to any conditions that ever
existed in Alaska than anything Fenimore Cooper wrote about the Five
Nations. There were never any slaves in the interior; there was never
any wealth amongst the Indians; there was never any state and
circumstance of life. And the more one lives amongst them and knows
them, the less one believes that they could ever have been a warlike
people, despite their own traditions. Sporadic forays, fostered by their
ignorant dread of one another or stirred up by rival medicine-men, there
may have been between different tribes--and there certainly were between
the Indians and the Esquimaux--with ambuscade and slaughter of isolated
hunting parties that ventured too far beyond the confines of their own
territory; and one such affair would furnish tradition for generations
to dilate upon. I have myself found all the men of Nulato gone scouting,
or hiding--I could not determine which--in the hills with their guns,
upon a rumour that the "Huskies," or Esquimaux, were coming; I have
known the Indians of the Yukon and the Tanana, and as far as the
Koyukuk, excited and alarmed over the friendly visit of a handful of
ragged natives from the Copper River to Nenana at Christmas time,
although in either case it must certainly have been fifty years since
there was any actual hostile incursion, and probably much longer.
[Sidenote: A GENTLE, TIMID PEOPLE]
They are a very timid people, and an exceedingly peaceable people. Years
and years may be spent amongst them without knowledge of a single act of
violence between Indian men; they do not quarrel and fight. Bold enough
in the chase, willing to face dangers of ice and water and wild beast,
they have a dread of anything like personal encounter, and will submit
to a surprising amount of imposition and overbearing on the part of a
white man without resorting to it. I knew a certain white man who
claimed a whole river valley north of the Yukon as his, who warned off
hunting parties of Indians who ventured upon it, and made them give up
game killed in "his territory." They came to the mission and complained
about it, but they never withstood the usurper. It ought to be added
that it always appeared more as the making good of a practical joke than
as a serious pretension, but the point is--the Indians submitted.
So far as these natives of the interior are concerned they were never
idolaters. I cannot find that they had any distinct notion of worship at
all. Their religion had root in a certain frantic terror of the unknown,
and found expression in ceaseless efforts to propitiate the malign
spirits surrounding them on every side. Thus they were given over to the
mastery of those amongst them who had the traditional art of such
propitiation, and fell more or less completely under that cruellest and
most venal of sways, the tyranny of the witch-doctor. It is impossible
to doubt, and hard to exaggerate, the grinding and brutal exactions to
which this rule led. Anything that a man possessed might be demanded and
must be yielded, on pain of disease and death, even to the whole
season's catch of fur or the deflowering of a young daughter. The utmost
greed and lust that can disgrace humanity found its Indian expression in
the lives of some of these medicine-men.
Since every sort of tyranny has its vulnerable spot, since the despotism
of Russia was tempered by assassination and of Japan by the effect of
public suicide, so melioration of the tyranny of the medicine-man seems
to have been found in rivalry amongst members of the craft itself.
Oppressed beyond endurance by one practitioner, allegiance would be
transferred to some new claimant of occult powers, and the breaking of
the monopoly of magic would be followed by a temporary lightening of the
burdens. Some of the most lurid of Alaskan legends deal with the
thaumaturgic contests of rival medicine-men, and one judges that sleight
of hand and even hypnotic suggestion were cultivated to a fine point.
To such minds the Christian teaching comes with glad and one may say
instantaneous acceptance. Their attitude is entirely childlike. They are
anxious to be told more and more about it, to be told it over and over
again. There is never the slightest sign of incredulity. It does not
occur to them as possible that a man should be sent all this way to
them, should hunt them up and seek them out to tell it to them, unless
it were true. And one learns over again how universal is the appeal the
Christian religion, and in particular the Life of Our Lord, makes to
mankind. I have seen Indians and Esquimaux mixed, hearing for the first
time the details of the Passion, stirred to as great indignation as was
that barbarian chieftain who laid his hand on his sword and cried,
"Would I and my men had been there!" or those Western cowboys, so the
story runs, bred in illiteracy and irreligion, to whose children a
school-teacher had given an account of the same great events, and who
rode up to the schoolhouse the next day with guns and ropes, and asked:
"Which way did them blamed Jews go?"
The medicine-man lies low; may himself profess acceptance of the new
teaching, may even really accept it (for it is very hard, indeed, to
follow and judge all the mental processes of an Indian)--yes, though it
expressly sweep all his devils away, out of the sick, out of the wind
and storm, from off every grave mound, though it leave him no paltry
net-tearing or trap-springing sprite to work upon with his conjurations;
yet the old superstition dies hard, often crops up when one had thought
it perished, and even sometimes maintains itself, sub rosa, side by side
with definite, regular Christian worship.
[Sidenote: THE OLD, OLD STORY]
The arctic explorer Stefanson, a careful and acute observer who has had
exceptional opportunities for observation of the intimate life of the
Esquimaux, has written much lately of the grafting of Christianity upon
native superstition and the existence of both together, as though it
were some new thing or newly noticed by himself. Yet every one familiar
with the history of Christianity knows that it has characterised the
progress of religion in all ages. There was never a people yet that did
not in great measure do this thing, nor is it reasonable to suppose that
it could have been otherwise. It is impossible to make a _tabula rasa_
of men's minds. It is impossible to uproot customs of immemorial
antiquity without leaving some rootlets behind. And what is acquired
joins itself insensibly to what is retained, and either the incongruity
is hidden beneath a change of nomenclature or is not hidden at all. Our
own social life is threaded through and through with customs and
practices which go back to a superstitious origin. The matter is such a
commonplace of history that it is bootless to labour it here.
A scientist is only a "scientist." How that name tends continually to
depreciate itself as the pursuit of physical science is divorced more
and more completely from a knowledge of literature, from a knowledge of
the humanities! And a scientist is a poor guide to an acquaintance with
man, civilised or uncivilised. To come to the study of any race of man,
even the most primitive, without some knowledge of all the long history
of man, of all the long history of man's thought, man's methods, man's
strivings, man's accomplishments, man's failures, is to come so ill
equipped that no just conclusions are likely to be reached. Your
exclusive "scientist"--and such are most of them to-day--may be
competent to deal with circles and triangles, with wheels and levers
with cells and glands, with germs and bacilli and micro-organisms
generally, with magnetos and dynamos, with all the heavenly host if you
like, but he has no equipment to deal with man! Somatic anthropology in
particular tends to assume in some quarters such an overimportance that
one falls back upon the recollection that the original head measurers
were hatters and that all hatters are proverbially mad. The occupation
would seem to carry the taint.
It was with much pleasure that I was able to hold out hope to Chief
Isaac of the mission and the school he desired so earnestly for his
people. It must not be supposed that all of them were in the completely
unevangelised state which has been dwelt upon, that to all of them the
teaching of those two full days was novel; some of them, like the chief
himself, had been across to the Yukon long ago and still bore some trace
of the early labours of the Church of England missionaries to whom this
region of Alaska that adjoins Canada is so much indebted. Others had
once been to the Ketchumstock, upon the occasion of a visit from our
missionary at Eagle, and had received instruction from him. But there
were many present in that tent who had never seen any missionary, never
had any teaching, to whom it was wholly new save as they might have
picked up some inkling from those that had been more fortunate.
[Illustration: THE TANANA CROSSING.]
[Illustration: GOOD GOING ON THE YUKON.]
[Sidenote: TRIBAL CONNECTIONS]
When we left this encampment Isaac sent two of his young men to guide
us, with a sled drawn by three or four small dogs, so gaily caparisoned
with _tapis_ and ribbons, tinsel, and pompons, that they might have
been circus dogs. Here again is evidence of this tribe's affinity
with the upper Yukon natives, and so with those of the Mackenzie. I
never saw the _tapis_, a broad, bright ornamented cloth that lies upon
the dog's back under his harness, on the Middle Yukon. It is
characteristic of the Peel River Indians who come across by the Rampart
House and La Pierre House.
A few hours' journey brought us to the Tanana River again, which we
crossed, and took a portage on the other side that went up a long defile
and then along a ridge and then down another long defile until at night
we reached the native village at Lake Mansfield; a picturesque spot, for
the lake is entirely surrounded by mountains except on the side which
opens to the river. Here the Alaskan range and the Tanana River have
approached so close that the water almost washes the base of the
foot-hills, and the scenery is as fine and bold as any in Alaska. And
here, at Lake Mansfield, if only there were navigable connection between
the lake and the river into which it drains, would be an admirable place
for a mission station.
A couple of hours next day took us the seven remaining miles to the
Tanana Crossing. Here, at that time, was a station of the military
telegraph connecting Valdez on the coast with Fort Egbert (Eagle) on the
Yukon, a line maintained, at enormous expense, purely for military
purposes. It passed through an almost entirely uninhabited country in
which perhaps scarcely a dozen messages would originate in a year. The
telegraph-line and Fort Egbert itself are now abandoned. Strategic
considerations constitute a vague and variable quantity.
It was strange to find this little station with two or three men of the
signal-corps away out here in the wilderness. Their post was supplied by
mule pack-train from Fort Egbert, more than two hundred miles away, and
they told me that only ten pounds out of every hundred that left Fort
Egbert reached the Crossing, so self-limited is a pack-train through
such country. We amused ourselves calculating just how much farther
mules and men could go until they ate up _all_ they could carry.
The Tanana Crossing is a central spot for the Indians of this region.
Two days' journey up the river was the village of the Tetlin Indians.
Two days' journey into the mountain range were the Mantasta Indians. Two
days' journey across towards the Yukon were the Ketchumstock Indians.
Most of them would congregate at this spot for certain parts of the
year, should we plant a mission there, and despite the picturesque
situation of Lake Mansfield, it looked as if the Crossing were the best
point for building.
[Sidenote: THE TANANA CROSSING]
Our route lay northeast, across country to Fortymile on the Yukon, two
hundred and fifty miles away, along the trail for the greater part of
the distance by which the mule train reached the Tanana Crossing. The
first five miles was all up-hill, a long, stiff, steady climb to the
crest of the mountain that rises just behind the Crossing. We had to
take it slowly, with frequent stops, so steep was the grade, and every
now and then we got tantalising glimpses through the timber of the scene
that spread wider and wider below us. Bend after bend of the Tanana
River unfolded itself; the Alaskan range gave peak after peak; there
lay Lake Mansfield, deep in its amphitheatre of hills, with the Indian
village at its head.
At last my impatience for the view that promised made me leave the boys
(we still had Isaac's young men) and push on alone to the top. And it
was indeed by far the noblest view of the winter, one of the grandest
and most extensive panoramas I had ever seen in my life.
Perhaps three miles away, as the crow flies, from the river, and
seventeen hundred and fifty feet above it, as the aneroid gave it, we
were already on the watershed, and everywhere in the direction we were
travelling the wide-flung draws and gullies of the Fortymile River
stretched out, so clear and beautiful a display of the beginnings of a
great drainage system that my attention was arrested, notwithstanding my
eagerness for the sight that awaited my turning around. But it was upon
turning around and looking in the direction from which we had come that
the grandeur and sublimity entered into the scene. There was, indeed, no
one great dominating feature in this prospect as in the view of Denali
from the Rampart portage, but the whole background, bounding the vision
completely, was one vast wall of lofty white peaks, stretching without a
break for a hundred miles. Enormous cloud masses rose and fell about
this barrier, now unfolding to reveal dark chasms and glittering
glaciers, now enshrouding them again. In the middle distance the Tanana
River wound and twisted its firm white line amidst broken patches of
snow and timber far away to either hand, and, where glacial affluents
discharged into it, were finer, threadlike lines that marked the many
mouths. The thick spruce mantling the slope in the foreground gave a
sombre contrast to the fields of snow, and the yellow March sunshine was
poured over all the wide landscape save where the great clouds contended
with the great mountains.
The boys had stopped to build a fire and brew some tea before leaving
the timber, and I was glad of it, for it gave me the chance to gaze my
fill upon the inspiring and fascinating scene in the pleasant warmth of
the mountain top, with the thermometer at 30 deg. in the shade and just 12 deg.
higher in the sunshine.
[Sidenote: A NOBLE VIEW]
How grateful I was for the clear bright day! What a disappointment it
has been again and again to reach such an eminence and see--nothing! It
was the most extensive view of the great Alaskan range I had ever
secured--that long line of sharp peaks that stretches and broadens from
the coast inland until it culminates in the highest point of the North
American continent and then curves its way back to the coast again. Of
course, what lay here within the vision was only a small part of one arm
of the range; it stopped far short of Denali on the one hand and Mount
Sanford on the other, though it included Mount Kimball and Mount Hayes;
yet it was the most impressive sight of a mountain chain I had ever
beheld. It was a sight to be glad and grateful for, to put high amongst
one's joyful remembrances; and with this notable sight we bade farewell
to the Tanana valley.
Down the hill we went into Fortymile water and into a rolling country
crossed by the military mule trail. If the morning had been glorious the
evening was full of penance. Long before night our feet were sore from
slipping and sliding into those wretched mule tracks. One cannot take
one's eyes from the trail for a moment, every footstep must be watched,
and even then one is continually stumbling.
We were able, however, to rig our team with the double hitch that is so
much more economical of power than the tandem hitch, whenever the width
of the trail permits it. We now carry a convertible rig, so that on
narrow trails or in deep snow we can string out the dogs one in front of
the other, and when the trail is wide enough can hitch them side by
side. "Seal," the Great Dane pup we got at the Salchaket, was a good and
strong puller, but he had no coat and no sense. It is bad enough to have
no coat in this country, but to have no coat and no sense is fatal--as
he found. His feet were continually sore and he had to be specially
provided for at night if it were at all cold--a dog utterly unsuited to
Alaska.
Thirty miles of such going as has been described is tiring in the
extreme, and when we reached the Lone Cabin, behold! fifteen Indians
camped about it, for whom, when supper was done, followed two hours of
teaching and the baptism of six children. I would have liked to have
stayed a day with them, but if we were to spend Palm Sunday at Fortymile
and Easter at Eagle as had been promised, the time remaining did no more
than serve; and there was a large band of Indians to visit at
Ketchumstock.
The next day took us into and across the Ketchumstock Flats, a wide
basin surrounded by hills and drained by the Mosquito Fork of the
Fortymile. The telegraph-line, supported on tripods against the summer
yielding of the marshy soil, cuts straight across country. This basin
and the hills around form one of the greatest caribou countries,
perhaps, in the world. All day we had passed fragments of the long
fences that were in use in times past by the Indians for driving the
animals into convenient places for slaughter.
The annual migration of the vast herd that roams the section of Alaska
between the Yukon and the Tanana Rivers swarms over this Flat and
through these hills, and we were told at the Ketchumstock telegraph
station by the signal-corps men that they estimated that upward of one
hundred thousand animals crossed the Mosquito Fork the previous October.
[Sidenote: CARIBOU]
The big game of Alaska is not yet seriously diminished, though there was
need for the legal protection that has of late years been given. It is
probable that more caribou and young moose are killed every year by
wolves than by hunters. Only in the neighbourhood of a considerable
settlement is there danger of reckless and wasteful slaughter, and some
attention is paid by game wardens to the markets of such places. The
mountain-sheep stands in greater danger of extermination than either
caribou or moose. Its meat, the most delicious mutton in the world, as
it has been pronounced by epicures, brings a higher price than other
wild meat, and it is easy to destroy a band completely. The sheep on the
mountains of the Alaskan range nearest to Fairbanks have, it is said,
been very greatly diminished, and that need not be wondered at when one
sees sled load after sled load, aggregating several tons of meat,
brought in at one shipment. The law protecting the sheep probably needs
tightening up.
The big game is a great resource to all the people of the country, white
and native. It is no small advantage to be able to take one's gun in the
fall and go out in the valleys and kill a moose that will suffice for
one man's meat almost the whole winter, or go into the hills and kill
four or five caribou that will stock his larder equally well. The fresh,
clean meat of the wilds has to most palates far finer flavour than any
cold-storage meat that can be brought into the country; and, save at one
or two centres of population and distribution, cold-storage meat is not
available at all. Without its big game Alaska would be virtually
uninhabitable. Therefore most white men are content that the necessary
measures be taken to prevent the wasteful slaughter of the game; for the
rights of the prospector and trapper and traveller, and the rights of
the natives to kill at any time what is necessary for food, are
explicitly reserved.
[Sidenote: THE KETCHUMSTOCK]
We reached the village and telegraph post of Ketchumstock for the night
only to find all the natives gone hunting; but since they had gone in
the direction of Chicken Creek, towards which we were travelling, we
were able to catch up with them the next morning without going far out
of our way. While we were pitching our tent near their encampment came
two or three natives with dog teams, and as the dogs hesitated to pass
our dogs, loose on the trail, a voluble string of curses in English fell
from the Indian lips. Such is usually the first indication of contact
with white men, and in this case it spoke of the proximity of the mining
on Chicken Creek. To discover the women chewing tobacco was to add but
another evidence of the sophistication of this tribe; a different people
from Chief Isaac's tribe, different through many years' familiarity with
the whites at these diggings. If the mission to be built at the Crossing
tends to keep these Indians on the Tanana River and thus away from the
demoralisation of the diggings, it will do them solid service.
In some way foul and profane language falls even more offensively from
Indians than from whites; for the same reason, perhaps, that it sounds
more offensive and shocking from children than from adults. Sometimes
the Indian does not in the least understand the meaning of the words he
uses; they are the first English words he ever heard and he hears them
over and over again.
So here another day and a half was spent in instruction. There are some
forty souls in this tribe and they have had teaching from time to time,
though not in the last few years, at the mouths of missionaries from
Yukon posts. Most of the adults had been baptized; I baptized sixteen
children. One curious feature of my stay was the megaphonic
recapitulation of the heads of the instruction, after each session, by
an elderly Indian who stood out in the midst of the tents. What on earth
this man, with his town-crier voice, was proclaiming at such length, we
were at a loss to conjecture, and upon inquiry were informed: "Them
women, not much sense; one time tell 'em, quick forget; two time tell
'em, maybe little remember." So when we stopped for dinner and for
supper and for bed, each time this brazen-lunged spieler stood forth and
reiterated the main points of the discourse "for the _hareem_," as
Doughty would say, whose account of the attitude of the Arabs to their
women often reminds me of the Alaskan Indians. It was interesting, but I
should have preferred to edit the recapitulation.
When all was done for the day and we thought to go to bed came an Indian
named "Bum-Eyed-Bob" (these white man's nicknames, however dreadful, are
always accepted and used) for a long confabulation about the affairs of
the tribe, and I gathered incidentally that gambling at the telegraph
station had been the main diversion of the winter. It seems ungracious
to insist so much upon the evil influence of the white men--we had been
cordially received and entertained at that very place, and our money
refused--but there is little doubt that the abandonment of the
telegraph-line will be a good thing for these natives. Put two or three
young men of no special intellectual resource or ambition down in a
lonely spot like this, with no society at all save that of the natives
and practically nothing to do, and there is a natural and almost
inevitable trend to evil. To the exceptional man with the desire of
promotion, with books, and all this leisure, it would be an admirable
opportunity, but he would be quite an exceptional man who should rise
altogether superior to the temptations to idleness and debauchery. One
may have true and deep sympathy with these young men and yet be
conscious of the harm they often bring about.
Ten miles or so from the encampment brought us to Chicken Creek, and
from that point we took the Fortymile River. The direct trail to Eagle
with its exasperating mule tracks was now left, and our journey was on
the ice. But so warm was the weather that 16th of March that we were
wet-foot all day, and within the space of eight hours that we were
travelling we had snow, sleet, rain, and sunshine. Leaving the main
river, we turned up Walker Fork and, after a few miles, leaving that, we
turned up Jack Wade Creek and pursued it far up towards its head ere we
reached the road-house for the night.
[Sidenote: THE FORTYMILE]
We were now on historic ground, so far as gold mining in Alaska is
concerned. The "Fortymilers" bear the same pioneer relation to gold
mining in the North that the "Fortyniners" bear to gold mining in
California. Ever since 1886 placers have been worked in this district,
and it still yields gold, though the output and the number of men are
alike much reduced. It is interesting to talk with some of the original
locators of this camp, who may yet be found here and there in the
country, and to learn of the conditions in those early days when a
steamboat came up the Yukon once in a season bringing such supplies and
mail as the men received for the year. It was here that the problem of
working frozen ground was first confronted and solved; here that the
first "miner's law" was promulgated, the first "miners' meeting" dealt
out justice. Your "old-timer" anywhere is commonly _laudator temporis
acti_, but there is good reason to believe that these early, and
certainly most adventurous, gold-miners, some of whom forced a way into
the country when there were no routes of travel, and subsisted on its
resources while they explored and prospected it, were men of a higher
stamp than many who have come in since. The extent to which that early
prospecting was carried is not generally known, for these men, after the
manner of their kind, left no record behind them. There are few creek
beds that give any promise at all in the whole of this vast country that
have not had some holes sunk in them. Even in districts so remote as the
Koyukuk, signs of old prospecting are encountered. When a stampede took
place to the Red Mountain or Indian River country of the middle Koyukuk
in 1911-12, I was told that there was not a creek in the camp that did
not show signs of having been prospected long before, although it had
passed altogether out of knowledge that this particular region had ever
been visited by prospectors.
[Sidenote: "SNIPING ON THE BARS"]
As the Fortymile is the oldest gold camp in the North, some of its trail
making is of the best in Alaska. In particular the trail from the head
of Jack Wade Creek down into Steel Creek reminded one of the Alpine
roads in its bold, not to say daring, engineering. It drops from bench
to bench in great sweeping curves always with a practicable grade, and
must descend nigh a thousand feet in a couple of miles. At the mouth of
Steel Creek we are on the Fortymile River again, having saved a day's
journey by this traverse. And here, on the Fortymile, we passed several
men "sniping on the bars," as the very first Alaskan gold-miners did on
this same river, and probably on these same bars, twenty-five years ago.
One hand moved the "rocker" to and fro and the other poured water into
it with the "long Tom"; so was the gold washed out of the gravel taken
from just below the ice. It was interesting to see this primitive method
still in practice and to learn from the men that they were making
"better than wages."
The Fortymile is a very picturesque but most tortuous river. In one
place, called appropriately "The Kink," I was able to clamber over a
ridge of rocks and reach another bend of the river in six or seven
minutes, and then had to wait twenty-five minutes for the dog team,
going at a good clip, to come around to me. At length we reached the
spot where a vista cut through the timber that clothes both banks,
marked the 141st meridian, the international boundary, and passed out of
Alaska into British territory. A few miles more brought us to Moose
Creek, where a little Canadian custom-house is situated, and there we
spent the night.
The next day we reached the Yukon; passing gold dredges laid up for the
winter and other signs of still-persisting mining activity, going
through the narrow wild canon of the Fortymile, and so to the little
town at its mouth of the same name, where there is a mission of the
Church of England and a post of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. I
never come into contact with this admirable body of men without wishing
that we had a similar body charged with the enforcement of the law in
Alaska.
Sunday was spent there officiating for the layman in charge of the
mission and in interesting talk with the sergeant of police about the
annual winter journey from Dawson to Fort McPherson on the McKenzie,
from which he had just returned with a detail of men. The next winter he
and his detail lost their way and starved and froze to death on the same
journey.
Here at one time was a flourishing Indian mission and school, and here
Bishop Bompas, the true "Apostle of the North," lived for some time. The
story of this man's forty-five years' single-eyed devotion to the
Indians of the Yukon and McKenzie Rivers is one of the brave chapters of
missionary history. But the Church of England "does not advertise."
Writers about Alaska, even writers about Alaskan missions, carefully
collect all the data of the early Russian missions on the coast, but
ignore altogether the equally influential and lasting work done along
five hundred miles of what is now the American Yukon by the missionary
clergy of the English Church before and after the Purchase. Bishop
Bompas identified himself so closely with the natives as to become
almost one of them in the eyes of the white men, and many curious
stories linger amongst the old-timers as to his habits and appearance.
It is interesting to know that the bishop was a son of that Sergeant
Bompas of the English bar from whom Dickens drew the character of
Sergeant Buzfuz, counsel for the plaintiff in the famous suit of
"Bardell v. Pickwick."
But the natives have all left Fortymile, some to the large village of
Moosehide just below Dawson, some to Eagle. The town, too, like all the
upper Yukon towns, is much decayed; the custom-house, the police
barracks, the company's store, the road-house, and the little mission
embracing nearly all its activities and housing nearly all its
population.
There is always some feeling of satisfaction in reaching the broad
highway of the Yukon again, even though rough ice make bad going and one
of the most notorious, dirty road-houses in the North hold its menace
over one all day and amply fulfil it at night. There is indeed so little
travel on the river now that it does not pay any one to keep a
road-house save as incidental to a steamboat wood camp and summer
fishing station. Two short days' travel brought us across the
international boundary again to Eagle in Alaska, where at that time Fort
Egbert was garrisoned with two companies of soldiers.
[Sidenote: EAGLE]
Eagle and Fort Egbert together, for the one begins where the other ends,
have perhaps the finest and most commanding situation of any settlement
on the Yukon River. The mountains rise with dignity just across the
water and break pleasingly into the valley of Eagle Creek, a few miles
up-stream. To the rear of the town an inconsiderable flat does but give
space and setting before the mountains rise again; while just below the
military post stands the bold and lofty bluff called the Eagle Rock,
with Mission Creek winding into the Yukon at its foot. Robert Louis
Stevenson said that Edinburgh has the finest situation of any capital
in Europe and pays for it by having the worst climate of any city in the
world. It would not be just to paraphrase this description with regard
to Eagle, for while it is unsurpassed on the Yukon for site, there are
spots on that river where still more disagreeable weather prevails; yet
it cannot be denied that the position of the place subjects it to
exceedingly bitter winds, or that the valley of Eagle Creek, which gives
pleasing variety to the prospect, acts also as a channel to convey the
full force of the blast. Climate everywhere is a very local thing;
topographical considerations often altogether outweigh geographical; and
nowhere is this truer than in Alaska. Commanding sites are necessarily
exposed sites, and he who would dwell in comfort must build in
seclusion.
A native village of eighty or ninety souls, with its church and school,
lies three miles up-stream from the town, so that the relative positions
of village, town, and military post exactly duplicate those at Tanana.
It must at once be stated, however, that this situation has not led to
anything like the demoralisation amongst the natives at Eagle that
thrusts itself into notice at the other place. Whether it were the
longer training in Christian morals that lay behind these people, or
better hap in the matter of post commanders (certainly there was never
such scandalous irregularity and indifference at Egbert as marked one
administration at Gibbon), or the vigilance during a number of
consecutive years of an especially active deputy marshal and the wisdom
and concern through an even longer period of a commissioner much above
the common stamp,[F] or all these causes combined, the natives at Eagle
have not suffered from the proximity of soldiers and civilians in the
same measure as the natives at Tanana. Drunkenness and debauchery there
have been again and again, but they have been severely checked and
restrained by both the civil and military authorities.
It was pleasant during Holy Week and Easter to see so many of the
enlisted men of the garrison taking part in the services in town;
pleasant, especially, to see officers and men singing together in the
choir, a tribute to the tact and zeal of the earnest layman in charge of
this mission; and it was pleasant at the village to hear the native
liturgy again and to see old men and women following the lessons in the
native Bible.
[Sidenote: FORT EGBERT ABANDONED]
Fort Egbert is abandoned now, another addition to the melancholy of the
Yukon; its extensive buildings, barracks, and officers' quarters,
post-exchange and commissariat, hospital, sawmill, and artisans' shops,
a spacious, complete gymnasium only recently built, are all vacant and
deserted. In the yards lie three thousand cords of dry wood, a year's
supply; cut on the hills, awaiting the expected annual contracts, lie as
many more--six thousand cords of wood left to rot! Some of us perverse
"conservationists," upon whom the unanimous Alaskan press delights to
pour scorn, lament the trees more than the troops.
One may write thus and yet have many pleasant personal associations
with the post and those who have lived there. A large and varied
military acquaintanceship is acquired by regular visits to these Alaskan
forts, for the whole command changes every two years. If one stayed in
the country long enough one would get to know the whole United States
army, as regiment after regiment spent its brief term of "foreign
service" in the North. Gazing upon the empty quarters, the occasion of
my first visit came back vividly, when there was diphtheria amongst the
natives at Circle and none to cope with it save the missionary nurse.
The civil codes containing no provision for quarantine, the United
States commissioner at Circle could not help, and the Indians grew
restive and rebellious, and when Christmas came broke through the
restrictions completely. Even some of the whites of the place defied her
prohibition and attended native dances and encouraged the Indians in
their self-willed folly.
[Sidenote: SOME ARMY OFFICERS]
So I went up the week's journey to Eagle and sought assistance from
Major Plummer, the officer commanding the post, who, after telegraphing
to Washington, promptly despatched a hospital steward and a couple of
soldiers, and placed them entirely at the nurse's disposal. "I don't
think we have any law for it," he said, "but we'll bluff it out." And
bluff it out they did very effectively until the disease was stamped
out, and then they thoroughly disinfected and whitewashed every cabin
that had been occupied by the sick. I used to tell that nurse that, so
far as I knew, she was the only woman who had ever had command of United
States soldiers.
Then there was Captain Langdon of the same regiment, the scholarly
soldier, with the account of every great campaign in history at his
fingers' ends. I recollect one evening, when we had been talking of the
Peninsular War, I ventured to spring on him the ancient schoolboy
conundrum: "What lines are those, the most famous ever made by an
Englishman, yet that are never quoted?" "Lines?" said he, "lines?"
though I don't think he had ever heard the jest. "They must be the Lines
of Torres Vedras." How well I remember the musical box that used to
arouse me at seven in the morning, however late we had sat talking the
night before!
And that young lieutenant, of wealthy New York people, just arrived from
West Point, who was sent by another commandant to report upon the
condition of the natives at the village and who came back and reported
the whole population in utter destitution and recommended the issue of
free rations to them all! As a matter of fact, during the administration
of this commanding officer, some sixteen or eighteen persons were put
upon the list for gratuitous grub, and it took a written protest to get
them off. For no one who has the welfare of the natives at heart can
tolerate the notion of making them paupers; these who have always fended
abundantly for themselves, and can entirely do so yet. With free rations
there would be no more hunting, no more trapping, no more fishing; and a
hardy, self-supporting race would sink at once to sloth and beggary and
forget all that made men of them. If it were designed to destroy the
Indian at a blow, here is an easy way to do it. Yet there are some,
obsessed with the craze about what is called education, regarding it as
an end in itself and not as a means to any end, who recommend this
pauperising because it would permit the execution of a compulsory
school-attendance law. Or is it a personal delusion of mine that esteems
an honest, industrious, self-supporting Indian who cannot read and write
English above one who can read and write English--and can do nothing
else--and so separates me from many who are working amongst the natives?
These days at the end of March, when the sun shines more than twelve
hours in the twenty-four, are too long for the ordinary winter day's
twenty-five miles or so, and yet not quite long enough, even if man and
dogs could stand it, to double the stage; so that there is much daylight
leisure at road-houses. One grows anxious, after four months on the
trail, to be done with it; to draw as quickly as may be to one's
"thawing-out" place. One even becomes a little impatient of the
continual dog talk and mining talk of the road-houses, to which one has
listened all the winter. On the other hand, the travelling is very
pleasant and the going usually very good, so that one may often ride on
the sled for long stretches.
By river and portage--one portage that comes so finely down to the Yukon
from a bench that there is pleasure in anticipating the view it
affords--in two days we reached the Nation road-house, just below the
mouth of the Nation River, a name that has always puzzled me. Here all
night long the wolves howling around the carcass of a horse kept our
dogs awake, and the whimpering of the dogs kept us awake. The country
beyond the Yukon to the northeast, the large area included between the
Yukon and the Porcupine, into which the Nation River offers passage, is
one of the wildest and least known portions of Alaska, abounding in game
and beasts of prey.
[Sidenote: THE GLARE OF THE SUN]
At the Charley River we visited the native village and held service and
instruction as well as inadequate interpretation permitted. Round Coal
Creek and Woodchopper Creek the scenery becomes bold and attractive, but
we found, as usual, that as we pushed farther and farther down the river
the snow was deeper and the going not so good. The sun grows very bright
upon the snow these days of late March and early April. Even through
heavily tinted glasses it inflames the eyes more or less, and a couple
of hours without protection would bring snow-blindness. Bright days at
this season are the only days in all the year when the camera shutter
may be used at its full speed. When the sun comes out after a flurry of
new snow in April, the light is many times greater than in midsummer.
[Illustration: "A PORTAGE THAT COMES SO FINELY DOWN TO THE YUKON THAT
THERE IS PLEASURE IN ANTICIPATING THE VIEW IT AFFORDS."]
[Illustration: FORT YUKON.]
We reached Circle in a day and a half from Woodchopper Creek, in time to
spend Sunday there. Circle had not changed much in the five years that
had elapsed since the first visit to it mentioned in these pages. The
slender trellis of the wireless telegraph had added a prominent feature
to its river bank; a few more empty cabins had been torn down for
fire-wood. Here it was necessary to shoot the Great Dane pup we got at
the Salchaket. His feet were still very sore and he quite useless for
the next winter, while Doc was returned to me from Fairbanks, not
much the worse for his severe frost-bite. Indian after Indian begged for
the dog, but I had more regard for him than to turn him over to the
tender mercies of an Indian. There are exceptional Indians, but for my
part I would rather be a dead dog than an ordinary Indian's dog--so he
died.
There remained the seventy-five or eighty miles through the Yukon Flats
to Fort Yukon--always the most dangerous stretch of the river, and at
this season, when the winter's trail was beginning to break up,
particularly so. It would be entirely practicable to cut a land trail
that should not touch the river at all, or not at more than one point,
between Circle and Fort Yukon, and such a portage besides removing all
the danger would save perhaps twenty miles. In many places it was
necessary for one of us to go ahead with an axe, constantly sounding and
testing the ice. Here and there we made a circuit around open water into
which the ice that bore the trail had collapsed bodily--one of them a
particularly ugly place, with black water twenty feet deep running at
six or seven miles an hour. I never pass this stretch of river without a
feeling of gratitude that I am safely over it once more.
[Sidenote: CAPTAIN AMUNDSEN]
As we left the Halfway Island we passed an Indian from Fort Yukon going
up the river with dogs and toboggan, and I chuckled, as I returned his
very polite salutation and shook hands with him, at the success of the
way he had been dealt with the previous fall, for he had been a
particularly churlish fellow with an insolent manner. Six or seven
years before he had been taken by Captain Amundsen, of the _Gjoa_, as
guide along this stretch of the river. It will be remembered that when
that skilful and fortunate navigator had reached Herschell Island from
the east, he left his ship in winter quarters and made a rapid journey
with Esquimaux across country to Fort Yukon expecting to find a
telegraph station there from which he could send word of his success.
But to his disappointment he found it necessary to go two hundred and
thirty miles farther up the river to Eagle, before he could despatch his
message. So he left his Esquimaux at Fort Yukon and took this Indian as
guide. And in his modest and most interesting book he mentions the man's
surliness and says he was glad to get rid of him at Circle.
Some new outbreak of insolence for which he had been flung out of a
store decided that he must be dealt with, and I sent for him, for the
chief, the native minister, and the interpreter. With these assessors
beside me, and Captain Amundsen's book open on the table, I spoke to the
man of his general conduct and reputation. I read the derogatory remark
about him in the book "printed for all the world to read," and told him
that of all the people, white and native, the captain had met on his
journeys, only one was spoken of harshly and he was the one. It made a
great impression on the man. The chief and the native minister followed
it up with their harangues, and the net result was a thorough change in
his whole attitude and demeanour. He told us he felt the shame of being
held up to the world as rude and impudent and would try to amend. He has
tried so successfully that he is now one of the politest and most
courteous Indians in the village, for which, if this should ever chance
to reach Captain Amundsen's eye, I trust he will accept our thanks.
Fort Yukon, where the headquarters of the archdeaconry of the Yukon are
now fixed, grows in native population and importance. A new and sightly
church, a new schoolhouse, a new two-story mission house, a medical
missionary and a nurse in residence, as well as a native clergyman, mark
the Indian metropolis of this region and perhaps of all interior Alaska.
Self-government is fostered amongst the people by a village council
elected annually, that settles native troubles and disputes and takes
charge of movements for the general good, and of the relief of native
poverty. The resident physician has been appointed justice of the peace
and there is effort to enforce the law of the land at a place where
every man has been a law unto himself. But it is a very slow and
difficult matter to enforce law in this country at all, and more
particularly at these remote points; and the class of white men who are
to be found around native villages, many of whom "fear not God neither
regard man," pursue their debauchery and deviltry long time unwhipped.
FOOTNOTE:
[F] I take pleasure in naming Mr. U. G. Myers as the United States
commissioner in question and Mr. Jack Robinson as the deputy United
States marshal, and I mention their names the more readily because Mr.
Myers, after his long and excellent service, has just been removed for
political reasons. (May, 1916.)