The Land of Tomorrow Part 8

In speaking of the native races of Alaska it is not my purpose to enter into the subject except in so far as it belongs to a book of this character. As was said of the mines, the real student of such subjects will find (in the journals devoted to ethnology) what definite information he seeks. Strangely enough, however, a diligent search has revealed that there is not to be found in any library a book or in any magazine an article dealing with that most unusual custom which prevails among the Eskimos,--the trial marriage. Whether this custom exists among any other natives of the world I do not know. But I think not.

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_, 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.

The Thlinkits were once the most civilized and at the same time the most warlike of the native tribes. When the Russians came they found them living in well-built log houses and with an organized tribal system. They are to-day of greater intelligence than any of the other native tribes and are skilled craftsmen. The Athabaskans, on the other hand, with the exception of some of the most isolated Eskimo tribes, are the least civilized. Only those on the coast have any kind of tribal organization and this is not countenanced by the United States Government. Like the clansmen of Scotland, they seem to group themselves in families. The Aleuts were once quite prosperous, expert in the taking of the sea-otter, a very difficult animal to catch. The ravages of the Russian fur-traders almost annihilated the native population. They enslaved them and compelled them to capture the sea-otters for them. But the latter are now almost extinct and the Aleuts eke out a precarious existence by fishing and trapping foxes.

They call their habitations _barabaras_ and they resemble the igloos of the Eskimos.

It is the latter people that I know best and of whom I would speak most. There are no Indians in St. Michael. The native people here are wholly Eskimos, and one has to live among them to realize the moral descent of a once-fine native race. One must know them in order to comprehend the height from which they have fallen! In winter they live in their igloos. And an igloo is a place so unspeakably filthy that one can scarcely entertain a thought (much less a sight) of it. In summer they live in tents. Yet----. In spite of their uncleanliness, in spite of every other argument which may be urged against them, one always finds himself at the end of his ruminations admitting to himself that, after all, they are a fine native race! It is a conclusion at which he never fails to arrive even in the face of appalling evidence. The conviction will not be downed.

I have often walked about their summer camps at St. Michael, Nome and other localities. Always I have found the scene practically the same.

One cannot help being struck with the industry which the Eskimos display. Every inmate of the tent will be at work! And each is at work upon something _useful_! Not one of them will be caught idle. The father usually will be seen carving a piece of ivory, or wood. The Eskimos are skilled carvers. While President Taft was in office a magnificent piece was sent him for his desk. It was carved from the tusk of a walrus by a native. In the tent the mother will be making _mukluks_, or fur boots, while the older daughter beats out and twists the caribou sinew into that strong thread with which the furs and boots are sewed. Let me add that they never come unsewed! The smaller children will each be engaged in some light task, such as making curios, or smoothing the first roughness off of the ivory from which the father, later, will carve something. Every member of the family will be engaged in producing _something of value_. Wherever one goes among the Eskimos he will be struck by this admirable trait.

They are a light-hearted, good-natured people, easily amused. They have a ready smile for you as you pa.s.s them by. Compared with the white man they are undersized. From my own six-feet-two they seem rather diminutive to me when I look down upon them, but they are by no means the dwarfs that people imagine them. The average height of the man is five-feet-four. Tall Eskimos are not unusual. They are well-built, graceful in movement and possessed of small hands and feet. The nose (in some of the tribes) is flat, but in others it is quite the opposite, and the mouth, although somewhat large, is always filled with beautiful teeth. Their smile is most attractive. I have seen many handsome Eskimos,--that is, they would be handsome if they were clean!

The centaur of old was no more a part of his horse than the Eskimo is a part of his boat. He is a born navigator,--as aquatic as a duck. He fashions for himself a small boat of skin in which he practically encloses himself. These boats are of two kinds and in their construction the Eskimo reveals his ingenuity. They are cunningly contrived and cleverly managed. With this primitive craft he performs all sorts of unbelievable stunts. An expert and daring fisherman is he.

The smaller boat (called a _kayak_) is a sealskin canoe and is a rather tiny affair. It has circular hatches for one man. The _bidarka_ (or _bidocky_) will hold two men. But the _baidara_ is made of walrus hide and will hold from twenty to thirty persons. It will live in a heavy sea and is taken on long sea voyages. The stranger who travels even a short distance in one, however, usually does so with his heart in his mouth most of the time. The fabric belies its looks. It appears so flimsy as to be dangerous and the water is plainly visible underneath.

But the natives walk boldly about in them. Every step depresses the skin for two or three inches, but long experience has taught them that the spot on which they stand will sustain the weight of a ton! I have actually seen them turn a summersault in the water with one of these home-made craft and come up smiling! Yet, strange to say, while they are, apparently, more at home on the water than on the land, few of them swim. Perhaps it is that the water is too cold.

Who that has seen these diminutive people venture forth into a treacherous and perilous sea with naught between them and death but this tiny home-made boat to do battle with the huge monsters of the ice-enc.u.mbered deep--the whale, the walrus and the seal--can question their courage? Not I! The Eskimo has made no effort to conquer his environment. More wisely he has adapted himself to it and constrained it to his needs. The land of his birth is inhospitable. His environment is savage. He wrings his sustenance from the land only by powerful effort, and human nature takes on a new dignity in the life of such people. Only the st.u.r.diest of creatures, set naked in an Arctic world, could rise superior to such an environment.

As for the Eskimo woman,--in youth she is not unattractive, often quite good-looking, in fact. But I hereby testify that of all the hideously unattractive and ugly creatures known to the human race the full-blooded, middle-aged Eskimo woman carries off the palm. As it was in the beginning, before G.o.d said "Let there be light"--she is without form and void! She ages rapidly. She dresses as do the men, in the _parka_, a long, loose garment reaching to the knee, made of muskrat and reindeer skin in winter and of drill in summer, fur-seal boots and breeches. As the men are nearly always smooth-faced it is often difficult to tell them apart. They both use tobacco. And they are nothing if not economical! They chew it until every particle of flavor has vanished. Then they dry and smoke it!

A friend of mine, a well-known woman writer who once served the American Minister to China as personal secretary, one day confided to me that since the day she left the celestial empire (some fifteen years ago) she had never seen any dirt worth mentioning! Obviously, she has never glimpsed the interior of an igloo! With an American Army Officer of the Medical Corps I once visited one. We were told that it was one of the cleanest Eskimo villages in Alaska. The saints preserve me from a visit to the dirtiest one! An igloo is a windowless hut, shut tight against the air. It is usually crowded with a large family, grossly clad in skins which are poorly tanned, partly decayed. They are unspeakably fed, greasy of skin. Refuse of every kind was piled about the igloo and a recent thaw made the place a ma.s.s of liquid filth.

Of course, the reason for all this is apparent, and in a way unavoidable. Fuel is scarce and hard to obtain. Therefore, ventilation, with its waste of heat, would be fatally extravagant. Food is gathered in summer and stored for winter. When it comes out of storage much of it is decayed. Crowding is unavoidable and this means filth and infection. Water is scanty, cleanliness impossible. All this leads to the prevalence of disease and the disease most prevalent is tuberculosis. Moreover, this village which we visited has no doctor.

The nearest one is seven miles away.

Conditions in Alaska, so far as medical relief for the natives is concerned, are distressing and inexcusable. Year after year, with persistent regularity, the Sundry Civil Appropriation Committee of the House strikes out the modest sum of seventy-five thousand dollars pet.i.tioned for by the Board of Education for medical relief work among the natives of Alaska. In all southeastern Alaska there is but one hospital for natives,--a Presbyterian inst.i.tution at Haines. Dr.

Romig, a former Moravian Medical Missionary in the Bristol Bay district in Bering Sea, gave as an estimate that forty per cent of the Eskimo population of this district, numbering some seventeen hundred people, were afflicted with transmissible diseases--chiefly tuberculosis, syphilis and trachoma. The physical condition of these people is pitiable in the extreme. Yet the government provides _one_ physician and a small inadequate infirmary without proper equipment and maintained in an abandoned schoolhouse!

Contrast this with what is being done for the Indians of the United States. For the three hundred thousand there are now employed two hundred doctors, eighty nurses, seven dentists, seventy field matrons, and seventy-seven miscellaneous hospital attendants. Also, the government maintains for the Indians forty-nine hospitals, four tuberculosis sanitaria with a capacity for caring for a thousand four hundred and ninety-nine patients! The reason for the striking contrast between this and the shameful neglect of the Alaskan natives ought to be found and removed. The present condition is a reproach to us as a nation. Not only this, it is a menace to the health and safety of the white people already there and an argument against the coming of others.

Much has been said and written of the origin of the Eskimos. There is a difference of opinion as to whence, originally, they came. My own belief is that they are of Mongolian origin. A similarity of language would tend to strengthen this belief. When it comes to a native tongue I confess that the Eskimo has a peculiarity which is unique and baffling, more so than I have ever encountered in any other language. I once got up against this in a manner which took some time to untangle.

As United States Commissioner at St. Michael it was part of my duty to try offenders against the law. The first time the offender chanced to be an Eskimo I suddenly discovered that I had troubles of my own.

Apparently his _no_ meant _yes_, and vice versa. I could not understand it at first, but at last it dawned upon me that although he spoke brokenly in English he was _thinking_ in his own tongue. For instance, I would say to him:

"You did so-and-so, didn't you?"

"Yes!" he would reply, when I knew very well that he meant to deny it.

I called in a priest, a man who spoke the native language, from whom I learned that my surmise was correct. The Eskimo, when he says yes means "Yes, I did _not_!" When he says no he means "No, I _did_!" There you are! One has to be mentally cross-eyed in order to get him!

The Eskimos are very peaceable people except when (in violation of the law) the white man sells them whisky. It must be acknowledged that the latter has done little to encourage their uplift. In fact, he is largely to blame for the demoralized condition of the Eskimo to-day.

One may no longer sell liquor in Alaska, but the mischief, so far as the natives is concerned, is already done. For a long time there seemed no way to prevent the furnishing of whisky to the Eskimos. A law might cover it, it is true. But experience has taught me that if a man is clever enough and unscrupulous enough he can drive a horse and wagon through the best law that was ever made! Where there was no saloon the liquor was furnished the natives in the guise of pay or bribe, and every man who has lived in Alaska knows how little regard the white man has had for the sanct.i.ty of the native home. Wives and daughters were constantly dishonored. If the husband or father protested or put up a fight he was overcome by threats or bribes and given liquor to drink until what natural good qualities he once possessed disappeared forever.

If one would see the native races at their best he must see them as far as possible from the haunts of the white men. There he will find them by no means an inferior people. I know of one cannery where every employee except the superintendent and the bookkeeper is a native, and one has but to observe their work to be convinced of their capability.

But it seems impossible for them to live near the white people without both whites and natives starting down hill. From the acquaintance to the debauchery of the native woman by a certain type of white man is but a step. It has not been a great many years since the whalers used to come up from San Francisco to winter in the Arctic and catch whales.

Their first act on arriving was to carry off the native women, take them aboard the vessels and keep them all winter. In the spring when they got ready to return they would throw them ash.o.r.e unceremoniously.

This went on many years but has now been stopped by the government.

Sometimes the white men marry the native women and when they do they quickly sink to their level. The native man, always imitative of the white man, in time forsakes the hunting and fishing which once furnished him an honest living and sooner or later he is to be seen hanging around the villages, picking up odd jobs.

Some of the customs of the natives of Alaska (and elsewhere) are both quaint and startling. When a native guest enters a house neither host nor guest take notice of each other. The host goes on with his work and the visitor either a.s.sists him or produces some of his own. When he departs, however, the host says to him:

"Inuvdluaritse!" (Live well!)

But they greet the white visitor in smiling friendliness and when he leaves the host usually says to him:

"Ap.o.r.niakinat.i.t!" (Do not hurt thy head!) Presumably this is a warning against the upper part of the low doorway.

The Eskimo's idea of hospitality sometimes extends to lengths which are somewhat appalling and occasionally it requires not a little diplomacy to refuse them without giving offense. When one gets caught in an Eskimo village and has to spend the night there it is the commonest of occurrences for the man of the house to offer him not only the freedom of his home but his wife as well! Among the natives the interchange of wives is common.

And this brings us to that most discussed of all questions,--the morality (or the lack of it) of the native peoples of the earth. No matter to what far corner of the world one may journey he will find this problem the same in all of them. The Eskimo is no exception.

Before the coming of the white man he was utterly G.o.dless. He had no religion, no form of worship, no imagery, no idea of any "happy hunting ground" hereafter. In many sections this is still true, although they have been brought under the influence of the church in some localities.

In St. Michael the natives are not permitted to live in the village, but their tents dot the hillsides around and during the summer months the streets are alive with them. Often they come from great distances with their furs, carved ivory, etc., which they have for sale. Their winter dwelling, the igloo, is a pit in the ground, roofed over with logs and sometimes, not always, a window made of fish skin or the entrail of a walrus. The hut is entered by a kind of ante-chamber in the top of which is a hole large enough to admit a man. If he chances to be a large man he sometimes has difficulty in getting through! He must descend a ladder to a narrow pa.s.sage or tunnel which leads to the princ.i.p.al room, often fifteen or twenty feet from the entrance. The sole furniture of a native residence is a seal-oil lamp which is used for both heating and cooking. It is lighted in the autumn and burns incessantly until spring.

The igloo is usually from six to eight feet high and about thirty feet in circ.u.mference. Often it houses from ten to twenty persons. During the cold and stormy weather every aperture is closed. How they endure the odor and the vitiated air is something no white man can understand.

The summer dwellings were formerly constructed above ground and consisted of light poles roofed over with skins. Now, however, these have given way to the ordinary tent which is not only cheaper but preferable for many reasons.

In almost every village, or native settlement, the visitor will find the council-house, a much larger hut than the others. It is called a _kashga_, and is used also as a sort of club where the youths and the unmarried men of the village congregate. Here matters of importance are discussed and guests from a distance lodged. The hut is usually about twenty feet square and ten feet high.

It was in one of these _kashgas_ that I had what was perhaps the most interesting experience in connection with the native races that I have had during the years that I have lived in Alaska. I have come in touch with the ceremonies of the natives of many corners of the earth, but this one was unique,--even more so than the celebrated Snake Dance of the Hopi, of Arizona. I had once been able to befriend a young Eskimo.

In grat.i.tude for the favor he invited me to attend a native festival to which (he gave me to understand) no white man had ever been admitted.

Whether this meant that no white man had _ever_ been admitted or that none had seen the ceremony as indulged in by this particular tribe I am unable to say. Nevertheless I understood that he was attempting to honor me. I confess that it was with some misgivings that I went, but I have never been sorry.

This particular ceremony was known as The Ten Year Festival. Some tribe from another locality is asked to visit the home tribe and the ceremony is held during the visit. The visitors this year came from Unalakleet, bringing large quant.i.ties of gifts and many of them going back empty-handed at the end of the festival. "Potlatching," or trading, is the favorite occupation of the Eskimos and many a time have I been a victim. But I usually hastened to "potlatch" whatever I happened to draw off onto some one else at the earliest possible opportunity!

In some respects the Ten Year Festival is not unlike the ceremonies of the American Indians. In the _kashga_, heated to suffocation, the natives and their visitors foregather. A square hole is cut in the floor and a sort of shelf, or bench, runs around the sides of the room.

On this bench sit the princ.i.p.al personages of the tribe, their feet dangling and not infrequently kicking those below them in the face. The "orchestra" with their tom-toms begin their monotonous drumming. The medicine man is heard below chanting a weird tribal song and presently his head appears through the hole in the floor. He comes up, dancing and singing, both song and chant increasing in intensity as he appears.

The other members of the tribe join the dance and the song. Their motions become more and more violent. A perspiration which is largely grease, due to the oil which exudes from their skin, rolls from their naked bodies as they writhe and lash themselves into a perfect frenzy.

The women join the dance, cavorting about unclothed, just as the men do.

The final episode of the ceremony occurs when the medicine man breaks from the _kashga_ and runs outside in the bitter cold. Of course, everything is frozen tight, but a hole is cut in the Bay and into the ice-cold water he plunges, returning to the _kashga_ dripping wet. He then tells them that he has been in consultation with the Great Spirit, or whatever it is that they call their ruling power, and that he has been instructed to tell them that the crops will be good, the furs plentiful, that they will be successful in catching the walrus and the seal.

I have already spoken of the unusual custom of the trial marriage which exists among the natives of the Far North. So far as I know, it exists nowhere else,--at least under supervision of the church. But when the United States purchased Alaska there was a paragraph in the treaty which read as follows:

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory, according to their choice, reserving their natural allegiance, may return to Russia within three years, but if they should prefer to remain in the ceded territory they, with the exception of the uncivilized tribes, shall be admitted to the enjoyments and all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and shall be maintained and protected in the full enjoyment of their liberty, property and religion. The uncivilized tribes will be subject to such laws and regulations as the United States may from time to time adopt in regard to aboriginal tribes of that country."

The supposition is that the "laws and regulations" were not immediately forthcoming and that gradually the natives came under the influence of the Greek Catholic Church. The trial marriage is a blending of the customs of both of these.

I presume that there is no other place in the world where the natives approach more nearly to living in a state of nature than here. This applies as much to their family life as to their out-door existence. In former times when the Eskimo man and woman decided that they would like to wage the war of life together, to combine against their implacable foes, the cold, the storm and the darkness, they just went ahead and did it. This was and in many cases still is the beginning and the end of the subject of marriage with them. The native custom in the olden days was a somewhat strenuous experience for the bride. It is still followed, but it has now become a mere ceremony, quaint and picturesque. The young Eskimo seldom "falls in love." He selects a wife, usually choosing her for her health and strength. In the olden days, having picked her out, he would lie in wait for her, seize her by the hair of her head and drag her off to his igloo, the whole family following and (apparently) attempting to rescue her. Strangely enough, his choice was not always the young girl. There was a lively compet.i.tion for widows, especially if they were the mothers of sons who would be able to help bring in the whale and keep the wolf from the door.

Of Eskimo morality and civilization there are many degrees. Some of the tribes as yet untouched by the influence of the missionaries have moral laws of extreme refinement. And they live up to them! Do you know of another spot on earth where _both man and woman_ who have proved guilty of unfaithfulness are meted out the same punishment? I do not.

But the reindeer Koriaks, one of the tribes not far from Nome, place the greatest stress upon loyalty and chast.i.ty of both man and woman, and the punishment for both, when they transgress the law, is instant death!

As to many of the tribes, however, little can be said and that little is not to their credit. They have no higher conception of life than that which is wholly animalistic. Through all the long ages, with them a physical act has been merely a physical act. It has had no moral significance. And can the idea of untold ages be easily eradicated?

And, after all, are they worse than other people? Comparisons are odious. But it must be remembered that these natives live out their lives thus _thinking no evil_! What, then, of the white man, born with the knowledge of the moral significance which is attached to the personal relationship and who has permitted himself to become degraded by the vices of civilization? The native man is _un_moral. The white man is _im_moral. There is a difference! Moreover, the Scarlet Letter is not alone for the Hester Prynnes of Old Plymouth. From time immemorial among some of the tribes of the North the unchaste Eskimo woman has been forced to wear a sign of her degradation,--a green band in her hair. However, unlike Hester Prynne, she is given another chance, albeit an unfair one. If she gives birth to an able-bodied boy she becomes an object of unusual and sincere respect and her green band becomes, as it were, a crown.