USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 14
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be laid directly south ; so much so, that for once we express our surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart and calls us to the table. A moment's inspection shows the wisdom of the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour to clear the path of our progress from all dan- ger, we will give the reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter, which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.
CHAPTER VII.
THE QUEST OF THE OTTER.
Searching for the Otter. - Exposure and Danger in Hunting Sea-otters .- The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the Captor. - Altasov and his Band of Cruel Cossacks. - Feverish Energy of the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders .- Their Shameful Excesses .-- Greed for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Ex- plore the Entire Alaskan Coast, 1760-1780 .- Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they were First Discovered in Alaska .- Their Partial Extermina- tion in 1836-40 .- More Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the Twenty Years Preceding .- What is an Otter ?- A Description of its Strange Life .- Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500 .- The Typical Sea- otter Hunter .- A Description of Him and his Family .- Hunting the Sea- otter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Alentians .- Gloomy, Storm- beaten Haunts of the Otter .- Saanak, the Grand Rendezvons of the Hunters .- The "Surround " of the Otter .- "Clubbing" the Otter .- "Netting " the Otter .- " Surf-shooting " Them.
LITTLE does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new sealskin sacque, that the quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme dar- ing, and does to-day-that the possession of the the sea-otter's coat calls for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur- bearing or economic animal known to savage or civilized man. No wonder that it is costly ; what abundant reason that it should be rare !
The rugged, storm-beaten resorts of the sea-otter, its wariness and cunning, and the almost incredible fortitude and patience, skill and bravery, of its semi-civilized captor, have so impressed the writer that he feels constrained to rearrange his notes and touch up his field-sketches made upon the subject-matter of this chapter sev- eral years ago, while cruising in Alaskan waters, so that he may give to the readers of this work the first full or fair idea of the topic ever put into type and engraving.
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Feodor Altasov, with a band of Russian Cossacks* and Tartar " promishlyniks," were the pioneers of civilized exploration in East- ern Siberia, and finally arrived at the head of the great Kamchatkan Peninsula, toward the end of the seventeenth century. Here they found, first of all their race, the rare, and to them the exceedingly valuable, fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing this pelage then was abundant on that coast, and not prized above the seals and sea- lions by the natives who displayed their peltries to the ardent Rus- sians, and who in barter asked little or nothing extra from the white men in return. The feverish eagerness of the Slavonians, quickly displayed, to secure these choice skins, so excited the natives as to result very soon in the practical extirpation of the " kahlan," as they termed it, from the entire region of the Kamschadales. The greedy fur-hunters then rifled graves and stripped the living of every scrap of the precious object of their search, and, for the time being, searched in vain for other haunts of the otter.
Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering's second voy- age of exploration and Tseherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian and Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans or the Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty re- sources at the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude wooden shallops and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tem- pestuous seas to the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. In this manner and by this impulse the discovery of the Aleutian Islands and the mainland of Alaska was fully determined, between 1745 and 1763. In this enterprise some twenty-five or thirty differ- ent individuals and companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels and hundreds of men, were engaged ; and so thorough and energetic
* The Cossacks who came with Altasov were rough-looking fellows of small size, lean and wiry, with large, thin-lipped mouths and very dark skins. Most of them were the offspring of Creole Russian Tartars and women from the native tribes of Siberia. They were filthy in their habits. Naturally cruel, they placed no restraint upon their actions when facing the docile Aleutes, and indulged in beastly excesses at frequent intervals. The custom of the Cossack hunters after establishing on an island, was to divide the command into small parties, each of which was stationed in or close by a native settlement. The chief or head Aleut was induced by presents to assist in compelling and urging his people to hunt. When they returned, their catch was taken and a few trifling presents made, such as beads and tobacco- leaf.
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were they in their search and stimulated capture of the coveted animal, that, along by the period of 1772-74, the catch of this un- happy beast had dwindled down from thousands and tens of thou- sands at first, to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. When the Russian traders opened up the Aleutian Islands they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, which they willingly parted with at first for trifles, not placing any especial value upon the otter, as they did upon the bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which were vastly more palatable to them and serviceable. But the fierce competition and raised bidding of the greedy traders soon fired the savages into hot and incessant hunting. During the first decade or two of pursuit the numbers of these animals taken all along the Aleutian chain and down the entire northwest coast as far as Oregon, were so great that they appear fabulous in comparison with the exhibit made now .*
The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and startling diminution set in ; so much so, that it soon became diffi- cult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska came into our possession, the Russians were taking between four and five hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and South of the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and fifty more from Cook's Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkan district, the Hudson Bay traders and others getting some two hundred more from the coasts of Queen Charlotte's and Vancouver's Islands, and Gray's Harbor, Washington Territory.
Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred skins taken as above specified, our traders have secured more than four thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of a proportionate increase of sea-otters-that is not evident-but it is due to the keen competition of our people, who have reanimated the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the
* In 1804 Baranov (the Colonial Governor) went from Sitka to the Okotsk with fifteen thousand sea-otter skins, that were worth as much then as they are now, viz., fully $1,000,000. Last year the returns from Alaska and the north- west coast scarcely foot up four thousand skins; but they yielded at least $200,000 directly to the native hunters, being ten times better pay than they ever brought under Russian rule to these people.
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style of Baranov's bateaux. As matters are now conducted, the hunting-parties do not let the sea-otter have a day's rest during the whole year : parties relieve each other in orderly, steady succession, and a continual warfare is maintained. Stimulated by our people, this persistence is rendered still more deadly to the kahlan by the use of rifles of our best make, which, in the hands of the young and ambitious natives, in spite of the warnings of their old sires, must result in the virtual extermination of that marine beast .*
This is the more important because all the world's supply comes from the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled to live beyond simple barbarism ; its chase and the proceeds of its capture furnish the only employment offered by their country, and the revenue by which they can feed and clothe themselves as they do, and, by so doing, appear to all intents and purposes much superior to their Indian neighbors of Southeast- ern Alaska, or their Eskimo cousins of Bering Sea.
The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another striking illustration of an animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world, yet respecting the life and habits of which nothing definite has been ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvious, for, save the natives who hunt them, no one properly qualified to write has ever had an opportunity of observing the Enhydra so as to study it in a state of nature, inasmuch as of all the shy, sensitive beasts upon the capture of which man sets any value whatever, this creature is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain ; and, also, like the fur-seal, it possesses, to us, the enhancing value
* It is a fact, coincident with the diminution of the sea-otter life under the pressure of Russian greed, that the population of the Alentian Islands fell off at the same time and in the same ratio. The Slavonians regarded the lives of these people as they did those of dogs, and treated them accordingly. They impressed and took, under Baranov's orders, in 1790-1806, and his subordinates, hunting-parties of five hundred to one thousand picked Aleutes, eleven or twelve hundred miles to the eastward from their homes at Oonalashka, Oom- nak, Akoon, and Akootan. This terrible sea-journey was made by these natives in skin " baidars" and bidarkies, traversing one of the wildest and roughest of coasts. They were used not only for the drudgery of otter-hunting in Cook's Inlet and the Sitkan archipelago, but forced to fight the Koloshians and other savages all the way up and down those inhospitable coasts. That soon destroyed them-very few ever got back to the Aleutian Islands alive.
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THE QUEST OF THE OTTER.
and charm of being principally confined in its geographical distri- bution to our own shores of the Northwest. A truthful account of the strange, vigilant life of the sea-otter, and the hardships and the perils of its human hunters, would surpass, if we could give it all, the novelty and the interest of a most weird and attractive work of fiction.
The sea-otter is widely removed from close relationship to our common land-otter. Unlike this latter example, it seldom visits the shore, and then only when the weather is abnormally stormy at sea. Instead of being a fish-eater, like Lutra canadensis, it feeds almost wholly upon clams, crabs, mussels, and echinoderms, or " sea- urchins," as might be inferred from its peculiar flat molars of den-
The Kahlan or Sea-otter.
tition. It is, when adult, an animal that will measure from three and a half to four and a half feet in length from nose to root of its short, stumpy tail. The general contour of the body is strongly suggestive of the beaver, but the globose shape and savage expres- sion of the creature's head are peculiar to it alone. The small, black, snaky eyes gleam with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled ; the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. This pelt, when removed in skinning, is cut only at the posteriors, and the body is drawn forth, turning the skin inside out, and in that shape it is partially stretched, air-dried, and is so lengthened by this process that it gives the erroneous impres- sion of having been taken from an animal the frame of which was
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
at least six feet in length, with the proportionate girth and shape of a mink or weasel.
There is no sexual dissimilarity in color or size, and both male and female manifest the same intense shyness and aversion to man, coupled with the greatest solicitude for their young, which they bring into existence at all seasons of the year, for the natives capt- ure young pups in every calendar month. As the hunters never have found the mothers and their offspring on the rocks or beaches, they affirm that the birth of a sea-otter takes place on the numer- ous floating kelp-beds which cover large areas of the ocean south of the Aleutian chain and off the entire expanse of the northwest coast. Here, literally " rocked in the cradle of the deep," the young kahlan is brought forth and speedily inured to the fury of fierce winds and combing seas. Upon these algoid rafts the Aleutes often surprise them sporting one with the other, for they are said to be very playful, and one old hunter told the writer that he had watched a sea-otter for half an hour as it lay upon its back in the rollers and tossed a bit of sea-weed up into the air from paw to paw, ap- parently taking great delight in catching it before it fell into the water.
The sea-otter mother clasps her young to her breast between her fore-paws, and stretches herself at full length on her back in the ocean when she desires to sleep, and she suckles it also in this po- sition. The pup cannot live without its mother, though frequent attempts have been made by hunters to raise them, for the lit- tle animals are very often captured alive and wholly uninjured ; but, like some other animals, they seem to be so deeply imbued with fear or dislike of man that they invariably die of self-imposed starvation. The enhydra is not polygamous, and it is seldom, in- deed, that the natives, when out in search of it, ever see more than one animal at a time. The flesh is very unpalatable, highly charged with a rank taste and odor. A single pup is born, as the rule, about fifteen inches in length and provided with a natal coat of coarse, brownish, grizzled hair and fur, the head and nape being rather brindled, and the nose and cheeks whitish-gray, with the roots of the hair everywhere much darker next to the skin. From this poor condition of fur at birth the otter gradually improves as it grows older, shading darker, finer, thicker, and longer by the time they are two years of age. Then they rapidly pass into prime skins of the most lustrous softness and ebony shimmering, though the creat-
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ure is not full-grown until it has passed its fourth season. The rufous-white nose and mustache of the pup are not changed in the pelage of the adult, but remain constant through life. The whis- kers are short, white, and fine. So much for the biology of the sea-otter. Now we turn to the still more interesting one of its captors.
The typical hunter is an Aleutian Islander or a native of Kadiak. He is not a large man-rather below our standard-say five feet five or six inches in stature. There are notable exceptions to this rule, for some of them are over six feet, while others are veritable dwarfs-resemble gnomes more than anybody else. He wears the peculiar expression of a Japanese more than any other. His hair is long, coarse, and black; face is broad ; high, prominent cheek bones, with an insignificant flattened nose; the eyes are small, black, and set wide in his head under faintly marked eye- brows, just a faint suggestion of Mongolian obliquity ; the lips are full, the mouth large, and the lower jaw square and prognathous ; the ears are small, likewise his feet and hands ; his skin in youth is often quite fair, with a faint flush in the cheeks, but soon weathers into a yellowisli-brown that again seams into deep flabby wrinkles with middle and old age. He has a full, even set of good teeth, while his body, as might be inferred from his habit of living so much of his life in the cramped " bidarka "* or skin boat, is well developed in the chest and arms, but decidedly sprung at the knees, and he is slightly unsteady in his pigeon-toed gait.
The mate of this hunter was when young a very good-looking young woman, who never could honestly be called handsome, yet she was then and is now very far from being hideous or repulsive.
* The " bidarka " is a light framework of wooden timbers and withes very tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my illustrations. It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are sewed on over it while they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out they contract, and bind the frame, and are as taut as the parchment of a well-strung bass-drum. Then the native smears the whole over with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water out of the pores of the skin for quite a long period and prevents the slacken- ing of the taut binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry off in the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them are made with two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have but one. The otter- hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words, use two-holed bidarkies.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
She partakes, somewhat mellowed down, of the same characteristics which we have just sketched in the face and form of her husband. As they live to-day, they are married and sustain this relation, shel- tered in their own hut or "barrabkie." They have long, long ago ceased to dress themselves in skins, and now appear in store clothes and cotton gowns, retaining, however, their characteristic water- proof garment known as the "kamlayka," and the odd boots known as "tarbosars," in which they are always enveloped in wet weather, or whenever they venture out to sea in their bidarka. They dress themselves up on Sundays, when at home, in boots and shoes and stockings of San Francisco make. He wears a conventional " beaver" or plug hat often, and she affects a gay worsted hood, although, ou account of the steady persistence of high winds, he prefers a smart marine-band cap, such as our soldiers on fatigue- duty wear. He is, however, inclined to be quite sober, not giving much attention to display or color, as is the habit of semi-civilized people everywhere else ; but he does lavish the greatest care and labor over the decoration of his bidarka, and calls upon his wife to ornament the seams of his water-repellant kamlayka and tarbosars with the gayest embroidery, and tufts of bright hair and feathers, and lines of cunning goose-quill work.
Mrs. Kahgoon, however, is a true woman. She naturally desires all the bright ribbons and cheap jewellery which the artful trader exhibits to her longing eyes in his store, that stands so near and so handy to her barrabkie, and her means only limit the purchase which she makes of these prized desiderata. She dresses her hair in braids, as a rule, and twists them up behind. She seldom wears a bonnet or hat, but has a handkerchief, generally of cotton, some- times silken, always tied over her head, and when she goes, as she often does, out to call on a neighboring spinster or madam, or to the store, she throws a small woollen shawl over head and shoul- ders, holding it drawn together under her chin by one hand. As we have intimated, she dresses principally in cotton fabrics, with skirts, overskirts, white stockings, etc. ; but when she was a girl, and much more than that, she usually went, with her legs and feet bare, into the teeth of biting winds and over frosty water and wood-paths.
The domestic life of this hunter and his wife is all bound up within the shelter of their " barrabkie." This hut or house of the Aleutian hunter is half under ground, or, in other words, it is an
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THE QUEST OF THE OTTER.
excavation on the village site of a piece of earth ten or fifteen feet square, three or four feet deep, which is laid back up and over upon a wooden frame or whalebone joisting, which is securely built up within and above this excavation, so that a rafter-ceiling is made about six feet in the clear from the earthen floor. A wall of peaty sod is piled up around outside, two and three feet thick. The nat- ive architect enters this dwelling through a little hall patched on to that leeward side from the winds prevalent in the vicinity. The door is low, even for Kahgoon, and he stoops as he opens and
A Barrabkie.
( The characteristic dwelling of Aleutes and Kadiakers.)
closes it. If he has been a successful hunter, he will have the floor laid with boards secured from the trader ; but if he has been un- lucky, then nothing more to stand upon than the earth is afforded. This barrabkie is divided into two rooms, not wholly shut out one from the other, by a half-partition of mats, timber, or some hanging curtains, which conceal the bedroom or "spalniah " from the direct gaze of the living and cook-room. They are very fond of comforta- ble beds, having adopted the feather-ticks of the Russians. Soap is an expensive luxury, so Kahgoon's wife is economical of its use for washing in her laundry ; and, though she may desire to spread over her sleeping couch the counterpane and fluted shams of our own choice, she has nothing better than a colored quilt which the
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
traders bring up here especially to meet this demand. A small deal-table, two or three empty cracker-boxes from the store, and a rude bench or two constitute all the furniture, while a little cast-iron stove, recently introduced, stands in one corner, and the heating and cooking is created and performed thereon. The table-ware of a hunter's wife and the household utensils do not require much room or a large cupboard for their reception. A few large white crockery cups, plates, and saucers, with gaudy red and blue designs, and several pewter spoons, will be found in sufficient quantity to enter- tain withi during seasons of festivity. She manifests a marked dis- like to tin dishes, probably due to the fact that it is necessary to take care of this ware, or it rusts out. Then, above all the strange odors which arise here in this close, hot little room, we easily de- tect the smell of kerosene, and, sure enough, it is the oil which is burned in the lamp.
Such a barrabkie built and furnished in this style and occupied by Kahgoon, his wife, two or three children, and a relative or so, is a warm and a thoroughly comfortable shelter to him and his, as long as he keeps it in good repair. It is true that the air seems to us, as we enter, oppressively close, and, in case of sickness, is posit- ively foul ; yet on the whole the Alaskan is very comfortable. He never stores up much food against the morrow-the sea and its piscine booty is too near at hand. Whatever he may keep over he does not have in a cellar, but hangs it up outside of his door on an elevated trestle which he calls a " laabas," beyond the reach of the village dogs, while there is no thought of theft from the hands of his neighbors. He lives chiefly upon fresh fish-cod, halibut, salmon and other varieties, which he secures the year round as they rotate in the sea and streams. He varies that diet according to the suc- cess of his hunting, by buying at the store tea, sugar, hard-bread, crackers, flour and divers canned fruits or vegetables. Nature sends him in season the flesh and eggs of sea-fowl, geese, ducks, and a few land birds like willow-grouse.
In this fashion the sea-otter hunter appears to us as we view him now ; his children come, grow up, and branch out, to repeat his life and doing, as they show themselves capable of living by their own exertions as hunters and fishermen. He is a peaceful, affectionate, and thoroughly undemonstrative parent, a kind husband, and he imposes no burden upon his wife that he does not fully share, un- less he becomes a drunkard, when, in that event, a sad change is
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made in the man. He gets drunk, and his wife too, by taking sugar, flour, and dried-apples, rice or hops, if he can get them, in certain proportions, puts them into a barrel or cask, with water, bungs it up and waits for fermentation to do its work. Before it has worked entirely clear he draws off a thick, sour liquid which in- toxicates him most effectually-he beats his spouse and runs her and children from the house, smashes things, and for weeks after- ward the barrabkie is desolate and open as the result of such orgies. If he continues, his health is shattered, he rapidly fails as a hunter, and he suffers the pangs of poverty with his family. It is said upon good authority that the brewing of this liquor was taught to these people by the earliest Russian arrivals in their country, who made it as an anti-scorbutic ; but it certainly has not proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it has brought upon them nearly all the misery that they are capable of understanding.
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