USA > Alaska > Alaska and the Klondike > Part 6
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In Alaska the administration of the laws is committed to three federal judges and the commissioners whom the judges appoint. The federal court issues all licenses, fran- chises and charters and collects all occupation taxes. The commissioners correspond to the justices of the peace in the States with the added functions of coroner, recorder and probate judge. Every settlement or village or mining district of importance where there are 200 or more men has a commissioner, who is practically the whole thing so far as the enforcement of law is concerned. These com- missioners are usually selected with great care and as a rule are a superior grade of men. It is important that they should be so selected, as appeal from them to the federal
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judge nearly always involves great expense for transporta- tion of principals and witnesses to the established places of holding court.
Rampart was full of litigants and attorneys and wit- nesses from Eagle and Circle City, from the upper Koyu-
Dog Power at Rampart
kuk and the Tanana and other places in the interior. Some criminal business was pending, a grand jury was em- panelled and the regular machinery of justice was set going the first day of the term. The presence of men of prominence from various places in the central and northern parts of the central judicial division afforded peculiar ad- vantages for gaining information about the resources of
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the country, the condition of the people, the efficiency of the administrative machinery and the prevailing sentiment as to what action on the part of Congress is desired by the people and would best promote the interests of the district.
A couple of young men on board a steamship sailing between Seattle and Skagway developed the idea that inas- much as they were going far from home and into a country where every man is supposed to look out for himself, cir- cumstances might arise where it would be a good thing to have friends, and that probably the best way to provide for such emergencies was to organise a fraternal and mutual benefit society. That was four years ago, or more. The result of this thought is a secret society known as the Arctic Brotherhood, of which there are camps in all the settlements and towns of any consequence in Alaska. There was a camp of the Arctic Brotherhood at Rampart. This fraternity has a building of its own there, containing a good-sized hall in which it holds its regular meetings and which serves as a public hall for the town and a sort of social centre. A feature of the hospitality extended to the senatorial party was a " smoker," the night before we left, at the A. B. hall. This social session was presided over by Judge Claypool, United States commissioner at Circle, who was in Rampart attending court. Claypool belongs to the prominent Indiana family of that name, and sus- tains the reputation of the family for intellectual clever- ness and capacity. The impromptu programme developed the existence of considerable talent for entertaining on the part of the citizens of Rampart. At this evening entertain-
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While Crossing the Arctic Circle
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ment it occurred to some member of the Arctic Brother- hood that it would be a capital idea to invite the members of the senatorial party to become honorary members of the fraternity. The senators expressed their appreciation of the compliment, and a meeting for the purposes of initiat- ing by special dispensation was called for II o'clock the next day.
Initiation into the Arctic Brotherhood, it can be stated without revealing any of the secrets or violating the solemn oath, is attended at times with experiences which the initiates are not likely soon to forget. While it was pro- posed to have a special dispensation for the senatorial party, applying the forms of regular initiation to some other candidates, one member of our party expressed an unwillingness to be made the object of special favours in the way of initiation and a preference for induction into the mysteries of the order in the regular way. The members of the camp were quite ready to take him at his word, and it is sufficient to say that the initiation was thorough and complete, to the great edification and entertainment of his fellow travellers. The victim was Will H. Brill, a newspaper man who had joined our company after we en- tered Alaska, and who has since taken several more degrees as a war correspondent with the Japanese army.
The Arctic Brotherhood is really an excellent organisa- tion, serving purposes substantially similar to those pro- moted by such organisations as the Knights of Pythias and the Odd Fellows. There is a camp at Seattle composed of Alaska men, and it was this body which provided a special
Drying Salmon on the Yukon
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entertainment for President Roosevelt when he was in that city two years ago, at which he took occasion to make the speech with regard to Alaska which attracted so much attention at the time. At this meeting of the Rampart camp notice was taken of President Roosevelt's extraor- dinary interest in Alaska and by action of the camp the President was invited to become and was duly elected as an honorary member of the brotherhood, and the senators were commissioned to convey to him formal notice of his election. The emblem of this society, worn by members, is a small bronze button in the form of a miner's pan with the letters A. B. at the top, and on the lower edge three small gold nuggets.
As it happened that all the senators were lawyers, it was also suggested that they ought to be members of the Alaska bar. They were accordingly invited to enrol them- selves among the legal fraternity of the district and having been brought before Judge Wickersham and having ex- hibited sufficient legal attainments and the proper qualifica- tions in all other respects, good moral character, etc., were duly admitted. Down at Sitka there is an institution of no little value historically and scientifically, known as the Sheldon Jackson museum. It is provided by law that all fees for admission to the bar shall be applied to the main- tenance of that institution, so that the Sitka museum, to which the senators paid a visit a month later, was enriched to the extent of $40 by this action, which also increased the membership of the bar of Alaska by adding four distin- guished names from the roll of the United States Senate.
Indian " Cache" at Rampart
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Rampart was an Indian village before it became an important station in the commercial system of the trans- portation and trading companies, and just across the mouth of the Little Minook is the Indian village of which William Pitgu is chief. Here is a collection of Indian cabins and on the racks in front are strung the red salmon which the Indians are drying and smoking for their winter supply. As previously stated, these Alaskan Indians ap- preciate the comforts of warm log houses in winter, but they almost invariably betake themselves to tents and wickiups in summer, or during the salmon season. In the house of William Pitgu, to which I was invited by the hospitable chief, and which in point of cleanliness and furnishings was very much the best Indian habitation seen in Alaska outside of Metlakahtla, I found his son and his son's wife sewing canvas and making a tent and the young man displayed quite as much skill in running a sewing machine as he had in the construction of the long- boat which carried me across the Minook to his father's village.
They say that in Alaska the worm never turns and then they rather tardily explain this departure from nature's law by the further statement that there are no worms. It is also capable of demonstration that the cellars in Alaska are never damp, but the course of reasoning is not quite the same. The fact is the Alaska cellar is built about five feet above ground. They call it a " cache," and pronounce it cash. It is to all appearances a little log cabin set up on poles, the entrance to which is by means of a ladder made
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Horns of Primeval Ox
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out of a notched log, and here, high above the reach of the dogs and other prowling animals, are stored the family supplies.
The white man, however, has not adhered strictly to the Indian custom, for the leading refreshment place of the village has a refrigerator for the preservation of fresh meats and other articles which are improved by a low temperature. Here, as everywhere else in Alaska, the frost never leaves the ground to a depth of more than two or three feet, and all that is necessary to provide an icebox is to dig to the depth of three or four feet where perishable food supplies may be kept in constant cold storage. A box is let down into the excavation where, surrounded by the perpetual ice, the temperature of a first-class refrigerator plant is constantly maintained. The use of such devices in hotels and domestic establishments furnishes an obvious answer to the query as to the desirability of being the ice- man in Alaska.
In numerous places in Alaska the enormous ivory tusks of the mastodon were met with. These remnants of the animal life of a past age are supposed to prove that at some time or other the earth has slipped upon its axis, changed the direction of its diurnal revolution and that what is now the Frigid Zone was once within the Torrid belt. Of late that theory has been combated by those who contend that the mastodon was not necessarily the denizen of a warm country and that the climate of the north has not necessarily changed. However that may be, all relics of prehistoric days are suggestive to the imagination and
Lodge of Arctic Brotherhood, Rampart
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no little interest was excited by the discovery on the roof of one of the Rampart cabins of a pair of enormous horns joined together by a portion of the skull of the animal to which they once belonged. These horns were found by some miners digging in the gravel of Little Minook creek not far from Rampart. They were embedded at a depth of twenty-two feet below the surface and were in a re- markable state of preservation. They measured three feet and ten inches at the widest spread and fifteen and a half inches in circumference. The tips curved inward something after the manner of buffalo horns, but the pair were much larger than the horns of the American bison. Colonel Timothy E. Wilcox, deputy surgeon general of the United States army, who first joined our party at Juneau, and subsequently fell in with us again at Eagle, and who was on a tour of inspection of the hospital service and sanitary condition of the Alaska military posts, obtained from the owner of these horns permission to forward them to the Smithsonian Institution, where they may now be seen. This was the most perfect pair of horns of this kind ever found in Alaska, so that this contribution to the Smith- sonian collection is no doubt a valuable one.
I believe the time will come when Alaska will produce its own dairy products, but the beginnings are certainly very small. One of them is at Rampart, where a daughter of the Scandinavian peninsula was found one day in a high state of excitement because one of her two red cows, the only two of the species for hundreds of miles in any direction, seemed about to choke to death on a potato.
Indian Graves at Anvik
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Happily she did not, but think what that would have meant to the dairymaid with milk at $ I a quart.
Rampart is the present terminus of the telegraph line which runs southward to the Tanana River, along the Tanana to the Yukon, down the Yukon to St. Michael. Of course a matter of great interest to us was the discovery of some way to continue our journey down the river. By means of this telegraph line we were able to arrange for the use of the army transport stationed at Fort Gibbon to carry us down to Nulato, where the Healy, a boat be- longing to the North American Transportation and Trad- ing company had orders to await our arrival. And so on the 23d of July we left our hospitable friends at Rampart on the transport Van Vliet, with a parting salute from the members of the Arctic Brotherhood, who lined up on shore and, as our boat swung out into the stream, gave with such striking fidelity of imitation the "malamute " yell that the " malamute " dogs themselves presently joined in the lugubrious wail. We were afloat again on the Yukon, with a reasonable assurance this time that our progress to the sea would not meet with serious interruption.
Shortly after midnight we arrived at the mouth of the Tanana River, seventy-five miles below Rampart, where to one end of the settlement occupied by one trad- ing company is given the name of Weare, while to the other, occupied by the other commercial company, is given the name of Tanana ; and between them lies a military post known as Fort Gibbon. Here was stationed a company of the Eighth Regiment, under Captain Gerhardt. A halt
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was made long enough to afford Colonel Wilcox an op- portunity to make his official inspection, long enough to inspect the buildings at the post and the garden of the commercial agent, and to enjoy a lunch set out by Mr. Windes, agent of the North American Trading and Trans- portation company, which would have done credit to any club or hotel in Minneapolis.
At Fort Gibbon stands a tall iron tower equipped with wireless telegraphic apparatus as a part of a system con- necting the line from Valdez to Eagle, from the point where it crosses the Tanana River, with the line down the river to St. Michael, from which point the wireless sys- tem is employed again to convey the messages across Nor- ton Sound to Nome. A cable was laid across that sound a year or two ago, but the ice ground it into small pieces in the spring, showing that a cable is impracticable there.
It was 10 o'clock the next night, July 24, when we over- hauled the Healy, Captain Holscher, at the Indian village of Nulato. The lower Yukon possesses less of interest, scenically, than the upper stretches of that great river, and yet the roll of its mighty flood onward towards the sea carries the traveller through many miles of interest- ing and picturesque country. The general characteristics of the landscape are lower mountain and hill elevations, smaller timber, with occasional ramparts of solid rock showing the effects of volcanic action and great disturb- ance of the earth's surface.
Late Saturday afternoon, July 24, we reached the vil- lage of Anvik, an Indian settlement at the mouth of the
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Anvik River. We had been told before going to Alaska that the trip down the Yukon could not be made comfort- ably without shields from the mosquitoes. No occa- sion to use them, however, had offered until this day, and none had been pro- vided. While some annoy- ance from mosquitoes was experienced on deck during the day, we were quite un- prepared for the attack made upon us as the gang- plank touched the shore at this Indian settlement.
A picturesque Indian graveyard had attracted at- tention as we swung around to the landing in the mouth of the Anvik River, and thither several members of the party had hastened. The graves were on a hill- side covered with rank grass A " Prominent Citizen " of Anvik and vines and shrubbery, out of which rose clouds of mosquitoes and small black gnats, almost blinding the eyes and making a stay of only a few minutes a most painful experience. A few pictures were obtained, but not
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without the shedding of blood, and great haste was made back to the shelter of the wire screens on the boat. The graveyard was, however, one of the most interesting seen in Alaska. It was remarkable for the number and variety of articles with which the graves were decorated. Nearly all were covered with small wooden structures closely re- sembling an ordinary chicken coop, on the top of which were painted rude but significant designs of animals and birds and fish, while the articles collected on these graves included guns, snowshoes, moccasins, masks, etc. A fa- vourite grave decoration was a big tin pan mounted bot- tom side up on a tall pole. While we marvel-and let me say that nobody stopped in that graveyard long enough to do any marvelling just then-that was all reserved till after we were safe behind the Healy's mosquito bars- while we marvel at the superstition which prompts the col- lection of these numerous articles on the graves of the dead we are reminded of the reply of the Chinaman to the ques- tion why he put rice on the grave of his friend-whether he thought he would come back to eat it-when he said: " Yeppy; all samee Melican man come back smellee posey." The propriety of it all depends upon the view- point. Anvik is the seat of an Episcopal mission conducted by Rev. Mr. Chapman, who has spent nine years here among these Indians, many of whom become very devout and reasonably consistent converts to Christianity.
It was 10 o'clock in the evening and cloudy, but not yet dark, when the Healy stuck her nose against the soft, muddy bank at Holy Cross, the largest and most success-
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ful of the Indian missions on the river. This institution is under the supervision of the Jesuits, of whom Father George de la Motte of Spokane is superior, assisted by members of the Sisterhood of St. Anne. Father Leopold Van Gorp is procurator in charge and associated with him is Father John Luchesi. Several brothers of the same order assist in the teaching and in the manual labour of the insti- tution, which is considerable, as there are under cultivation here twenty-five or thirty acres, producing fine crops of potatoes, beans, peas, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, turnips and other vegetables. This is the best demonstra- tion of Alaska's agricultural possibilities on the Yukon. There are about 150 Indians attached to the mission and while the mission buildings were substantial log structures, the grounds around them well kept and the situation pic- turesque, the conditions that prevailed in the little Indian village that lay almost in front of the mission, along the river bank, were in striking and pitiful contrast. Such squalor, such filth, such wretchedness suggested two re- flections with regard to this mission-one, viewing the matter from the standpoint of the village, of wonder that the influence of the mission had not produced a better state of things among the Indians, and the other of won- der, viewing the matter from the standpoint of the mission school, to which we were introduced, that so much had been accomplished by the fathers and the sisters out of the material which the village furnished.
The visit of the senatorial committee had been expected for more than a week and so eager were the children to see
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the senators that for several days they had kept watch by relays of the upper river from a high bluff above the settlement. When we arrived the children of the school were all in bed. They would be terribly disappointed if
An Afternoon Tea at Anvik
they did not see the visitors. Would we wait till they could be wakened and dressed and assembled in their school- room? Of course we would. From the priest's house we were presently conducted across the mission grounds to the Sisters' dormitory and school, another long, log build- ing banked with flowers in great variety and abundance and set on a well-kept lawn. The schoolroom had been prepared for the occasion, draped tastefully with red and
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white bunting and decorated with sentiments of welcome in letters of white and gilt. Here were assembled about twenty-five girls dressed in a neat school uniform and rang- ing in age from 6 to 16 years, and on the other side of the room as many boys comfortably clothed, and all taken together, a very presentable and intelligent-looking lot of children. The real surprise came, however, when they began to carry out the programme. There was a welcome song : " Home, Sweet Home," and " America," in which the peculiar and somewhat metallic, but not unpleasant, voices of the children carried the four parts to an accom- paniment on a small organ. There was a short address of welcome read by one of the larger boys and a response by Senator Dillingham. Then there were recitations by the smaller children that would have done credit to pupils of the same age in the Minneapolis schools. The grave and solemn dignity, the sober, serious earnestness which found expression in the demeanour and on the faces of these little Innuits and Tinnehs would have been amusing if it had not really commanded our respect. One might almost wonder if these children could laugh and shout and play and have fun as other children do, but another visitor who came at a more opportune time describes some of the pranks she witnessed which go to show that while the Indian child of Alaska, like the Indian of the States, is generally owl-like in his solemnity as long as white strangers are by, he is not at all lacking in the spirit of fun or the capacity to express it.
This school is conducted by Sister Mary Stephen, whose
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strength of character is proclaimed in her countenance, and Sister Mary Winifred, a woman of striking beauty and gentleness of manner, who, when asked how long she had been here among the Indians and how long she expects to stay, replies that she came nine years ago and that she
Holy Cross Mission Chapel
bought no return ticket. Sister Mary Stephen is asked to furnish a photograph of the school, but she has none and so the children are grouped outside the school build- ing, and those of us who have cameras take pictures of them which turn out fairly well, although it is now I I o'clock at night.
The mosquitoes here are nearly as ferocious as they were at Anvik and we are soon driven back again on board our boat in sheer defeat. There is no adequate oppor-
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tunity afforded here to learn much of the practical and permanent effects of the mental and religious training of these children, for they cannot always be kept in the school. But enough is gathered there and elsewhere to show that while the boys in most cases reap permanent benefits and live on a higher level than their parents did, some of them earning good wages as pilots on the river, and others securing other kinds of profitable employment, the problem of the girls is much more difficult as there is almost no future for them except in the village life of their own people, or the worse fate which the presence of white adventurers so often brings. The condition of the Alaska Indian and the obligation of our Government to him are interesting and pressing questions which must receive some consideration further on.
The first sign of the Russian occupation found on the Yukon came into view for a few minutes Sunday afternoon, July 26. It was the little Greek church at Andraefski. There is an old Russian mission at Ikogmute, a little farther up, but we pass it in the night without stopping. The little church at Andraefski with its pale blue and yellow towers and domes and crosses, a bit of Byzantine architecture set down on a grassy slope of a lonesome, treeless hillside, beside the rolling Yukon, with no other sign of human habitation in sight except a few Indian huts half a mile away, was a curious introduction to the lingering remnants of the work of Russia's Holy Synod. We do not stop, but are carried on toward the sea, where we find, all along the coast, frequent reminders of the great missionary zeal of
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the Greek Church and its stubborn persistence. And that was really as far as Russia's occupation went; her invasion of the interior of her American possessions seldom reached far from the seashore.
The morning of July 27 brought us to the mouth of the Yukon and the shores of Bering Sea, and we find that we have travelled the great artery of the north, from White
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Indian School at Holy Cross Mission
Horse to the ocean for a distance of nearly 2,000 miles. It appears, too, that when we shall have reached St. Michael, sixty miles from the mouth of the river, and the only harbour available for our river boat on that shore of Bering Sea, we shall have travelled 1,600 miles from Dawson.
VI PHASES OF LIFE ON BERING SEA
S EVENTY-FIVE miles from where the waters of the Yukon mingle with the restless tides of Bering Sea, they begin to stray out over the low, flat wastes that border that part of the sea known as Norton Sound. The banks drop low and the tawny floods of the Yukon delta spread farther and farther till, almost without knowing just where, the traveller emerges from the long channel of the great river, cut nearly 2,000 miles through the heart of Alaska, out into the waters of the western sea. The Yukon, like the ancient Nile in at least one particular, has seven mouths, the most southerly of which is ninety miles by sea-coast measurement from the most northerly. Boats from the upper river looking for a harbour must take this northern channel and make all haste, if, fortunately, they find the sea quiet enough for river craft, to St. Michael, sixty miles up the coast from the mouth of the northern outlet. It is a good deal like going to sea in a tub-this thing of venturing out on Norton Sound in a flat-bottomed river boat-and is never undertaken without some degree of trepidation even by the stout-hearted. There is always the serious consideration that Bering Sea can make trouble for river craft on short notice, and the steady progress which the boat makes running at full speed while Captain
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