USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 41
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At the head of the Bay of Bristol a small but deep and rapid river empties a flood of pure, clear water into an intricate series of sand and mud channels which belong there. The Kvichak is the name of this stream, and it rises less than forty miles away in the
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largest fresh-water lake known to Alaska-that inland sea of Ily- amna, over ninety miles in its greatest length, varying in width from fifteen to thirty. Those gusts and gales that sweep over its blue waters raise a heavy surf which beats sonorously upon its pebbly shores and under its cliffs, while the loud wailing cry of a great northern loon * echoes from one lonely shore to the other when dis- turbed by the unwonted passage of a native's canoe. Against the eastern horizon there springs from its bosom an abrupt and mighty wall of Alpine peaks, which stand as an eternal barrier between its pure sweet waters and the salt surges of the Pacific.
The ruins of an old Russian trading-post stand in the midst of a small native village at the outlet of, and on the slope of, a lovely grassy upland which rises from the lake. Its people are all living in log houses like those we noticed in Cook's Inlet ; but nevertheless they are true Innuits. The two other small hamlets on these Ily- amma shores are all that exist. Their inhabitants live in the great- est peace and solitary comfort that savages can understand. Two trails over the divide are travelled by these natives, who trade with the Cook's Inlet people, and who range over the mountain sides in pursuit of reindeer and of bears. A most noteworthy family of Russian Creoles lived here on the first portage. The father was a man of gigantic stature, and he reared four Anak-like sons, who are, as he was, mighty hunters, and of great physical power. This family lives all to itself in that beautiful wilderness of Ilyamna, a little way back from the lake on a hillside, where they command passes over to Cook's Inlet. They control the trade of this entire region and rule without a shadow of disputation.
A tragedy occurred in one of these small villages of Ilyamna, which has been fitly memorized by the Russian Church. In 1796 a priest of the Greek faith came over from Kadiak, and, enchanted by the scenery and pleased by a warm, kindly welcome received from the natives, he determined to tarry here with them and save their souls. Het was a man of the most handsome presence and the sweetest address, and for a moment prevailed. Then, as the
* Colymbus arcticus.
+ The Archimandrite Jeromonakh Juvenal. The second of the priestly Russian service was Arch. Joassaf. He was drowned at sea in 1797. He was succeeded by Arch. Afanassy, who remained Bishop of Alaska until 1825, and he has been followed by many successors since.
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heathenish rites and festivals were postponed at his bidding, sur- ly shamans fomented seeds of hate and fear. Finally an hour arrived when, at a preconcerted signal, the slumbering wrath of the savages was aroused, and they fell upon and slew this unsus- pecting missionary and destroyed every vestige of his existence among them. The cause of Father Juvenal's death was his strong opposition to polygamy. It is said that when he was attacked by savages he neither fled nor did he defend himself, either of which he might have successfully done ; but he delivered himself unre- sistingly into the hands of his murderers, asking only for the safety of his subordinates, which was granted. The natives say, in their recitation of the event, that after the monk had been struck down and left by the mob as dead, he " rose up once more, walked towards them, and spoke." They fell upon him again, and again, and again, for he repeated this miracle several times, until at last, in bewil- dered fury, they literally cut him into pieces.
Reindeer cross and recross the Kvichak River in large herds during the month of September, as they range over to and from the Peninsula of Alaska, feeding, and also to escape from mosqui- toes. At the mouth of this stream is one of the broadest deer-roads in the country. The natives run along the banks of the river when reindeer are swimming across, easily and rapidly spearing those unfortunate animals as they rise from the water, securing in this way any number that fancy or want may dictate. At one time a trader counted seven hundred deer-carcasses as they lay here on the sands of the river's margin, untouched save by a re- moval of the hides ; not a pound of that meat out of the thousands putrefying had been saved by these lazy Innuits ; who, improvident wretches as they are, would be living, less than five months later, in a state of starvation ! But all this misery of famine in March will have been forgotten again next September, when the same surplus of food is within their reach, for they will not store up against the morrow-the labor is too great-the shiftless sentiment of a savage forbids that exertion.
There is a curious distinction drawn by nature between the Siberian and Alaskan reindeer. Everybody is familiar with the fact that on the Asiatic side these animals are domesticated and serve as a mainstay and support of large tribes, both savage and civilized. But the spirit of the Alaskan deer is such that it will not live under the control of man, or even within his presence. If con-
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fined, it refuses food, and then perishes of self-imposed starvation. The most patient and extended trials have been made at Nooshagak by imported Kamschadales, who were raised to the life of deer- driving over there ; yet, in no instance whatsoever were these experts able to overcome the difficulty and accustom those timid animals to the sight, sound, and smell of man. The Alaskan spe- cies is much larger than its Asiatic cousin, but otherwise resembles it closely, being, if anything, more uniformly gray in tint and less spotted with white over the back and head.
Reindeer have a most extended range in Alaska, where an im- mense area of tundra and upland moors yield an abundance of those mosses and lichens which they most affect. Innumerable sloughs and lakes afford these deer a harbor of refuge from cruel tor- ments of mosquitoes, when the wind does not blow briskly in sum- mer ; the wooded interior gives them shelter from the driving fury of wintry snow-storms. Big brown bears follow in the wake of travelling herds, and feed fat upon all sickly or weaker members and imprudent fawns of the drove ; so do wolves and wolverines ; and the lop-eared lynx is not missing.
Nooshagak is a trading centre for that entire Bristol Bay dis- trict, which comprises the coast of Bering Sea from Cape Newen- ham, in the north, to the peninsular extremity at Oonimak, in the sonth-an immense expanse in which some four thousand Innuits abide, and live largely upon fish and deer-meat. The Oogashik, Igageek, Nakneek, Kvichak, Nooshagak, Igoosheek, and Togiak Rivers all empty into this great shallow gulf. Up their swollen channels, after an opening of the ice during the last half of May, salmon run from the sea in irregular but constant travel until the end of August. Inferior salmon run even as late as November, while the various kinds of salmon-trout and white-fish exist under the ice of deep streams and lakes all winter. By the middle of September hard frosts in the mountains congeal all sources of in- numerable rivulets which have helped to swell the volume and raise the level of a river's summer flood, and then these streams which we have just named begin to fall rapidly in their channels. If we chance to travel anywhere along their banks at this time, we will find them covered with windrows and heaps of dead sahnon two and three feet in height. The gravelly beaches of the lakes, the bars and shoals of every stream, are then lined with decaying and putrid bodies of these fish, while every overhanging bough
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and projecting rock is festooned with their rotting forms-ah ! the stench arising absolutely forbids the pangs of hunger, even though we have no provision. These are the salmon that have died from exhaustion and from bruises received in struggling with swift and impetuous currents, and the rocks and snags that beset their paths of annual reproduction.
North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which, having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of sand and mnd reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted hunter. Stragglers, however, are fre- quently surprised on the mainland shore opposite, and the south- ern coast of Hagenmeister Island toward Cape Newenham to the westward.
The muskrat catch of Alaska is secured almost wholly in the Nooshagak region-an immense number of these water-rodents are annually taken by Innuits here. Traders, however, do not prize them very highly, but to secure the natives' custom they are obliged to ap- pear satisfied with all that these people bring in to the post. These skins are, however, not sold in this country ; they are all shipped to France and Germany, where they meet with a ready sale, since the poor people there are not above wearing them. Also, most of the good Alaskan beaver peltries are from this district, where they have the best fur and are consequently prized above all other catches outside of that region. Land-otter is also in large quantity and fine quality, but the mink and martens and foxes are inferior. During summer seasons, on many lakes, flocks of big, white, trumpeting swans will be found frequenting nearly every one of those bodies of water. The natives hunt them at night, and capt- ure unsuspecting birds as they sleep upon the water, by paddling noiselessly upon them. The traders encourage this industry for the sake of the swan's down which it produces. The most favored spot by swans is Lake Walker, which lies on the Nakneek port- age over to Cook's Inlet. Perhaps its rare, unique beauty charms these giant natatores as it does ourselves, for, without question, it is incomparably the most lovely sheet of water, set in a frame of glorious mountains, which the fancy of an artist could possibly
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devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language is utter- ly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from absolute grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its pebbly shores and yellow sands.
The immediate banks of the Nakneek River, through which Lake Walker empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and flat, and covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and amphibious plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. The timber on hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally clumps of birch and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of spruce as a higher ascent is made to the rolling uplands and mountain sides. An old, deserted settlement-ruins of Pangwik, marked by the decayed outlines of its cemetery, still is visible at the debouchure of the Nakneek. With a strange disrespect for the departed, those natives who live at an adjoining village come over here to excavate salmon-holes in that ancient graveyard, wherein they place their fish-heads, so that a process of moist rotting shall take place prior to eating them ! The Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear of the " witching hour of night " in this burial site of their ancestors.
The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly marked "saddle-backed" seal are taken by these people in large numbers every year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those fur-bearing animals that belong to the land here are away below par when brought to a trader. The coast between their villages and the mouth of the Togiak River is one of a most remarkable series of bluffy headlands, seven of them, being all of sandstone which has weathered into queer, fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is washed at the sea-level into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the surf beats with a noise like the distant roar of artillery. Scream- ing flocks of water-fowl are breeding on their mural faces, and troops of foxes lurk in the interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs and unwary birds.
The Togiak River never was ascended by a white man until the summer of 1880 .* It is a very remarkable region with respect to
'Visited then by Ivan Petroff, who made an extended trip for the United States Census.
1
#Elliott
Female
THE SADDLE-BACK, OR HARLEQUIN HAIR SEAL [Histriophoca equestris]
Male
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its people. Though the course of the river is only one hundred miles in length, yet we find upon it seven villages (one of them very large), having an aggregate population of 1,826 souls. No other one section of Alaska has so dense a population with reference to its inhabited area. The river is, however, a broad one, being a mile and a half in width, shoal and shallow, with deep pools and eddies here and there. Its banks are low, and the valley through which it runs is low and flat, with extensive bottom-lands that widen out at places to a distance of fifteen miles between the ridges and hills which direct its short course. Upon these flats grow most luxuriant and lofty grasses, high as the heads of natives- literally concealing, as it were, the dense human occupation of its extent.
The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska ; they are the simplest and the most unpretending of all her people ; they seem to live en- tirely to themselves, wholly indifferent as to what other folks have and they have not. They seldom ever view a white man, and then it is only when they go down to the river's mouth and visit a trader in his sloop or schooner. He never goes up to see them, for the best of reasons to him-they never have anything fit for barter save a few inferior mink and ground-squirrel skins to trade. They have no chiefs ; each family is a law unto itself, and it comes and goes with a sort of free and easy abandon that must resemble the life and habit of primeval time. What little these people want and can- not get from each other, they do not go farther in search of, but do without, unless it be small supplies of tobacco which they pro- cure through other Innuits, second or third hand.
Entire families of them, during the summer, leave their winter huts and go out into the valley at such points as their fancy may indicate, where they pass two and three months with absolutely no shelter whatever erected during that entire lapse of time. When it rains hard they simply turn their skin boats bottom side up, stick their heads under, and consider themselves fully settled for protec- tion from tempestnous wind and sleet-storms, or any other climatic unpleasantness. How insensible to extremes of weather do these bodies of the Innuits become-their whole external form is as in- sensible to heat or cold as their stolid features are ! Were they living under Italian skies, they could not affect a greater disregard for the varying moods of that mild climate than they do for the chilly, boisterous weather of Alaska. The Togiakers never go far
26
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from the river upon which they build their rude winter villages, and never venture out from its mouth ; hence they are not so happy in making the skin canoe or kayak, as their hardier brethren are : these boats on the Togiak are clumsy, broad of beam in proportion to length, and the hatch, or hole, so large that two persons can sit in it back to back. When a family concludes to go out for the summer camp, the man gets into his "kayak," takes the children who are under four or five years in with him, then pulls and pad- dles his way up against the current, or floats down, as the case may be ; the women-wife, mother, and daughters-are turned ashore and obliged to find their way up or down through long grass and over quaking bogs-to toil in this manner from camp to camp, and as they plod along they shout and sing at the top of their voices to apprise any bear or bears, which may be in their path, of such coming, and thus stampede them ; otherwise they would be in continual danger of silently stepping upon bruin as he lurked or slept in dense grassy jungles. When a bear first takes notice of the approach of a human being it invariably slinks away, rarely ever displaying, by the faintest sound, its departure ; but that same animal, if surprised suddenly at close quarters, will turn and fight desperately, even unto death.
The bold, far-projected headland of Cape Newenham forms the southern pier of that remarkable funnel-like sea-opening to the Kuskokvim River-a river upon which the human ichthyophagi of the north do most congregate : three thousand savages are living here in a string of scattered hamlets that closely adjoin each other, and are nearly all located on the right-hand bank of the river as we ascend it. They are more like muskrat villages than human habi- tations-water, water all around and everywhere : situated on little patches, or narrow dikes, at the rim of the high tides, on the edge of the river proper, which is here, and for a long distance up, bor- dered by a strikingly desolate and forlorn country. A glance at our map will show to the reader that great funnel-fashioned mouth of the Kuskokvim, through which its strong and turbid, clay-white current is discharged into Bering Sea. The tides, in this enormous estuary, run with a rise and fall that simply beggars description- reaching an amazing vertical flow and ebb of fifty feet at the en- trance ! Such extraordinary change in tide-level is carried up, but inuch modified as it progresses, until lost at Mumtrekhlagamute ; the entire physical aspect of that region, in which this sweeping
in.
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THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER AND TUNTUH MOUNTAINS
Viewed from Toolookah, 30 miles below Kolmakovsky, a famous Moose and Reindeer Hunting Grounds for the Innuits of that Region
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daily change in a level of the water prevails, is most repellant and discouraging.
From the high-tide bank-rims of the Kuskokvim, as we go up, across to the hills and to their rear in the east, extends a dreary expanse of swale and watered moors forty to sixty miles in width, flat and low as the surface of the sea itself. At high tide it appears to be nearly all submerged. It shimmers then like an inland ocean studded with myriads of small mossy islets. Again, when the tide in turn runs out, great far-expanded flats of mud and ooze supplant the waters everywhere, giving in this abrupt manner a striking shift of scenic effect. The eastern river bank is a queer, natural dike, formed by a rank and vigorous growth of coarse sedges, bul- rushes, and little sapling fringes of alders, willows, with birch and poplars interspersed. Upon this natural dike these native villages range in close continuity, each occupying all the dry land in its own immediate limits, and occupying it so thoroughly that a traveller cannot, without great difficulty, find bare land enough outside of their sites upon which to pitch his tent. Mud, mud everywhere- a whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a phys- ical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the vil- lages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, you are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries you forward and over to your destination.
On the Lower Kuskokvim the river width of itself is so great that the people living on its eastern banks never can see an oppo- site shore to the westward, for it is even more submerged there and swampy, if anything, than where they reside ; hence we find them located here on the east bank, to a practical exclusion of all settle- ment over on those occidental swales and bogs. The current of this singular stream flows quite rapidly. It discharges a great volume of water, which is colored a peculiar whitish tone by the contribution of a roiled tributary that heads in the Nooshagak divide. At its source and down to this muddy junction it is clear. It is a rapid stream in the narrows, and dull and sluggish in flow through wide openings.
The density of aboriginal population so remarkably manifested as we observe it on the Lower Kuskokvim does not, however, give all the testimony, inasmuch as during every summer two thousand
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or more natives from the Yukon delta come over here to fish with the Kuskokvims, making a sum-total of six or seven thousand fish- eaters, who catch, consume, and waste an astonishing quantity of salmon, which would, if properly handled, be sufficient to hand- somely feed the entire number of native inhabitants of Alaska, four times over, every year !
Snow lies deeply upon all this region, driven and packed in vast drifts and fields by the wrath of furious wintry gales, and the hunt- ing of land animals is thus made impossible. Then a native of the Kuskokvim Valley turns his attention to trapping white-fish * just as soon as the ice becomes firmly established, usually early in No- vember. The traps are made of willow and alder wicker-work, and nearly all in the same pattern as those employed for salmon, but of somewhat smaller dimensions, so as to be easier to handle, since they are not required to catch the huge "chowichie." Every morn- ing at dawn on the river the men of its many villages can be seen making their way out to these fish-traps, when it is not bitterly inclement, and even then, sometimes. They carry curiously shaped ice-picks, made or fashioned from walrus-teeth or deer-antlers, be- cause every night's freezing covers the trap anew with a solid cap of ice, which must be broken up and removed ere a savage can get at it, haul it out, and empty its "pot." Think of the physical hard- ihood required of a man who goes out from his hut to visit such a trap when the wind, away below zero, is blowing over an icy plain of the broad river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, whirling snowy spiculæ, like hot shot, into the faintest exposure which he dares to make of his face or eyes! He does not often go when a "poorga " prevails in this boisterous manner. Sometimes he feels as though he must, since a storm may have raged in wild, bitter fury for a week without sign of abatement. His children or his wife may be sick and half-starved ; then, only then, does he vent- ure out to dare and endure the greatest hardship of savage life in Alaska.
It frequently happens after an unusually cold night that a trap, including its contents, is frozen solid. This is another dreaded accident, for it involves great labor, since the trap itself must be picked to pieces and built anew. In spite of all these difficulties, the natives get enough fresh fish during each winter by such method
* Coregonu s&p.
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to eke out their scanty store of dried salmon and save themselves from starvation. On the lower river course, within the influence of that tremendous tidal action which has been described, a solid covering of ice never envelops the surface of the Kuskokvim. Here the natives hunt seals, the mahklok, and also the white whale or beluga, which furnishes them a full supply of oil * and blubber. A school of belugas puff and snort, like a fleet of tug-boats, as they push between and under tide-broken masses of ice in hot pursuit of fish that abound all over the broad estuary.
There is one particularly distressing and hideous feature that belongs to this entire area of the Alaskan coast tundra and marshy moors of the interior and its forests, its river-margins, and, in fact, to every place except those spots where the wind blows hard. It is the curse of mosquitoes-the incessant stinging of swarms of these blood-thirsty insects, which come out from their watery pupa by May 1st (with the earliest growing of spring vegetation), and remain in perfect clouds until withered and destroyed by severe frosts in September and October. The Indians themselves do not dare to go into the woods at Kolmakovsky during the summer, and the very dogs themselves frequently die from effects of mere mosquito-biting about their eyes and paws only, for that thick woolly hair of these canines effectually shields all other portions of their bodies. Close- haired beasts, like cattle or horses, would perish here in a single fortnight at the longest, if not protected by man.
Universal agreement in Alaska credits the Kuskokvim mosquito
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