USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 39
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
CHAPTER XII.
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
" Nooshagak ;" Wide Application of an Innuit Name .- The Post and River .- Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District bordering Bristol Bay. -The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast .- The Features and Form of Alaskan Innuits .- Light-hearted, Inconstant, and Independent .- Their Dress, Manners, and Rude Dwellings. --- Their Routine of Life .- Large and Varied Natural Food-supplies .- Indifferent Land Hunters, but Mighty Fishermen .- Limited Needs from Traders' Stores .- Skilful Carvers in Ivory .- Their Town Hall, or "Kashga."-They Build and Support no Churches here .- Not of a real Religions Cast, as the Aleutians are .- The Dogs and Sleds ; Importance of Them here. - Great Interest of the Innuit in Savage Ceremonies .- The Wild Alaskan Interior .- Its Repellent Features alike Avoided by Savage and Civilized Man. - The Indescribable Misery of Mosquitoes .- The Desolation of Winter in this Region .- The Reindeer Slaughter-pen on the Kvichak River .- Amazing Improvidence of the Innuit. - The Tragic Death of Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great Ilyamna Lake, 1796 .- The Queer Innuits of Togiak .- Immense Muskrat Catch. - The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska. - The Kuskokvim Mouth a Vast Salmon-trap .- The Ichthyophagi of Alaska .- Dense Population. - Daily Life of the Fish-eaters .- Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskokvim ; the Worst in Alaska .- Kołmakovsky ; its History.
"NOOSHAGAK " is not a very euphonious name, yet it is employed in Alaska to express the whole of an immense area that backs the borders of Bristol Bay ; but, when strictly applied, it is the desig- nation of a small trading-post at the head of a large, brackish estu- ary of the sea, into which the Nooshagak River pours its heavy flood. A cruise of three hundred and eighty miles to the northeast from Oonalashka in a trim little trading-schooner, which alone can make the landing, takes you to this old and well-known Russian outpost ; but the mariner who pilots that vessel must be well ac- quainted with those perilous shoals and tide-rips of Bristol Bay, or you will never disembark at the foot of that staircase which leads up to the doors of Alexandrovsk. The river here is a broad arm of the sea, full of shifting sand-bars and mud-flats which try the tem-
NOCSHAGAK, OR ALEXANDROVSK
Old Russian Central Trading Post for the Innuits of the Bristol Bay Region-founded by Kolmakov, in 1834
375
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
per of the most patient and skilful navigator. It runs over these shallows at certain turns of the tide, like the ebb and flow in the Bay of Fundy, with a big, booming tidal wave, or " bore." The cur- rent of this river may be discerned for a long distance out into Bris- tol Bay, easily traced at the season of high water by its turbidity.
Above the settlement of Nooshagak that river rapidly narrows into a width of half a mile between banks for a long distance up its winding course. It is very deep, with a succession of ripples, or bars, that prevent navigation. When the northern bend is reached, then it changes to a brawling, swift, and shoal current, with higher rocky banks up to its source in the big lake which bears its gut- tural name. It is clear and pure here, and is not muddy until it reaches the shelving, alluvial banks of its lower course, which pre- cipitate, by their caving and washing out, large quantities of soil and timber into the stream. Its shores are, and all the country back is, thiekly wooded by spruce forests, and parked with grassy slopes which reach out here and there, planted sparsely with thickets and clumps of graceful birch- and poplar-trees. These nod and wave their tremulous foliage as the summer gusts sweep now and then over them. Countless pools, ponds, and lakes nestle in the moors and in the forest hollows, upon which flocks of geese, ducks, and all other kinds of hardy water-fowl breed and moult their plumage during the short, hot summer. The traders say that this river is the only one in Alaska, of the least magnitude, which has banks on both sides of firm soil throughout its entire course.
This site of Nooshagak village was an initial point of Russian influence and trade among the great Innuit people of Alaska. who live extended in their numerous settlements from the head of Bris- tol Bay clear to the Arctic Ocean. Kolmakov established the post in 1834, and named it Alexandrovsk. A simple cylindrical wooden shaft, twenty feet high, surmounted with a globe, stands erected to his memory on a small hillock overlooking the post below. The village itself is located on the abrupt slopes of a steep, grassy hill- side which rises from the river's edge. The trading-stores and the residence of the priest, the church, log-huts of the natives and their barraboras are planted on a succession of three earthen terraces, one rising immediately behind the other. All communication from flat to flat is by slippery staircases, which are fraught with great danger to a thoughtless pedestrian, especially when fogs moisten the steps and darkness obscures his vision.
376
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
The red-roofed, yellow-painted walls of the old Russian build- ings, the smarter, sprucer dwellings of our traders, with lazy, curling wreaths of bluish smoke, are brought into very picturesque relief by the verdant slopes of Nooshagak's hillside, caught up and reflected deeply by the swiftly flowing current of the river below. The natives have festooned their long drying-frames with the crim- son-tinted fleslı of salmon ; bleached drift-logs are scattered in pro- fusion upon a bare sandy high-water bench that stretches like a buff-tinted ribbon just beneath them, and above, the dark, turbid whirl of flood and eddy so characteristic of a booming, rising river. A gleam of light falls upon a broad expanse of the estuary beyond that point under which the schooner lies at anchor, and brings out the thickly wooded banks of an opposite shore, causing us to note the fact that, for some reason or other, no timber seems ever to have spread down so far toward the sea on this side of the stream, or where the settlement stands, since nothing but scattered copses of alder- and willow-bushes grow on its suburbs or anywhere else as far as an eye can range up the valley.
We notice a decided difference in bearing and expression among the natives here-nothing like what we have studied at Oonalashka, Kadiak, or Sitka. They are Innuits, or representatives of the most populous savage family indigenous to Alaska, and are as nomadic as Bedouins. They are the least changed or altered by contact with our race. They are Eskimo, strictly speaking, and the natives of Kadiak are almost strictly related to them. In portraying the phy- sique, physiognomy, and disposition of these people, we find in an average Innuit a man who stands about five feet six or seven inches in his heelless boots ; his skin is fair, slightly Mongolian in its com- plexion and facial expression ; a broad face, prominent cheek-bones, a large mouth with full lips, small black eyes, but prominently set in their sockets-not under a lowering brow, as in the case of true Indian faces. The nose is very insignificant and much de- pressed, having between the eyes scarcely any bridge at all. He has an abundance of coarse black hair ; never any of a reddish hue, as frequently noted among the Aleutes when first discovered and described by the Russians. Up to the age of thirty years an In- nuit usually keeps his hair cut pretty close to his scalp ; some of them shave the occiput, so that it shines like a billiard-ball. After this period in life he lets it grow as it will, wearing it in ragged, unkempt locks. He sometimes will sport a well-developed mus-
377
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
tache and chin-whisker, of which he is as proud as though a Caucasian. He has shapely hands and feet ; his limbs are well made, formed, and muscled. An Innuit woman is proportionately smaller than the man, and, when young, sometimes she is not un- pleasant to look at. The skin of her cheeks then will be faintly suffused with blushes of natural color, her lips pouting and red, with small, tapering hands and high-instepped feet. She rarely pierces her lips or disfigures her nose ; she lavishes upon her child or children a wealth of affectionate attention-endows them with all her ornaments. She allows her hair to grow to its full length, gathers it up behind into thick braids, or else it is bound up in ropes lashed by copper wire or sinews. She seldom tattooes her
An Innuit Woman.
skin in any place ; a faint drawing of transverse blue lines upon the chin and cheeks is usually made by her best friend when she is married.
We are not reminded of the clothing stores of San Francisco when we meet Innuits everywhere between Point Barrow and Noo- shagak ; they are clad in the primitive garments of their remote ancestry, as a rule-a few exceptions to this generalization being those individuals who are living constantly about the widely scat- tered trading-posts, and the chapels, or missions, located in their territory, where they act as servants or interpreters. The conven- tional coat of these people is the "parka," made of marmot and muskrat-skins, or of tanned reindeer-hides, with enormous winter hoods, or collars, of dog-hair or fox-fur. This parka has sleeves, and compasses the body of the wearer, without an opening either
378
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
before or behind, from his neck to his feet. His head is thrust through an aperture left for it, with a puckering string which draws it up snugly around the neck. In winter the heavy hood-collar, or cowl, is fitted so as to be drawn over his entire head and pulled down to the eyes. This parka is worn with singular ease and abandon ; frequently the arms are withdrawn from the big, baggy sleeves and stowed under the waist-slack of the garment, leaving these empty appendages to dangle. Natives, as they sit down, draw the parka out and over the knees, still keeping their arms un- derneath ; or, when on the trail, and the wet grass and bushes make it imperative, the parka is gathered up and bound by a leather thong-strap or girdle of sinews, so as to keep its bottom border dry and as high as the knees of a tramping native ; the baggy folds of it then give its wearer a grotesque and clumsy figure as they bulge out over his hips and abdomen. The most favored and valu- able parka is that one made out of alder-bark tanned reindeer-skin, for winter use ; the hair is worn inside, next to the skin. For sum- mer styles those fashioned out of the breasts of water-fowl, of mar- inot- and mink-skins, are most common. The hood is never attached to the parka in the warmer months of the year. It is a very capa- cious pouch which, when not in service, is resting in thick folds back of the head and upon the shoulders. It is ornamented in a variety of ways, but usually a thick fringe of long-haired dog- or fox-fur forms its border, and when drawn into position encircles the wearer's face and gives it a wild and unkempt air.
The only underwear which a Mahlemoot affects is limited to that garment which we call a shirt, made of light skins or of cheap cotton drillings ; if it is of skin, it is worn from father to son, and becomes a real heirloom highly polished and redolent. Their trou- sers are, for both sexes, a pair of thin skin or cotton drawers, puck- ered at the ankles and bound about with the uppers of their moccasons, or else enclosed by the tops to their reindeer-boots, which are the prevalent covering for their feet. Such are the char- acteristics of a costume worn by much more than half the entire aboriginal population of Alaska ; but when we come to inspect their dwellings we find a greater variety of housing than indexed in dressing.
A very great majority of the Innuits live in a house that out- wardly resembles a circular mound of earth, seven or eight feet high, and thirty or forty feet in circumference. It is overgrown with
" CHAM! "
An Innuit Girl, about 14 years old
Elliot
AFTER DINNER-GOOD DIGESTION Favorite position of Innuits
379
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
rank grasses, littered with all sorts of utensils, weapons, sleds, and other Eskimo furniture. A small spiral coil of smoke rises from a hole in its apex, a dog or two are crouching upon it, and children climb up and roll down its sides, scattering bones and fragments of fish and meat as they eat in the irregular fashion of these people. A rude pole scaffolding stands close by, upon which, high above the reach of dogs, is a wooden cache, containing all winter stores of dried provision, " ukali," and the like. This hut is usually right down upon the sea-beach, just above high tide, or high-water mark, on the river banks, for these savages draw their sustenance largely, even wholly in many instances, from the piscine life of those northern streams.
$115
An Innuit Home on the Kuskokvim.
All these tribes have summer dwellings distinct from those used during the winter. For the winter houses a square excavation of about ten feet or more is made, in the corners of which posts of drift-wood or whale-ribs from eight to ten feet in height are set up ; the walls are formed by laying posts of drift-wood one above the other against the corner-posts; outside of this another wall is built, sometimes of stone, sometimes of logs, the intervals being filled with earth or rubble ; the whole of the structure, including the roof, is covered with sods, leaving a small opening on top, that can be closed by a frame over which a thin, transparent seal-skin is tightly drawn. The entrance to one of these houses consists of a narrow, low, underground passage from ten to twelve feet in length, through which an entrance can only be accomplished on hands and
380
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
knees. The interior arrangement of such a winter house is sim- ple, and is nearly the same with all these tribes. A piece of bear- or reindeer-skin is hung before an inner opening of the doorway; in the centre of the enclosure is a fireplace, which is a square ex- cavation directly under that smoke-hole in the roof ; the floor is rarely planked, and frequently two low platforms, about four feet in width, extend along the sides of the house from the entrance to the back, and covered with mats and skins which serve as beds at night. In the larger dwellings, occupied by more than one family, the sleeping-places of each are separated from each other by suspended mats, or simply by a piece of wood. All the bladders containing oil, the wooden vessels, kettles, and other domestic utensils, are kept in the front part of the dwelling, and before each sleeping- place there is generally a block of wood upon which is placed the oil-lamp used for heating and cooking.
The only ingress or egress is afforded by a small, low, irregu- larly shaped aperture (it cannot rightfully be called a door), through which the natives stoop and enter, passing down a foot or two through a short, depressed passage that is created by the thickness of the walls to the hut ; the floor is hard-tramped earth, and the ground-plan of it a rude circle, or square, twelve, fifteen, or twenty feet in diameter, as the case may be, and in which the only light of day comes feebly in from a small smoke-opening at the apex of the roof, the ceiling of which rises tent-like from the floor. A faint, smouldering fire is always made directly in the centre, and the at- mosphere of the apartment is invariably thick and surcharged with its combustion.
Hard and rude are the beds of the Innuit-a clumsy shelf of poles is slightly elevated above the earth, and placed close against the walls ; upon this staging the skins of bears and reindeer, seals, and even walrus-hides, together with mats of plaited sedge and bark, are laid ; sometimes these bedsteads are mere platforms of sod and peat. If the hut stands in a situation where it is exposed to the full force of boisterous storms, then the architect builds a rough hallway of earth and sods, with a bulging expansion, whereby room is given in which to shelter his dogs and keep many utensils and traps under cover. He also, in warm weather, lives outside of this winter hut, to a great degree, when at home ; and, for that pur- pose, he builds a summer cook-house, or kitchen, which resembles the igloo itself, only it is not more than five or six feet square, and
381
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
no higher than a stooping posture within warrants. This is also a great resort for his dogs, which renders the place very offensive to ns.
The summer houses are erected above ground, and are generally slight pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front; fire is rarely made in them, and therefore they have no opening in the roof, all cooking being done in the open air during fine weather. They seldom have flooring, but otherwise the interior arrangements resemble those of the winter houses. The store-houses of all our Eskimo tribes are set on posts at a height of from eight to ten feet above the ground, to protect them from foxes, wolves, and dogs. They have generally a small square opening in front that can be elosed with a sliding board, and which is reached by means of a notehed stick of wood. These boxes are seldom more than eight feet square by three or four feet in height.
The routine of life which these natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim valleys and streams follow is one of much activity-they are on the tramp or are paddling up and down the rivers pretty much all of the time. A year is divided up by them about as follows : In February they prepare to go to the mountains, and go then most of them do, though some will be as late as April in get- ting away on account of their children, or of sheer laziness. They move with the entire family outfit, bag and baggage, dogs, sleds, and boats. They settle down along by the small mountain streams, trap martens, shoot deer, and dig out beaver. February and March are the best months for marten, April and May for the beaver, bear, and land-otter.
By June 10th they return to their winter villages and visit the trading-posts. They then begin their preparations for salmon-fish- ing, getting their traps into shape so as to be used effectively when those fish begin to run. They air-dry salmon on frames, and put the heads in holes and allow them to rot slightly before eating ; also the spawn, which, however, is preserved in oil, and used as a great delicacy during their own festivals in the midwinter season. The salmon-fishing is all over about July 20th. By August 10th these nomads return to the mountains, leaving the old women and young- est children with their mothers in charge of the eaches at the vil- lages. This time they go for reindeer, which have just shed their hair and are in the full beauty of new, fine, sleek coats. They hunt these animals from that time until the middle of September,
382
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
when the fur of the beaver is again in prime condition; then Castor canadensis receives their undivided attention. They catch these giant rodents in wooden " dead-falls," and also by breaking open the dams, which causes the water to suddenly leave the beavers fully exposed to the spears of their savage human enemies.
When the first snow flies in October they rig up rude deer-skin boats, like the " bull-boats " on the Missouri, and float all their traps and rude equipage down the river back from whence they started. They all return for the winter by the middle of October ; then, with- out going far from the vicinity of their settlements, they renew and set up fresh dead-fall traps for marten-they never go any distance from home for this little animal, and when ice forms on the rivers, about the end of October or early in November, they put their white- fish traps under it. The marten-trapping is abandoned in Decem- ber, because the intense, stormy, and cold weather then drives these pine-weasels into winter holes, where they remain semi-dormant until the end or middle of February. During this period of severe wintry weather the Innuit gives himself up to unrestrained loafing and vigorous dancing festivals, which last until the year is again renewed by going out to the mountains in February.
These natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim regions have a large and varied natural food-supply. They have reindeer-meat, the flesh of moose, of bears, and of all the smaller fur-bearing animals found in this territory-the list is a full one, comprising land-otters, cross, red, and black foxes, the mink, the marten, the marmot, and the ground-squirrel, or "yeavrashka," which last is the most abundant. The bears are all brown in this country-no black ones. They also secure large gray and white wolves, while those who live right on the coast of Bering Sea get walrus, the big " mahklok " seal, and a little harbor phora, or " nearpah."
They have a great abundance of water-fowl, such as geese, ducks, and the small waders, and they occasionally kill a beluga, or white grampus, and at still more rare intervals they find a stranded whale, which is set upon and eaten. They save carefully all the oil which comes from marine mammals ; they treasure it up in seal- skin bags that are placed high up above the reach of dogs and foxes on a frame scaffold which adjoins every hnt. Fish-oil is also secured in the same manner ; it answers a threefold purpose-it serves for food, for fuel, and for light, and it is a luxurious skin and hair dressing for them all, old and young.
383
INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.
Fish they capture in the greatest abundance, and the variety is quite fair. Salmon is the staff, and is found in all of the thousand and one lakes and sluggish or rapid streams that run from them into the greater rivers, where a mighty rush of the same fish is an- nually made up in June and July from Bering Sea. In all of the deeper lakes, and the big rivers, a variety of large white-fish and trout are found, especially prized and searched for by these people in midwinter, when they are trapped there in wicker-work baskets and pole weirs under ice.
Elliot
The Big Mahklok.
In round numbers these Eskimo, or Innuits, of Alaska, number nearly eighteen thousand souls ; they inhabit the entire coast-line of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, with an exception of the Aleu- tian chain and that portion of the peninsula west of Oogashik. The numerous subdivisions of this great family are based wholly upon dialectic differentiation, and as its elaboration would entail a dreary and uninteresting chapter upon any reader save a studious ethnolo- gist, it will not be itemized here. These Eskimo are all hunters and fishermen ; those land animals to which we have made allusion are pursued by them at the proper seasons of the year. They do not have much, in the aggregate, of value to a trader ; it is chiefly
384
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
oil and walrus-ivory. Their proximity to a relatively warm coast renders the furs which they get of small value comparatively, since these pelts are paler and lighter-haired than those brought in from the distant interior, where the winters are vastly colder and longer. But an Innuit does not require a great deal from the trader-he is very much more independent than is his semi-civilized Aleutian brother ; his wants are only a small supply of lead and powder, of sugar and of tobacco, a little red cloth and a small sack of flour which suffice for a large Innuit family during the year. The flour he makes up into pancakes and fries them in rancid oil ; but, as a rule, all cook- ing is a mere boiling or stewing of fish and meat in sheet-iron or cop- per kettles. In those huts where they can afford to use tea, a small number of earthenware cups and saucers will be found carefully treasured in a little cupboard ; but they never set a table or think of such a thing, except those highly favored individuals who live as servants about the trading-posts and missions, where they do boil a "samovar" (tea-urn) and spread a cloth over the top of a box or rude table upon which to place their teacups.
Down here at Nooshagak these natives have earned a distinction of being the most skilful sculptors of the whole northern range. Their carvings in walrus-ivory are exceedingly curious, and beauti- fully wrought in many examples. The patience and fidelity with which they cut from walrus-tusks delicate patterns furnished them by the traders are equal in many respects to that remarkable display made in the same line by the Chinese, and so much admired. Time to them, at Nooshiagak, is never reckoned, and it does not raise a ripple of concern in the Innuit's mind when, as he carves upon a tusk of white ivory, he pauses to think whether he shall be six hours or six months engaged upon the task. Shut up as he is from December until the end of February in his dark and smoky hut, he welcomes the task as one which enables him to " kill time " most agreeably, and bring in a trifle, at least, to him from the trader in the way of credit or of direct revenue.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.