USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 7
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Precisely the same system was prosecuted by the con- temporaneous Hudson Bay Company, whose outposts by that time had been pushed to the sources of the Mac- kenzie River, and even beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Yukon. The headwaters of the Yukon interlock with those of the Mackenzie, and there was regular traffic over an eighty-mile portage between the two to points where forty-foot barges, drawing two feet of water, could float. Again, there was an established thorough- fare, and now is, all along the continental coast line, west from the mouth of the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Colville, where an Eskimo coast brigade meets a brigade which comes up from Kotzebue Sound via the Noatak River and across a portage to the Colville River, which it descends, there exchanging tobacco and iron implements for seal products. When the barter is over, the Point Barrow Eskimos journey eastward to Barter Reef, where they obtain, from eastern Eskimos, lamps, knives, beads, guns and ammunition (brought from the Mackenzie River), which they exchange the following year for Kotzebue goods at the Colville rendezvous. There is also a shore route from Icy Cape on the Arctic Coast, over which furs and walrus teeth are sent from hand to hand as far as Gwosdew Islands, in Bering Strait, where they are bartered for tobacco, knives and iron kettles of Tchuktchi, who obtain them from Sledge Island on East Cape of Siberia, to which they have previously been shipped from Ostrownoje. Thus did the early articles of Russian manufacture gradually find their way along the American coast as far east as Repulse Bay, there com- peting among the tribes of the Mackenzie district with articles from Sheffield or Birmingham, in England. By this hyperborean transit and line of connection it may,
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be possible to establish an old-time relationship with the Eskimo of the entire circumpolar region. Matiuschin, who was Baron Wrangell's companion, says that "the Tschuktchi belong to the widespread Eskimo family and live in the same way. They are of Chinese origin, hardened by acclimation."
The Eskimos of the Arctic belt have hitherto occu- pied their isolated geographical position from sheer ne- cessity, compelled no less by exigencies of subsistence than fear of coterminous hostile tribes. They are never found far from the coast line, because the sea amply supplies their wants. Deer and wild fowl come to them in Summer, and in Winter there is no occasion for them to leave the coast, for the adjacent country to the south- ward is an inhospitable ice plain, barely covered with lichens and sphagmum, and utterly destitute of life. Nature has interposed it as a neutral and uninhabitable belt to separate them from the Red Indians who are their hereditary enemies and merciless.
Thus restricted to the Arctic Zone, they can migrate only on east and west lines. Their hazardous pursuits require an association of labor, so that they are obliged to dwell in communities. Exigencies of the chase-some dearth or superabundance of salmon, seals, whales or other creatures upon which they depend for subsistence- sometimes drive or attract them to new regions and stim- ulate the planting of new communities, so that it seems easy to account for the continuous extension of Eskimo settlement from Bering Sea to Smith Sound, and also for the persistence of the Mongolian type, with unaltered habits and manners, whether they be independent or under Russian, Danish or British rule. Only on the Pacific Coast do they venture into lower latitudes, rang- ing southward as far as the Aleutian Peninsula, in lati- tude fifty-eight degrees, where they meet and fraternize with their congeners from Asia, no longer deterred by fear of hostile aliens, but by their presence bearing significant testimony to their common origin. On the Atlantic Coast the Eskimos drop down to Ivuktuk Inlet, or Eskimo Bay, in latitude fifty-five degrees.
BAPTIST CHURCH ON WOOD ISLAND
AN INTERIOR VIEW.
The territory of Alaska, is naturally divided into two immense districts, insular and continental ; and the latter, owing to its vast area and mountainous interruptions is again subdivided into three districts with more or less dis- tinctly defined boundaries and characteristics. The northern district, bordering the Arctic Ocean, and comprising a third, is principally a series of spruce timber flats and moss barrens, or "tundras ;" the eastern division, lying between the coast range of mountains and the Rockies, is occupied by the broken and diversified country which is drained by the upper Yukon, presenting every contour of mountain, valley and plain. The southwestern portion, not including the Alaska peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands, is in large part a spruce timbered flat, but the " Alaskan range " of mountains, 500 miles or more in length, occupies its southern portion. The delta of the Yukon on the west coast, is an alluvial flat. The Yukon, itself, nearly as long as the Mississippi, almost bisects the territory. It lies midway between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, flowing in a general east and west direction, but with a tremendous curvilinear sweep conformable to the outline of the coast, which carries it up through seven degrees of latitude into the very verge of the Arctic Zone. With its twenty or thirty great tribu- taries, it constitutes a vast fluvial system which drains almost the entire territory. Besides this, there are several large
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rivers like the Stickeen, the Taku, Suchitno, and Copper Rivers, which find their way to the sea through great gaps in the mountains, and others which drain the glaciers and the melted snows of the peaks. On the north shore are several large rivers flowing into the Arctic. The prevailing level of the great interior platcau is interrupted only by a few isolated mountains and mountain ranges, which lie princi- pally in the southwest. It is a co-ordinate and extension of the plateau of the Columbia and the country south of it, between the same meridians, except that the arid sage and prickly pear of the latter are replaced in Alaska by bound- less grass prairies and the so-called " tundras," on which the moss grows knee-deep, nurtured into rank exuberance by the constant melting under the fervid heat of midsummer of the omnipresent stratum of ice, which underlies it. In like manner the grain of Manitoba and the Northwest Territory is stimulated into a marvelous yield by the very instrumentality which wiseacres in the early period of inves- tigation declared would kill it. And the interior of Alaska is much milder than the region which lies east of the Rockies in the same latitude, as every body knows. The conditions of prolific growth in high latitudes are continu- ous moisture, and a temperature sufficiently high and evenly maintained to constitute an equivalent for the longer sea- sons of lower latitudes where rainfall is insufficient. Maturity can be secured by a forcing process in half the time that is reached by natural operations where the tem- perature and irrigation are uneven. In the long days of an Alaskan midsummer the sun dips but little below the horizon, and Venus, the brightest star that shines, alone is visible at midnight. Between sunset and sunrise the warmed earth suffers no temporary chill, even though per- petual ice lies not two feet beneath. Cole's new system of subsoil irrigation, which is attracting such general attention, and shows such prodigious results, is merely an arti- ficial application of the natural process in operation under the shadows of the north pole. It counteracts solar evapo- ration, supplying moisture to the growing plants as they need it, and becomes, as it were, the measure of the fertility of the soil. It is not unusual to find the ground frozen eight feet deep in northern Minnesota ; and if it freezes a hundred feet deep in Alaska, what does it signify, more or less ?
When the future requirements of settlement shall test the capabilities of the interior climate, it will undoubtedly be found as fruitful as Minnesota for all crops not requiring a long period of ripening. Alaska will make four Statest
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AN INTERIOR VIEW.
Lieutenant Schwatka says that luxuriant moss fields and great timber flats, densely covered with spruce, extend to the very verge of the Arctic Ocean. In his admirable report, which is more tropical than boreal in its coloring, he refers to these frequently, and to the great bands of caribou or reindeer which find pasturage on the tundra. He writes of grass-covered bluffs along the rivers ; of foot-hills, with an impenetrable underbrush of deciduous vegetation ; of vast expanses of treeless prairie, of thick black loamy soil ; of rank dead grass, which remains over until June from the previous year, looking like fields of yellow stubble. He speaks of thunder storms, of broods of young grouse early in June, of flowers on all sides, of cloudless skies and blistering sun, of wild hops and onions and berries in pro- fusion, of myriads of great mosquitoes, which drive the game to the mountain slopes above the timber line, and other like phenomena altogether at variance with commonly conceived opinions of the territory. Up to the very head- waters of the Yukon and its lateral tributaries, the noble salmon run ; the adjacent lakes are filled with salmon trout, which reach ten pounds in weight, and all the brooklets teem with mountain trout like those of Montana ; in the long reaches of the Yukon itself, as well as in its fluvial feeders, grayling which weigh a pound may be caught in great abundance ; and if one will pass through the country in mid-summer, as Schwatka did, he will find brush camps and canvas tents lining the river banks at frequent intervals, where the Indians are curing fish for their winter supply ; and should he for any reason pene- trate beyond into those vast tracts which white men have seldom trod, he will discover other Indians with stores of hides and pelts stripped from the scores of cariboo and moose which they have captured among the willow copses of the far-reaching "tundras," or perchance the skins of a few black or grizzly bears picked up accidentally beside some river bank or shore of lake-for the Indians fear to hunt in the tangles of the forest where the multitude of bears and the difficulties of the jungle make it unsafe to look even for small game ; and so they resort only to run- ways there, and the methods of the " still hunt." There is no use for hounds in the coverts of Alaska ; they might as well try to run through an osage hedge. The Indians use the reindeer or cariboo hide for clothing, dog-harness, and covering of tepees, or lodges ; and the very fact that so slight a habitation is a sufficient protection against the extremest rigors of the climate is evidence of its compara-
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tive mildness ; albeit the Indians of the lower river have greater need of more substantial houses, which they build like those of white folks, with boards riven from the helm- lock and smoothed with adzes, thatching them with the bark of cedar. The tundras or moss barrens where they hunt professionally, and except for daily supply, are similar to the "muskegs" of northern Minnesota, and the adjacent country-not wholly a growth of yielding moss, knee deep, but interjected with thickets of willows and mingled with rank, coarse grass which grows breast high ; sometimes they are interspersed with cranberry bogs and patches of wild roses, with here and there a slough or pocket of water, dyed wine-color with the steepings of the dead leaves and mosses. Walking over a tundra is like promenading a feather-bed. This thick undergrowth of moss is found in all the forests and above the timber line as well ; and a lady correspondent of the American Register, of Paris, France, who is a botanist and an impulsive student of the woodlands, has written :
" The Alaskan forests are the finest, in a picturesque way, in the United States. Trees grow upright from prostrate and dead trees, from the tops of stumps, and they are draped with black and white moss, dry, fine, and crinkly, like hair, which produce a most weird and Druidical effect. Mosses grow to a depth of from six to ten inches, and on the top of stumps, dead branches, and every dead thing is cushioned deep with moss and draped with vines. Par- ticularly does the Cornus Canadensis enwreath logs and stumps in the most charming way." All of which I hope will corroborate what others say of the exuberance of Alaska ; yet I think the tree mosses there can in nowise compare with those of Florida or Louisiana.
The upper portion of the Yukon valley, or rather the entire region which the upper river drains, is spoken of as almost a perfected Eden. Flowers bloom, beneficent plants yield their berries and fruits ; majestic trees spread their umbrageous fronds, and song birds make the branches vocal. The water of the streams is pure and pellucid ; the blue of the rippled lakes is like Geneva's ; their banks resplendent with verdure, and with grass and shining peb- bles. Wherever the rocks lift up their crags they are cushioned with luxurious moss. Nature is enjoying a grateful surcease from labor. Lower down, in the middle country, the creation is quite unfinished. One can per- ceive that the processes of the glacial forces are still in operation. All the fluvial waters are white or milky with the glacial mud washed down from the sluices of the out-
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AN INTERIOR VIEW.
lying chains of mountains, where the Titanic pulverizers of their rocky flanks are yet industriously grinding. Like the muddy Missouri into the limpid Mississippi, pours the impetuous White River into the Yukon, with a current so swift that it sends its discolored waters, chalky with the debris of the glaciers nearly across the other stream, changing its sparkling blue into an element which even the fish avoid. A few miles below the White another river of the same size and character comes in, called the Stewart ; and others still, at frequent intervals-at least a dozen of them-as far down as the majestic Porcupine near Fort Yukon, five hundred miles or more. All such lakes as are widenings of the river beds are bordered with deep deposits of the same mud, which are gradually filling them up, pre- paring a richness of alluvial land which in the course of a brief span of geological time will constitute the most fertile fields of all the hyperborean world. And a thousand miles further down, the outflow of the Yukon delta is building out land in the Bering Sea, just as has been going on for centuries at the mouths of the Mississippi, forming shoals, dangerous to approach from the outboard, which every storm lashes into a muddy froth. The delta of the Yukon is a labyrinth of channels and islands whose upper ends are piled yards high with driftwood brought down by the cur- rent, and all the levels are fringed and interspersed with low willows which have replaced the poplars and spruces of the upper country. This is the land of the Esquimaux ; and hereaway, not only up stream, but along the coast, one can study their native habits and peculiarities, not so primitive and boreal as in the Kane country and Greeley land, yet still suggestive of sealskin, blubber, and whalebone. Though their houses are modern and within the civilizing influence of the Greek missions around which they have clustered for two generations, one will see their kayaks and bidarkas (sealskin canoes) and their toupiks (or summer tents of sealskin) scattered along the shore; and if he should search behind the permanent winter dwellings he would find a cometik, or sled, convenient for winter use early in September, with sharp-eared dogs at hand to draw them at the proper time, though now listless in their summer indolence, lazily snapping at flies congregated in the tena- cious atmosphere of stale fish. On pegs inside hang hairless sealskin boots well tanned and preserved by their natural oil, waterproof jackets made of walrus intestines, which find a ready sale to the tribes far southward, nets made of the prepared fibers of the sea-kelp, queer fish.
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hooks of wood and bone, and many an ornament or utensil into whose ingenious composition are fabricated portions of the skeletons and integuments of walrus, seal and whale.
Such are the varied features of our interior domain, not less foreign because our flag floats over them, but con- cerning us the more on that account, and well worth our investigation, not merely as hunters of curios, but as speculators and shrewd men of business. Undoubtedly portions of Alaska are very charming at certain seasons of the year, but the sophisticated explorer will incline to avoid them in fly-time. The romance of natural history is not confined exclusively to the tropics. The mosquitoes of Alaska are unquestionably bigger than the southern bred, and the higher up the Arctic pole we climb, the bigger and more insatiate they become. "In fact," says Schwatka, "our greatest inconvenience within the Arctic circle was the tropical heat (July 29th) and the dense swarms of gnats and mosquitoes that met us everywhere when we approached the land. That night none of the party could sleep notwith- standing the mosquito bars over us." But our summer saunterers along the coast will have none of these ex- cruciating experiences. There are no pestiferous insects to be dreaded, for every blessed breath which blows from the south will waft them inland, over the hills and far away. Seated in his comfortable easy chair on deck, while the steamer steadily pursues her weaving way through the clustering islands, each happy tourist who languidly follows these closing lines will be content to take for granted the truth of what they say, and scarcely incline at present to push the matter to a personal inquiry.
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SEAL-SKIN BIDARKA.
HOME OF THE SIWASH.
From the broad blue waters of Puget Sound to Bering Strait, beyond the Aleutian Isles, the high-prowed gondo- las of the natives are ever present. Crossing some wind- swept sound with bellying sails, gliding under the shadow of bold shores or drawn high and dry among the rocks before some temporary camp, they animate a solitude whose vast loneliness would otherwise be wearisome, despite the exquisite charms of the natural scenery. Whenever a steamer comes to an anchor, no matter in however so sequestered a cove or fiord, a half dozen canoes appear as if by magic, where none were visible before, and surround the vessel, eager to dispose of curios to the passengers. "Sitkum tolla (half a dollar), sitkum tolla !" pipes the shrill treble of the klootchmen, using the common Chinook vernacular, as they hold up to view their baskets, mats, miniature canoes, and carved spoons made from the horn of the mountain goat. "Sitkum tolla !" chimes in the deeper voice of the stolid Siwash, who steadies the cranky craft with his paddle. And one of the smart Alecks among the passengers, who under- stands human nature better than Chinook, yells back : " Sixteen dollars be hanged, I'll give you $2.50." And so the trade is eagerly made, but the market is spoiled for the rest of the passengers, and Aleck enjoys a short-lived tri- umph until he learns true wisdom by experience.
As ponies are to the plains Indians, so are canoes to the shore dwellers of the Pacific. They are the universal vehicles of locomotion and livelihood. More weatherly craft are not found anywhere among savage or civilized peoples. Be- yond the limits of compact populations there are no roads, excepting foot trails over the mountains, only the intermin- able waterways through archipelagoes and long rivers which penetrate far into the land ; and the Indian who wishes to haul freight or travel, instead of hitching up his team, simply launches his canoe. These craft are of several different patterns, but the distinctive type is quite like a batteau in outline, high and sharp at both ends, with a broad flare and an inordinate prolongation of prow, which
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is often ornamented with grotesque carvings of nondescript creatures, animals, birds or fishes. One model has a pro- jecting prow or beak below the water-line, precisely like that of the old triremes of the Romans and the modern ram of our war ships. There is another pattern similar to the common Indian birch canoe. Their old-fashioned war ca- noes were formidable craft, carrying a hundred men, and Alaskan history relates how a fleet of ten of these made an expedition of 1,000 miles down the coast to one of the Hud- son Bay posts, in the early days, to capture a man against whom they had a grievance. The magnitude of their naval demonstration is sufficient evidence of their inherent nerve and determination.
Indian trails are found all along the coast, which lead up to bodies of fine timber where canoes have been built, and the valuable wood otherwise utilized for totem poles and for carving and building purposes. Upon some of these trails much labor has been expended in bridging ravines, corduroying marshy places, and cutting through trunks of fallen trees no less than six feet in diameter. Across the mountain ranges, in the interior, white birch grows to great size, and there its bark is substituted for the cedar. Dug- outs of cottonwood are also used in broken water. There are no skin canoes used in Alaska south of Bering Sea. The largest wooden canoes are more than fifty feet long, capable of carrying sixty men, hewn from great cedar logs with much labor, being dug out with axes, and then thinned with adzes to the required thickness. They are next steamed by filling the cavities or holes with water heated by hot stones, so as to give them their graceful curves, after which they are spread to the desired width and braced. They have often as much as eight feet beam. Usually they are painted black outside, but when new they often show quaint decorations, in bright colors, which, however, are very soon lost by weathering. The Indians take as great care of their canoes as the Arabs do of their horses. When not in use they are drawn up on sloping beaches in front of their villages or camps, and carefully covered with brush, mats or sails to protect them from the weather. A native will take off his own coat to wrap around the ornamental prow of his boat, which is as much as he would do for his " klootch." The best of the canoes, of course, cost a high figure, and great pains is frequently employed in clearing away bowlders and rocks to provide a snug berth for them upon the beach. They are weatherly craft in a sea way, and the fact that none
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of them are decked, speaks with high testimony of the habitually quiet moods of the Pacific, to say nothing of skillful seamanship. The native Alaskan is seldom wrecked or drowned. In tempestuous weather he propitiates the spirit of the storm by tossing a few wads of tobacco into the rock caves alongshore, and in calm he leisurely stuffs the same into his pipe and smokes serenely. By the way, these people smoke less than any others I have ever met, which is a fact phenomenal. One seldom sees a native with a pipe in his mouth.
In the dry and sunny days of summer, when the salmon are running, and the climate is uniform perfection, the tem- perature scarcely varying ten degrees from sun to sun and month to month, the Siwash locks his winter cabin and takes his " klootch " and fishing outfit to some choice loca- tion where he can catch and cure a supply of fish for winter's use; and as the natives incline to be gregarious and combine for mutual help in hauling nets and hunting, he usually has plenty of company. Very picturesque are their aggregations of canvas tents and shanties of bark and boards which skirt the shore of some landlocked cove under the shelter of some circumjacent forest and overshadowing mountain, with busy canoes plying to and fro with the seines, and the klootchmen spreading out the ruddy salmon on the adjacent rocks to dry. " Klootch," or klootchman, is synonym for woman in the Chinook lingo, who may be wife, concubine, mistress, or actual slave, for partnership attach- ments are not always fixed by formulas of marriage in that lone country ; and every sojourner has his " klootch " in wedlock or otherwise, who acts as constant housekeeper or handmaiden. In the same vernacular her liege is known as " Siwash," which is a corruption of the French word sauvage, and is applied to the male sex generally.
A queer jargon is this Chinook. Once upon a time, when very many nations were represented by a very few peo- ple in that vast region dominated by the fur companies, em- bracing Oregon and Washington Territories and all the country lying to the northward (the French perhaps being numerically the strongest), a sort of congress of national representatives formulated this universal language to facilitate intercourse. The words in most common use were adopted, a few of them purely native dialect, but a very large proportion bastard French. The remainder are simply phonetic, expressing, when pronounced, the ideas conveyed by the sounds ; for instance, amusement is " he-he," rain "patter-chuck," a crow "caw-caw," a
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