Alaska Part 47

As for her own courtesy and restraint, I have never seen them surpa.s.sed by any one. Shock upon shock must have been hers as we pa.s.sed through that village of her childhood and affection. She went into those noisome hovels without the faintest hesitation; she breathed their atmosphere without complaint; she embraced the women without shrinking.

She knew perfectly why we did not buy the baskets; but she received our excuses with every appearance of believing them to be sincere, and she offered us others with utmost dignity and with the manner of serving us, strangers, in a strange land.

If her delicacy was outraged by the scenes she witnessed, there was not the faintest trace of it visible in her manner. She made no excuses for the people, nor for their manner of living, nor for the village.

Belkoffski had been her childhood's home, her father's field; its people had befriended her and had given her love and tenderness when she was in need; therefore, both were sacred and beyond criticism.

When we returned to the ship, she could not have failed to hear the jests and frank opinions of Belkoffski which were freely expressed among the pa.s.sengers; but her grave, dark face gave no sign that she disapproved, or even that she heard.

A government cutter should be sent to Belkoffski with orders to clean it up, and to burn such portions as are past cleansing. So far as the Russian priest and the people in his charge are concerned, they would be benefited by less religion and more cleanliness.

Dr. Hutton, an army surgeon stationed at Fort Seward on Lynn Ca.n.a.l, and Judge Gunnison, of Juneau, have recently made an appeal to President Roosevelt for relief for diseased and suffering Indians of Alaska.

Tuberculosis and trachoma prevail among the many tribes and are increasing at an alarming rate, owing to the utter lack of sanitation in the villages. 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.

The United States Grand Jury recently recommended that medical men be sent by the government to attend the disease-stricken creatures, and that a system of inspection and education along sanitary lines--with special stress laid upon domestic sanitation--should be established.

This system should be extended to the last island of the Aleutian Chain, and in the interior down the Yukon to Nome. The fur trade and the canneries depend largely upon the labor of Indians. The former industry could scarcely be made successful without them. The Indians are rapidly becoming a "vanishing race" in the North, as elsewhere. For the vices that are to-day responsible for their unfortunate condition they are indebted to the white men who have kept them supplied with cheap whiskey ever since the advent of the first American traders who taught them, soon after the purchase of Alaska by the United States, to make "hootchenoo" of mola.s.ses, flour, dried apples, or rice, and hops. This highly intoxicating and degrading liquor was known also as mola.s.ses-rum. During the latter part of the seventies, six thousand five hundred and twenty-four gallons of mola.s.ses were delivered at Sitka and Wrangell.

The loss of their help, however, is not so serious--being merely a commercial loss--as the danger to civilized people by coming in contact with these dreaded diseases. An Indian in Alaska whose eyes are not diseased is an exception, while the ravages of consumption are very frequently visible to the most careless observer. Both diseases are aggravated by such conditions as those existing at Belkoffski. A physician should be stationed there for a few years at least, to teach these poor, kind-hearted people what the Russian priest has not taught them--the science of sanitation.

Bishop Rowe reports that if there were no missionaries to protect the Eskimo and Indians from unscrupulous white whiskey-traders, they would survive but a short time. When they can obtain cheap liquors they go on prolonged and licentious debauches, and are unable to provide for their actual physical needs for the long, hard winter. Their condition then becomes pitiable, and many die of hunger and privation. Prosecutions are made entirely by missionaries. One Episcopal missionary post is conducted by two young women, one of whom was formerly a society woman of Los Angeles. The post is more than a thousand miles from Fairbanks, the nearest city, and one hundred and twenty-five miles from the nearest white settler. It is owing to the reports and the prosecutions of missionaries in all parts of Alaska that the outrages formerly practised upon Eskimo women by licentious white traders are on the decrease.

Federal Commissioner of Education Brown advocates a compulsory school law for Alaska. He favors instruction in modern methods of fishing and of curing fish; in the care of all parts of walrus that are merchantable; in the handling of wooden boats, the tanning and preparing of skins, in coal mining and the elements of agriculture.

In 1907 fifty-two native schools were maintained in Alaska, with two thousand five hundred children enrolled. Ten new school buildings have recently been constructed.

The reindeer service has been one of Alaska's grave scandals, but it has greatly improved during the past year.

The Eskimo, or Innuit, inhabit a broad belt of the coast line bordering on Behring Sea and the Arctic Ocean, as well as along the coast "to Westward" from Yakutat; also the lower part of the Yukon.

Lieutenant Emmons, who is one of the highest authorities on the natives of Alaska and their customs, has frequently reported the deplorable condition of the Eskimo, and the prevalence of tuberculosis and other dread diseases among them.

In 1900 an epidemic of measles and _la grippe_ devastated the Northwestern Coast. Out of a total population of three thousand natives about the mouth of the Kuskokwim, fully half died, without medical attendance or nursing, within a few months.

The hospitality and generous kindness of the Eskimo to those in need is proverbial. Ever since their subjection by the early Russians--to whom, also, they would doubtless have shown kindness had they not been afraid of them--no shipwrecked mariner has sought their huts in vain. Often the entire crew of an abandoned vessel has been succored, clothed, and kept from starvation during a whole winter--the season when provisions are scarce and the Eskimo themselves scarcely know how to find the means of existence.

Along the islands, the rivers, and lakes, nature has provided them with food and clothing, if they were but educated to make the most of these blessings.

But the vast country bordering the coast between the Kuskokwim and the Yukon, and extending inland a hundred and fifty miles, is low and swampy. This is the dreariest portion of Alaska. Tundra, swamps, and sluggish rivers abound. There is no game, and the natives live on fish and seal. The winters are severe, the climate is cold and excessively moist. Food has often failed, and the old or helpless are called upon to go alone out upon the storm-swept tundra and yield their hard lives--bitter and cheerless at the best--that the young and strong may live. As late as 1901 Lieutenant Emmons reports that this system of unselfish and heart-breaking suicide was practised; and it is probably still in vogue in isolated places when occasion demands.

This district is so poor and unprofitable that the prospector and the trader have so far pa.s.sed it by; yet, by some means, the white man's worst diseases have been carried in to them.

These people are in dire need of schools, hospitals, medical treatment, and often simple food and clothing.

Farther north, on Seward Peninsula and along the lower Yukon, the natives who have mingled with the miners and traders could easily be taught to be not only self-supporting but of real value to the communities in which they live. They are intelligent, docile, easily directed, and eager to learn. Lieutenant Emmons found that everywhere they asked for schools, that their children, to whom they are most affectionately devoted, may learn to be "smart like the white man."

They are more humble, dependent, and trustful than the Indians, and could easily be influenced. But people do not go to Alaska to educate and care for diseased and loathsome natives, unless they are paid well for the mission. So long as the natives obey the laws of the country, no one has authority over them. No one is interested in them, or has the time to spare in teaching them. The United States government should take care of these people. It should take measures to protect them from the death-dealing whiskey with which they are supplied; to provide them with schools, hospitals, medical care; it should supply them with reindeer and teach them to care for these animals.

Surely the government of the United States asks not to be informed more than once by such authorities as Lieutenant Emmons, Bishop Rowe, Judge Gunnison, Ex-Governor Brady, and Doctor Hutton that these most wretched beings on the outskirts of the world are begging for education, and that they are sorely in need of medical services.

The government schools in the territory of Alaska are supported by a portion of the license moneys levied on the various industries of the country. Alaska has an area of six hundred thousand square miles and an estimated native and half-breed population of twenty-five thousand; and for these people only fifty-two schools and as many poorly paid teachers!

When I have criticised the Russian Church because it has not taught these people cleanliness, I blush--remembering how my own government has failed them in needs as vital. And when I reflect upon the outrages perpetrated upon them by my own fellow-countrymen--who have deprived them largely of their means of livelihood, robbed them, debauched them, ravished their women, and lured away their young girls--when I reflect upon these things, my face burns with shame that I should ever criticise any other people or any other government than my own.

The recent rapid development of Alaska, and the appropriation of the native food-supplies by miners, traders, canners, and settlers, present a problem that must be solved at once. In regard to the Philippines, we were like a child with a new toy; we could not play with them and experiment with them enough; yet for forty years these dark, gentle, uncomplaining people of our most northern and most splendid possession--beautiful, glorious Alaska--have been patiently waiting for all that we should long ago have given them: protection, interest, and the education and training that would have converted them from diseased and wretched beings into decent and useful people.

According to Lieutenant Emmons, the condition of the Copper River Indians is exceptionally miserable; and of all the native people, either coastal or of the interior, they are most needy and in want of immediate a.s.sistance. Reduced in number to barely two hundred and fifty souls, scattered in small communities along the river valleys amidst the loftiest mountains of the continent and under the most rigid climatic conditions, their natural living has been taken from them by the white man, without the establishment of any labor market for their self-support in return.

Prior to 1888 they lived in a very primitive state, and were, even then, barely able to maintain themselves on the not over-abundant game life of the valley, together with the salmon coming up the river for sp.a.w.ning purposes. The mining excitement of that year brought several thousand men into the Copper River Valley, on their way to the Yukon and the Klondike.

They swept the country clean of game, burnt over vast districts, and frequently destroyed what they could not use. About the same time the salmon canneries in Prince William Sound, having exhausted the home streams, extended their operations to the Copper River delta, decreasing the Indians' salmon catch, which had always provided them with food for the bitter winters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

"WOLF"]

These Indians are simple, kind-hearted, and have ever been friendly and hospitable to the white man. They respect his cache, although their own has not always been respected by him.

At Copper Centre, which is connected by military wagon road with the coast at Valdez, flour sells for twenty-four dollars a hundredweight, and all other provisions and clothing in proportion; so it may be readily understood that the white people of the interior cannot afford to divide their provisions with the starving Indians, else they would soon be in the same condition themselves. Therefore, for these Indians, too,--fortunately few in number,--the government must provide liberally and at once.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

At sunset on the day of our landing at Belkoffski we pa.s.sed the active volcanoes of Pogromni and Shishaldin, on the island of Unimak. For years I had longed to see Shishaldin; and one of my nightly prayers during the voyage had been for a clear and beautiful light in which to see it. Not to pa.s.s it in the night, nor in the rain, nor in the fog; not to be too ill to get on deck in some fashion--this had been my prayer.

For days I had trembled at the thought of missing Shishaldin. To long for a thing for years; to think of it by day and to dream of it by night, as though it were a sweetheart; to draw near to it once, and once only in a lifetime--and then, to pa.s.s it without one glimpse of its coveted loveliness!--that would be too bitter a fate to be endured.

In a few earnest words, soon after leaving Valdez, I had acquainted the captain with my desire.

It was his watch when I told him. He was pacing in front of the pilot-house. A cigar was set immovably between his lips. He heard me to the end and then, without looking at me, smiled out into the golden distance ahead of us.

"You fix the weather," said he, "and I'll fix the mountain."

I, or some other, had surely "fixed" the weather.

No such trip had ever been known by the oldest member of the crew. Only one rainy night and one sweet half-cloudy afternoon. For the rest, blue and golden days and nights of amethyst.

But would the captain forget? The thought always made my heart pause; yet there was something in the firm lines of his strong, brown face that made it impossible for me to mention it to him again.

But on that evening I was sitting in the dining room which, when the tables were cleared, was a kind of general family living room, when Charlie came to me with his angelic smile.

"The captain, he say you please come on deck right away."