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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 3 1761 00296964 0
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SIBERIA
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GENERAL MAP OF ALASKA
and the neighboring Coasts.
Engraved for the Presbyterian Bound of Publication by Theo.Leonhardt & Son, Phila.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
StLawrence IS
Boyd
Donecmak Atcha 00 Aleutian Island Conalashka) .000
HEcalMis. W.
AMONG THE ALASKANS
BY
JULIA McNAIR WRIGHT
AUTHOR OF " ALMOST A NUN," " THE COMPLETE HOME," " EARLY CHURCH OF BRITAIN," ETC., ETC.
LIBRARY
" Oh ! if the Lord himself takes hold of them, that is another thing."
PHILADELPHIA PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 1334 CHESTNUT STREET
2
COPYRIGHT, 1883, BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
3119 9/5/90
WESTCOTT & THOMSON, Stercotypers and Electrotypers, Philada.
140°
130
MT.STELIAIS
Chilcats
GO.
YAKUTATBAY
WILLARD
HAINES
Hoony anz
JUNEAU
BOYD
Talcotms
.STIKINERIVER
SITKA
FT. WRANCELL
+
KUSON OR ROBERTS PRINCEOF WALES ISLAND
~Hydahs
JACKSON
Tsunpseerns PORT SIMPSON METLA KATLA
MAP OF SOUTH EASTERN ALASKA .
QUEEN CHARLOTTE ALS,
MASSETT
BRITISH COLUMBIA
FT RUPERT+
130°
50
140 5
TAKOO RIVER
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST
9
CHAPTER II.
A STORY OF THE PAST
29
CHAPTER III.
A NEW VIEW OF AMERICAN CITIZENS .
52
CHAPTER IV.
THE ALASKA OF THE FUTURE
77
CHAPTER V.
BEHOLD! MORNING !
94
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHURCH AWAKES.
IIO
CHAPTER VII.
PROGRESS AT FORT WRANGELL. .
. 121
5
6
CONTENTS.
CIIAPTER VIII.
PAGE
THE MISSION AT SITKA . · 158
CHAPTER IX.
MODERN HEROES
198
CHAPTER X.
STANDARDS SET UP .
244
CHAPTER XI.
HOME-SCHOOLS IN ALASKA .. 263
CHAPTER XII.
BOATS AND SAW-MILLS. 283
CHAPTER XIII.
EDUCATION IN ALASKA . 298
CHAPTER XIV.
BURIAL-CUSTOMS OF THE ALASKANS. 309
CHAPTER XV.
INDIAN PROGRESS IN ALASKA 334
APPENDIX · 343
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MAP OF SOUTH-EASTERN ALASKA .
3
MOONLIGHT SCENE ON THE ARCTIC COAST
II
YUKON RIVER, AT THE RAMPARTS
15
RED LEGGINS, A CHIEF AT FORT YUKON IN 1867.
31
SITKA FROM THE SOUTH, IN 1867.
43
HERALD ISLAND, IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN
53
TOTEM-POLES, FORT WRANGELL
59
A CANOE-BURIAL
69
VILLAGE ON THE LOWER YUKON RIVER DURING THE FISHING-SEASON 85
FORT WRANGELL, ALASKA
123
SARAH DICKINSON, THE INTERPRETER
129
ALASKAN GIRL, TATTOOED
. 133
ALASKAN WOMAN: TATTOOING INDICATIVE OF HIGH RANK. 135 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AND MCFARLAND HOME, FORT
WRANGELL, ALASKA .
147
SITKA, ALASKA, FROM THE WEST
. 159
" BOY I, IN HOUSE NO. 38"
. 181
7
8
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGK
MISS AUSTIN AND A CLASS OF BOYS, " SHELDON JACKSON
INSTITUTE " 185
DORMITORY, " SHELDON JACKSON INSTITUTE SCHOOL" . . 189 DR. JACKSON TRAVELING WITH INDIANS . . 201 MISSION RESIDENCE AND SCHOOLHOUSE, HAINES, ALASKA. 209 KUTCHIN LODGE ON THE UPPER YUKON RIVER, ALASKA. 282 THE HARBOR OF SITKA, WITH OUTLYING ISLANDS .. . 285
LODGE-BURIAL. .311
INGALIK GRAVE . 317
INNUIT GRAVE. . 319
CANOE-BURIAL. 323
BURIAI .- BASKET FOR A BABY 325
ALASKAN CREMATION
331
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
CHAPTER I.
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
T HIRTY years ago what would have been the mental picture of Alaska that a pupil interested in the study of geography could have been able to fashion for himself from the information within his reach ? A meagre paragraph in print and a narrow space on the atlas represented nearly all his sources of information. A stray book of travels might have come within the reach of a reading youth, and have afforded some few starting-points for flights of the imagination as to those far- away regions.
The student thus circumstanced beheld Alaska as a peninsula on the north-west
9
IO
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
coast of North America-a peninsula be- longing to the empire of Russia, and one which, so far as he knew, might have been trimmed off the mainland with much advan- tage to the symmetry of the continent, and with small loss to creation in general.
From its relative space on the map, he estimated the area of Alaska to be less than that of Maine. It had a river-the Yukon -which to compare with the Hudson would be the same as comparing Mantua to great Rome. There was also a mount-St. Elias -not worthy to be named on the same day as Mount Washington ; a rambling coast- line, with certain forlorn islands obstructive to northern navigation. Over this lonely land the imaginative student saw the faint shining of Northern Lights upon fields of snow; glaciers chilled the air and rebuked the incursion of men; a few Indians with dog-sledges and skin canoes wandered hopeless as the unburied dead along the margin of the Styx. The other examples of animal life were a few reindeer, certain shaggy bears and unwieldy walruses resting on blocks of floating ice.
MOONLIGHT SCENE ON THE ARCTIC COAST.
13
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
With such a notion of Alaska, or "Rus- sian America," we who were children thirty years ago arrived at our majority. It was the outcropping of this idea that caused the land, at the time of its purchase, to be loudly called "Seward's Folly" and produced that outburst of newspaper con- demnation and sarcasm which drowned the magnificent echoes of Sumner's oration in favor of the purchase.
In all that storm of opprobrium Secre- tary Seward held unmoved his own con- viction of the wisdom of his act; but, with the far-reaching hope of the true states- man, he freely admitted : " It may take two generations to learn to appreciate the pur- chase." Less than one generation has passed, and public sentiment has heartily endorsed the act of the far-sighted public servant, and to the Church of God and its faithful missionaries does the old statesman owe this early vindication of his position. Two generations and more might have passed, and the people of the United States have still been left in ignorance of the enor- mous value of their new possession, had not
14
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
the Church-we may add, in this case, the Presbyterian Church-made known the magnificence of our purchase from Rus- sia.
The Church of God has ever been the conservator and the pioneer of true science and of discovery. No Stanley would have flung wide the doors of "the Dark Conti- nent" had not a Livingstone and a Moffat gone before. In a small work devoted strictly to Alaska it is not needful to mul- tiply examples of this asserted fact-exam- ples within the reach of every unbiased mind. Rather would we now estimate the flood of geographical and scientific light poured by the Church on Alaska, and that by the very simple means of laying the old idea upon the new, comparing the view of thirty years ago with the Alaska of to-day : then none were so poor as to do the land reverence; now its welfare and its possi- bilities are among the great interests of the times. For ten years the mist that brood- ed over our northernmost territory has been melting away. The process finds its description in the poet's picture :
YUKON RIVER, AT THE RAMPARTS.
17
A VISION IN THE NORTH -WEST.
" At noon to-day Over our cliffs a white mist lay unfurled, So thick one standing on their brink might say,
' Lo ! here doth end the world.'
" But deep, deep,
The subtle mist went floating; its descent Showed the world's end was steep.
" Then once again it sank : its day was done. Part rolled away, part vanished utterly, And, glimmering softly under the white sun, Behold ! a great white sea."
So, through the mists of ignorance and indifference, slowly emerges a portion of country hereafter to become, as Seward suggested, "many States."
At this hint the idea of area first arises in our comparison, and, lo! the tract that seemed as large as Maine, shows itself as large as all of the United States east of the Mississippi and north of Georgia and the Carolinas-in other words, one-sixth of the whole area of the United States, over half a million square miles. That river, the Yukon, that once showed so small, now appears navigable for nearly three thousand miles,* is seventy miles wide at its delta of
* Report of Robert Campbell of Hudson Bay Company, to Senator M. C. Butler, United States Senate.
2
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AMONG THE ALASKANS.
five mouths, and has tributaries from one to two hundred miles long. The Mississippi, with the Missouri, is four thousand three hundred miles long, and one hundred and fifty miles wide at the delta of three main mouths; the Amazon is three thousand seven hundred and fifty miles long, and one hundred and fifty miles wide at its delta of three main mouths ; the Nile is four thou- sand miles long, one hundred and fifty miles wide at its delta of five principal mouths. Nor is the Yukon the only river of Alaska : the Kuskokvim is almost six hundred miles long, and others vary from one hundred to two hundred and fifty miles.
Turning to the mountains of Alaska, we find Mount St. Elias towering up nineteen thousand five hundred feet, and Mount Cook lifts its peaks sixteen thousand feet above sea-level. In comparison with these lofty altitudes, how small does Mount Wash- ington seem at six thousand two hundred and thirty-four feet!
The coast-line of Alaska, we find, would girdle the globe; the area of its islands is more than thirty-one thousand square miles.
19
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
Given this physical frame of the penin- sula, and exploration and widely-spread in- formation now enable us to clothe it with forests and with grazing-lands, and to peo- ple its woods and its waters with animal life, whilst, in addition to this, the prescient eye discerns enormous mineral wealth hoarded under the soil and in the rocks.
To return again in our quest for infor- mation, we see this coast-line, its deep in- dentings representing an extent of twenty- five thousand miles. Is there any meaning in this-any advantage? Professor Guyot tells us that "it is a remarkable fact that deeply-indented and well-articulated conti- nents are, and have always been, the abode of the most highly-civilized nations. The unindented ones, shut up within themselves, and less accessible from without, have played no important part in the drama of the world's history. It should be remem- bered, however, that variety of contour is but the expression of a complicated inner structure, which, together with the climatic situation of the northern continents, has had a large share in this result."
20
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
That which the physical geographer would predicate from the conformation of the land is recognized as fact by those ac- quainted with the Alaskan population. Vin- cent Colyer, special Indian commissioner to Alaska, says, with reference to the more advanced natives of Southern Alaska: "I do not hesitate to say that if three-fourths of these Alaskan Indians were landed in New York as coming from Europe, they would be selected as among the most intelligent of the many worthy emigrants who daily arrive at that port." "They are a people mad after education," said an American sailor stationed at Sitka.
The mountain-range along the Alaskan coast is a continuation of that which be- gins in Mexico-a vast volcanic chain flung up as if for a barrier against the Pacific sea ; which chain, running along the Alas- kan peninsula, finally invades the ocean in a mighty loop of volcanic islands reaching almost to Kamtchatka. This series of Aleutian islands is flung out between America and Asia in the form of those rope-bridges which are still common in
4
21
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
South America. Who can tell if they have not in former ages served the same purpose and been the footpath whereby the children of the East found their dwellings in the West?
These mountains of Alaska have snow- capped peaks and forest-clothed sides ; down their deep ravines rush melted ice and snow to fill and deepen the channels of the rivers, and with the waters comes fresh soil for the wide intervales. These mountains are the great volcanic region of North America. Along the sharp penin- sula extending into Behring's Sea and upon the Aleutian islands sixty-one volcanoes have belched out smoke and ashes within the knowledge of white men, and ten are now in active operation. To be thankful for volcanoes is perhaps to have an insight of the moral uses of dark things; and yet how many of us have looked to Vesuvius as a major part of Italy and willingly, if wearily, climbed its steeps !
But it is evident that all the physical ad- vantages of a country will to a large extent fail of securing a population if the climate
22
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
is inveterately hostile to human life. What is the climate of Alaska ?
Far north as this land lies, it is, like Eng- land, rescued from the desolation of the Northland by an ocean-current. Sweep- ing from the warm islands of Asia, a gulf- stream twin to that which leaves our eastern border and blesses England swells in a bountiful flood against the southern coast of Alaska ; so that " the mean annual tem- perature of Sitka is the same as that of Georgia in winter. In summer it is the same as that of Michigan."
Of course a country extending through so many degrees of latitude must have va- rieties of temperature. Northern and Cen- tral Alaska have intense cold. In Central Alaska, after a very severe winter, comes a short summer, often of intense heat; but all that southern coast, extending for thou- sands of miles along bays and straits, and for some miles inland, has a remarkably salubrious climate, the mean annual tem- perature of the winter being that of Ken- tucky, as proved by notes made during forty-five winters past. It was observation
23
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
of this climate which caused Secretary Sew- ard to say in his speech at Sitka : " It must be a fastidious person who complains of a climate in which, while the eagle delights to soar, the humming-bird does not disdain to flutter. . . . I have lost myself in admira- tion of skies adorned with gold and sap- phire as richly as those reflected in the Mediterranean. . . Some men seek dis- tant climes for health, and some for pleas- ure: Alaska invites the former class by a climate singularly salubrious; the latter class, by scenery unrivaled in magnifi- cence." Those accustomed to the clear atmosphere and the marvelous skies of the Central, Southern and Western States- skies surpassing the famed heavens of Italy-no doubt find even Southern Alaska too misty, foggy and with too frequent rains for their taste; and yet those who have lived in London know that all these con- ditions prevail there without antagonizing the health or happiness of men or the prosperity of commerce.
This consideration of the climate of Alaska suggests a glance at its vegetable
24
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
productions. Once we dreamed of finding there only the lichen of the North, hidden . under beds of snow. Instead of this, we find illimitable forests so dense that the eye cannot penetrate their glades. Pine, hemlock and cedar, spruce, balsam-fir and cottonwood are here. Poplar attains such a size that the Indian shapes of its trunk a canoe capable of carrying sixty warriors. The birch, the larch and the cypress thrive here; and, as said Seward after personal observation, " no beam or pillar or spar or mast or plank is ever required in land or naval architecture, by any civilized state, greater in length or width than can be had from these trees, hewn and conveyed direct- ly to the coast by navigation." Under this towering mass of trees luxuriates a won- derful growth of shrubs, particularly of all varieties of berry-bearing bushes and vines. Fifteen kinds of berries and all varieties of currants are plentiful. Hun- dreds of barrels of cranberries go yearly to California.
But now emerge from the forest-land, from the mountain-sides and the canons,
25
A VISION IN THE NORTH-WEST.
from the black foot-hills, and go westward and northward, and you have a sea of grass -blue grass, blue joint and wood-meadow -which caused Mr. N. H. Dall of the Smith- sonian Institute to declare that here would be the dairy-land of California and one of the best hay- and cattle-lands of the United States. Over these uncultivated spaces a splendid growth of flowers mingles with the grass: white and gold are the favor- ite colors of Flora in this region.
Break up the earth that for ages has borne unchallenged this rank vegetation, and you can have a garden that will amply repay care. Cabbages-one of the plants in- digenous here-reach twenty-seven pounds' weight; potatoes thrive; cauliflower and celery do so well nowhere else. It may be broadly said that all root-vegetables flourish here, while the gourd, vetch and bean families are not apt to prosper. Pro- fessor Muir of California declared that, outside of the tropics, he had never seen vegetation ranker than in Alaska.
This abundant provision of herbage has made possible a teeming animal life. Fur.
.
26
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
bearing animals are plentiful; deer are so numerous that their flesh is little prized. The waters are full of life; salmon are abundant and of the best quality; the seal-fisheries of two small islands have paid to the United States government a rental of over three million dollars in nine years, being four per cent. on the purchase-money paid to Russia for the entire territory. Otter-skins bring from twenty to two hun- dred dollars each, and are plentiful; there are codfish here to supply the world when our Eastern fisheries fail.
But the territorial wealth does not con- sist alone in animal life. Minerals abound ; coal crops out everywhere ; petroleum floats on the lakes. Says Secretary Seward of a visit to the Chilcat River : "I found there not a single iron mountain, but a whole range of hills the very dust of which adhered to the magnet." The coal in this locality is remarkably impregnated with resin, mak- ing itunusually inflammable, and particularly suitable for the manufacture of iron. Cop- per abounds; gold is not wanting, and stamp-mills have been erected near Juneau
27
A VISION IN THE NORTH -WEST.
for the reduction of gold-ores. The mar- ble of Alaska is inexhaustible ; limestone abounds ; sulphur, bismuth, kaolin, fire-clay and gypsum are found, with the less valu- able of precious stones, as amethysts, agates, carnelian and garnet.
Yet, however a land may teem with wealth, it may be so deficient in means of outlet that its treasures are scarcely available. Is this the case with Alaska ? We recall what has been said of the coast- line. The variety of indenture of the coast depends on the mountains that form a ram- part, and on the rivers that break through them. These mountains, advancing their spurs into the sea, afford capes and prom- ontories, and deep water near the coast, while the outcome of the numberless rivers will open highways to the interior. The coast is lined with commodious harbors ; sites for manufacturing and commercial towns abound; navigable streams give means of conveying the enormous mineral, vegetable and peltry wealth of the interior to the sea, and so to our commercial centres.
28
AMONG THE ALASKANS.
Here, then, is a land, not too difficult of access, containing in itself material for food, fuel, lights, shelter and much of the clothing of men, abounding in sources of wealth- a land in climate suited to human life and human activity. The territory at which we scoffed as an unendurable waste of snow, a rocky desolation, promises to be a rich and noble portion of our wonderfully favored country. It waits for its inhabitants, for the alphabet and the ten commandments, for the Church, the common school and civil law.
Far in the north-west a door of vision has been flung wide open before our eyes ; across the leaping waters at the edge of the sunset, under the flaming of its daz- zling auroras, we gaze at it, rich beyond belief in what the good God has hoarded there for the youngest-born of the na- tions; and we see Russia and America courteously treating for it, and we recall that word : " All this did Ornan as a king give a king."
CHAPTER II.
A STORY OF THE PAST.
W HEN the year 1867 opened, the Russian drum-beat and the Greek church-bell woke the echoes more than half- way around the world. From the Bal- tic Sea, St. Petersburg and Novgorod ; across the Dnieper, the Volga and the Ural ; over the steppes and the Siberian wastes; along the Obe and the Yenesei and the Lena ; down the peninsula of Kamt- chatka and beyond Behring's Straits and Behring's Sea; into Alaska, up the Yukon and to the Mackenzie,-echoed the drum and pealed the bell. Then Bayard Taylor wrote :
" And may the thousand years to come- The future ages wise and free- Still see her flags and hear her drum Across the world from sea to sea."
The American part of her possessions Russia ceded to the United States in Octo-
29
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AMONG THE ALASKANS.
ber, 1867, for the sum of seven million two hundred thousand dollars. With the ter- ritory came into our hands Indian, creole and Russian inhabitants-of the last but few, of the first an aggregate of tribes given by the census of 1880 as thirty thousand. These tribes are classed by most writers under four divisions, marked by certain variations of tongue and customs, but not as indicating a remote different ancestry. William H. Seward, after visiting Alaska, says : "I have mingled freely with the mul- tifarious population-the Tongas, the Stick- eens, the Kakes, the Hydahs, the Sitkas, the Kootnoos and the Chilcats. Climate and other circumstances have indeed pro- duced some differences of manners and customs between the Aleuts, the Kolos- chians and the interior continental tribes, but all of them are manifestly of Mongol origin. Although they have preserved no common traditions,* all alike indulge in tastes, wear a physiognomy and are imbued with sentiments peculiarly noticed in China and Japan."
* They have Asian or Indo-European traditions.
-
RED LEGGINS, A CHIEF AT FORT YUKON IN 1867.
33
A STORY OF THE PAST.
Ethnologists include under the term Mongolidæ an immense number of Asiatic, Polynesian and American families .* The original seat of the Mongolian race was Central Asia, and thence, as water flows from the heights toward the sea, the sons of Mongol wandered into China, Siam, Ja- pan, Thibet, Burmah, Anam and other Asian territories. To the north of the Mongols, and related to them originally as brothers, were the Ugrian races, which swept along the Arctic Circle, across Siberia and out upon the Kamtchatkan peninsula. These Ugrians-nomad by nature-had drifted up and down over Asia and Europe, and could not be effectually shut up in Kamt- chatka and Siberia by a mere matter of sea- water. In frail kyacks or on floating ice they crossed Behring's Straits into Northern and Central Alaska, and, known as the Eskimo tribes, some of them have re- mained in Alaska and others have moved along the northern part of British America and into Greenland. Following the Ugri- ans down into Kamtchatka, the Mongols
* Latham, in Varieties of Man ; section " Mongolidæ."
3
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AMONG THE ALASKANS.
also followed them into America. They too had kyacks, and between the islands of the Aleutian chain the distances were but short. Possibly, in those remote ages, there were in that chain other volcanic islands that have now been submerged. The arrival of the Ugrian Eskimos in Greenland falls within the historic period .* They insensibly mingled with their Mon- golian brethren in Southern Alaska and in British Columbia, and this mingling we find in the Alaska tribes and families. Here, in Northern America, these Ugrians and Mongolst were cut off from other races, from the sources of their traditions and from civilization. The hyperborean tribes are slow and materialistic, and the entire absence of written character has greatly aided in their mental degradation; and yet no races have furnished a better com- mentary on the words of Paul : " Because that which may be known of God is mani- fest in them; for God showed it unto them. For the invisible things of God from the
* Prichard, Natural History of Man, vol. i. p. 222. + Appendix.
35
A STORY OF THE PAST.
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and God- head."
If it were possible for God to have per- ished out of any people's consciousness, if the early history of our race could have faded out of any minds, we should say that these northern tribes would be the ones to suffer such a loss. When we find . an idea of God, of human responsibility and destiny, retained in these minds, we acknowledge the indelible stamp of the Creator. This realization of God, of some infinite power in him and of an infinite in- dignation against them for their wicked- ness, is remarkably present in the minds of the Alaskan tribes. "The bad that is in them " haunts them terribly, and they take most extraordinary and painful means "to get the bad out." That death is in some mysterious fashion the punishment and the cure of sin they also feel assured.
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