THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK.
Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska.—Site of
the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company.—Shellikov and his
Remarkable History, 1784.—His Subjection of the Kaniags.—Bloody
Struggle.—He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three
Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago.—Kadiak, a Large and Rugged
Island.—The Timber Line drawn upon it.—Luxuriant Growth of Annual
and Biennial Flowering Plants.—Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned
for Sitka.—The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company
on Wood Island.—Only Road and Horses in Alaska there.—Creole
Ship and Boat Yard.—Tough Siberian Cattle.—Pretty Greek Chapel
at Yealovnie.—Afognak, the Largest Village of “Old Colonial
Citizens.”—Picturesque and Substantial Village.—Largest Crops
of Potatoes raised here.—No Ploughing done; Earth Prepared with
Spades.—Domestic Fowls.—Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at
Kolma.—What a “Creole” is.—The Kaniags or Natives of Kadiak; their
Salient Characteristics.—Great Diminution of their Numbers.—Neglect
of Laws of Health by Natives.—Apathy and Indifference to
Death.—Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska;
Measles equally deadly.—Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters.—The Penal
Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska.—The Wild Coast of
the Peninsula.—Water-terraces on the Mountains.—Belcovsky, the
Rich and Profligate Settlement.—Kvass Orgies.—Oonga, Cod-fishing
Rendezvous.—The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741.—The Coal Mines here
Worthless.
The boldest and the most striking cape in this wilderness of bluffy
headlands and jutting promontories is that point which marks the
dividing line between the Kadiak region and Cook’s Inlet—Cape
Douglas. It is a lofty alpine ridge or spur, abruptly thrust out at a
right angle to the coast, and into and over the sea for a distance of
three miles, where it drops suddenly with a sheer precipitous fall of
over one thousand feet into the waves that thunder on its everlasting
foundations. Baffling winds here, and turbulent tide-rips distress
that navigator who, coming down from the inlet, seeks the harbor of
St. Paul’s village. He hardly regards this seared and rugged headland
with that admiration which the geologist and the artist always
will. The “woollies,” which blow fiercely off from it, worry him and
challenge all his nautical skill.
Kadiak Island is the centre, geographical and commercial, of a most
interesting and wide-extended district, perhaps the most so, of the
Alaskan Territory, and Kadiak village, or Saint Paul Harbor is, in
turn, the central and all-important settlement of this district.[47]
It was the site of the first grand depot of the old Russian American
Company, and also the location of the first missionary establishment
and day-school ever founded on the northwest coast of the continent.
From the quiet moorings of this beautiful Kadiak bay hundreds of
shallops and vessels bearing courageous monks and priests have set
out in every direction over all Alaska, carrying scores of them to
preach the gospel among its savage inhabitants, who then were savage
indeed to all intents and purposes.
The first visit ever made by white men to the great Island of
Kadiak was the landing here in the autumn of 1763, at Alikitak
Bay, of Stepan Glottov, a Russian sea-otter trader, who went into
winter-quarters at the southeastern extremity of the island, on a
spot now called Kahgooak settlement. The natives were ugly, hostile,
refused all intercourse, and kept the Russians in a chronic state
of fear. Scurvy broke out in their camp and nearly destroyed the
invaders, leaving less than one-third of them alive in the spring.
They managed then, with the greatest effort, to launch their vessel
and get away, the savages meanwhile constantly attempting to finish
that destruction which bodily disease had so well-nigh effected.
The beginning of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century is a
true date of the real epoch of Russian domination in Alaska. All
history of white exploration in this country prior to that is simply
the cruel legend of an eager, heartless band of outraging Muscovites,
doing everything just for the gain of the present moment, sowing so
badly that they dared not remain and reap. One of those big-brained,
cool, and indomitable Russians, who gave then as they give now, the
stamp of high character to the race, was for several years prior
to 1780 prominently engaged in the American fur trade. Grigor Ivan
Shellikov was this man. He was a citizen of the Siberian town of
Roolsk. He resolved to survey in person those scenes of rapid
demoralization and ruin to the profitable prosecution of his Alaskan
business, and, if possible, to attempt a change for the better.
An evident decrease in furs, together with the hostile attitude
of the natives, provoked altogether by their inhuman treatment at
the hands of the “promishlyniks,” called for reform in the most
emphatic manner. After a carefully deliberated plan of action had
been determined upon between himself and his partners, the brothers
Gollikov, he at once proceeded to the Okotsk Sea and fitted out three
small vessels for his expedition.[48] He did not reach Kadiak until
1784, two years after starting out, when two of his vessels came to
anchor in the harbor now known, as it was then christened by him,
Three Saints Bay. Shellikov was a ready and willing correspondent.
His numerous letters to his Siberian partners and his own published
“Journeys” give us a clear idea of the hardihood of his enterprise,
and they have a rare ethnographic value. From them we learn of the
great liking which Shellikov’s party took to the Island of Kadiak,
and how they resolved, soon after making a short reconnoissance, to
establish themselves permanently if they could gain the confidence of
its savage inhabitants.
Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought
him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with presents and
kindness, then sent him back to his people; but the native, though
won wholly over himself,[49] could not prevail upon his hostile
countrymen, who soon gave the Russians ample evidence of their
enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships’ boats were
exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the appearance
of a “perfect cloud” of natives that were encamped on rough and
precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main
island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and
endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He exhausted every
art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making
the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up
in the liveliest recollection those outrages and indignities which
they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov’s
Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader
now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows
and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching
the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected
over day a rude stockade—none too quick, for these Kaniags approached
the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw
themselves with frenzied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians.
The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instinct of
self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness
and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and,
considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their
loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this
terrible midnight struggle, they would have been overpowered and
exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation
which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the
assailing ranks of those dusky hosts.
Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and
commercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete
subjugation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat
of the hostiles, armed one of his vessels and followed them up
to their rocky fortresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a
position that was well-nigh impregnable, and to which savage
reinforcements were rapidly flocking from the main islands. Unable
to reach the entrenched camp of those defiant natives with the
small ship’s-cannon, Shellikov picked a party of sixty men out
of his company, went ashore with them, and, with his little iron
two-pounders, he stormed the enemy with such impetuosity that the
rapid discharges of these guns and small firearms of the charging
Russians utterly demoralized an immensely superior force of the
savages, who became panic-stricken, and actually jumped by scores
off the high bluffs of Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below;
the rest of them, more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the
Russians, who took and located them on a rocky islet, several miles
from the harbor of Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with
provisions; and then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and
liberally paid for their peltries. Twenty or thirty of their leaders
were kept as hostages on the vessels, and the result was entire
submission everywhere afterward to the Russians in this region.
Occasional attacks and massacres would now and then be made upon
far-distant hunting parties of the Russians, it is true, but the
moral effect of the Oogak victory and slaughter was such among the
Kadiakers that no further combined organized resistance or opposition
was ever given again.
Shellikov soon realized that he was in no further danger from savage
attacks. He began a most extensive and thorough exploration of the
great island, and organizations of trading-posts at every eligible
point. He sent a large party around to the north side and located it
at Karlook, where we now find quite a salmon-canning establishment.
Here, during the winter of 1785-86 fifty-two Russians and as many
natives ranged all over the water of Shellikov Straits in eager
search of the sea-otter; in the meantime the whites under Shellikov’s
immediate command were actively examining the recesses and fiörds
which are so numerous and deep on the south side of Kadiak. So well
and so thoroughly was this work carried out, that by the beginning
of 1786 Shellikov had made himself well acquainted with the whole
region—had established his trading-posts at every point between
Shooak, in the north, and Trinity Islands, at the extreme south; and
had even made himself tolerably familiar with the coast of Cook’s
Inlet, having chastised the ugly Kenaitze in a most summary manner.
Again, this remarkable man is distinguished by the successful and
sensible effort which he made in substituting for the orgies of
Kadiak demonology the practices of the Greek Church, which, he
wisely foresaw, if effected, would bind the natives closer to the
Russians than any other power. He was aided in this by the personal
labors and example of his wife, who accompanied him at the outset.
She instructed the girls and women in needle-work, and acquired an
influence over them that was very great. Feeling certain that he had
established his trade on a secure foundation, Shellikov and his wife
sailed for home on May 22, 1786, in the same vessel which brought
them out, leaving an impress of enduring character upon Alaska of the
greatest good and worth.
During the first years of the existence of the Shellikov Company,
thus established here in Kadiak, it enjoyed the partial protection of
the Crown and many exclusive privileges, by which advantages nearly
all the smaller trading companies had been fairly crowded out of
the country. But it was not always the power conferred upon a great
firm by its favor at Court and larger capital that gained supremacy
in Alaska during those early days—it frequently occurred that the
employés of one association resorted to physical force of arms in
dispossessing those of another, and then, this order initiated, the
strongest organization was sure to eventually dominate the coveted
region. This commercial anarchy led to the autocratic monopoly of the
Russian American Company in a very few years—it was the best thing
that could then have transpired for Alaska and its people.
The approach to Kadiak from the ocean is striking, because it and the
numerous islets and islands that join it closely are mountainous and
hilly, with many lofty peaks that have plateaux and ravines full of
eternal snow. It is not often seen clearly, however, along its full
extent of wild topography, on account of clouds, fog and boisterous
weather, which terrifies the navigator, driving him from its vision.
It is, however, an island that affords the greatest number of safe
and snug harbors, and has no rival as the most enjoyable place for
the traveller to visit. It so justifies us in our mind to-day, just
as it warranted the Russians in expressing their preference for it a
full hundred years ago.
Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit
of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbitrary and
capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only
one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered
with spruce-forest; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be
a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the
south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change
from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy
tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass
from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the
moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes
the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite,
and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the
coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound.
There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large
island itself; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling,
with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great
extent. A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from their
mountain sources, but none of them are navigable—they are mere rapids
and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic
circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of
Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of
floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe
the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless
area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits
of the hilly ridges of the interior.
Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian
Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet
when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single
organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of
supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the
present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he
procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those
huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to
house the merchandise, furs, and his employés. The harbor, too, is
ample, and so situated that sailing-craft can come and go in all
winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon
Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on
file show; but the menacing encroachments of foreign traders in the
far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of
loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action.
To-day many of the ancient Russian structures are still pointed out
in the village here which commands the harbor of Saint Paul, and in
which some three hundred Creoles are living in well-built log and
frame houses. Everything is clean[50] and orderly, but very, very
quiet, inasmuch as no commerce, no monthly steamer, no tramping
miners invade the solitude of its location. It supports a large Greek
church and the priest attendant. Its people, as a rule, are wholly
engaged in the business of trading fur and hunting sea-otters. Small
codfish schooners often rendezvous here, and the natives also cut
considerable cord-wood, for the use of such fur-traders who ply to
the treeless districts westward, and fuel for fishing canneries at
Karlook and Kassilov. Several little mountain rivulets flow through
the limits of this settlement, which is everywhere well drained,
and therefore dry in the streets by reason of its position on the
rising slopes of the lofty hills which make a bold background, when
the picture is viewed from the ship’s deck as you sail up to the
anchorage. The presence here of some thirty white men, pure Russian
Creoles, and several of our own people who have really settled in the
country, many of them married, and who call the place home, makes
Kadiak unique in this respect. Elsewhere, if we find a white man
living at the trading-posts, or plying his vocation as a cod-salmon
fisherman, or miner, he always draws himself up and emphatically
denies any idea of permanent residence in Alaska.
Looking down the bay, we observe a thickly timbered and a somewhat
more level island than usual—it is the famous Wood Island, where the
largest spruce-trees in all this section grow; upon it is a small
village of one hundred and fifty-six souls, living in thirteen log
houses, thickly clustered together; they are all sea-otter hunters
during the summer. This village is also the depot of that mysterious
San Francisco corporation which has regularly cut up and stored tons
of ice here every winter since 1856, and never has shipped a pound of
it away! and when the bright, hearty agent of this corporation asks
you to come out with him to the stable and advises you to mount one
of the three or four horses sheltered therein, so that you can gallop
round the island with him, your astonishment is perfect.
Sure enough, there is a road, incredible as it first seemed; for, in
order that the horses might be exercised, a good track has been made
upon the entire tide-level circuit of the island, about twelve miles
in length, over which the ice company’s stock is trotted every summer
at frequent intervals; in the winter these unwonted animals are busy
hauling ice. You may well improve this opportunity, for it will not
occur again as you travel in Alaska—you will not be able to ride
elsewhere on a road worthy of the name.
A number of small trading-sloops and schooners have been built here
in a boatyard, fashioned by the skill of some Creole ship-carpenters,
who were trained in the yards at Sitka when Russian authority was
dominant, and who have taken up their permanent abode in this
“Leesnoi” settlement. A few small, tough Siberian cattle, such as we
saw at Neelshik, Cook’s Inlet, are roaming about here, cared for by
the natives who prize milk; also several of these same bovines are
to be seen at Kadiak, where they are limited also to a few head, on
account of the trouble of winter attendance and loss from bears in
the summer pasturage.
An odd, weather-beaten faded little building is pointed out by the
natives with pride and animation, as the house in which a “soul-like
man”—a Russian monk made his abode for thirty consecutive years,
teaching the children of the village and those of the neighboring
towns, who flocked here in great numbers to be instructed. He
taught the Russian alphabet, so that the church service might be
intelligible; also rudimentary art-principles, gardening and divers
useful habits for such youth. This unique shrine is in the heart
of the next village closely adjoining, and which is located on
Spruce Island, or “Yealovnie,” as the seventy odd Russian Creoles
who live there call it. It is a little hamlet of only fifteen small
log houses, very neat and clean; and the prettiest of flower-pots
within the scant windows give you a far-away thought as you observe
them. Here is also one of the tiniest of Greek chapels, in which the
natives are regularly joined by the small number of those of Oozinkie
village (a little way off) and just across the straits; these people,
who have no church, are also pure Creoles, and unite in perfect
accord with those of Spruce town.
Near by, on the southern shore of Afognak Island, is the largest
settlement of the “old colonial citizens” in the Territory; three
hundred and thirty of these people are living here in a very
picturesque and substantial village; a large chapel, which is also
used as a school-house, is the distinguishing architectural feature,
while a number of newly-built row-boats for fishermen, on the stocks,
in a miniature shipyard, point to an industry worthy of attention.
The town is spread over a large landed extent, which in many places
between the dwellings is devoted to vegetable gardens. More land
is under cultivation here than all the rest so treated in Alaska
to-day; the crops of potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and garden-salads,
like radishes, etc., seldom fail except in very backward years. No
ploughing[51] is done; the earth prepared for potatoes is thrown
with spades, picks, and hoes up as small ridges or tumuli, into the
surface of which the seed is planted. A few of those shaggy little
bulls and cows, which we have noticed before at Wood Island and
Kadiak, are also roaming about, and a great many domestic fowls, such
as chickens and ducks, are raised by the women and children, who take
the poultry into the attics or lofts above their living rooms during
the inclemencies of winter.
The desire of the Russians to have beef, milk, and butter, led to a
very general importation of Siberian cattle from Petropaulovsk so
that every post in Alaska, at one time, had at least a pair of these
useful animals to start with. The greatest care was given to them
at first, everywhere; they were especially fostered at Sitka, where
the demand for their flesh and milk was most urgent, but at Kadiak
and the Kenai mission on Cook’s Inlet, the only partial success in
causing an increase to the stock was achieved. Impressed with an idea
that certain sections of the Kadiak region would serve admirably for
sheep-husbandry, a San Francisco merchant-firm shipped a flock of
rams and ewes—one hundred and fifty of them—sheep of the hardiest
breed, to Kolma, a spot not far from St. Paul’s Harbor, Kadiak. They
were in charge of a trained Scotch shepherd; but while the flock
did remarkably well in the summer, yet most of them perished during
the following winter, not from exposure nor want of food, but the
long-continued and frequent intervals when the sheep are obliged to
be shut up tightly from the fury of wintry gales laden with sleet and
rain and snow, causes their wool to “sweat” and fall from the skin in
large patches, producing an emaciation and debility which the animal
seldom fully recovers from. Also, the general dampness everywhere
under foot during the summer season in many good grazing sections of
Alaska, is such as to cause an abnormal increase of the hoofs, so
that the horny toes turn and grow upward, destroying the peace and
comfort of a sheep and literally confine its movements and destroy
its thrifty life.[52]
Since these little villages of Kadiak, Leesnoi, Yealova, and Afognak
embrace within their limits a large majority of the sixteen or
seventeen hundred Creoles who are residents and natives of Alaska,
it may be interesting if a sketch be given of the physical and
mental characteristics which distinguish them broadly from the
aboriginal types. The original Creole was the offspring of a Russian
father and an Aleutian or Kaniag mother. He inherited the strong
thickset frame and bushy, curly beard and brown hair of his father;
in many cases his eyes were as blue (and his hair sometimes red),
his skin as white, and his bearing just as good as was his Russian
progenitors’. The aggressive energy, however, of the sire seldom
was transmitted, the Creole being indolent and very pacific in
disposition. If this original Creole, in his time and turn, married
a full-blooded Aleutian or Kaniag girl, then the offspring would
show a marked dominance of the mother’s race—indeed, the child would
be as much like other Aleutian babies as they are related in looks
among themselves; but if this original Creole marries an original
Creole girl, sired like himself, then we have a type which cannot
be distinguished at all from the full-blooded Slavonian, only much
less demonstrative, alert, and pugnacious. Most of these old colonial
citizens of this district of Kadiak are therefore full-blooded
Russian quadroons and octoroons, and in every physical aspect are as
much like Russians as if of pure origin. Those early Creoles, male
and female, who mated, as they matured, with the native males and
females, in so doing caused all their offspring, long ago, to revert
to the savage types, and we cannot distinguish them to-day.
[Illustration: CREOLES AND ALEUTES
Pencil Portraits of typical Alaskan faces, selected from the Author’s
Portfolio
1. Luka Mandriggan, an Aleute, 49 years of age
9. Philip Vollkov, a Creole, 50 ” ”
8. Matroona Vollkov, ” girl, 15 ” ”
10. Anoorka Meeseekin, ” ” 11 ” ”
7. Fevronia Eevanov, ” ” 9 ” ”
11. Deemietri Veatkin, ” 48 ” ”
6. Aggie Kooshing, ” boy, 18 ” ”
3. Ivan, an Aleute boy, 7 ” ”
5. Domian, ” ” 12 ” ”
a. Paraskeeva, ” girl, 13 ” ”
4. Natalia, ” ” 12 ” ”
Some of the Creole girls and women whom we observe in these
settlements are exceedingly handsome, modest, and the only fault we
can find with them is their absolute speechlessness—they cannot be
induced to chat with us, though they seem to enjoy our presence.
Most of them live in scrupulously clean houses, the floors scrubbed
and sanded like a well holystoned ship’s deck, walls papered and
decorated with pictures of saints and other pious subjects; old
Russian furniture, chairs, settees, bureaus, and clocks of our own
make; the bright, omnipresent “samovar” in which the boiling water
for tea is never allowed to get cool; little curtains over the small
windows, and big curtains puckered around the beds—everything is
usually clean, tidy, and quiet within the Creole’s home.
The wants of the Creole are very few outside of what the country in
which he lives affords him. He manages to so deal in sea-otter, and
fox and bear skins as to get from the trader’s store what tea, sugar,
flour, and cloth are required for his family. Beyond this exertion
and that displayed in his gardening he rests wholly at peace with
himself and all the rest of the world.
The Kaniags or Kadiakers, who are the natives of this island and
contiguous islands, are in much greater numbers, and are to be found
everywhere here in small hamlets that nestle in the deep fiörds and
bays of Kadiak. They resemble the Aleutes so closely in outward form
and characteristics that the full description given in a following
chapter of those people will cover the whole ground of this inquiry,
only let it be remembered that the Kaniag is a trifle taller than
his Aleutian cousin, has a fairer skin, a somewhat broader face,
and is considerably more muscular. Like the Aleutes, he has small
feet and hands, small black eyes set in deep sockets, little or no
beard, and an abundance of coarse, straight, black hair, which he
cuts off roughly just above his shoulders; he has a trifle more beard
and a better mustache, but this is a very fine distinction. He is
lighter-hearted, freer, and more jovial, but has less patience during
seasons of privation or epidemic disease.
When the Kaniags gather together they are exceedingly talkative,
abounding in jokes, in the recitation of funny legends, and stories
of every imaginable nature associated with their simple lives. As
they paddle their bidarkas and bidarrahs in making long journeys,
they enliven the labor by continuous songs, snatches from church
tunes, or lively airs taught them by the Russians and later by our
soldiers and traders. They are in every respect much more susceptible
of emotional impulses than are the Aleutes. This greater sociability
is well exhibited by the invariable erection, in every settlement, of
a “kashima,” or public dance and work-house, or, in fact, a town-hall
as we have it:—the Aleutes have nothing of the sort. They pass a
good deal of their time on the land, traversing mountain trails in
quest of bears, wolves, foxes, the land-otter, and the marmot, or
“yeavrashkie,” which is made into that famous skin coat called
the “parkie” all over this Alaskan country outside of the Sitkan
archipelago.
As these natives exist to-day there are only eighteen hundred, a few
more or less, of them, which is an immense shrinkage from the Russian
enumeration of six thousand five hundred made by actual count of
Baranov. They seem to be declining even now, year by year, even as
the Koloshians of the Sitkan region do, so that the native population
of the Kadiak district, if decreased[53] in the next two decades as
it has in the last, will hardly have a living representative. No one
can well avoid a train of fast-crowding thought when he stops in
contemplation of sickness and death as it appears and is treated in
savage settlements—the only medical counsel that they ever have is
their own individual instinct. Ignorant as they are of the simplest
anatomical details of their structure, it is not surprising that
they should surrender to disorders and disease with that remarkable
passive apathy which is so distinctive of the sick everywhere in such
communities.
Indians, and these Aleutes and Kaniags, as they grow up, have no
parental supervision whatever as to details of diet, of warm or cool
clothing, or of any of those many attentions which our children
receive from their parents. For the first ten or twelve years of
their lives they literally run wild, and are semi-naked or wholly
so, both male and female;[54] this is their condition, then, at all
seasons of the year. Exposed as they are, in their manner of living,
to draughts, to insufficient covering, and damp, cold nooks for
slumber, in which the air reeks with odors too vile for the power of
language to express, naturally they lay a foundation, at the very
outset of their existence, for pulmonic troubles in all the varied
degrees of that dread disease. Consumption is, therefore, the simple
and broad term for that single ailment which alone destroys the
greatest number of these people, every season, in Alaska; all the
natives, the Eskimo, the Aleut, the Kaniag, and the Indians suffer
from it alike, and they all exhibit that same stolid indifference
to its stealthy but fatal advancement—no extra care, no attempt to
shelter, to protect or to ward off in the slightest manner this
trouble, until the very moment of supreme dissolution calls in a
shaman and the sorrowing relatives.
After lung diseases, the next destroying factor of greatest power is
embodied in the virulence of scrofulous affections, which take the
form of malignant ulcers that eat into the vitals and slough away
the walls of the large arteries. This most loathsome blood-poisoning
renders a few settlements entirely leprous, especially so to our
startled eyes when we visit them. And in this regard it is hard to
find a village in the whole Alaskan boundary where at least one or
more of the families therein has not got upon some one of its members
the singularly prominent scars that attest this disease. Often a
comely young girl or man will, in turning suddenly, reveal under the
jaws or on the neck and throat, a disgusting, livid eruption which
a scrofulous ancestry has cursed the youth with. Since most of this
complaint is on the surface, as it were, we naturally would look for
some care on the part of the afflicted native, even if for no other
end than self-contentment and the ready alleviation of this cutaneous
misery; but we will look in vain, the patient never gives it. On
the contrary, it is utterly neglected, and by reason of the filthy
habit of these people, it is immensely aggravated and made infinitely
more violent. In regard to consumption this apathy on the part of
the victim is not, in contrast, so very remarkable, since it is more
concealed and not near so disagreeable both to the native and his
associates.
Though consumption and scrofula are the two great indigenous sources
of disease and death among the natives, yet there is still a
list—quite a long one—of other ills, such as paralysis, inflammatory
rheumatism and peritonitis, fits, and an abrupt ending of life in the
middle-aged, called most graphically “general debility.” As might be
inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal life in Alaska,
these natives do not survive to any great age; rarely, indeed, will
an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years be recorded or
observed—an overwhelming majority of them are old at thirty-five and
forty. When a man or a woman in a settlement rounds the fiftieth year
of his or her life, a noted example of the tribe is afforded; but
should this age be attained, and the man then be free from rheumatic
troubles or the death-grasp of scrofulous or pulmonic disease, he
is sure to be afflicted with injured and defective vision, if not
totally blind; the glint of snow and the intensely smoky interiors
of every style of native dwelling so affect the eyes of these people
that those organs of sight, in the middle-aged, are seldom without
signs of decay—showing some one of the various stages of granular
ophthalmia, as a rule.
Snow-blindness can be remedied and its pain abated by the use of
peculiar goggles, which the savages know well how to make and use,
but the greater evil of smoke-poison to the optic nerve is not
obviated at all by any action on their part, though it would be easy
so to do. They actually seem determined to live on so as to live as
wretchedly in the future as they have in the past.
Another singular characteristic of these Alaskan savages is the fact
that none of the many tribes have any medicine whatever; nor have
they any knowledge, so far as we can find out, of any medicinal herb
or mineral, and this again is the most extraordinary item of it all.
Every less or great indisposition is treated by a universal resort
to the sweat-bath; this is the sole specific, and this is the only
relief, except when the shaman is called in to worry the last hours
of the unhappy patient to death, or, perhaps, in rare cases, to
prolong his wretched existence for a longer period, by stimulating
an undue or extra nervous tension, which then causes, at times, the
usually languid and resigned sufferer to rally, as it were, before
the flame flickers out. Truly these people are predestinarians; they
are wonderful in their patience when suffering long and acutely, as
they lie stretched out or squatted in their gloomy, noisome hovels.
All the traders, and every vessel that sails in Alaskan waters, have
medicine-chests, and to their credit be it said that, as far as
they can, they do everything in their power to aid the natives when
sick; but the aborigines have not the right idea of taking physic,
since they appreciate nothing but forcible treatment—large doses of
something that acts immediately, or nothing at all. For instance, if
the trader gives an Indian a dose of Epsom-salts, the amount given
must be at least four or five times as much as would do for himself,
or there will be no effect on the patient whatever. Consequently,
the simplest remedies known are the only ones which the white man
dare give to these people, and they have, as a matter of course, very
little power to relieve them. During the last six or seven years a
violent form of typhoid-pneumonia has been wasting whole settlements
on the Kadiak and Aleutian coasts; the Creoles and the natives alike
yield at once to the disease, making scarcely an effort to save
themselves. The traders everywhere became seriously alarmed, as
the force of sea-otter hunters was rapidly decreasing, and exerted
themselves to their utmost in staying the epidemic, which seemed to
be carried from one village to the other in vessels and by canoes.
But the only medicines which can be used in the safe and successful
treatment of this complaint were regarded as unworthy of notice by
the suffering natives, who, not feeling immediately relieved after
taking them, would then totally ignore their further use.
Bad enough are the indigenous ills of the savages in Alaska. They
were, however, nothing to the horrors which followed the importation
of small-pox by the Russians in 1838-39. This terrible scourge swept
like wildfire up from its initial point at Sitka, over the whole
length of the Alaskan mainland and island coast, until it faded out
in the far north where it had nothing to prey upon. It actually
carried in its grim grasp one-half of the whole population then
living in that large area to an abrupt and violent death—several
districts were so afflicted that not a soul escaped—every human
being was exterminated; it was exceedingly fatal and virulent in the
Sitkan archipelago. We, knowing the filth and exposure of the lives
of these people, can readily understand how they fell down and were
crushed under the march of this disease.[55] As might be supposed the
Russians lost no time in thoroughly vaccinating the survivors; and
they have been faithfully followed, in this duty, by our own sailors
and traders who now live in the country.
Another imported evil, the measles, is almost as deadly up here among
the natives as small-pox. While it is a simple trouble arousing
no especial anxiety with us, yet in this climate, together with
the careless methods of life, it assumes a black form and becomes
malignant and fatal. The last extended attack took place principally
in the villages of the Kadiak district in the winter of 1874-75,
where it so alarmed and impressed the sojourning members of an
Icelandic Commission as to shake their desire to emigrate to that
region—at least, when they returned to their country, they were never
heard from in favor of Alaska.
A very natural question arises in this connection as to whether or
no the savages of Alaska will ever increase in numbers or diminish
to actual extermination as time advances. It appears very plain,
however, that the inhabitants of the Aleutian chain, the Peninsula,
and Cook’s Inlet are nearly as numerous to-day as they have been
ever since the small-pox decimation of 1838-39. But all authorities
agree in declaring that these people have never regained their
numerical force represented in the settlement prior to the advent of
the scourge which depopulated them. As to the Eskimo of the Bering
Sea coasts and the Koloshians of the Sitkan region, it seems well
established, from what we can learn, that they have regained their
former strength in part, and were they only provident they might
live by hundreds where they now exist in tens. Indifferent, wholly
indifferent when living, they are as apathetic when they face death.
After reading the quaint yet strong narrative of the ferocity and
strength of the Kaniags which Shellikov[56] has given us, it is
hard, indeed, to realize that bold pioneer’s feeling as we now
look in upon the steep slopes of Three Saints Bay, where, at the
head of it, within the sweep of a sand-spit, he erected the first
permanent white habitation ever planted on Kadiak with the aid of
the one hundred and fifty or sixty Russians who formed his company.
Here, to-day, we see a cluster of sod-walled barraboras and two
small, frame trading-houses, in which live one hundred and ninety
of the descendants of those hardy savages who terrified and nearly
annihilated the party of Shellikov one hundred years ago in this
very spot. Nothing else is left, for Baranov in 1796 removed the
post itself to the present site of Kadiak village. As we scan the
settlement of Three Saints we notice that the most prominent object
is the rough-hewn walls and thatched roof of an old Greek chapel,
in front of which is a rude trestle; from the upper frame of this a
bell hangs. Now a stooping figure emerges from the church door; he
seizes the clapper, or bell tongue, with both hands and swings it
vigorously. Promptly the villagers emerge from their huts; trotting
and shambling in single file, they all troop into the chapel.
Meanwhile the dusky sub-deacon still tolls and chimes away long after
every inhabitant has been gathered in. These men and women who, with
bowed heads and fervent crossings, bend and kneel as they enter
that place of worship, are the children of the “blood-thirsty and
implacable” Kaniags of whom Shellikov gave so vivid a picture to the
Empress of all the Russias just a century ago.
They are hunting sea-otters, however, just as they did then, and
living in precisely the same manner, save the variations of outward
demeanor and intercourse due to the teachings of the Greek Church.
But if you go among them and strive to have them tell you of the
heroic battle made by their ancestors on the Oogak “kekour,” you will
be rewarded by either a stupid stare of vacancy or a muttered “Bogue
ezniet” (God knows)!
The deep recess of Eagle Harbor, which lies between this point of
earliest Russian occupation and Kadiak village, affords the location
of another large native village, and its region is called the best
grazing ground in all Alaska. On the surf-beaten islets at the mouth
of the inlet a great many sea-lions are always found, and thus yield
to these hunters of Orlova a rich return in hides and sinews so
essential for the construction of the “bidarka.” A few families of
Creoles also reside here, who attend to a small herd of cattle, keep
fowls, and generally look after their commissions as middlemen in the
sea-otter revenues.
From the earliest colonial time to the present the little village
of Karlook, on the north side of the island, has been the busiest
spot in the country. Here is a salmon-fishing settlement right on
the coast at the mouth of a small river, where from the ancient
date of Russian occupation there has been a salt house and packing
establishment, in which the salt and dried fish used throughout the
entire Alaskan region was annually secured and prepared. To-day we
find two large canning establishments set up and sustained by San
Francisco merchants. The run of salmon into this river of Karlook
at the height of the season is so great that it interferes with the
free movement of canoes in crossing the stream; while the fishermen
of long experience in such matters say that twenty thousand barrels
of the red-meated flesh could be easily secured and packed away at
Karlook every summer and autumn. This salmon,[57] so abundant here,
is much smaller in average size than is the one common in Cook’s
Inlet—it does not average ten pounds in weight. But the rich red
color of its flesh is an object of the canner, who soon finds out
what public taste prefers.
The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the extreme
southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of
sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few
hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts
of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting
range, reaching far away down to the westward and southward as low
as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated
“Botany Bay,” of the old Russian régime, was established. That
lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time
criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital
offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices
for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this
islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could
exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely
appreciable—elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this
island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry’s
marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were
characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their
fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those
universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called “parkies”
by them.
Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their
liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little
animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in
self-defence to kill time as well.
In 1870 the descendants of the original convicts, and survivors of
recent transportation by Russian order, learned in some way or other
that they might lead a free life; so they then actually removed _en
masse_ in two large skin bidarrahs, loaded to the gunwales, and made
in safety that long sea-voyage which intervenes between Ookamok and
Kadiak Island. They had about one chance in a hundred of getting over
the route alive, for the least of those chronic gales and storms that
prevail here would have swept them to the bottom of the ocean had it
arisen in the time of their passage.[58]
A great expanse of tide-troubled and wind-tossed water is bound
between the northern coast of Kadiak and the volcanic ridges of the
mainland opposite. The Straits of Shellikov are fair to see on the
chart, but the mariner who has once sailed into them, lured there by
the false promise of a sheltered passage, never fails to avoid the
track afterward—he gladly makes the open detour of the broad Pacific.
That same precipitous mountain range which we have gazed upon as
it rose in sullen grandeur from the waters of Cook’s Inlet, still
fronts us, just as boldly, as it sweeps down the entire three hundred
miles of the peninsula, forming the southern coast of that land. The
sombre green and blue timber-cloak, so characteristic of its northern
range, is here replaced by the russet-grays and brownish-yellows of
that sphagnum and moss which now supplant the coniferous forests
of Cook’s Inlet, giving to the picture a much richer tone. Several
of these peaks in this chain of mountains thus extended down the
south coast of the peninsula are five and seven thousand feet in
altitude, their summits much eroded and broken. They hold in their
lofty solitudes a great many little glaciers, that, however, never
come down to the sea as they habitually do in the Choogatch and Elias
Alps. The feet of these peninsular mountains are washed by the direct
roll of the ocean waves, which dash into innumerable fiörds and
coves, studded with small, rocky islets and reefs awash. A beautiful
geological demonstration of the effect which surf-beating waves of
the ocean have made upon these mountains ages ago, is shown by the
plainly evident lines traced on their flanks fully one thousand feet
above the present level of the tide; and again, another terrace is
sculptured in parallel relief just above it, some five hundred feet
higher—a silent, but conclusive showing of the truth that the entire
Aleutian chain has been lifted out, at two successive periods, and up
from the sea.
This range of the peninsula is in itself quite peculiar from the
others which we have hitherto noticed thus far. It differs from their
physiognomy in one respect—the mountains and ridges themselves are
interrupted in one continuity down the line of their extension by
abrupt depressions. These passes, as they appear to be, are not so
in fact, but are either low or elevated marshy plains, which extend
clear across the peninsula; they create an impression in the mind of
the observer that at a not very remote period, geologically speaking,
the peaks of this peninsula range were then islands, and the marshy
portages, now elevated, were the bottoms of the straits then between
them. The natives are continually going to and fro between the waters
of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean over these areas of swampy level,
engaged in hunting reindeer, bear, or in friendly intercourse with
the settlements. The most signal mountain groups on the peninsula
are those of Morshovie, of Belcovsky, and the Pavlosk volcanic
cluster—all joined by low, wet isthmian swales. The Shoomagin volcano
of Veniaminov is also a noteworthy peak. The peninsula is almost
bisected between Moller and Zakharov Bays, where the natives cross
from water to water in a half-day’s portage, and again at Pavlov
Harbor. All these isolated or nearly detached mountain sections have
a striking resemblance in every respect to the first large island,
Oonimak, that is separated from the mainland by the narrow and
unnavigable Krenitzin Straits.
The Bering Sea coast line of the great Alaskan Peninsula presents
a most radical contrast to that of the Pacific—the unbroken, rocky
abruptness and roughness there is here suddenly transformed right
at the very turn in the Straits of Krenitzin, to low, sandy reaches
and slightly elevated moorland tundra, which cover a wide interval
between the mountains and the waters of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea.
The huge masses of lava, of breccia and conglomerate tufa, that
everywhere rear their black-ebony shoulders above the Pacific
surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogashik, where we
find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, hunting walrus
and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks of granite and
quartz-porphyries appear, every evidence of that character to the
westward being purely and essentially igneous.
[Illustration: The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik.]
Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief
settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the greatest
rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly
skins of the “bobear,”[59] and which constitutes the only traffic
worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian
and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our anchorage
a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the
flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up behind it, usually
so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred
and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families
are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and
earthen barraboras; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls
of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of
bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as
the most attractive single object within the limits of the place.[60]
The rival traders have run up their flags very smartly on the poles
that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the
offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when
our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy
right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival
trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception
of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The
ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of
mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawling brook runs down through the
town, and we cross it by a little foot-bridge on our way. We observe
cord-wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from
Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast
from Vancouver’s Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives
here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the
“chicksa”[61] vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides.
Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation,
for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully
one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries
is secured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and
extravagant, they would be a really wealthy community; but the
notoriety of the debauches here has become a by-word and a reproach
over the whole region between Cook’s Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar
of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the
vile “quass” or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits
of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when lounging about
the village, and their women wear cloth garments and hats cut after a
fashion not very remote in San Francisco.
[Illustration: BELCOVSKY
Village of Aleutian Sea-otter Hunters, on the South Shore of the
Alaskan Peninsula. Viewed from the Schooner’s Anchorage]
The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak
and Cook’s Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of
its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere
manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh
and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the
inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the
night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as
the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a
teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares
that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot resist
intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the
Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the
Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capture
of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders’ money and supplies
into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that
showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of
Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying
which declares that riches alone do not bring contentment to the
human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low.
A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the
skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is
sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the
offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous.
The little schooner is rapidly put under way, “beating out” in the
freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement
in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come
into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most
risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska.
Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention
to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula,
twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up entirely
of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty
souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health
and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better
opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the
reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regular
intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the northeast,
travelling on a well-beaten “road” or track, which leads clear to
the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road-makers
plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their
land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and
mountain sides of Oonimak Island.
With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce
of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to
include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the
far end of the peninsula—the extreme west end, where a much smaller
community exists, though equally opulent and just as dissolute. Here
is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual
average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of
this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of
the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect of abject
physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them
more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These
people, in addition to their fine natural advantages of position
for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to
walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands elsewhere on the Bering
shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain
seasons of the year. The flesh, skins, blubber, and sinews are both
articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same
reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes
close by the village, so that those desiderata of food-supply and
trade are very accessible.
Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned especially
by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur-springs
which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief,
if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to
them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Government declares
that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of
the healing waters—“It was too far to walk!”
When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga
Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit
of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The
village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge,
and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and
land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and
pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a
thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one
barrabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as
much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large.
This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who
annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or
seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little
hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a
somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given
over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and
successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred
dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more
than it comforts their existence.
The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during
the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they
are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest—a north wind
is always warmer! These south winds bring to Oonga its foggiest
weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the
village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to
sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks
outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the
islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are
on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of
riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years
on the Grand Banks and “Georges,” for the Gloucester and Boston
markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the
Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on
the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and
snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November,
until next April, all sailing-craft are practically driven from the
fishing grounds.
The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our
Gloucester men, in only one respect, however: the long, buoyed lines
are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and
dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and
fish with hand-lines, using what is known as “11-inch” and “12-inch”
hooks. Halibut, and “squid,” or cuttle-fish, make the best bait.
A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred
codfish in a day’s steady labor, but this is an extraordinary streak
of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that
gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the
schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken
for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose
in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives
up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so; but a patient
trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men
instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile,
and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in
steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time.
Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly
recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubtedly
be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many
of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare
that they would bring their wives and children into the country,
to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be happy
under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that
where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it
would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well
established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial,
sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who
have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here,
there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or
prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical,
and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the
world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them
is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no desire to see it
changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few,
easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was—it does not
trouble them now.
The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this
village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is
called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there,
and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just
outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering
landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoomagin,
and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the
precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which
the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred
the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfactorily
established; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down,
after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly
hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and
apprehension.[62] When the _St. Peter_, six days later, hauled off
from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that
gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition
of the wreck of this vessel, which soon followed—and his own death
too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the
bluffs at “Kommandor”—this may have caused him to earn that reproach
which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable
and disastrous voyage.
The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and lofty
ridges; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of
timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed
crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock-ribbed break-waters
against the full sweep of the mighty uninterrupted roll of a vast
ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm
foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.
Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough
attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out
on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The
oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook’s Inlet
near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor.
Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of
their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic
series of mining operations; they brought machinery and ran it by
steam-power; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend
and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka.
In 1857 the work had been so energetically pushed that shafts had
been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one
thousand seven hundred feet; during this period, and three following
years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the
value of which was forty-six thousand rubles, but the result was
a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine
to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the
Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that
this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the
steamers—that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a
flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars—even melting down the
smoke-stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from
San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there
by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.[63]
As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to
be laid directly south; so much so, that for once we express our
surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our
dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart
and calls us to the table. A moment’s inspection shows the wisdom of
the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the
ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the
intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would
be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour
to clear the path of our progress from all danger, we will give the
reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter,
which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] With the exception of Prince of Wales Island in the Sitkan
archipelago, Kadiak is the largest Alaskan island. There is not much
difference between these two islands in landed area; the former,
however, is the bigger.
[48] These “galiots” where characteristically named by Shellikov’s
spiritual advisers, viz.: _The Three Saints_; _The Archangel Michael
and Simeon, the Friend of God_; and _Anna the Prophetess_. Bad
weather and poor navigation caused the vessels to separate, so that
Shellikov was compelled to winter on Bering Island; but during the
following year the little fleet was reorganized, and it reached
Oonalashka, where repairs again were necessary.
[49] Shellikov says that this man returned the following day and
refused to leave the Russian camp; that he not only accompanied and
served him in all his voyages thereafter, but often warned the party
of hostile ambuscades and hidden dangers by land and sea.
[50] Cleanliness and comfort, however, were but little regarded by
the Russian fur-traders, who gave their surroundings of residence
no sanitary attention whatever. Even Baranov himself was supremely
indifferent, and when the Imperial Commissioner, Resanov, called
on him at Sitka in 1805, the chief manager of the Russian American
Company was living in a mere hut, “in which the bed was often
afloat,” and a leak in the roof too small a matter to notice!
[51] On Wood Island, however, a small field of rye, oats, or barley,
is planted every year for the use of the horses kept there; here a
plough is employed. These cereals never ripen, but are cut green, and
fed as fodder. Corn is a total failure everywhere, even as fodder. No
cereals have been ripened in Alaska; the attempt, however, has been
made a thousand times.
[52] The first cattle brought into Alaska were taken to Kadiak in
1795, and from this central station the stock was distributed—so that
by 1833 it had increased to a herd of over two hundred and twenty.
At the present writing it is very doubtful whether there are sixty
head in the whole region. Every season it is the habit of traders and
others to send upon steamers as they go, a few head of beef-steers,
which are turned out at Sitka, Kadiak, and Oonalashka to fatten
during the summer, and then are slaughtered when winter ensues. Pigs
thrive here, but live too much on the sea-refuse for the good of
their flesh. So they are not favored.
[53] The church records show that the people of the Kadiak district
have decreased as follows: 1796—6,510; 1818—3,430; 1819—3,252;
1822—2,819; 1863—2,217; 1880—1,813. Small-pox, measles, and other
imported diseases have caused this.
[54] The little girls, as a rule, receive the earliest garments,
generally nothing but a cotton shift and a torn blanket.
[55] La Pérouse, who touched on this coast in 1786 at Litooya Bay,
under the flanks of Mount Fairweather, declares that he saw marks of
the small-pox on the savages who were there then; most likely what he
saw was the scar of scrofulous sores. In 1843-44 another small-pox
outbreak on the Aleutian Islands took place, but the people had been
vaccinated in the meantime, and nothing serious came of it.
[56] Grigoria Shellikova Stransvovania, or Shellikov’s Journeys, from
1783 to 1787. Published, St. Petersburg, 1792-93. 12mo. 2 vols.
[57] _Oncorynchus nerka._ The fishing is done entirely with seines,
floating across the river twenty to twenty-five fathoms in length,
three fathoms in depth, with a three-and-a-half-inch mesh. The whole
native population is also employed in this fishery during the summer.
[58] The true reason for this hegira of the convicts is a most
amusing one. It is as follows: Shortly after the transfer, in 1869,
General Thomas made an extended inspection of the Alaskan posts on
a steamer detailed for that work. He was accompanied by a certain
representative of a Protestant Board of Missions. The vessel
accidentally ran across Ookamok Island when making her way to the
westward from Kadiak and touched there, where, ignorant of the fact
that the people were convicts and their descendants, moved by their
pitiful tales of privation, a large amount of ship’s stores were
landed upon the beach to satisfy the “suffering” natives: they ate,
drank, and were merry, and lived sumptuously for several months
afterward. But an end to these good things came at last; the reaction
in the settlement was terrible. So, urged by its pangs, the penal
colony determined to pack up and move to the nearest point possible,
where, when living, they could again meet, and often too, their kind
benefactors! Hence that startling journey to find those generous
Americans. Lately, however, the traders at Kadiak have taken many of
these people back to Ookamok, where they begged to be allowed to go
and end their lives. This is the most desolate island, perhaps, in
all the range of that vast Aleutian archipelago.
[59] Literally “beaver.” The Russians always called this animal the
“sea-beaver,” but shortened from “morskie-bobear” to the simple name.
[60] This church was finished in 1882—begun in 1880, it cost $7,000,
every cent being freely contributed by the natives.
[61] Trailing tendrils of the _Empetrum nigrum_.
[62] From the record made in the ship’s log it would seem most likely
that he landed on either Popov Island, or else Nogai; the description
will fit either locality.
[63] Captain F. W. Beechey in his voyage of the _Blossom_, 1825-27,
discovered and located at Cape Beaufort, in the Arctic Ocean and
on the Alaskan coast, a vein of coal; this has been subsequently
revisited and mined to a small extent by the officers of the Revenue
marine cutters of our Government, who pronounce it very satisfactory
for steaming purposes. Its situation, however, is so remote that it
has no economic significance, and no harbor is there for a vessel of
any kind.