USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 9
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were willing and ready to accept the new dispensation, to live by it, and to qualify themselves to promote it. All they wanted was, to receive it undefiled. These Indians have sagaciously forecast their approaching opportunity, and all look for the advent of commercial ventures with eager longing and open hands ready for employment. It would seem as if the red men were in advance of the philanthro- pists. All they want is a clean deal, and it is the fault of the government if it does not step in and occupy a field so nearly ripe for the harvest. The resources of Alaska are now known to be varied and rich enough to tempt invest- ment. The outlook is propitious, and the natives will aid us in every way to find out all there is to know about the country.
The history of this palaver by which the entire popula- tion of the country may be said to have been conciliated at one diplomatic stroke, is interesting if not remarkable, inas- much as the key of the situation came to hand at the very outset. It seems that a domestic quarrel was on the eve of an outbreak between the Chilkats and Chilkoots in conse- quence of a drunken brawl the previous summer, at which blood was shed, and which could only be expiated by a requital in kind, or its equivalent in blankets ; and as the Chilkats did not consider the dead Chilkoot worth quite one hundred blankets (say $400), the usual " potlatch " preliminary to a war was in progress at the date of the pro- posed "wau-wau " (Aug. 24, 1880), at which fully three thousand Indians were estimated to be present. The object of the " wau-wau," or conference, to which the contestants were peremptorily invited by the naval commandant of the Alaska station, backed by a persuasive gun-boat, was to settle the difficulty without war, and to re-establish peace. Now, nearly all of the Indians of Alaska are, according to tradition, descended from the Chilkats, and among these descendants are the Chilkoots, who have largely inter-mar- ried with them. The villages of the two tribes are about thirty miles distant from each other, situated well up the rivers, one of which, the Chilkat, flowing southeast, and the other southwest, converge to the head of a narrow peninsula which divides the upper end of Chatham Straits into two bays. There is a trail and portage across this peninsula, and at the lower Chilkat village on the west side, and at Portage Bay on the east, the two tribes used to meet to trade when in harmony. At Portage Bay the post agent is in the confidence of the two. The Chilkats are the most powerful and warlike of all the tribes, and as they have
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always dominated the trade with the interior tribes, it is obvious that a maintenance of friendship and amicable intercourse with them was all important to secure the pro- tection of such whites as were prospecting in the far-off interior, as well as to conserve the future welfare of the entire territory. The happy result of the conference is thus related in Capt. Beardslee's own written account, addressed to the author of this book at the date of the occurrence. The vessel which did duty on the momentous occasion was the North-west Trading Company's tug-boat, " Favorite," with a howitzer in the bow and a gatling mounted on the upper deck. The regular naval coast detail, the " Jamestown," lay in Sitka harbor. I quote :
PYRAMID HARBOR, August 25.
" That you get this letter may be a sign and token to you that success has crowned our efforts. I gave in yesterday afternoon, too restless to continue my summing up, and in spite of my prudent resolution donned my shooting habili- ments and started across the trail. About half way over I met in single file, first Pierre Errassan, who, with his hand- some six feet of figure arrayed in red shirt, leggins, and well revolvered, would have made a capital robber in Fra Diavolo ; and behind him five Indians, the foremost of whom I at once recognized by descriptions I had had as Klotz-Klotz, the chief of the Chilkats, a tall, well-built, dig- nified old fellow, from whose good looks, however, a wad of cotton, stuffed into a hole in his left cheek, somewhat detracted. From this hole, caused by a gun-shot wound, one of his sobriquets, " Hole-in-the-Cheek," has been derived. With him was another veteran, almost equally powerful with himself and much older, Klotz being about sixty and Kak-na-tay about seventy or more. Both wel- comed me most heartily, for in spite of my decidedly unmil- itary rig, Errassan, with true shrewdness and French polite- ness combined, drew himself stiffly up as we neared each other, and making to me the most profound obeisance, omitted to offer me his hand, thus paying tribute to my greatness, which was his trump card with the Indians, and most gracefully and solemnly introduced me.
" The costume of Klotz and Kak was not so gorgeous as to add to my discomfiture, as both they and their attend- ants were arrayed in blankets and leggins ; but in a big box carried by the latter was the wardrobe, in which he had expected to astonish and impress me. The retainers were in war paint, with cotton or down on their heads, which
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indicated determination. Thus stripped of all external show of power, the old chief and I sat down under a great cedar tree and discussed the situation. I think that this meeting was a fortunate one, for I had with me cigars and a breech-loader, the free use of both of which I at once accorded; and the influence of a large meerschaum pipe, which some months ago I sent him as a present, had its weight. After all, if the true history of wars and diplomacy could be written, how many times such little matters have had more weight than elaborate speeches, convincing only their utterer. Free from disturbing influences, Klotz-Klotz unbosomed himself, and during that interview he admitted to me that his family was in the wrong, and that he would willingly assist in establishing peace. He claimed that the killed Chilkoot was not worth a hundred blankets, but that he would pay two hundred if no less would heal the breach.
" The post trader made Klotz & Co. comfortable for the night, and this morning about ten o'clock several large canoes, with flags flying, drums (Indian drums) beating, and propelled by about a dozen painted paddlers, each came around the point of Chilkoot Inlet and were shortly along- side. In the foremost was Danawah, the chief of the lower village, and a blind old Shaman, who is chief of the Chil- koots. They were directed to go ashore to the post trader's, to wait until the firing of a gun announced the readiness of the Tyhees to receive them. They refused to go to the trader's, because the Chilkats, their enemies, were there. but instead paddled in to the mouth of a creek, where on the beach they prepared and ate their meal and donned their pow-wow garments. At 11 the sharp bark of the howitzer summoned them to the meeting, and both parties came alongside on different sides of the boat, and avoiding all intercourse with each other. When duly seated in the cabin they presented a not undignified appearance. All wore good American clothes, of which the coats were orna- mented with more or less insignia of various ranks of American and English officers of both army and navy, white shirts and shoes and stockings. On our side of the table, epaulets and full dress undoubtedly produced good effect. The interview lasted two hours, and during it the whole difficulty was adjusted, and when we left the stifling atmosphere of the cabin-for Indians even of high rank are odorous-for the upper deck we were a party of friends all under pledges for mutual benefit. Mine to them was, in answer to the request of both parties, 'Yes; I will do my utmost to assist you in this matter,' which matter was this :
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" When you go to your country please tell them to send teachers to us as well as to the Stickeens, so that our chil- dren may not grow up stupid like their fathers." (The Stickeens are the Indians at Wrangell, where the Presby- terians have established a mission school which is doing much good.) I believe that they will keep their promises to treat well all white men coming to their country, and I know I will mine, and through you I now ask of any Chris- tians you may have among your readers-and I doubt not that such there are-to send to the missionary at Sitka, such articles as will be useful to the school which Mrs. Dickson, the wife of the post trader, has started on her own hook, and at which half a hundred children are being taught, and which is soon to be transferred to a neat frame building, which, designed for a store at Taku, has been, by Capt. Vanderbilt, given to the Indians at Portage Bay, and on each side of which building the Chilkats and Chilkoots, now re-united, promise to build villages so that their children may attend the schools.
" The Indians were entertained by a few shots fired from the howitzer, and more by several volleys from the gatling which was mounted aft, and which was made to sweep an arc of one hundred and eighty degrees, at good canoe dis- tance.
"Then they paddled ashore in company, lit a camp fire, and began a friendly potlatch on the beach, and we, satisfied with the day's work, started at 3 P. M. for home, as we have learned to consider Sitka, and are now anchored in a snug harbor for the night.
" Yours &c., L. A. B."
" Potlatch" is a term of varying significance applied to any assemblage, for whatsoever purpose, at which good cheer is provided. Sometimes a native will invite his friends to a house-raising and give away more grub and blankets than ten such houses would cost to build. Pot- latches are given at the outset of great undertakings, and in commemoration of the same. In its primary sense a pot- latch is a gift. In its expression, as an economic, or social, or moral force, it amplifies the uses and applications of the customary tobacco pipe in all grave affairs of red-men. It is preliminary to weighty councils, social entertainments, business undertakings, unexpected meetings of old or new friends, family reunions, celebrations, special observances, obsequies, etc. When grave complications threaten, and diplomacy is invoked, arguments are invariably re-enforced
1
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by a war dance, or a series of dances, in the course of which the jarring factions who have met together to investigate and settle their differences (peaceably, or by arms,) endeavor to impress and intimidate each other by extravagant dis- plays of costume, menacing attitudes, hideous noises, uncompromising yells, consummate braggadocio, and illustrations of prowess and muscular science in pantomime, so that peradventure, each other's opponent may weaken before he ventures upon hostilities, or at least be timorous on the field of battle. The full significance of these methods is presumably understood by the present genera- tion of natives, though the young men do not appear to be well posted in the formula, seeming to regard the whole demonstration as a noisy farce ; and it is seldom nowadays that young or old can be induced to illustrate the nearly obsolete customs of their forefathers, an exhibition of which is apparently regarded with some such mixed interest as "ye old folks' concerts" of their progressive white brethren. However, for a few dollars contributed by inquisitive spectators or tourists they can usually be per- suaded to do the proper thing, and it has got to be quite the fashion, within the past few years, for excursionists to drum up some recruits from the Indian " ranche " at Sitka to give a war dance, or some other dance, on the parade ground, although such improvisations are obviously not as striking as the bona-fide demonstrations held at the Chilkat potlatch in 1880. The form is to build a huge bonfire in the center of the plaza, and after a sufficient time for suita- ble preparation, the maskers appear, marching in from the Indian quarter through the gate of the old Russian stock. ade, in full panoply of buckskin, paint and feathers, singing in a wild weird monotone which has a swinging cadence or rhythm that is quite infectious, and while the glow of the bonfire lights up their painted faces and fantas- tic toggery with the lurid tinge of Tophet, all the by- standers catch the inspiration and join the chant with sway- ing bodies and ever kindling fervor. It is much like the regulation Indian dance which most eastern readers have witnessed at the "Wild West Show " of Buffalo Bill in these later days-chiefly mechanical posturing and posing, with wild gestures and much brandishing of weapons- only that the Alaska natives do not pass and chassez around the fire, but dance in a single row, all on one side, like so many jacks-in-the box. Neither their performance nor their costumes begin to compare with what I have seen among the Mountain Crows and Sioux. Most of them had their
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faces painted red with dashes of black, chiefly on one side, and they wore preposterous head-dresses of cotton waste and goat horns, and fantastic ornaments that dangied, feathers which wabbled, and bits of metal that made a tinkling noise. Some wore their blankets, and others more meager costumes, with bodies daubed. The women bound their silver bracelets about their heads, spread wide open in crescent form, like the characters in old mythology, and the firelight glistened on their polished points like scintilla- tions from the moon ; but a pervading odor, whose origin was familiar and unmistakable, added a substantial realism to the scene.
There are, perhaps, thirty thousand Indians in Alaska- though this estimate is based solely upon the number of tribes or bands known to the trading posts on the coast and in the interior ; and they are not only expert in their natural gifts of hunting, trapping and fishing, but they are splendid navigators and seamen, and will make good sol- diers, surveyors, coast guards and policemen. They are very efficient help in the salmon canneries and oil factories, and they make good mill men, miners and agriculturists.
That Indians will become farmers when it is made worth while, is shown in an appendix to General Crook's report, whence it appears that during 1885 the White Mountain tribes of Arizona had 2,120 acres of land under cultivation, raised 80,000 pounds of barley, and 3,500,000 pounds of corn. They sold to the government 700,000 pounds of hay and thirty-two tons of barley, and had 1,000,000 pounds of hay awaiting the quartermaster's order. These Alaskans are natural-born carpenters and workers in wood. Some of their carving on wood, bone, stone and metal is exquisite, and always original and unique. Their permanent houses are one-story and occasionally two-story frame buildings, and many of them have two or more windows fitted with sash and glass. The women weave beautiful cloth and blankets from the fleece of the mountain goat ; they sew very deftly, embroider, weave hats, mats and baskets, and make fishermen's nets. They also make waterproof cloth- ing from the intestines of the moose, bear and sea lion. There are also among them regular artificers in metals, jewelers, who manufacture the silver rings, bracelets and lip ornaments which are so common among themselves. If a dollar ever comes into their possession, it is hammered out at once into ornaments. It never goes back to the United States Treasury. Oh, that all the silver dollars could be sent to Alaska !
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GOOD INDIANS.
There are already industrial schools at Sitka, Wrangell and Juneau, with apt pupils aggregating several hun- dreds, and lesser communities elsewhere, at all of which native men and women are employed in every sort of out- of-door and household capacity, so that their versatility, industry and ingenuity have been fully tested. In British Columbia the Indians derive a considerable income from their labors in various occupations, and it has been de- clared that but for their aid several flourishing industries would cease to exist, or, at least, labor under serious dis- advantages. The inner life of the Alaskan natives is ex- tremely interesting to the visitor. There is every encour- agement to hope for their complete absorption into civili- zation.
THE MISSION FIELD.
Alaska owes its otology, its autonomy, its prosperity, its good order, and the civilization and thrift of its na- tives collectively to Capts. Beardslee and Glass, U. S. N .; Rev. Sheldon Jackson, who has been styled the "apostle of Alaska" and the "Alaska Moses"; Capt. Healy, of the revenue cutter "Bear" ; Mrs. A. R. McFarland, and Rev. John G. Brady, all pioneers soon after the cession. Alex Choquette, Tom Haley, King Lear, Capt. George, and those other oldtimers of an earlier and fateful period played their individual parts all right, too, but they were not the true vitalizing force which laid out the working plan of the Arctic Province and set its machinery in mo- tion ; Sheldon Jackson was. His eleemosynary and exec- utive work in Alaska was absolutely the chief corner- stone of its Christian civilization and good order, as well as the salvation of the natives, body and soul, and in more recent years the helpful promoter of material comfort and commercial dispatch (by his reindeer scheme) in the rigorous sub-Arctic winters. Capt. Beardslee held down the Purchase under his guns for three years (1879-80), and was followed by Command- ers Henry Glass and Edward P. Lull at intervals until Jan. 10, 1882, each of them rendering efficient service in many a critical emergency. Capt. Healy, for ten years, was an ever-present help in time of need when the ice blockade was on. Rev. Brady played an heroic Aaron to Jackson's Moses, and Mrs. McFarland stayed up the hands and stiffened the backbone of the others. She was the trained nurse for the bantling in arms. For twenty-five years past Mr. Jackson has filled the difficult and not altogether attractive position of general agent of the U. S. Board of Education for Alaska with its multi- farious duties, requiring a stout heart, a tough constitu- tion, and a resourceful tact. His record is before the
SHELDON JACKSON
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world in a score of annual reports, printed books and monographs. His biography, written by Rev. Robert L. Stewart, D. D., was issued in September, 1908, from the press of Revell & Co., New York, under the title, "Shel- don Jackson, Pathfinder and Prospector of the Mission- ary Vanguard of the Rocky Mountains and Alaska."
But his work in Alaska is only the half of a lifelong service for the betterment of men. For a quarter of a century he was one of the chief factors in the making of the "New West." Keeping pace with the new settlers pouring into the farming regions, camping with the pio- neers who laid out new railway centres, scaling the mountains, and penetrating the canons with the pros- pectors and miners, he everywhere rallied around him the friends of order and religion, of schools and tem- perance, of Sabbath observance and good citizenship. While public sentiment was still plastic he shaped it for weal and for civic righteousness, and left his impress upon that half of the United States which lies west of the Mississippi river. From 1869 to 1903 he traveled from 17,000 to 30,000 miles a year-on foot, horseback, by buckboard and army ambulance, stage and railway, steamship and canoe, revenue cutters and naval vessels.
In the Alaska Mission field signal success has attended his tactful apportionment of its precincts among the dozen religious denominations engaged there, the idea and purpose being to prevent the simple pagan mind from being phased by the many different forms of relig- ious work in vogue among civilized people. Accordingly, the Presbyterians who were already established in South- eastern Alaska took that section, where they had in 1907 four churches for whites, and for natives 32 missionaries and teachers, an industrial school with 164 uniformed pupils, a hospital, 12 churches with 982 native communi- cants, and 25 preaching stations, influencing some 5,000 natives. The Baptists operate at Kadiak and the regions around Cook's Inlet and Prince William Sound, 600 miles west, where they have churches and mission stations, an orphanage, with 46 pupils, with an experimental farm of sixteen acres attached; a fishing station, a dairy, a poultry yard, and other industrial plants. The Metho- dists occupy the Shumagin and Aleutian Islands and the Aleutian Peninsula. They have six stations for whites, two local preachers, and two missions for natives and an
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Industrial Home at Unalaska. The Aleuts are practically civilized. They live like white folks, and study the latest fashion plates. The Moravians hold to the valleys of the Nushagak and Kushokwim, having 24 missionaries, 8 na- tive helpers, with 75 native communicants and 860 native adherents. The Swedes hold to Norton Sound. They liave nine white missionaries and nine native assistants, and a membership of about 500; also a mission school. The Norwegians use around Port Clarence, the Friends, or Quakers, about Kotzebue Sound, where they have a main station and nine out stations, schools, and several hundred adherents, and are doing very successful work. Episcopalians control the Yukon Valley, employing a bishop, 14 clergy, native helpers 8, women workers II, wives of missionaries 6, licensed candidates 2, missions 17, outside preaching stations 15, hospitals 7, schools 7, churches 14, sawmills 2. The Congregationalists are lined along Bering Strait, with churches at Nome, Valdez, and Douglas, and an Eskimo mission at Cape Prince of Wales. The Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greco-Rus- sian churches are scattered broadcast. The Catholics have 19 priests, II lay brothers, 7 sisters of St. Anne, II mis- sion centres, and 100 out stations. The Russians have a bishop, 18 priests, 2 deacons, 44 teachers, I woman teacher, I catechizer, 16 parishes, 17 temples (churches), 67 chapels or prayer houses, and claim 10,600 adherents, of whom 7,821 are said to be natives. Consequently, there is a most wholesome absence of denominational fric- tion, and the sects are all harmonious and friendly.
Alaska in the beginning, so far as the general disposi- tion of the natives was concerned, was not a dangerous field. After they were toned down by naval discipline there was small chance of any missionary being killed and eaten. Three or four have been drowned and two have been killed by insubordinate grown Eski- mo pupils at Cape Prince of Wales, and Mr. Edwards by a white whiskey smuggler at Kake Island, in southeastern Alaska, but no gangs of bad men exist throughout Alaska's broad extent one-half so brutal as the well-dressed thugs who infest New York and Chicago. The population of the Province was no longer savage, but like those of British America under the jurisdiction of the Hudson Bay Company. They had been in contact with the Russians for 120 years. Fur
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THE MISSION FIELD.
hunters, mining prospectors, and explorers had pene- trated to the innermost parts of the country. Quite a few trading posts and as many as fourscore chapels were located at principal points. Fifteen or more tribes are embraced in five ethnic divisions of manifestly different origins, mainly from Asia. So many being fairly civilized and skilled in many of the finer arts is evidence of de- generation from a civilization not very remote, whose ancestors were cocval with the antediluvians of the other hemisphere and of the people who formerly occupied Central America, Arizona and New Mexico, and whose close kindred dwell to-day in the vicinity of Klamath, Oregon, and Puget Sound. One proof of this contention is that they are so susceptible to culture, and respond so quickly to efforts toward rehabilitation, the Rev. Wm. Duncan having restored a community of Tsimpsheans to its original high plane in five years, and had them building churches, attending schools, keeping stores, run- ning sawmills, playing pipe organs and orchestra music, and behaving and dressing like advanced and educated white men. In like manner Rev. Jackson had half the native of the Alexander Archipelago going through all the motions of a civilized community in ten years, with the schoolboys in military uniform learning trades for future support, and the girls doing embroidery as a re- laxation from cooking, baking, sewing, washing, and housekeeping, and a dozen two and three-story build- ings to accommodate the crowding applicants.
This partly explains why Alaska is forging ahead so wonderfully. She does not have to import Asiatic labor. She has her own indigenes in direct descent, and those lend a willing hand toward her development. Her enter- prise and her ingenuity keep pace with her wants. She makes history as fast as she can stand for it. Never was there a field so attractive to the anthropologist, or so rich, accessible, and easy to work. This view is just coming to light.
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