CHAPTER XII.

INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.

“Nooshagak;” Wide Application of an Innuit Name.—The Post and

River.—Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District

bordering Bristol Bay.—The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast.—The

Features and Form of Alaskan Innuits.—Light-hearted,

Inconstant, and Independent.—Their Dress, Manners, and

Rude Dwellings.—Their Routine of Life.—Large and Varied

Natural Food-supplies.—Indifferent Land Hunters, but Mighty

Fishermen.—Limited Needs from Traders’ Stores.—Skilful Carvers

in Ivory.—Their Town Hall, or “Kashga.”—They Build and Support

no Churches here.—Not of a real Religious Cast, as the Aleutians

are.—The Dogs and Sleds; Importance of Them here.—Great Interest

of the Innuit in Savage Ceremonies.—The Wild Alaskan Interior.—Its

Repellent Features alike Avoided by Savage and Civilized Man.—The

Indescribable Misery of Mosquitoes.—The Desolation of Winter

in this Region.—The Reindeer Slaughter-pen on the Kvichak

River.—Amazing Improvidence of the Innuit.—The Tragic Death of

Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great Ilyamna Lake, 1796.—The

Queer Innuits of Togiak.—Immense Muskrat Catch.—The Togiaks are

the Quakers of Alaska.—The Kuskokvim Mouth a Vast Salmon-trap.—The

Ichthyophagi of Alaska.—Dense Population.—Daily Life of the

Fish-eaters.—Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskokvim; the Worst in

Alaska.—Kolmakovsky; its History.

[Illustration: NOOSHAGAK, OR ALEXANDROVSK

Old Russian Central Trading Post for the Innuits of the Bristol Bay

Region—founded by Kolmakov, in 1834]

“Nooshagak” is not a very euphonious name, yet it is employed in

Alaska to express the whole of an immense area that backs the borders

of Bristol Bay; but, when strictly applied, it is the designation

of a small trading-post at the head of a large, brackish estuary

of the sea, into which the Nooshagak River pours its heavy flood.

A cruise of three hundred and eighty miles to the northeast from

Oonalashka in a trim little trading-schooner, which alone can make

the landing, takes you to this old and well-known Russian outpost;

but the mariner who pilots that vessel must be well acquainted with

those perilous shoals and tide-rips of Bristol Bay, or you will never

disembark at the foot of that staircase which leads up to the doors

of Alexandrovsk. The river here is a broad arm of the sea, full of

shifting sand-bars and mud-flats which try the temper of the most

patient and skilful navigator. It runs over these shallows at certain

turns of the tide, like the ebb and flow in the Bay of Fundy, with a

big, booming tidal wave, or “bore.” The current of this river may be

discerned for a long distance out into Bristol Bay, easily traced at

the season of high water by its turbidity.

Above the settlement of Nooshagak that river rapidly narrows into

a width of half a mile between banks for a long distance up its

winding course. It is very deep, with a succession of ripples, or

bars, that prevent navigation. When the northern bend is reached,

then it changes to a brawling, swift, and shoal current, with higher

rocky banks up to its source in the big lake which bears its guttural

name. It is clear and pure here, and is not muddy until it reaches

the shelving, alluvial banks of its lower course, which precipitate,

by their caving and washing out, large quantities of soil and timber

into the stream. Its shores are, and all the country back is, thickly

wooded by spruce forests, and parked with grassy slopes which reach

out here and there, planted sparsely with thickets and clumps of

graceful birch- and poplar-trees. These nod and wave their tremulous

foliage as the summer gusts sweep now and then over them. Countless

pools, ponds, and lakes nestle in the moors and in the forest

hollows, upon which flocks of geese, ducks, and all other kinds of

hardy water-fowl breed and moult their plumage during the short, hot

summer. The traders say that this river is the only one in Alaska,

of the least magnitude, which has banks on both sides of firm soil

throughout its entire course.

This site of Nooshagak village was an initial point of Russian

influence and trade among the great Innuit people of Alaska, who live

extended in their numerous settlements from the head of Bristol Bay

clear to the Arctic Ocean. Kolmakov established the post in 1834,

and named it Alexandrovsk. A simple cylindrical wooden shaft, twenty

feet high, surmounted with a globe, stands erected to his memory on

a small hillock overlooking the post below. The village itself is

located on the abrupt slopes of a steep, grassy hillside which rises

from the river’s edge. The trading-stores and the residence of the

priest, the church, log-huts of the natives and their barraboras

are planted on a succession of three earthen terraces, one rising

immediately behind the other. All communication from flat to flat

is by slippery staircases, which are fraught with great danger to a

thoughtless pedestrian, especially when fogs moisten the steps and

darkness obscures his vision.

The red-roofed, yellow-painted walls of the old Russian buildings,

the smarter, sprucer dwellings of our traders, with lazy, curling

wreaths of bluish smoke, are brought into very picturesque relief by

the verdant slopes of Nooshagak’s hillside, caught up and reflected

deeply by the swiftly flowing current of the river below. The natives

have festooned their long drying-frames with the crimson-tinted flesh

of salmon; bleached drift-logs are scattered in profusion upon a bare

sandy high-water bench that stretches like a buff-tinted ribbon just

beneath them, and above, the dark, turbid whirl of flood and eddy so

characteristic of a booming, rising river. A gleam of light falls

upon a broad expanse of the estuary beyond that point under which the

schooner lies at anchor, and brings out the thickly wooded banks of

an opposite shore, causing us to note the fact that, for some reason

or other, no timber seems ever to have spread down so far toward the

sea on this side of the stream, or where the settlement stands, since

nothing but scattered copses of alder- and willow-bushes grow on its

suburbs or anywhere else as far as an eye can range up the valley.

We notice a decided difference in bearing and expression among the

natives here—nothing like what we have studied at Oonalashka, Kadiak,

or Sitka. They are Innuits, or representatives of the most populous

savage family indigenous to Alaska, and are as nomadic as Bedouins.

They are the least changed or altered by contact with our race. They

are Eskimo, strictly speaking, and the natives of Kadiak are almost

strictly related to them. In portraying the physique, physiognomy,

and disposition of these people, we find in an average Innuit a man

who stands about five feet six or seven inches in his heelless boots;

his skin is fair, slightly Mongolian in its complexion and facial

expression; a broad face, prominent cheek-bones, a large mouth with

full lips, small black eyes, but prominently set in their sockets—not

under a lowering brow, as in the case of true Indian faces. The nose

is very insignificant and much depressed, having between the eyes

scarcely any bridge at all. He has an abundance of coarse black hair;

never any of a reddish hue, as frequently noted among the Aleutes

when first discovered and described by the Russians. Up to the age

of thirty years an Innuit usually keeps his hair cut pretty close to

his scalp; some of them shave the occiput, so that it shines like

a billiard-ball. After this period in life he lets it grow as it

will, wearing it in ragged, unkempt locks. He sometimes will sport a

well-developed mustache and chin-whisker, of which he is as proud as

though a Caucasian. He has shapely hands and feet; his limbs are well

made, formed, and muscled. An Innuit woman is proportionately smaller

than the man, and, when young, sometimes she is not unpleasant to

look at. The skin of her cheeks then will be faintly suffused with

blushes of natural color, her lips pouting and red, with small,

tapering hands and high-instepped feet. She rarely pierces her lips

or disfigures her nose; she lavishes upon her child or children a

wealth of affectionate attention—endows them with all her ornaments.

She allows her hair to grow to its full length, gathers it up behind

into thick braids, or else it is bound up in ropes lashed by copper

wire or sinews. She seldom tattooes her skin in any place; a faint

drawing of transverse blue lines upon the chin and cheeks is usually

made by her best friend when she is married.

[Illustration: An Innuit Woman.]

We are not reminded of the clothing stores of San Francisco when we

meet Innuits everywhere between Point Barrow and Nooshagak; they are

clad in the primitive garments of their remote ancestry, as a rule—a

few exceptions to this generalization being those individuals who

are living constantly about the widely scattered trading-posts, and

the chapels, or missions, located in their territory, where they act

as servants or interpreters. The conventional coat of these people

is the “parka,” made of marmot and muskrat-skins, or of tanned

reindeer-hides, with enormous winter hoods, or collars, of dog-hair

or fox-fur. This parka has sleeves, and compasses the body of the

wearer, without an opening either before or behind, from his neck

to his feet. His head is thrust through an aperture left for it,

with a puckering string which draws it up snugly around the neck. In

winter the heavy hood-collar, or cowl, is fitted so as to be drawn

over his entire head and pulled down to the eyes. This parka is worn

with singular ease and abandon; frequently the arms are withdrawn

from the big, baggy sleeves and stowed under the waist-slack of the

garment, leaving these empty appendages to dangle. Natives, as they

sit down, draw the parka out and over the knees, still keeping their

arms underneath; or, when on the trail, and the wet grass and bushes

make it imperative, the parka is gathered up and bound by a leather

thong-strap or girdle of sinews, so as to keep its bottom border dry

and as high as the knees of a tramping native; the baggy folds of it

then give its wearer a grotesque and clumsy figure as they bulge out

over his hips and abdomen. The most favored and valuable parka is

that one made out of alder-bark tanned reindeer-skin, for winter use;

the hair is worn inside, next to the skin. For summer styles those

fashioned out of the breasts of water-fowl, of marmot-and mink-skins,

are most common. The hood is never attached to the parka in the

warmer months of the year. It is a very capacious pouch which, when

not in service, is resting in thick folds back of the head and upon

the shoulders. It is ornamented in a variety of ways, but usually a

thick fringe of long-haired dog- or fox-fur forms its border, and

when drawn into position encircles the wearer’s face and gives it a

wild and unkempt air.

The only underwear which a Mahlemoöt affects is limited to that

garment which we call a shirt, made of light skins or of cheap cotton

drillings; if it is of skin, it is worn from father to son, and

becomes a real heirloom highly polished and redolent. Their trousers

are, for both sexes, a pair of thin skin or cotton drawers, puckered

at the ankles and bound about with the uppers of their moccasons,

or else enclosed by the tops to their reindeer-boots, which are the

prevalent covering for their feet. Such are the characteristics of a

costume worn by much more than half the entire aboriginal population

of Alaska; but when we come to inspect their dwellings we find a

greater variety of housing than indexed in dressing.

[Illustration: “CHAMI”

An Innuit Girl, about 14 years old]

[Illustration: AFTER DINNER—GOOD DIGESTION

Favorite position of Innuits]

A very great majority of the Innuits live in a house that outwardly

resembles a circular mound of earth, seven or eight feet high, and

thirty or forty feet in circumference. It is overgrown with rank

grasses, littered with all sorts of utensils, weapons, sleds, and

other Eskimo furniture. A small spiral coil of smoke rises from a

hole in its apex, a dog or two are crouching upon it, and children

climb up and roll down its sides, scattering bones and fragments of

fish and meat as they eat in the irregular fashion of these people.

A rude pole scaffolding stands close by, upon which, high above the

reach of dogs, is a wooden cache, containing all winter stores of

dried provision, “ukali,” and the like. This hut is usually right

down upon the sea-beach, just above high tide, or high-water mark,

on the river banks, for these savages draw their sustenance largely,

even wholly in many instances, from the piscine life of those

northern streams.

[Illustration: An Innuit Home on the Kuskokvim.]

All these tribes have summer dwellings distinct from those used

during the winter. For the winter houses a square excavation of about

ten feet or more is made, in the corners of which posts of drift-wood

or whale-ribs from eight to ten feet in height are set up; the

walls are formed by laying posts of drift-wood one above the other

against the corner-posts; outside of this another wall is built,

sometimes of stone, sometimes of logs, the intervals being filled

with earth or rubble; the whole of the structure, including the roof,

is covered with sods, leaving a small opening on top, that can be

closed by a frame over which a thin, transparent seal-skin is tightly

drawn. The entrance to one of these houses consists of a narrow,

low, underground passage from ten to twelve feet in length, through

which an entrance can only be accomplished on hands and knees. The

interior arrangement of such a winter house is simple, and is nearly

the same with all these tribes. A piece of bear-or reindeer-skin

is hung before an inner opening of the doorway; in the centre of

the enclosure is a fireplace, which is a square excavation directly

under that smoke-hole in the roof; the floor is rarely planked, and

frequently two low platforms, about four feet in width, extend along

the sides of the house from the entrance to the back, and covered

with mats and skins which serve as beds at night. In the larger

dwellings, occupied by more than one family, the sleeping-places of

each are separated from each other by suspended mats, or simply by a

piece of wood. All the bladders containing oil, the wooden vessels,

kettles, and other domestic utensils, are kept in the front part of

the dwelling, and before each sleeping-place there is generally a

block of wood upon which is placed the oil-lamp used for heating and

cooking.

The only ingress or egress is afforded by a small, low, irregularly

shaped aperture (it cannot rightfully be called a door), through

which the natives stoop and enter, passing down a foot or two

through a short, depressed passage that is created by the thickness

of the walls to the hut; the floor is hard-tramped earth, and the

ground-plan of it a rude circle, or square, twelve, fifteen, or

twenty feet in diameter, as the case may be, and in which the only

light of day comes feebly in from a small smoke-opening at the apex

of the roof, the ceiling of which rises tent-like from the floor. A

faint, smouldering fire is always made directly in the centre, and

the atmosphere of the apartment is invariably thick and surcharged

with its combustion.

Hard and rude are the beds of the Innuit—a clumsy shelf of poles

is slightly elevated above the earth, and placed close against the

walls; upon this staging the skins of bears and reindeer, seals, and

even walrus-hides, together with mats of plaited sedge and bark, are

laid; sometimes these bedsteads are mere platforms of sod and peat.

If the hut stands in a situation where it is exposed to the full

force of boisterous storms, then the architect builds a rough hallway

of earth and sods, with a bulging expansion, whereby room is given

in which to shelter his dogs and keep many utensils and traps under

cover. He also, in warm weather, lives outside of this winter hut,

to a great degree, when at home; and, for that purpose, he builds a

summer cook-house, or kitchen, which resembles the igloo itself, only

it is not more than five or six feet square, and no higher than a

stooping posture within warrants. This is also a great resort for his

dogs, which renders the place very offensive to us.

The summer houses are erected above ground, and are generally slight

pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front; fire is rarely

made in them, and therefore they have no opening in the roof, all

cooking being done in the open air during fine weather. They seldom

have flooring, but otherwise the interior arrangements resemble those

of the winter houses. The store-houses of all our Eskimo tribes are

set on posts at a height of from eight to ten feet above the ground,

to protect them from foxes, wolves, and dogs. They have generally

a small square opening in front that can be closed with a sliding

board, and which is reached by means of a notched stick of wood.

These boxes are seldom more than eight feet square by three or four

feet in height.

The routine of life which these natives of the Nooshagak and

Kuskokvim valleys and streams follow is one of much activity—they

are on the tramp or are paddling up and down the rivers pretty much

all of the time. A year is divided up by them about as follows: In

February they prepare to go to the mountains, and go then most of

them do, though some will be as late as April in getting away on

account of their children, or of sheer laziness. They move with the

entire family outfit, bag and baggage, dogs, sleds, and boats. They

settle down along by the small mountain streams, trap martens, shoot

deer, and dig out beaver. February and March are the best months for

marten, April and May for the beaver, bear, and land-otter.

By June 10th they return to their winter villages and visit the

trading-posts. They then begin their preparations for salmon-fishing,

getting their traps into shape so as to be used effectively when

those fish begin to run. They air-dry salmon on frames, and put the

heads in holes and allow them to rot slightly before eating; also

the spawn, which, however, is preserved in oil, and used as a great

delicacy during their own festivals in the midwinter season. The

salmon-fishing is all over about July 20th. By August 10th these

nomads return to the mountains, leaving the old women and youngest

children with their mothers in charge of the caches at the villages.

This time they go for reindeer, which have just shed their hair and

are in the full beauty of new, fine, sleek coats. They hunt these

animals from that time until the middle of September, when the fur

of the beaver is again in prime condition; then _Castor canadensis_

receives their undivided attention. They catch these giant rodents in

wooden “dead-falls,” and also by breaking open the dams, which causes

the water to suddenly leave the beavers fully exposed to the spears

of their savage human enemies.

When the first snow flies in October they rig up rude deer-skin

boats, like the “bull-boats” on the Missouri, and float all their

traps and rude equipage down the river back from whence they started.

They all return for the winter by the middle of October; then,

without going far from the vicinity of their settlements, they

renew and set up fresh dead-fall traps for marten—they never go any

distance from home for this little animal, and when ice forms on

the rivers, about the end of October or early in November, they put

their white-fish traps under it. The marten-trapping is abandoned in

December, because the intense, stormy, and cold weather then drives

these pine-weasels into winter holes, where they remain semi-dormant

until the end or middle of February. During this period of severe

wintry weather the Innuit gives himself up to unrestrained loafing

and vigorous dancing festivals, which last until the year is again

renewed by going out to the mountains in February.

These natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim regions have a large and

varied natural food-supply. They have reindeer-meat, the flesh of

moose, of bears, and of all the smaller fur-bearing animals found in

this territory—the list is a full one, comprising land-otters, cross,

red, and black foxes, the mink, the marten, the marmot, and the

ground-squirrel, or “yeavrashka,” which last is the most abundant.

The bears are all brown in this country—no black ones. They also

secure large gray and white wolves, while those who live right on the

coast of Bering Sea get walrus, the big “mahklok” seal, and a little

harbor _phoca_, or “nearhpah.”

They have a great abundance of water-fowl, such as geese, ducks,

and the small waders, and they occasionally kill a beluga, or white

grampus, and at still more rare intervals they find a stranded whale,

which is set upon and eaten. They save carefully all the oil which

comes from marine mammals; they treasure it up in seal-skin bags

that are placed high up above the reach of dogs and foxes on a frame

scaffold which adjoins every hut. Fish-oil is also secured in the

same manner; it answers a threefold purpose—it serves for food, for

fuel, and for light, and it is a luxurious skin and hair dressing for

them all, old and young.

Fish they capture in the greatest abundance, and the variety is quite

fair. Salmon is the staff, and is found in all of the thousand and

one lakes and sluggish or rapid streams that run from them into the

greater rivers, where a mighty rush of the same fish is annually made

up in June and July from Bering Sea. In all of the deeper lakes, and

the big rivers, a variety of large white-fish and trout are found,

especially prized and searched for by these people in midwinter, when

they are trapped there in wicker-work baskets and pole weirs under

ice.

[Illustration: The Big Mahklok.]

In round numbers these Eskimo, or Innuits, of Alaska, number nearly

eighteen thousand souls; they inhabit the entire coast-line of Bering

Sea and the Arctic Ocean, with an exception of the Aleutian chain

and that portion of the peninsula west of Oogashik. The numerous

subdivisions of this great family are based wholly upon dialectic

differentiation, and as its elaboration would entail a dreary and

uninteresting chapter upon any reader save a studious ethnologist,

it will not be itemized here. These Eskimo are all hunters and

fishermen; those land animals to which we have made allusion are

pursued by them at the proper seasons of the year. They do not have

much, in the aggregate, of value to a trader; it is chiefly oil and

walrus-ivory. Their proximity to a relatively warm coast renders the

furs which they get of small value comparatively, since these pelts

are paler and lighter-haired than those brought in from the distant

interior, where the winters are vastly colder and longer. But an

Innuit does not require a great deal from the trader—he is very much

more independent than is his semi-civilized Aleutian brother; his

wants are only a small supply of lead and powder, of sugar and of

tobacco, a little red cloth and a small sack of flour which suffice

for a large Innuit family during the year. The flour he makes up

into pancakes and fries them in rancid oil; but, as a rule, all

cooking is a mere boiling or stewing of fish and meat in sheet-iron

or copper kettles. In those huts where they can afford to use tea, a

small number of earthenware cups and saucers will be found carefully

treasured in a little cupboard; but they never set a table or think

of such a thing, except those highly favored individuals who live as

servants about the trading-posts and missions, where they do boil a

“samovar” (tea-urn) and spread a cloth over the top of a box or rude

table upon which to place their teacups.

Down here at Nooshagak these natives have earned a distinction of

being the most skilful sculptors of the whole northern range. Their

carvings in walrus-ivory are exceedingly curious, and beautifully

wrought in many examples. The patience and fidelity with which

they cut from walrus-tusks delicate patterns furnished them by the

traders are equal in many respects to that remarkable display made

in the same line by the Chinese, and so much admired. Time to them,

at Nooshagak, is never reckoned, and it does not raise a ripple of

concern in the Innuit’s mind when, as he carves upon a tusk of white

ivory, he pauses to think whether he shall be six hours or six months

engaged upon the task. Shut up as he is from December until the end

of February in his dark and smoky hut, he welcomes the task as one

which enables him to “kill time” most agreeably, and bring in a

trifle, at least, to him from the trader in the way of credit or of

direct revenue.

All of these people, when they go hunting, use firearms of modern

patterns and many old flint-lock muskets; for fish and bird-capture

they never waste any precious ammunition; they employ spears and

arrows of most artful construction and effective service. But a large

number of those very primitive Eskimo, the Togiaks, just west and

north of Nooshagak, use nothing at all in the chase other than the

same antique bows and spears of a remote ancestry. The disposition

of these people is one of greater _bonhomie_ than that evidenced by

the Aleutes or the Koloshians, who are rather taciturn. The Innuit

is very independent in his bearing, without being at all vindictive

or ugly. He is light-hearted, enjoys conversation with his fellows,

tells jokes with great gusto, sings rude songs with much animation,

in excellent time but with no music, and dances with exceeding

exhilaration during the progress of those savage festivals which he

calls in to enliven a long dreary winter solstice.

[Illustration: The Kashga.]

Such a man is naturally quite sociable. Hence we find in every

Innuit settlement, big or little, a town hall, or “kashga.” This

is a building put up after the pattern of all winter houses in

the village, but of very much larger dimensions; some of the more

populous hamlets boast of a kashga which will measure as much as

sixty feet square, and be from twenty to thirty feet high under

its smoky rafters. A raised platform from the earth, of rough-hewn

planks, runs all around the walls of the interior, and in the largest

council-houses a series of three tiers of such staging is observed.

The fireplace in the centre is large, often three or four feet deep

and eight feet square; on ordinary days in the spring, and during the

summer and early fall, when no fire is wanted, it is covered with

planks. An underground tunnel-entrance to the kashga is made just

as it is into some of the family huts, only here it is divided at

the end; one branch leads to a fireplace below the flooring, and the

other rises to the main apartment. The natives are obliged to crawl

on all fours when they enter that underground passage or leave the

kashga through its dark opening.

This is the great and sole rendezvous of the men and older boys

of most settlements. The bachelors and widowers sleep here and

prepare their simple meals; the village guest and visitors of the

male sex are all quartered here; the discussion of all the town

affairs is conducted here; the tanning of skins, the plaiting and

weaving of wicker-work fish-traps, and the manufacture of sleds and

dog-harness, spear- and arrow-heads, and carving of wood and ivory—in

fact, everything done by these people under shelter, of that kind,

is executed on the platforms of a kashga. It is the theatre for the

absurd and vigorous masked dances and mummery of their festivals, and

above all, it is the spot chosen for that vile ammoniacal bath of the

Eskimo, the most popular of all their recreations.

[Illustration: Section showing Subterranean Entrance and Interior of

a Kashga.]

The daily routine of living as practised by an Innuit family is

exceedingly simple. The head of the household usually sleeps over

night in the kashga, as do all of his peers. His wife in the early

morning rolls out of her rude deer-skins, retucks her parka about her

hips, and starts up the smouldering fire which she banked with ashes

before going to sleep. A little meat or fish is soon half-boiled,

and a small kantag of oil is decanted, a handful of dried berries

thrown into it, and perhaps she has a modicum of rotten fish-roe

to add. This she takes out to her husband in the kashga, rousing

him, if he is not awake, with a gentle but firm admonition. A large

bowl of fresh water is also brought by her, and then everything is

before the husband for his breakfast. She returns to her hut after

he has finished, and feeds her children and herself. If she or her

husband has a male visitor, he is served in the same way. When the

evening meal is ready, sometimes the men go home and dine with their

families; but the women and children invariably eat at home, and when

they wait upon the males in the town hall they always turn their

backs to them while the men are dining, it being considered a gross

breach of good manners for a woman to look at a man when he is eating.

After breakfast the male Innuits start out, if the weather permits,

to hunt or fish, as the case may be. If a driving storm prevents

them, then indoor work is resumed or recourse to sleep again assumed.

At some time in the afternoon the fire is usually drawn from the hot

stoves on the hearth, the water and a kantag of chamber-lye poured

over them, which, arising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice

(by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor) to the delighted

inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation, it

is full of smoke, and the outside men run in from their huts, with

wisps of dry grass for towels, and bunches of alder-twigs to flog

their naked bodies. They throw off their garments; they shout and

dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in

the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed

on, and produces a lather which they rinse off with cold water; and,

to cap the full enjoyment of this satanic bath, these naked actors

rush out and roll in a snow-bank or plunge into the icy flood of some

lake or river adjoining, as the season warrants. This is the most

enjoyable occasion of an Innuit’s existence, so he solemnly affirms.

Nothing else affords him a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this

orgie gives him. To us, however, there is nothing so offensive about

him as that stench which such a performance arouses.

When a bath is over, the smoke-hole is reopened (it was closed during

the process!), and fresh air descends upon those men who sit around

upon the platforms stupefied by that smoke and weak from their

profuse perspiration. Slowly these terrible odors leave the kashga,

and only the minor ones remain, rendering it quite habitable once

more. Night comes on: the huge stone lamps are filled with seal-oil

and lighted; the men soon lop down for sleep in their reindeer-skins

or parkas, removing their trousers only, which they roll up and use

as pillows, tucking the parka snugly over and around their bended

knees, which are drawn up tightly to the abdomen. In the morning

whoever happens to awake first relights the lamp, if any of the fluid

remains over; if not, he goes to his own cache and gets a supply.

If he is a bachelor, he attends then to making a fresh fire in the

hearth below and prepares his coarse breakfast.

The women assist their husbands in harnessing and unharnessing the

dogs; they go out and gather the firewood, and employ themselves in

sewing, patching, and making thread from deer-tendons. They plait

grass mats and weave grass stockings, because nearly all of the coast

Innuits wear socks very skilfully made of dried grass. The boys and

girls scatter about the vicinity looking after their snares and

traps, or engage, in hilarious groups, playing at ball and leap-frog

games, tag, and jumping matches. They harness up the young dogs and

the pups, and sport for hours at a time with them.

[Illustration: “Tatlah,” an Innuit Dog.]

These people are savages, and not at all affected by the earnest and

persistent attempts of the Russian priests to Christianize them.

They are even less influenced by the teachings of missionaries than

the Siwashes of the Sitkan archipelago, and that is saying a great

deal for their hardness of heart. They are a brave race, and have

displayed the utmost physical courage in fighting their way up the

great rivers, Yukon, Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak, whereby they displaced

and destroyed the Indians who once lived there. The Koltchanes, or

Ingaleeks of the interior, who disputed that privilege with them,

bear cheerful witness to this fact. But all such strife between the

two great families is only known to us by legends which they recite

of ancient time. No trace of recent war can be found among them.

They have no ear for music; they are not fond of it like the Aleutes,

yet they keep perfect time to cultivated tunes and melodies of

our own order. The song of an Innuit is essentially like that of

his Sitkan relative: it is usually a weird dirge, monotonous, and

long-drawn out, accompanied by a regular and rhythmic beating of

a rude drum, or a dry stick, or resonant bag. Some of the native

Innuit chantings, when rendered intelligible to us, have a plaintive

pathos running through them which is attractive and are simple in

composition; but such ballads are very, very rare. The majority are

tedious and boastful recitations of a singer’s achievements on land

or water when engaged in hunting or fishing. Their mythology is the

rudest and the least ornate of all savage races, unless it be that

perfect vacuum of the Australasians and Terra del Fuegians.

These savages respect the dead, but they fear the sick. When death

invades an Innuit family, taking the husband, or the wife, or a

child, the survivors eat nothing, after the decease of the relative,

but sour or last year’s food, and refrain from going out or from

work of any sort for a period of twenty days. They seat themselves

in one corner of the hut, or “kahsime,” with their backs toward the

door. Every five days they wash themselves, otherwise death would

promptly come to them again. The body of the dead native is composed

in a sitting position, with its knees drawn up to the stomach and its

arms clasped around them. It is placed in one corner, with its head

against the wall. The inhabitants of that village where the dead man

has lived voluntarily bring to the hut dresses of reindeer-skin, in

one of which the corpse is shrouded. A coffin, or box, is prepared

at some selected spot outside of the village, set up a few feet

from the ground, on four stoutly driven posts, and in it the body

is deposited. Near by is planted a square board or smoothly hewn

plank, upon which rude figures are painted of the animals that the

deceased was most fond of hunting, such as a beaver, a deer, a fish,

or seal. A few of his most cherished belongings are laid in the

coffin with him, but the balance of his property is divided among his

family.[147]

A festival in honor of the spirits of land and sea, and in memory

of deceased kinsmen, is celebrated annually in the month of October

or November. Lieutenant Zagoskin,[148] who spent five years among

these people exploring the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers, has given us

full details of that strange mummery and capers which characterize

Innuit festivals and dances. What he saw between 1842 and 1845, and

so graphically narrated, is to be seen substantially the same now

everywhere among these people, who are almost wholly unchanged from

their primeval habits as they live to-day.

Of the tribal organization of these people but little is known:

yet, there seems to be no recognized chieftainship—each isolated

settlement generally contains one man who makes himself prominent by

superintending all intercourse and traffic with visitors. The profits

accruing to him from this position give him some slight influence

among his people; but the _oomailik_ (_oomuialik_ of Zagoskin),

as these middlemen or spokesmen are called, possess no authority

over the people of their village, who pay far more attention to the

advice or threats of sorcerers, shamans, or “medicine men.” In the

festivals, consisting of feasting, singing, and dancing, with which

these hyperboreans while away the long winter nights, the shamans

also play a prominent part, directing the order of the performances

and the manufacture of masks, costumes, etc., while the oomailik or

spokesman sinks back into insignificance for the time being.

All these games, both private and public, take place in the kashga.

At the public performances the dancers and singers, men and women,

stand around the fire-hole; and the men, to the time of the drum and

the singing, go through various contortions of the body, shifting

from one foot to the other without moving from the spot, the skill

of the dancer being displayed only in the endurance and flexibility

of his muscles. The women, on the other hand, with their eyes cast

down, motionless, with the exception of a spasmodic twitching of the

hands, stand around in a circle, forming, we may say, a living frame

to the animated picture within. The less motion a dancer displays

the greater his skill. There is nothing indecent in the dances of

our sea-board natives. The dancing dress of the men consists of

short tight drawers made of white reindeer-skin and the summer

boots of soft moose-hide, while the women on those occasions only

add ornaments, such as rings and bracelets and bead-pendants, to

their common dress, frequently weighting themselves down with ten or

fifteen pounds of these baubles.

An entertainment of the women was described by Zagoskin as follows:

“We entered the kashga by the common passage and found the guests

already assembled, but of the landladies nothing was to be seen. On

three sides of the apartment stone lamps were lighted; the fire-hole

was covered with boards, one of them having a circular opening,

through which the women were to make their appearance. Two other

burning lamps were placed in front of the fire-hole. The guests

then formed a chorus and began to sing to the sound of the drum,

two men keeping them in order by beating time with sticks adorned

with wolfs’ tails and gulls’ wings. Thus a good half-hour passed by.

Of the song my interpreter told me that it consisted of pleasantry

directed against the women; that it was evident they had nothing to

give, as they had not shown themselves for so long a time. Another

song praised the housewifely accomplishments of some woman whose

appearance was impatiently expected with a promised trencher of the

mixed mess of reindeer-fat and berries. No sooner was this song

finished than that woman appeared and was received with the greatest

enthusiasm. The dish was set before the men, and she retreated amid

vociferous compliments on her culinary skill. She was followed by

another woman. The beating of drums increased in violence and the

wording of the song was changed. Standing up in the centre of the

circle this woman began to relate, in mimicry and gesture, how she

obtained the fat, how she stored it in various receptacles, how she

cleansed and melted it, and then, placing a kantag upon her head,

she invited the spectators with gestures to approach. The song went

on, while eagerness to partake of the promised luxury lighted up the

faces of the crowd. At last the wooden spoons were distributed, one

to each man, and nothing was heard for a time but the guzzling of the

luscious fluid. Another woman advanced, followed still by another,

and luxuries of all kinds were produced in quick succession and

as quickly despatched, while the singers pointedly alluded to the

praiseworthy Russian custom of distributing tobacco. When the desired

article had been produced, a woman then represented with great skill

all the various stages of stupefaction resulting from smoking and

snuffing. The women dressed in men’s parkas.”

A man’s entertainment witnessed by Zagoskin took place in the same

village. The preparatory arrangements were similar; one of the

women, a sorceress, lead the chorus. Her first song on that occasion

praised a propensity of the Russian for making presents of tobacco,

rings, and other trifles to women, who, in their turn, were always

ready to oblige them. This, however, was only introductory, the

real entertainment beginning with a chorus of men concealed in the

fire-hole. The gist of their chant was that trapping, hunting, and

trade were bad, that nothing could be made, and that they could only

sing and dance to please their wives. To this the women answered

that they had long been aware of the laziness of their husbands,

who could do nothing but bathe and smoke, and that they did not

expect to see any food produced, such as the women had placed

before them, consequently it would be better to go to bed at once.

The men answered that they would go and hunt for something, and

shortly one of them appeared through the opening. This mimic, who

was attired in female apparel, with bead-pendants in his nose, deep

fringes of wolverine tails, bracelets, and rings, imitated in a

most admirable and humorous manner the motions and gestures of the

women in presenting their luxuries, and then gave imitations of

the various female pursuits and labor, the guests chuckling with

satisfaction. Suddenly the parka was thrown off, and the man began

to represent how he hunted the mahklok, seated in his kayak, which

performance ended with the production of a whole boiled mahklok,

of which Zagoskin received the throat as his portion. Others

represented a reindeer-hunt, the spearing of birds, the rendering of

beluga-blubber, the preparation of seal-intestines for water-proof

garments, the splitting of deer-tendons into thread, and so forth.

One young orphan who, possessing nothing wherewith to treat the

guests, brought on a kantag filled with water, which was drunk by the

women amid much merriment. It sometimes happens on these occasions

that lovers of fun sprinkle the women with oil, or with that fluid

which they use in place of soap, squirted from small bladders

concealed about their persons; and such jokes are never resented.

Another festival, in honor of the spirits of the sea (_ugiak_), is

celebrated by the coast tribes during a whole month. The preparations

for this gathering begin early in the autumn. Every hunter preserves

during an entire year the bladders from all such animals as he

kills with arrows; the mothers also save with the greatest care the

bladders of all rats, mice, ground-squirrels, or other small animals

killed by their children. At the beginning of December all these

bladders are inflated, painted in various colors, and suspended in

the kashga; and among them the men hang up a number of fantastically

carved figures of birds and fish. Some of the figures of birds are

quite ingeniously contrived, with movable eyes, heads, and legs,

and are able to flap their wings. Before the fireplace there is a

huge block wrapped up in dry grass. From morning until night these

carved figures are kept in motion by means of strings, and during the

whole time a chanting of songs continues, while dry grass and weeds

are burned to smoke the suspended bladders. This fumigating process

ends the day’s performances, which are begun anew in the morning. In

the evening of that culminating day of this festival those strings

of bladders are taken down and carried by men upon painted sticks

prepared for the occasion; the women, with torches in their hands,

accompany them to the sea-shore. Arrived there, the bladders are

tied to sticks and weighted with stones, and finally thrown into the

water, where they are watched with the greatest interest to see how

long they float upon the surface. From the time of sinking and the

number of rings upon the water where a bladder has disappeared the

shamans prophesy success or misfortune in hunting during the coming

year.

A final memorial feast in honor of a distinguished ancestor is

conducted as follows:

Eight old men clad in parkas enter the kashga, or council-house,

each carrying a stone lamp, which they deposit around the fire-hole.

They next produce three small mats and spread them upon the floor

in three corners of the building, and from the spectators three men

are selected who are willing to go to the grave. The three nearest

relatives of the deceased then seat themselves on the mats and

divest themselves of all their clothing, wash their bodies, and don

new clothes, girding themselves with belts manufactured several

generations back and preserved as heirlooms in the family. To each

of these men a staff is given, and they advance together to the

centre of the kashga, when the oldest among the invited guests sends

them forth to call the dead. These messengers leave the building,

followed by the givers of this feast. After an absence of ten

minutes the former return, and through the underground passage the

whole population of the village crowds in, from the old and feeble

down to children at the breast, and with them come the masters of

ceremonies, wearing long seal-skin gloves, and strings of sea-parrot

bills hanging about the breast and arms, with elaborate belts nearly

a foot in width, consisting of white bellies of unborn fawns trimmed

with wolverine tails. All such ornaments are carefully preserved and

handed down from generation to generation, some of them being made

of white sable—an exceedingly rare skin—for which high prices are

paid, as much as twenty or thirty beavers or otters for one small

skin. The women hold in their hands one or two eagle-feathers, and

tie around the head a narrow strip of white sable. Each family,

grouping itself behind its own stone lamp, chants in turn in mournful

measure a song composed for the occasion. These songs are almost

indefinitely prolonged by inserting the names of all the relatives

of the deceased, living and dead. The singers stand motionless in

their places, and many of those present are weeping. When a “song

of the dead” is concluded the people seat themselves, and their

usual feasting and gorging ensues. The next morning, after a bath

(indulged in by all the males), the multitude again assembles in this

kashga. The chanting around the fire-hole is renewed in the same

mournful tone, until one old man seizes a bladder drum and takes the

lead, accompanied by a few singers, and followed in procession by

all participants in the feast. They walk slowly to every sepulchre

in succession, halting before each to chant a mourning song; all

visitors not belonging to the bereaved families in the meantime crowd

upon the sodded roofs of the houses and watch these proceedings. In

the evening all that remains of food in the village is set before the

people, and when every kantag is scraped of the last remnant of its

contents the feast is ended; then those visitors at once depart for

their homes.

Occasionally the giver of such a feast, desiring to do special honor

to the object of it, passes three days sitting naked upon a mat in

a corner of his kashga, without food or drink, chanting a song in

praise of a dead relative. At the end of such a fast any or all

visitors present gifts to him; the story of his achievement is

carried abroad, and he is made famous for life among his fellows.

[Illustration: JEST OF AN INNUIT MOTHER

“Yes—me sell!—plenty tabak”]

[Illustration: THE SON OF AHGAAN

An Innuit boy, 6 or 7 years old]

It has already been mentioned that many individuals give away all

their property on such occasions. If it happens that during such a

memorial feast a visitor arrives from a distant village who bears

the same name with the subject of a celebration, he is at once

overwhelmed with gifts, clothed anew from head to foot with the most

expensive garments, and returns to his home a wealthy man.

The country in which the Innuit lives is one that taxes the utmost

hardihood of man when it is traversed by land or by sea. It is not

likely that it will ever be much frequented by white men—it will

remain to us as it has been to the Russians, an immense area of

desolate sameness, almost unknown to us, or to its savage occupants,

for that matter. The general contour of the great Alaskan mainland

interior is that of a vast undulating plain with high rounded

granitic hills and ridges scattered in all lines of projection; on

the flanks of which, and by its countless lakes and water-courses, a

growth, more or less abundant, of spruce, birch, willows, poplars,

and a large number of hardy shrubs, will be encountered. Its summers

are short, warm, and pleasant; its winters are long, and bitterly

cold and inclement.

The tundra, however, which fronts the whole of that extensive

coast-line of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, is indeed cheerless

and repellant at any season. In the summer it is a great flat swale,

full of bog-holes, shiny and decaying peat, innumerable sloughs,

shallow and stagnant, and from which swarms of malignant mosquitoes

rise to fairly torture and destroy a traveller unless he be clad in

a coat of mail. In the winter and early spring fierce gales of wind

at zero-temperature sweep over these steppes of Alaska in constant

succession, making travel exceedingly dangerous, and as painful even

as it is in the warmer months. During this period of the year all

approach to the coast is barred in Bering Sea by a system of shoals

and banks which extend so far seaward that a vessel drawing only ten

feet of water will be hard aground, beyond the sight of land, sixty

miles off the Yukon mouth.

At the head of the Bay of Bristol a small but deep and rapid river

empties a flood of pure, clear water into an intricate series of

sand and mud channels which belong there. The Kvichak is the name of

this stream, and it rises less than forty miles away in the largest

fresh-water lake known to Alaska—that inland sea of Ilyamna, over

ninety miles in its greatest length, varying in width from fifteen to

thirty. Those gusts and gales that sweep over its blue waters raise

a heavy surf which beats sonorously upon its pebbly shores and under

its cliffs, while the loud wailing cry of a great northern loon[149]

echoes from one lonely shore to the other when disturbed by the

unwonted passage of a native’s canoe. Against the eastern horizon

there springs from its bosom an abrupt and mighty wall of Alpine

peaks, which stand as an eternal barrier between its pure sweet

waters and the salt surges of the Pacific.

The ruins of an old Russian trading-post stand in the midst of a

small native village at the outlet of, and on the slope of, a lovely

grassy upland which rises from the lake. Its people are all living in

log houses like those we noticed in Cook’s Inlet; but nevertheless

they are true Innuits. The two other small hamlets on these Ilyamna

shores are all that exist. Their inhabitants live in the greatest

peace and solitary comfort that savages can understand. Two trails

over the divide are travelled by these natives, who trade with the

Cook’s Inlet people, and who range over the mountain sides in pursuit

of reindeer and of bears. A most noteworthy family of Russian Creoles

lived here on the first portage. The father was a man of gigantic

stature, and he reared four Anak-like sons, who are, as he was,

mighty hunters, and of great physical power. This family lives all

to itself in that beautiful wilderness of Ilyamna, a little way back

from the lake on a hillside, where they command passes over to Cook’s

Inlet. They control the trade of this entire region and rule without

a shadow of disputation.

A tragedy occurred in one of these small villages of Ilyamna, which

has been fitly memorized by the Russian Church. In 1796 a priest of

the Greek faith came over from Kadiak, and, enchanted by the scenery

and pleased by a warm, kindly welcome received from the natives, he

determined to tarry here with them and save their souls. He[150] was

a man of the most handsome presence and the sweetest address, and

for a moment prevailed. Then, as the heathenish rites and festivals

were postponed at his bidding, surly shamans fomented seeds of hate

and fear. Finally an hour arrived when, at a preconcerted signal,

the slumbering wrath of the savages was aroused, and they fell upon

and slew this unsuspecting missionary and destroyed every vestige

of his existence among them. The cause of Father Juvenal’s death

was his strong opposition to polygamy. It is said that when he was

attacked by savages he neither fled nor did he defend himself, either

of which he might have successfully done; but he delivered himself

unresistingly into the hands of his murderers, asking only for the

safety of his subordinates, which was granted. The natives say, in

their recitation of the event, that after the monk had been struck

down and left by the mob as dead, he “rose up once more, walked

towards them, and spoke.” They fell upon him again, and again, and

again, for he repeated this miracle several times, until at last, in

bewildered fury, they literally cut him into pieces.

Reindeer cross and recross the Kvichak River in large herds during

the month of September, as they range over to and from the Peninsula

of Alaska, feeding, and also to escape from mosquitoes. At the mouth

of this stream is one of the broadest deer-roads in the country. The

natives run along the banks of the river when reindeer are swimming

across, easily and rapidly spearing those unfortunate animals as

they rise from the water, securing in this way any number that fancy

or want may dictate. At one time a trader counted seven hundred

deer-carcasses as they lay here on the sands of the river’s margin,

untouched save by a removal of the hides; not a pound of that meat

out of the thousands putrefying had been saved by these lazy Innuits;

who, improvident wretches as they are, would be living, less than

five months later, in a state of starvation! But all this misery of

famine in March will have been forgotten again next September, when

the same surplus of food is within their reach, for they will not

store up against the morrow—the labor is too great—the shiftless

sentiment of a savage forbids that exertion.

There is a curious distinction drawn by nature between the Siberian

and Alaskan reindeer. Everybody is familiar with the fact that on

the Asiatic side these animals are domesticated and serve as a

mainstay and support of large tribes, both savage and civilized. But

the spirit of the Alaskan deer is such that it will not live under

the control of man, or even within his presence. If confined, it

refuses food, and then perishes of self-imposed starvation. The most

patient and extended trials have been made at Nooshagak by imported

Kamschadales, who were raised to the life of deer-driving over there;

yet, in no instance whatsoever were these experts able to overcome

the difficulty and accustom those timid animals to the sight, sound,

and smell of man. The Alaskan species is much larger than its Asiatic

cousin, but otherwise resembles it closely, being, if anything, more

uniformly gray in tint and less spotted with white over the back and

head.

Reindeer have a most extended range in Alaska, where an immense area

of tundra and upland moors yield an abundance of those mosses and

lichens which they most affect. Innumerable sloughs and lakes afford

these deer a harbor of refuge from cruel torments of mosquitoes, when

the wind does not blow briskly in summer; the wooded interior gives

them shelter from the driving fury of wintry snow-storms. Big brown

bears follow in the wake of travelling herds, and feed fat upon all

sickly or weaker members and imprudent fawns of the drove; so do

wolves and wolverines; and the lop-eared lynx is not missing.

Nooshagak is a trading centre for that entire Bristol Bay district,

which comprises the coast of Bering Sea from Cape Newenham, in the

north, to the peninsular extremity at Oonimak, in the south—an

immense expanse in which some four thousand Innuits abide, and live

largely upon fish and deer-meat. The Oogashik, Igageek, Nakneek,

Kvichak, Nooshagak, Igoosheek, and Togiak Rivers all empty into this

great shallow gulf. Up their swollen channels, after an opening of

the ice during the last half of May, salmon run from the sea in

irregular but constant travel until the end of August. Inferior

salmon run even as late as November, while the various kinds of

salmon-trout and white-fish exist under the ice of deep streams and

lakes all winter. By the middle of September hard frosts in the

mountains congeal all sources of innumerable rivulets which have

helped to swell the volume and raise the level of a river’s summer

flood, and then these streams which we have just named begin to fall

rapidly in their channels. If we chance to travel anywhere along

their banks at this time, we will find them covered with windrows

and heaps of dead salmon two and three feet in height. The gravelly

beaches of the lakes, the bars and shoals of every stream, are then

lined with decaying and putrid bodies of these fish, while every

overhanging bough and projecting rock is festooned with their

rotting forms—ah! the stench arising absolutely forbids the pangs of

hunger, even though we have no provision. These are the salmon that

have died from exhaustion and from bruises received in struggling

with swift and impetuous currents, and the rocks and snags that beset

their paths of annual reproduction.

North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which,

having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of

sand and mud reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea

is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is

practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the

tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets

one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted

hunter. Stragglers, however, are frequently surprised on the mainland

shore opposite, and the southern coast of Hagenmeister Island toward

Cape Newenham to the westward.

The muskrat catch of Alaska is secured almost wholly in the Nooshagak

region—an immense number of these water-rodents are annually taken by

Innuits here. Traders, however, do not prize them very highly, but

to secure the natives’ custom they are obliged to appear satisfied

with all that these people bring in to the post. These skins are,

however, not sold in this country; they are all shipped to France and

Germany, where they meet with a ready sale, since the poor people

there are not above wearing them. Also, most of the good Alaskan

beaver peltries are from this district, where they have the best fur

and are consequently prized above all other catches outside of that

region. Land-otter is also in large quantity and fine quality, but

the mink and martens and foxes are inferior. During summer seasons,

on many lakes, flocks of big, white, trumpeting swans will be found

frequenting nearly every one of those bodies of water. The natives

hunt them at night, and capture unsuspecting birds as they sleep upon

the water, by paddling noiselessly upon them. The traders encourage

this industry for the sake of the swan’s down which it produces.

The most favored spot by swans is Lake Walker, which lies on the

Nakneek portage over to Cook’s Inlet. Perhaps its rare, unique beauty

charms these giant natatores as it does ourselves, for, without

question, it is incomparably the most lovely sheet of water, set in

a frame of glorious mountains, which the fancy of an artist could

possibly devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language

is utterly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from

absolute grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its

pebbly shores and yellow sands.

The immediate banks of the Nakneek River, through which Lake Walker

empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and flat, and

covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and amphibious

plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. The timber on

hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally clumps of birch

and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of spruce as a higher

ascent is made to the rolling uplands and mountain sides. An old,

deserted settlement—ruins of Paugwik, marked by the decayed outlines

of its cemetery, still is visible at the debouchure of the Nakneek.

With a strange disrespect for the departed, those natives who live

at an adjoining village come over here to excavate salmon-holes in

that ancient graveyard, wherein they place their fish-heads, so that

a process of moist rotting shall take place prior to eating them! The

Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear of the “witching hour of night” in

this burial site of their ancestors.

The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those

hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight

of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a

short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly marked

“saddle-backed” seal are taken by these people in large numbers every

year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those fur-bearing

animals that belong to the land here are away below par when brought

to a trader. The coast between their villages and the mouth of the

Togiak River is one of a most remarkable series of bluffy headlands,

seven of them, being all of sandstone which has weathered into queer,

fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is washed at the sea-level

into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the surf beats with a noise

like the distant roar of artillery. Screaming flocks of water-fowl

are breeding on their mural faces, and troops of foxes lurk in the

interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs and unwary birds.

[Illustration: THE SADDLE-BACK, OR HARLEQUIN HAIR SEAL

[_Histriophoca equestris_]

Female Male

The Togiak River never was ascended by a white man until the summer

of 1880.[151] It is a very remarkable region with respect to its

people. Though the course of the river is only one hundred miles in

length, yet we find upon it seven villages (one of them very large),

having an aggregate population of 1,826 souls. No other one section

of Alaska has so dense a population with reference to its inhabited

area. The river is, however, a broad one, being a mile and a half

in width, shoal and shallow, with deep pools and eddies here and

there. Its banks are low, and the valley through which it runs is low

and flat, with extensive bottom-lands that widen out at places to a

distance of fifteen miles between the ridges and hills which direct

its short course. Upon these flats grow most luxuriant and lofty

grasses, high as the heads of natives—literally concealing, as it

were, the dense human occupation of its extent.

The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska; they are the simplest and the

most unpretending of all her people; they seem to live entirely to

themselves, wholly indifferent as to what other folks have and they

have not. They seldom ever view a white man, and then it is only when

they go down to the river’s mouth and visit a trader in his sloop or

schooner. He never goes up to see them, for the best of reasons to

him—they never have anything fit for barter save a few inferior mink

and ground-squirrel skins to trade. They have no chiefs; each family

is a law unto itself, and it comes and goes with a sort of free and

easy abandon that must resemble the life and habit of primeval time.

What little these people want and cannot get from each other, they

do not go farther in search of, but do without, unless it be small

supplies of tobacco which they procure through other Innuits, second

or third hand.

Entire families of them, during the summer, leave their winter

huts and go out into the valley at such points as their fancy may

indicate, where they pass two and three months with absolutely no

shelter whatever erected during that entire lapse of time. When

it rains hard they simply turn their skin boats bottom side up,

stick their heads under, and consider themselves fully settled for

protection from tempestuous wind and sleet-storms, or any other

climatic unpleasantness. How insensible to extremes of weather do

these bodies of the Innuits become—their whole external form is as

insensible to heat or cold as their stolid features are! Were they

living under Italian skies, they could not affect a greater disregard

for the varying moods of that mild climate than they do for the

chilly, boisterous weather of Alaska. The Togiakers never go far

from the river upon which they build their rude winter villages,

and never venture out from its mouth; hence they are not so happy

in making the skin canoe or kayak, as their hardier brethren are:

these boats on the Togiak are clumsy, broad of beam in proportion

to length, and the hatch, or hole, so large that two persons can

sit in it back to back. When a family concludes to go out for the

summer camp, the man gets into his “kayak,” takes the children who

are under four or five years in with him, then pulls and paddles his

way up against the current, or floats down, as the case may be; the

women—wife, mother, and daughters—are turned ashore and obliged to

find their way up or down through long grass and over quaking bogs—to

toil in this manner from camp to camp, and as they plod along they

shout and sing at the top of their voices to apprise any bear or

bears, which may be in their path, of such coming, and thus stampede

them; otherwise they would be in continual danger of silently

stepping upon bruin as he lurked or slept in dense grassy jungles.

When a bear first takes notice of the approach of a human being it

invariably slinks away, rarely ever displaying, by the faintest

sound, its departure; but that same animal, if surprised suddenly at

close quarters, will turn and fight desperately, even unto death.

The bold, far-projected headland of Cape Newenham forms the southern

pier of that remarkable funnel-like sea-opening to the Kuskokvim

River—a river upon which the human ichthyophagi of the north do most

congregate: three thousand savages are living here in a string of

scattered hamlets that closely adjoin each other, and are nearly all

located on the right-hand bank of the river as we ascend it. They

are more like muskrat villages than human habitations—water, water

all around and everywhere: situated on little patches, or narrow

dikes, at the rim of the high tides, on the edge of the river proper,

which is here, and for a long distance up, bordered by a strikingly

desolate and forlorn country. A glance at our map will show to the

reader that great funnel-fashioned mouth of the Kuskokvim, through

which its strong and turbid, clay-white current is discharged into

Bering Sea. The tides, in this enormous estuary, run with a rise and

fall that simply beggars description—reaching an amazing vertical

flow and ebb of fifty feet at the entrance! Such extraordinary change

in tide-level is carried up, but much modified as it progresses,

until lost at Mumtrekhlagamute; the entire physical aspect of that

region, in which this sweeping daily change in a level of the

water prevails, is most repellant and discouraging.

[Illustration: THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER AND TUNTUH MOUNTAINS

Viewed from Toolookah, 30 miles below Kolmakovsky, a famous Moose and

Reindeer Hunting Grounds for the Innuits of that Region]

From the high-tide bank-rims of the Kuskokvim, as we go up, across

to the hills and to their rear in the east, extends a dreary expanse

of swale and watered moors forty to sixty miles in width, flat and

low as the surface of the sea itself. At high tide it appears to be

nearly all submerged. It shimmers then like an inland ocean studded

with myriads of small mossy islets. Again, when the tide in turn

runs out, great far-expanded flats of mud and ooze supplant the

waters everywhere, giving in this abrupt manner a striking shift

of scenic effect. The eastern river bank is a queer, natural dike,

formed by a rank and vigorous growth of coarse sedges, bulrushes, and

little sapling fringes of alders, willows, with birch and poplars

interspersed. Upon this natural dike these native villages range

in close continuity, each occupying all the dry land in its own

immediate limits, and occupying it so thoroughly that a traveller

cannot, without great difficulty, find bare land enough outside of

their sites upon which to pitch his tent. Mud, mud everywhere—a

whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a

physical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the

villages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement

here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, you

are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your

cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries

you forward and over to your destination.

On the Lower Kuskokvim the river width of itself is so great that the

people living on its eastern banks never can see an opposite shore

to the westward, for it is even more submerged there and swampy, if

anything, than where they reside; hence we find them located here on

the east bank, to a practical exclusion of all settlement over on

those occidental swales and bogs. The current of this singular stream

flows quite rapidly. It discharges a great volume of water, which

is colored a peculiar whitish tone by the contribution of a roiled

tributary that heads in the Nooshagak divide. At its source and down

to this muddy junction it is clear. It is a rapid stream in the

narrows, and dull and sluggish in flow through wide openings.

The density of aboriginal population so remarkably manifested as

we observe it on the Lower Kuskokvim does not, however, give all

the testimony, inasmuch as during every summer two thousand or

more natives from the Yukon delta come over here to fish with the

Kuskokvims, making a sum-total of six or seven thousand fish-eaters,

who catch, consume, and waste an astonishing quantity of salmon,

which would, if properly handled, be sufficient to handsomely feed

the entire number of native inhabitants of Alaska, four times over,

every year!

Snow lies deeply upon all this region, driven and packed in vast

drifts and fields by the wrath of furious wintry gales, and the

hunting of land animals is thus made impossible. Then a native of

the Kuskokvim Valley turns his attention to trapping white-fish[152]

just as soon as the ice becomes firmly established, usually early in

November. The traps are made of willow and alder wicker-work, and

nearly all in the same pattern as those employed for salmon, but of

somewhat smaller dimensions, so as to be easier to handle, since

they are not required to catch the huge “chowichie.” Every morning

at dawn on the river the men of its many villages can be seen making

their way out to these fish-traps, when it is not bitterly inclement,

and even then, sometimes. They carry curiously shaped ice-picks,

made or fashioned from walrus-teeth or deer-antlers, because every

night’s freezing covers the trap anew with a solid cap of ice, which

must be broken up and removed ere a savage can get at it, haul it

out, and empty its “pot.” Think of the physical hardihood required

of a man who goes out from his hut to visit such a trap when the

wind, away below zero, is blowing over an icy plain of the broad

river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, whirling snowy spiculæ,

like hot shot, into the faintest exposure which he dares to make of

his face or eyes! He does not often go when a “poorga” prevails in

this boisterous manner. Sometimes he feels as though he must, since

a storm may have raged in wild, bitter fury for a week without sign

of abatement. His children or his wife may be sick and half-starved;

then, only then, does he venture out to dare and endure the greatest

hardship of savage life in Alaska.

It frequently happens after an unusually cold night that a trap,

including its contents, is frozen solid. This is another dreaded

accident, for it involves great labor, since the trap itself must be

picked to pieces and built anew. In spite of all these difficulties,

the natives get enough fresh fish during each winter by such method

to eke out their scanty store of dried salmon and save themselves

from starvation. On the lower river course, within the influence

of that tremendous tidal action which has been described, a solid

covering of ice never envelops the surface of the Kuskokvim. Here the

natives hunt seals, the mahklok, and also the white whale or beluga,

which furnishes them a full supply of oil[153] and blubber. A school

of belugas puff and snort, like a fleet of tug-boats, as they push

between and under tide-broken masses of ice in hot pursuit of fish

that abound all over the broad estuary.

There is one particularly distressing and hideous feature that

belongs to this entire area of the Alaskan coast tundra and marshy

moors of the interior and its forests, its river-margins, and, in

fact, to every place except those spots where the wind blows hard.

It is the curse of mosquitoes—the incessant stinging of swarms of

these blood-thirsty insects, which come out from their watery pupæ

by May 1st (with the earliest growing of spring vegetation), and

remain in perfect clouds until withered and destroyed by severe

frosts in September and October. The Indians themselves do not dare

to go into the woods at Kolmakovsky during the summer, and the very

dogs themselves frequently die from effects of mere mosquito-biting

about their eyes and paws only, for that thick woolly hair of these

canines effectually shields all other portions of their bodies.

Close-haired beasts, like cattle or horses, would perish here in a

single fortnight at the longest, if not protected by man.

Universal agreement in Alaska credits the Kuskokvim mosquito

as being the worst. They do not appear elsewhere in the same

number or ferocity, but they are quite unendurable at the best

and most-favored stations. Breeding here, as they do, in these

vast extents of tundra sloughs and woodland swamps, they are able

to rally around and embarrass an explorer beyond all reasonable

description. Language is simply inadequate to portray that misery and

annoyance which the Alaskan mosquito-swarms inflict upon us in the

summer, whenever we venture out from the shelter of trading-posts,

where mosquito-bars envelop our couches and cross the doors and

windows to our living-room. Naturally, it will be asked, What do

the natives do? They, too, are annoyed and suffer; but it must be

remembered that their bodies are daily anointed with rancid oil,

and certain ammoniacal vapors constantly arise from their garments

which even the mosquito, venomous and cruel as it is, can scarcely

withstand the repellant power of. When the natives travel in this

season, they gladly avail themselves, however, of any small piece of

mosquito-netting that they can secure, no matter how small. Usually

they have to wrap cloths and skins about their heads, and they always

wear mittens in midsummer. The traveller who exposes his bare face

at this time of the year on the Kuskokvim tundra or woodlands will

speedily lose his natural appearance; his eyelids swell up and close;

his neck expands in fiery pimples, so that no collar that he ever

wore before can now be fastened around it, while his hands simply

become as two carbuncled balls. Bear and deer are driven into the

water by these mosquitoes. They are a scourge and the greatest curse

of Alaska.

Two hundred miles up from the Kuskokvim mouth is a focal centre of

the trade in this district. It is Kolmakovsky, established by the

Russians in 1839. It consists of seven large, roughly built frame

dwellings and log warehouses, and a chapel, which stand on a flat,

timbered mesa well above the river, on its right or southern shore.

Here the current of the stream has narrowed, and flows between high

banks over a gravelly bed. These terraces, which rise from the water,

are flat-topped, and covered with a tall growth of spruce. Mossy

tundras and grassy meadows roll in between forest patches. The timber

is much larger here than it is anywhere else in the great Alaskan

interior, and that scenery along this river is far wilder and more

agreeable than any which is so monotonous and characteristic of the

Upper Yukon. The desolate flatness and muddy wastes of the Lower

Kuskokvim are now replaced by this pleasing change, which we have

just mentioned, a short distance below Kolmakovsky.

[Illustration: KOLMAKOVSKY, ON THE KUSKOKVIM

Old Russian trading-post, established in 1839, two hundred miles up

the River: these houses were once surrounded with a stockade, but

such a defence has long been needless. This view is taken from the

opposite bank of the River, looking over to the high hills of the

Nooshagak divide, and Mount Tamahloopat in the distance]

Back of that post, and clearly defined against the horizon, are the

snowy-capped summits of those mountains that form a Nooshagak divide.

One of them rises in an oval-pointed crest to a very considerable

elevation[154] above all the rest, and is the landmark of every

traveller who comes over the Yukon divide to Kolmakov. The river

here, as it brawls swiftly in its course, is about seven hundred feet

in width, with bends above and below where it expands to fully twice

that distance.

While the Kuskokvim is the only considerable rival of the Yukon in

this whole Alaskan country, yet when seriously contrasted with the

great Kvichpak[155] itself, then the Kuskokvim bears about the same

resemblance to it that the Ohio River does to the Mississippi.

Kolmakovsky marks the limit of inland migration allotted to the

Innuit race on its banks, who are not permitted by those Tinneh

tribes of the interior to advance farther up the river. It is also

removed from that disagreeable influence of Bering Sea, where the

prevalence of rain and of furious protracted gales of wind make

life a burden to a white man on the Lower Kuskokvim. Its environing

forests break the force of these storms, and there is also less fog,

so that the sun usually shines out clear and hot, especially in July

and August.

In the winter season, when frost has locked up miry swales and

swamps, and snow lies in deep, limitless drifts, a white hunter at

Kolmakov can join the Kuskokvamoots in trailing and shooting giant

moose which come down from the mountains of the Nooshagak divide.

This animal is quickly apprehended by the native dogs, so that

whenever winter weather will permit, a native Innuit spends most of

his time, not employed by ice-fishing on the Kuskokvim, in this sport.

The fur-trade at Kolmakovsky is quite active, but it is almost

exclusively transacted with a few Indians up the river, and not

with the numerous Innuits below. The latter are, commercially

speaking, very poor, having not much of anything but little stores

of “mahklok” seal-oil. These big phocaceans are almost as great

fishermen as the Innuits are themselves, and find the mouth of the

Kuskokvim as attractive as it is to their human foes. In this frame

of mind the mahklok ventures on to those tidal banks of the estuary

below, and this rash habit enables the natives to capture a great

many of them there every year. Those Innuits below Kolmakovsky have

no land-furs whatever, save a few inferior mink-skins; but they trade

their surplus seal-oil with the Indians above and on the Yukon for

that ground-squirrel parka and tanned moose-skin shirt which they

universally wear. There is an exceeding rankness to an odor of rancid

fish-oil, but the aroma from a bag of putrescent seal-oil is simply

abominable and stifling to a Caucasian nose—an acrid funk, which

pervades everything, and hangs to it for an indefinite length of time

afterward in spite of every effort made to disinfect.

The Indians of the Upper Kuskokvim were once said to be a very

numerous tribe; but the severity of successive cold winters has so

destroyed them, as a people, that to-day they exist there as a feeble

remnant only of what they once were. An intelligent trader, Sipari,

who has traversed their entire country, in 1872-76, declares that

“forty tents,” or one hundred souls is an ample enumeration of their

number.

The Innuits of the Lower Kuskokvim are much better physical specimens

of humanity than are those of their race living on the Lower Yukon.

These latter are called by all traders the most clumsy and degraded

of Alaskan savages. The portage from Kolmakovsky to the Kvichpak

is only three days’ journey in winter, or five days by water in

canoes, during summer. It is a trip made by large numbers of the

natives of both streams, in the progress of their natural barter and

moose-hunting.

The forests of the Kuskokvim and the Nooshagak mountains and uplands

are frequently swept by terrible conflagrations, which utterly

destroy whole areas of timber as far as the eye can reach. This

ruin of fire, of course, absolutely extinguishes all trapping for

any fur-bearing animal hitherto found in those _brulé_ tracts, and

entails much privation upon the natives who have been accustomed to

gain their best livelihood largely by hunting in those sections. A

burnt district presents a desolate front for years after; the fire

does not, in its swift passage, do more, at first, than burn the

foliage and smaller limbs of trees in a dense spruce forest; but

it roasts the bark and kills a trunk, so that all sap-circulation

is forever at an end in it. As the years roll by, these trunks

gradually bleach out to almost a grayish white, the charred,

blackened bark is all weathered off, and gradually such trees fall,

as they decay at the stump, in every conceivable direction upon

the ground, across one another, like so many jack-straws, making

a perfectly impassable barricade to human travel without tedious

labor. A brisk growth of small poplars, birch, and willow springs

up in place of the original spruce forest, but none of these trees

and shrubs ever grow to any great size. At rare intervals a young

evergreen is seen to rise in sharp relief, towering over all

deciduous shrubbery, and in the lapse of long years it will succeed

in supplanting every growing thing around with its own kind again.

[Illustration: “Brulé” Desolation; Alaskan Interior.

[_A view on the Stickeen Divide: bears, in search of larvæ, ripping

open decayed logs._]]

The traders at Kolmakovsky make up their furs into snug bales and

descend the river in wooden and skin boats, every June, to a point

below, about one hundred and fifty miles, where they meet their

respective schooners, or go still lower to an anchorage of larger

vessels, and renew their annual supplies. These river-boats are then

poled and rope-walked up the river back to the post. The principal

trade here is beaver, red foxes, mink, marten, land-otter, and brown

and black bears.

The traders say it is exceedingly seldom that a white man ever

comes in contact with the natives of the Lower Kuskokvim, and that

there is nothing to call them there; also, that the labors of the

Russian missionaries of the Yukon never extended to this region,

though their registers and reports show quite a number of Christians

on the Kuskokvim River. The only trace of Christianity among this

tribe, outside of the immediate vicinity of a trading-station with

its chapel, consists of a few scattered crosses in burial-places

adjoining the settlement. At the village of Kaltkhagamute,

within three days’ travel of the Russian mission on the Yukon, a

graveyard there contains a remarkable collection of grotesquely

carved monuments and memorial posts, indicating very clearly the

predominance of old pagan traditions over such faint ideas of

Christianity as may have been introduced for these people. Among

monuments in this place the most remarkable is that of a female

figure with four arms and hands, resembling closely a Hindoo goddess,

even to its almond eyes and a general cast of features. Natural

hair is attached to its head, falling over the shoulders. The legs

of this figure are crossed in true oriental style, and two of the

hands, the lower pair, hold rusty tin plates, upon which offerings of

tobacco and scraps of cotton prints have been deposited. The whole is

protected by a small roof set upon posts.

Other burial posts are scarcely less remarkable in variety of feature

and coloring, and the whole collection would afford a rich harvest of

specimens to any museum. Nearly all these figures are human effigies,

though grotesque and misshapen, and drawn out of proportion. No

images of animals or birds, which would have indicated the existence

of totems and clans in the tribe, were to be seen; but here and

there, over apparently neglected graves, a stick, surmounted by a

very rude carving of a fish, a deer, or a beluga, indicative of the

calling of the deceased hunter, could be discovered.

Petroff, who has made the only hand-to-hand examination ever

conducted, by a white man, of the people of the Lower Kuskokvim,

says that they resemble in outward appearance their Eskimo neighbors

in the north and west, but their complexion is perhaps a little

darker. The men are distinguished from those of other Innuit tribes

by having more hair on the faces; mustaches being quite common, even

with youths of from twenty to twenty-five, while in other tribes

this hirsute appendage does not make its appearance until the age of

thirty-five or forty. Their hands and feet are small, but both sexes

are muscular and well developed, inclined rather to embonpoint. In

their garments they differ but little from their neighbors hitherto

described, with an exception of the male upper garment, or parka,

which reaches down to the feet, even dragging a little upon the

ground, making it necessary to gird it up for purposes of walking.

The female parkas are a little shorter. Both garments are made of the

skins of ground-squirrels, ornamented with pieces of red cloth

and bits of tails of that rodent. The women wear no head-covering

except in the depth of winter, when they pull the hoods of reindeer

parkas over their heads. The men wear caps, made of the skin of an

Arctic marmot, resembling in shape those famous Scotch “bonnets,” so

commonly worn by Canadians.

[Illustration: AN INNUIT TOMB

Characteristic Method of Eskimo Burial on the Kuskokvim River: this

Coffin contains the Bodies of a famous Reindeer Hunter, his Squaw,

and two Children]

Many young men wear a small band of fur around the head, into which

they insert eagle and hawk-feathers on festive occasions. A former

custom of this tribe, of inserting thin strips of bone or the quills

of porcupines through an aperture cut in the septum, seems to have

become obsolete, though the nasal slit can still be seen on all

grown male individuals. Their ears are also universally pierced

for an insertion of pendants, but these seem at present to be worn

by children only, who discard them as they grow up. In fact, all

ornamentation in the shape of beads, shells, etc., appears to be

lavished upon their little ones, who toddle about with pendants

rattling from ears, nose, and lower lip, and attired in frocks stiff

with embroidery of beads or porcupine-quills, while the older girls

and boys run almost naked, and the parents themselves are imperfectly

protected against cold and weather by a single fur garment.

The use of the true Eskimo kayak is universal among the

Kuskokvagmute, but in timbered regions of the upper river, in the

vicinity of Kolmakovsky, the birch-bark canoe also is quite common.

The latter, however, is not used for extended voyages or for hunting,

but is reserved chiefly for attending to fish-traps, for the use of

women in their berrying and fishing expeditions, and for crossing

rivers and streams.

The only indigenous fruit which this large population of the Lower

Kuskokvim can enjoy is that of the pretty little “moroshkie,” or red

raspberry,[156] which grows in great abundance on its short, tiny

stalks throughout all swales and over rolling tundra. These berries

are saturated in rancid oil, however, before they are eaten to any

great extent, being air-dried first and pressed into thin cakes;

then, as wanted, they are pounded up in mortars and boiled, or simply

thrown into a wooden basin (or kantag) of oil. Then the fingers, or

rude horn spoons, are dipped in by happy feeders, who apparently

relish this ill-savored combination just as keenly as one of our

Gothamitic gourmands appreciates the flavor of a Chesapeake terrapin

stewed in champagne.

FOOTNOTES:

[147] The Indians, or Koltchanes, of the Alaskan interior burn their

dead. If anyone dies in the winter, the relatives carry that corpse

everywhere with them, use it at night in the place of a pillow, and

only burn it at the commencement of warm weather.

[148] The Russian Imperial Government in 1841 ordered Governor

Etholin, of Sitka, to select a skilled engineer to make this

exploration, and accordingly, on July 10, 1842, Zagoskin was started

for St. Michael’s. His expedition was the most extended of any white

man ever made in Alaska prior to American search.

[149] _Colymbus arcticus._

[150] The Archimandrite Jeromonakh Juvenal. The second of the

priestly Russian service was Arch. Joassaf. He was drowned at sea

in 1797. He was succeeded by Arch. Afanassy, who remained Bishop of

Alaska until 1825, and he has been followed by many successors since.

[151] Visited then by Ivan Petroff, who made an extended trip for the

United States Census.

[152] _Coregonu ssp._

[153] The oil obtained from the beluga and the large seal (mahklok)

is a very important article of trade between the lowland people and

those of the mountains, the latter depending upon it entirely for

lighting their semi-subterranean dwellings during the winter, and

to supplement their scanty stores of food. It is manufactured by a

very simple process. Huge drift-logs are fashioned into troughs much

in the same manner as the Thlinket tribes make their wooden canoes.

Into these troughs filled with water the blubber is thrown in lumps

of from two to five pounds in weight. Then a large number of smooth

cobble-stones are thrown into a fire until they are thoroughly

heated, when they are picked up with sticks fashioned for the purpose

and deposited in the water, which boils up at once. After a few

minutes these stones must be removed and replaced by fresh ones, this

laborious process being continued until all oil has been boiled out

of the blubber and floats on the surface, when it is removed with

flat pieces of bone or roughly fashioned ladles, and decanted into

bladders or whole seal-skins, then cached on pole-frames until sold

or used by the makers.

[154] Mount Tamahloopat: two thousand eight hundred feet.

[155] The Russians and natives always called the Yukon River by this

name. Our change was first made by those Hudson Bay traders who came

over to it from the Mackenzie, and was subsequently universally

adopted.

[156] _Rubus chamæmorus._