Aleutian Islands

“ Throughout the long line of the Aleutian Islands and the neighbouring coasts of North America, for over a century, hunters' boats—little cockle-shell skiffs made of oiled walrus-skin stretched on whalebone frames, narrow as a canoe, light as cork—rode the wildest seas in the wildest storms in pursuit of the sea-otter. Sea-otter became to the Pacific coast what beaver was to the Atlantic—the magnet that drew traders to the north-west seas, and ultimately led to the settlement of the north-west coast. ”

“ The whole range of Aleutian Islands from Attoo to Kodiak contains between four and five thousand inhabitants, nearly all of whom are called Christians, being members of the Greek Church. They are very generally half-breeds, that is, born of intermarriage between emigrant Russians and native women. Professor Davidson was struck by the strong resemblance of the aboriginal tribes inhabiting 125these islands to the Chinese and Japanese, and was satisfied that they came originally from Asia. There are many very intelligent persons among them. ”

“ The Aleutian Islands.
O. J. Murie, U.S. Biological Survey, made the most complete survey of the Aleutians (Murie 1959) . He specifically recorded seabird colonies, spending parts of four summers in the area. Murie visited every large Aleutian island and most small ones. He recorded nearly every major colony of cliff-nesting or talus-nesting seabirds known in the Aleutians, but seldom gave sizes of colonies, and separate colonies on a particular island were often not differentiated.
World War II brought several ornithologists to the Aleutians. ”

“ Every school boy knows that the United States owns the Aleutian Islands. He knows also that they stretch all the way across to Asia and separate Bering Sea from the Pacific. In this group of Islands is one which has an ice-free front. It is called Dutch Harbor. It would prove an excellent base, if properly fortified, in the control of the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ The Black Current of the Pacific, like the Gulf Stream, salter than the adjacent waters.—The natives of the Aleutian Islands, where no trees grow, depend upon the drift-wood cast ashore there for all the timber used in the construction of their boats, fishing-tackle, and household gear. ”

“ Only young males are killed by the Company, but many of both sexes are taken far from here among the Aleutian Islands and around the shores of Vancouver Island and the outermost of the Alexander Archipelago. ”

“ In the Pacific are the Aleutian Islands, Kadiak, the Alexander and Queen Charlotte groups, Vancouver and other British-Columbian Islands, the Santa Barbara group, Bevilla-Gigedo, the Pearl Islands, and others in the Gulf of Panama, the Galápagos, Juan Fernandez and the associated islets, Chiloe and the Chonos Archipelago. In the Arctic Ocean there are many large but unimportant islands. ”

“ Inspired by the important discoveries of this expedition and by the hope of a profitable fur trade with China, various Russian traders and adventurers, known as "promyshleniki," made voyages into the newly discovered regions, pressing eastward island by island, and year by year; beginning that long tale of cruelty and bloodshed in the Aleutian Islands which has not yet reached an end. Men as harmless as the pleading, soft-eyed seals were butchered as heartlessly and as shamelessly, that their stocks of furs might be appropriated and their women ravished. ”

“ When the Russian traders opened up the Aleutian Islands they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, which they willingly parted with at first for trifles, not placing any especial value upon the otter, as they did upon the bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which were vastly more palatable to them and serviceable. But the fierce competition and raised bidding of the greedy traders soon fired the savages into hot and incessant hunting. ”

“ Their Asiatic origin could not be doubted, and, on the other hand, Aleuts—natives of the Aleutian Islands, which stretch out in a grand chain from Alaska—who had shipped as sailors on the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition, and a Tchuktchi [pg 140] boy brought down to be educated, were constantly taken for Japanese or Chinamen in San Francisco, where there are 40,000 of the former people. ”

“ If the cave-dwellers of Europe’s palæolithic era found their way as has been suggested, in some vastly remote age, either by an eastern or a western route to the later home of the Arctic Eskimo, it is in comparatively modern centuries that the tide of migration has set westward across the Behring Strait, and by the Aleutian Islands, into Asia. ”

“ Abuse, cruelty, outrage, accumulated on the heads of the poor Aleuts. They had reached the fine point where it is better for the weak to die trying to overthrow strength, than to live under the iron heel of brute oppression.
The immediate cause of revolt is a type of all that preceded it. [1] Running out for a thousand miles from the coast of Alaska is the long chain of Aleutian Islands linking across the Pacific toward Asia. Oonalaska, the most important and middle of these, is as far from Oregon as Oregon is from New York. Near Oonalaska were the finest sea-otter fields in the world ”

“ Embraces Gravel Island and Spider Island, approximately in latitude forty-five degrees and fifteen minutes north, longitude eighty-six degrees and fifty-eight minutes west from Greenwich, in Lake Michigan, Wisconsin.
March 3, 1913. Aleutian Islands Reservation. Embraces all of the islands of the Aleutian chain, Alaska, including Unimak and Sannak Islands on the east and Otter Island on the west, reserved for preserve and breeding-ground for native birds, and in addition thereto for the propagation of reindeer and fur-bearing animals and encouragement and development of the fisheries. ”

“ The Kuro Siwo, or Japan Current, breaks on the western end of the Aleutian Chain; half flows eastward south of the islands, and carries with it the warm, moist atmosphere which is condensed on the snow-peaks and sinks downward in the fine and delicious mist that gives the grass and mosses their vivid, brilliant, perpetual green. The other half passes northward into Behring Sea and drives the ice back into the "Frozen Ocean." ”

“ It is a curious fact that no reptile, toad, lizard, or similar animal is to be found in Alaskan territory. The waters of the North Pacific, from the most westerly of the Aleutian Islands up to Behring Strait, swarm with cod, haddock, sturgeon, large flounders, and halibut, while our hardy whale men successfully pursue 150their mammoth game both north and south of the strait. ”

“ It is noteworthy that, at the north of the great continental land-mass, where minor seas and channels break through, great volcanic forces are constantly at work, as hinted at above, to restore the unity. In the Sea of Kamtchatka lie the Aleutian islands, extending more than 950 miles, and forming what has been happily termed a bridge from the old world to the new. It consists of more than a hundred rocks and islands, some of which have been thrown up within the memory of man. ”

“ There are mountains all about this region, which the official geographers are naming after public men, among them being Mount Dewey. To the westward the vast Alaska peninsula projects far out, dividing the Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea, terminating in the Fox Islands, of which Ounalaska is the port, and having the Aleutian Islands spreading beyond still farther westward. It is a remarkable fact, indicating the vast extent of the United States, that the extremity of the Aleutian group is as far in latitude westward from San Francisco as the Penobscot River and coast of Maine are eastward. ”

“ The far Aleutian Islands have witnessed more desperate sea-fighting than has occurred elsewhere since the days of the Spanish Buccaneers, and pirate craft, which the U. S. Fisheries must watch, rifle in hand, are prowling in the Behring Sea to-day. The fish-farms of the United States are as interesting as they are immense in their scope. ”

“ Sea-otter were found and taken in thousands at Sitka Sound, in Yakutat Bay, Prince William Sound, Cook's Inlet, and all {67} along the chain of eleven hundred Aleutian Islands to the Commander Group, off Kamchatka. Where they were found in thousands then, they are seen only in tens and hundreds to-day. Where they are in hundreds one year, they may not come at all the next, having been too hard hunted. This explains why there used to be returns of five thousand in a single year at Kadiak or Oonalaska or Cook's Inlet ”

“ The great chain of Aleutian Islands extending hundreds of miles into the sea, is the scene of much volcanic activity where a great mountain range is now literally being born out of the sea by the processes of vulcanism. ”

“ These forces are aided essentially by the configuration of the Northwest Coast, with a lofty and impenetrable barricade of mountains, by which its islands and harbors are protected from the cold of the North. Occupying the Aleutian Islands, traversing the peninsula of Alaska, and running along the margin of the ocean to the latitude of 54° 40 ́, this mountain-ridge is a climatic division, or, according to a German geographer, a “climatic shed,” such as perhaps exists nowhere else in the world. ”

“ In vessels just as defective, destitute of the instruments requisite for observing their course, and of any fixed notion concerning the conformation or extent of the earth, often even without a compass, ignorant Russian adventurers have embarked from Ochotsk, and rounding Kamtschatka, have discovered the Aleutian Islands, and attained to the north-west coast of America. ”

“ Many intelligent students of history believe that the first inhabitants of this continent probably came from Asia by way of Behring Strait or the Aleutian Islands, which may at some period in past ages have extended across the north Pacific Ocean ”

“ Dwellers in hot climates dislike the sudden transition to cooler waters, and some voyagers enjoy it. Fortunately, icebergs cannot float down the shallow reaches of Bering Strait, but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian Islands. ”

“ Men-of-war proceeding north of Sitka—which, except for purposes of science or war, is not likely to be the case, although the Pacific Station extends to the northernmost parts of Alaska—would voyage into Bering Sea through Ounimak Pass, one of the best passages between the rocky and rugged Aleutian Islands. ”

“ The Aleutian branch occupies the long chain of islands which stretch westward from the southwestern corner of Alaska. The climate is mild, the sea abounds in fish, and innumerable birds nest in the rocks. We may therefore believe the navigators of the last century, who placed the population of the islands at 25,000 or 30,000 souls, although at present they have sunk to about 2,000. They have the same cheerful temperament as the Eskimos, and their grade [66] of culture was, when first discovered, about the same. ”

“ Among the inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, at least in times of scarcity of food, the produce of the fisheries is divided according to their need. (V. Wrangell, 185.) The organization of labor is rigidly enforced among the Otomacs, on the banks of the Orinoco, and they are, nevertheless, more civilized than their neighbors. (Depons, Voyage, I, 295.) A community of goods must, however, be considered an advance, in the case of an isolated people ”

“ Furthermore, these natives are constantly going to and from Oonalashka, visiting their relations in the Aleutian settlements, hunting for wives, etc. On the mainland they have intimate intercourse with bitter enemies of the company, with whom they would not hesitate to talk over the whole state of affairs on the islands, as they always do; for they know nothing else and think of nothing else and dream of nothing else. ”