Alaska Natives

“ As might be inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal life in Alaska, these natives do not survive to any great age; rarely, indeed, will an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years be recorded or observed—an overwhelming majority of them are old at thirty-five and forty. When a man or a woman in a settlement rounds the fiftieth year of his or her life, a noted example of the tribe is afforded ”

“ This is the more important because all the world’s supply comes from the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled to live beyond simple barbarism ”

“ To interpret the clause 'or any other public lands which are actually occupied by Indians or Eskimos within said Territory' to describe only land above mean low tide is too restrictive in view of the history and habits of Alaska natives and the course of administration of Indian affairs in that Territory. The title to the uplands and waters in question is in the United States. [34] The fisheries as well as the uplands are subject to its present control. ”

“ The northern shore of Alaska is extremely shallow and sandy, great sand-spits being shoved up by the ice all along the coast. The beach is covered with drift-wood, which comes from the rivers emptying into Behring Sea. In conclusion, the Indians of Alaska have been reported as savage and treacherous. In my experience, I found the natives of interior northern Alaska the most kind and hospitable people in the world. ”

“ The fact nevertheless stares us in the face, that Alaska is nearly as large as the whole of the United States lying east of the Mississippi River, or three times as large as France. Within the last twenty years greater intelligence has been shown, in part through missionaries,—self-sacrificing and devout men,—who have sought by their teachings to abolish the wild superstitions of the natives, together with their cruel rites of Shamanism. ”

“ On the island of Unga, one of the Shumagin group, situated half way between Unalaska and Kodiak, is a small settlement of a score of white men and about a hundred and fifty natives. By a regulation of our Treasury Department, only natives are allowed to hunt the sea-otter, and therefore these white men have married native wives, thereby becoming natives in the eyes of the 126law. ”

“ Where there was no saloon the liquor was furnished the natives in the guise of pay or bribe, and every man who has lived in Alaska knows how little regard the white man has had for the sanctity of the native home. ”

“ This is a large island off the Alaskan coast, well below the present delta of the Yukon and some distance above Kuskokwim Bay. The island is one of the least explored, and the people living upon it one of the least known. It is only during the last few years that a trading and a reindeer post has been established on this island, and only the second year that there is a teacher. What little is known of the natives, a branch of the Eskimo, shows that they have many different habits from those farther north, in clothing, decoration, etc. ”

“ The collection proved clearly that two or three hundred years ago these natives of Alaska enjoyed a much higher degree of civilization than is exhibited by their descendants to-day. That they have deteriorated in industry, steadiness, and ability generally is obvious. The art of forging must have been known to them in the earlier times, as shown in this collection of admirable weapons, clearly of native manufacture and of most excellent finish. ”

“ It was during the latter half of the voyage, and after our discovery of Glacier Bay. The climax of the trip, so far as the missionary interests were concerned, was our visit to the Chilcat and Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His [Pg 82] wealth was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms. ”

“ From 1893 to 1895 the United States expended $55,000 to support the natives of the Fur Seal Islands. This policy threatens to become a continued necessity throughout much of Alaska. There is a small government Indian reservation on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. The white population is extremely mobile, and few towns have an assured or definite future. The prosperity of the mining towns of the interior is dependent on the fickle fortune of the gold-fields, for which they are the distributing points. ”

“ A steamer can always move very rapidly from place to place among the islands, making her presence felt without delay, when and where it is most needed. At the outset of our taking possession of Alaska, an example of decision and power was necessary to put the natives in proper awe of the government, and it followed quickly upon an unprovoked outrage committed by the aborigines. ”

“ The Presbyterians maintain, moreover, an industrial training school at Sitka. Almost the whole native population has been brought under the influence of Christian teaching.
History. In July, 1740, the Danish navigator Bering, who was in the Russian service, discovered a number of islands, among them that bearing his name. Russian explorers and traders gradually pushed further eastward and came into conflict with the natives, whom they cruelly maltreated. The coast of Alaska was visited by Captain Cook in 1778, and by the Spaniards at about the same time. ”

“ Michael will be more fully dealt with. In other sections of Alaska [45] the natives are largely Indians. Here only the Eskimo is to be seen. The visitor will encounter him everywhere in summer—in the streets, loafing in the stores, beaching or launching his boat on the water front, clad in the native costume, the parka, made of drill in summer and of fur, beautiful in design, in winter, shod in mukluks. At every turn one will find their handiwork for sale—carved ivories from walrus tusks, baskets, fur boots. ”

“ The three hundred and ninety-eight natives who inhabit the two islands are mostly half breeds of the Aleut tribe. They live now after a certain civilized way, in neat and comfortable houses provided for them by the company, but it was at first difficult to get them to leave their filthy underground hovels. ”

“ They have an Asiatic cast of features and the coast people are generally thought to have originated from Japanese stock. The Eskimos have a language very similar to the Eskimos of Labrador and almost identical [Pg 389] with a small population upon the Asiatic side of Behring Strait. Physically they differ from the Eskimos of Greenland and Labrador, being more robust and healthy. All of the natives of Alaska have small and delicately-formed hands and feet and rather a massive head, straight black hair, dark eyes, high cheek bones and nut-brown complexion. ”

“ At the present time, among the Hydahs, Tsimpseans, Thlinkets and Aleuts, the so-called chiefs have very little, if any, power or influence, as such. Among the Eskimos it may be doubted if the office ever amounted to anything.
The progress of the natives of Southeastern Alaska toward civilization is steady and certain, though it must not be supposed that these people yet take high rank in learning, intelligence or morality. ”

“ In this region, when a few years ago there was a partial failure of the salmon, there was distress amongst the Indians. But the country on the whole is almost as good an Indian country as ever it was, and there are few signs that it tends otherwise, though things happen so quickly and changes come with so little warning in Alaska that one does not like to be too confident.
The Indian is the only settled inhabitant of interior Alaska to-day; for the prospectors and miners, who constitute the bulk of the white population, are not often very long in one place. ”

“ Truth compels us to say that the residents here, of both sexes, are far from being of a desirable class. The Indians of this vicinity are of the Auk and Takou tribes; good traders and good hunters, but enemies of each other, though not given to open hostility. The native women, as if not content with the natural ugliness which has been liberally bestowed 250upon them by Providence, besmear their faces with a compound of seal-oil and lampblack, but for what possible reason, except that it is aboriginal Alaska fashion, one cannot divine. ”

“ VILLAGE OF KASA-AN, ALASKA.—It will doubtless be a surprise to many persons not familiar with the conditions of the Alaskan Indians to observe that their houses are usually quite substantially built of frame or wood. We generally think of Indians as living in wigwams or huts, but in the case of the Alaskans they were for many years previous to the purchase of that country by our government under the influence of Russia, and are therefore partly civilized and somewhat advanced in the modern ways of living. ”

“ Indians in North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Texas: Miamis, Seminoles, Lipans, Tonkawas, 850. Number of Indians in the United States, exclusive of those in Alaska, 266,151; number of Indians who are mixed-bloods, 40,639; number of school-teachers for Indians, 437; amount of money expended for education during the year, $362,496.03; number of births and deaths about even.
Alaska. The aboriginal inhabitants of Alaska are divided generally into two classes, the Ararian, or Coast tribes, and Indian, or Interior tribes ”

“ Just as the Eskimo graduate in the American Indian, so do they pass into the populations of northeastern Asia—language being the instrument which the present writer has more especially [Pg 335] employed in their affiliation. From the Peninsula of Alaska to the Aleutian chain of islands, and from the Aleutian chain to Kamskatka is the probable course of the migration from Asia to America—traced backwards, i. e., from the goal to the starting point, from the circumference to the center. ”

“ The boys and girls of Alaska belong to several different races. There are the yellow-skinned Eskimos of the far north and west; there are the copper-colored Indians who are found in the south, and along the banks of the rivers of the inland country; there are the Aleuts, who live on a chain of islands stretching westward towards Asia, and who are like Indians in some ways and like the Japanese in others. ”

“ The aborigines of Alaska are slow in their movements, and in this respect resemble the Lapps of Scandinavia, having also a drawling manner of speech entirely in consonance with their bodily movements. They are as inveterate gamblers as the Chinese, often passing whole days and nights absorbed in the occupation, the result of which is in no way contingent upon intelligence or skill, until finally one of the party walks off winner of all the stakes. ”

“ The men of these native tribes are strong and vigorous; the women are, however, forced to perform most of the domestic labor, and all of the drudgery, yet it was observed that they held the purse strings. That is to say, a native buck always defers to his wife in any matter of trade as to the price either to ask or to pay. The women of Alaska are certainly in a better condition and are better treated than those belonging to any of our Western Indian tribes, with whom we are acquainted. Though they are called upon to do much menial work, they do not seem to be actually abused. ”

“ Not until long after the English, French, and Spanish discoverers had explored the country in the Temperate Zone did any European find Alaska. Even when it was found it seemed to offer little but ice-fields and desolate prairies, leading to wild mountain ranges that did not tempt men to settle. Seal hunters came and went, but generally left the native Indians in peace. Most of these hunters came from Siberia, for the Russians were the first owners of this land.
An officer in the Russian Navy named Vitus Bering found the strait that is called by his name in 1728. ”

“ Wonderful is our latest American Continental possession—the rich territory of Alaska. Limitless are its resources, unmatchable its possibilities. One of its admirers thus sounds its praises: "In scenery, Alaska dwarfs the world. Think of six hundred and seventeen thousand square miles of landscape. Put Pike's Peak on Mount Washington or Mount Mitchell and it would hardly even up with Mount Logan. All the glaciers of Switzerland and the Tyrol dwindle to pitiful summer ice-wagon chunks beside the vast ice empires of Glacier Bay or mighty Malaspina. ”

“ Such pictures are far more flagrantly untrue to any conditions that ever existed in Alaska than anything Fenimore Cooper wrote about the Five Nations. There were never any slaves in the interior; there was never any wealth amongst the Indians; there was never any state and circumstance of life. And the more one lives amongst them and knows them, the less one believes that they could ever have been a warlike people, despite their own traditions. ”

“ Nowhere else in all the world are there such wondrous tints as in Alaska. To appreciate the beauty of the land, however, one needs must be an early riser. To have seen the marvelous change which comes over the pure whiteness of the snow-crowned crests between the darkness and the dawn! ”

“ Seemingly the aborigines throughout North America, with the exception—and it is hoped this is but temporary—of the Alaskan Eskimos and the still uncared-for Indian tribes of Alaska and Canada, should increase in numbers as well as in enlightenment. ”