USA > Alaska > Among the Alaskans > Part 10
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Mr. Stiles, in his first report of his school, mentions the need of books, maps. charts, slates, seeds of flowers and garden- vegetables, needles, thread and cloth, also a sewing-machine. Mrs. Stiles has a sew- ing class-a much-needed work at Hoonyah -and Mr. Stiles desires to instruct the men and lads in gardening. There is a trading-store at Boyd. On the Ist of
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March, 1882, a snowdrift extended all the way over the roof of this store, and the snow around the mission-house was fif- teen feet deep.
This station among the Hoonyahs- Boyd-suffers especially from the nomadic character of the tribe. So long as the Indians have no fixed means of support they must move from winter-quarters to spring, summer and autumn fishing-, berry- ing- and hunting-grounds. In the eight months of roving life they forget all that was learned in the four months of school- ing. This nomadic existence prevents the establishment of comfortable and de- cent domestic life, and lays them especial- ly open to temptations of drink, Sabbath- breaking and licentiousness.
Mr. Duncan, of the English mission at Metlahkatlah, found a solution of this difficulty by building a village and there opening industries for the Indians-trade, lumbering, agriculture. No doubt, if the United States Indian Department could give some aid in setting up a model indus- trial town at one of our stations, giving, as .
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was done in British Columbia, part of the price of the houses, a saw-mill and a trad- ing vessel, leaving the Indians to own shares in all, while the missionaries were reinforced by Christian teachers of mechan- ical arts, and the Indians were taught building, agriculture, weaving, shoemaking, and had a manufactory for their beautiful grass and bark baskets and mat-making, and for their carving, which products would meet ready sale in our large cities, and could be forwarded viâ San Francisco at moderate expense,-we should have in a few years, as at Metlahkatlah, not only an orderly Christian village, not only a self- supporting village, but a thriving and rich village, a centre of industry and an example to the whole Alaskan region. In fact, Christian mechanics and the teaching of the Indians agriculture and some kind of handiwork will be the grand means of transforming them from nomads to settled, increasing and improving tribes.
Another important piece of mission-work has been undertaken at Upper Takoo, among the mines and fisheries. Between
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Fort Wrangell and Haines is a small river called the Takoo, at whose upper fork is located an Indian village inhabited mostly in summer or early spring, when the fish are ascending all the streams in great numbers. Mrs. Dr. Corlies, writing of this river, says : "I feel confident that the scenery on the upper Takoo will equal in grandeur any in the world. It has snow- capped mountains, glistening glaciers and foaming cataracts."
In 1881, Dr. and Mrs. Corlies deter- mined to visit this fishing-village. The voyage was by canoe, and difficult because of the exceedingly swift current, which whirled the canoe about and tossed it from bank to bank. Timid women do not make good missionaries in Alaska. Sometimes all the passengers were landed on a sand- bank to walk while the canoe was carried. When the missionaries arrived at Takoo, the chiefs received them coldly. They said clearly that they kept slaves and loved hoochinoo, and they understood that gospel- teachers came to do away with these things. Dr. and Mrs. Corlies opened a school, and
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the young people asserted their right to attend. In a few weeks the pupils could read words of three and four letters and sing a number of hymns.
The weather at Takoo was at this time very hot, so the missionaries had morning school, and then evening school from six to ten, when twilight began. The woods were full of all kinds of ripe berries for food, and the fish were good and plenty. The young people proved apt and docile, and all came to Sabbath services, which were also joined by Indians, who came in canoes from other parts of the river. On Sabbath evening Dr. Corlies read the Bible to the gathered Indians, explaining its stories and precepts. The poor heathen were greedy for this reading; they sat in crowded circles long after dark while Dr. Corlies stood among them to read, and some Indian at his side would hold a candle close over the page.
As each week went by the effect of the teaching became more evident: there was less and less hoochinoo, better order, more knowledge, more eagerness to be taught
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And so in the forest-village the mission- aries were not without their reward.
In June, 1882, Mr. Corlies decided to remove to Juneau and there establish a permanent station. The place where this devoted, self-sustaining family of three have chosen to abide is twelve miles south of Juneau, where they live among the Takoo tribe, far from the face of any white per- son. This is heroism and self-sacrifice be- yond what most of us reach, and we trust that, as the Church is not called upon through its Board of Home Missions to contribute to the support of these mis- sionaries, liberal donations of mission-work material-as text-cards, pictures, easy books, Christmas-tree gifts, clothing for the chil- dren they gather in, and books and com- forts for the missionaries themselves in their isolation and in the long dark winter days-will be sent by individuals.
CHAPTER XI.
HOME-SCHOOLS IN ALASKA.
N O unalterable laws can be laid down for the conduct of our mission-fields. Each country opened to the entrance of the gospel has its especial difficulties and needs and calls for its own peculiar methods of work. The missionaries, as on the ground, and therefore better acquainted with the particular wants and opportunities, should, for the most part, be the judges of the ap- pliances demanded.
One prominent feature of the mission- work in Alaska is the home-school. This will be an increasingly important phase, and a large outlay will be demanded to place and keep these homes on a proper footing. We propose, therefore, to devote an entire chapter to the industrial home in Alaska. The homes required and estab-
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lished in Alaska are for both boys and girls.
The longest established and most suc- cessful work among any Alaskan Indian tribe is that maintained by Mr. Duncan, of the Church of England, begun at Fort Simpson in 1856, and removed to the mis- sion-village of Metlahkatlah in 1863. Early in his missionary life Mr. Duncan discov- ered that the Christian Indians, with their children, must be in a measure segregated from the pagans, and especially that the children and youth must be rescued from the contaminating influences of heathenism. before any effective work could be accom- plished. Mr. Duncan writes : "What is to become of the children and youth under instruction ... if they are permitted to slip away from us into the gulf of vice and misery that everywhere surrounds them? Then the fate of these tribes is sealed, and the labor and money already spent for their welfare might as well have been thrown away. The more thoughtful part of the Indians already see this, and are asking-yes, craving-a remedy. The
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head-chief is constantly urging this ques- tion upon me, and begs that steps may be taken which shall give the Indians that are inclined, and especially the children now being taught, a chance and a help to become what good people desire them to be. In the present state of affairs this is the only method in which real and per- manent good can be effected."
In pursuance of this plan for the rescue of the converts and youth, Mr. Duncan removed the Christian Indians to some distance from their heathen friends, and aided them to build a village in a spot fitted for gardening, fishing, commerce and hunting. Here the Sabbath was to be strictly observed; no strong drink was admitted ; simple and needful laws were to be promulgated and enforced. The result was a beautiful, orderly, self-supporting- even rich-village, a large ingathering of souls into the church, and one of the most wonderful examples given in modern times of the regenerating power of the gospel of Christ. And even in this Christian village Mr. Duncan found the home-school
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needful to train up a generation of youth entirely free from the degraded and supersti- tious fashions and feelings of their ancestors.
In fact, in every new field among these people the demand for an industrial home- school has confronted our missionaries, and that for the following reasons :
First .- The houses of the Indians are not fitted for any decency of home-life, nor for maintaining health. The houses are often without any partitions, and are inhabited by many Indians together, of all ages and both sexes. There is no possi- bility of securing modesty of demeanor, purity of thought or cleanliness of living in these circumstances. Polygamy of the most shameless type exists, and child-mar- riages are common, There is no need to expatiate on the moral degradation result- ing from twenty, thirty or more persons living in one room : the results would be evident even to an idiot.
But these houses are dangerous to health. They are not clean, they are not drained ; the fires are often in the centre and the the place is full of smoke, occasioning very
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general diseases of the eyes. The windows are frequently of some kind of parchment, so that ventilation is impossible; the crowd- ing and the bad air encourage strumous diseases, and by these especially the Indian tribes are decreasing. Unless something is done to stop the process of decay resulting from vitiated blood, these Indian races will disappear.
If missionaries spend their time and the funds of the Church laboring among gene- rations remitted to these disastrous home influences, the labor will be to a great degree thrown away. The Indians will be sickly, inert and short-lived, and it will be almost impossible to put in practice the truths taught, and even accepted. Imagine the endeavor of a youth to obey the ten commandments in an Indian house full of heathen. Idolatry, cruelty, revenge, mur- der, Sabbath-breaking, theft, profanity, un- cleanness and lying form the daily life of the whole establishment. To require the child to breathe this atmosphere while its own blood is full of the inherited tendencies of heathenism, and yet live in harmony
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with the law of God, is to demand the impossible.
Second .- Homes for girls are imperatively needed to rescue them from the cruel im- prisonment of months or years to which cus- tom makes them subject. This horrible or- deal gives them degraded ideas of their own status, destroys hopefulness, health and happiness, and often causes their premature death. We can only wonder that any survive it. Dall says that this imprison- ment has a most ruinous physical effect ; that the girls become weak and the women have a feeble, tottering gait very much in contrast with the vigorous, rapid step of the men.
Third .- Homes for boys are especially needed to rescue them from the influence of the shamans and to save them from shaman-training. Boys are early appren- ticed to the trade of witch-doctors-a life full of cruelty and extortion, and entered through the most horrible initiation. The neophyte is required to undergo cuttings and tortures ; to go naked, or nearly naked ; with his teeth to tear living dogs; to eat
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dog flesh and human flesh; to bite the flesh out of his friends and relatives; and to hold in his mouth portions of corpses.
Fourth .- Both boys and girls are trained as above to make them wise in witchcraft. Where not so tutored themselves, they see the pupils of the shamans going through their orgies, and are also open to their cruel and disfiguring attacks.
Fifth :- The young being more suscepti- ble to religious training, the missionaries secure many more youth than grown peo- ple for adherents. The older people are occupied in their work-hunting, fishing, trading-and have less time, as well as less inclination, to attend school ; while they are also, to a large degree, discouraged from attendance by finding it difficult to learn essons given. The men and women are by habit more rooted than the young in their old superstitions. Thus it falls out that in families where the older people are heathen of the most stubborn type the youth are pupils, and often very bright and docile pupils, of the mission. Their heathen friends, either actively or passively, are
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constantly antagonizing the instructions of the missionaries and filling the child's mind with the superstitions and vileness of paganism. The only way to clinch the religious teaching given in the school and to make civilization possible is to separate the youth from his demoralized family, else what is built up in school is torn down at home. Even in the public and private schools of our most civilized communities the ratio of the progress and the propriety of the pupils is in the ratio of the cultivation and the good discipline of their homes. How often a teacher says, "I could make something of that child if I had any home- training to fall back on"!
Sixth .- Another very weighty reason for the establishment of the home-school is to be found in the vice and degradation of the Indian mothers. Long centuries of cruelty and demoralization have eliminated the idea of virtue from the Indian mind. The Alas- kan women are outcast and brutalized. They have no notion of purity or of decency. It would be simply revolting to exhibit the tes- timony of Dall, of Surgeon White, of Mr.
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Crosby and of others conversant with facts. It is an old proverb, "As is the mother, so the daughter." With or without reason, the daughter of a vicious mother is looked on with suspicion. Our courts consider that the immoral character of a mother affords good and sufficient reason for removing her chil- dren from her custody. The daily exam- ple, the open teachings, the whole tone, of the heathen mothers are destructive of vir- tue in the child. Therefore, to secure a generation of virtuous men and women who shall be capable of training up their families in moral living, we must set apart the youth of the present day in schools where decency and integrity can be incul- cated, exhibited and enforced.
Seventh .- Again, we find the need of our home-school in the open and shameless sale of girls by their relatives, and in the fact that when young-even very young- girls are enticed away by wicked men, no reprobation follows the deed. We have seen Katy's mother trying to drag her off for sale.' The parents just as much expected to sell their daughters for a few blankets as
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they expected to sell their furs or their fish.
These young girls of Alaska have a right to protection ; and, since our government moves slowly in according it, the Church of God is doubly bound to go to their res- cue by providing homes for their refuge. The Alaskan girl will be kidnapped on the streets or sold by her relations, and the more mannerly, bright, cleanly and attract- ive she becomes through the influence of the school and Christian instruction, the more she is in danger. The one hope for her is a home where she can live safely, and where the teachers shall be kind and powerful guardians.
Eighth .- The prevalence of witchcraft notions in Alaska makes it needful to pro- vide homes to shelter the victims, who are often young children-even infants.
On the 8th of December, 1882, Shaaks heard at Fort Wrangell that a child was being starved as a witch. Accompanied by Mr. Young, he went to the house indi- cated, and found a sick woman in bed and a man by the fire. They denied all knowl-
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edge of the child; but Shaaks instituted a search, and found a very diminutive five- year-old child crowded under the bed and barricaded by pails and boxes. The accused baby was an orphan creole and so weak that she could not stand, her body bruised, her cheek blackened by a violent blow; she had been given only sea-water to drink, and no food for several days. A pitiful object indeed! The poor thing said the people called her " bad medicine," and she did not know what bad medicine was. Mr. Young carried her off, and at the nearest white man's house got her a piece of biscuit. Shaaks then took her to his house and fed her at judicious intervals during the night. The next day she was brought to the home, and Miss Dunbar washed and dressed her ; and, with her nice clothes and neatly- arranged hair, she was found to be an unusually bright and pretty child. The people who had abused her admitted their treatment, but maintained that she was a witch. At Mrs. McFarland's home this "witch " is one of the most loving, artless and obedient children, and learns rapidly.
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Again, Miss Dunbar was walking on the beach with some of the home-girls, when a canoe of fugitives landed and, hurrying to her, demanded help. It was a whole family condemned to die by torture for witchcraft. The shamans accuse the aged, the poor or the children. This family was composed of two old people, their daughter, her child and some others. The old woman was first murdered as a witch, but by night the aged man got the others into a canoe and set out for Fort Wrangell, where he had heard there was a home and some missionaries who protected people. The grandfather wanted the little girl received into the home, while he found refuge in the village with his family, The girl was at o as a pupil.
Another pitiful case brought before Mrs. McFarland was of Kooseetke, a child of a high-caste Stickeen family -- a family greatly given to whisky. In defiance of the customs officer, they went continually over those fatal steps-molasses, hoochinoo, drunken- ness, fights, murders, revenge. Pushed about by her drunken parents, Kooseetke
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got two bad falls, hopelessly injuring her spine and her chest. In 1879, during a hoochinoo uproar at the fishing-station, Kooseetke's father shot his wife before his child's eyes and towed her ghastly corpse down to Wrangell behind the canoe in which sat his eight-year-old daughter. When the horrible spectacle was seen from the shore, Kooseetke's married half-sister rushed to the water, and, snatching up the frantic little one, carried her to Mrs.McFar- land. Mrs. McFarland received her, real- izing that it must be only to let her die in peace. All that skill could do to relieve her physical infirmities was done; all that love could do to blot out terrible memories from that baby-mind and fill it with happy child-thoughts was done. Saddest and most patient of all the home-children, waking at night with wild shrieks, the echoes of her past alarms, her limbs be- coming slowly paralyzed, little Kooseetke drifted down to death. Standing by a window of the home during that unhappy February fight already described, this child of misfortune saw her father killed by one
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of her mother's relations, the avenger of blood. It was the last blow: within a week she died in nervous spasms. But she died happy, speaking of the Jesus whom she had learned to love, and of the heaven where God receives little children.
Ninth .- We also find our industrial homes needed to train the children and the youth in habits of order, industry, neatness and home-making that it is impossible for them to acquire at their own homes, even when their parents are among the converts to Christianity.
When an Indian woman renounces vice and heathenism and becomes a sincere follower of Christ, a great change indeed enters her home-life. She is more kind, more cleanly, more industrious ; she has forsaken her vices and strives to improve. But old people advance slowly in manner of daily living, and the improvement is further hindered by poverty. She has no means of setting a decent family meal ; her religion does not inspire her with a knowl- edge of sewing, breadmaking, house-clean- ing and laundry-work. She learns these
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things more slowly than a child would. If her children are to learn these "arts " and become habituated to the decencies of life, it must be in homes supervised by the missionaries and provided with means of instruction. Boys and girls in these homes learn cooking, washing, scrubbing-the general methods of housework. They are taught regularity and neatness. The girls learn to sew, to cut and to make clothes ; the boys garden, prepare fuel, and salt, smoke and dry food. As the homes im- prove in means the pupils will also learn shoemaking, tailoring and other work. They are and will be, in every sense of the words, industrial homes.
Tenth .- We must have these homes for both boys and girls to train up a generation suited to each other in habits of thought and manner of life. If only one-half of the In- dian family is civilized, the civilization of the future home is impossible. The lad cult- ured by the school-training will not be happy with a wife taken from the Indian ranche and versed only in Indian ways, nor will the girl instructed for several
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years in decent living want "a blanket Indian " for a husband. Already some who have been trained in these homes are setting up Christian families, which will be examples and springs of good to their tribes.
Eleventh .- Another need met by these homes is in the training of Indians for teachers and assistant missionaries to their own people. Even as interpreters, to be useful, they must be Christianized and en- lightened. Some have already gone from the Fort Wrangell school to this work- as Mrs. Dickinson and Tillie and Louie Paull, mentioned in our last chapter.
Twelfth .- These schools do not break family ties nor violate family feeling. They are the refuge of orphans, and are also the homes of those whose parents eagerly bring them to claim advantages which they them- selves never had. Even the heathen In- dians have shown a remarkable desire for the instruction and the rescue of their chil- dren. Again and again parents have come imploring that room may be made in the homes for their children, that they either
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may become " wise and strong " or may be saved from the superstitions and the witch- craft accusations of their heathen people.
Thirteenth .- Finally, in these schools we must create a public opinion. Even among Alaskans progress cannot stem the tide of public opinion. So long as drunkenness, revenge, murder-vice of all kinds-shall be considered neither wrong nor disgrace- ful, but even praiseworthy, so long these vices will abound. A generation must be educated which will look at morals in a right light-a generation which shall be virtuous, temperate, cleanly, industrious ; a generation, in short, permeated with the alphabet and the ten commandments. And such a generation, as in the above points has been conclusively shown, can be se- cured only in the training of our industrial home-schools. Wrangell, Sitka and Haines have now such homes assured. The Church must be faithful, courageous, hearty in giving, that at each of our stations a home may be set up as a part of the indispensable work of the mission. We must plant the teach- er's house, the church, the school-building
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and the industrial home at every station as our declaration that we mean to carry this work thoroughly and wisely to its com- pletion.
The Alaskan tribes are not large: they have been wasting away under whisky and vice. Given the gospel, we trust they may increase, and no longer diminish. As a general thing, each tribe needs its mission, and each mission needs its home capable of accommodating from twenty-five to fifty pupils, or in some tribes as many as a hundred. Trades and agriculture and housework and sewing must be taught, and, though our missionaries are doubt- less very gifted people, I see no reason to suppose that they are of such a sur- prising quality that they can teach in all these branches without materials or im- plements. Theoretical carpentry will fall wearily on Indian ears; they must have saws and hammers and planes and nails and lumber. Let us be done with " bricks without straw" in our missions.
And here-as we do not intend to get out books as yearly bulletins of our mis-
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sions-let it be added that the time is coming when another school, of another class, must be provided, and liberally pro- vided, in the most eligible locality to be found in Alaska-a school for white chil- dren. Already in our mission families there are children whom it will be equally inadvisable to keep among the heathen at the stations or send thousands of miles from their parents whilst between the ages of eight and sixteen. There are also trad- ers' families, government officials and other white people of good standing and refine- ment, who are finding homes for a longer or shorter time in Alaska. To accommo- date the children of such households, the Church, if she lives up to the measure of her duty and her opportunity, will within a few years provide a well-appointed school, well furnished, well supplied with apparatus, well taught.
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