Contrast between American and Russian Sitka.—A Practical Missionary.—The Sitka Industrial School.—Gold Mines on the Island.—Environs of the Town.—Future Prosperity of the Country.—Hot Springs.—Native Religious Ideas.—A Natural Taste for Music.—A Native Brass Band.—Final View of the Capital.
The Sitka of to-day contains about two thousand inhabitants, but is a very different place from that which the Russians made of it. The subjects of the Tzar carried on shipbuilding, manufactured wooden and iron ware, erected an iron furnace and smelted native ore, made steel knives and agricultural tools, axes, hatches, and carpenters’ tools generally. They established a bell foundry here at which many bells and chimes were cast, and shipped the products all along the Pacific coast, especially to Mexico. The Greek Church was kept up to the highest standard as regarded the national forms, and employed nearly a score of priests, which, together with some forty or fifty civil officers attached to the governor’s household staff, made a considerable community of white citizens, which was a constant scene of business activity. The capital has, in some respects at least, been greatly improved since it came into our possession, but it bears unmistakable evidences of antiquity. It has been made neat and clean, which was certainly not a characteristic under its former management, the streets have been regularly laid out, and good sidewalks have taken the place of muddy pathways, while some well-constructed roads leading through the neighborhood have been perfected. Though there is not seemingly so much of local business going on as there used to be, still it is a far more wholesome and pleasant place to live in than it was in the days of Muscovite possession. In Mrs. E. S. Willard’s published letters from Alaska we learn how an officer of our navy, namely, Captain Henry Glass of the United States steamer Jamestown, in 1881, proved to be the right sort of missionary to send on special duty to Sitka.
“His first move,” says this lady, “was to abolish hoochinoo. He made it a crime to sell, buy, or drink it, or any intoxicating drinks. He prevailed upon the traders to sell no molasses to the Indians in quantities, so that they could not make this drink. He issued orders in regard to clearing up the native ranches, which were filthy in the extreme, and had been the scene of nightly horrors of almost every description. He appointed a police force from the Indians themselves, dressed them in navy cloth with ‘Jamestown’ in gilt letters on their caps, and a silver star on their breasts. He made education compulsory. The houses were all numbered and the children of each house, each child being given a little round tin plate on which was marked his number and the number of his house. These plates were worn on a string about the neck. As the children arrived in school they were registered. Whoever failed to send their children were fined one blanket. As soon as they discovered that the captain was in earnest they submitted, and I believe no blanket was forfeited after the first week. The ranches have been cleaned, whitewashed, and drained, and all is peaceful and quiet where a few months ago it was a place of strife.”
The Sitka Industrial School—or as it is better known here, the Jackson Institution—is the most interesting feature of the town, because one cannot fail to realize how much good it is accomplishing in the way of practical civilization and real education among the natives. At this writing there are nearly one hundred boys, and about sixty girls and young women, who are under the parental care of the Institution. The teaching force consists of a dozen earnest workers, mostly ladies from the Eastern States. Besides the ordinary English branches taught in the school, the girls are trained to cook, wash, iron, sew, knit, and to make their own clothes. The boys are taught carpentry, house-building, cabinet-making, blacksmithing, boat-building, shoemaking, and other industries. The work of the school is so arranged that each boy and girl attends school half a day, and works half a day. The results thus brought about are admirable. The “Mission,” as the cluster of buildings forming the school, the hospital, the residence for teachers, cottages, and workshops is called, is situated beside the road leading to Indian River, overlooking the bay, the islands, and the sea, with grand mountain views on three sides. Fifteen different tribes are represented in this Sitka Industrial School. English-speaking young natives who have been trained here readily obtain good wages at the mines, in the fish-canneries, and wherever they apply for employment among the white residents of the Territory, while their influence with their tribes is very great. That the Alaskans are teachable and capable of attaining a higher and better plane of life has been abundantly proven by the successful mission of this school during the few years of its existence.
There is a small monthly newspaper published at Sitka in the interest of the Training School called “The North Star.” It is inexpensively produced, and is calculated to disseminate information in behalf of the excellent mission, as well as to add interest to its local affairs. The type-setting and all the work on this little paper is done by native boys. In his last published report Dr. Sheldon Jackson says in relation to the Alaskan natives: “Christianize them, give them a fair school education and the means of earning a living, and they are safe; but without this the race is doomed. We believe in the gospel of habitual industry for the adults, and of industrial training for the children. By these means they can be reclaimed from improvident habits, and transformed into ambitious and self-helpful citizens.”
The Industrial Training School at Sitka was established as a day school by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions in 1880, with Miss Olinda A. Austin as teacher. The following fall circumstances led to the opening of a boarding department. Since then the institution has grown until there are connected with it two large buildings (one for boys and the other for girls), an industrial building sheltering the carpenter and boot and shoe shops, the printing-office and boat house, a small blacksmith shop, a steam laundry, a bakery, a hospital, and six small model cottages. Every building has been constructed by the pupils themselves under the direction of the one carpenter, who acted as their instructor. Even the domestic furniture, such as beds, chairs, bureaus, and the like, is the handiwork of these native boys. We can testify from personal observation that all is wonderfully well done, and of excellent patterns.
There is a valuable gold mine situated six or eight miles southeast of Sitka, eight hundred feet above the sea level and about a mile from deep water, on Silver Bay, where the largest ships may lie beside the shore, the wharfage having been prepared by Nature’s own hand. The quartz rock is here represented to be of excellent quality, showing thirty dollars to the average ton, and there is never-failing water near at hand sufficient for running a hundred stamp-mill. Gold has been mined at Silver Bay in a primitive way for several years. Numerous other mines have been located and opened on Baranoff Island which give great promise, but this just mentioned has accomplished thus far the best results. We took notes of eleven mines upon which much work had been done, shafts sunken, and tunnels run. “The island is besprinkled with these gold-quartz veins,” said an intelligent citizen to us. “Prospectors and miners have been attracted elsewhere in the Territory by still more promising gold deposits. This, together with the want of capital, is the reason the mines have not been opened and worked on an extensive scale. This will follow, however, in due time, for miners can work here all the year round, with comfort as regards the weather, and at the minimum cost of living.”
The arrival of an excursion steamer at Sitka is made the occasion of a regular holiday, which is very natural with a people who live in so isolated a place. As the steamer enters the several harbors of the inland passage northward, her presence is announced by a report from the cannon on the forecastle, which awakens a score of sonorous echoes from the rocky cliffs and nearest mountains, also serving to arouse the sleepy natives and put the dealers in curios on the qui vive. The few cafÉs do a thriving business; the nights, never very dark in summer, are turned into day, and hours of revelry prevail. The aboriginal women drive a lively business with their home-made curios, and indiscreet native girls promenade freely with strangers. Peccadilloes are overlooked; no one seems to be held strictly to account. The officials are unusually lenient on such occasions, just as they are in Boston or New York on the Fourth of July.
The immediate environs of Sitka present many rural beauties, including river, forest, and wild flowers, with here and there a rapid, musical cascade. The same species of highly-developed white clover as was seen at Fort Wrangel is a charming feature here, fragrant and lovely,—“Beautiful objects of the wild bees’ love.” Buttercups and dandelions are twice the size of those which we have in New England. Ferns are in great variety, and the mosses are exquisite in their velvety texture, while tenderly shrouding the fallen and decaying trees they present an endless variety of shades in green. There are over three hundred varieties of wild flowers found on Baranoff Island, and wild berries abound here as among all the islands and on the mainland. The wild raspberry, salmon-berry, and thimbleberry are especially luxuriant and fine in size and flavor. The woods are full of song-birds and of others more gaudy of feather. These are only summer visitors, to be sure, among which the rainbow-tinted humming-bird made his presence obvious. A pleasant walk is finely laid out along the banks of the sparkling Indian River, a swift mountain stream, hedged with thrifty and graceful alders, by which means the citizens have created for themselves a charming and favorite promenade. Along the left bank of this beautiful watercourse are woodland scenes of exquisite rural beauty.
It would be foolish to suggest the idea that Alaska promises to become eventually a great agricultural country; but it is equally incorrect to say, as did a certain popular writer not long since, that “there is not an acre of farming land in the Territory.” There are considerable areas of good arable land now under profitable cultivation in the Sitka district, and large farms, rich in virgin soil, could be had for a mere song, as the saying goes, in desirable localities, by clearing away the timber and draining the land. Some twenty-five milk cows are kept at Sitka; milk is sold at ten cents per quart. Fresh venison is cheap and abundant, and fish of various kinds cost nearly nothing. In the immediate vicinity there are three thousand acres of arable land, much of which is well grassed and covered with white clover. On the foot-hills there is plenty of grass for the sustenance of sheep and goats. Experienced residents told us that wool-growing might be profitably pursued as a business here, and that there was not a month in the year when the animals would absolutely require to be housed. Hay is easily made, and is in abundance at cheap rates. “I have never seen finer potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and garden produce generally, than those grown here,” says Governor Swineford in his annual report to the Department at Washington.
There is a great abundance of natural and nutritious grasses in most parts of the country, but especially in the southern islands and the Kodiak group. The great prosperity of Alaska, however, to be looked for in the near future, lies in the energetic development of her coal trade, her fisheries, and her extraordinary mineral wealth. The immense supply of timber, some of which is unsurpassed in its merchantable value, will come into use one or two generations later. The fur-trade, already of gigantic proportions, cannot be judiciously developed beyond its present volume, otherwise the source of supply will gradually become exhausted. It might be quadrupled for a few years, but this would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg. If protected, as our government is striving to do for it to-day, it will continue indefinitely to meet the market demand without glutting or overstocking it. In this connection, and after some inquiry, we cannot refrain from expressing the fear that the legal limit as regards the slaughter of the seals is greatly exceeded. Over three million dollars’ worth of canned salmon were exported from Alaska last year. “This Territory can supply the world with salmon, herring, and halibut of the best quality,” says Dr. Sheldon Jackson.
Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, there are a number of hot springs, strongly impregnated with iron and sulphur, the sanitary nature of which has been known to the Indians for centuries, and hither they have been in the habit of resorting for the cure of certain physical ills, especially rheumatism, to which they are so liable. Vegetation in the neighborhood of these springs is tropical. The temperature of the water is said to be 155° Fah. At the time of the Russian possession the whites built bath-houses on the spot, and much was made of this sanitarium. But all is now neglected, except that the natives still occasionally resort to the place to enjoy the tonic and recuperating effect of the waters. Anything which will promote cleanliness among the Alaskan tribes must be unquestionably of benefit to them. There are plenty of hot mineral springs all over the various island groups of the Territory, and especially that portion which makes out from the Alaska Peninsula westward towards Asia. The most fatal diseases prevailing among the aborigines after consumption are scrofulous affections; the latter is thought to be aggravated, if not induced, by their almost exclusive fish diet, supplemented by their gross uncleanliness. The Aleuts of the south, the Eskimos of the north, and the natives generally of the coast and the interior sleep and live in such dark, dirty, unventilated quarters, reeking with vile odors, that they cannot fail to poison their blood and thus induce a myriad of ills. As we have said, none of these natives seem to have any intelligent idea of medicine, and they do not possess any herbs, so far as we could learn, which are used for medicinal purposes. If a native is furnished with a prescription after the manner of the whites, he requires at least twice the amount of medicine which it is customary to give to a white man, otherwise the dose will have no apparent effect upon his system. This is a never varying experience which medical men have found repeated among all savage races.
As far as one is able to comprehend the religious convictions of the native Sitkans, other than the few who have gone through the form of professing Christianity, they seem to entertain a sort of animal worship, a reverence for special birds and beasts. Like the Japanese they hold certain animals sacred and will not injure them. It is thus that they have some mystical idea about the bear, which prevents them from willingly hunting that animal. Ravens are nearly as numerous in Sitka as they are in Ceylon, and no one will injure then. They believe that the spirits of the departed occupy the bodies of ravens, hawks, and the like. One is reminded that in the temples of Canton the Chinese keep sacred hogs; the Parsees of Bombay worship fire; the Japanese bow before snakes and foxes, as divine symbols; the pious Hindoo deifies cows and monkeys; so there is abundant precedent to countenance these simple natives of Alaska in their crude worship and superstitions.
Their aboriginal belief is called Shamanism, or the propitiating of evil spirits by acceptable offerings. It is significant that the same faith is participated in by the Siberians, on the other side of Behring Strait. This is no new or original form of religion; it was the faith of the Tartar race before they became disciples of Buddhism.
These aborigines seem to anticipate a state of future happiness, but not one of rewards and punishments. All blessedness in this anticipated eternity is for man; woman, it seems, has no real inheritance in this world or the next! Slavery, vice, and misery would thus appear to be her portion in life, and she expects nothing beyond. This picture is not overdrawn. These natives are now as much a part of our population as are the people who live in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, and our manifest duty is to educate them. The light of reason will soon follow, and like the rising sun will burn away this mist of ignorance and superstition. Schools are the most potent missionaries that can be established among any savage race; reasonable religious convictions will follow as a natural result.
“When the missionary,” says W. H. Dall, “will leave the trading-post, strike out into the wilderness, live in the wilderness, live with the Indians, teach them cleanliness first, morality next, and by slow and simple teaching raise their minds above the hunt and the camp,—then, and not until then, they will be able to comprehend the simplest principles of right and wrong.” Though these Indians at the populous centres often pretend to yield to the religious teachings of the professional missionaries, still, like the Chinese religious converts, they are pretty sure to return to their idols and superstitions. When the Roman Catholic Bishop from San Francisco came among the natives of Alaska, and offered to baptize their children, the Indians told him that he might baptize them if he would pay them for it!
H. H. Bancroft, in his work upon the native races of the North Pacific, says: “Thick, black clouds, portentous of evil, hang threateningly over the savage during his entire life. Genii murmur in the flowing river, in the rustling branches of the trees are heard the breathings of the gods, goblins dance in the vapory twilight, and demons howl in the darkness. All these things are hostile to man, and must be propitiated by gifts, prayers, and sacrifices; while the religious worship of some of the tribes includes practices frightful in their atrocity.”
The Sitkans, like many other tribes, used to burn their dead before the missionaries partially dissuaded them from doing so, but some still adopt cremation as a final and most desirable resort. To one who has seen its universal application in India, there are many strong reasons in its favor. The Alaskan native idea of a hell in another world constituted of ice, it is said, causes them to reason that those buried in the earth may be cold forever after, while those whose bodies are burned will be forever warm and comfortable in the next sphere. After the funeral these aborigines, as we have shown, engage in a genuine “wake,” recklessly feasting and drinking to emphasize the importance of the occasion, and to demonstrate their unbounded grief.
The native women occasionally show some taste for music and ability in playing upon the accordion, almost the only instrument found in their possession. A young Indian girl was seen quite alone among the wild flowers just outside the town (Sitka) who had been taught a few pleasing airs, and who surprised us with a well-played strain from a familiar opera. She was a pretty, gypsy-like child of nature, evidently having white blood in her veins, and was not over sixteen years of age. The coarse, scanty clothing could not disguise her handsome form, bright, intelligent face, or hide the depth and splendor of her jet-black luminous eyes. When she discovered us the accordion was quickly thrust behind her, while her downcast eyes expressed mortification at being found alone by the white strangers, playing to the flowers beside the Indian River. She understood English and spoke it fairly well, but hesitated to receive the bright bit of silver offered to her. When we told her that in the East it was the custom to pay those who played to us upon musical instruments out-of-doors, and described the itinerant hand-organist with his monkey, and the brass bands which perambulate city streets, she laughed heartily, thrust the shining silver in her bosom, and held out her hand to greet us cordially. As we turned our steps back towards the town the innocent, winning face of the young girl haunted us with thoughts of hidden possibilities never to be fulfilled.
On the evening before we left Sitka a brass band consisting of twenty-one performers marched down to the wharf from the mission school, in good military order, headed by their teacher as band-master, and serenaded the passengers. The band was composed entirely of native boys, the oldest not over eighteen, not one of whom had ever seen a brass musical instrument two years ago. They performed eight or ten elaborate pieces of composition, not passably well, but admirably, in perfect time, and with real feeling for the music they expressed. It was a surprise to every one on board the Corona to hear such a performance by natives in this isolated spot in the far north. A liberal purse was handed to the teacher to be divided among them.
“Do you know what they will do with this money?” he asked, gratefully.
“Purchase some trifle, each one after his own fancy,” we replied.
“No, sir,” said the teacher, “they will tell me, every one of them, to purchase some new music with the money, which they can practice and learn to play together.”
Their means are of course quite circumscribed, and they have had but little variety afforded them, either in school-books or music. They look upon their musical tuition as a reward for good behavior, and the severest punishment to them is to be deprived of any favorite branch of instruction.
At our final view of Sitka, the quaint capital of Alaska was lying quiet and peacefully at the feet of Vestova, while enshrouded in a voluptuous sheen of afternoon sunlight. A rose-glow rested on everything, beautifying the simplest objects. Lofty, thickly-wooded hills formed the background, while the Greek church and the old castle dominated all the humbler buildings. The waters of the island-dotted bay were as still as an inland lake, and flooded with golden reflections. Now and again an eagle sailed gracefully from one wooded height to another, and the hoarse croak of many ravens, held sacred by the Indians, greeted the ear. A few United States soldiers lounged about their barracks, and a few cannon were arranged upon the broad common. These were light fieldpieces, more for show than for use. Groups of natives clad in bright-colored blankets were seen here and there before their simple dwellings which line the beach. A broad, intensely green plateau forms the centre of the settlement, about which the better houses of the whites are situated. A little to the left, nearer to the hills, is the curiously arranged burial-ground of the aborigines, with a few totem-poles, and many boxes reared above ground in which are deposited the remains of former chiefs. On a slight rise of ground stands the ancient blockhouse, built of logs, from which the Russians once made a desperate fight with the natives. Behind us Mount Edgecombe loomed far up among the clouds, where its apex was half hidden, and in the same direction, not far away, was the open Pacific. It was nearly ten o’clock P. M. before the sun set behind the distant western hills in a blaze of scarlet, yellow, and purple, reflected by soft, butterfly clouds and mountain tops in the east. After that came the luminous moonlight, making a regal glory of the darkness, and flashing in opal gleams from the sea.
While watching the rippling lustre of the water, tremulous with starlight and the languid breath of the night air, one was fain to ask if it was all quite real, if this was not a fancy picture from the land of dreams. Could these be the far-away shores of Alaska? The pathos and tenderness of the scene, the glow, and fire, and throbbing loveliness, were indescribable. Even the few fleecy clouds which sailed between us and the planets seemed as if they came to waft our hymn of praise to Heaven. Is not such surpassing beauty of nature an image of the Infinite One?
