USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 6
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These savages are fish-eaters, and as such they have a common bond of abrupt contrast in physique with their meat-eating breth- ren of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains ; but the traits of natural disposition are the same, the heart and impulse of the Haidah or the Tongass, are the heart and the impulse of the Sioux or the Cheyenne-the former moves nowhere except squatted in his shapely canoe, the other always bestrides a pony or mustang. This wide divergence in every-day action gives alone to these savages their strongly marked bodily separation ; the fish-eater is stooping as he stands, and though he has a deep chest and sinewy arms, yet his lower limbs are bowed, sprung at the knees, and imperfectly muscled ; while the meat-cater is erect and symmetrical, in fine physical outline from the crown of his head to his heels.
The various divisions or bands of the Indian population of the Sitkan archipelago and mainland * differ but little in their manner of life and customs, and speak closely related dialects of the same
* I. Chillkahts: Lynn Canal and Glacier Bay.
II. Hooniahs : Chichagov Island and islets.
III. Awks : North end Admiralty Island.
IV. Tahkoos : Mainland, Stephen's Passage and Juneau City.
V. Khootznahoos : South end Admiralty Island.
VI. Sitkas : Baranov Island.
VII. Kakho : Kou and Kuprianoy Islands, Prince Frederick Sound, mainland coast.
VIII. Stickeens : Wrangel, Zarenbo and Etholin Islands, Stickeen River mouth.
IX. Huidah : Prince of Wales Island.
X. Tongass : Mainland, Cape Fox to Cape Warde, and contiguous islands.
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language. The Haidahs are the best dispositioned and behaved. They have been from the earliest times constantly in the habit of making long and incessant canoe voyages ; and, taking into account the ease with which all parts of this region can be reached on water, it is rather surprising that any marked difference in language should be found at all ; still, when we recall the knowledge which we have of their fierce inter-tribal wars, it is not so strange ; this warfare, however, was of the same barbarous character as that recognized in all other American savages-it was the surprise and massacre of helpless parties, never sparing old women, children or decrepit men. These internecine family wars have undoubtedly been the sole cause of the present subdivisions of the savages as we note them to-day.
In drawing the picture, faithfully, of any one Alaskan Indian, I may say candidly that in so doing I give a truthfully defined image of them all throughout the archipelago. Physically the several tribes of this region differ to some extent, but not near so much as our colored people do among themselves ; the margin of distinction up here between the ten or eleven clans, which ethnologists enume- rate, is so slight that only a practised eye can declare them. The Haidahs possess the fairest skins, the best temper, and the best physique ; while the ugly Sitkans and Khootznahoos are the darkest and the worst. But the coarse mouth, the width and prominence of the cheek bones, and the relatively large size of the head for the body, are the salient main departures from our ideal symmetry.
The body is also long and large, compared with the legs, brought about by centuries of constant occupation in canoes and the consequent infrequent land travel ; their hair is black and coarse, unkempt, and never allowed, by the males, to fall below their shoulders except in the case of their "shamans," or doctors. A scattered, straggling mustache and beard is sometimes allowed to grow upon the upper lip and chin, generally in the case of the old men only, who finally grow weary of plucking it out by the roots, which in youth they always did in sheer vanity.
Once in a while a face is turned upon you from a canoe, or in a rancherie, which arrests your attention, and commands comment as good-looking ; these instances are, however, rare-very, very rare. I think the Haidahs give more evidence in average physiog- nomy of possessing greater intelligence than that presented in the countenances of their brethren ; while I deem the Sitkas and Khootznahoos to be the most insensible-if they are as bright they
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conceal the fact with astonishing success. Again, the ferocity and exceptionally savage expression of their faces, which Captain Cook and Vancouver saw and so graphically recorded, has faded out com- pletely ; but in all other respects they agree to-day perfectly with those descriptions of these early voyagers. In those days firearms had not destroyed their faith in elaborate armaments of spear and bow and body armor-shields of wood and leather, so that they then appeared in much more elaborate costumes and varied pigments than they do now.
Each tribe has one or more large " rancheries," or villages, in which it lives, and which are always located at the level of the sea, just above tide and surf, at river-mouths, or on sheltered bays of the islands, or the mainland ; these rancheries, or houses, are built of solid, heavy timbers in the permanent villages, or thrown loosely together of lighter material in their temporary or camping stations. The general type of construction is the same throughout the archi- pelago, the most substantial houses being those of the Haidahs, who give more care to the accurate fitting together and ornamen- tation of their edifices than is shown elsewhere. They certainly show a greater constructive facility and mechanical dexterity, not only in the better style of house-building but in the greater num- ber of, greater size of, and excessively elaborate carved totem posts. These peculiar adjuncts to Alaskan Indian architecture are small and shabby everywhere else when compared with the Prince of Wales exhibition.
All permanent villages are generally situated with regard to one great idea-easy access to halibut-fishing banks and such coast fish- eries, which occupy the greater proportion of the natives' time in going to and coming from them when not actually engaged in fishing upon these chosen grounds ; therefore it happens that, occasionally, a village will be located on a rocky coast, bleak and exposed, though carefully placed at the same time so as to permit of the safe landing of canoes in rough water. These houses always face seaward, and stand upon some flat of soil, elevated a few feet above the high-tide mark, where below there is usually a sandy or gravelly beach upon which the fleet of canoes is drawn out, or launched from, as the owners come and go at all hours of the day and night. The houses are arranged side by side, either in close contact, or else a space of greater or less width between. A promenade or track is always left between the fronts of the houses and the edge of the bank, from
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ten to thirty feet in width; it constitutes a street, and in which the carved posts and temporary fish-drying frames, etc., are usually planted. Also those canoes that are not in daily use, or will not be used for some time, are invariably hauled up on this street, and carefully covered by rush-mats or spruce-boughs, so as to protect them from the weather, by which they might be warped or cracked.
The rancheries are themselves never painted by their rude archi- tects and builders ; they, however, soon assume a uniform, incon- spicuous, gray color, and become yellowish-green in spots, or over-
olegaicho Año. 1. S'impose Oct. 20, 3L6
A Haidah Rancherie.
grown with moss and weeds owing to the dampness of the climate. If it were not for the cloud of bluish smoke that hovers over these villages in calm weather, they would never be noticed from any con- siderable distance.
In localities where the encroachment of mountain and water make the village area very scant, two rows of houses are occasion- ally formed, but in no instance whatever is any evidence given in these Koloshian settlements of special arrangement of dwellings, or of any set position for the house of the chief man of the village : he may live either in the centre or at the extreme end of the row.
1
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ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
Each house usually shelters several families, in one sense of the term ; these are related to each other and under the tacitly ac- knowledged control of some elder, to whom the building is reputed to belong, and who is a person of greater or less importance in the tribe or village according to the amount of his property or cunning of his intellect.
Before some of these Siwash mansions a rude porch or platform is erected, upon which, in fair weather, a miscellaneous group of natives will squat in assembly, conversing, if squaws, or gambling, if men. The houses themselves are usually square upon their founda- tions, and vary much in size, some of them being a hundred feet square, while most of them are between fifty and sixty feet, the smaller rancheries being less than twenty. The gable end, and the entrance right under its plumb, always faces the street and beach- view ; the roof slopes down at a low pitch or angle on each side, with a projecting shelter erected right over the hole left in the roof- centre, intended for the escape of smoke-no chimneys were ever built. This shelter, or shutter, is movable, and is shifted by the Indian just as the wind and rain may drive ; the floor is oblong or nearly square, and, in the older and better constructed examples, is partly sunk in the earth, i.e., the ground has been excavated to a depth of six or eight feet in a square area, directly in the centre, with one or two large earthen steps or terraces left running around the sides of the cellar. A small square of bare dirt is left in the exact centre, again, of this hole, while the rest of the floor is cov- ered with split planks of cedar ; the earthen steps which environ the lower floor are in turn faced and covered with cedar-slabs, and these serve not only for sleeping and lounging places, but also for the stowage, in part, of all sorts of boxes and packages of property and food belonging to the family ; the balance of these treasures usually hangs suspended, in all manner of ingenious contrivances, from the heavy beams and roof-poles overhead. The rancheries which are built to-day by Alaskan Indians nearly all stand on the surface of the ground without any excavation-a decided degen- eracy.
The pattern of the Koloshian house is maintained with little variation throughout the archipelago, and has been handed down from remote antiquity. When, after extended confabulation, a number of Indians agree to build a house, several months are passed first in the forest by them, where they are engaged in fell-
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ing the trees and dressing the timbers necessary ; when these logs and planks are finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is done with axes and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), they are tumbled into the water and towed around to the contem- plated site of the new edifice. The great size of the beams and planks used in a big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a large number of hands co-operate in the work. The erection, therefore, of such a structure in all its stages, the cutting and hew- ing in the woods, the launching and towing of the timbers to the foundations, and their subsequent elevation and fitting, forms the occasion of a regular gathering, or "bee," that generally calls in whole detachments from neighboring villages, which is always the
Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a Rancherie.
precursor to a grand "potlatch," or giving away of the portable property of the savage for whom the labor is undertaken.
Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assem- bling of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time ere completion in all details, because the Siwash for whom the work has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as it may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable property, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of the labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more than two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect babel of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the
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ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
entire combination of men, women, and children, as the great beams are placed in position .*
In the construction of these dwellings the savage uses no iron or wooden spikes, he " mortices " and "tenons " rudely but solidly everything that requires binding firmly ; in the lighter and tempo- rary summer rancheries much use is made of cedar-root and bark- rope lashings to the same end. Within the last fifteen or twenty years the common use of small windows has been employed, the glazed sashes being purchased from the whites either at Victoria or else brought up to order by the traders ; these are inserted in the most irregular manner, usually on the sides under the eaves.
The oddly-carved totem posts, which appear in every village, sometimes like a forest of dead trees at distant sight, are, broadly speaking, divisible into two classes : that is to say, the clan or family pillars, and those erected as memorials of the dead. There has been too much written in regard to these grotesque features seeking to endow them with idolatry, superstitions, and other fancies of the savage mind. Nothing of the kind, in my opinion, belongs to the subject ; the image posts of the totem order are generally from 30 to 50 feet in height, with a diameter of 3 to 5 feet at the base, tapering slightly upward. They are often hol- lowed at the back, after the fashion of a trough, so that they can be the easier handled and put into position. Those grotesque figures which cover these posts from top to bottom, closely grouped to- gether, have little or no serious significance whatever : they always display the totem of the owner, and a very marked similarity runs through the carvings of this character in each village, though they have a wide range of variation when one settlement is contrasted with another. I am unable to give any definite explanation, that is worthy of attention, of the real meaning of all those strange designs -perhaps, in truth, there is none; they are simply ornamental doorways.
The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the
The exact measurements of such a rancherie, and of which the author submits a careful drawing, were : Breadth in front of house, 54 feet 6 inches ; depth from front to back, "in the clear," 47 feet 8 inches ; height of ridge of roof, 16 feet 6 inches ; height of eaves, 10 feet 8 inches ; girth of main ver- tical posts and horizontal beams, 9 feet 9 inches ; width of outer upright beams, 2 feet 6 inches, thickness, about 6 inches ; width of carved totem post in front of house, 3 feet 10 inches, height, (?) 50 feet.
4
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village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the buildings. When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in the medicine man, or " shaman," and also invite the friends of the fam- ily to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco ; soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and pur- chased it from some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay or difficulty in getting one.
If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner as that indi- cated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be placed but a single body, then again it will contain several-all relatives, how- ever. But should the deceased savage have been one of great im- portance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and seeking quar- ters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary, sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man. Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a distribution of property made by the deceased man's brother, or that relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before .*
The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole
* Whole volumes have been written upon this subject of the totem and consanguinity among these savages of the northwest coast. Further descrip- tion or discussion, in this instance, is superfluous.
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ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
through which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside. As you enter, the whole interior seems dark-everything, at first, indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portière over the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace, upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing ; kettles of stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes, all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room, some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving in wood or slate ; while others are idly staring into the fire, or, wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring. Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead, lang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life, such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs, cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon and hali- but, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such people -blankets,* tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs of silk, are stowed away in the corners.
But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation swift,
* The blanket is now, however, the general recognized currency among these people. It is the substitute among them of that unit of value, the beaver skin, which has been for so long the currency of the great Hudson Bay region. The blankets used in Alaskan trade are of all colors-green, blue, yellow, red, and white-of the very best woollen texture, none others will do. They are rated in value by the "points " or line-marks woven into the edge, the best and largest being a " four-point," the smallest and poorest being "one- point." The unit of value is a single " two and a half point " blanket, worth a little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large four- point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. Traders not infrequently buy in blankets, taking them, when in good order, from the Indians as money, and selling them out again as trade demands.
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of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though a tem- pest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the Ko- loshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse-slops, bones, shells, fish-débris, and a medley of similar and worse nui- sances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere hangs heavy around our heads-we move away.
On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with, unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basket- ware; they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are almost invariably bare-too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is a very common practice ; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect ; blue and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of meat-eating savages, who always paint them- selves with great care as to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning ; especially hideous are the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe smeared over the counte- nances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out upon them as they are fish- ing or paddling extended journeys in their canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in mourning by the same application.
Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style ; and, until quite lately, the females all. wore labrets in the lower lips-this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only
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ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
among the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or copper, are inserted ; and also the septum of the nose is perforated, of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or a pendant of haliotis shell.
Each village has its ler non scripta, and is a law unto itself every- where within the confines of the Alexander archipelago ; or, in differ- ent words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to any other village or savages-it is the largest unit in the Indian system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the indi- vidual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen-there are no strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other's sim- ple life, every move that they make, what they capture in the for- est or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the ranch- eries over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimu- lates and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing in its detail-no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not acknowledged ; but any action tending to the injury of another, in person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the suf- ferer-usually atoned for-and the village feud, thus aroused, is soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property, to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which, inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable manner ; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male Indian able to bear arms ; and although these savages
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