THE QUEST OF THE OTTER.
Searching for the Otter.—Exposure and Danger in Hunting
Sea-otters.—The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the
Captor.—Altasov and his Band of Cruel Cossacks.—Feverish Energy of
the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders.—Their Shameful Excesses.—Greed
for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Explore the Entire
Alaskan Coast, 1760-1780.— Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they
were First Discovered in Alaska.—Their Partial Extermination in
1836-40.—More Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the
Twenty Years Preceding.—What is an Otter?—A Description of its
Strange Life.—Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500.—The Typical
Sea-otter Hunter.—A Description of Him and his Family.—Hunting the
Sea-otter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians.—Gloomy,
Storm-beaten Haunts of the Otter.—Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous
of the Hunters.—The “Surround” of the Otter.—“Clubbing” the
Otter.—“Netting” the Otter.—“Surf-shooting” Them.
Little does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of
the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new seal-skin sacque, that the
quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last
century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme daring,
and does to-day—that the possession of the sea-otter’s coat calls
for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the
hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur-bearing or
economic animal known to savage or civilized man. No wonder that it
is costly; what abundant reason that it should be rare!
The rugged, storm-beaten resorts of the sea-otter, its wariness and
cunning, and the almost incredible fortitude and patience, skill and
bravery, of its semi-civilized captor, have so impressed the writer
that he feels constrained to rearrange his notes and touch up his
field-sketches made upon the subject-matter of this chapter several
years ago, while cruising in Alaskan waters, so that he may give to
the readers of this work the first full or fair idea of the topic
ever put into type and engraving.
Feodor Altasov, with a band of Russian Cossacks[64] and Tartar
“promishlyniks,” were the pioneers of civilized exploration in
Eastern Siberia, and finally arrived at the head of the great
Kamchatkan Peninsula, toward the end of the seventeenth century.
Here they found, first of all their race, the rare, and to them
the exceedingly valuable, fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing
this pelage then was abundant on that coast, and not prized above
the seals and sea-lions by the natives who displayed their peltries
to the ardent Russians, and who in barter asked little or nothing
extra from the white men in return. The feverish eagerness of
the Slavonians, quickly displayed, to secure these choice skins,
so excited the natives as to result very soon in the practical
extirpation of the “kahlan,” as they termed it, from the entire
region of the Kamschadales. The greedy fur-hunters then rifled graves
and stripped the living of every scrap of the precious object of
their search, and, for the time being, searched in vain for other
haunts of the otter.
Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering’s second voyage
of exploration and Tscherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an
enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian and
Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans or the
Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty resources at
the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude wooden shallops
and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tempestuous seas to
the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. In this manner
and by this impulse the discovery of the Aleutian Islands and the
mainland of Alaska was fully determined, between 1745 and 1763. In
this enterprise some twenty-five or thirty different individuals
and companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels and hundreds of
men, were engaged; and so thorough and energetic were they in their
search and stimulated capture of the coveted animal, that, along by
the period of 1772-74, the catch of this unhappy beast had dwindled
down from thousands and tens of thousands at first, to hundreds and
tens of hundreds at last. When the Russian traders opened up the
Aleutian Islands they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter
cloaks, which they willingly parted with at first for trifles, not
placing any especial value upon the otter, as they did upon the
bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which
were vastly more palatable to them and serviceable. But the fierce
competition and raised bidding of the greedy traders soon fired the
savages into hot and incessant hunting. During the first decade or
two of pursuit the numbers of these animals taken all along the
Aleutian chain and down the entire northwest coast as far as Oregon,
were so great that they appear fabulous in comparison with the
exhibit made now.[65]
The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters
then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere
throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and
startling diminution set in; so much so, that it soon became
difficult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as
many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska came
into our possession, the Russians were taking between four and five
hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and South of
the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and fifty more
from Cook’s Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkan district, the Hudson Bay
traders and others getting some two hundred more from the coasts
of Queen Charlotte’s and Vancouver’s Islands, and Gray’s Harbor,
Washington Territory.
Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred skins
taken as above specified, our traders have secured more than four
thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of a
proportionate increase of sea-otters—that is not evident—but it
is due to the keen competition of our people, who have reanimated
the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the
style of Baranov’s bateaux. As matters are now conducted, the
hunting-parties do not let the sea-otter have a day’s rest during the
whole year: parties relieve each other in orderly, steady succession,
and a continual warfare is maintained. Stimulated by our people,
this persistence is rendered still more deadly to the kahlan by the
use of rifles of our best make, which, in the hands of the young and
ambitious natives, in spite of the warnings of their old sires, must
result in the virtual extermination of that marine beast.[66]
This is the more important because all the world’s supply comes from
the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between
four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska
depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled
to live beyond simple barbarism; its chase and the proceeds of its
capture furnish the only employment offered by their country, and
the revenue by which they can feed and clothe themselves as they do,
and, by so doing, appear to all intents and purposes much superior
to their Indian neighbors of Southeastern Alaska, or their Eskimo
cousins of Bering Sea.
The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another striking illustration
of an animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world,
yet respecting the life and habits of which nothing definite has been
ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvious, for, save
the natives who hunt them, no one properly qualified to write has
ever had an opportunity of observing the _Enhydra_ so as to study it
in a state of nature, inasmuch as of all the shy, sensitive beasts
upon the capture of which man sets any value whatever, this creature
is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain; and, also,
like the fur-seal, it possesses, to us, the enhancing value and
charm of being principally confined in its geographical distribution
to our own shores of the Northwest. A truthful account of the
strange, vigilant life of the sea-otter, and the hardships and the
perils of its human hunters, would surpass, if we could give it all,
the novelty and the interest of a most weird and attractive work of
fiction.
[Illustration: The Kahlan or Sea-otter.]
The sea-otter is widely removed from close relationship to our common
land-otter. Unlike this latter example, it seldom visits the shore,
and then only when the weather is abnormally stormy at sea. Instead
of being a fish-eater, like _Lutra canadensis_, it feeds almost
wholly upon clams, crabs, mussels, and echinoderms, or “sea-urchins,”
as might be inferred from its peculiar flat molars of dentition. It
is, when adult, an animal that will measure from three and a half to
four and a half feet in length from nose to root of its short, stumpy
tail. The general contour of the body is strongly suggestive of the
beaver, but the globose shape and savage expression of the creature’s
head are peculiar to it alone. The small, black, snaky eyes gleam
with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled;
the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold
of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up
like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. This pelt, when
removed in skinning, is cut only at the posteriors, and the body is
drawn forth, turning the skin inside out, and in that shape it is
partially stretched, air-dried, and is so lengthened by this process
that it gives the erroneous impression of having been taken from an
animal the frame of which was at least six feet in length, with the
proportionate girth and shape of a mink or weasel.
There is no sexual dissimilarity in color or size, and both male
and female manifest the same intense shyness and aversion to man,
coupled with the greatest solicitude for their young, which they
bring into existence at all seasons of the year, for the natives
capture young pups in every calendar month. As the hunters never have
found the mothers and their offspring on the rocks or beaches, they
affirm that the birth of a sea-otter takes place on the numerous
floating kelp-beds which cover large areas of the ocean south of the
Aleutian chain and off the entire expanse of the northwest coast.
Here, literally “rocked in the cradle of the deep,” the young kahlan
is brought forth and speedily inured to the fury of fierce winds and
combing seas. Upon these algoid rafts the Aleutes often surprise them
sporting one with the other, for they are said to be very playful,
and one old hunter told the writer that he had watched a sea-otter
for half an hour as it lay upon its back in the rollers and tossed a
bit of sea-weed up into the air from paw to paw, apparently taking
great delight in catching it before it fell into the water.
The sea-otter mother clasps her young to her breast between her
fore-paws, and stretches herself at full length on her back in the
ocean when she desires to sleep, and she suckles it also in this
position. The pup cannot live without its mother, though frequent
attempts have been made by hunters to raise them, for the little
animals are very often captured alive and wholly uninjured; but, like
some other animals, they seem to be so deeply imbued with fear or
dislike of man that they invariably die of self-imposed starvation.
The enhydra is not polygamous, and it is seldom, indeed, that the
natives, when out in search of it, ever see more than one animal at a
time. The flesh is very unpalatable, highly charged with a rank taste
and odor. A single pup is born, as the rule, about fifteen inches in
length and provided with a natal coat of coarse, brownish, grizzled
hair and fur, the head and nape being rather brindled, and the nose
and cheeks whitish-gray, with the roots of the hair everywhere much
darker next to the skin. From this poor condition of fur at birth
the otter gradually improves as it grows older, shading darker,
finer, thicker, and longer by the time they are two years of age.
Then they rapidly pass into prime skins of the most lustrous softness
and ebony shimmering, though the creature is not full-grown until
it has passed its fourth season. The rufous-white nose and mustache
of the pup are not changed in the pelage of the adult, but remain
constant through life. The whiskers are short, white, and fine. So
much for the biology of the sea-otter. Now we turn to the still more
interesting one of its captors.
The typical hunter is an Aleutian Islander or a native of Kadiak.
He is not a large man—rather below our standard—say five feet
five or six inches in stature. There are notable exceptions to
this rule, for some of them are over six feet, while others are
veritable dwarfs—resemble gnomes more than anybody else. He wears
the peculiar expression of a Japanese more than any other. His hair
is long, coarse, and black; face is broad; high, prominent cheek
bones, with an insignificant flattened nose; the eyes are small,
black, and set wide in his head under faintly marked eyebrows, just
a faint suggestion of Mongolian obliquity; the lips are full, the
mouth large, and the lower jaw square and prognathous; the ears
are small, likewise his feet and hands; his skin in youth is often
quite fair, with a faint flush in the cheeks, but soon weathers into
a yellowish-brown that again seams into deep flabby wrinkles with
middle and old age. He has a full, even set of good teeth, while his
body, as might be inferred from his habit of living so much of his
life in the cramped “bidarka”[67] or skin boat, is well developed
in the chest and arms, but decidedly sprung at the knees, and he is
slightly unsteady in his pigeon-toed gait.
The mate of this hunter was when young a very good-looking young
woman, who never could honestly be called handsome, yet she was then
and is now very far from being hideous or repulsive. She partakes,
somewhat mellowed down, of the same characteristics which we have
just sketched in the face and form of her husband. As they live
to-day, they are married and sustain this relation, sheltered in
their own hut or “barrabkie.” They have long, long ago ceased to
dress themselves in skins, and now appear in store clothes and cotton
gowns, retaining, however, their characteristic water-proof garment
known as the “_kamlayka_,” and the odd boots known as “_tarbosars_,”
in which they are always enveloped in wet weather, or whenever
they venture out to sea in their bidarka. They dress themselves up
on Sundays, when at home, in boots and shoes and stockings of San
Francisco make. He wears a conventional “beaver” or plug hat often,
and she affects a gay worsted hood, although, on account of the
steady persistence of high winds, he prefers a smart marine-band
cap, such as our soldiers on fatigue-duty wear. He is, however,
inclined to be quite sober, not giving much attention to display or
color, as is the habit of semi-civilized people everywhere else; but
he does lavish the greatest care and labor over the decoration of
his bidarka, and calls upon his wife to ornament the seams of his
water-repellant kamlayka and tarbosars with the gayest embroidery,
and tufts of bright hair and feathers, and lines of cunning
goose-quill work.
Mrs. Kahgoon, however, is a true woman. She naturally desires all the
bright ribbons and cheap jewellery which the artful trader exhibits
to her longing eyes in his store, that stands so near and so handy
to her barrabkie, and her means only limit the purchase which she
makes of these prized desiderata. She dresses her hair in braids,
as a rule, and twists them up behind. She seldom wears a bonnet or
hat, but has a handkerchief, generally of cotton, sometimes silken,
always tied over her head, and when she goes, as she often does, out
to call on a neighboring spinster or madam, or to the store, she
throws a small woollen shawl over head and shoulders, holding it
drawn together under her chin by one hand. As we have intimated, she
dresses principally in cotton fabrics, with skirts, overskirts, white
stockings, etc.; but when she was a girl, and much more than that,
she usually went, with her legs and feet bare, into the teeth of
biting winds and over frosty water and wood-paths.
[Illustration: A Barrabkie.
(_The characteristic dwelling of Aleutes and Kadiakers._)]
The domestic life of this hunter and his wife is all bound up
within the shelter of their “barrabkie.” This hut or house of the
Aleutian hunter is half under ground, or, in other words, it is an
excavation on the village site of a piece of earth ten or fifteen
feet square, three or four feet deep, which is laid back up and
over upon a wooden frame or whalebone joisting, which is securely
built up within and above this excavation, so that a rafter-ceiling
is made about six feet in the clear from the earthen floor. A wall
of peaty sod is piled up around outside, two and three feet thick.
The native architect enters this dwelling through a little hall
patched on to that leeward side from the winds prevalent in the
vicinity. The door is low, even for Kahgoon, and he stoops as he
opens and closes it. If he has been a successful hunter, he will
have the floor laid with boards secured from the trader; but if he
has been unlucky, then nothing more to stand upon than the earth
is afforded. This barrabkie is divided into two rooms, not wholly
shut out one from the other, by a half-partition of mats, timber, or
some hanging curtains, which conceal the bedroom or “spalniah” from
the direct gaze of the living and cook-room. They are very fond of
comfortable beds, having adopted the feather-ticks of the Russians.
Soap is an expensive luxury, so Kahgoon’s wife is economical of
its use for washing in her laundry; and, though she may desire to
spread over her sleeping couch the counterpane and fluted shams of
our own choice, she has nothing better than a colored quilt which
the traders bring up here especially to meet this demand. A small
deal-table, two or three empty cracker-boxes from the store, and
a rude bench or two constitute all the furniture, while a little
cast-iron stove, recently introduced, stands in one corner, and the
heating and cooking is created and performed thereon. The table-ware
of a hunter’s wife and the household utensils do not require much
room or a large cupboard for their reception. A few large white
crockery cups, plates, and saucers, with gaudy red and blue designs,
and several pewter spoons, will be found in sufficient quantity to
entertain with during seasons of festivity. She manifests a marked
dislike to tin dishes, probably due to the fact that it is necessary
to take care of this ware, or it rusts out. Then, above all the
strange odors which arise here in this close, hot little room, we
easily detect the smell of kerosene, and, sure enough, it is the oil
which is burned in the lamp.
Such a barrabkie built and furnished in this style and occupied by
Kahgoon, his wife, two or three children, and a relative or so, is a
warm and a thoroughly comfortable shelter to him and his, as long as
he keeps it in good repair. It is true that the air seems to us, as
we enter, oppressively close, and, in case of sickness, is positively
foul; yet on the whole the Alaskan is very comfortable. He never
stores up much food against the morrow—the sea and its piscine booty
is too near at hand. Whatever he may keep over he does not have in a
cellar, but hangs it up outside of his door on an elevated trestle
which he calls a “laabas,” beyond the reach of the village dogs,
while there is no thought of theft from the hands of his neighbors.
He lives chiefly upon fresh fish—cod, halibut, salmon and other
varieties, which he secures the year round as they rotate in the sea
and streams. He varies that diet according to the success of his
hunting, by buying at the store tea, sugar, hard-bread, crackers,
flour and divers canned fruits or vegetables. Nature sends him in
season the flesh and eggs of sea-fowl, geese, ducks, and a few land
birds like willow-grouse.
In this fashion the sea-otter hunter appears to us as we view him
now; his children come, grow up, and branch out, to repeat his life
and doing, as they show themselves capable of living by their own
exertions as hunters and fishermen. He is a peaceful, affectionate,
and thoroughly undemonstrative parent, a kind husband, and he imposes
no burden upon his wife that he does not fully share, unless he
becomes a drunkard, when, in that event, a sad change is made in
the man. He gets drunk, and his wife too, by taking sugar, flour,
and dried-apples, rice or hops, if he can get them, in certain
proportions, puts them into a barrel or cask, with water, bungs it
up and waits for fermentation to do its work. Before it has worked
entirely clear he draws off a thick, sour liquid which intoxicates
him most effectually—he beats his spouse and runs her and children
from the house, smashes things, and for weeks afterward the barrabkie
is desolate and open as the result of such orgies. If he continues,
his health is shattered, he rapidly fails as a hunter, and he
suffers the pangs of poverty with his family. It is said upon good
authority that the brewing of this liquor was taught to these people
by the earliest Russian arrivals in their country, who made it as an
anti-scorbutic; but it certainly has not proved to be a blessing in
disguise, for it has brought upon them nearly all the misery that
they are capable of understanding.
In concluding this brief introduction to the life of the
otter-hunter, we may fitly call attention to the fact that Kahgoon
and his family are devout members of the Greek Catholic Church, as
are all of his people, without a single exception, between Attoo and
Kadiak Islands—nearly five thousand souls to-day, living in scattered
hamlets all along between.
The subtle acumen displayed by the sea-otter in the selection of
its habitat can only be fully appreciated by him who has visited
the chosen land, reefs, and water of its resort. It is a region so
gloomy, so pitilessly beaten by wind and waves, by sleet, rain and
persistent fog, that the good Bishop Veniaminov, when he first came
among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered the curriculum
of hell to be omitted from the church breviary, saying, as he did
so, that these people had enough of it here on this earth! The fury
of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate currents
in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer,
the blackness of the fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud,
so alarm and discomfit the white man that he willingly gives up
the entire chase of the sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, who
alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these
obstacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who, in turn,
have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day.
So we find the sea-otter-hunting of the present, as it was in
the past, entirely confined to the natives, with white traders
here and there vieing in active competition one with the other in
bidding for the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders erect
small frame dwellings as stores in the midst of the otter-hunting
settlements, places like Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Oonga, and Kadiak
villages, which are the chief resorts of population and this trade
in Alaska. They own and employ small schooners, between thirty and
one hundred tons burthen, in conveying the hunting parties to and
from these hamlets above mentioned as they go to and return from
the sea-otter hunting-grounds of Saanak and the Chernaboor rocks,
where five-sixths of all the sea-otters annually taken in Alaska are
secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality for this
region between the Straits of Oonimak and the west end of Kadiak
Island is somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the great
sea-otter hunting-ground of the country. Saanak Island, itself, is
small, with a coast-circuit of less than eighteen miles. Spots of
sand-beach are found here and there, but the major portion of the
shore is composed of enormous water-worn boulders, piled up high by
the booming surf. The interior is low and rolling, with a central
ridge rising into three hills, the middle one some eight hundred feet
high. There is no timber here, but an abundant exhibit of grasses,
mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little fresh-water ponds in
which multitudes of ducks and geese are found every spring and fall.
The natives do not live upon the island, because the making of fires
and scattering of food-refuse, and other numerous objectionable
matters connected with their settlement, alarm the otters and drive
them off to parts unknown. Thus the island is only camped upon by the
hunting-squads, and fires are never made unless the wind is from the
southward, since no sea-otters are ever found to the northward of the
ground. The sufferings—miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which
the Aleutes subject themselves here every winter, going for weeks and
weeks at a time without fires, even for cooking, with the thermometer
below zero in a wild, northerly and westerly gale of wind, is better
imagined than portrayed.
To the southward and westward of Saanak, stretching directly from it
out to sea, eight or ten miles, is a succession of small, submerged
islets, rocky, and bare most of them, at low water, with numerous
reefs and stony shoals, beds of kelp, etc. This scant area is the
chief resort of the kahlan, together with the Chernaboor Islets,
some thirty miles to the eastward, which are identical in character.
The otter rarely lands upon the main island, but he is, when found
ashore, surprised just out of the surf-wash on the reef. The quick
hearing and acute smell possessed by this wary brute are not equalled
by any other creatures in the sea or on land. They will take alarm,
and leave instantly from rest in a large section, over the effect
of a small fire as far away as four or five miles distant to the
windward of them. The footstep of man must be washed from a beach by
many tides before its trace ceases to scare the animal and drive it
from landing there, should it approach for that purpose.
The fashion of capturing the sea-otter is ordered entirely by the
weather. If it be quiet and moderately calm, to calm, such an
interval is employed in “spearing surrounds.” Then, when heavy
weather ensues, to gales, “surf-shooting” is the method; and if
a furious gale has been blowing hard for several days without
cessation, as it lightens up, the hardiest hunters “club” the kahlan.
Let us first follow a spearing party; let us start with the hunters,
and go with them to the death.
Our point of departure is Oonalashka village; the time is an early
June morning. The creaking of the tackle on the little schooner out
in the bay as her sails are being set and her anchor hoisted, cause a
swarm of Aleutes in their bidarkies to start out from the beach for
her deck. They clamber on board and draw their cockle-shell craft
up after them, and these are soon stowed and lashed tightly to the
vessel’s deck-rail and stanchions. The trader has arranged this trip
and start this morning for Saanak, by beginning to talk it over two
weeks ago with these thirty or forty hunters of the village. He is to
carry them down to the favored otter-resort, leave them there, and
return to bring them back in just three months from the day of their
departure this morning. For this great accommodation the Aleutes
interested agreed to give the trader-skipper a refusal of their
entire catch of otter-skins—indeed many of them have mortgaged their
labor heavily in advance by pre-purchasing at his store, inasmuch as
the credit system is worked among them for all it is worth. They are
adepts in driving a bargain, shrewd and patient. The traders know
this now, to the grievous cost of many of them.
If everything is auspicious, wind and tide the next morning, after
sailing, bring the vessel well upon the ground. The headlands are
made out and noted; the natives slip into their bidarkies as they
are successively dropped over the schooner’s side while she jogs
along under easy way, until the whole fleet of twenty or thirty craft
is launched. The trader stands by the rail and shakes the hand of
each grimy hunter as he steps down into his kyack, calling him, in
pigeon-Russian, his “loobaiznie droög,” or dear friend, and bids him
a hearty good-by. Then, as the last bidarka drops, the ship comes
about and speeds back to the port which yesterday morning she cleared
from, or she may keep on, before she does so, to some harbor at
Saanak, where she will leave at a preconcerted rendezvous a supply of
flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco for her party.
If the weather be not too foggy, and the sea not very high, the
bidarkies are deployed into a single long line, keeping well abreast,
at intervals of a few hundred feet between. In this manner they
paddle slowly and silently over the water, each man peering sharply
and eagerly into the vista of tumbling water just ahead, ready to
catch the faintest evidence of the presence of an otter, should
that beast ever so slyly present even the tip of its blunt head
above for breath and observation. Suddenly an otter is discovered,
apparently asleep, and instantly the discoverer makes a quiet signal,
which is flashed along the line. Not a word is spoken, not a paddle
splashes, but the vigilant, sensitive creature has taken the alarm,
and has turned on to its chest, and with powerful strokes of its
strong, webbed hind feet, has smote the water like the blades of a
propeller’s screw, and down to depths below and away it speeds, while
the hunter brings his swift bidarka to an abrupt standstill directly
upon the bubbling wake of the otter’s disappearance. He hoists his
paddle high in the air, and holds it there, while the others whirl
themselves over the water into a large circle around him, varying in
size from one-quarter to half a mile in diameter, according to the
number of boats engaged in the chase.
[Illustration: THE SURROUND
A fleet of Sea-otter Hunters in the North Pacific, South of Saanak
Island: marking the Wake of an Otter at the Moment of its Diving]
The kahlan has gone down—he must come up again soon somewhere within
reach of the vision of that Aleutian circle on the waters over its
head; fifteen or twenty minutes of submergence, at the most, compel
the animal to rise, and instantly as its nose appears above the
surface, the native nearest it detects the movement, raises a wild
shout, and darts in turn toward it; the yell has sent the otter down
again far too quickly for a fair respiration, and that is what the
hunter meant to do, as he takes up his position over the spot of
the animal’s last diving, elevates his paddle, and the circle is
made anew, with this fresh centre of formation. In this method the
otter is continually made to dive and dive again without scarcely
an instant to fully breathe, for a period, perhaps, of two or even
three hours, until, from interrupted respiration, it finally becomes
so filled with air or gases as to be unable to sink, and then falls
at once an easy victim. During this contest the Aleutes have been
throwing their spears whenever they were anywhere within range of the
kahlan, and the hunter who has stricken the quarry is the proud and
wealthy possessor, beyond all question or dispute.
In this manner the fleet moves on, sometimes very fortunate in
finding the coveted prey; again, whole weeks pass away without a
single surround. The landings at night are made without any choice
or selection, but just as the close of the day urges them to find
the nearest shore. The bidarkies are hauled out above surf-wash, and
carefully inspected; if it is raining or very cold, small A-tents are
pitched, using the paddles and spears for poles and pegs, into which
the natives crowd for sleep and warmth, since they carry no blankets
or bed-clothes whatever, and unless the wind is right they dare not
make a fire, even to prepare the cherished cup of tea, which they
enjoy more than anything else in the world, not excepting tobacco.
After ninety or a hundred days of such employment, during which
time they have been subjected to frequent peril of life in storm,
and fog-lost, they repair to the rendezvous agreed upon between the
trader and themselves, ready and happy to return for a resting-spell,
to their wives, children, and sweethearts in the village whence we
saw them depart. They may have been so lucky as to have secured forty
or fifty otters, each skin worth to them at least fifty to sixty
dollars, and if so, they will have a prolonged season of festivity
at Oonalashka, when they get back. Perhaps the weather has been so
inclement that this party will not have taken a half-dozen pelts;
then gloomy, indeed, will be the reception at home.
While the “spearing surround” of the Aleutian hunter is orthodoxy,
the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is
heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been
in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders,
who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater
showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters
in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the
shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors,
are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter’s head
is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards out, the expert,
patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark,
he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and
thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or
taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet: nine
times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head,
which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot
is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down
with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually
heave the prized carcass within his ready reach.
Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human
endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of “clubbing.”
You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to understand,
even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We cannot walk,
for the wind blows too hard—note the heavy seas foaming, chasing and
swiftly rolling by, one after the other—hear the keen whistle of the
gale as it literally tears the crests of the breakers into tatters,
and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away
into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in
this tremendous fashion, coming from the westward, during the last
three or four days without a moment’s cessation. Look at those two
Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you
see them launch a bidarka, seat themselves within and lash their
kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes? And now observe them
boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into
the very vortex of the fearful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from
the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a
dream in our eyes!
[Illustration: ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS
During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks]
Yes, it looks to you like suicide; but there is this method to
their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an
understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer at
the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty miles
away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a
series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-continued
fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that have been
so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to crawl there
above the wash of the surf, and, burying their globose heads in
heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the wind, are sleeping
and resting in great physical peace until the weather shall change:
then they will at once revive and plunge back into the ocean
without the least delay. So our two hunters, perhaps the only two
souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave
enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale,
run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead
of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to
the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to
the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast
falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet
somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its
unconscious head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than
that made by the stealthy movements of these venturesome natives,
who, plying their heavy, wooden bludgeons, despatch the animals one
after another without alarming the whole number. In this way, two
Aleutian brothers are known to have slain seventy-eight otters in
less than one hour!
If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Saanak in that gale,
had deviated a paddle’s length from their true course for the islet
which they finally struck, after scudding twenty or thirty miles
before the fury of wind and water, they would have been swept on and
out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaustion.
They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they
have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand
yards! Still, if they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters
would all be back in the water ere they could even reach the scene.
By doing what we have just seen them do they fairly challenge our
admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit calculation, under
the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue
of their venture.
In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the
Aleutian otter-hunters of Attoo, who live on the extreme westernmost
island of the grand Alaskan archipelago. Here the kahlan is captured
in small nets,[68] which are spread out over the floating kelp-beds
or “otter-rafts,” the natives withdrawing and watching from the
bluffs. The otters come out to sleep or rest or sport on these
places, get entangled in the meshes, and seem to make little or no
effort to escape, being paralyzed, as it were, by fear. Thus they
fall an easy prey into the hands of the captors, who say that they
have caught as many as six at one time in one of these nets, and that
they frequently get three. The natives also watch for surf-holes
or caves awash below the bluffs: and, when one is found to which a
sea-otter is in the habit of going, they set this net by spreading it
over the entrance, and usually capture the creature, sooner or later.
No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the sea-otters,
strong animals as they are; only stray sea-lions and hair-seals
destroy them. There is no driving an otter out upon land if it is
surprised on the beach by man between itself and the water; it will
make for the sea with the utmost fearlessness, with gleaming eyes,
bared teeth and bristling hair, not paying the slightest regard to
the hunter. The Attoo and Atkah Aleutes have never been known to hunt
sea-otters without nets, while the people of Oonalashka, and those
eastward of them, have never been known to use such gear. Salt-water
and kelp appear to act as disinfectants for the meshes, so that the
smell of them does not repel or alarm the shy, suspicious animal.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] The Cossacks who came with Altasov were rough-looking fellows of
small size, lean and wiry, with large, thin-lipped mouths and very
dark skins. Most of them were the offspring of Creole Russian Tartars
and women from the native tribes of Siberia. They were filthy in
their habits. Naturally cruel, they placed no restraint upon their
actions when facing the docile Aleutes, and indulged in beastly
excesses at frequent intervals. The custom of the Cossack hunters
after establishing on an island, was to divide the command into
small parties, each of which was stationed in or close by a native
settlement. The chief or head Aleut was induced by presents to assist
in compelling and urging his people to hunt. When they returned,
their catch was taken and a few trifling presents made, such as beads
and tobacco-leaf.
[65] In 1804 Baranov (the Colonial Governor) went from Sitka to the
Okotsk with fifteen thousand sea-otter skins, that were worth as much
then as they are now, viz., fully $1,000,000. Last year the returns
from Alaska and the northwest coast scarcely foot up four thousand
skins; but they yielded at least $200,000 directly to the native
hunters, being ten times better pay than they ever brought under
Russian rule to these people.
[66] It is a fact, coincident with the diminution of the sea-otter
life under the pressure of Russian greed, that the population of the
Aleutian Islands fell off at the same time and in the same ratio. The
Slavonians regarded the lives of these people as they did those of
dogs, and treated them accordingly. They impressed and took, under
Baranov’s orders, in 1790-1806, and his subordinates, hunting-parties
of five hundred to one thousand picked Aleutes, eleven or twelve
hundred miles to the eastward from their homes at Oonalashka,
Oomnak, Akoon, and Akootan. This terrible sea-journey was made by
these natives in skin “baidars” and bidarkies, traversing one of
the wildest and roughest of coasts. They were used not only for the
drudgery of otter-hunting in Cook’s Inlet and the Sitkan archipelago,
but forced to fight the Koloshians and other savages all the way up
and down those inhospitable coasts. That soon destroyed them—very few
ever got back to the Aleutian Islands alive.
[67] The “bidarka” is a light framework of wooden timbers and withes
very tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my
illustrations. It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are
sewed on over it while they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out
they contract, and bind the frame, and are as taut as the parchment
of a well-strung bass-drum. Then the native smears the whole over
with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water out of the pores of the
skin for quite a long period and prevents the slackening of the taut
binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a
single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry
off in the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them
are made with two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have
but one. The otter-hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words,
use two-holed bidarkies.
[68] Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes;
made nowadays of twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews.