At 3 p. m. reach Marshall, a little cheerful-looking mining town,
high on a bank. See the place, identify the skeleton from the
above-mentioned bank as that of a missing white man, see telegraph
operator, postmaster, teacher, commissioner. Sun comes out, is warm.
Almost no mosquitoes here and no gnats. Hills above and beyond town
belong already to the coast range and are barren of trees, even largely
bare of shrubs and bushes. Leave 4.30.
Soon after Marshall--after passing by an Eskimo village (white man's
style of buildings)--leave the hills and enter flats on both sides.
This is the beginning of the delta region. River like glass, and it is
warm in the sun but very perceptibly cooler when sun is hidden.
The boat has only three bunks, and there are five of us with the two
pilots. But on the last trip up, there were, fortunately only for about
eight hours, seven, including two women and a child, and that without
any privacy or conveniences whatsoever. It is almost criminal, and they
charge a very steep fare. However, for me it will soon be over--only
about 36 hours. Still it is hard to believe this is yet in the United
States and presumably under some sort of supervision.
Which brings me to a realization that the first half of my journey--the
preliminary survey of the Yukon--is slowly closing; a little, and it
will be the sea and other conditions, which also brings the realization
that I have seen much but learned not greatly. What should be done
would be to own a suitable fast boat; to locate on each of the more
important old sites a party for careful, prolonged excavation; and to
try to locate, in the rear of or on the higher places on the present
river flats, more ancient sites than are known to date. These steps,
together with the enlisting of the interest in these matters of every
prospector, miner, and trader, would before many years lead to much
substantial knowledge.
Friday, July 9. Must keep up these notes, for they alone keep me posted
on the day and date; even then I am not always sure. There are no
Sundays in nature.
Slept in my bag on the roof of the _Agnes_. Her namesake must have been
one of these goodly but insufficient and but indifferently clean native
women, plodding, doing not a little work, but wanting in many a thing.
It was cold and dreary, but I found an additional blanket, and so, with
mosquito netting about my head--one or two got in anyway--would have
slept quite well had it not been for a dog. At about 1 a. m. we stopped
in front of a little place called also "Mountain Village." And almost
at once we began to hear a most piteous and insistent wail of a dog
who either had colic or thirst or hunger, and he kept it up with but
little stops for what seemed like two hours, making my sleep, at least,
impossible.
Saturday, July 9. Morning. Cold, cloudy, rough--head almost beginning
to feel uncomfortable, the boat is tossing so much. A teacher comes
aboard with an inflamed hand which I fix; a few questions, the mail
bag, and we are off again. Enter a slough where it is less rough and
warmer. Later the sun will probably come out again. This evening we
shall be at Old Hamilton and then a new anxiety--how to get to St.
Michael.
Just had a little walk over the roof--my roof, for the other two
passengers prefer to sleep in the gassy, dingy room below, though how
they can stand it is beyond my medical ken. It is four short steps
long, or five half steps in an oblique direction.
Every object in distance appears magnified all along the river for
many days now. An old snag will look like a boat or a man, hills look
higher, a boat looks much more pretentious than she proves to be on
meeting.
Firs and spruce have now completely disappeared, also forests of birch,
etc., are reduced to brush both on flats and lower parts of hills.
Very large portion of the hills in distance just greenish with grass
and lichens, not even a brush.
9.45 a. m. Meet the _Matanuska_ bound upward. Looked from distance like
an ocean steamer; from near, just a lumbering, moderate-sized river
boat with a barge in front. But a whole lot better than ours.
The scenery has become monotonous. The gray river, although only one
of the "mouths," is broad, and the country is all low. Nothing but
bushy or grassy cut banks on the right, and mud flats, "smoking" under
the wind, to low banks on left. It is a little warmer and the warm sun
shows itself occasionally, but I still need the wrapping of a double
blanket. The wind luckily is with us and the waves not too bad.
Noon. Passing "Fish village"; a few huts and tents.
No "camps" here outside the few villages; just an endless dreary waste
and water.
New Hamilton--a few native huts only now--no whites.
Reach Old Hamilton--about a dozen houses with a warehouse, a store of
the Northern Commercial Co., and a nice looking but now unoccupied
school.
Here the governor told me there was somewhere a skull waiting for me,
and the storekeeper would tell me of it. But when we arrive there are
only two or three natives to meet us. The storekeeper, who is also
postmaster, is said to be sick in bed. He is supposed to have an ulcer
or some other bad thing of the stomach. So we go to his house and find
him in bed, with a lot of medicine bottles on a table next to him. Is
alone; no wife. Shows no enthusiasm in seeing me, though heard of my
coming. Reads letters--no attention to me. Gets up--I ask him about his
illness--answers like a man carrying a chip on his shoulder. Goes to
store to attend to mail, and barely asks me to follow. I wait in store;
he finishes mail and goes out--orders the Eskimo present out gruffly,
and to me says, "You may stay in the store; I'll be back." But I wait
and wait, and finally decide the man for some reason is unwilling
to help me. Asked him before he went out about the _Matanuska_, but
he told me she might not be back from Holy Cross in a month, trying
doubtless to discourage me to stay. On going toward the _Agnes_ I find
him sitting on a log and talking to a couple of men from a tugboat that
has arrived--just talk, no business, judging from their laughing. So
I go on the boat, write a few words to Mr. Townsend of the Bureau of
Fisheries, who makes this place his headquarters, and with some feeling
hand this to the man, telling him at the same time that plainly he does
not wish to assist me in any way. This, of course, rouses him; he gets
red and says a few lame words, ending with, "Do you think I would touch
any of them dam things or that I would let any of my men (natives)
touch them? Not on your life!" So I leave Old Hamilton, for he is the
only white man there now. But the place had other distinctions. Until
recently, I am told, they have had a teacher, a young girl, who in her
zeal had the natives collect all the burial boxes with their contents
and had them all thrown into the river. Not long after she accomplished
that she left. The storekeeper told me that "If I want them so bad I
could pick them up (skulls and bones) along the river where the water
washed them out after the teacher threw them in." Luckily there were
not many "Old Hamiltons."
We met here a boat from St. Michael with Mr. Frank P. Williams, the
well-known postmaster and trader of St. Michael, who comes for the
two men, my fellow passengers. We get acquainted and, to escape the
gases of the _Agnes_, I go with them. The boat is heavier and free
from fumes, though without accommodation. At about 7 p. m. we arrive
at Kotlik, at the mouth of the river--an abandoned wireless station,
a store, and four tents of natives. But the old wireless building,
now the storekeeper's house, is the dwelling place of a clean white
man, Mr. Backlund, who is now "outside," but with whom Mr. Williams
is in some partnership; so we occupy the building. Outside the wind
has risen to half a gale and there are squalls of rain and drizzle.
The _Agnes_ has to "tie to," as she would be swamped in the open. My
boxes and bedding, which were on the roof of the _Agnes_, are soaked,
though the contents will be dry. So both boats are fastened to a little
"dock," and we soon have fire in the stove, supper, and then--it is 11
p. m.--a bed, not overclean, somewhat smelly, but a bed and free from
mosquitoes, rain, wind, and cold.
July 10. Up at 6.30. Outside a storm and rain--just like one of the
three-day northeasters with us, and cool. Both boats were to leave, but
are unable to do so. I find that Mr. Williams's tug will come back here
and go to St. Michael on the 13th, so arrange with Mr. Williams to take
me and leave the _Agnes_ for good. This partly because I learn of two
graveyards near, one 1½, the other 4½ miles distant.
After lunch, rain for a while ceasing, I set out for the nearer burial
place. This is already a tundra country--treeless and bush-less flats
overgrown with a thick coat of moss, into which feet bury themselves
as in a cushion, and dotted with innumerable swampy depressions with
high swamp grass. Walking over all this is very difficult--lucky I have
rubber boots. Even so, it is no easy matter, except where a little
native trail is encountered.
The graveyard, belonging to the now abandoned little village above
Kotlik, consists of only about half a dozen adult graves. These consist
of boxes of heavy lumber laid on a base raised above the ground
level, and covered with other heavy boards. Some of the burials are
quite recent. Open three older ones. In two the remains are too fresh
yet, but from one secure a good female skeleton, which I pack in a
practically new heavy pail, thrown out probably on the occasion of the
last funeral. Then back, farther out, to avoid notice, through swamps
and over moss, and with a recurring wind-driven drizzle against which
my umbrella is but a weak protection.
Reach home quite wet and a bit tired. Have to undress and, wrapped in a
blanket, dry my clothes and underwear about the stove.
Nothing further this day and evening--just wind and heavy low clouds
and rain.
July 11. Up at 4.40. Weather has moderated. The _Agnes_ left at 4
and Mr. Williams's boat, due to favorable tide, must soon go also.
Breakfast, and all leave me before 6.
Yesterday we brought up my needs--i. e., collection of skeletal
material--to the few natives here, explaining to them everything, and
they do not object in the least. One of them, in fact, is to take me
to-day to the more distant cemetery in a rowboat and help me in my work.
My man, after being sent for, comes at a little after 7. He is a
good-looking and well-behaving Eskimo of about 35. He brings a
good-sized tin rowboat--a whaling or navy boat probably; but "he leaks
a whole lot." The oarlocks are not fastened to the boat, the plate of
one is loose, and the oars are crudely homemade of driftwood and pieces
of lumber fastened on with nails; in one the shaft is crooked, while
the other is much heavier. But we start, with the sky still leaden and
gray but no wind and calm water. I row and he paddles; then he rows
and I paddle. We carry but the camera, a little lunch, a heavier coat
each, and a box and two bags for the specimens. We pass a number of
broods of little ducks, the mother prancing before us until the young
are in safety, and there are several species of new kinds (to me) of
water birds, some of which fly right above us, examining us. In the
distance we see a big abandoned dredge, then a few empty log houses and
"barabras" on the bank of a stream and the edge of the tundra. This
is Pastolik, our destination. There is no one anywhere near, an ideal
condition for work, if work there'll be. And there will be--for almost
immediately upon landing I see, beginning at a few rods distance on the
tundra, a series (about 50) of old graves, in all grades of mossiness
and preservation. A few are, we later find, quite late, but the
majority are old--60 years and over according to information given by
the natives of Kotlik. They do not, except perhaps the few late ones,
seem to belong to anyone still living. Yet "Pashtolik," as they wrote
it then, used to be a place of some importance in the Russian times,
and even later.
We settle in an empty native house, and I start investigation. The
older graves are found widely spread in several clusters, but a few are
isolated at a distance.
The graves are all aboveground and resemble in substance those along
the lower Yukon (Bonasila and downward). They consist of a base of
small logs or splits; a rude box about 3 feet long by about 2 feet
wide, of heavy, unpainted, unnailed, split boards; four posts near the
four corners; a cover, unjoined, of two to three heavy split boards;
two crosspieces over this, at head and base, perforated and sliding
over the upright posts, and a few half splits (smaller drift logs split
in two) laid over the top of the crosspieces.
On the first cover lies as a rule a stone--generally a piece of a slab
or a good-sized pebble--unworked, though now and then showing some
trace of use. The pebble is generally broken.
When the grave is opened there is usually over the body, as a canopy
on a light frame, a large (probably caribou) skin--rarely birch bark.
Neither covers or envelops the body but simply forms a covering over
it, with some space between it and the body. The body lies flexed, on
left or (rarely) right side, with the head toward (or near) the east
(same as at Bonasila). It is often covered with or enveloped in a
native matting. There are but few traces of clothing on women; none on
men. And very seldom is there anything else in the coffin.
Some of the oldest graves were found tumbled down and could not be
examined. The moss and roots envelop the bones, and it is a tough job
to get them out; also they eat the bones and destroy them. Even in the
older boxes, however, the downward part of the skeleton--generally the
left--is, due to moisture, usually in much worse state of preservation
than the upper.
Children have been buried in large native wooden dishes and these were
in some cases placed on the top of adult graves, but more generally
about these, or even apart.
Many household articles, from matches and pails to dishes, alarm
clocks, lamps, etc., are placed upon the ground near the more recent
dead. Excavation would probably recover here many older objects, though
wood decays.
The wind has died down and the flat is as full of mosquitoes as a
Jersey salt meadow, and there is an occasional gnat. They bite, and,
having been almost free of the pest at Kotlik, I failed to take my
"juice" along, so just have to do the best possible. The gnats enter
even the eyes, however.
Work as never before. Decide to utilize the rare opportunity to the
limit, and to take the whole skeletons, not merely the skulls, leaving
only the few fresher ones and those that are badly damaged. A great
Sunday; burial after burial; opening the wooden grave--taking out
and marking on the spot bone after bone--fighting mosquitoes all
the while--and packing temporarily in any convenient receptacle.
Fortunately there are quite a few boxes and pails and oil cans on the
spot, left by the dredge people and the few natives who evidently
sometimes come to the place. At about 2 eat lunch--coffee (the Eskimo
put what was for three cups into about two quarts of water, so there
is but a suggestion of coffee), raw smoked fish for me and eggs with
bacon (left over from breakfast) for my companion, and on again until
about 5 p. m. or a little later. Last two or three hours, however, work
with some difficulty. A gnat bit me in an eyelid, or got into my eye,
and that has now swollen so that I can hardly see with it. My Eskimo,
however, is about all I could wish. He just looks at me working in
a matter-of-fact way, and carries the filled boxes, or looks around
for something I could take with me, and even helps on a few occasions
with the bones, finding evidently the whole proceeding quite right
and natural. Brings me, among other things, an old copper teakettle,
but to his wonder I do not want it and leave it. I find a fine large
walrus-ivory doll and a handsome decorated "kantág" (wooden bowl),
besides smaller objects, and also a large piece of a poor quality clay
pot (no pottery now), with a fragment of a decorated border as on the
lower Yukon.
Pack up, we load on the boat--lucky now she is so spacious--get into
the shallow river--the tide has run out--push the boat out and start
for home.
Thus far we had but slight drizzles. But the clouds now grow heavier,
and as we have much farther to row than this morning, due to the low
water, we are caught by showers. The last mile or so we have to hurry,
see a big rain approaching. My man pushes her with a pole while I row
all I can, with both hands, with the heavy oar. Of course the whole
population of Kotlik has to see our arrival. And more, too, for in our
absence a schooner came in with wood and a number of the natives. They
talk, but no one is either angry or excited. We two carry the boxes,
pails, etc.--grass covered--into the house; how lucky I am now alone.
Inside I remove the wet grass from them--the bones, too, are somewhat
wet--then pay my Eskimo $5, which again is taken as a matter-of-fact
thing, without thanks, but he well deserved the amount, even if I rowed
a full half.
It is 9 p. m. My man comes again, we have a modest supper, he
some left-over meat and I again the smoked fish, which I feel is
strengthening me as well as agreeing with my stomach, and then
to rest, quite earned to-day. Seldom have done as much in a day.
Thirty-three graves collected, with over twenty nearly complete
skeletons, and all restored so that I had to take considerable care not
to go again into some already emptied. But this place should be dug
over. The tundra in a few years swallows up everything on the surface.
It literally buries or assimilates bones and all other objects, the
moss and other vegetation with probably blown dust covering them very
effectively. Finding anything below the surface and that even a foot
or more, as was actually experienced, means something quite different
under these conditions than it might elsewhere.
Monday, July 12. Slept fairly well and feel refreshed, but the eye
still badly swollen. The Eskimo believe, I think, I got it from the
bones. Yet they are quite sensible--a marked mental difference between
them and the Yukon Indians.
Breakfast before 7--cereal, raw smoked fish, and coffee. Then pack.
At the store buy empty gasoline boxes, but no nails to be had, and no
packing. Lunch at 1--macaroni, raw smoked fish, sauerkraut, coffee;
then pack again, fix boxes, break old ones to get nails, even pull a
few unnecessary ones from the boards of the house, go see my man's
wife, a hopeless consumptive, and at 6 through with all except
cleaning. Another fair work-day, 12 tightly packed boxes. Then clean
up, burn rubbish, and ready for departure early to-morrow.
Supper--macaroni, raw smoked fish, greengage plums, a little
sauerkraut, and coffee. Then a little walk outside, watch Eskimo women
and children jump the rope (hilariously, but awkwardly), and go in to
catch up with my notes. Nobody scowls at me, so that although they
probably fear me as a "medicine man" they are not at all resentful for
what I did yesterday. They are grown-up children, much more tractable
than the Indians. But otherwise they show so much in common with the
Indian that the more one sees of them the more he grows drawn to the
belief of the original (and that not so far distant) identity of their
parentage. It seems the Eskimo and the Indian are after all no more
than two diverging fingers of one and the same hand; or they were so
a bit farther back. Mental differences there are, yet these are no
more than may be found in different tribes of the Indians or different
groups of other races.
Tuesday, July 13. Rise a little after 6. Eye still sore after Sunday's
gnat and sweat and dirt; must use boric acid frequently. An Eskimo
actually said yesterday it was a sickness from touching the bones. A
little breakfast--have no more salmon strips, so just cereal, canned
plums, and coffee. And then with the help of two young Eskimo carry my
spoils and baggage on to the tug, which has come for me. By about 7
start. Good-by Kotlik, what little there is of it.
At 9 arrive at Mr. Williams's reindeer camp farther up the coast. There
are five tents and two small log houses of natives--the herders with
their families, dogs, and fish racks; and three whites, Mr. Williams,
owner of the boat and of most of the herd of about 8,000 animals;
Mr. Palmer, of the United States Biological Survey; and a Dane, Mr.
Posielt, here for the Biological Survey of Canada. All are already at
the corral some distance over the hill, branding, counting, etc., the
great reindeer herd, which belong to several owners.
A short walk along the shore brings me in sight of the herd. The
animals can be heard grunting a good distance off. The herd is so large
and so compact that it looks like a forest of horns. The animals keep
on moving in streams, but remain in the herd. They go to the shore to
drink some of the salty water, instead of salt. All is of interest,
even though the branding, the cutting off of big slices from the ears,
and castration, is rather cruel.
At lunch, for the first time, reindeer meat, a select steak. It is
tender and decidedly good. Has no special flavor and is poor in fat,
but tender and good.
Afternoon, once more to the corral, and then various things, including
a photograph of a little impromptu native group.
Supper once more on reindeer meat. This time prepared as a sort of a
stew with onions--again very good. But we were to leave after supper
for St. Michael and I see no intention to that effect. Instead they all
go once more to the corral to continue the work until about 11 p. m.
So I have to settle for the night, with some hope that we may leave in
the morning. We sleep four side by side in a tent 10 feet wide. Luckily
they had a spare clean blanket or two, and but one of the three snores,
and he like a lady; also the weather has cleared and is warmer, so the
night is fairly good.
Wednesday, July 14. Morning bright, calm. Breakfast, and all hurry off
to corral without even any explanation--just a few casual words, from
which I understand that we shall not go. So I write whole forenoon,
though feeling none too good about the delay. Had I my own boat, as
one should have in this country, all would be different. As it is I am
utterly helpless. At lunch speak to Mr. Williams; and though not much
willing, he half promises that we may go to St. Michael to-night.
Afternoon. Walk 8 miles along the beach, to a cape and back, looking
in vain for traces of human habitation and collecting along the beach
what this offers, which outside of some odd, flat, polished stones is
but little. Come back near 6--soon after supper--and hear with much
satisfaction that, after all, we will go to-night to St. Michael.