USA > Alaska > Trailing and camping in Alaska > Part 16
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The horses gave their bells an extra rattle, about two hundred yards from camp, then they could be heard approaching. Horses that have been used for hunting take a human-like interest in such things, and show inquisitiveness. When they arrived in camp, the smell of the wolverine made them so rest- less that they were saddled with difficulty.
After breakfast, I mounted my saddle-horse and with pack-horse following, proceeded on my way.
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About two miles from there I met two Indian squaws, and when they were told where they could find a dead wolverine, they hurried on with the prospect of obtaining the skin. The Indians place a high value on the skin of the wolverine, as they claim that it is the only fur on which the breath will not freeze. With it, they border-fringe the parkie, where it is worn near the face.
Upon arriving on the bank of the Copper, the wind was blowing harder than I had ever experienced it in that country. It was a long time before I could attract the attention of the Indians on the other side of the river, as they could not hear the firing of a gun so far across the wind and water. Finally they came down to the bank, launched a canoe, and in a short time the horses were swimming for the other shore, and we were paddling in pursuit.
I found a cabin in which I was sheltered for two days, while the wind blew trees down near by. Old Doctor Bellum, an Indian doctor, came in and en- tertained me for hours, narrating interesting details about his people's traditions and superstitions. He told of the war with the Tananas; how one night the Tananas quietly came down the river, and at daylight disclosing themselves in battle array, began firing on the Ahtnas. They killed about forty of the Copper River Indians, but the remainder re- treated to the wood, deployed in the mountain passes, and killed thirty of the Tananas on their return.
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He said the breath of Mount Wrangell (Una- letta) was poison; that the smoke from its crater once descended and killed several Indians when they were sitting around their campfire, near the mouth of the Tulsona, and that the Indians had accused him of causing the catastrophe. He employed Una- letta's smoke, he said, as a threat to control bad characters; and he informed me that Chief Nicoli had once sent six Indians up to examine the crater. That had happened " eleven snows yesterday" (1891), and they had not yet returned, but "may-be-so some time come back." Four others had gone in search of the six, and two of them, while looking over into the crater, had fallen dead from the effects of the poison they had breathed. Then he talked of the superstition of the Indians, and said they believed that he could look right through them and discover their wickedness.
Presently another tall Indian came in and intro- duced himself as Eselota, whereupon Bellum mod- estly retired, possibly because he knew Eselota was somewhat of a liar himself. As Eselota wore a long beard and had the features of a white man, he was asked if he were not partly Russian. He seemed to entertain doubts, unless his people had come from Russia long before the other Russians had known of the country. He said his people, the Suslotas, were all as tall as he, and wore long beards. Twenty- four Russians, he declared, had once ascended the
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Copper River on the ice. They were so abusive that the Indians had been compelled to kill them in their camp, near the mouth of the Tazlina River. They had knocked the Russians in the head with rocks, while they were asleep, but had let two of them escape to tell the others, so that the Russians never again would molest the tribe.
This statement was corroborated by an old Rus- sian who claimed that he was one of the two men who had been released. This old man died recently at Tatetlik.
Those Indians seemed very much attached to their 3000 acres tract of river-bottom land, and the gov- ernment should protect them in their ownership of it. Their little homes and sacred graveyards should be insured against the white invaders who are disposed to divest them too often, not only of their property rights, but also of their morals.
When I rode up the trail that ascended the escarp of the river's deep channel, I paused and looked back on that almost unknown little valley and wondered if those clay banks could talk, what stories of life, romance and death they could relate.
That summer had been an unlucky one for I had arranged to accompany the Indian, Gokona Charley, to a great copper deposit. He had failed to appear the year before, because of sickness in his family, but as they had all died, he was now left alone to disclose the secret. He was willing to do so on con-
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dition that if it were worth it to me, I should take him out of the Copper River country, so that he would never see it again. We were to meet on August I, but on the way to our appointed ren- dezvous, he was drowned in the Tazlina River, on July 28. The secret was lost, and so was an Indian friend whom I had known for four years.
I had often noted his tracks and those of his family as they moved from one hunting-ground to another, and had seen their abandoned camps, where in their all-too-brief period of childish happiness, his little ones had built playhouses (wickiups). Charley had watched his children die, one at a time, and then had seen his wife succumb to consumption. With loving hands he had laid her to rest beside their children, and with tearful eyes had followed the lonely trail leading away from their decorated graves, never to return.
The great Mongol Emperor, Shah Jehan, of In- dia, erected the Taj Mahal, the most costly bejeweled tomb on the globe, to the memory of his beloved wife, Queen Muntazi Mahal. He did all that he could to express his grief, yet he did no more than did poor Gokona Charley, for he, too, did the best he could.
Several persons lost their lives exploring that sum- mer: Thos. Conally was drowned in the Kotsina River ; Horace Tuffin and Mr. Riley had been frozen
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to death during the previous winter, and a few were drowned in the Chitina.
One day I heard shooting at intervals a short dis- tance ahead, and presently saw seven rabbits hang- ing to a tree. Those Rocky Mountain snowshoe rabbits were quite plentiful, but an Indian could kill a dozen of them while an average white man was killing one. Stealthily following, I soon came upon an old Indian, with a boy walking behind and drag- ging two rabbits by the heels. Presently, as the old Indian approached a patch of brush, he stopped and began to make a peculiar noise ! then bang ! went the gun and over tumbled a rabbit. As I came up, I laughingly said that I knew how it was that an Indian could kill more rabbits than a white man. He replied :
" White man, he no sabe how to call 'em. Me know how to talk rabbit-talk."
The trail, on my return, was lined with stampeders for the Nizina country, who made their poor horses carry packs as far as they were able to go, and then shot them or left them to starve. I found one ex- hausted horse lying in the trail in such a place that it was necessary to shoot him in order to pass by. While he struggled in death his body went rolling and tumbling down one hundred feet into the Tekeil River.
The Geological Survey boys that season had about
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finished up their work in that part of the country. Too much credit cannot be given to Schrader, Brooks, Mendenhall and others for their industry in map- ping the land; and to M. P. Ritter and others of the Geodetic Survey for their diligence in charting the waters of our northern possessions.
CHAPTER XXIII
A philosophical Indian once described the world as an animal, vegetation as hair, all living things as vermin, and a volcano as a " sore place."
THOSE Indians, commonly called Sticks, should bear their original name of Ahtna. Their name of Stick was evidently derived from the English word stick, which they apply to forests, trees and logs, and the definition of the name, as applied to them, is " Woodsmen." Sub-chief Stickman derived his name from the fact that he built a log cabin in which to live, in preference to the uncomfortable tepee.
Their real, or former, name was Ahtna, but whether or not they are related to the Ahtnas of the upper Frazer River, and the Apaches of Arizona, who possess a part of their vocabulary, probably never will be known.
These Indians will steal only when driven to it by starvation. Like all Indians, they were better before the whites discovered them than after they have accepted the white man's vices and re- jected his virtues. Their deplorable condition seems to be the result of natural inclination.
An old Indian seemed very much disappointed when he was informed that the military would not
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employ Indians to work on the trail. He said he preferred that the Indians should work for what they got, rather than to obtain it by begging. A few In- dians earned a livelihood by running ferries across the rivers, but white men secured licenses for that privilege and took the industry away from them.
An old Indian once explained to me that his father had lived and died on the spot he was then occu- pying, and there he intended to live and die. Six months after that some white men took possession of his sacred spot and drove him farther up the river. It is the same old story of the white man's injustice to the Indian-a story which should bring the blush of shame to all Americans. When those Indians discover that they are discriminated against, they become discouraged, mean and sullen. Intellec- tually, the Copper River Indians are superior to any other Indians I have ever met. They are quick to learn, and are naturally musical and also humor- ous.
While an Indian's humor is of a quiet and grim sort, it often means much. Once a companion of mine was fooling with a crowd of them, and play- ing a few of his many tricks. He had a sewing machine bobbin and around it he had wound about thirty feet of silk ribbon. He placed this spool in his mouth when unobserved, and began to pull out the ribbon, an inch at a time. The Indians swarmed around as he slowly unwound it, until he had piled
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up about twenty feet of ribbon, when one of the In- dians approached me and said :
" Say, you come look see! White man hiyu (very) sick ! "
"No, he no sick," I replied.
" You say he ha-lo (not) sick?" he asked.
" Yes, he ha-lo sick," I answered.
" All right, he ha-lo sick, by and by he make 'em blanket!" replied the Indian, as he solemnly re- joined the spectators.
These Indians dig a wild parsnip root they call " chauce," and it is their only farinacious diet. Often during the long winters they consume all their supplies of " chauce " and dried salmon, and are then compelled to subsist on the inner bark of trees, the juices of which they swallow. It may be that this is the prime cause of the black vomit which, they claim, has killed off so many of them during the last fifty years. The last appearance of that dis- ease was among the Indians at the source of the White River. It was always fatal, causing a destruc- tion of the mucous membrane of the stomach. How- ever, their having eaten the inner bark of trees may not have been the cause of the black vomit, as that custom has been general among all Indians through- out the timbered regions in the United States. It is more probable that it was caused by the sudden change in springtime, from starvation to a period of gormandizing.
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An Indian will not give anything to another's wife, not even something to eat; that is, he would not directly do so, but he might pass the article to a child to hand to the squaw, because the child is in- nocent. He believes that if he gave her anything directly, the action would bring down on him a spell of sickness, or that some harm would befall him.
In more ancient times, their marriage ceremonies were accompanied with a feast given by the bride's parents, when the bridegroom presented them with all he could afford, to show to them his appreciation of their daughter. When the custom is now ob- served, the groom sings a verse of a song after the feast, pleading with the girl to go with him, as he has stored ample provisions for the coming win- ter, and is strong and willing to hunt, and to care for her when she is old.
The girl then sings a song wherein she announces her parental love and her content with her existing conditions. Then he answers that his canoe is moored to the river bank, and if she had come with him their trip on the water would have represented their life together; but as she has refused, he will go down the river alone, and in his wickiup moan for the one he loves.
He bids them good-bye and before he unties his canoe, he generally finds that she has followed him,
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and in the moonlight, their friends from the shore watch the two paddle down the river together.
Like some white women, the squaws wear rings in their ears, and often go their white sisters one better by wearing them in their noses.
At one moment these Indians surprise you with their cleanliness by their regular bathing habits, and the next astonish you with their filthy ways. They carry a cud of tobacco in a little tin box. They will take this out and chew it for a few minutes, and then, if near a fire, they will roll it in the ashes and replace it in the box to absorb lye and strength for future use. Often this cud is passed around to others who may be present, but after they have, in turn, chewed the morsel, it is returned to the owner. An Indian child will beg for tobacco with as much persistency as a white child for candy. It is really from the Indian that we learned our tobacco habits.
An Indian seldom has a plurality of wives, and when he does, he apologetically explains that the last one was formerly a wife of some friend who died, and that he took her to support until she had found another husband; but the fact is, she is gen- erally the one who does the supporting.
When these Indians break up camp to go on a hunt, or to some trading-post, they indicate how many persons have departed and the course that they took by sticking a pole in the ground for each person, and leaning it in the direction he has gone.
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To each pole is attached a remnant of some mascu- line or feminine wearing apparel to indicate the sex of the person it represents. Age is indicated by the length of the pole.
A cache post, or the surface of an old tree near by, may be found marked with charcoal, or a lead pencil, if they should be fortunate enough to have one, bearing such a diagram as the following:
This would mean that a man with a gun, a squaw, a little girl and a dog had left the bank of the river, when the moon was half full; that their first day's travel will terminate on the bank of a creek, where they will camp on the near shore; that their next day's travel will terminate on the bank of another creek where they will camp on the opposite shore; and that at noon of the next day, they will make their final camp at the foot of the mountain.
These leaning sticks are generally left at every camping place along their trail, for the edification of other Indians. This explains what puzzles many white men, and that is: how the Indians are so well- informed about the movements of parties of white men as well as of Indians. If an Indian were in your camp, and knew of your number, it is proba-
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ble, if afterwards you secreted yourself near your old camp, that you would find the Indians placing some mysterious stick in the ground near the camp or your trail.
The Indian maiden, when approaching maturity, is ostracised as an unclean thing. She is then com- pelled to wander alone, and obtain her own living in the best possible way. Edibles are occasionally left where she can find them, but nothing is given directly to her. She is not allowed to accept any- thing from the hands of another, and must cook everything she eats. This brutal custom of driving the poor girls out in inclement weather is shocking.
One of the old customs of these Indians, when approaching another's camp, was to fire as many shots as there were numbers in their party. In those days, when they had muzzle-loading rifles, it indicated that their guns were unloaded and they were peaceable. Owing to the white man's disre- gard for those signals, and his refusal to answer them, the custom is now about obsolete.
The moccasin of the Tananas has a square heel- tip that leaves its impression in the track; the Cop- per River Indian moccasins have two, and the moccasin of the Shusitnas has none. By the tracks of the Indians, they can tell to what tribe they be- long. The interior Indians plainly articulate their words, and their language is easily learned, as they name animals and birds by the noises that they make.
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They name sheep "tobah "; goat, "tobay "; wild geese, "honk, honk," and the little red squirrel " klinket."
They show respect for the dead by fencing in their graves and placing crudely constructed crosses over them. Articles that were once the property of the deceased, and little playthings of the children, are placed on the graves as tokens of respect and lingering affection. The old squaws occasionally wail for the dead, just as the Digger squaws used regularly to do in southern climes, where I heard them when a boy. Their wailing was a regular oc- currence between sundown and dark, and created a lonely feeling in me that reasserted itself when the occasional moan was heard away up there on Cop- per River.
One evening I had seated myself on the grass- covered ground, near a large boulder, on the bank of that river to enjoy an after-supper smoke. The river boiled, curled and murmured, only about twenty feet below. The last rays of the summer's sun were kissing the tips of the mountains a lingering good-night. Soon, from far away down the river, was heard that lonesome wail, which has probably gone up from that river-bottom for a thousand years, but here, as in other places, it is nearing its last echo. To me it came with a poignant sugges- tion of my vanished boyhood.
Suddenly a grunt from an Indian was heard, only
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a few feet away, and looking round, I discovered one of the most intelligent of his race. I invited him to sit down, whereupon I handed him an extra clay pipe, a package of tobacco and a bunch of sul- phur matches. Sulphur matches are the only kind the hunter will carry, for the wet ones can be dried readily by giving them a few strokes through the hair, and can then be lighted. That is why they are so popular in the west.
When he had filled the pipe, he offered to return the tobacco and matches, but the offer was refused. That wail had put us upon the natural level of com- radeship, and the tobacco was accomplishing its share. I desired that he should talk and impart in- formation about himself and his people. One must give an Indian time to commence to do that, even under favorable conditions, and it was hoped that the gift of tobacco would be conducive to that end.
The old Indian had smoked but a few puffs, when he laughingly compared the smoke of his pipe to that of the Unaletta volcano which was in plain view. He asked about the Indians away off in the white man's country, and appeared to be surprised when he was told that the Indians and whites lived in the same vicinity. He said he thought the In- dians were all dying off to make room for the white man. He informed me that once there were 1500 Indians between Tonsina River and Copper Center, a distance of about twenty miles, but that now there
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were less than one hundred. Formerly they could kill a moose whenever they wanted it, while now there were very few of them to be found.
He was a fatalist, and believed it was the destined plan of the Great Power that the Indians should give way for the whites. He said he could "feel it." To explain his position as a fatalist, he assured me that if we could have looked ahead correctly a year before, we should have seen ourselves sitting by that rock at this time. He said if we could look ahead, we could tell when earthquakes would occur; that if we could look into the future we could see the little babe grow up, follow its wanderings until its death, and then, if we watched the child's life, that it would be just as we had seen it-it would die just the same way, and no human power could change it. The individual might think he could do as he pleased, but he was only doing what was pre- destined for him to do, and he could not help it.
That untutored savage could have entertained our civilized philosophers, but he would certainly have collided with some of the modern free-moral- agent theories.
He described how his people once had made axes out of stone, then later out of native copper. He said that they could harden copper fairly well with an application of urinal ammonia, but the process was tedious, and moreover the ax was not as serv- iceable as the white man's steel.
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He explained that the Indians were compelled to hunt for a living and had not the time to improve themselves like the white people, but he wished they could read and write. He said that the children would learn to do so, if the Great Power so destined it. All Indians believe in an occult power. He thought that his people once had occupied the whole land, but the fish-eating Siwashes had come and driven them back from the coast. He could under- stand the language of the Tananas, Shusitnas and the Yukons, as their languages were similar to his own. It is reported by explorers in the Hudson Bay country that the Indians up there talk the same lan- guage, or nearly so, and it is possible that this old fellow's conclusions were correct. He had traveled some, and said he had been over twice to the Yukon country, and had seen the Japanese there.
" Jap, may-be-so he my cousin !" he added.
He told me of his tribe's superstitions and laughed at their foolishness, the same as the white men laugh at lucky horseshoes, and four-leaved clover. He explained how the squaws made charms with beads and ptarmigan wing-bones, to wear when going on a dangerous canoe voyage. These they call " ha-lo calepie," which, when literally trans- lated, means "no upset." The Indian sweat-baths he informed me were a sure cure for rheumatism.
He said the ptarmigan sometimes increase to such
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numbers that the country was unable to support them, and that at such times they would fly away to other localities. This statement is supported by the fact that those birds once flew across the Yukon River in such great numbers that a steamboat's pas- sengers were enabled to kill them with clubs. He said that rabbits also increased too rapidly for their sustenance, and that then they would die off. He denied that they died at definite periods, and ridi- culed the saying that rabbits die off every seven years as a silly tradition of the squaws.
I asked him why it was that so many of the In- dians of the Pacific coast buried their dead facing the setting sun, as I had noticed that custom along the coast as far south as Mexico.
" Me no sabe," he answered. "May-be-so one time all Indians' home that way, and when Indians die they look back to old home."
There, that was a statement worth something. Then the old Indian rested his head on his hands, as if in deep reminiscent thought. If he were now living a reincarnated life of his ancestors, what a history he could tell of battles, hardships and death which had accompanied their immigration into that country ! When he resumed, it was not of the past, but of the future. He arose and stood in a com- manding attitude, and motioning his hand from west to east, exclaimed :
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" Indians come ! "
Motioning from east to west he continued:
" White man come ! "
Then in apparent exultation and great joy he waved both hands in the air and exclaimed :
" Bye-and-bye, all Indians come back-all come back! White man die."
I never shall forget the apparently inspired ex- pression of his countenance when he made that prophecy. There is really no yellow race, but the red race in Japan, China, Korea and Siberia num- bers nearly 500,000,000, and there is no race sui- cide there. The reward of conquest over a weak, wealthy, but intelligent nation, which may be the final destiny of this, would be so great, with the accumulated wealth in the hands of a few, that re- sistance to temptation may be discontinued, and instead of China being dismembered for spoils, his- tory may repeat itself, and in the words of this old Indian :
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