ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
The White Man and the Indian Trading.—The Shrewdness and
Avarice of the Savage.—Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade
of Alaska.—The Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to
Influence the Sitkan Indians.—The Reason why Missionary Work
in Alaska has been and is Impotent.—The Difference between the
Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and the Meat-eating Savage of the
Plains.—Simply One of Physique.—The Haidahs the Best Indians of
Alaska.—Deep Chests and Bandy Legs from Canoe-travel.—Living in
Fixed Settlements because Obliged To.—Large “Rancheries” or Houses
Built by the Haidahs.—Communistic Families.—Great Gamblers.—Indian
“House-Raising Bees.”—Grotesque Totem Posts.—Indian Doctors “Kill
or Cure.”—Dismal Interior of an Indian “Rancherie.”—The Toilet
and Dress of Alaskan Siwashes.—The Unwritten Law of the Indian
Village.—What Constitutes a Chief.—The Tribal Boundaries and their
Scrupulous Regard.—Fish the Main Support of Sitkan Indians.—The
Running of the Salmon.—Indians Eat Everything.—Their Salads and
Sauces.—Their Wooden Dishes and Cups, and Spoons of Horn.—The
Family Chests.—The Indian Woman a Household Drudge.—She has no
Washing to Do, However.—Sitkan Indians not Great Hunters.—They are
Unrivalled Canoe-builders.—Small-pox and Measles have Reduced the
Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty Number.—Abandoned
Settlements of these Savages Common.—The Debauchery of Rum among
these People.—The White Man to Blame for This.
“Think you that yon church steeple
Will e’er work a change in these wild people?”
Our people living now in the Sitkan district are engaged either in
general trading with the Indians, in prospecting for “mineral,” or
actively mining; and, also, in a small fashion, in canning salmon
and rendering dog-fish and herring oil. Perhaps we can give a fair
idea of the traders by introducing the reader to one of them and
his establishment just as we find him at Sitka. In a small frame
one-story house, not usually touched by paint, the trader shelters
a general assortment of notions and groceries, but principally
tobacco, molasses, blankets of all sizes and colors, cotton prints
and cheap rings, beads, looking-glasses, etc.; he stands behind a
rude counter, with these wares displayed to best advantage on the
rough shelves at his back; a wood-burning stove diffuses a genial
glow, but no chairs or benches are convenient. A “Siwash”[16] and
his squaw deliberately and gravely enter. The Indian slowly looks up
and down the room, and then proceeds to price every object within
his vision, no matter whether he has the least idea of purchasing or
not; this is the prelude and invariable habit of a Sitkan Indian, and
it arouses an immense amount of suppressed profanity on the part of
the outwardly courteous trader. But our savage has come in this time
bent upon buying, and selling also; his female partner has a bundle
carefully done up under her blanket, and which she wholly concealed
when she squatted down on her haunches the moment after entering the
door; she also has a number of small silver coins in her mouth, for,
funny as it may seem, this worthy pair have carefully agreed upon
what they shall spend in the store before coming in; so the woman
has taken out from the leathern purse which hangs on her breast and
under her chemise, the exact amount, and, returning the pouch to the
privacy of her bosom, she places the available coin in her mouth for
safe keeping _ad interim_.
Finally the Indian, in the course of half an hour, or perhaps a whole
half-day in preliminary skirmishing, boldly reaches down for his
bundle in the squaw’s charge; then having, by so doing, given the
trader to fully understand that he has something to sell, as well as
desiring to buy, he reaches out for the groceries, the cloth, the
tobacco, or whatever he may have fully decided to purchase; a long
argument at once ensues as to the bottom cash price, and in every
case of doubt the squaw decides; all the articles are done up in
brown paper and neatly tied with attractive parti-colored twine. Then
the dusky woman arises, with an indescribably vacant stare, bends
over the counter and lets the jingling silver drop upon it, pausing
just a moment until the tired but triumphant trader counts and sweeps
it, still moist, into his till.
Now the Siwash, having bought, proceeds to sell, and he does it in
his own peculiar way. He unrolls his package of furs; he eloquently
discourses as he strokes each pelt out on the counter, in turn
praising its size and its quality; the trader in the meanwhile
sharply keeps one eye on the savage and one eye on the furs, and,
after the story of their capture and quality has been told over the
third or fourth time, he asks, “How much?” The crafty hunter promptly
demands more than they would retail at in London; the trader answers
with great emphasis and a most disgusted head-shake, “no;” he then
offers just half or one-third the sum named, whereupon the Indians,
affecting great contempt, both shout out “klaik!” which sounds like
Poe’s “Raven”—roll up their furs and hustle out in a huff, still
repeating, in sonorous unison, “klaik, klaik”—(no, no). Then they go
to the rival trader’s establishment, and to all of them in turn, even
if there are half a dozen, not leaving one of them unvisited; they
finally finish the rounds in the course of a week or two, and then
quietly march back to that trader who offered the most, and laying
their peltries down in perfect silence on his counter, hold out a
grimy hand for the exact sum he had previously proffered.
In this shrewd and aggravating manner does the simple untutored
savage of the northwest coast deal with white traders—are they
swindled, do you think? From the beginning to the end of any
transaction you may have with an Alaskan Indian you will be met with
the keenest understanding on his part of the full value in dollars
and cents of whatsoever he may do for you or sell. When, however,
the Hudson Bay or the Russian Company held an exclusive franchise
in this district, then the Indian had no alternative but the single
post-trader’s terms; and then the white man’s profits were enormous.
But now, with the keen rivalry of competing stores, the trader barely
makes a living anywhere in Alaska to-day, while the Indian gets
the best of every bargain—vastly better compared with his former
experience.
[Illustration: The Sitkan Chimes.]
The fur trade, however, in the whole Sitkan district is now of small
commercial importance; thirty or forty thousand dollars annually will
more than express its gross value. This great shrinkage is due to
the practical extermination of the sea-otter in these waters, while
the brown and black bears, the mink and marten, the beaver and the
land-otter skins secured in this archipelago and its mainland coast
are not highly valued by furriers, inasmuch as the climate here is
never cold enough to give them that depth and gloss of fur desired
and so characteristic of those animals which are taken, away back
in the interior, where the temperature ranges from 20° to 40° below
zero for months at a time. In early days, the Sitkan savages acted
as middlemen, receiving these choice peltries from the back-country
Indians, who were never permitted by the coast tribes to come down
to the sea—and then trading the stock anew in their own right over
to the Russian and English posts, they reaped a large advance. Now,
however, the independent white trader penetrates to the interior
himself, and the Alaskan Siwashes mourn the loss of those rich
commissions which once accrued to their emolument and consequence.
The irruption, also, of the restless, tireless, wandering miners
throughout Alaska and British Columbia, who, prospecting in every
ravine and cañon, never let an opportunity pass to trade and trap
for good furs, has also contributed to this total stagnation of the
business in the Sitkan region.
The finest structure in Sitka to-day is the Greek church, which alone
did not pass from the custody of its original owners at the time of
the transfer. This building has been kept in repair, so that its trim
and unique architecture never fails to arrest the visitor’s attention
and challenge inspection, especially of the interior. We find the
service of the church rich and profuse in silverware, candelabra,
ornately framed pictures—oil-paintings of the saints—and rich
vestments; two priests officiate, a reader chants rapid automatism,
and a choir of small boys respond in shrill but pleasing orisons;
instrumental music is banished from the services of the Greek Church,
and so are pews, chairs, and hassocks; the Creole congregation, men,
women, and children, stand and kneel and cross themselves, erect
and bowed, for hours and hours at a time during certain festivals,
never moving a step from their positions. The men stand on the right
side of the vestibule, facing the altar, while the women all stand
by themselves, on the left, the children at option as they enter. No
one looks to the one side or the other, but every face is riveted
upon the priest, who says little, and is busily engaged in symbolic
worship.
The Indians do not enter here, nor did they ever; for them the
Russians erected a small chapel, which still stands on the site
of its first location; it is built against the inner side of the
stockade, and, like the old Lutheran church lower down in the town,
it is fast going to ruin; the door is secured by one of those
remarkable Muscovitic padlocks—it is eight or ten inches long, five
or six wide, and three deep; these singular locks must be seen to
be appreciated in all of their clumsy strength. This little faded
place of savage worship was the scene in 1855 of the second and last
stand ever made by the Sitkan Indians in revolt against the Russians.
Those savages, brooding over some petty indignities received from the
whites, became suddenly inflamed with passion, and a swarm of armed
warriors from the adjacent rancheries rushed, one dusky evening, upon
the fortified palisade surrounding the village, and began to cut and
tear it down. The Russians opened their brass batteries of grape and
round-shot upon the infuriated, yelling natives from the several
block-houses which commanded the stockade, but the Siwashes returned
the fire fearlessly with their smoothbore muskets, and succeeded in
getting possession of this chapel, behind the stout logs of which
they were sheltered and able to do deadly execution with their rifles
in picking off the Russian officers and men, as they hurried to and
from the bastions and through the streets of the town. When, however,
one of the company’s vessels hauled off the beach opposite the Indian
village, and trained her guns upon it and its people, the savages
humbly sued for mercy, and have remained in abasement ever since.
[Illustration: Old Indian Chapel at Sitka.
[_Greek Catholic Church, June 9, 1874._]]
Contemplating this Indian church at Sitka, which has stood here
for nearly three quarters of a century, and then glancing over it
and into the savage settlement that nestles in its shadow, it is
impossible to refrain from expressing a few thoughts which arise to
my mind over the subject of the Indian in regard to his conversion to
the faith and practices of our higher civilization. Nearly a whole
century has been expended, here, of unflagging endeavor to better and
to change the inherent nature of these Indians—its full result is
before our eyes. Go down with me through the smoky, reeking, filthy
rancheries and note carefully the attitude and occupation of these
savages, and contrast your observation with that so vividly recorded
of them by Cook, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and many other early
travellers, and tell me in what manner have they advanced one step
higher than when first seen by white men full a hundred years ago.
You cannot escape the conclusion with this tangible evidence in your
grasp, that in attempting to civilize the Alaskan Indian the result
is much more like extermination, or lingering, deeper degradation
to him than that which you so earnestly desire. The cause of this
failure of the missionary and the priest is easy to analyze: it is
due to the demoralizing precept and example of those depraved whites
who always appear on the field of the Indian mission, sooner or
later; if they could be shut out, and the savage wholly uninfluenced
by their vicious lives, then the story of Alaskan Indian salvage
might be very different. Still, the thought will always come unbidden
and promptly—these savages were created for the wild surrounding
of their existence; expressly for it, and they live happily in it:
change this order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do
the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and
the domestication of animals.
The Indians of Alaska, however, will never call upon the Government
for food and reservations—there is a great abundance on the earth
and in the waters thereof for them; living as they do all down at
tide-water, at the sole source of their subsistence, they are within
the quick reach of a gunboat; the overpowering significance of that
they fully understand and fear. There is a huge wilderness here for
them which the white man is not at all likely to occupy, even in
part, for generations of his kind to come, yet unborn.
Sitka is the seat of that Alaskan civil government[17] which
Congress, after much deliberation, ordered in 1884; but the governor
lives here in much humbler circumstances than did his Slavonian
predecessors. As it would require a small fortune to rehabilitate
the “castle,” the present chief-magistrate resides in one of those
neatly built houses which the military authorities erected shortly
after they took charge in 1867-68; it is not at all commanding, but
has a pleasant vista from its windows over the parade ground, and the
steamers’ landing.
While the most impressive feature of the Sitkan archipelago is
unquestionably that of the awe-inspiring solemnity and grand beauty
of its strange wilderness, yet the most interesting single idea is
the Indian and the life he leads therein; with the single exception
of the substitution of a woollen blanket and a cotton shirt for his
primitive skin garments, he is living here to-day just as he has
lived away back to the time when his legends fail to recite, and
centuries before the bold voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and the
savage sea-otter fleet of Baranov, first discovered him and then made
his existence known to the civilized world. True, some of the young
fellows who have labored upon vessels and in the fish-canneries wear
an every-day workingman’s shirt and trousers, and speak a few words
of English, understanding much more, yet the primeval simplicity of
all Indian life in this district is substantially preserved.
These savages are fish-eaters, and as such they have a common bond
of abrupt contrast in physique with their meat-eating brethren of
the Rocky Mountains and the great plains; but the traits of natural
disposition are the same, the heart and impulse of the Haidah or
the Tongass, are the heart and the impulse of the Sioux or the
Cheyenne—the former moves nowhere except squatted in his shapely
canoe, the other always bestrides a pony or mustang. This wide
divergence in every-day action gives alone to these savages their
strongly marked bodily separation; the fish-eater is stooping as he
stands, and though he has a deep chest and sinewy arms, yet his lower
limbs are bowed, sprung at the knees, and imperfectly muscled; while
the meat-eater is erect and symmetrical, in fine physical outline
from the crown of his head to his heels.
The various divisions or bands of the Indian population of the Sitkan
archipelago and mainland[18] differ but little in their manner of
life and customs, and speak closely related dialects of the same
language. The Haidahs are the best dispositioned and behaved. They
have been from the earliest times constantly in the habit of making
long and incessant canoe voyages; and, taking into account the ease
with which all parts of this region can be reached on water, it is
rather surprising that any marked difference in language should be
found at all; still, when we recall the knowledge which we have of
their fierce inter-tribal wars, it is not so strange; this warfare,
however, was of the same barbarous character as that recognized
in all other American savages—it was the surprise and massacre of
helpless parties, never sparing old women, children or decrepit men.
These internecine family wars have undoubtedly been the sole cause of
the present subdivisions of the savages as we note them to-day.
In drawing the picture, faithfully, of any one Alaskan Indian, I may
say candidly that in so doing I give a truthfully defined image of
them all throughout the archipelago. Physically the several tribes
of this region differ to some extent, but not near so much as our
colored people do among themselves; the margin of distinction up
here between the ten or eleven clans, which ethnologists enumerate,
is so slight that only a practised eye can declare them. The Haidahs
possess the fairest skins, the best temper, and the best physique;
while the ugly Sitkans and Khootznahoos are the darkest and the
worst. But the coarse mouth, the width and prominence of the cheek
bones, and the relatively large size of the head for the body, are
the salient main departures from our ideal symmetry.
The body is also long and large, compared with the legs, brought
about by centuries of constant occupation in canoes and the
consequent infrequent land travel; their hair is black and coarse,
unkempt, and never allowed, by the males, to fall below their
shoulders except in the case of their “shamans,” or doctors. A
scattered, straggling mustache and beard is sometimes allowed to grow
upon the upper lip and chin, generally in the case of the old men
only, who finally grow weary of plucking it out by the roots, which
in youth they always did in sheer vanity.
Once in a while a face is turned upon you from a canoe, or in a
rancherie, which arrests your attention, and commands comment as
good-looking; these instances are, however, rare—very, very rare.
I think the Haidahs give more evidence in average physiognomy
of possessing greater intelligence than that presented in the
countenances of their brethren; while I deem the Sitkas and
Khootznahoos to be the most insensible—if they are as bright they
conceal the fact with astonishing success. Again, the ferocity
and exceptionally savage expression of their faces, which Captain
Cook and Vancouver saw and so graphically recorded, has faded out
completely; but in all other respects they agree to-day perfectly
with those descriptions of these early voyagers. In those days
firearms had not destroyed their faith in elaborate armaments of
spear and bow and body armor-shields of wood and leather, so that
they then appeared in much more elaborate costumes and varied
pigments than they do now.
Each tribe has one or more large “rancheries,” or villages, in which
it lives, and which are always located at the level of the sea,
just above tide and surf, at river-mouths, or on sheltered bays
of the islands, or the mainland; these rancheries, or houses, are
built of solid, heavy timbers in the permanent villages, or thrown
loosely together of lighter material in their temporary or camping
stations. The general type of construction is the same throughout the
archipelago, the most substantial houses being those of the Haidahs,
who give more care to the accurate fitting together and ornamentation
of their edifices than is shown elsewhere. They certainly show a
greater constructive facility and mechanical dexterity, not only in
the better style of house-building but in the greater number of,
greater size of, and excessively elaborate carved totem posts. These
peculiar adjuncts to Alaskan Indian architecture are small and shabby
everywhere else when compared with the Prince of Wales exhibition.
All permanent villages are generally situated with regard to one
great idea—easy access to halibut-fishing banks and such coast
fisheries, which occupy the greater proportion of the natives’ time
in going to and coming from them when not actually engaged in fishing
upon these chosen grounds; therefore it happens that, occasionally, a
village will be located on a rocky coast, bleak and exposed, though
carefully placed at the same time so as to permit of the safe landing
of canoes in rough water. These houses always face seaward, and stand
upon some flat of soil, elevated a few feet above the high-tide mark,
where below there is usually a sandy or gravelly beach upon which the
fleet of canoes is drawn out, or launched from, as the owners come
and go at all hours of the day and night. The houses are arranged
side by side, either in close contact, or else a space of greater or
less width between. A promenade or track is always left between the
fronts of the houses and the edge of the bank, from ten to thirty
feet in width; it constitutes a street, and in which the carved
posts and temporary fish-drying frames, etc., are usually planted.
Also those canoes that are not in daily use, or will not be used for
some time, are invariably hauled up on this street, and carefully
covered by rush-mats or spruce-boughs, so as to protect them from the
weather, by which they might be warped or cracked.
The rancheries are themselves never painted by their rude architects
and builders; they, however, soon assume a uniform, inconspicuous,
gray color, and become yellowish-green in spots, or overgrown with
moss and weeds owing to the dampness of the climate. If it were not
for the cloud of bluish smoke that hovers over these villages in calm
weather, they would never be noticed from any considerable distance.
[Illustration: A Haidah Rancherie.]
In localities where the encroachment of mountain and water make the
village area very scant, two rows of houses are occasionally formed,
but in no instance whatever is any evidence given in these Koloshian
settlements of special arrangement of dwellings, or of any set
position for the house of the chief man of the village: he may live
either in the centre or at the extreme end of the row. Each house
usually shelters several families, in one sense of the term; these
are related to each other and under the tacitly acknowledged control
of some elder, to whom the building is reputed to belong, and who
is a person of greater or less importance in the tribe or village
according to the amount of his property or cunning of his intellect.
Before some of these Siwash mansions a rude porch or platform is
erected, upon which, in fair weather, a miscellaneous group of
natives will squat in assembly, conversing, if squaws, or gambling,
if men. The houses themselves are usually square upon their
foundations, and vary much in size, some of them being a hundred
feet square, while most of them are between fifty and sixty feet,
the smaller rancheries being less than twenty. The gable end, and
the entrance right under its plumb, always faces the street and
beach-view; the roof slopes down at a low pitch or angle on each
side, with a projecting shelter erected right over the hole left in
the roof-centre, intended for the escape of smoke—no chimneys were
ever built. This shelter, or shutter, is movable, and is shifted
by the Indian just as the wind and rain may drive; the floor is
oblong or nearly square, and, in the older and better constructed
examples, is partly sunk in the earth, _i.e._, the ground has been
excavated to a depth of six or eight feet in a square area, directly
in the centre, with one or two large earthen steps or terraces left
running around the sides of the cellar. A small square of bare dirt
is left in the exact centre, again, of this hole, while the rest of
the floor is covered with split planks of cedar; the earthen steps
which environ the lower floor are in turn faced and covered with
cedar-slabs, and these serve not only for sleeping and lounging
places, but also for the stowage, in part, of all sorts of boxes and
packages of property and food belonging to the family; the balance of
these treasures usually hangs suspended, in all manner of ingenious
contrivances, from the heavy beams and roof-poles overhead. The
rancheries which are built to-day by Alaskan Indians nearly all
stand on the surface of the ground without any excavation—a decided
degeneracy.
The pattern of the Koloshian house is maintained with little
variation throughout the archipelago, and has been handed down from
remote antiquity. When, after extended confabulation, a number of
Indians agree to build a house, several months are passed first in
the forest by them, where they are engaged in felling the trees
and dressing the timbers necessary; when these logs and planks are
finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is done with axes
and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), they are
tumbled into the water and towed around to the contemplated site of
the new edifice. The great size of the beams and planks used in a
big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a large number of hands
co-operate in the work. The erection, therefore, of such a structure
in all its stages, the cutting and hewing in the woods, the launching
and towing of the timbers to the foundations, and their subsequent
elevation and fitting, forms the occasion of a regular gathering, or
“bee,” that generally calls in whole detachments from neighboring
villages, which is always the precursor to a grand “potlatch,” or
giving away of the portable property of the savage for whom the labor
is undertaken.
[Illustration: Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a
Rancherie.]
Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assembling
of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time ere
completion in all details, because the Siwash for whom the work
has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on
each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as
it may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable
property, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and
continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of the
labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more than
two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect babel
of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the entire
combination of men, women, and children, as the great beams are
placed in position.[19]
In the construction of these dwellings the savage uses no iron
or wooden spikes, he “mortices” and “tenons” rudely but solidly
everything that requires binding firmly; in the lighter and temporary
summer rancheries much use is made of cedar-root and bark-rope
lashings to the same end. Within the last fifteen or twenty years
the common use of small windows has been employed, the glazed sashes
being purchased from the whites either at Victoria or else brought
up to order by the traders; these are inserted in the most irregular
manner, usually on the sides under the eaves.
The oddly-carved totem posts, which appear in every village,
sometimes like a forest of dead trees at distant sight, are, broadly
speaking, divisible into two classes: that is to say, the clan or
family pillars, and those erected as memorials of the dead. There has
been too much written in regard to these grotesque features seeking
to endow them with idolatry, superstitions, and other fancies of
the savage mind. Nothing of the kind, in my opinion, belongs to the
subject; the image posts of the totem order are generally from 30
to 50 feet in height, with a diameter of 3 to 5 feet at the base,
tapering slightly upward. They are often hollowed at the back, after
the fashion of a trough, so that they can be the easier handled and
put into position. Those grotesque figures which cover these posts
from top to bottom, closely grouped together, have little or no
serious significance whatever: they always display the totem of the
owner, and a very marked similarity runs through the carvings of this
character in each village, though they have a wide range of variation
when one settlement is contrasted with another. I am unable to give
any definite explanation, that is worthy of attention, of the real
meaning of all those strange designs—perhaps, in truth, there is
none; they are simply ornamental doorways.
The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the
village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses
and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the buildings.
When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in
the medicine man, or “shaman,” and also invite the friends of the
family to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco;
soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the
abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not
burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but
is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar
box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the
assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and purchased it from
some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape
and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the
reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay
or difficulty in getting one.
If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body
is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at
once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which
is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or
in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united
labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner
as that indicated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be
placed but a single body, then again it will contain several—all
relatives, however. But should the deceased savage have been one of
great importance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the
reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting
thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of
the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and
seeking quarters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary,
sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man.
Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a
distribution of property made by the deceased man’s brother, or that
relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This
inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead
has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before.[20]
The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole through
which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It
is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained
by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the
outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside.
As you enter, the whole interior seems dark—everything, at first,
indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the
smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portière over
the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy
interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace,
upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing; kettles of
stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some
squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large
one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes,
all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or
lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room,
some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving
in wood or slate; while others are idly staring into the fire, or,
wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring.
Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead,
hang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life,
such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs,
cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon
and halibut, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such
people—blankets,[21] tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs
of silk, are stowed away in the corners.
But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick
and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils
of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation
swift, of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily
turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though
a tempest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which
seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the
rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is
not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the
Koloshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse—slops,
bones, shells, fish-débris, and a medley of similar and worse
nuisances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side
and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other
rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty
weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere
hangs heavy around our heads—we move away.
On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with,
unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion
and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basketware;
they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by
conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are
almost invariably bare—too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is
a very common practice; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is
usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect; blue
and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never
seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of
meat-eating savages, who always paint themselves with great care as
to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes
are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning; especially hideous are
the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe
smeared over the countenances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to
prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out
upon them as they are fishing or paddling extended journeys in their
canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in
mourning by the same application.
Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver
coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often
carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are
forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite
flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style;
and, until quite lately, the females all wore labrets in the lower
lips—this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only among
the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original
form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in
the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the
size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above
the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not
even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often
pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or
copper, are inserted; and also the septum of the nose is perforated,
of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or
a pendant of haliotis shell.
Each village has its _lex non scripta_, and is a law unto itself
everywhere within the confines of the Alexander archipelago; or, in
different words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to
any other village or savages—it is the largest unit in the Indian
system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where
they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the
individual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether
the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen—there are no
strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other’s simple
life, every move that they make, what they capture in the forest
or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the rancheries
over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing
and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager
rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimulates
and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing
in its detail—no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not
acknowledged; but any action tending to the injury of another, in
person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the
sufferer—usually atoned for—and the village feud, thus aroused, is
soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property,
to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which,
inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close
at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable
manner; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war
with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been
to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their
internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause
was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that
settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male
Indian able to bear arms; and although these savages are fearless
and brave, yet they know no open, fair fight—taught to get his living
by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in
capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and
do.
Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though
possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now
enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is
really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet,
and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no
weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work,
hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has
to hire them to labor by making the customary “potlatch,” just as
any other man of the tribe would do—only he must give a little more.
The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange
features, for though every rancherie has its freely-acknowledged
chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than
there are houses, each one of which has its own regulations, and a
subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.[22]
The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the interior
country; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers
and streams, are duly divided up among the different families.
These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we
would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches—and they
are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage
inheritance; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring
to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain
of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of proprietary
and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast,
corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define
the limits of such properties between savages, by savages; and
furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps
over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such,
for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter—berries,
wreckage, or shell-fish.
The woods and the waters are teeming with animal life; the lofty
semi-naked peaks harbor mountain goats in large flocks; the beautiful
grouse of Sabine hides in the forest thickets; the land otter and the
mule-eared deer haunt the countless ravines, valleys, and rivulet
bottoms; salmon in fabulous numbers run up those streams, and big,
brown and glossy black bears come down to fatten upon these spawning
fish. But the Sitkan savage is indolent, and, though all this dietary
abundance and variety is before him, he lives quite exclusively upon
halibut and salmon, the former mostly fresh and the latter air-dried
and smoked in the soot of his rancherie. Halibut he finds all the
year round; salmon briefly run only at widely separated periods.
The halibut fishery is the one systematic regular occupation of the
natives. These fish may be taken in all waters of the archipelago
at almost any season, though on certain banks, well known to the
Indians, they are more numerous at times. When the halibut are most
active and abundant, the Koloshians take them in large quantities,
fishing with a hook and line from their canoes, which are anchored
over the favored spots by stones attached to cedar-bark ropes or
cables. They still employ their own primitive, clumsy-looking hook in
decided preference to using our own make. When the canoe is loaded to
the gunwale by an alert fisherman, these halibut are brought in to
some convenient adjacent point on the shore, where they are handed
over to the women, who are there to take care of them, usually living
in a temporary rancherie. They squat around the pile, rapidly clean
the fish, removing the larger bones, head, fins, and tail, and cut it
into broad, thin flakes. These are then hung on the poles of a wooden
frame trellis, where, without salt, and by the wind and sun alone,
sometimes aided by a slow fire underneath the suspended fish-meat,
the flakes are sufficiently cured and dried; then they are packed
away in those characteristic cedar boxes for future use.
A group of old and young squaws, half-nude, flecked with shining
scales and splashed with blood, as they always are when at work
upon a fine run of halibut or salmon—such a group is to be vividly
remembered ever afterward, if you see it even but once. The little
pappooses, entirely naked, with big heads and bellies, slender
necks and legs, are running hither and thither in infantile glee
and sport, always with a mouthful of raw ova or a handful of stewed
fish from the kettle near by, while the babies, propped up in their
stiff-backed lashings, croon and sleep away the time.
There are no rivers of any size flowing on the islands of the Sitkan
archipelago; but there are rapid rivulets and broad brooks in great
numbers. Many of these are large enough to be known as “salmon
rivers.” The first run of those attractive fish usually takes place
up some of the longest island-streams and the mainland rivers about
July 10th to 20th. A month later a larger species begins to arrive
from the depths of the ocean outside, and this run sometimes lasts,
in a desultory manner, until January. These salmon, when they first
appear, are fat and in superb condition and color; but as they leave
the salt water and take up their persistent, tireless ascent of
fresh-water channels they become hook-jawed, lean, and pale-fleshed.
They ascend very small streams in especially great numbers when these
rivulets are swollen by the heavy rains of October, and, being easily
caught and very large, they constitute the chief harvest of the
Alaskan Indian—his meat and bread, in fact. They are either speared
in the shallow estuaries or trapped in brush and split-stick weirs,
which are planted in the streams. Everyone of the little salmon
brooks has its owner in the Indian law. They are the private property
of the several families or subdivisions of the clans. Those people
always come out of their permanent village houses during the fishing
period, and camp upon the banks of their respective water claims.
It is quite unnecessary to itemize all the species of food-fishes in
the Alexander archipelago, for anything and everything that is at
all abundant in the vicinity of an Indian rancherie is sure to be
eaten; trout, herring, flounders, rock-cod, and the rosy, glittering
_sebastines_ constitute minor details of the savage dietary. Codfish
are taken in these waters, but not in great numbers, nor are they
especially sought for. The spawn of the herring[23] is collected on
spruce boughs, which the Indians carefully place at low-water on the
spawning grounds; then, when taken up, it is smoke-dried and stored
away.
But the “loudest” feast of these savages consists of a box, just
opened, of semi-rotten salmon-roe. Many of the Siwashes have a
custom of collecting the ova, putting it into wooden boxes, and
then burying it below high-water mark on the earthen flats above.
When decomposition has taken place to a great extent, and the mass
has a most penetrating and far-reaching “funk,” then it is ready to
be eaten and made merry over. The box is usually uncovered without
removing it from its buried position; the eager savages all squat
around it, and eat the contents with every indication on their hard
faces of keen gastronomic delight—faugh!
[Illustration: Indians Raking Oolochans and Herring.—Stickeen River.]
The same ill-favored and heartily-hated “dog-fish”[24] of our Cape
Cod fishermen is also very abundant in these far-away waters.
Recently, the demand created for its oil by the tanneries of Oregon
and California has made its capture by the Indians an important
source of revenue to them; the oil rendered from its liver is readily
sold by them to the white traders, who also have established a
fishery for the purpose on Prince of Wales Island. These traders also
are making good use of herring-oil, which is to be secured here in
unfailing, abundant supply, to any quantity required.
The most grateful condiment to the Sitkan palate is rancid fish-oil,
or oolachan “butter”—a semi-solid grease, with a fetid smell and
taste; into this they always dip or rub their flakes of dried fish,
their berries, in fact everything that they eat. A little wooden
trencher or tub, grotesquely carved, always is to be seen (and
smelled), placed alongside of the monotonous kettle of stewed fish,
or pile of dried fish, which constitutes the regular spread for a
full meal. And again, a very curious, soap-like use of this oil is
made by the younger and more comely savages. An Indian never washes
in water up in this wet and watery wilderness. I never have seen an
attempt made to wash the face or hands with water, but they do rub
oil vigorously over, and scrub it off bright and dry with a towel, or
mop, of cedar-bark shreds or dry sedge-grass. The constant presence
of this strong-flavored oil renders it a physical impossibility for
a white man, not long-accustomed to its odor, to enter a rancherie
and eat with the inmates, unless the pangs of starvation make him
ravenous.
Whether from taste itself, or sheer indolence, the culinary art of
these people is confined to the incessant simmering and boiling of
everything which is not eaten raw, or ripe; copper, sheet-iron,
and brass kettles being now universally used, are the only decided
innovation made by contact with ourselves in their aboriginal cooking
outfit, though the introduction of tin and cheap earthenware dishes
is growing more general every day. Most of the Indian household
utensils are made of wood; they are fashioned in several forms or
types, which appear to have been faithfully copied from early time.
The berry and the food-trays are cut out of solid pieces of wood, the
length being about one and one-third times as great as the width,
while the depth is relatively small. In some of the large rancheries
these trays, or troughs, are six to ten feet long; the outer ends of
those receptacles are generally carved richly in all sorts of fancy
relief; and, sometimes, the sides are grotesquely painted. A common
form, and smaller in size, and a great favorite with the family, is
boat-shaped, the hollow of the dish being oval; the ends are provided
with odd prow-shaped projections that serve as handles—one of these
ends being usually carved into the head and fore-feet of some animal
or bird, the other to represent its hind-feet and tail. These dishes
are seldom more than eight or ten inches in length, and curve upward
from the middle each way, like the “sheer,” or the gunwale, of a
clipper ship.
[Illustration: A STICKEEN SQUAW
Boiling Berries and Oil, Toasting Herrings, etc.]
Water-dippers, pot-spoons and ladles are made from horns of the
mountain sheep. They are steamed, bent, and pared down thin, carved
and shaped so as to be exceedingly symmetrical, and well finished.
The stew and berry-spoons in ordinary use are made from the stiff,
short black horns of the mountain goat, the handles often carved to
represent a human form, animal, or bird. Knives of all sorts are now
in use. Much ingenuity is often exhibited by the adaptation of old
blades to new handles—in converting the large, flat blacksmithing
files into keen weapons, and making fish-cleaning knives out of
pieces of iron; thin, square or oblong sheets of this metal are
so fitted into oblong wooden handles as to resemble the small
hash-knives used in our kitchens.
But the Sitkan housekeeper glories in her boxes—great chests and
little ones—in which she stores everything of value belonging to the
family, except the dogs and the canoes. The big boxes, corded up with
bark ropes, are her blanket and fur treasuries; the smaller ones
contain her oolachan “butter” and dried fish and meat. The larger
chests are from two and a half to four feet square; the lesser are
between a foot to two feet. The sides of such a box are made of a
single piece of thinly shaven cedar board, which by steaming is bent
three times at a right angle, and pegged tightly and very neatly up
to the fourth corner. The bottom is a separate solid plank, keyed
in with little pegs very solidly, and water-tight; the cover is cut
out of a thick slab, and fits over and sets down heavily on the
upper edge of the chest. Those boxes are all decorated in designs of
the peculiar type so common among these savages, painted in black
and white. The next desideratum of the squaw is a full supply of
cedar-bark mats, which she plaits from strips of this material, and
which are always spread out on the ground or rude plank floor when
the Indian prepares to roll up in his blanket for slumber. Such mats
are the pride of all Thlinket squaws, and vary much in texture and in
pattern.
But the daily routine of the dusky housekeeper is a very different
one indeed from that characteristic of woman’s labor in caring
for our homes. No sweeping or dusting in the Indian rancherie; no
bed-chambers to change the linen in and tidy up; no kitchen or
servants to look after; nothing whatever of the kind. Yet the Indian
matron is always busy. She has to hew the firewood and drag it in;
she has to carry water and attend to all of the rude cooking and
filling of the trenchers; she looks after the mats and the sewing
of the children’s fur and other garments—not much to be sure in the
way of dressmaking—she has to make all of the tedious berry-trips,
picking and drying of the fruit, as well as attending to the
preservation, in the same manner, of the fish and game which the
man brings in. She has an infinite amount of drudgery to do in the
line of gathering certain herbs, bark, and shell-fish. Many small
roots indigenous to the country, containing more or less starch,
are eagerly sought after, dried, and stored away by the women. The
inner sap-layer of the spruce and also that of the hemlock—the
cambium layer—is collected by cutting the trees down and then
barking the trunks for that object. It is shaved off in ribbons and
eaten in great quantities, both fresh and dried, and is considered
very wholesome. It is sweet, mucilaginous, but distinctly resinous
in flavor. The rank-growing seeds, shoots, and leaf-stalks of the
_Epilobium heracleum_, and many others, are plucked and carried by
the squaws in huge bundles to the family fire, and there eaten by all
hands, the stalks being dipped, mouthful after mouthful, in oil.
She has, however, no washing whatever of clothes to do for anybody,
except what little she may see fit to do for herself; she never
treats the dishes even to that ordeal. With all this, however, it
seems rather strange that the clothes of the Indians, consisting of
dresses, shirts and blankets for the men; and for women, petticoats,
chemises, dresses (sometimes), and blankets also—that these articles
usually appear neat and tolerably clean—the children excepted,
as they are always dirty beyond all adequate description. Every
individual attends to his or her own washing—if the husband wants a
clean shirt, he washes it himself.
Before the introduction of the potato through early white
fur-traders, the only plant cultivated by the Alaskan savages was
a potent weed which they grew as a substitute for tobacco—the
importation of the latter, however, has taken its place entirely
to-day, because the Virginian weed is far more pleasant. But the old
stone mortars and pestles that are still to be found knocking around
the most venerable town-sites, bear evidence to the industry of
making native tobacco here ages ago. This plant was prepared for use
by drying over a fire on a little frame stretcher, then bruised to a
powder in the stone mortars, then moistened and pressed into cakes.
It was not smoked in a pipe, but, mixed with a little clamshell lime
(burnt for the purpose), it was chewed or held in the cheek, just as
the Peruvian Indians use coca.[25] Everybody knows how fond Indians
are of tobacco—there is no exception to the rule in Alaska, and no
excuse for attempting to recite in these pages the well-worn story
anew.
No domesticated animals, except dogs, are to be found with the
Alaskan Indians—no cats or fowls. The original breed of curs has been
very much disguised by imported strains; the present natives are gray
and black, shaggy, wolfish beasts, about the size of a large spitz
dog. These cowardly, treacherous animals alone make a white man’s
stay in an Indian village a burden to his existence.
The work bestowed by several of the Sitkan clans upon their so-called
potato gardens is hardly to be designated as the “cultivation” of
that tuber. It forms to-day, this vegetable does, a very important
part of the food-supply, and where a white man takes hold of such
a garden the result, in a small way, is very satisfactory; but the
Siwash finds that the greater part of the low, flat, rich soil in
this country is so thickly wooded that the task of clearing the
ground is altogether too much for him to even consider, much less
undertake. But when he can find a place where an old settlement once
existed, though long abandoned—there the sites of decayed rancheries
are sure to be of rich, warm soil—such are the spots which the Siwash
calls his garden, and where his potatoes are rudely planted, little
or no attention being paid to the hoeing and drilling which we deem
essential, therefore the variety in use has been run down so that the
size and yield is very small, and the quality watery and poor.
While we observe the very general possession of firearms in every
rancherie, and we hardly ever see a canoe-load of savages unless the
barrels of several muskets or rifles project over the gunwale, yet
these Sitkan Indians are not great hunters; but the potent fact that
there is no place in all this region where foot travel is practicable
into the interior, or even along the coast margin itself, affords an
excellent reason; they do, however, kill a very considerable number
of black bears every year, at two special seasons therein, _i.e._,
when these brutes are found prowling upon the sea-beach. But they
never follow bruin into the mountainous recesses, where he invariably
retreats.
In the early spring, during that brief period when the weeds and
grasses first grow green along the outskirts of the timber in warm
sheltered nooks down by the tide-level, black bears come below
from the cold, gloomy cañons above and feed upon the sprouting
skunk-cabbage[26] and other succulent shoots, browsing here and
rooting up there, these tender growths, just as hogs do in our
orchards and clover-fields. Again, late in autumn, when the salmon
rush up into the estuaries and through the shallows by countless
myriads, bruin is once more tempted down to the sea-beaches, and
again gets into trouble. In the same manner the Indians secure the
beautiful little mule-deer,[27] which also loves tender vegetation,
and in this love falls an easy prey to the silent approach of a
canoe with its skulking crew. Geese and ducks, during winter months,
spend much time on the quiet fiörds in large flocks, and constitute
the chief gunning of the Siwashes, who shoot them from their canoes
with the same old flint-lock trade-muskets first used by the whites
a hundred years ago. The Indian admires this pattern still above
all other patterns—despises the percussion-cap, which in this damp
region often fails him, and the trader, knowing this weakness of the
savage, always has a stock of these flint-lock muskets, newly made,
on hand. A supply is steadily furnished by the Hudson’s Bay Company
at Victoria.
But the one thing of joy, of delight, and of infinite use to the
native of the Sitkan archipelago is his canoe. Life, indeed, would
be a sad problem for him were it not for this adjunct of his own
creation. Upon its construction he lavishes the best of his thought,
the height of his manual skill, and his infinite patience. The result
of this attention is to fashion from a single cedar log a little
vessel which challenges our admiration invariably, for its fine
outline and its seaworthiness and strength.
All the canoes of this region have a common model, and are similar in
type, though they differ much in details of shape and size. They are
all made from the indigenous pine[28] and giant cedar,[29] the wood
of which is light, durable, and worked very readily; but it is apt to
split parallel to its grain. This constitutes the only solicitude
of the Indian’s mind. He keeps the canoe covered with mats and brush
whenever it is hauled out, even for a few days, to avoid this danger,
for whenever a canoe is heavily laden, and working, as it will do,
in a rough channel, it is in constant danger of splitting at the
cleavage lines of its grain, and thus jeopardizing its living as well
as dead freight.
With an exception of the bow and stern-pieces, each canoe, no matter
how large or how small, is made in the same manner and from a single
log, which is roughed out in the forest, then towed around to the
permanent village, where it is hauled up in front of the architect’s
house. Here he works upon it during winter months, usually in odd
hours, employing nothing but his little adze-like hatchet and fire
to assist in giving it shape and fine lines. The requisite expansion
amidships, to afford that beam required, is effected by steaming
with water and hot stones and the insertion of several thwart
sticks. Canoes are smoothed outside and painted black, with a red
or white streak under the gunwale in most cases; inside they bear
the regular fine tooth-marks of the excavating adze, and are smeared
with red-ochre. The paddles are usually made of yellow cypress, and
a great variety of small wooden baling dippers are also provided,
one or two for each canoe, because the water often slops over the
gunwales in bad weather. The canoe itself is never suffered to leak.
The average size is one of fifteen to twenty feet in length, which
will carry from eight to ten savages, with baggage. One having a
length of from thirty to thirty-five feet carries as many men. The
smaller canoes of from twelve to thirteen feet are usually used by
one or two savages in their quick, irregular trips to and from the
village, and are easily launched and hauled out by one man.
It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the Sitkan ever took or takes
any real enjoyment in hunting or fishing. If he does, it is never
exhibited on his countenance or evidenced by his language. It is, in
fact, the serious business of his life, and the steady routine of
its prosecution has robbed him of every enjoyable sporting sensation
which we love to experience when after fish or game. Perhaps,
however, he may recall the thrill of that feeling which he felt when,
as a boy, he was first taken out in his father’s canoe to the halibut
banks, and there permitted to bait a huge wooden hook and haul away
upon the taut kelp-line when the “kambala” had swallowed it; but the
necessity of going out to this shoal in all sorts of disagreeable
weather every summer and winter of his subsequent existence, at very
frequent intervals, soon destroyed pleasurable emotions. Therefore,
he fashions his acute-angled wooden hooks, his iron-tipped fish and
seal spears, and polishes up his musket with none of those enjoyable
anticipations which possess the soul of a white sportsman.
In 1841-42 the best understanding of the Russian and English traders
agreed in reporting a population of over twenty thousand Indians
within the limits of the Alexander archipelago; to-day the same
country can show no more than a scant seven thousand. The inroads
that small-pox and measles have made, by which these savages were
destroyed even as fire sweeps through and burns drought-withered
thickets, leave little doubt as to the great numerical superiority of
earlier days as compared with the present. This decay and abandonment
is everywhere exhibited now even in the permanent villages, where
houses have been deserted completely: some are shut up, mouldering,
and rotting away upon their foundations; others, large and fit for
the shelter of fifty or sixty natives, will be found tenanted by
only two or three Siwashes. All the standing carved posts in this
entire region, with rare exceptions, are, as a rule, more or less
advanced into decay. A rank growth of weeds, dark and undisturbed in
some cases, presses up close to inhabited houses, the traffic not
being sufficient to keep them down. The original features of these
settlements, in a few years more of this unchecked neglect and decay,
will have entirely disappeared as they have already at Sitka. At the
present hour, however, we can go among them, and readily call up to
our minds what they once were when they were swarming with occupants
who were dressed in tanned-leather shirts and sea-otter cloaks, as
they thronged about the ships of Cook and Vancouver.
Slavery, which was originally firmly interwoven with the social
fabric of these people, has been about abolished—slaves themselves
to-day are very scarce, and are not much more so than in name. They
were the captives taken in savage warfare between opposing clans, and
were most horribly tortured and cruelly treated by their masters.
As a rule the young people marry young, after the stolid fashion
of Indians. They approve of polygamy, but seldom do you find a man
with more than one squaw, simply because the women do not contribute
materially and primarily to the support of the family, and attend
only to the accessory duties of it; thus it becomes an increased tax
upon the dull energies of the savage whenever he adds an extra woman
to his household. The squaws are all well treated everywhere up here;
they have just as much to say as their lords and masters whenever the
occasion of buying, selling, or hiring arises; as to the children (we
will not see many of them to-day), they are always kindly cared for
by both parents, and the whole tribe is as indulgent, since they are
constantly roaming about the village, after the custom of youngsters
universally.
A candid verdict will result, in view of the surroundings of the
Koloshian, that the only vice which can be legitimately charged up
against him, or his kind, is the sin of gambling. To this dissipation
the Alaskan savage is desperately prone; the monotonous chant of the
stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These
worthies sit on the ground, in a circle usually, in the centre of
which a mat is spread; six or seven small wooden pins about as large
as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are
marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who
thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them
under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting
a deep guttural _hah-hah-ee-nah-hah!_ the others watch him with
lynx-like eyes for a few moments, when one of the players suddenly
orders the shuffler to show his hands, in which the sticks are firmly
clinched, and at the same time endeavors to guess the value of
these sticks in either one hand or the other, which have been held
up—he pauses a moment, then makes his decision, the clinched hand
designated is opened, the little sticks fall to the mat, and the
caller wins or loses just as he happens to hit the value expressed
by the markings on these pins: if he guesses correctly he wins
everything in the pot or pool, and takes up the wooden dice in turn,
to shuffle, shout, and repeat for the rest of the circle. This game
is usually sustained night and day, until some one of the party
remains the winner of everything that the others started in with.
That wretched debauchery which an introduction of rum into the
rancheries of these natives has caused, cannot be justly laid at
the Indian’s door; this intense morbid craving for liquor among the
Alaskan savages of this region is most likely due to the climate—it
is not near so strong in the appetite of the natives who live east of
the coast range. Although Congress has legislated, and our officials
have endeavored to carry out the prohibition statutes, yet the matter
thus far is wholly beyond control—the savage cannot only smuggle
successfully within these intricate watery channels, but he now
thoroughly understands the distillation of rum itself from sugar and
molasses.
There is something in this atmosphere which enables a white man
to drink a great deal more with impunity than he can in any other
section of the United States or Territories—the quantities of strong
tea, the nips of brandy, wine, and cordials which he will swallow
with perfect physical indifference, in the course of every day of
his life, at Sitka for instance, would drive him to delirium in
an exceedingly short time if repeated at San Francisco. Naturally
enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected
by Indian stomachs; and now that they have fully grasped the
understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid
reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify
a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate extinction
of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to
effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our combined
virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] All savages are called by this name up here—the sex being
indicated by “buck” and “squaw.” Children are called “pappooses.”
[17] This Act wisely does not establish a full-fledged form of
territorial government in Alaska, because the lack of a suitable
population to maintain it reputably was conclusively shown by the
census returns of 1880: it creates an executive and a judiciary;
it extends certain laws of the United States relating to crimes,
customs, and mining, over Alaska, and provides for their enforcement.
The land laws of the United States should also be made operative in
Alaska, they are expressly omitted in the present act.
[18]
I. _Chillkahts_: Lynn Canal and Glacier Bay.
II. _Hooniahs_: Chichagov Island and islets.
III. _Awks_: North end Admiralty Island.
IV. _Tahkoos_: Mainland, Stephen’s Passage and Juneau City.
V. _Khootznahoos_: South end Admiralty Island.
VI. _Sitkas_: Baranov Island.
VII. _Kakho_: Kou and Kuprianov Islands, Prince Frederick Sound,
mainland coast.
VIII. _Stickeens_: Wrangel, Zarenbo and Etholin Islands, Stickeen
River mouth.
IX. _Haidah_: Prince of Wales Island.
X. _Tongass_: Mainland, Cape Fox to Cape Warde, and contiguous
islands.
[19] The exact measurements of such a rancherie, and of which the
author submits a careful drawing, were: Breadth in front of house, 54
feet 6 inches; depth from front to back, “in the clear,” 47 feet 8
inches; height of ridge of roof, 16 feet 6 inches; height of eaves,
10 feet 8 inches; girth of main vertical posts and horizontal beams,
9 feet 9 inches; width of outer upright beams, 2 feet 6 inches,
thickness, about 6 inches; width of carved totem post in front of
house, 3 feet 10 inches, height, (?) 50 feet.
[20] Whole volumes have been written upon this subject of the totem
and consanguinity among these savages of the northwest coast. Further
description or discussion, in this instance, is superfluous.
[21] The blanket is now, however, the general recognized currency
among these people. It is the substitute among them of that unit of
value, the beaver skin, which has been for so long the currency of
the great Hudson Bay region. The blankets used in Alaskan trade are
of all colors—green, blue, yellow, red, and white—of the very best
woollen texture, none others will do. They are rated in value by the
“points” or line-marks woven into the edge, the best and largest
being a “four-point,” the smallest and poorest being “one-point.” The
unit of value is a single “two and a half point” blanket, worth a
little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large
four-point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. Traders not
infrequently buy in blankets, taking them, when in good order, from
the Indians as money, and selling them out again as trade demands.
[22] There are naturally in every clan certain individuals of
hereditary Indian wealth and a long pedigree, who speak in better
language, who have a fine physical presence, a more dignified
bearing, and the self-possession and pride of incarnate egotism. From
these men the chiefs are selected, and although the chieftainship
is not necessarily hereditary, yet it is often retained in this
manner for many generations in one family. The covers of this volume,
however, cannot be expanded wide enough to permit the further
discussion and enumeration of a thousand and one singular points in
this connection which rise in the author’s mind.
[23] _Clupea mirabilis._
[24] _Squalus acanthias._
[25] This accounts for the puzzling appearance of ancient stone
mortars and pestles in Alaska, throughout the Sitkan region.
Ethnologists have endeavored to reason that certain extinct tribes
must have cultivated grain up here of some kind and used it as food.
I am indebted to the venerable Dr. W. F. Tolmie for this fact,
he showing me the mortars and giving the reason of their use in
December, 1866, at Victoria, B. C.
[26] _Lysichiton sp._
[27] _Cervus columbianus_—a well-grown specimen weighs about one
hundred and fifty pounds. Great numbers are taken in the Tahkoo
region, though it is found everywhere.
[28] _Abies sitkensis._
[29] _Thuja gigantea._