Schools in Alaska.—Natives Ambitious to learn.—Wild Flowers.—Native Grasses.—Boat Racing.—Avaricious Natives.—The Candle Fish.—Gold Mines Inland.—Chinese Gold-Diggers.—A Ledge of Garnets.—Belief in Omens.—More Schools required.—The Pestiferous Mosquito.—Mosquitoes and Bears.—Alaskan Fjords.—The Patterson Glacier.

The general plan of this school at Wrangel struck us as being the most promising means of improvement that could possibly be devised and carried forward among the aborigines of Alaska. We were informed that fourteen government day schools were in operation in the Territory, under the able supervision of that true philanthropist, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, United States General Agent for Education in the Territory. The natives almost universally welcome and gladly improve the advantages afforded them for instruction, especially as regards their children. Many individual cases with which the author became acquainted were of much more than ordinary interest; indeed, it was quite touching to observe the eagerness of young natives to gain intellectual culture. Surely such incentive is worthy of all encouragement. One could not but contrast the earnestness of these untutored aborigines to make the most of every opportunity for learning with the neglected opportunities of eight tenths of our pampered children of civilization. Here is the true field of missionary work, the work of education.

In the neighborhood of Fort Wrangel plenty of sweet wild flowers were observed in bloom, some especially of Alpine character were very interesting,—“wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers,”—while the tall blueberry bushes were crowded with wholesome and appetizing fruit, with here and there clusters of the luscious salmon-berry, yellow as gold, and so ripe as to melt in the mouth. At the earliest advent of spring the flowers burst forth in this latitude with surprising forwardness, a phenomenon also observable in northern Sweden and Norway. Such white clover heads are rarely seen anywhere else, large, well spread, and fragrant as pinks. Among the ferns was an abundance of the tiny-leaved maiden’s hair species, with delicate, chocolate stems. The soil also abounds in well-developed grasses, timothy growing here to four feet and over in height, and the nutritious, stocky blue grass even higher. Vegetation during the brief summer season runs riot, and makes the most of its opportunity. Although south of Sitka, Fort Wrangel is colder in winter and warmer in summer, on account of its distance from the influence of the thermal ocean current already described.

Sometimes a purse is made up among the visitors here and offered as a prize to the natives in boat-racing. A number of long canoes, each with an Indian crew of from ten to sixteen, take part in the aquatic struggle, which proves very amusing, not to say exciting. The native boats are flat-bottomed, and glide over the surface of the water with the least possible displacement. An Alaskan is seen at his best when acting as a boatman; he takes instinctively to the paddle from his earliest youth, and is never out of training for boat-service so long as he lives and is able to wield an oar. No university crew could successfully compete with these semi-civilized canoeists. Well-trained naval boat-crews have often been distanced by them.

The avariciousness of the natives is exhibited in their readiness to sell almost anything they possess for money, even to parting with their wives and daughters to the miners for base purposes; though, as we have seen, they do draw the line at totem-poles. It should be understood that these queerly carved posts are emblems mostly of the past; that is to say, although the natives carefully preserve those which now exist, few fresh ones are raised by them. Toy effigies representing these emblems are carved and offered for sale to curio-hunters at nearly all of the villages on the coast, and as a rule are readily disposed of.

There is very little if any use in Alaska for artificial light during the summer season, while nature’s grand luminary is so sleepless; but when these aborigines do require a lamp for a special purpose, they have the most inexpensive and ingenious substitute ever ready at hand. The water supplies them with any quantity of the ulikon or candle-fish, about the size of our largest New England smelts, and which are full of oil. They are small in body, but over ten inches in length. They are prepared by a drying process and are stored away for use, serving both for food and for light. When a match is applied to one end of the dried ulikon, it will burn until the whole is quite consumed, clear and bright to the last, giving a light equal to three or four candles. So rich are these fishes in oil that alcohol will not preserve them, a discovery which was made in preparing specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. When the Indians of the interior visit the coast, as many of them do annually, they are sure to lay in a stock of candle-fish to take back with them for use in the long Arctic night. This fish runs at certain seasons of the year in great schools from the sea, invading the fresh-water rivers near their mouths, when the natives rake them on shore by the bushel and preserve them as described. When boiled they produce an oil which hardens like butter, and which the Alaskans eat as we do that article, with this important difference, that they prefer their oil-butter to be quite rancid before they consider it at its best, while civilized taste requires exactly the opposite condition, namely, perfect freshness. Putrid animal matter would certainly poison a white man, but the Alaskan Indians seem to thrive upon it.

Some inland districts, which are most easily reached from this point, are rich in gold-bearing quartz and placer mines, but especially in the latter. We were credibly informed that over three million dollars’ worth of gold was shipped from here in a period of five years, though no really organized and persistent effort at mining had been made, or rather we should say no modern facilities had been employed in bringing about this result. The machinery for reducing gold-bearing quartz has not yet been carried far inland because of the great difficulty of transportation. Gold quartz ledges are numerous and quite undeveloped in the neighborhood of Wrangel. The well-known Cassiar mines are situated just over the Alaska boundary on the east side in British Columbia, but the gold discoveries in Alaska proper are proving so much more profitable that those of the Cassiar district have ceased to attract the miners. There is a curious fact connected with these deposits of the precious metal in the region approached by the way of Wrangel. In more than one instance, as reported by Captain White of the United States Revenue Service, placer gold, which is usually sought for in the dry beds of river courses and in lowlands, is here found on the tops of mountains a thousand feet high, where the largest nuggets of the precious metal yet found in the Northwest have been obtained. Many of the lumps of pure gold picked up in this region have weighed thirty ounces and over. The idea of finding placer deposits on the tops of mountains is a novelty in gold prospecting.

The Stickeen River, which is the largest in the southern part of the Territory, has its mouth in the harbor of Fort Wrangel, discoloring the waters for a long distance with its chalk-like, frothy flow, a characteristic of all Alaska streams into which the waters of the snowy mountains and glaciers empty. The river is navigable for light-draft stern-wheel steamers to Glenora, a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. After reaching this place, the way to the Cassiar mines is overland for an equal distance by a difficult mountain trail, it being necessary to transport all provisions and material on the backs of natives, who have learned to demand good pay for this laborious service. The interior upon this route is broken into a succession of sharply-defined mountains, separated by narrow and deep valleys, similar to the islands off the mainland. This is so decided a feature as to lead Mr. George Davidson of the United States Coast Survey to remark: “The topography of the Alexander Archipelago is a type of the interior. A submergence of the mountain region of the mainland would give a similar succession of islands, separated by deep narrow fjords.” The sandy bed and banks of the Stickeen are heavily charged with particles of gold, ten dollars per day each being frequently realized by gangs of men who manipulate the sand only in the most primitive fashion. Numbers of Chinamen availed themselves of this opportunity until they were expelled by both the whites and the natives. The poor “Heathen Chinee” is unwelcome everywhere outside of his own Celestial Empire, and yet close observation shows, as we have already said, that these Asiatics have more good qualities than the average foreigners who seek a home on our shores.

The scenery of the Stickeen River is pronounced by Professor Muir to be superb and grand beyond description. Three hundred glaciers are known to drain into its swift running waters, over one hundred of which are to be seen between Fort Wrangel and Glenora. Near the mouth of the river is the curious ledge of garnet crystals, which furnishes stones of considerable beauty and brilliancy, though not sufficiently clear to be used as gems. Choice pieces are secured by visitors as cabinet specimens, however, and can be had, if desired, by the bushel, at a trifling cost. They occur in a matrix of slate-like formation, some so large as to weigh two or three ounces, and diminishing from that size they are found as small as a pin-head. It requires three days of hard steaming against the current to ascend the river as far as Glenora from the mouth, whereas the same distance returning, down stream, has frequently been made in eight or ten hours. So necessarily rapid is the descent of the Stickeen as to make the downward trip quite hazardous, except in charge of a careful pilot. In the neighborhood of Fort Wrangel there are some very active boiling springs, which the natives utilize, as do the New Zealanders at Ohinemutu, by cooking their food in them.

In the crater of Goreloi, on Burned Island, is a vast boiling spring, or rather a boiling lake, which has never been intelligently described, and which is represented by those who have seen it to be unique. This strange body of water is eighteen miles in circumference. The natives are well supplied with legends relating to these remarkable natural phenomena, including the extinct and active volcanoes. Genii and dreaded spirits are supposed by them to dwell in the extinct volcanoes, and to make their homes in the mountain caves. They believe that good spirits will not harm them, and therefore do not address themselves to such, but the evil ones must by some active means be propitiated, and to them their sole attention is given, or, in other words, their religious ceremonies when analyzed are simply devil worship. All of the tribes, if we except the Aleuts, are held in abject fear by their conjurers or medicine-men, who seemed to us to be the most arrant knaves conceivable, not possessing one genuine quality to sustain their assumptions except that of bold effrontery. This seems particularly strange, as the aborigines of the Northwest are more than ordinarily intelligent, compared with other half-civilized races, both in this and other lands.

They are firm believers in signs and omens. When Rev. Mr. Willard and wife first came to the Chilcat country the winter was one of deep snows and stormy weather. The natives said that the weather-gods were angry at the new ways of the missionaries. A child had been buried instead of burned on the funeral pyre in accordance with their customs. The mother of the child became alarmed and felt that her life was in jeopardy for permitting her child to be buried, so she kindled a fire over the grave in order to appease the gods and bring fair weather. At school the children had played new games and mocked wild geese. So the girls of the Sitka Training School brought on a very cold spell of weather by playing a game called “cat’s-back,” and which caused a commotion at the native village. A white man out with some natives picked up some large clam-shells on the beach to bring home with him; the natives remonstrated with him, saying that “a big storm may overtake us, our canoe might capsize, and all be drowned the next time we go on the water.”

In tempestuous weather the native propitiates the spirit of the storm by leaving a portion of tobacco in the rock-caves alongshore, but in calm weather he smokes the weed himself. It was noticed, however, that the aboriginal Alaskans were little given to the use of tobacco, less, indeed, than any semi-civilized race whom the writer has ever visited.

Governor Swineford, in his annual report to the department at Washington, dated 1886, says: “I have no reason to change or modify the estimate I had formed on very short acquaintance of the character of the native Alaskans. They are a very superior race intellectually as compared with the people generally known as North American Indians, and are as a rule industrious and provident, being wholly self-sustaining. They are shrewd and natural-born traders. Some are good carpenters, others are skillful workers in wood and metals. Not a few among them speak the English language, and some of the young men and women have learned to read and write, and nearly all are anxious for the education of their children.”

Our government should act upon this hint and freely establish the means of education among the Alaskans. True, it is systematically engaged in promoting the cause in various ways, though not very energetically, Congress having voted forty-five thousand dollars to be expended for the purpose during the year 1889. “School-houses are the republican line of fortifications,” said Horace Mann. “Among those best known,” says Dr. Sheldon Jackson, speaking of the native tribes, “the highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living, and be American citizens. They ask no special favors from the American government, no annuities or help, but simply to be treated as other citizens, protected by the laws and courts, and in common with all others furnished with schools for their children.” It was made the duty of the Secretary of the Interior, by the act providing a civil government for Alaska, to make needful and proper provision for the education of all children of school age without reference to race or color, and all true friends of progress and humanity will urge the matter until a common school is established in every native tribe and settlement having a sufficient number of children.

We were told that there is good hunting inland a short distance from Fort Wrangel; winter, however, is the only season when this can be successfully pursued near to the coast in the wild districts. The marshy “tundra” is then frozen and covered with snow, making it possible to cross. This is the period of the year also when the natives of the interior prosecute their most successful trapping and hunting, coming down to the coast by the river in the summer to sell their pelts and to purchase stores of the white traders. The Russians have long since taught the aborigines to depend much upon tea, but they care very little for coffee. Rifles are greatly prized by them, and though they are contraband nearly every Indian manages to possess one and knows how to use it most effectually. They are very economical of ammunition, and never throw away a shot by carelessness.

The pestiferous and ubiquitous mosquito is not absent from these high latitudes. They are very troublesome during the short summer season in northern Alaska as well as among the islands of the Alexander Archipelago. Strange that so frail an insect should have reached as far north as man has penetrated. Even while climbing the frosty glaciers the excursionist will find both hands required to prevent their biting his face from forehead to chin. If they are a persistent pest in equatorial latitudes, they are ten times more venomous and voracious in these regions during certain seasons. The author has experienced this fact also in Norway at even a much higher latitude than he visited in the western hemisphere. The bites of these mosquitoes fortunately, like all flesh wounds in this northern region, heal quickly, venomous as they are, owing to the liberally ozonized condition of the atmosphere as well as the absence of disease germs and organic dust.

It is said that when the otter hunters or others among the aborigines get wounded in any way, their treatment is simple and efficacious, and however severe the wound may be, it is nearly always quickly healed. The victim of the accident puts himself uncomplainingly on starvation diet, living upon an astonishingly small amount of food for a couple of weeks, and the cure follows rapidly.

Frederick Schwatka, in his excellent book entitled “Along Alaska’s Great River,” tells how the mosquitoes conquer and absolutely destroy the bears, and it seems that the native dogs are sometimes overcome by them in some exposed districts of the Yukon valley. The great brown bear, having exhausted the roots and berries on one mountain side, cross the valley to another range, or rather makes the attempt to do so, but is not always successful. Covered by a heavy coat of hair on his body, his eyes, nose, and ears are the only vulnerable points of attack for the mosquitoes, and hereon they congregate, surrounding the bear’s head in clouds. As he reaches a swampy spot they increase in vigor and numbers, until the animal’s forepaws become so occupied in striving to keep them off that he cannot walk. Then Bruin becomes enraged, and, bear-like, rises on his hind legs to fight. It is a mere question of time after this stage is reached until the bear’s eyes become so swollen from the innumerable bites that he cannot see, and in a blind condition he wanders helplessly about until he gets mired and starves to death. The cinnamon and black bears are most common, the grizzly being less frequently met with. The great white polar bears are not found south of Behring Strait, though they are numerous on the borders of the Arctic Ocean.

At every landing made by the steamer on our meandering course among the islands Indians come to the wharves to offer their curios or home-made articles, only valuable as souvenirs of the visit. As they mass themselves here and there, either on the shore or the ship’s deck, they form picturesque groups, made up of bucks, squaws, and papooses, presenting charming bits of color, while they amuse the stranger by their peculiar physiognomy and manners. During the excursion season they must reap quite a harvest by the sale of baskets and various domestic trinkets.

After leaving Fort Wrangel we are soon in the wild, picturesque, and sinuous narrows which bear the same name. The water is shallow; here and there are many dangerous rocks in the channels. Inlets or fjords are often passed, so quiet and inviting in their appearance as to tempt the traveler to diverge from the usual route. Some of these marine nooks are deep enough to float the largest ship, yet far down through the clear water one can see gardens of zoÖphytes invaded by myriads of curiously shaped fish, large and small. The bottom of these waters, like the land and sea of Alaska, teems with animal life. A few hours’ dredging would supply the most enthusiastic naturalist with ample material for a year’s study. In the many stops of the steamer to take or deliver freight, brief boat excursions can be enjoyed. On one of these occasions we saw the first live octopus, or devil-fish, with two of its fatal arms encircling a small fish, which, after squeezing out its life, the octopus would devour. The one which was seen on this occasion was not very large, the rounded body being, perhaps, eighteen or twenty inches across, but its vicious looking tentacles, six in number, two of which securely clasped its victim, were each three times that length. The large eyes seemed out of proportion to the animal’s size, and were placed on one side like those of the flounder.

The Patterson glacier is the first of the many which come into view on this part of the voyage, but they multiply rapidly as we steam northward. It is vast in proportions, though partly hidden behind the moraine which it has raised. Three or four miles back from its front rises a wall of solid ice nearly a thousand feet in height. The whole was rendered marvelously beautiful, lighted up as we saw it by bright noonday sunshine, which brought out its frosty and opaline colors of white, scarlet, and blue, in brilliant array. Little has been written about the Patterson glacier, but it is one of the most remarkable in size and other characteristics in all Alaska. Vessels from San Francisco have taken whole cargoes of ice from these Alaskan glaciers and transported the same for use in California. There seems to be no reason why the gathering of such a supply should not be both possible and profitable, though ice can now be so easily manufactured by artificial means.

The fact that these glaciers are slowly decreasing in size leads to the conclusion that the extreme Arctic temperature in the north is slowly growing to be less intense. Intelligent captains of whaleships have made careful observations to a like effect. It was once tropical in the Yukon valley,—of that there is evidence enough; who can say that it may not again be so a few thousand years hence?