Unalaska

“ During the early part of the present decade Unalaska saw its most prosperous times. Thousands of people waited here for transportation to the Klondike, via St. [Pg 410] Michael and the Yukon. Many ships were built here, and one still lies rotting upon the ways.
The Greek church is second in size and importance to the one at Sitka only, and the bishop once resided here. There is a Russian parish school, a government day-school, and a Methodist mission, the Jessie Lee Home. The only white women on the island reside at the Home. ”

“ W. H. Dall predicted that this Aleutian district will yet furnish California with its best butter and cheese; while Dr. Kellogg, botanist of the United States Exploring Expedition, wrote: “Unalaska abounds in grasses, with a climate better adapted for haying than the coast of Oregon. The cattle are remarkably fat, and the milk abundant.” This is the refitting station for all vessels passing between the Pacific Ocean and Behring Strait, and here also is the principal trading post of the Alaska Commercial Company. ”

“ The surface is somber with the all-pervading tundra, or Russian moss, which stretches over the greater part of Alaska and northern [Pg 20] Siberia. Looking down the harbor are discovered the large warehouses of one of the great Alaska commercial and trading companies, and the ancient and unique Russian settlement of Unalaska, peopled mainly by a mixed-breed population of Russian, Japanese, and native Eskimo constituents. There are a picturesque little Russian church, and the Jesse Lee Home for orphans and foundlings, endowed by a number of charitable women in Washington. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our course was almost a direct line to Behring Straits; we were to pass through the channel between Unalaska and Uninak Islands, then coast the Pribylof Islands for the benefit of the Professor, reach Indian Point, on the Siberian side of the strait where some of the natives, Masinkers (Tchouktchis) , could be seen, then cross to Port Clarence on the Alaskan shore for an inspection of the Nakooruks (Innuits) ; then two stops for the benefit of Hopkins and Goritz. We also intended to secure at the latter place dogs for our dash over the ice to the Krocker Land shore from Point Barrow. ”

“ The women of Unalaska have always been noted for the beauty and variety of their woven grass mats and various other ornamental work, particularly in the combinations of colors and unique designs.
This cunning of the hand and artistic ingenuity is not confined to the women; the men are also skillful carvers and engravers. Whenever they have been afforded a fair degree of instruction, and the opportunity to exercise their ability, they have proved themselves to be adepts especially in this last mentioned branch of skilled labor. ”

“ They are vaguely divided into two tribes or sub-tribes, known respectively as Unalaska and Atka. They are strong and agile, capable of enduring great fatigue and extremes of heat and scold, and are peaceful and cheerful. They subsist by hunting and fishing, using implements of wood, ivory, bone, and stone, with the two types of Eskimo water craft (kayak and umiak) ; their summer habitations are tents or huts like those of the mainland Eskimo, while in winter they occupy huts of stone, snow, or other material, or (especially on Fox Island) underground dwellings. ”

“ Southwesterly on straight line across Unalaska Island to the head of Portage Bay at mean high tide;
Westerly and northwesterly along shore of Portage Bay and Makushin Bay at mean high tide around Cathedral Point to the point of beginning.
The area described, including both public and non-public lands, aggregates 200,000 acres.
Tract No. 2
All of Hog Island, in Unalaska Bay, near Unalaska Island, as shown on U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart No. 9007. ”

“ The great volcano itself is easy of ascent, and the view from its crest is one of the memories of a lifetime. Borka, a tiny village at Samghanooda, is as noted for its Dutch-like cleanliness as Belkoffski is for its filth.
The other islands of the Aleutian chain drift on to westward, lonely, unknown—almost, if not entirely, uninhabited. Now and then a small trading settlement is found, which is visited only by Captain Applegate,—the last remaining white deep-sea otter hunter,—and once a year by a government cutter, or the Russian priest from Unalaska, or a shrewd and wandering trader. ”

“ The country is too wet and stormy to be attractive for raising livestock. However, when we landed on Amchitka Island on the south side of the chain, we found it drier with fine grassy uplands. We found also the usual shore cliffs and foxes.
We returned to Unalaska, where I was attracted by the empty hotel building and wharves at Dutch Harbor, deserted by the Alaska Commercial Company after the booming maritime trade of the Cape Nome gold days. I talked to Company officers about using the buildings as a scientific station. An old powder house would be suitable for a seismograph cellar ”

“ A few degrees to the north of the Aleutian chain, which extends in a long271 line from the promontory of Aliaska to Kamchatka, are situated the Pribilow Islands, St. George and St. Paul, which are celebrated in the history of the fur-trade, the former as the chief breeding-place of the sea-bear, the latter as that of the sea-lion. Chamisso was struck with their wintry aspect, for here no sheltered valleys and lowlands promote, as at Unalaska, a more vigorous vegetation. The rounded backs of the hills and the scattered rocks are covered with black and gray lichens ”

“ Grasses grow luxuriantly, being cut and cured to feed a few small Siberian cattle through the winter months, though it is hardly necessary to house them at all. They are kept on only one or two of the larger islands of the group. Domestic animals might do well here with a little care, but the attention of the natives is given almost exclusively to the products of the sea, whose very bounty demoralizes them. At Unalaska, 123of this same group, the natural grass grows to six feet in height, and with such body that one must part it by exerting considerable force in order to get through. ”

“ 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 most sanguine do not expect to see Alaska enter the sisterhood of States during this century, but they claim with reason that southeastern Alaska will develop so rapidly that it will become necessary to make it a separate Territory with full and complete form of government, and skeleton rule be confined to the dreary and inhospitable regions of the Yukon mainland. ”

“ The natives of Alaska are of four groups. First, the Eskimos, who dwell in the northern part of the territory in the area near the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea. Second, the Aleut, a people closely related to the Eskimos, who are to be found only in the Aleutian Islands and the mainland adjacent thereto. Third, the Thlinkits, [162] who are Indians and confined to the southeastern section of the country known as the Panhandle. Fourth, the Athabaskans, of the same stock as the American Indian, who occupy the interior and touch the coast only at Cook Inlet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the far-distant corners, hidden away from the eyes of man, one will come upon the scattered missions of the various churches to reach which one must journey thousands of miles! So, whenever a man from Nome speaks of Alaska he means that part of it which he himself knows,—the Seward Peninsula. The man from Cordova, [39] or Valdez, talks of the Prince William Sound country and calls it Alaska! The man from Juneau speaks of Alaska, but all that he means is the southeastern coast. This is why so much that is written of the country is contradictory. In fact, Alaska is not one but many countries! ”

“ 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. ”

“ An extensive spread of the largest fresh-water lake in Alaska just over the divide from Cook’s Inlet, early led the Russians to explore it, and to find a portage via its waters to the sea of Bering. But, though this barrier can be passed by an active man in a single day, yet it has divided, and continues to absolutely separate, two distinct races of savages—the Innuits from the Indians; for the Kenaitze are Indians, as we understand them, based upon our types of the great plains and foothills of the Rocky Mountains ”

“ The people of that country are eager to avail themselves of such an opportunity. They are being gradually crowded out of their native land by the increased flow of volcanic matter over their plains and valleys. Alaska, while it affords them in certain portions, say the valley of the Yukon, a climate similar to their own, offers them also many advantages over the place of their nativity. It is authoritatively stated that over fifty thousand souls will gladly avail themselves of this chance to emigrate to Alaska, provided our government will aid them in the matter of transportation. ”

“ To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware of the outfitting and transportation facilities which the large commerce of Fairbanks affords, aware of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to the foot-hills of the Alaskan range, aware also of the amenities of the interior slope with its dry, mild climate, its abundance of game and rich pasturage compared with the trackless, lifeless snows of the coast slopes, there seems a strange fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the mountain from the southern side of the range. ”

“ Alaska has had no voice. It is true each congressman has been so burdened with the wants of his own State that session after session has closed before the Alaska bills were reached. We have been accustomed to look on Alaska as a bleak and forbidding country, with a floating population of adventurers and lawless men, who go there with the intention to stay only long enough to reap a mineral harvest. If she had other great resources and such citizens as you, why were you not in Washington to exploit her?"
Lucky Banks shook his head. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I call your special attention to the Territory of Alaska. The country is developing rapidly, and it has an assured future. The mineral wealth is great and has as yet hardly been tapped. The fisheries, if wisely handled and kept under national control, will be a business as permanent as any other, and of the utmost importance to the people. The forests if properly guarded will form another great source of wealth. Portions of Alaska are fitted for farming and stock raising, although the methods must be adapted to the peculiar conditions of the country. Alaska is situated in the far north ”

“ This point at the junction of the two rivers was an important place for the inhabitants of interior Alaska ages before the white man reached the country. Tribes from all the middle Yukon, from the lower Yukon, from the Tanana, from the upper Kuskokwim met here for trading and for general festivity. It is impossible nowadays to determine when first the white man's merchandise began to penetrate into this country, but it was long before the white man came himself. Such prized and portable articles as axes and knives passed from hand to hand and from tribe to tribe over many hundreds of miles. ”