USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 15
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In concluding this brief introduction to the life of the otter- hunter, we may fitly call attention to the fact that Kahgoon and his family are devout members of the Greek Catholic Church, as are all of his people, without a single exception, between Attoo and Kadiak Islands -- nearly five thousand souls to-day, living in scat- tered hamlets all along between.
The subtle acumen displayed by the sea-otter in the selection of its habitat can only be fully appreciated by him who has visited the chosen land, reefs, and water of its resort. It is a region so gloomy, so pitilessly beaten by wind and waves, by sleet, rain and persistent fog, that the good Bishop Veniaminov, when he first came among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered the curriculum of hell to be omitted from the church breviary, saying, as he did so, that these people had enough of it here on this earth! The fury of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate currents in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer, the black- ness of the fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud, so alarm and discomfit the white man that he willingly gives up the entire chase of the sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, who alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these ob- stacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who, in turn, have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day.
So we find the sea-otter-hunting of the present, as it was in the past, entirely confined to the natives, with white traders here and there vieing in active competition one with the other in bidding for
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the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders erect small frame dwellings as stores in the midst of the otter-hunting settlements, places like Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Oonga, and Kadiak villages, which are the chief resorts of population and this trade in Alaska. They own and employ small schooners, between thirty and one hundred tons burthen, in conveying the hunting parties to and from these hamlets above mentioned as they go to and return from the sea-otter hunting-grounds of Saanak and the Chernaboor rocks, where five-sixths of all the sea-otters annually taken in Alaska are secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality for this region between the Straits of Oonimak and the west end of Kadiak Island is somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the great sea-otter hunting-ground of the country. Saanak Island, itself, is small, with a coast-circuit of less than eighteen miles. Spots of sand-beach are found here and there, but the major por- tion of the shore is composed of enormous water-worn boulders, piled up high by the booming surf. The interior is low and roll- ing, with a central ridge rising into three hills, the middle one some eight hundred feet high. There is no timber here, but an abun- dant exhibit of grasses, mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little fresh-water ponds in which multitudes of ducks and geese are found every spring and fall. The natives do not live upon the island, because the making of fires and scattering of food-refuse, and other numerous objectionable matters connected with their settlement, alarm the otters and drive them off to parts unknown. Thus the island is only camped upon by the hunting-squads, and fires are never made unless the wind is from the southward, since no sea-otters are ever found to the northward of the ground. The sufferings-miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which the Aleutes subject themselves here every winter, going for weeks and weeks at a time without fires, even for cooking, with the thermometer below zero in a wild, northerly and westerly gale of wind, is better imagined than portrayed.
To the southward and westward of Saanak, stretching directly from it out to sea, eight or ten miles, is a succession of small, sub- merged islets, rocky, and bare most of them, at low water, with numerous reefs and stony shoals, beds of kelp, etc. This scant area is the chief resort of the kahlan, together with the Chernaboor Islets, some thirty miles to the eastward, which are identical in character. The otter rarely lands upon the main island, but he
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is, when found ashore, surprised just out of the surf-wash on the reef. The quick hearing and acute smell possessed by this wary brute are not equalled by any other creatures in the sea or on land. They will take alarm, and leave instantly from rest in a large sec- tion, over the effect of a small fire as far away as four or five miles distant to the windward of them. The footstep of man must be washed from a beach by many tides before its trace ceases to scare the animal and drive it from landing there, should it approach for - that purpose.
The fashion of capturing the sea-otter is ordered entirely by the weather. If it be quiet and moderately calm, to calm, such an in- terval is employed in " spearing surrounds." Then, when heavy weather ensues, to gales, " surf-shooting " is the method ; and if a furious gale has been blowing hard for several days without cessa- tion, as it lightens up, the hardiest hunters " club " the kahlan. Let us first follow a spearing party ; let us start with the hunters, and go with them to the death.
Our point of departure is Oonalashka village ; the time is an early June morning. The creaking of the tackle on the little schooner out in the bay as her sails are being set and her anchor hoisted, cause a swarm of Aleutes in their bidarkies to start out from the beach for her deck. They clamber on board and draw their cockle-shell craft up after them, and these are soon stowed and lashed tightly to the vessel's deck-rail and stanchions. The trader has arranged this trip and start this morning for Saanak, by beginning to talk it over two weeks ago with these thirty or forty hunters of the village. He is to carry them down to the favored otter-resort, leave them there, and return to bring them back in just three months from the day of their departure this morning. For this great accommodation the Aleutes interested agreed to give the trader-skipper a refusal of their entire catch of otter-skins-in- deed many of them have mortgaged their labor heavily in advance by pre-purchasing at his store, inasmuch as the credit system is worked among them for all it is worth. They are adepts in driv- ing a bargain, shrewd and patient. The traders know this now, to the grievous cost of many of them.
If everything is auspicious, wind and tide the next morning, after sailing, bring the vessel well upon the ground. The headlands are made out and noted ; the natives slip into their bidarkies as they are successively dropped over the schooner's side while she jogs
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along under easy way, until the whole fleet of twenty or thirty craft is launched. The trader stands by the rail and shakes the hand of each grimy hunter as he steps down into his kyack, calling him, in pigeon-Russian, his "loobaiznie droog," or dear friend, and bids him a hearty good-by. Then, as the last bidarka drops, the ship comes about and speeds back to the port which yesterday morn- ing she cleared from, or she may keep on, before she does so, to some harbor at Saanak, where she will leave at a preconcerted rendezvous a supply of flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco for her party. .
If the weather be not too foggy, and the sea not very high, the bidarkies are deployed into a single long line, keeping well abreast, at intervals of a few hundred feet between. In this manner they paddle slowly and silently over the water, each man peering sharply and eagerly into the vista of tumbling water just ahead, ready to catch the faintest evidence of the presence of an otter, should that beast ever so slyly present even the tip of its blunt head above for breath and observation. Suddenly an otter is discovered, ap- parently asleep, and instantly the discoverer makes a quiet signal, which is flashed along the line. Not a word is spoken, not a paddle splashes, but the vigilant, sensitive creature has taken the alarm, and has turned on to its chest, and with powerful strokes of its strong, webbed hind feet, lias smote the water like the blades of a propeller's screw, and down to depths below and away it speeds, while the hunter brings his swift bidarka to an abrupt standstill directly upon the bubbling wake of the otter's disappearance. He hoists his paddle high in the air, and holds it there, while the others whirl themselves over the water into a large circle around him, varying in size from one-quarter to half a mile in diameter, according to the number of boats engaged in the chase.
The kahlan has gone down-he must come up again soon some- where within reach of the vision of that Aleutian circle on the waters over its head ; fifteen or twenty minutes of submergence, at the most, compel the animal to rise, and instantly as its nose appears above the surface, the native nearest it detects the movement, raises a wild shout, and darts in turn toward it; the yell has sent the otter down again far too quickly for a fair respiration, and that is what the hunter meant to do, as he takes up his position over the spot of the animal's last diving, elevates his paddle, and the circle is made anew, with this fresh centre of formation. In this method the otter is continually made to dive and dive again without scarcely
A fleet of Sea-otter Hunters in the North Pacific, South of Saanak Island : marking the Wake of an Otter at the Moment of its Diving
THE SURROUND
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an instant to fully breathe, for a period, perhaps, of two or even three hours, until, from interrupted respiration, it finally becomes so filled with air or gases as to be unable to sink, and then falls at once an easy victim. During this contest the Aleutes have been throwing their spears whenever they were anywhere within range of the kahlan, and the hunter who has stricken the quarry is the proud and wealthy possessor, beyond all question or dispute.
In this manner the fleet moves on, sometimes very fortunate in finding the coveted prey ; again, whole weeks pass away without a single surround. The landings at night are made without any choice or selection, but just as the close of the day urges them to find the nearest shore. The bidarkies are hauled out above surf- wash, and carefully inspected ; if it is raining or very cold, small A-tents are pitched, using the paddles and spears for poles and pegs, into which the natives crowd for sleep and warmth, since they carry no blankets or bed-clothes whatever, and unless the wind is right they dare not make a fire, even to prepare the cherished cup of tea, which they enjoy more than anything else in the world, not excepting tobacco. After ninety or a hundred days of such em- ployment, during which time they have been subjected to frequent peril of life in storm, and fog-lost, they repair to the rendezvous agreed upon between the trader and themselves, ready and happy to return for a resting-spell, to their wives, children, and sweethearts in the village whence we saw them depart. They may have been so lucky as to have secured forty or fifty otters, each skin worth to them at least fifty to sixty dollars, and if so, they will have a pro- longed season of festivity at Oonalaslika, when they get back. Per- haps the weather has been so inclement that this party will not have taken a half-dozen pelts; then gloomy, indeed, will be the reception at home.
While the " spearing surround " of the Aleutian hunter is ortho- doxy, the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders, who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors, are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter's head is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards
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out, the expert, patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark, he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet : nine times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head, which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually heave the prized carcass within his ready reach.
Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of " clubbing." You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to under- stand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We can- not walk, for the wind blows too hard-note the heavy seas foam- ing, chasing and swiftly rolling by, one after the other-hear the keen whistle of the gale as it literally tears the crests of the break- ers into tatters, and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in this tremendous fashion, coming from the west- ward, during the last three or four days without a moment's cessa- tion. Look at those two Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you see them launch a bidarka, seat them- selves within and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes ? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fear- ful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a dream in our eyes !
Yes, it looks to you like suicide ; but there is this method to their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer at the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty miles away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-con- tinued fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that have been so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to crawl there above the wash of the surf, and, burying their glo- bose heads in heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the wind, are sleeping and resting in great physical peace until the weather shall change : then they will at once revive and plunge
ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks
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back into the ocean without the least delay. So our two hunters, perhaps the only two souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale, run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its unconscious head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than that made by the stealthy movements of these venturesome natives, who, plying their heavy, wooden blud- geons, despatch the animals one after another without alarming the whole number. In this way, two Aleutian brothers are known to have slain seventy-eight otters in less than one hour !
If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Saanak in that gale, had deviated a paddle's length from their true course for the islet which they finally struck, after scudding twenty or thirty miles before the fury of wind and water, they would have been swept on and out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaus- tion. They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand yards ! Still, if they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters would all be back in the water ere they could even reach the scene. By doing what we have just seen them do they fairly challenge our admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit cal- culation, under the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue of their venture.
In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the Aleutian otter-hunters of Attoo, who live on the extreme west- ernmost island of the grand Alaskan archipelago. Here the kahlan is captured in small nets," which are spread out over the floating kelp-beds or "otter-rafts," the natives withdrawing and watching from the bluffs. The otters come out to sleep or rest or sport on these places, get entangled in the meshes, and seem to make little or no effort to escape, being paralyzed, as it were, by fear. Thus they fall an easy prey into the hands of the captors, who say that
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* Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes ; made nowadays of twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews.
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they have caught as many as six at one time in one of these nets, and that they frequently get three. The natives also watch for surf- holes or caves awash below the bluffs : and, when one is found to which a sea-otter is in the habit of going, they set this net by spreading it over the entrance, and usually capture the creature, sooner or later.
No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the sea- otters, strong animals as they are ; only stray sea-lions and hair- seals destroy them. There is no driving an otter out upon land if it is surprised on the beach by man between itself and the water ; it will make for the sea with the utmost fearlessness, with gleaming eyes, bared teeth and bristling hair, not paying the slightest regard to the hunter. The Attoo and Atkah Aleutes have never been known to hunt sea-otters without nets, while the people of Oona- lashka, and those eastward of them, have never been known to use such gear. Salt-water and kelp appear to act as disinfectants for the meshes, so that the smell of them does not repel or alarm the shy, suspicious animal.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN.
The Aleutian Islands .- A Great Volcanic Chain .- Symmetrical Beauty of Shishaldin Cone .- The Banked Fires in Oonimak .- Once most Densely Populated of all the Aleutians ; now Without a Single Inhabitant. - Sharp Contrast in the Scenery of the Aleutian and Sitkan Archipelagoes. -Fog, Fog, Fog. Everywhere Veiling and Unveiling the Chain Inces- santly .- Schools of Hump-back Whales .- The Aleutian Whalers .- Odd and Reckless Chase .- The Whale-backed Volcano of Akootan .- Striking Ontlines of Kahlecta Point and the " Bishop."-Lovely Bay of Oonalashka. -No Wolf e'er Howled from its Shore .- Illoolook Village .- The " Curved Beach."-The Landscape a Fascinating Picture to the Ship-weary Trav- eller. - Flurries of Snow in August .- Winds that Riot over this Aleutian Chain .- The Massacre of Drooshinnin and One Hundred and Fifty of his Siberian Hunters here in 1762-63 .- This the Only Desperate and Fatal Blow ever Struck by the Docile Alentes .- The Rugged Crown and Noisy Crater of Makooshin .- The Village at its Feet .- The Aleutian People the Best Natives of Alaska .- All Christians .- Quiet and Respectful .- Fash- ions and Manners among Them .- The "Barrabkie. "-Quaint Exterior and Interior. - These Natives Love Music and Dancing .- Women on the Wood and Water Trails .- Simple Cuisine .- Their Remarkable Willing- ness to be Christians .- A Greek Church or Chapel in every Settlement. -General Intelligence .- Keeping Accounts with the Trader's Store .- They are thus Proved to be Honest at Heart. - The Festivals, or " Praz- niks."-The Phenomena of Borka Village. - It is Clean. - Little Ceme- teries .- Faded Pictures of the Saints .- Attoo, the Extreme Western Set- tlement of the North American Continent .- Three Thousand Miles West of San Francisco !- The Mummies of the "Cheetiery Sopochnie."-The Birth of a New Island .- The Rising of Boga Slov.
AFTER "lying-to " in a fierce southwester for three whole days and nights, in which time the fury of the gale never abated for an hour, our captain had so husbanded his resources that, when the weather moderated, he was able to clap on sail and get under swift head- way; then we quickly left the watery area of our detention and soon opened up a splendid vista of Oonimak Island, in the early dawning of a clear June day. This is the largest one of that long-
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extended archipelago which stretches as an outreaching arm for Asia from America ; it presents to our delighted gaze a sweep of richly-colored, rolling uplands, which either slope down gently to the coast at intervals, or else terminate in chocolate-brown and reddish cliffs abruptly stopped to face the sea breaking at their feet. Very high ridges, with summits entirely bare of vegetation, traverse the centre of the island from east to west, while the tower- ing snowy cone of Shishaldin and the lower, yet lofty, head of Po- gromnia-two volcanoes-roar themselves over all in turn.
There are a multitude of huge and cloud-compelling mountains in Alaska, but it is wholly safe to say that Shishaldin is the most beautiful peak of vast altitude known upon the North American continent ; it rears its perfectly symmetrical apex over eight thou- sand feet in sheer height above those breakers which thunder and incessantly roll against its flanks, as these precipitous slopes fall into the great Pacific Ocean on the south, and Bering Sea to the north. A steamy jet of vapor curls up lazily from its extreme summit, but it has not been eruptive or noisy at any time within the memory of the Russians. No foothills, that crowd up against and dwarf the presence of most high mountains, embarrass your view of Shishaldin ; from every point of the compass it presents the same perfect cone-shape ; rising directly from the water and lowlands of Oonimak, it holds and continues long to charm your senses with its rare magnificence ; the distance of our vessel, ten or twelve miles away, serves to soften down its lines of numerous seared and blackened paths of prehistoric lava overflow, so that they now softly blend their purplish tones into those of the rich- hued mantle of golden-green mosses and sphagnum which cover the rolling lower lands.
As we draw into Oonimak Pass-it is the gateway for all sail- ing vessels bound to Bering Sea from American ports, we, in closing up with the land, almost lose sight of Shishaldin, and come into the shadow of the rougher and less attractive volcano of Pogromnia. It shows ample evidence of its origin by the streams of blackened frost-riven basalt and breccia which are ribbed upon its rugged sides ; great masses of eruptive rock and pumice lie here and there scattered all over the broad-stubbed head of the mountain ; tons and tons of this material have rolled from thence in lavish profu- sion and disorder, clear down for miles to the very waters of the sea and straits, strewing that entire route with huge débris. Seams
A GLIMPSE OF SHISHALDIN
The Volcano of Pogromnia Sopka, 5,500 feet
The Volcano of Shishaldin, 8,500 feet The beautiful Peak of Shishaldin as seen from the entrance to Oonimak Pass, in Bering Sea. A Summer picture looking East over Oonimak Island
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of snow and ice lacquer, in white, thread the bold black crown of this, the "booming " or "noisy " volcano of the Russians. It has not been in action since 1820, when it then threw showers of ashes and pumice ; but those fires in its furnace are only banked, as it has been smoking in inky brown and black clouds at irregular and frequent intervals ever since ; loud mutterings, deep rumblings and wide-felt tremors of land and sea are aroused by it constantly. This Island of Oonimak has been always regarded by the Russians as the roof of a subterranean smelting furnace with many chim- neys through which telluric forces ascended from the molten masses beneath. It has been, and is still, the theatre of the greatest plutonic activity in Alaska. Russian eye-witnesses have described violent earthquakes here where whole ridges of the interior and coast have been rent asunder, cleft open, from which torrents of lava poured and columns of flame and clouds of ashes, steam and smoke, have risen so as to be viewed and noticed for a circuit of hundreds of miles around. These manifestations were always accompanied by violent earthquakes, and tidal-waves which often submerged adjacent villages on the sea-level, and also whole native settlements were swept away in mountain floods caused by the sudden melting of those big banks of ice and snow on such vol- canic summits and their foothills, upon which the hot breccia from a vomiting crater fell .*
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