American Indians and Alaska Natives

“ Between 1800 and 1900, the American Indians lost more than half of their population, and their proportion in the total U.S. population dropped from 10.15% to 0.31%. Throughout the 19th century, while the U.S. population grew by 20-30% every 10 years, the Indian population experienced a precipitous decline. Currently, the Indian and Alaska Native population accounts for only 1.3% of the total U.S. population. ”

“ There was never an attempt in Alaska to isolate Indians on reservations. Very few were ever created, and the purpose of these, in contrast to many in other States, was not to confine the Indians for the protection of the white settlers but to safeguard the Indians against exploitation. Alaskan Indians are now voting citizens, some of whom occupy prominent public office in the state government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Along the coast of Alaska live tribes of simple and ignorant Indians, who were for years the prey of conscienceless whites, many of whom turned from the business of sealing, when the two Governments undertook its regulation, to take up the easier trade of fleecing the Indians. ”

“ There are more than 2 million American Indians living in our country today, from the hardwood forests of Maine to the Florida Everglades, across the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast, and throughout the State of Alaska. Through a variety of innovative enterprises, many tribes are sharing in the unprecedented prosperity our country enjoys today, prosperity that is reflected in the construction of community centers, schools, museums, and other cultural centers. ”

“ To assume that a population came over and passed down to Mexico, Yucatan and even to South America, carrying with them their arts, but not exercising them on this interminable journey, is ridiculous. No pottery has yet been found between the Yukon and the Humbolt, or even further south.
It was also assumed that either the ten tribes, or a Jewish colony, were the ancestors of the American Indians. ”

“ Had the settlements of the United States not been extended beyond the frontier of 1867, all the Indians of the continent would to the end of time have found upon the plains an inexhaustible supply of food and clothing. Were the westward course of population to be stayed at the barriers of to-day, notwithstanding the tremendous inroads made upon their hunting-grounds since 1867, the Indians would still have hope of life. But another such five years will see the Indians of Dakota and Montana as poor as the Indians of Nevada and Southern California ”

“ There are two reasons for this state of affairs, which is of some importance, considering that 38,500 Indians live in British Columbia. During the last few years, reservations were allotted to each tribe and the rest of the land declared government land. Now, the Indians of the coast are not migratory, but claim to be autochthonous in their several districts. All tribes, from Puget Sound to Alaska, believe that the Son of God gave every gens a piece of land which they consider their personal property. ”

“ The old Indian had robbed his own family's little winter stock of "white-man's grub" that this stranger might be provided, and had never heard a word from him since, though he had promised to make return when he reached Bettles.
Unfortunately Alaska's white population is sprinkled with men like this, men without heart and without conscience, and it is precisely such rascals who are loudest in their contemptuous talk of the Indians. ”

“ A perfect chaos of races meets us among the Indians of British Columbia and Alaska, and their language is polyglot. Seemingly the result of innumerable immigrations from Malayan and Mongolian sources in Asia, they have come at different times. One of the best known tribes of the coast is the Haidas, numbering some six thousand souls. The Nutka Indians occupy Vancouver Island, and have many tribal divisions. To the Selish or Flatheads belong many of the tribes of the Lower Fraser River, while the Shushwaps hold the country on the Columbia and Okanagan Rivers. ”

“ The stories that linger with the village ancients of the great numbers of Indians who used to inhabit the country are doubtless based upon recollections of the gathering at old Nuchalawóya, when furs were brought here from far and wide, when there was no other place of merchandise in mid-Alaska. Now almost every Indian village has a trader and a store. That the race has diminished, and in most places is still diminishing, is beyond question, but that it was ever very largely numerous the natural conditions of the country forbid us to believe. ”

“ Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans, possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to have constituted virtually a native race. ”

“ Motor launches owned and operated by the Indians in the river; dogs, scores of the big, half-wild, noisy sled dogs tied to stakes along the slope of the bank, fighting stray ones, barking in whole outbursts, feeding on smelly fish, or digging cooling holes into the bank in which they hide most of the body from the warm rays of the sun; and many Indians, about 400 in all, in whole families, in houses, large canvas tents, cooking, eating, visiting—a busy multitude, but with white man's clothes, utensils, etc., not nearly so interesting as a group of more primitive Indians would be. ”

“ The Indians are almost all gone from their village a mile above the town; they dwindled away with the dwindling prosperity, some to Tanana, some to other points down the river; and what used to be the worst small native community in the interior of Alaska has almost ceased to exist. ”

“ There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians have been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour. ”

“ The more durable material employed alike by the ancient cave-dwellers of Europe and by the modern Innuit and Eskimo, has secured their preservation in a form best calculated to command attention. But similar graphic representations of incidents and ideas are common to various tribes of North American Indians. Throughout the wide region of the old Algonkin tribes rock-carvings, such as that of the famous Dighton Bock, abound. The same are no less frequent in the South-West from New Mexico to California ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects, and commence anew; using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society. It was a calamity to the entire Red Race that the achievements of the Village Indians of Mexico and Central America, in the development of their institutions, should have suffered a shipwreck so nearly total. The only remedy for the evil done them is to recover, if possible, a knowledge of their institutions, which alone can place them in their proper position in the history of mankind. ”

“ Whole communities have taken up the vocations of white men. The native shows a willingness to work, which is quite unusual among people of his race. The United States has not forced the reservation system upon him, and he has always been self-supporting. However, his present status, in many instances, is most pitiable. Fishing companies, in disregard of the rights or interests of the natives, have depleted many of the streams of their supply of fish, thus destroying the Indian's principal source of a livelihood. The destruction of fur-bearing animals does him similar injury. ”

“ The Indians of America owe very few obligations to the white people that have settled among them. The latter have endeavoured to exterminate the former, and by violence or fraud, to get possession of their territories. They have slaughtered a great part of the American Aborigines in open war, endeavoured to enslave the rest, and multiplied so rapidly, and spread themselves so regularly over the face of the transatlantic world, as to render the Indian mode of procuring subsistence exceedingly precarious. ”

“ Nor can they be ascribed to mixture with the Indian in such far-away groups as the St. Lawrence Islanders, who so long as known have never had any direct or even indirect contact with Indians. These relations in dimensions and relative proportions of the body, and in physiological characteristics such as the slow normal pulse, are supplemented by many phases of behavior, and often by a more or less Indianlike physiognomy. They inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Eskimo and the Indian are in the root members of the same family. ”

“ The main body of Indians who still dwell in this eastern part of the American continent are the Wabanaki branch of the once great Algonquin stock, and they consist of tribes known as the Passamaquoddies (meaning “Spearers of Pollock fish”) , Penobscots, Abenaki (Land of the Dawn) , Micmacs, and Delawares. They are disappearing so quickly now before the white men that, as Professor Prince of New York says, they are a race “which fifty years from now will have hardly a single living representative.” ”

“ Throughout our history, American Indian and Alaska Native peoples have been an integral part of the American character. Against the odds, America's first peoples have endured, and they remain a vital cultural, political, social, and moral presence. ”

“ The relation of the American people to the Indians, since the first settlement of this country, has been one of conflict, which has been almost incessant in some sections of the land. By the opening of the nineteenth century the red men had been driven back in great measure from the thirteen original states, but the tribes in the west were still frequently hostile, and stood sternly in the way of our progress westward. ”

“ The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong (p. 021) to one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the higher culture of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas; There is one great American "red" race. ”

“ Present Restricted Domain.—The Arctic seaboard, Greenland, Alaska; numerous reservations and some unsettled parts of the United States and Canada; most tribes of Mexico, Central and South America are partly intermingled with the whites and blacks and still partly in the tribal state. By far the greater part of the native tribes never progressed beyond the savage state, except in the United States and Canada, where during the past quarter century, and particularly during the last decade, the Indians have rapidly advanced in civilization. ”

“ On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any special importance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowest specimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimately classed as savages. All the others are more properly known as barbarians.
In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the Pueblo Indians, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or sun-dried brick. In this particular they stand in a class distinct from all other native tribes in the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is expedient with respect to the condition of the North American Indians, to take into consideration some of the circumstances relating to their languages, customs, and superstitions; particularly such of them as may appear to have remote analogies with the observances of other races, or with the more advanced state of civilisation that existed in the fifteenth century, among the tribes who had conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan. ”

“ Alaskans travelling in the territory are thrown in constant contact with the Indians. They are encountered on steamers and trains, in stores and hotels. Owing to the pure air and the general healthfulness of the northern climate, Alaskans feel no real alarm over the conditions prevailing as yet; but all feel that the time has arrived when the Indians should be cared for.
Everything purchased of an Indian should be at once fumigated—especially furs, blankets, baskets, and every article that has been handled by him or housed in one of his vile shacks. ”