USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 6
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have been drained, and denizens of cold countries are look- ing about them for substitutes for buffalo robes and the more costly furs which have now at last become priceless or extinct. American furs are becoming scarcer every year as civilization pushes into the wilds. Oregon, which within the memory of men not old, was one of the finest of hunting grounds, has practically ceased to yield any thing of the kind. Washington Territory is only productive in its wilder portions, and the same may be said of British Columbia. Alaska, however, remains almost intact, and not only the lucrative seal isles of Prybilov, but all the fastnesses of the coast range, the " barren grounds " of the great plateau, and the banks of the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, still make it worth the absorbing attention of the fur trader, and the trapper. The stock of good merchantable fur is neither abundant nor cheap in Alaska ; but squirrel robes containing six or seven dozen skins neatly sewed together may often be bought cheap at the Indian " ranches." They make excellent cloak and coat linings. A red fox skin costs two dollars ; mountain goat fifty cents; black bear from ten to twenty-five dollars unmounted. Hair and fur seals range in price, undressed from three to ten dollars ; sea otter from ninety to two-hundred dollars-the most expensive of all American fur and the most desirable. Land otter is very pretty, and at one of the Sitka stores a shoulder cape and muff made up in San Francisco was offered at twenty-five dollars. The Russian occupation, which was founded on the fur trade and enriched itself for a century on its profits, withdrew from the field before the lead was half worked out, nay, scarcely opened ! The Hudson Bay Company was long ago attracted to the country by its inducements, and attempted to secure a foothold in it by establishing trading posts on the upper Yukon as far back as 1850, crossing the Rocky mountain divide from the head waters of the Mackenzie; but they were soon driven out by the Chilkoot Indians, the most energetic and business-like of the coast tribes, who had been for generations the self- constituted middle-men between the seaboard and the in- terior ; and the interior of Alaska has since remained an unoccupied field for the pursuit of an industry, which for a century enriched a masterful corporation and made it almost a sovereign power. If the brave spirits who started the Northwest Fur Company of years ago, and whose survivors are now few and hoary, could renew their youth and energy, they would ask no better opportunity for business than the one now so opportunely presented, with transportation
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made easy and bases of supplies convenient, the natives not only friendly but earnestly disposed, the cost of outfit cheap, and a market more remunerative than was ever offered before. With the population doubling every twenty years, and more and more permanent residents wintering through, more mushers to muffle and furs of superior quality for street perambulation in the cities, and the ladies to bundle for their cross-country excursions with sleds and kometiks, and the very general demand for furs in Alaska, hunters, trappers, furriers, traders and shoppers ought to find the fur business lucrative. The successes of the Hudson Bay Company, through the pro- tracted period of its sovereignty, are an earnest of the re- sources which are held in reserve in the Alaskan fur lands; and inasmuch as its earnings reached millions an- nually, who dare say that the "Seward Purchase" is not as good as gold, just for its furs alone ?
With regard to the mineral resources of Alaska whose richness is rapidly coming to view with their development, I have chosen to devote a separate chapter.
A once lucrative and interesting industry of Alaska is the seal "fishery," so called, though the animals are usu- ally driven upon the land and knocked on the head with clubs. For the exclusive privilege of catching seals, not to exceed 100,000 in number per annum, the Alaska Com- pany of San Francisco paid to the government the stipu- lated price of $317,000 every year. Since the lease ex- pired in 1890, the seal catch has very materially fallen off in consequence of poaching, so the revenue to the govern- ment is far less now.
With regard to the possibilities of the Alaska Commercial fisheries, they may be regarded as simply illimitable. Fish are so abundant everywhere, that a dime will at any time procure from a native all the fish that ten men can eat. Halibut banks, cod-fish banks, and rock-cod bottoms, occur at inter- vals all along the coast. Salmon jam the rivers and tidal estuaries so that they can not move, in masses many yards wide and as deep as the normal rise of the tide (18 feet) from the surface to the bottom. In their spawning season candle-fish, or caplin-beautiful fish some seven inches long, like smelts-line the beaches at each flood-tide in windrows a yard wide and several inches deep, all alive and kicking, each incoming wave stranding a host of them. Herring swarm in all the estuaries and channels.
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All the inlets abound in fish of a hundred known and unknown kinds, good for food and good for oil and fertilizers. Whales and blackfish are plentiful off the coast and in the estuaries. There is wealth here for all who will spread their nets or cast the hook. Devastating storms and periodical dearth of fish do not make the fishing business too hazardous to undertake. Starvation never threatens. Our Cape Anners and Gloucester fishermen who breast the hardships of the Atlantic, will here find a more congenial climate ; spring opening with fulsome benefi- cence in early March ; fish swarming into every estuary and congregating on every outlying bank in ample season for Lenten market ; herring, cod and halibut enough to sat- isfy an eternity of Fridays. There labor stands already provided-men, native Indians accustomed for many gener- ations to the perils, intricacies and abounding munificence of the sea coast ; men, intelligent and industrious, waiting with open arms to welcome any enterprise which will give them congenial and profitable employment ; men of dusky hue, and strong sinews to breast the waves and haul the seine and heave the ponderous halibut and rock cod from their sequestered depths, who have already, of their own motion and energy, established canneries and oil factories along their sea-girt home ! Here on this boundless Pacific coast, where Yankee and Kanuck have each a thousand miles of scope, no questions of jurisdiction or marine pre- rogatives need arise ; whispers of awards and claims will be lost in the sounding surf ; dissensions and jealousy will be drowned in the overwhelming flood of fortune ; and no one will have to wait on the flow of tide. All the vessels of the coast-guard will be impressed for holiday jaunts among the clustering islands, and moods and tenses of men and tempests will remain symbolically " pacific." Should the attachments of home be too strong for the sturdy New Englanders to cut their latch-strings loose altogether and deter them from migrating for permanent establishment on new cruising grounds, the annihilation of time and distance by modern facilities of transcontinental transportation will make each trip and periodical sojourn little more than an annual holiday excursion. Compared with the precarious ventures of their progenitors who flocked to the North Atlantic fishing grounds before the early days of colonial settlement, their new departure would be a bagatelle-a mere reflection of personal hazard and commercial risk.
Out in Alaska every thing which is required for this stu- pendous industry grows spontaneously-an abundance of
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
bait without cost ; all materials for building and cooperage; ice for packing, salt for curing, if it can be evaporated profitably, and twine for nets and seines, which is supplied by the gigantic kelp, a hundred feet in length, whose fiber is too tough to break. At no distant day ice from her glaciers will be harvested for consumption in lower latitudes, just as it is now gathered in San Rafael Bay, in South America, for refrigerating uses in Chili and equatorial towns. Some enterprising company will establish a set of piers or breakers in the bays where the glacier streams debouch, with flumes and machinery for squaring the ice for stowage in cargo ; and among the ice, packed in galvanized iron cases inclosed by wooden crates, fresh fish will be dispatched on ten-knot steamers to lower ports, and thence perchance to eastern cities where Pacific salmon have long been the precursors of the coming traffic. Thus a combined industry may secure a two-fold return from the capital employed. The rapid drift of time will see all these things accomplished, for men will not be content to grub when they can possess bonanzas for the gathering. Glut of labor will return no more " like a dog to its vomit," nauseating the whole industrial system ; but the surcharge will flow into the open channels of our new possession, and, with the relief that must follow, the present pressure will measurably cease to aggravate dis- tress. Capital will prefer to invest where it is least liable to disturbance, and in Alaska the field is broad, the laborers few, and the branches of industry new and almost untried. Long before we began to rub our eyes the citizens of British Columbia were fully awake to the opportunities before them, and alive to the importance of their unde- veloped resources, so very like our own in kind and quan- tity. At once they had steamers running to all essential points up the rivers and along the coast to the interna- tional boundary line. They have established numerous industries, thrown open public lands to settlement, civ- ilized the Indians, and instituted schools for them, and sumptuary laws. But we are laggard no longer. We not only followed the lead of our sagacious predecessors, but we lead now ourselves in all things. If not, why not? Interest in the boundary dispute grew slack when the rich placers of the Seward Peninsula were discovered - ten years ago, and now Canada has her Klondike and we our Nome, and each of us our own good name. On this we bank. At the same time our "Cache near the Pole" is a lasting verity upon which we expect to draw
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for generations to come, sure and inexhaustible. The Pole may shift in its secular progression, and the per- sistent Peary chase it from pillar to post across the ice pack and into the ice blink until his term of service expires, but our cache will hold radiant with pay streaks and the color of gold. Meanwhile let the old flag wave!
STONE TOTEM-POLE (HAIDAH)
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COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE.
COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE.
The prominence given to Alaska and Siberia by current politico-economic questions as well as by the contribu- tions of popular authors and lecturers will render inter- esting any information bearing directly upon the commer- cial relations of those two vast regions, especially in view of the possible union of Asia and America in the near future by transcontinental railroad and telegraph. Under this belief the following history is submitted, with the remark that the route of the government railroad from St. Petersburg to Bering Strait follows very nearly the course of the fur trade, as outlined by the writer, in its gradual extension eastward through Siberia to the ter- ritory once known as Russian-America, but now called Alaska.
In the course of the one hundred and fifty years subse- quent to Czar Ivan's conquests on the Caspian, the Osti- aks, Samoides, Tungusi, Buraits, Yakouts, Koriaks, Tchuktchi, all of them inhabitants of Siberia, and finally the dwellers in Kamschatka successively came under the dominion of the Czar. The Russians also took posses- sion of the Amoor River in northern China and held it over forty years (1639 to 1680), during which occupa- tion a very considerable intercourse was maintained with the Chinese subjects of Manchuria. Meanwhile, discov- ering the marvelous wealth of the Siberian wilderness and the value of the fur trade that in the course of time came to yield 3,500,000 silver roubles per annum, the Russian government located "ostrogs" or fortified trad- ing posts all over the country, opened commercial thor- oughfares between the principal depots, and established a continuous line of communication from St. Petersburg to Bering Sea, with lateral ramifications into China via the Amoor, and through Kiachta, the central gateway of the Great Altai mountain range.
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Tempted by the emoluments which the constantly increasing fur trade promised, the great body of the invading army, with its motley following, remained in Siberia and was distributed permanently throughout the country. By the exigencies of war, many of the native tribes were scattered; some were almost extirpated, and others were driven to the antipodes of their homes. But analogous pursuits and a common struggle for subsist- ence brought them all, aliens and aborigines, into close personal contact ; and therefore it is easy to see how con- tinual association during the three supervening centuries might naturally result in essential modifications of race characteristics. At the same time the strongest types would remain constant, and generic peculiarities and customs, be transmitted lineally to the latest generation, even under most adverse circumstances.
At the very inception of the fur trade a system of annual fairs or exchanges was inaugurated by the gov- ernment, which brought together to the ostrogs once a year the entire nomadic population of fur hunters and a considerable portion of the shore-dwellers for the pur- pose of barter. The principal fairs were, and are, held at Ostrownoje, the easternmost and remotest trading post of the Old World; Okhotsk, on the sea of that name ; Yakoutsk, on the Lena River; Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, at the central gateway of the Celestial Empire; Irbit, Tobolsk, and Nijni-Novgorod, whence the bales of fur and the miscellaneous products of the Arctic Seas find their way eventually through regular channels to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Pekin, and at last to markets far beyond. There is also at the present day a very con- siderable trade to the Amoor, which, being ceded to the Russians in 1858, was again occupied by them after an interval of almost two hundred years, and more recently contested for again. Yakoutsk is the focal point and entrepot of Eastern Siberia, lying on the border line that separates the countries of the Yakouts and Tungusi-the latter occupying the center of Siberia and the Yakouts the country north of them up to the Arctic Ocean. Orig- inally the Yakouts, or Jakuts, occupied as far south and west as the Baikal and Angora, but were driven thence by the more powerful hordes of Tungusi, who were, in turn, subjugated by the Russians in 1640, about the time when the Manchus conquered the Chinese Empire. Al-
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though the Manchus and Tungusi come from the same stock, the difference in their fate is accounted for by the fact that the Manchus were better armed and disciplined than the Chinese, while the Tungusi had only bows and arrows to oppose to the firearms of the Cossacks. The Manchu tongue is now the court language of Pekin, while the Tungusi are nomads, poor and ignorant.
It was a bad day for Eastern Siberia when the Yakouts were crowded up to the Lena by the victorious Tungusi, for they in turn dispossessed the weaker tribes which they found in possession of the country and established themselves as far eastward as the Kolyma River, on the frontier of the Tschuktchi, the most eastern tribe of Asia, whose ultimate boundary is the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea. The Yakouts, or Jakuts, have always possessed a higher civilization than is found elsewhere in the same latitude, except in Iceland, Finland and Norway ; and by their superior intelligence and force of character they have stamped their impress upon all with whom they have come in contact. Theirs is the dominant language from the basin of the Lena to the extreme eastern coast of Siberia. All the Tungusi speak Jakut. Russian is scarcely known in two-thirds of its Asiatic possessions. For centuries the Jakuts have been the common carriers for all the peoples with whom they have had commercial intercourse. "Without the Jakut and his horse," says Middendorf, the eminent naturalist and Siberian ex- plorer, "the Russians would never have been able to pen- etrate to the Sea of Okhotsk, and from thence to the Aleutian chain; but for him they never would have set- tled on the Kalyma, nor have opened commercial inter- course with the Tschuktchi and the eastern Eskimo. * * * Before the possession of the Amoor had opened a new road to commerce (1640), thousands of pack horses used annually to go to Okhotsk."
Jakutsh merchants were the pioneers of trade with Kamschatka, and many hundreds of them settled on that peninsula and remained until the forests of the New World became the ultimate quest of the insatiable fur hunters. When pursuit was pushed to the adjacent con- tinent they were the first to venture in crazy craft across the Sea of Kamschatka (now called Bering), discovering the island of Kadiak in the Aleutian Archipelago, and opening barter with the natives; so that three centuries,
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at least, have elapsed since the infusion of Asiatic ele- ments into the Aleutian composition.
But there are shorter routes than this from Asia to America, and there must have been, from a period long anterior, intercommunication between land and land, whose approximate shores are so contiguous as to be dis- cernible from a boat in mid-passage, and whose inhabi- tants are constantly afloat in pursuit of a livelihood. Nevertheless, there was little to invite barter between neighboring peoples whose products were as homogene- ous as themselves; for traffic in tobacco, sugar and iron implements had not begun thus early. Such tangible intimations of a superior civilization had not so soon penetrated the interminable versts of wilderness which intervened.
There can be little doubt that Asiatic blood and Asiatic customs, transmitted through the Manchus and Tungusi, with the Jakut predominating, are deeply engrafted into the coast dwellers of western Alaska and the Aleutian Islands; and, furthermore, inasmuch as all the shore tribes intermarry promiscuously, that they have perme- ated southeastern Alaska and the Alexandrian Archipel- ago. George William Stellar, a distinguished ethnologist who accompanied Bering on his second voyage of dis- covery in 1741 and landed at Kaiak Island, on the Alas- kan coast, noticed such race similarities, and he immedi- ately conjectured that the aborigines of that part of the American coast must be of the "same origin as the Kam- schatkans." But the Kamschatkans had then been inti- mate with the Jakuts for a century, and 1,000 of the latter were settled at Petropovolsk, imparting their dominant traits to the natives, after having been amalgamated for a still longer period with the Tungusi, who are of Man- chu stock. The Jakuts have a Mongolian cast of fea- tures, but Middendorf says there is a tradition that they are of Turkish extraction. They are very shrewd and "beat the Jews" for trading. They are keen of vision, very hardy, great hunters, well versed in woodcraft, pur- suing the fur-bearing animals with great persistence. Their memory is remarkable, and their bump of locality well developed. Like the Alaskans, they are ingenious artificers and artisans. In manual dexterity they surpass all other Siberian nations. Long before the Russian con- quest they made use of iron ore to manufacture their own
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knives and axes, in the use of which they are very ex- pert. They are acquainted with flint and steel. Their women make carpets of white and colored skins. Their only domestic animals are the dog and the horse. Houses are built of slabs or logs placed upright, with sleeping berths ranged along the sides on a raised dais or plat- form, the center of the earthen floor being occupied by a hearth, the smoke of which issues through an aperture in the roof. They are gross feeders, and celebrate wed- dings and special events by feasting, after the fashion of the Alaskan "potlatch." This, for the most part, seems literally descriptive of what was to be seen in Alaska twenty years ago. It is identical.
Stellar, when he landed at Kaiak in 1741, found a wooden tray hollowed from a trunk of a tree, into which hot stones were placed to heat water for boiling meat. He also found a cellar filled with smoked fish and cov- ered with a platform made of strips of bark laid on poles, and numerous implements "like those used by the inhabitants of Kamschatka," all of which will be at once recognized by anybody familiar with Alaskan domestic economy of a later period.
The Jakuts call themselves Christians, having doubt- less been absorbed into the Greco-Roman church at the time of the conquest, but they all believe in shamanism, which is a sort of barbarous faith cure, and have an ab- ject fear of evil spirits. Shaman is the name applied to the sorcerer or magician among many of the tribes of northern Asia, and the shaman and shamanism were until recently alike prevalent along pretty nearly the entire coast of Alaska up to the Arctic Ocean. The Jakuts are generally reserved in manner, small in stature, with broad shoulders, prominent cheek bones, noses small, lips very full, hair black, complexion dark brown, or sometimes yellow-a description which answers very well for some of the Alaskan natives. The men sometimes have full beards, and the women paint their faces with black and red pigments mixed with fat.
Some conspicuous peculiarities of the Alaskan natives seem to have been borrowed directly from the Tungusi. For instance, the Tungusi are divided into clans accord- ing to their occupations, or to the domestic animals which they employ, or to those which they have killed in the chase, notably the horse, dog, reindeer, frog, raven and
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bear, and are distinguished by their respective names. This peculiarity is illustrated in the Alexandrian Archi- pelago by the heraldic totem poles which have been such striking objects of interest to tourists. The Tungusi have also evidently transmitted the superstition of the thunder bird; they do not bury the dead, but place them in large chests on platforms, or in the forks of trees; they hold slaves, and traffic in women; brides are bought for mer- chandise, or earned by long periods of service ; cannibal- ism and human sacrifices are not unknown ; all of which conditions were prevalent in Alaska at a period not re- mote.
The strangely composite Chinook jargon in use along the entire North Pacific Coast, which was invented by the early traders to facilitate business intercourse, repre- sents very well the ethnography of the people, for it was formulated from all the spoken languages and dialects of the associated inhabitants; and we shall find by analysis that a moiety of the words are of Asiatic origin, while we observe at once a prevalent substitution of the letter 1 for r, as in China. Some importance should attach to collateral testimony of this character. It is at least a link in the chain of evidence. Sir George Simpson, in his "Overland Journey Around the World," tells how the bales of fur which arrive at Kiachta, on the Chinese fron- tier, are covered with walrus hide from the Arctic coasts, the same being forthwith utilized to protect the tea chests which are shipped thence to Moscow, whereby a perfect continuity of overland traffic is "blazed" half way round the globe. By the same token we can readily trace the lineage of representative peoples employed along the line of traffic.
It is quite as easy to follow the races, through their commercial connection, across the Strait of Bering into what was so long known as Russian-America. By the year 1769 a very large area of that vast country had been so thoroughly prospected by fur hunters and explorers that it was intelligently, though rudely charted. Up to the time of the accession of the consolidated Russian Fur Company in 1779, no less than sixty distinct trading com- panies had been established. Posts were scattered all over the interior, as well as along the coast. The pur- suit of the seal, sea otter, ice bear, whale, walrus, and other hunting operations, extended over 3,000 miles, from
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Kadiak in the Aleutian chain over to the Kurile Islands of Japan, and up to the extreme north coasts of Asia and America. In the course of the great monopoly there came to be no less than one hundred and thirty of these trading posts in Russian-America. The Russians con- tinued the same commercial system which they had inau- gurated in Siberia long before. Trails and thorough- fares were established along the principal water-courses and across the divides which separated their headwaters, and brigades annually packed their furs and supplies over them to designate depots.
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