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E
O
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN
ALASKA PICTURESQUE HISTORIC AND COMMERCIAL
GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 01769 0550 m
m GENEALOGY 979.8 D6870
NATIVE ALASKAN NEEDLEWOMAN.
Our northern Domain
ALASKA PICTURESQUE, HISTORIC AND COMMERCIAL
FULLY ILLUSTRATED
TOE
naco
INTER SFOL !! RUCTUS
BOSTON DANA ESTES & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1910 BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY All rights reserved
Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS: C.H.Simonds& Co., Boston, U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A FLOUTED GIFT . 9
II. THE DISCOVERY OF ALASKA 17 .
III. THE RISE OF THE RUSSIAN - AMERICAN COMPANY 24
IV. THE FOUNDING OF SITKA 36
V. DECLINE OF THE RUSSIAN - AMERICAN COMPANY 49
VI. ALASKA BECOMES UNITED STATES TERRITORY 55
VII. THE MAGIC WAND OF GOLD . 70
VIII. OUTSIDERS AND INSIDERS AT NOME 82
IX. THE VASTNESS OF ALASKA 91
x. THE NORTHWARD PASSAGE 100
XI. WRANGEL AND THE GLACIERS 106 XII. JUNEAU AND SKAGUAY 118
XIII. THE MIGHTY YUKON 129
XIV. REINDEER AND ESKIMOS 140
XV. ST. MICHAEL'S AND NOME
154
XVI. SEALS, SEA - LIONS AND WALRUS
160
XVII. SITKA 181
XVIII. A SOUND OF GLACIERS
199
XIX. SUMMERLAND 209
XX. ROSARY EMERALDS 217
XXI. A MOUNTAIN OF FIRE 225 XXII. OUR IMPERIAL DOMAIN
.
234
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
NATIVE ALASKAN NEEDLEWOMAN
Frontispiece
STREET SCENE, KETCHIKAN, ALASKA
11
LOOKING ACROSS THE HARBOR FROM SKAGWAY WHARVES
21
WINTER DRESS OF ALASKANS .
31
BLOCK HOUSE, SITKA . 42
PACK TRAIN IN BOX CANYON, SKAGWAY TRAIL
59
ESKIMO AND KAYAK IN THE SURF
78
LOOKING UP WHITE PASS SUMMIT 95
NATIVE ALASKAN IVORY WORKER . 114
NATIVE ALASKAN BOAT BUILDER 131
UNLOADING FREIGHT AT NOME 150
WILD RAPIDS ON A MOUNTAIN STREAM .
· 167
DAWSON, PANORAMIC VIEW 186
OLD RUSSIAN TRADING POST AT ALQANIK
203
A NEW CAMP AFTER A GOLD DISCOVERY
221
HYDRAULIC MINING IN ALASKA .
.
. 231
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
ALASKA.
-
CHAPTER I.
A FLOUTED GIFT.
T HE fairy-godmother, in the old folk-story, brings the new-born infant a crooked coin, even more than insignificant in appear- ance; but it has miraculous powers, and when put to the test, multiplies into a fortune. Aladdin's lamp had nothing in its external aspect to indicate that when rubbed it would summon the aid of the all-powerful Djinn to reveal unmeasured riches. Such a gift, at first despised and ridiculed, seemed to be the great land of Alaska, which, instead of consisting wholly of glaciers and icebergs, as was at first generally supposed from its situation in the far north, has proved to be an El Dorado of fabulous value.
It is rather amusing and instructive, in view of the stream of gold and other precious products, pouring in an ever-increasing volume from Alaska's horn of plenty, to recall some of the predictions and comments that were made, in the newspapers and in Congress, when the proposed purchase of this imperial domain from Russia was under discussion.
In the debate of July, 1868, the Hon. Hiram Price of Iowa, in the House of Representatives, after animadverting on the Hon. N. P. Banks's eloquent plea in favor of Alaska, said: -
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OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
" By a movement as quick and a change as sudden as ever was pro- duced by Aladdin's lamp, we were standing upon the margins of the inlets, bays, and water courses of Alaska. There the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out to me the fish with which these waters swarm; no sir, I beg pardon, not swarm; there is no room for them to swarm; they are piled up, fish upon fish, pile upon pile - solid columns of fish; no human arithmetic can compute their numbers. And, sir, such fish - shad, salmon, cod, - according to the description, a foot and over through the shoulders, with sides and tails to match. As I stood there, Mr. Chairman, listening to the gentleman from Mas- sachusetts, with fish to the right of me, fish to the left of me, fish all in front of me, rolling and tumbling, I had to acknowledge that the pic- ture as painted made Alaska a good country for fish." He declared that he was almost ready to embrace " the creations of this splendid fancy," until, on sober second thought, stripping it of the " trimming and tinselry in which his imagery had clothed it," there remained " noth- ing but a cold, forbidding, ghastly, grinning skeleton," from which he " turned with horror and disgust." From all that he could learn, Alaska was, in the language of an impartial historian, " very moun- tainous and volcanic, with a climate intensely cold, and a sterile soil." He ended by claiming that Russia ought to be allowed to remain in peaceable possession of Alaska in all her hideous proportions and native cheerlessness, with her icebergs, her volcanoes, her three hun- dred and sixty days in the year of clouds and storms, her harbors, streams, Indians, and fish.
Mr. Schenck of the House declared that he had never felt his imag- ination worked upon to the extent of according to the bargain that had been made, anything like the value which other gentlemen seemed to find in it. " Perhaps," he said, " if anything could reconcile my- self, or any man, to the acquisition of the Alaska territory, it might be found in the weather under which we are now suffering, and that probably is a more earnest argument in its favor than almost anything else I can find in my mind." That was July 14th, 1868.
SIDEBOARD
nHORSE SHOE THE'S TEOMAN
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STREET SCENE, KETCHIKAN, ALASKA.
13
A FLOUTED GIFT.
Mr. Williams of Pennsylvania called it " a miserable property." He went on, in a flow of sarcastic eloquence, which was amusing then, but almost pathetic now: " Never, indeed, in the annals of imposture, has anything been witnessed so reckless and audacious in the way of invention as the statements which have been manufactured to accom- plish this object. By a miracle as stupendous as that of Joshua when he held the sun spellbound on Gibeon and the moon in the Valley of Ajalon, the very laws of nature - the same to which the honorable Chairman so confidently refers - are not only suspended but over- turned at the bidding of the wizard Secretary. The pen of the mer- cenary scribe is enlisted to furnish material for the statesman. The Sybilline leaves of these oracular personages, this hireling priesthood of the press, descend in showers like the snowflakes that load the at- mosphere of this promised land. The icy barriers, before which even the giant power that had cleft its way through the snows of Siberia to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, were obliged to recoil, giving way at once. The frozen rivers bare their flowing bosoms to the embraces of a tropic sun, and the rugged and inaccessible mountains sink down incontinently into the verdant shore and the grassy plain. And young America, always susceptible, - yes, and very old America, too, listen and believe. Already they hear, or think they hear, the screams of the American eagle from the peak of St. Elias, and as their eyes are skilfully directed to the exiled banner of the Union drooping discon- solately from its staff amid the perpetual rains of Sitka, they respond to the stirring appeal by swearing on the altar of the god Terminus that it shall never go back, even though the elements in mutiny may wage eternal war around it and against it.
" Nay, even the grave Chairman, to whom the nation looks for wise and wary counsel, transported by the glowing vision, is rapt in ecstasy himself, and while challenging the wild fancy that peopled Unalaska's shore with wolves, finds a new El Dorado among the icebergs and volcanoes of this new Eden, before which the riches of ancient Ophir and the marvels of Cathay must fade. The poet, who has license
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OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
as the statesman has not, was true at least to the law of verisimilitude when he assigned to that savage beast a home in this new purchase for which he could imagine no other inhabitant. If he forgot that there are regions of the earth where even a wolf could not subsist and would disdain to live, he has atoned at least for the error of the naturalist in the glorious rhythm that blends so well the dismal howl of that animal with the sullen dash of the breakers upon that desolate shore. But what is there in the way of license here to compare with the inventive genius that has sown the gift of Ceres among the driving mist and the eternal snows, and with a marvellous alchemy, transmuted the sterile rock and the inaccessible glacier into the richest of metals and the most priceless of gems? .
" Rich as he is in elocution, the powers of language almost fail him in his endeavor to depict the varied and endless resources of the new acquisition. Without even the trouble of an exploration, he gives his hand and his faith implicitly to the voracious penny-a-liner, who guides him to the mount of vision and there unfolds to his wondering eyes the mysteries of this untrodden and enchanted land. He sees, not with the visual orb, but as Sancho saw his Mistress, by hearsay, in this chaos of rock and mountain and wintry flood, a boundless area of cultivable land that only awaits the surveyor and the plow to be thronged with settlers and to dimple into harvests; timber for con- struction and export, huge as the pines hewn on Norwegian hills, to make the mast of some great admiral, and as indestructible as the bodies of the unburied Eskimos found by the first explorers on its northernmost point, which laughed the worm to scorn and defied alike the tooth of time and of the polar bear; treasures of mineral wealth deep hid from mortal eyes, in beds of coal, and ores of iron, lead, copper, silver, and even gold, with probably platinum, and possibly diamonds; forests alive with fur-bearing animals just waiting to ornament the shoulders of some Atlantic belle; and fishes swarming upon the coast, until they are crowded out of their native element and compelled to pasture upon the strand."
15
A FLOUTED GIFT.
Mr. Williams, in his eloquence, came nearer to the truth than he dreamed.
On the other hand, Charles Sumner and William H. Seward, whose greatest claim to immortality lies in their advocacy of purchasing Alaska, clearly foresaw the possibilities that would open up in the exploration of the vast unknown regions, which, since their day, have a million times justified their perspicacity. Charles Sumner, who was not wholly in sympathy, nevertheless made a great speech, which, by its matter of fact tone and by its overwhelming array of facts, did much to turn the tide in favor of this speculation. Speaking of the discovery of gold in the mountains of the Stikine River, not far in the interior from Sitka, he said: - " Gold has been found, but not in sufficient quantities reasonably accessible. Nature for the present sets up ob- stacles; but failure in one place will be no discouragement in another, especially as there is reason to believe that the mountains here contain a continuation of those auriferous deposits which have become so famous farther south."
The peroration of his plea is well worth reading. After piling up his unanswerable arguments, based on a characteristically thorough examination of all the literature of research and discovery, he uttered these ringing words : - " As these extensive possessions, constituting a corner of the Continent, pass from the imperial Government of Rus- sia they will naturally receive a new name. They will be no longer Russian America. How shall they be called? Clearly, any name borrowed from classical history or from individual invention, will be little better than a misnomer or a nickname unworthy of such an occasion. Even if taken from our own history, it will be of doubtful taste. The name should come from the country itself. It should be indigenous, aboriginal, one of the autochthons of the soil. Happily, such a name exists, which is as proper in sound as in origin. It ap- pears from the report of Cook, the illustrious navigator, to whom I have so often referred, that the euphonious name now applied to the peninsula which is the continental link of the Aleutian chain, was
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OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
the rule word used originally by the native islanders when speaking of the American continent in general, which they knew perfectly well to be a great land. It only remains that, following these natives, whose places are now ours, we, too, should call this great land, Alaska. .. . Your best work and most important endowment will be the Republican Government, which, looking to a long future, you will organize with schools free to all, and with equal laws before which every citizen will stand erect in the consciousness of manhood. Here will be a motive power without which coal itself will be insufficient. Here will be a source of wealth more inexhaustible than any fisheries. Bestow such a government and you will bestow what is better than all you can receive, whether quintals of fish, sands of gold, choicest fur, or most beautiful wing."
Still more prophetic and eloquent were the orations of Gen. N. P. Banks in the House of Representatives, when he urged Congress to appropriate money to pay Russia for the ceded territory.
Yet as late as November, 1877, in an article entitled " Ten Years' Acquaintance with Alaska," Henry W. Elliott, an attaché of the Smith- sonian Institution, published in " Harper's Weekly " a pessimistic article regarding the resources of that country. Speaking of the Pur- chase arguments, he wrote: - " The great speech of Sumner in favor of the treaty, and which, in the universal ignorance of the subject prevailing in the American mind at the time it was delivered, was hailed as a masterly and truthful presentation of the case, is, in fact, as rich a burlesque upon the country as was Proctor Knott's ' Duluth.' Sumner, however, meant well, but he was easily deceived by the cunning advocates of the purchase."
The truth is that although Sumner made no mention of the mar- vellous concentration of the fur-bearing seals in the Bering Sea, his perspicacity was, in many of his predictions, more than justified. In a dozen different industries which have sprung up with the past decade, the returns have many times exceeded the petty price demanded by Russia for this noble Empire of the North.
CHAPTER II.
THE DISCOVERY OF ALASKA.
T WO causes led to the discovery of the region now called Alaska; the first was the search for the North-west passage, the second was the quest of fur-bearing animals. As early as 1648, the Russian Cossack navigator, Semyon Deshnef, hearing that a tribe far to the eastward on the Polar Ocean had plenty of ivory, sailed along the northern coast of Siberia, rounded Asia, and reached the Chukchi peninsula by the body of water now called Bering Strait. He was the first to discover the walrus in these waters. The first authentic men- tion of the American Continent was made by Peter I. Popof, who, in 1711, learned from the wild Chukchi Indians that beyond the islands off Siberia lay a great land with broad rivers and inhabited by people who had tusks growing out of their cheeks, and tails like dogs. This evidently referred to the labrets worn in the face, and the wolf or dog tails attached to their parkas behind.
The Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, interested in everything that concerned science and discovery, shortly before his death in 1725, wrote out instructions for his Chief Admiral, Count Feodor Apraksin, to cause to be built at Kamchatka, or some other convenient place, one or more decked vessels to explore the northerly coasts and endeavor to discover whether they were contiguous with America, submitting exact notes of whatever discoveries they should make. Vitus Bering, a Dane, who had shown capacity in the wars with Sweden, was ap- pointed to take charge of the expedition. After extreme hardships in crossing Siberia by land, he and his followers reached Kamchatka, and in boats there launched they sailed along the eastern coast of the penin- sula, and in 1728 discovered and named St. Lawrence Island. They
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OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
passed through Bering Strait and proved that America and Asia were separate countries.
The discovery of Alaska by an adventurer named Gvosdef, in 1731, stimulated to further explorations, and in 1733, Bering, under the patronage of the Empress Anna Ivanovna, the niece of Peter the Great, was once more commissioned to take charge of an expedition from Kamchatka. There were long and annoying delays, but at last, in September, 1740, Bering, in the ship " St. Peter," accompanied by the " St. Paul " under command of Lieutenant Chirikof, who had been with him in the first voyage, set sail. They were soon beset by winter, and established themselves at Avatcha, where they built a few houses and a church, naming the settlement after the two ships, Petropavlovsk. Early in the following June, they once more weighed anchor, but on the twentieth a gale separated the two ships. Chirikof's went to the eastward, and on the fifteenth of July sighted land. He sent ten men ashore, under command of Abraham Mikhailovich Dementief, a young nobleman, who, having been disappointed in love, had volunteered for this dangerous service. After they had been absent for five days, another boat was despatched with six men to look for the first party. Those left on the ship soon observed a black smoke rising above the point of land behind which the boats had disembarked.
The next morning, the anxious company on board were gladdened by the sight of what they thought were the two boats approaching. Their joy was turned to horror when it was seen that the two boats were filled with savages. These turned about at the sight of the ship, and shouting " Agai! Agai! " made for the shore. A gale blew up, and Chirikof was obliged to put out into the open sea. When the storm had subsided, he returned to his former anchorage, but had no means of reaching land. The fate of the missing men was never determined but it can be easily surmised. Chirikof, crippled as he was, was com- pelled to return to Kamchatka. His men suffered terrible hardships; their provisions and water were exhausted, all on board were ill with scurvy, and they lost altogether twenty-one men.
19
THE DISCOVERY OF ALASKA.
Bering, on the sixteenth of July, caught sight of the magnificent snow-clad mountain range, of which St. Elias, rising to a height of 18,000 feet above the sea, is the crown. George Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist, who accompanied the expedition and left an excel- lent account of what he saw, claimed to have discovered land on the day preceding, but his claim was ridiculed by his companions. A land- ing was made on what is now known as Kayak Island. After delaying several days, and finding a number of unoccupied huts built of logs and bark and thatched with coarse grasses, together with dried salmon, copper implements, and other indications of former occupancy, Bering, without attempting to proceed farther, turned about. On his voyage back, he discovered and named a number of the Aleutian Islands, where they found friendly natives, with whom they exchanged gifts. The name Aleutian is supposed to have been suggested by Cape Alintorsky in Siberia, which, according to native tradition, was continued into a chain of islands stretching away toward the east. The ships were buffeted by terrific tempests, and so many of the crew perished of illness and deprivations that the survivors had difficulty in navigating their ships back to the Asiatic coast. There they had the misfortune to be wrecked on a small island, which now bears the name of their famous commander. Here, on the eighth of December, in a hut so exposed to the elements that it hardly deserved to be called a shelter, Bering died of scurvy, after suffering unutterable agonies. His com- panions, after spending the winter in holes dug in the sand dunes and roofed with canvas, their only food sea-otters and seals, constructed a boat from the wreck of the " St. Peter," and managed to reach the mainland.
The result of the discoveries of Bering and Chirikof was that many expeditions were fitted out for fishing and hunting along the American coast. These traders were called " promui'shleniki," the word sig- nifying traders or adventurers. They pushed farther and farther east- ward. Such were Emelian Basof, who made four consecutive voyages; one of Bering's companions named Nevodchikof; and Aleksei Belaief,
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OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
who, in 1745, inveigled fifteen of the gentle Aleuts into a quarrel for the express purpose of killing them, maltreating their wives, and rob- bing them of their furs. Similar outrages were perpetrated by many others of these irresponsible and brutal adventurers. In 1759, a pro- mui'shleniki named Glottof discovered the large island of Umnak, and subsequently skirted the extensive group of islands including Una- laska. On account of the foxes abounding there, he called this archi- pelago, the Fox Islands. Glottof is reputed to have been the first to baptize the natives; he also furnished his government with the first Russian map of that region. Glottof reached the island of Kadiak in the autumn of 1762, and took up his quarters there for the winter. The natives, who had at first been very gentle and patient under the outrageous demands of the traders, had begun to rebel. They attacked Glottof's settlement, but were repulsed by the Russians; after that they kept aloof and refused to trade. Later in the winter, discovering that the invaders were weakened by disease, they renewed their at- tacks and almost exterminated them. Glottof escaped only with the greatest difficulty. The same year, a merchant, Druzhinin, arrived at Unalaska, with one hundred and fifty men, and was attacked by the natives, who, at a signal, arose and killed all of his followers but four, who happened to be absent, and were protected by a kindly Aleut.
The treatment of the natives by the adventurers hardly corresponded to the wishes of the Empress Catharine II., who, in expressing her satisfaction at the reported subjection of the six new Aleutian Islands by the Cossack Vasiutin and his followers, said in her ukase to the Governor of Siberia: - " You must urge the promui'shleniki to treat the natives with kindness, and to avoid all oppression or ill treatment of their new brethren." She also urged the governor to glean all possible information regarding the country. In response to this wish, the Admiralty College selected two captains, Krenitsin and Levashef, who sailed from Kamchatka in 1768, and attempted to make explora- tions and gather scientific details about the land and the people. But they had difficulty with the savages, and, after losing a third of their
LOOKING ACROSS THE HARBOR FROM SKAGWAY WHARVES.
23
THE DISCOVERY OF ALASKA.
forces through senrvy and the arrows of their enemies, they returned to Siberia. The profits of the trading and hunting expeditions were very great, and there are records of more than sixty such enterprises. The profits were generally divided equally between the owners of the vessels and the crews; each sailor had one share, and the navigator and commanders had two each. A tenth of the whole was exacted as a tax by the government.
The natives who fell into the hands of their oppressors were com- pelled to do the hunting and to turn over their booty, receiving as a reward a few cheap trinkets, or a bit of tobacco. They thus became practically slaves. The horrors of their condition form the dark back- ground of Alaskan history. The story of the revenge wreaked by the cruel Solovióf for the slaughter of such Russians as were killed by the natives, when they at last were goaded into rebellion, is only one chap- ter of this tale of violence.
CHAPTER III.
THE RISE OF THE RUSSIAN - AMERICAN COMPANY.
A CHANGE for the better occurred when the Siberian merchant, Grigor Ivánovitch Shelikhof, recognizing that the unwise treat- ment of the natives was causing a diminution of the fur-prod- ucts, formed a partnership with two other merchants, named Golikof, to " sail for the Alaskan land called America and for known and un- known islands, to carry on the fur trade and explorations, and to establish friendly intercourse with the natives."
Three galiots, bearing the extremely pious names of " Three Saints," " Archangel Michael," and " Simeon the Friend of God, and Anna the Prophetess," were fitted out at Okhotsk and set sail in August, 1783. Shelikhof and his wife, Natali, took part in the expedition. As usual, storms separated the vessels, but, after a year's separation, they brought up together in a harbor of the island of Kadiak. A native was found and treated so kindly by Shelikhof that he attached himself to the ship, and several times did great service in warning the Russians of hostile attacks. A large body of natives threatened to exterminate the Russians unless they immediately evacuated the island. Shelikhof tried to treat with them but his words had no effect, and a few nights later the natives made a desperate attack on the Russians, who were prepared for them, however, and, after a pitched battle, caused them to retreat. Shelikhof made up his mind that he must exterminate them before they secured reinforcements, and, with a picked band, sup- ported by two-pounder cannon, stormed their stronghold, which the natives supposed was impregnable. It was a desperate battle, but Shelikhof's superior skill won the victory. Many were either killed or drowned by leaping over the precipice into the sea. Those that
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