USA > Alaska > Alaska, the great country > Part 27
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The Dora is not a fine steamship, but she is stanch, seaworthy, and comfortable ; and the islanders are as at- tached to her as though she were a thing of flesh and blood.
No steamer could have a twelve-hundred-mile route more fascinating than the one from Valdez to Unalaska.
It is intensely lovely. Behind the gray cliffs of the peninsula float the snow-peaks of the Aleutian Range. Here and there a volcano winds its own dark, fleecy tur- ban round its crest, or flings out a scarlet scarf of flame. There are glaciers sweeping everything before them ; bold headlands plunging out into the sea, where they pause with a sheer drop of thousands of feet; and flowery vales and dells. There are countless islands-some of them mere bits of green floating upon the blue.
At times a kind of divine blueness seems to swim over everything. Wherever one turns, the eye is rested and charmed with blue. Sea, shore, islands, atmosphere, and sky - all are blue. A mist of it rests upon the snow mountains and goes drifting down the straits. It is a warm, delicate, luscious blue. It is like the blue of frost-touched grapes when the prisoned wine shines through.
Sand Point, a trading post on Unga Island, is a wild and picturesque place. It impressed me chiefly, however, by the enormous size of its crabs and starfishes, which I saw in great numbers under the wharf. Rocks, timbers, and boards were incrusted with rosy-purple starfishes, some measuring three feet from the tip of one ray to the tip of the ray nearly opposite. Smaller ones were wedged in between the rays of the larger ones, so that frequently a piling from the wharf to the sandy bottom of the bay, which we could plainly see, would seem to be solid starfish.
As for the crabs -they were so large that they were positively startling. They were three and four feet from
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tip to tip; yet their movements, as they floated in the clear green water, were exceedingly graceful.
Sand Point has a wild, weird, and lonely look. It is just the place for the desperate murder that was committed in the house that stands alone across the bay, - a dull and neglected house with open windows and banging doors.
" Does no one live there ?" I asked the storekeeper's wife.
"Live there !" she repeated with a quick shudder. " No one could be hired at any price to live there."
The murdered man had purchased a young Aleutian girl, twelve years old, for ten dollars and some tobacco. When she grew older. he lived with her and called her his wife. He abused her shamefully. A Russian half-breed named Gerassenoff - the name fits the story - fell in love with the girl, loved her to desperation, and tried to persuade her to run away with him.
She dared not, for fear of the brutal white wretch who owned her, body and soul. Gerassenoff, seeing the cru- elties and abuse to which she was daily subjected, brooded upon his troubles until he became partially insane. He entered the house when the man was asleep and murdered him - foully, horribly, cold-bloodedly.
Gerassenoff is now serving a life-sentence in the govern- ment penitentiary on McNeil's Island; the man he mur- dered lies in an unmarked grave ; the girl - for the story has its touch of awful humor ! - the girl married another man within a twelvemonth.
There is a persistent invitation at Sand Point to the swim- mer. The temptation to sink down, down, through those translucent depths, and then to rise and float lazily with the jelly-fishes, is almost irresistible. There is a seductive, languorous charm in the slow curve of the waves, as though they reached soft arms and wet lips to caress. There are more beautiful waters along the Alaskan coast, but none in which the very spirit of the swimmer seemsso surely to dwell.
CHAPTER XXXVI
BELKOFFSKI ! There was something in the name that attracted my attention the first time I heard it ; and my interest increased with each mile that brought it nearer. It is situated on the green and sloping shores of Pavloff Bay, which rise gradually to hills of considerable height. Behind it smokes the active volcano, Mount Pavloff, with whose ashes the hills are in places gray, and whose fires frequently light the night with scarlet beauty.
The Dora anchored more than a mile from shore, and when the boat was lowered we joyfully made ready to de- scend. We were surprised that no one would go ashore with us. Important duties claimed the attention of officers and passengers ; yet they seemed interested in our prepa- rations.
" Won't you come ashore with us ? " we asked.
" No, I thank you," they all replied, as one.
" Have you ever been ashore here ?"
" Oh, yes, thank you."
" Isn't it interesting, then ? "
"Oh, very interesting, indeed."
" There is something in their manner that I do not like," I whispered to my companion. " What do you suppose is the matter with Belkoffski."
" Smallpox, perhaps," she whispered back.
" I don't care; I'm going."
" So am I."
" What kind of place is Belkoffski ?" I asked one of the sailors who rowed us ashore.
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He grinned until it seemed that he would never again be able to get his mouth shut.
"Jou vill see vot kind oof a blace it ees," he replied luminously.
" Is it not a nice place, then ? "
" Jou vill see."
We did see.
The tide was so low and the shore so rocky that we could not get within a hundred yards of any land. A sailor named " Nelse " volunteered to carry us on his back ; and as nothing better presented itself for our considera- tion, we promptly and joyfully went piek-a-back.
This was my most painful experience in Alaska. My father used to make stirrups of his hands; but as Nelse did not offer, diffidence kept me from requesting this added gallantry of him. It was well that I went first ; for after viewing my friend's progress shoreward, had I not already been upon the beach, I should never have landed at Belkoffski.
For many years Belkoffski was the centre of the sea- otter trade. This small animal, which has the most valu- able fur in the world, was found only along the rock shores of the Aliaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. The Shumagins and Sannak islands were the richest grounds. Sea-otter, furnishing the court fur of both Russia and China, were in such demand that they have been almost entirely exterminated - as the fur-bearing seal will soon be.
The fur of the sea-otter is extremely beautiful. It is thick and velvety, its rich brown under-fur being remark- able. The general color is a frosted, or silvery, purplish brown.
The sea-otter frequented the stormiest and most danger- ous shores, where they were found lying on the rocks, or sometimes floating, asleep, upon fronds of an immense
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kelp which was called " sea-otter's cabbage." The hunters would patiently lie in hiding for days, awaiting a favor- able opportunity to surround their game.
They were killed at first by ivory spears, which were deftly cast by natives. In later years they were captured in nets, clubbed brutally, or shot. They were excessively shy, and the difficulty and danger of securing them in- creased as their slaughter became more pitiless. Only natives were allowed to kill otter until 1878, when white men married to native women were permitted by the Sec- retary of the Treasury to consider themselves, and to be considered, natives, so far as hunting privileges were con- cerned.
The rarest and most valuable of otter are the deep-sea otter, which never go ashore, as do the " rock-hobbers," unless driven there by unusual storms. "Silver-tips " - deep-sea otter having a silvery tinge on the tips of the fur - bring the most fabulous prices.
The hunting of these scarce and precious animals calls for greater bravery, hardship, perilous hazard, and actual suffering than does the chase of any other fur-bearing animal. Pitiful, shameful, and loathsome though the slaughter of seals be, it is not attended by the exposure and the hourly peril which the otter hunter unflinchingly faces.
Sea-otter swim and sleep upon their backs, with their paws held over their eyes, like sleepy puppies, their bodies barely visible and their hind flippers sticking up out of the water.
The young are born sometimes at sea, but usually on kelp-beds ; and the mother swims, sleeps, and even suckles her young stretched at full length in the water upon her back. She carries her offspring upon her breast, held in her forearms, and has many humanly maternal ways with it, - fondling it, tossing it into the air and catching
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it, and even lulling it to sleep with a kind of purring lullaby.
Both the male and female are fond of their young, caring for it with every appearance of tenderness. In making dif- ficult landings, the male "hauls out" first and catches the young, which the mother tosses to him. Sometimes, when a baby is left alone for a few minutes, it is attacked by some water enemy and killed or turned over, when it invariably drowns. The mother, returning and finding it floating, dead, takes it in her arms and makes every at- tempt possible to bring it to life. Failing, she utters a wild cry of almost human grief and slides down into the sea, leaving it.
The otter hunters used to go out to sea in their bi- darkas, with bows, arrows, and harpoons ; several would go together, keeping two or three hundred yards apart and proceeding noiselessly. When one discovered an otter, he would hold his paddle straight up in the air, uttering a loud shout. Then all would paddle cautiously about, keeping a close watch for the otter, which cannot remain under water longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. When it came up, the native nearest its breathing place yelled and held up his paddle, startling it under the water again so suddenly that it could not draw a fair breath. In this manner they forced the poor thing to dive again and again, until it was exhausted and floated helplessly upon the water, when it was easily killed. Frequently two or three hours were required to tire an otter.
This picturesque method of hunting has given place to shooting and clubbing the otter to death as he lies asleep on the rocks. As they come ashore during the fiercest weather, the hunter must brave the most violent storms and perilous surfs to reach the otter's retreat in his frail, but beautiful, bidarka. With his gut kamelinka - thin and yellow as the "gold-beater's leaf "-tied tightly
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around his face, wrists, and the "man-hole " in which he sits or kneels, his bidarka may turn over and over in the sea without drowning him or shipping a drop of water - on his lucky days. But the unlucky day comes; an accident occurs; and a dark-eyed woman watches and waits on the green slopes of Belkoffski for the bidarka that does not come.
There were only women and children in the village of Belkoffski that June day. The men - with the exception of two or three old ones, who are always left, probably as male chaperons, at the village - were away, hunting.
The beach was alive, and very noisy, with little brown lads, half-bare, bright-eyed, and with faces that revealed much intelligence, kindness, and humor.
They clung to us, begging for pennies, which, to our very real regret, we had not thought to take with us. Candy did not go far, and dimes, even if we had been provided with them, would have too rapidly run into dollars.
Long-stemmed violets and dozens of other varieties of wild flowers covered the slopes. One little creek flowed down to the sea between banks that were of the solid blue of violets.
But the village itself ! With one of the prettiest natural locations in Alaska ; with singing rills and flowery slopes and a volcano burning splendidly behind it; with little clean-looking brown lads playing upon its sands, a Greek- Russian church in its centre, and a resident priest who ought to know that cleanliness is next to godliness - with all these blessings, if blessings they all be, Belkoffski is surely the most unclean place on this fair earth.
The filth, ignorance, and apparent degradation of these villagers were revolting in the extreme. Nauseous odors assailed us. They came out of the doors and windows ; they swam out of barns and empty sheds ; they oozed up
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out of the earth; they seemed, even, to sink upon us out of the blue sky. The sweetness and the freshness of green grass and blowing flowers, of dews and mists, of mountain and sea scented winds, are not sufficient to cleanse Belkoffski - the Caliban among towns.
An educated half-breed Aleutian woman, married to a white man, accompanied us ashore. She was on her way to Unalaska, and had been eager to land at Belkoffski, where she was born.
Her father had been a priest of the Greek-Russian church and her mother a native woman. She had told us much of the kind-heartedness and generosity of the villagers. Her heart was full of love and gratitude to them for their tenderness to her when her father, of blessed memory, had died.
" I have never had such friends since," she said. "They would do anything on earth for those in trouble, and give their own daily food, if necessary. I have never seen anything like it since. Education doesn't put that into our hearts. Such sympathy, such tenderness, such un- derstanding of grief and trouble !- and the kind of help that helps most."
If this be the real nature of these people, only the right influence is needed to lift them from their degradation. The larger children -the brown-limbed, joyous children down on the beach -looked clean, probably from spend- ing much time in the healing sea.
The people of the islands do not travel much, and our fellow-voyager had not been to Belkoffski since she was a little girl. For many years she had been living among white people, with all the comforts and cleanliness of a white woman. I watched hier narrowly as we went from house to house, looking for baskets.
We had told her we desired baskets, and she had offered to find some for us. After we saw the houses and the
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women, we would have touched a leper as readily as we would have touched one of the baskets that were brought out for our inspection ; but politeness kept us from ad- mitting to her our feeling.
As for her own courtesy and restraint, I have never seen them surpassed by any one. Shock upon shock must have been hers as we passed through that village of her child- hood and affection. She went into those noisome hovels without the faintest hesitation ; she breathed their atmos- phere without complaint ; she embraced the women with- out shrinking.
She knew perfectly why we did not buy the baskets ; but she received our excuses with every appearance of believing them to be sincere, and she offered us others with utmost dignity and with the manner of serving us, strangers, in a strange land.
If her delicacy was outraged by the scenes she wit- nessed, there was not the faintest trace of it visible in her manner. She made no excuses for the people, nor for their manner of living, nor for the village. Belkoffski had been her childhood's home, her father's field; its people had befriended her and had given her love and tenderness when she was in need; therefore, both were sacred and beyond criticism.
When we returned to the ship, she could not have failed to hear the jests and frank opinions of Belkoffski which were freely expressed among the passengers; but her grave, dark face gave no sign that she disapproved, or even that she heard.
A government cutter should be sent to Belkoffski with orders to clean it up, and to burn such portions as are past cleansing. So far as the Russian priest and the people in his charge are concerned, they would be benefited by less religion and more cleanliness.
Dr. Hutton, an army surgeon stationed at Fort Seward
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on Lynn Canal, and Judge Gunnison, of Juneau, have recently made an appeal to President Roosevelt for relief for diseased and suffering Indians of Alaska.
Tuberculosis and trachoma prevail among the many tribes and are increasing at an alarming rate, owing to the utter lack of sanitation in the villages. Alaskans trav- elling in the territory are thrown in constant contact with the Indians. They are encountered on steamers and trains, in stores and hotels. Owing to the pure air and the general healthfulness of the northern climate, Alaskans feel no real alarm over the conditions prevailing as yet ; but all feel that the time has arrived when the Indians should be cared for.
Everything purchased of an Indian should be at once fumigated - especially furs, blankets, baskets, and every article that has been handled by him or housed in one of his vile shacks.
The United States Grand Jury recently recommended that medical men be sent by the government to attend the disease-stricken creatures, and that a system of inspection and education along sanitary lines - with special stress laid upon domestic sanitation - should be established.
This system should be extended to the last island of the Aleutian Chain, and in the interior down the Yukon to Nome. The fur trade and the canneries depend largely upon the labor of Indians. The former industry could scarcely be made successful without them. The Indians ยท are rapidly becoming a " vanishing race " in the North, as elsewhere. For the vices that are to-day responsible for their unfortunate condition they are indebted to the white men who have kept them supplied with cheap whiskey ever since the advent of the first American traders who taught them, soon after the purchase of Alaska by the United States, to make " hootehenoo " of molasses, flour, dried apples, or rice, and hops. This highly intoxicating
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and degrading liquor was known also as molasses-rum. During the latter part of the seventies, six thousand five hundred and twenty-four gallons of molasses were de- livered at Sitka and Wrangell.
The loss of their help, however, is not so serious- being merely a commercial loss - as the danger to civilized people by coming in contact with these dreaded diseases. An Indian in Alaska whose eyes are not diseased is an exception, while the ravages of consumption are very frequently visible to the most careless observer. Both diseases are aggravated by such conditions as those exist- ing at Belkoffski. A physician should be stationed there for a few years at least, to teach these poor, kind-hearted people what the Russian priest has not taught them - the science of sanitation.
Bishop Rowe reports that if there were no missionaries to protect the Eskimo and Indians from unscrupulous white whiskey-traders, they would survive but a short time. When they can obtain cheap liquors they go on prolonged and licentious debauches, and are unable to provide for their actual physical needs for the long, hard winter. Their condition then becomes pitiable, and many die of hunger and privation. Prosecutions are made en- tirely by missionaries. One Episcopal missionary post is conducted by two young women, one of whom was for- merly a society woman of Los Angeles. The post is more than a thousand miles from Fairbanks, the nearest city, and one hundred and twenty-five miles from the nearest white settler. It is owing to the reports and the prosecu- tions of missionaries in all parts of Alaska that the out- rages formerly practised upon Eskimo women by licentious white traders are on the decrease.
Federal Commissioner of Education Brown advocates a compulsory school law for Alaska. He favors instruc- tion in modern methods of fishing and of curing fish ; in
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the care of all parts of walrus that are merchantable ; in the handling of wooden boats, the tanning and preparing of skins, in coal mining and the elements of agriculture.
In 1907 fifty-two native schools were maintained in Alaska, with two thousand five hundred children enrolled. Ten new school buildings have recently been constructed.
The reindeer service has been one of Alaska's grave scandals, but it has greatly improved during the past year.
The Eskimo, or Innuit, inhabit a broad belt of the coast line bordering on Behring Sea and the Arctic Ocean, as well as along the coast "to Westward" from Yakutat ; also the lower part of the Yukon.
Lieutenant Emmons, who is one of the highest authori- ties on the natives of Alaska and their customs, has fre- quently reported the deplorable condition of the Eskimo, and the prevalence of tuberculosis and other dread dis- eases among them.
In 1900 an epidemic of measles and la grippe devastated the Northwestern Coast. Out of a total population of three thousand natives about the mouth of the Kuskokwim, fully half died, without medical attendance or nursing, within a few months.
The hospitality and generous kindness of the Eskimo to those in need is proverbial. Ever since their subjection by the early Russians - to whom, also, they would doubt- less have shown kindness had they not been afraid of them - no shipwrecked mariner has sought their huts in vain. Often the entire crew of an abandoned vessel has been succored, clothed, and kept from starvation during a whole winter -the season when provisions are scarce and the Eskimo themselves scarcely know how to find the means of existence.
Along the islands, the rivers, and lakes, nature has provided them with food and clothing, if they were but educated to make the most of these blessings.
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But the vast country bordering the coast between the Kuskokwim and the Yukon, and extending inland a hun- dred and fifty miles, is low and swampy. This is the dreariest portion of Alaska. Tundra, swamps, and slug- gish rivers abound. There is no game, and the natives live on fish and seal. The winters are severe, the climate is cold and excessively moist. Food has often failed, and the old or helpless are called upon to go alone out upon the storm-swept tundra and yield their hard lives-bitter and cheerless at the best-that the young and strong may live. As late as 1901 Lieutenant Emmons reports that this system of unselfish and heart-breaking suicide was practised ; and it is probably still in vogue in isolated places when occasion demands.
This district is so poor and unprofitable that the pros- pector and the trader have so far passed it by; yet, by some means, the white man's worst diseases have been carried in to them.
These people are in dire need of schools, hospitals, medical treatment, and often simple food and clothing.
Farther north, on Seward Peninsula and along the lower Yukon, the natives who have mingled with the miners and traders could easily be taught to be not only self-supporting but of real value to the communities in which they live. They are intelligent, docile, easily di- rected, and eager to learn. Lieutenant Emmons found that everywhere they asked for schools, that their chil- dren, to whom they are most affectionately devoted, may learn to be " smart like the white man."
They are more humble, dependent, and trustful than the Indians, and could easily be influenced. But people do not go to Alaska to educate and care for diseased and loathsome natives, unless they are paid well for the mis- sion. So long as the natives obey the laws of the country, no one has authority over them. No one is interested in
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them, or has the time to spare in teaching them. The United States government should take care of these peo- ple. It should take measures to protect them from the death-dealing whiskey with which they are supplied; to provide them with schools, hospitals, medical care; it should supply them with reindeer and teach them to care for these animals.
Surely the government of the United States asks not to be informed more than once by such authorities as Lieu- tenant Emmons, Bishop Rowe, Judge Gunnison, Ex- Governor Brady, and Doctor Hutton that these most wretched beings on the outskirts of the world are begging for education, and that they are sorely in need of medical services.
The government schools in the territory of Alaska are supported by a portion of the license moneys levied on the various industries of the country. Alaska has an area of six hundred thousand square miles and an estimated native and half-breed population of twenty-five thousand; and for these people only fifty-two schools and as many poorly paid teachers !
When I have criticised the Russian Church because it has not taught these people cleanliness, I blush - remem- bering how my own government has failed them in needs as vital. And when I reflect upon the outrages perpe- trated upon them by my own fellow-countrymen - who have deprived them largely of their means of livelihood, robbed them, debauched them, ravished their women, and lured away their young girls - when I reflect upon these things, my face burns with shame that I should ever criticise any other people or any other government than my own.
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