USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 8
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cough " hoh-hoh," the heart " tum-tum," a handkerchief " hak-at-chum," etc. There are about five hundred and fifty words in all, and with this limited vocabulary and the use of signs, a man can travel the whole North-west over from Central Montana to Bering Sea. In fact, Chinook has almost superseded the native dialects, of which there are no less than ten upon the coast, and perhaps as
many more in the interior. The different tribes seldom attempt to converse in each other's language. There are a few words in which the letter " 1" is substituted for "r," Chinese fashion, indicating possibly an ancient Asiatic con- nection ; for most of such words are appropriated from the native tongues, a fact which no doubt must be gratifying to those who claim to be able to prove that the Chinese were the earliest discoverers of America.
In the early days when the monotony of isolation was varied by reprisals among the tribes, slaves were habitually made by the victors, and I have heard it stated by white men who claim to have been residents at the time, and cog- nizant of the circumstances, that the Shimpshean Indians, near Dixon Channel, used to kill and eat certain parts of their prisoners, taking bites from the fleshy portions of the arm and breast and thigh to give them courage " skookum tum-tum." Others placed the necks of their captives across a log, fastening the bodies to the ground by saplings weighted with stones at the ends, and so killed
them with axes. Slaves were often killed at "house- warmings," one being placed under each of the corner up- rights when the frame was raised, the ceremony being sometimes attended with the greatest cruelty. With a house of irregular foundation lines the sacrifice of life was great. One occasionally catches accidental glimpses of old-time war-implements which indicate an ancient degree of savagery out of which these people seem to have long since passed. Slavery, however, continued until a recent date, and even now a sort of traffic is constantly main- tained, whose conditions are more binding than the obli- gations of matrimony. Women often, and sometimes men, are traded for a valuable consideration, or thrown into a bargain as a sort of remplisage-white people not seldom being the purchasers ; and I have heard that those so obtained make far more dutiful servants than others who farm out their labor, showing conscientious fidelity in their obligatory relationship. Some of the old settlers have women living with them whose legal status it would be difficult to determine, but so it is in all the wilderness
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domain of the fur companies, the number of the half- breeds in the North-west being counted by tens of thou- sands. On the Alaskan coast the hybrid product of a na- tive crossed with a Russian is designated a "Creole," as with the French and Spanish mixtures in the Gulf of Mexico and West Indies.
At Kasaan Bay the Indian widow of old Baronovick, the Russian smuggler, was living in 1885, with a goodly heri- tage and two buxom daughters, which, I was informed, were at disposal for the moderate sum of $4,000-for the lot ! The girls, as I saw them, seated on their home-veran- da near the savory salmon cannery, and dressed in comely black dresses of modern mode, were not bad looking. The young women of the coast are uniformly comely, but their mouths are immense, and they have an excess of adipose, which grows greasy and more flabby as they grow older. They are very partial to gaudy frocks ; but the prevailing costume is a black shawl over a calico skirt, and a bright yellow kerchief over the head. Very often they blacken their faces with deer tallow and charcoal, some say to keep off mosquitoes, some to improve their complexions, and others to hide defects. The older women thrust great stone ornaments into their pendulous ears, and even some young women use a lip pin of silver, steel, or bone, which they push outward through the flesh from the inside of the lower lip. It is said this is the badge of wife-hood. But such fashions are not pretty. Like many of their discarded cus- toms and implements, they are the relics of a barbarism which passed away fully two generations ago. The girls look much better, according to modern ideas, in their silver bracelets and earrings, and the marvel is how so great improvement has taken place in so comparatively short a time. I have seen some of the gray-headed old folks take from their capacious chests souvenirs, such as medicine- rattles, masks, dance-blankets, stone war-clubs and idols ; and I fancied they regarded them tenderly, with some lingering regrets of the old time ; but very often they will part with these readily for cash to the curio-hunters, who frequently pay most exorbitant prices. Industry is one of the virtues of the Alaskans. When the men are not en- gaged in fishing and hunting, or employed at the several canneries on the coast, they build canoes and houses, pack goods on their backs over the mountains to the mines, and do all sorts of manual labor. They are very powerful. The regulation pack-load is seventy-five pounds. With this on their backs they will keep ahead of the most experi- enced mountain climbers, and I know of one who packed
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over a steep new trail, which was hardly more than blazed and cleared, a load of 125 pounds, to-wit: two sacks of flour, a shovel, some drills, a ten-pound salmon, and his clothes and blankets. They do tremendous tasks on very short commons, but when they do get afoul of a full kettle they never leave it while there is a mouthful left. In camp they are splendid attendants, drying wet clothes, cleaning guns, cooking, building shelters, and doing all manner of " chores." Once I followed the trail six miles over the mountain from Juneau into Silver Bow Basin, and was as- tonished at the work going on there in hydraulic and placer mining. Sluices were built or dug up to the very snow line, and ten-inch iron pipes, as well as every other article of use and construction, and contents of dwellings and stores had been carried there upon the backs of Indians at one cent a pound ! These men are ambitious to earn praise and money, and are not mere eye-servants. The women, too, are seldom idle, and when at home are occupied with the needle, or with braiding, weaving, basket-making and em- broidery. Dogs are always members of the household. They are civil and mild-mannered, like their owners, and sel- dom bark. In the winter season they also do their share of appointed work, dragging sleds over the deep snows and freighting goods and fuel when the water courses are frozen. They are of the true Eskimo type, of colors brindle, white, and tawny ; not fierce like the Labrador dogs.
However, the Indians have their bad traits as well as their good ones. In trading they are very unscrupulous. They will take a mean advantage of every opportunity. They will not abide by a contract. They will demand back what they have already sold, and tell you that their " klootch " objects to the trade. Like the strikers in Belgium, they put their women in front when they would shield their own craven selves. But this is policy ; for they well know the consideration with which the whites regard the fair sex. Indeed they are themselves quite chivalrous and consider- ate toward their women, imposing upon them no inequit- able burdens, but assuming upon themselves those heavier physical tasks which eastern squaws are obliged to perform unassisted ; even declining to excel them in the emulous and honorable competition of a canoe race, an act which they declare would cover them with everlasting disgrace. But it may be that the women wield the better paddle .- " Klaxta kumtux"-who knows? When a tribe or com- munity becomes imbued with the elements of politeness, which is refined humanity, there is indeed hope for them.
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Nevertheless, they are arrogant and exacting when they have the upper hand, and like all subordinates must be kept in their lower places. Once the Chilkats threatened to kill some miners who wished to cross the mountains over to the Yukon, and refused to pack goods for them. The distance was seventy miles. But when they discovered that two of the miners had started for the gunboat for assistance, they wilted at once, and offered to take the party over for noth- ing. The moral effect of the gunboat now on the Alaska station has proved most potent on more than one occasion. It is an admirable coadjutor of the garrison, as occasion has proved more than once.
The typical native house is a one-room affair built of upright split slabs, with a door-way in front and a square hole in the roof for the passage of smoke. Sometimes there is a small window as well. The bare earth is the floor and a goat-skin or a bear-pelt the bed. Dirt, filth and abundance are the accessories. The walls and ceilings are grimy with smoke; the pots and kettles smeared with a conglomerate of grease ; nothing seems ever to have been washed. Every thing is foul and squalid, and the strips of dried meat and fish, the oil bladders and pelts hung over the low rafters, are eloquent of degradation in the midst of plenty. The most pretentious houses in the country, with three or four exceptions, are those at Wrangell, some of which are 60x30 feet in dimensions, one story high, built of logs, planked on the outside, nicely whitewashed, with gable roof and doors and windows. They never have chimneys. The fire is built in the center of the smooth earthen floor, and the smoke escapes through a flat cupola in the roof. An elaborately carved and gaudily painted totem pole usu- ally ornaments the front. Some of these are sixty feet high. They are popularly supposed to have some religious significance, but are for the most part pedigree poles, illustrating the family history and showing the family crest, whether it be bear, beaver, eagle, shark, whale, wolf, frog or raven. To injure one was to insult the family to which it belonged; to cut one down, an unpardonable of- fense. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that descent is reckoned through the female line, and it seems to prevail throughout the North American tribes, a custom which is probably of very ancient date. These totems have their counterpart in the pictured buffalo robes and coup-sticks of the Indians of the plains. To one who has never seen them before the effect is most startling. One writer says: "Seen in the wet, gray dawn of early morning, as I first
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saw them, they have a most weird and strange appearance ; for the ravens which are carved upon them, the whales and the bears, are all of huge proportions, and have a most melancholy way of glaring down upon all who stand gaz- ing at the barbarous relics." One pole displays an ele- phant's head; indicating that elephants were once in- digenous.
But the totem poles are becoming weather-beaten and time-worn. The paint is nearly off, never to be renewed, and the pride of ancestry and achievement, as manifested by visible testimony, seems to have vanished with the pre- ceding generation. In many cases similar devices appear upon the tombs of the dead. Around the four sides of the interior of these houses is a raised platform several feet wide, the rear portion of which, opposite the entrance, is partitioned into state rooms and screened by curtains of cotton or woolen stuff. On either side of these sleeping apartments are slabs of heraldic devices fixed to the walls. The best houses have modern stoves, furniture, crockery and kitchen utensils, and are very clean and comfortable throughout. There is always a variety of traps, guns, nets, fishing implements, harpoons, spears, decoys for catching seals and all kinds of fur animals, birds and sea fowl. The families have ample supplies of oil suits, rubber boots, blankets, miscellaneous clothing, and even ornaments. No simple people were ever better " fixed "; and, as I have stated, their capacity for improvement and adaptability to new and better methods of living and doing is very marked.
If some master of the æsthetic school could only instruct them properly, what beautiful designs they might contrive in mats and rugs and shells and carving, and how hand- somely they could embellish their homes ! They have not only good taste, but a natural genius which could be culti- vated to marked advantage. Their preference for the gro- tesque manifests itself in all their ornaments and imple- ments, their cooking utensils and their costumes ; and there is scarcely an article of adornment, use or wear which is not elaborated with studies in natural history, some literal and others fanciful and ridiculously distorted. A good many devices are simply heraldic, corresponding to those seen on their totem poles, like the family crests paraded on the panels and dinner-service of people in a higher state of civilization. They have elaborate chests and boxes of red and yellow cedar ; spoons and dishes made from the horns of the mountain goat and sheep, set with mother of pearl obtained from the shells of the abe- lone ; trays of wood and stone highly polished and wrought
INDIAN CHIEFS (HYAS-TYEE).
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in the forms of frogs, fishes and creatures half-animal and half-human ; fish-hooks, harpoons and spears of wood, bone, iron and copper, all ornamented with quaint devices ; masks and head-dresses representing all the monsters of the pliocene period, with jaws worked by mechanical con- trivance ; blankets woven from the wool of goats and sheep in allegorical designs, and shirts of softest buckskin, beau- tifully painted and ornamented with bead-work. They are very clever in contriving pipes of old gun-barrels, and also of stone, wood and bone, inserting into the bowls of the wooden ones the brass collar of a kerosene lamp or the slide of an umbrella to serve as a lining. Formerly they made women's skirts of cedar bark and the fiber of sea- kelp. Some of their manufactures have attracted the attention of outside capital, and there are firms in New York and San Francisco who are regularly supplied with basket work and mats, which are made of the inner bark of roots and twigs of trees, shredded, dyed and plaited by hand. For dyes they extract the colors from calico, blankets, etc., and produce some brilliant hues, but they are not permanent. However, as they fade, they get to resemble more and more the India and Persian colors, and are very pleasing. A better dye of black and yellow was obtained from charcoal and a species of moss called sekhone. Their hats made of plaited roots and their wicker work are skillfully dyed to form pretty patterns. As silversmiths they are quite expert, making attractive bracelets from ham- mered coin, so attractive that the native market is kept well supplied by counterfeits shipped from San Francisco makers, which sell readily to tourists at $3.00 to $5.00 per pair. One considerable item of their handiwork is the manufacture of wooden decoys representing animals, birds, seals, etc., which they use in trapping and hunting. They cover bottles, demijohns and carboys with exquisite wicker work ; they make good beds from moss, caps and tobacco- pouches of furs and skins, and water-proof bags and pouches from the intestines of animals. Their magicians' rattles are perhaps the most elaborate of all their handi- work, being made hollow, usually in the form of a strange bird covered all over with carvings of strange creatures and human deformities, emblematic of the mysteries of their profession. They will trade readily for any thing they take a fancy to, or which is novel, but as they can buy almost any thing at the trading stores, they usually require silver coin to complete a purchase.
Finally they manufacture a beastly intoxicating liquor
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from molasses, called hoochinoo, the equal of which for vileness is hard to find anywhere.
Like many other people with more sense, they have an inherent passion for gambling, in the prosecution of which the popular implements are polished ivory or bone sticks about the size of a pencil, which have their respective values and uses, best known to the initiated.
INDIAN HOUSES AT WRANGELL.
GOOD INDIANS.
The cold-blooded maxim that the " only good Indians are dead Indians" does not apply to the natives of Alaska. Whatever may be truly or erroneously stated of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains has small significance with respect to the dwellers on the west side. The "great con- tinental divide " seems to have segregated traits and char- acteristics as effectually as it has separated climates and indigenous products. As a whole the Indians of Alaska, both of the coast and of the interior, as far as known, are normally peaceable, tractable, intelligent, clever, eager to learn, useful, and industrious to a degree unknown else- where among the aborigines of America. The general statement, however, is subject to some qualification, inas- much as there are a good many different tribes-ten at least on the coast, and perhaps as many more in the interior- who are manifestly of divers origins, and, of course, differ variously in respect to the meritorious attributes accorded to them. Some are very slovenly and semi-barbarous, while others have attained a degree of civilization which compares favorably with the status of Caucasian communities. Vin- cent Colyer said : " I do not hesitate to say that if three- quarters of the natives of Alaska were landed in New York as coming from Europe, they would be selected as among the most intelligent of the many worthy emigrants who daily arrive at that port. In two years they would be admitted to citizenship, and in ten years some of their children, under the civilizing influence of our eastern public schools, would be found members of Congress." The great majority of all the people dress wholly or partially in the costume of the whites, and in the towns, where there are shops and stores, the women affect even the latest procurable fashions in frocks and headgear. In complexion, they are olive rather than red, not unlike a seafaring man or a worker on a farm ; and many of the men wear beards. The Hon. James G. Swan, correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution at Port Town- send, Wash., who has made a special study of Pacific coast ethnology, thinks the whole population up to the Arctic
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belt have a common origin among the Aztecs, and attempts to establish this position by demonstrating an identity of many generic words common to both languages, and by similarity of features, implements, handiwork, carvings and religious emblems and ceremonies. One strong corrobora- tive coincidence rests on some old-time silver idols, which are quite identical in size, feature, and figure with the Chir- iqui idols of the Isthmus of Panama. Capt. Beardslee, U. S. N., who has likewise carefully investigated the subject, sustains Mr. Swan, so far as respects the tribe of Hydahs, who are exclusive occupants of Queen Charlotte's Island, in lati- tude 51 deg., but regards all other coast tribes as of Asiatic origin. He thinks the Hydahs were driven north by Cortez during the Spanish invasion. Diametrically opposite is Mr. Newton H. Crittenden, in the West Shore Magazine pub- lished at Portland, Or., who infers from incidental evidences that the Hydahs are castaways from Eastern Asia, who, first reaching the islands of Southern Alaska, soon took and held possession of the Queen Charlotte group. Mr. Edward Vining, in his new book entitled " The Discovery of Amer- ica ; or the Uncelebrated Columbus," inclines to a Chinese origin and reiterates the story from the original Chinese sources of the landing of Hwin Shin and a party of Bud- dhist monks on the coast of Mexico about the year 500 A.D. The spot marked out is about 20,000 Chinese iniles east from Kamtchatka. There is also a record that the indi- genous populations reached a high degree of civilization. The houses were small, and of wood ; stone dwellings were not known. The people knew how to write, and used a paper made from cotton wool. They wore garments of fine linen. There was no iron, but copper, gold, and silver existed in large quantities. Also the fact is on record of the Spaniards finding at Quivisa the wrecks of large ships which Mr. Vining feels assured were of Chinese origin. The Hurons also had a tradition that ages ago their ances- tors were visited by beardless men clad in silk and wearing pigtails.
There is assuredly a strong facial resemblance between the Chinese coolies now living on the coast and some of the native Indians. They seem to affiliate naturally, and to have some few words of common derivation. It is also true that there are Alaskan words of Aztec construction, espe- cially those having the terminal "tl" and "xtl." With regard to the Hydahs, they certainly have a remarkable physical and intellectual superiority over all the other Paci- fic coast Indians, while marked contrasts in the structure of
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their language denote a different origin from them. They are of fine stature, with exceptionally well-developed chests and arms, high foreheads, and lighter complexions than any other North American Indians. These people are engaged in the manufacture of fish-oil on a large and scientific scale, and they have a Protestant mission and trading post. It is proper to state that this tribe, with the exception of small detachments, is attached to British Columbia and not to Alaska, being situated a short distance south of the Alaska boundary ; and it is equally proper to credit their enviable condition to the wise policy pursued by the British govern- ment in cultivating friendly relations with them and educa- ting them to employments suited to their inclination and tastes. The plan of the British government has been never to recognize the Indian title, but certain tracts of land most prized by the Indians have been appropriated to their exclusive use, while at the same time they were made to understand that they must earn their own living the same as the white men they saw around them. It is gratifying to know that this view is likely to obtain with us henceforth, and to govern our own policy hereafter. Yet it must be allowed that the Indian problem in the United States has been more difficult to manage from the outset, because the Indians were vastly more numerous, wilder, and subject to food conditions which made them constantly nomadic, in- stead of communal and stationary. On the Pacific coast the advent of the white man has never diminished the food supply of the natives. They have fruit and game as before in abundance, and more fish than they know what to do with, while the lessons in farming which have been taught them have given them a source of food supply and variety which they were previously ignorant of ; so that they have never been compelled by starvation to make reprisals, like the transmontane plains Indians, to whom the buffalo in its prime supplied houses, fuel, food, clothes and utensils all at once. To the latter the extinction of the animals was like cutting down the palm trees to the South Sea Islanders ; and the shifts to which they have been forced in conse- quence are what is subduing them to the methods of those who toil for bread.
In writing of the Indians of the Pacific coast, it is not easy to segregate the tribes of Alaska as distinct from most of the others, for all of them have many traits, customs, peculiarities and occupations in common, and some are intermixed by marriage. It is true, however, that the inhabitants of our new possession are much more degraded
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and generally demoralized than those of British Columbia, whatever they may have been under the Muscovite occu- pation. Dawson's book, entitled "Indian Tribes of British Columbia," gives a very correct idea of the present status of the British Indians. While the Russians held possession of Alaska they also exercised a conservative and fostering care over their wards under a similar policy and system ; but after the American succession the Indians were left without visible restraint or guidance, and their course was miserably downwards; just an example of how people, no matter how refined their origin, will eventually degen- erate and actually revert to a savage state if segregated for a long period from the influences of civilization. This fact is especially illustrated in the case of our nomadic Plains Indians who occupied the buffalo ranges in the days when meat was running, and who migrated from the Southwest upon the advent of the Spanish conquistador, Coronado, and became hunters what time he introduced horses. Among the liberated slaves of our Southern States in known cases the third generation has lapsed into a degree of barbarity equal to that of their Congo and Guinea ancestors in Africa.
For a long time after the American succession they main- tained a hostile and often aggressive attitude. With all moral support and conserving influences withdrawn, they relapsed into partial savagery. For many years there was no civil government whatever in the territory. The " Shamans" or native magicians began to regain their ascendency over the people. The garrisons stationed at Sitka and Wrangell kept perpetually drunk on home-made hoochinoo ; they debauched the women and quarreled with the men. All industries along the coast were paralyzed. No business was done. There were none to buy the furs which the hunters had trapped and collected, and utter ruin seemed inevitable. At present, however, thanks to a com- bination of wise measures and ameliorating influences which have extended over three decades, the country has settled into serenity of hope, and good order everywhere pre- vails. The Indians are hostile no more. They have pledged themselves to perpetual amity ; a consummation chiefly effected through the instrumentality of a wau-wau, or conference held with the hyas-joint or grand commission of 1880, at which the first condition imposed by the Indians was " teachers, so that our children may not grow up stupid like their fathers !" In one brief hour of conviction they spontaneously abandoned the traditions of the past and never looked back to the flesh-pots of barbarism. They
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