NATIVES
Most of the Sitkan Kolosh kept aloof from the Russian settlement after
the establishment of the new fort on Chatham Strait, near the entrance
of Peril Strait. All the kwans, the Khootznoos, the Hoonahs, the
Chilkats, the Auks, Stikines, Kakes and others, joined with the Sitkas
in the hatred of the Russians. Parties going out from the fort at Sitka
for hunting expeditions, for cutting of wood, for traveling to the Hot
Springs, had to be on their guard and with arms at hand prepared to
fight at a moment's notice.[9] Small groups were often cut off and
murdered. As it was impossible to decide which of the many kwans did the
act, and as there were those in each kwan who were peaceable, with whom
it was desired to keep the peace, revenge against any village was
inadvisable. Even as late as the date of the lease to the Hudson's Bay Co.
the Russian ships that sailed among the islands to trade with the Kolosh
were compelled to act with the strictest caution. Only a few natives
were admitted on board at a time, the trading was done in a space near
the stern, and was conducted under the muzzles of loaded cannon
concealed in the fore part of the ship.[10] The conditions were thus
until 1821, when the Sitkas were invited to reoccupy the site of the old
village and to live in what is now known as the "Ranche," under the guns
of the redoubt.
The Thlingit nation is a strange, warlike, shrewd people, physically
strong and enduring, and possessed of many excellent qualities. Hunters
and fishermen by nature and training, they are skillful boatmen, and in
those days they built wonderfully beautiful canoes of the red cedar,
some of them large enough to carry sixty men at the paddles. Each spring
more than a thousand men gathered together in Sitka Bay, coming from the
different villages, to fish for herring at the spawning time, when those
fish run in countless myriads in those waters. Hemlock boughs were
placed in the water, and on them the herring roe collected until they
were encrusted with the eggs which were then stripped off and dried for
future use.
[Illustration: The "Ranche"--Looking north from the top of the Baranof
Castle. The Steamer at the left is the "Coquitlam," noted for her
participation in pelagic sealing and she was under seizure by the U. S.
Government.]
In 1807 there were over 2,000 hostile natives gathered in the harbor at
the herring season and they threatened an attack on the settlement.
Kuskof, the most trusted and able lieutenant of Baranof, was in charge,
and it put his wisdom and watchfulness to the test to avert disaster.
The strictest discipline was maintained. The tribesmen waited outside
day after day, hoping for news of some relaxation of the precautions of
the defenders to be brought to them by the women of the tribe who were
married to the Russian promishleniki (hunters). Day and night the
sentinels paced the beats on the stockade and along the waterfront,
till, weary of waiting, the Kolosh finally dispersed to their homes.
In the great tribal houses several families lived, sometimes as many as
fifty or sixty persons. Over the door of the house was painted the
family totem, for the Sitkas did not raise the house totem in a pole in
front as did many of the kwans of the Thlingits, and as the Hydahs do.
In these houses were held the potlatches, or gift parties, which were
made by the wealthy chiefs.
The potlatches were of different kinds, although all partook of the
nature of a feasting or merrymaking and were distinguished by the giving
of gifts. In the ordinary visiting potlatches, or in the berry
potlatches, the visitors came in their canoes with which they formed a
line off shore opposite the houses, put planks from one canoe to another
and on these planks danced the tribal dance. Those on shore danced the
welcome dance and invited the guests ashore. Then the visitors
disembarked and each family became the guest of their kinsmen of their
totem or they went to the guesthouse of the kwan. All the people of the
same totem are supposed to be blood relations, so all those of the wolf
totem go to the _Gooch-heat_, or the dwelling blazoned by the rude
heraldry with the wolf rampant. In the great social potlatches a wealthy
chief invites his friends from many villages and entertains them for a
week or more with dancing and feasting and makes presents varied and
valuable, from Hudson's Bay blankets to bolts of calico or of flannel,
and in primitive days, copper tows,[11] Chilkat blankets, and even
slaves were handed over with a lavish hospitality.
On special occasions in the olden time, with great ceremony the visitors
landed at a distance from the village, drew their canoes ashore and
proceeded to the village dressed in festive garments adorned with
sealion heads or other strange headdresses, in which they danced the
rare and picturesque "Beach Dance," in acknowledgement to the Spirit of
the Sea for the bountiful supply of salmon and herring of the past
season--for the native American is a thankful being and omits not to
show it when occasion offers to acknowledge it to the Giver of all good
and perfect gifts.
During the earlier years of the colony the Kolosh were implacable
enemies. War parties of young men constantly haunted the islands of the
bay, lying in wait for any unwary hunter or fisherman from the fort.
Later, when they were settled under the walls of the fort they became
more tractable, for their homes and families were commanded by the guns
of the fortress, but on the least provocation the savagery in their
blood would boil, from their great tribal houses they issued forth,
faces blackened to the semblance of devils, war masks grinning, and the
howling mob shouted defiance at their neighbor over the stockade. Many a
bloody tragedy was enacted in the "Ranche" for their code was primitive,
"an eye for an eye," and a life for a life.
Feuds raged between the different totemic families. About 1853 a party
of Wrangell Indians (Stikines) visited Sitka, and while being
entertained in the guest-house were murdered and their bodies piled into
a canoe which was then paddled to Japonski Island. On striking the shore
it was so heavily laden with the bodies of the dead that tradition says
the canoe split from end to end. It is said that the bones of the dead
are still to be seen in the undergrowth along the shore. In retaliation,
about 1855, the Wrangell Kolosh made an attack on the Hot Springs
settlement, burned the buildings, stripped the inhabitants of property
and clothing and left them to make their way over the mountains around
the head of Silver Bay to Sitka, where they arrived more dead than alive
from hunger and exhaustion. This feud was not settled until 1918, when a
peace treaty was consummated between the kwans on Armistice Day, a
coincidence which is much made of by the tribesmen.
The Kolosh were as firm believers in witchcraft as any of the more
civilized nations. They resorted to their shamans (_ekhts_) or
medicine men in case of illness. If his weird incantations failed to
relieve the sufferer, his resort was that the victim was bewitched and
some poor unfortunate paid the penalty by enduring the most fiendish
torture.
One March day in 1855 a commotion arose in the Kolosh village. A sentry
caught an Indian who was stealing and punished him, for which the tribe
called for vengeance. Some rushed to the stockade and began to cut away
the palisades. Other forced their way into the Koloshian Church through
the outer door. From this vantage point they fired on the garrison and
in return the batteries of the fort blazed back with solid shot and
shrapnel. For two hours the fight continued, when the Kolosh gave up all
hope of success, and ceased the battle. The Russian loss in killed and
wounded was 20 men, while the Kolosh loss was estimated at 60. This was
the last attempt of the natives to destroy the Russian stronghold.
At times during the later days of the colony the Kolosh were employed as
seamen and as workers in the ice trade by the Russians and thus they
occupied a place in the industrial life. Etolin was the most successful
in conciliating them of any of the chief managers, and he at one time
held a fur fair at Sitka to which peltry was brought from far and near,
modeled somewhat upon the idea of the great fur mart of Nizhni Novgorod.
Most of them, however, hunted and fished, lived in their tribal houses,
carved their canoes, wove their baskets, and practiced their witchcraft,
while their civilized neighbors gathered the furs and built ships.
Under the walls of the fort, in the old tribal houses of the Kolosh
which had not been destroyed, lived the Aleuts. Properly speaking the
name belongs to the natives of the Aleutian Islands, but the term was
also applied to the natives of Kodiak Island and the surrounding islets.
These speak a different language from the true Aleuts, but otherwise
resemble them closely. During the hunting season they scoured the seas
in their skin bidarkas, in the pursuit of fur animals. In winter many of
them remained at Sitka instead of returning to their homes. Their time
was spent in idleness, spending the summer's earnings in the pleasures
and vices of the white man. One who saw them in their kazhims, as their
dwellings were often called, describes them: "Morally, the Aleut is not
bloodthirsty. He delights in simple rejoicings and will play you a game
of chess with walrus ivory pieces--a duck for a pawn and a penguin for a
king--with the greatest of good humor. Even when squabbles arrive the
argument is carried on in poetry to the accompaniment of dancing, and
one would be inclined to prefer the Aleut angry to the Aleut amiable,
did he not know he also dances when festive and when religious.
"Among them the social duty of visiting has its drawbacks. Several
families live together in the kazhims, and during one's visit they all
lie around in every conceivable posture, jolly and genial, naked and
unashamed. The fumes of the blubber oil lamps and stoves, the stores of
raw meat, the many naked bodies, well smeared with grease and scented
with primitive unguents, combine to make an atmosphere difficult to
tolerate and not easy to describe. Yet, if you will, you may enjoy the
warmest hospitality, and have heaped upon you the most assiduous
attentions."