The question is naturally asked, How do these people employ themselves during the long nine months of every year after the close of the sealing season and until it begins again, when they have little or absolutely nothing to do? It may be answered that they simply vegetate, or, in other words, are entirely idle, mentally and physically, during most of this period. But, to their credit, let it be said that mischief does not employ their idle hands. They are passive killers of time, drinking tea and sleeping, with a few disagreeable exceptions, such as the gamblers. There are a half-dozen of these characters at St. Paul, and perhaps as many at St. George, who spend whole nights at their sittings, even during the sealing season, playing games of cards taught by Russians and persons who have been on the island since the transfer of the territory; but the majority of the men, women, and children, not being compelled to exert themselves to obtain any of the chief or even the least of the necessaries of life, such as tea and hard bread, sleep the greater portion of the time, when not busy in eating and in the daily observances of that routine belonging to the Greek Catholic Church. The teachings, pomp, and circumstance of the religious observances of this faith alone preserve these people from absolute stagnation. In obedience to its promptings they gladly attend church very regularly. They also make and receive calls on their saints’ days, and such days are very numerous. The natives add to these entertainments of their saints’ day and birth-festivals, or “Emannimiks,” the music of accordions and violins. Upon the former and its variation, the concertina, they play a number of airs, and are real fond of the noise. A great many of the women in particular can render indifferently a limited selection of tunes, many of which are the old battle-songs, so popular during the rebellion, woven into weird Russian waltzes and love-ditties, which they have jointly gathered from their former masters and our soldiers, who were quartered here in 1869. From the Russians and the troops also they have learned to dance various figures, and have been taught to waltz. These dances, however, the old folks do not enjoy very much. They will come in and sit around and look at the young performers with stolid indifference; but if they manage to get a strong current of tea setting in their direction, nicely sugared and toned up, they revive and join in the mirth. In old times they never danced here unless they were drunk, and it was the principal occupation of the amiable and mischievous treasury agents and others in those early days to stimulate this beery fun.
Seal-meat is their staple food, and in the village of St. Paul they consume on an average fully five hundred pounds a day the year round, and they are, by the permission of the Secretary of the Treasury, allowed occasionally to kill five thousand or six thousand seal-pups, or an average of twenty-two to thirty young “kotickie” for each man, woman, and child in the settlements. The pups will dress ten pounds each. This shows an average consumption of nearly six hundred pounds of seal-meat by each person, large and small, during the year. To this diet the natives add a great deal of butter and many sweet crackers. They are passionately fond of butter. No epicure at home or butter-taster in Goshen knows or appreciates that article better than these people do. If they could get all that they desire, they would consume one thousand pounds of butter and five hundred pounds of sweet crackers every week, and indefinite quantities of sugar. The sweetest of all sweet teeth are found in the jaw of the ordinary Aleut. But it is of course unwise to allow them full swing in this matter, for they would turn their stomachs into fermenting-tanks if they had free access to an unlimited supply of saccharine food. The company issues them two hundred pounds a week. If unable to get sweet crackers, they will eat about three hundred pounds of hard or pilot bread every week, and, in addition to this, nearly seven hundred pounds of flour at the same time. Of tobacco they are allowed fifty pounds per week; candles, seventy-five pounds; rice, fifty pounds. They burn, strange as it may seem, kerosene-oil here to the exclusion of that seal-fat which literally overruns the island. They ignite and consume over six hundred gallons of kerosene-oil a year in the village of St. Paul alone. They do not fancy vinegar very much; perhaps fifty gallons a year are used up there. Mustard and pepper are sparingly used, one to one pound and a half a week for the whole village. Beans they peremptorily reject; for some reason or other they cannot be induced to use them. Those who go about the vessels contract a taste for split-pea soup, and a few of them are sold in the village-store. Salt meat, beef or pork, they will take reluctantly, if it is given to and pressed upon them; but they will never buy it. I remember, in this connection, seeing two barrels of prime salt pork and a barrel of prime mess salt beef opened in the company’s store shortly after my arrival in 1872, and, though the people of the village were invited to help themselves, I think I am right in saying these three barrels were not emptied when I left the island in 1873. They use a very little coffee during the year—not more than one hundred pounds—but of tea a great deal. I do not know exactly—I cannot find among my notes a record as to that article—but I can say that they each drink not less than a gallon of tea per diem. The amount of this beverage which they sip from the time they rise in the morning until they go to bed late at night is astounding. Their “samovars,” and latterly the regular tea-kettles of our American make, are bubbling and boiling from the moment the housewife bestirs herself at daybreak until the fire goes out when she sleeps. It should be stated in this connection that they are supplied with a regular allowance of coal every year by the company, gratis, each family being entitled to a certain amount, which alone, if economically used, keeps them warm all winter in their new houses; but for those who are extravagant, and are itching to spend their extra wages, an extra supply is always kept in the store-houses of the company for sale. Their appreciation of and desire to possess all the canned fruit that is landed from the steamer is marked to a great degree. If they had the opportunity, I doubt whether a single family on that island to-day would hesitate to bankrupt itself in purchasing this commodity. Potatoes they sometimes demand, as well as onions, and perhaps if these vegetables could be brought here and kept to an advantage the people would soon become very fond of them. Most of these articles of food mentioned heretofore are purchased by the natives in the company’s store at either island. This food and the wearing apparel, crockery, etc., which the company bring up here for the use of the people, is sold to them at the exact cost price of the same, plus the expenses of transportation, and many times within my knowledge they have bought goods here at these stores at less rates than they would have been subjected to in San Francisco. The object of the company is not, under any circumstances, to make a single cent of profit out of the sale of these goods to the natives. They aim only to clear the cost and no more. Instructions to this effect are given to its agents, while those of the Government are called upon to take notice of the fact.
The store at St. Paul, as well as that at St. George, has its regular annual “opening” after the arrival of the steamer in the spring, to which the natives seem to pay absorbed attention. They crowd the buildings day and night, eagerly looking for all the novelties in food and apparel. These slouchy men and shawl-hooded women, who pack the area before the counters, appear to feel as deep an interest in the process of shopping as the most enthusiastic votaries of that business do in our own streets. It certainly seems to give them the greatest satisfaction of their lives on the Pribylov Islands.
With regard to ourselves up here in so far as a purely physical existence goes, the American method of living on and in the climate of the Pribylov Islands is highly conducive to strength and health. Tea and coffee, seasoned with condensed milk and lump sugar; hot biscuits, cakes and waffles; potatoes, served in every method of cookery; salt salmon, codfish, and corned beef; mess pork, and, once a week, a fresh roast of beef or steaks; all the canned vegetables and fruits; all the potted sauces, jams and jellies; pies, puddings and pastries; and the exhaustive list of purely seafaring dishes, such as pea and bean, barley and rice soups, curries and maccaroni; these constitute the staples and many of the luxuries with which the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company prolong their existence while living here in the discharge of their duties, and to which they welcome their guests for discussion and glad digestion.
A piano on St. Paul, in the company house; an assorted library, embracing over one thousand volumes, selected from standard authors in fiction, science, and history, together with many other unexpected adjuncts of high comfort for body and soul, will be found on these islands, wholly unlocked for by those who first set foot upon them. A small Russian printed library has also been given by the company to the natives on each island for their special entertainment. The rising generation of sealers, however, if they read at all, will read our own typography.
Before leaving the consideration of these people, who are so intimately associated with and blended into the business on these islands, it may be well to clearly define the relation existing between them, the Government, and the company leasing the islands. When Congress granted to the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco the exclusive right of taking a certain number of fur-seals every year, for a period of twenty years on these islands, it did so with several reservations and conditions, which were confided in their detail to the Secretary of the Treasury. This officer and the president of the Alaska Commercial Company agreed upon a code of regulations which should govern their joint action in regard to the natives. It was a simple agreement that these people should have a certain amount of dried salmon furnished them for food every year, a certain amount of fuel, a school-house, and the right to go to and come from the islands as they chose; and also the right to work or not, understanding that in case they did not work, their places would and could be supplied by other people who would work.
The company, however, has gone far beyond this exaction of the Government; it has added an inexpressible boon of comfort, in the formation of those dwellings now occupied by the natives, which was not expressed nor thought of at the time of the granting of the lease. An enlightened business-policy suggested to the company that it would be much better for the natives, and much better for company too, if these people were taken out of their filthy, unwholesome hovels, put into habitable dwellings, and taught to live cleanly, for the simple reason that by so doing the natives, living in this improved condition, would be able physically and mentally, every season when the sealing work began, to come out from their long inanition and go to work at once with vigor and energetic persistency. The sequel has proved the wisdom of the company.
Before this action on their part, it was physically impossible for the inhabitants of St. Paul or St. George Islands to take the lawful quota of one hundred thousand seal-skins annually in less than three or four working months. They take them in less than thirty working days now with the same number of men. What is the gain? Simply this, and it is everything: the fur-seal skin, from the 14th of June, when it first arrives, as a rule, up to the 1st of August, is in prime condition; from that latter date until the middle of October it is rapidly deteriorating, to slowly appreciate again in value as it sheds and renews its coat; so much so that it is practically worthless in the markets of the world. Hence, the catch taken by the Alaska Commercial Company every year is a prime one, first to last—there are no low-grade “stagey” skins in it; but under the old regimen, three-fourths of the skins were taken in August, in September and even in October, and were not worth their transportation to London. Comment on this is unnecessary; it is the contrast made between a prescient business-policy, and one that was as shiftless and improvident as language can well devise.[105]
The company found so much difficulty in getting the youth of the villages to attend their schools, taught by our own people, especially brought up there and hired by the company, that they have adopted the plan of bringing one or two of the brightest boys down every year and putting them into our schools, so that they may grow up here and be educated, in order to return and serve as teachers there. This policy is warranted by the success which attended an experiment made at the time when I was up there first, whereby a son of the chief was carried down and over to Rutland, Vt., for his education, remained there four years, then returned and took charge of the school on St. Paul, which he has had until recently, with the happiest results in increased attendance and attention from the children. But, of course, so long as the Russian Church service is conducted in the Russian language, we will find on the islands more Russian-speaking people than our own. The non-attendance at school was not and is not to be ascribed to indisposition on the part of the children and parents. One of the oldest and most intelligent of the natives told me, explanatory of their feeling and consequent action, that he did not, nor did his neighbors, have any objection to the attendance of their children on our English school; but, if their boys and young men neglected their Russian lessons they knew not who were going to take their places, when they died, in his church, at the christenings, and at their burial. To any one familiar with the teachings of the Greek Catholic faith, the objection of old Philip Vollkov seems reasonable. I hope, therefore, that, in the course of time, the Russian Church service may be voiced in English; not that I want to substitute any other religion for it—far from it; in my opinion it is the best one we could have for these people—but until this substitution of our language for the Russian is done, no very satisfactory work, in my opinion, will be accomplished in the way of an English education on the Seal Islands.
The Alaska Commercial Company deserves and will receive a brief but comprehensive notice at this point. In order that we may follow it to these islands, and clearly and correctly appreciate the circumstance which gave it footing and finally the control of the business, I will pass back and review a chain of evidence adduced in this direction from the time of our first occupation, in 1867, of the territory of Alaska.
It will be remembered by many people, that when we were ratifying the negotiation between our Government and that of Russia, it became painfully apparent that nobody in this country knew anything about the subject of Russian America. Every school-boy knew where it was located, but no professor or merchant, however wise or shrewd, knew what was in it. Accordingly, immediately after the purchase was made and the formal transfer effected, a large number of energetic and speculative men, some coming from New England even, but most of them residents of the Pacific coast, turned their attention to Alaska. They went up to Sitka in a little fleet of sail and steam vessels, but among their number it appears there were only two of our citizens who knew of or had the faintest appreciation as to the value of the Seal Islands. One of these, Mr. H. M. Hutchinson, a native of New Hampshire, and the other, a Captain Ebenezer Morgan, a native of Connecticut, turned their faces in 1868 toward them; also an ex-captain of the Russian-American Company, Gustav Niebaum, who became a citizen immediately after the transfer, knowing of their value, chartered a small vessel, and hastened so as to land there a few days even before Captain Morgan arrived in the Peru, a whaling ship.
Mr. Hutchinson gathered his information at Sitka—Captain Morgan had gained his years before by experience on the South Sea sealing grounds. Mr. Hutchinson represented a company of San Francisco or California capitalists when he landed on St. Paul; Captain Morgan represented another company of New London capitalists and whaling merchants. They arrived almost simultaneously, Morgan a few days or weeks anterior to Hutchinson. He had quietly enough commenced to survey and pre-empt the rookeries on the islands, or, in other words, the work of putting stakes down and recording the fact of claiming the ground, as miners do in the mountains; but later agreed to co-operate with Mr. Hutchinson. These two parties passed that season of 1868 in exclusive control of those islands, and they took an immense number of seals. They took so many that it occurred to Mr. Hutchinson unless something was done to check and protect these wonderful rookeries, which he saw here for the first time, and which filled him with amazement, that they would be wiped out by the end of another season; although he was the gainer then, and would be perhaps at the end, if they should be thus eliminated, yet he could not forbear saying to himself that it was wrong and should not be. To this Captain Morgan also assented, and Captain Niebaum joined with them cordially. In the fall of 1868 Mr. Hutchinson and Captain Morgan, by their personal efforts, interested and aroused the Treasury Department and Congress, so that a special resolution was enacted declaring the Seal Islands a governmental reservation, and prohibiting any and all parties from taking seals thereon until further action by Congress. In 1869, seals were taken on those islands, under the direction of the Treasury Department, for the subsistence of the natives only; and in 1870 Congress passed the present law, for the protection of the fur-bearing animals on those islands, and under its provisions, and in accordance therewith, after an animated and bitter struggle in competition, the Alaska Commercial Company, of which Mr. Hutchinson was a prime organizer, secured the award and received the franchise which it now enjoys and will enjoy for some time yet. The company is an American corporation, with a charter, rules, and regulations. They employ a fleet of vessels, sail and steam: four steamers, a dozen or fifteen ships, barks, and sloops. Their principal occupation and attention is given naturally to the Seal Islands, though they have stations scattered over the Aleutian Islands and that portion of Alaska west and north of Kadiak. No post of theirs is less than five hundred or six hundred miles from Sitka.
Outside of the Seal Islands all trade in this territory of Alaska is entirely open to the public. There is no need of protecting the fur-bearing animals elsewhere, unless it may be by a few wholesome general restrictions in regard to the sea-otter chase. The country itself protects the animals on the mainland and other islands by its rugged, forbidding, and inhospitable exterior.
The treasury officials on the Seal Islands are charged with the careful observance of every act of the company; a copy of the lease and its covenant is conspicuously posted in their office; is translated into Russian, and is familiar to all the natives. The company directs its own labor, in accordance with the law, as it sees fit; selects its time of working, etc. The natives themselves work under the direction of their own chosen foremen, or “toyones.” These chiefs call out the men at the break of every working-day, divide them into detachments according to the nature of the service, and order their working. All communications with the laborers on the sealing-ground and the company passes through their hands, those chiefs having every day an understanding with the agent of the company as to his wishes, and they govern themselves thereby.
The company pays forty cents for the labor of taking each skin. The natives take the skins on the ground, each man tallying his work and giving the result at the close of the day to his chief or foreman. When the skins are brought up and counted into the salt-houses, where the agent of the company receives them from the hands of the natives, the two tallies usually correspond very closely, if they are not entirely alike. When the quota of skins is taken, at the close of two, three, or four weeks of labor, as the case may be, the total sum for the entire catch is paid over in a lump to the chiefs, and these men divide it among the laborers according to their standing as workmen, which they themselves have exhibited on their special tally-sticks. For instance, at the annual divisions or “catch” settlement, made by the natives on St. Paul Island among themselves, in 1872, when I was present, the proceeds of their work for that season in taking and skinning seventy-five thousand seals, at forty cents per skin, with extra work connected with it, making the sum of $30,637.37, was divided among them in this way: There were seventy-four shares made up, representing seventy-four men, though in fact only fifty-six men worked, but they wished to give a certain proportion to their church, a certain proportion to their priest, and a certain proportion to their widows; so they water their stock, commercially speaking.[106]
It will be remembered that at the time the question of leasing the islands was before Congress much opposition to the proposal was made, on several grounds, by two classes, one of which argued against a “monopoly,” the other urging that the Government itself would realize more by taking the whole management of the business into its own hands. At that time far away from Washington, in the Rocky Mountains, I do not know what arguments were used in the committee-rooms, or who made them; but, since my careful and prolonged study of the subject on the ground itself, and of the trade and its conditions, I am now satisfied that the act of June, 1870, directing the Secretary of the Treasury to lease the seal-islands of Alaska to the highest bidder, under the existing conditions and qualifications, did the best and the only correct and profitable thing that could have been done in the matter, both with regard to the preservation of the seal-life in its original integrity, and the pecuniary advantage of the treasury itself. To make this statement perfectly clear, the following facts, by way of illustration, should be presented:
First. When the Government took possession of these interests in 1868 and 1869, the gross value of a seal-skin laid down in the best market, at London, was less in some instances and in others but slightly above the present tax and royalty paid upon it by the Alaska Commercial Company.
Second. Through the action of the intelligent business-men who took the contract from the Government in stimulating and encouraging the dressers of the raw material, and in taking sedulous care that nothing but good skins should leave the island, and in combination with leaders of fashion abroad, the demand for the fur, by this manipulation and management, has been wonderfully increased.
Third. As matters now stand, the greatest and best interests of the lessees are identical with those of the Government; what injures one instantly injures the other. In other words, both strive to guard against anything that shall interfere with the preservation of the seal-life in its original integrity, and both having it to their interest, if possible, to increase that life; if the lessees had it in their power, which they certainly have not, to ruin these interests by a few seasons of rapacity, they are so bonded and so environed that prudence prevents it.
Fourth, The frequent changes in the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, who has very properly the absolute control of the business as it stands, do not permit upon his part that close, careful scrutiny which is exercised by the lessees, who, unlike him, have but their one purpose to carry out. The character of the leading men among them is enough to assure the public that the business is in responsible hands, and in the care of persons who will use every effort for its preservation and its perpetuation, as it is so plainly their best end to serve. Another great obstacle to the success of the business, if controlled entirely by the Government, would be encountered in disposing of the skins after they had been brought down from the islands. It would not do to sell them up there to the highest bidder, since that would license the sailing of a thousand ships to be present at the sale. The rattling of their anchor-chains and the scraping of their keels upon the beaches of the two little islands would alone drive every seal away and over to the Russian grounds in a remarkably short space of time. The Government would therefore need to offer them at public auction in this country: that would be simple history repeating itself—the Government would be at the mercy of any well-organized combination of buyers. Its agents conducting the sale could not counteract the effect of such a combination as can the agents of a private corporation, who may look after their interest in all the markets of the world in their own time and in their own way, according to the exigencies of the season and the demand, and who are supplied with money which they can use, without public scandal, in the manipulation of the market. On this ground I feel confident in stating that the Treasury of the United States receives more money, net, under the system now in operation than it would by taking the exclusive control of the business. Were any capable government officer supplied with, say, $100,000, to expend in “working the market,” and intrusted with the disposal of one hundred thousand seal-skins wherever he could do so to the best advantage of the Government, and were this agent a man of first-class ability and energy, I think it quite likely that the same success might attend his labor in the London market that distinguishes the management of the Alaska Commercial Company. But imagine the cry of fraud and embezzlement that would be raised against him, however honest he might be! This alone would bring the whole business into positive disrepute, and make it a national scandal. As matters are now conducted there is no room for scandal—not one single transaction on the islands but what is as clear to investigation and accountability as the light of the noonday sun; what is done is known to everybody, and the tax now laid by the Government upon, and paid into the treasury every year by the Alaska Commercial Company yields alone a handsome rate of interest on the entire purchase-money expended for the ownership of all Alaska.
It is frequently urged with great persistency, by misinformed and malicious authority, that the lessees can and do take thousands of skins in excess of the law, and this catch in excess is shipped sub rosa to Japan from the Pribylov Islands. To show the folly of such a move on the part of the Company, if even it were possible, I will briefly recapitulate the conditions under which the skins are taken. The natives of St. Paul and St. George do themselves, in the manner I have indicated, all the driving and skinning of the seals for the company. No others are permitted or asked to land upon the islands to do this work, so long as the inhabitants of the islands are equal to it. They have been equal to it and they are more than equal to it. Every skin taken by the natives is counted by themselves, as they get forty cents per pelt for that labor, and, at the expiration of each day’s work in the field, the natives know exactly how many skins have been taken by them, how many of these skins have been rejected by the company’s agent because they were carelessly cut and damaged in skinning—usually about three-fourths of one per cent. of the whole catch—and they have it recorded every evening by those among them who are charged with the duty. Thus, were one hundred and one thousand skins taken, instead of one hundred thousand allowed by law, the natives would know it as quickly as it was done, and they would, on the strength of their record and their tally, demand the full amount of their compensation for the extra labor; and were any ship to approach the islands, at any hour, these people would know it at once, and would be aware of any shipment of skins that might be attempted. It would then be the common talk among the three hundred and ninety-eight inhabitants of the two islands, and it would be a matter of record, open to any person who might come upon the ground charged with investigation.
Furthermore, these natives are constantly going to and from Oonalashka, visiting their relations in the Aleutian settlements, hunting for wives, etc. On the mainland they have intimate intercourse with bitter enemies of the company, with whom they would not hesitate to talk over the whole state of affairs on the islands, as they always do; for they know nothing else and think of nothing else and dream of nothing else. Therefore, should anything be done contrary to the law, the act could and would be reported by these people. The Government, on its part, through its four agents stationed on these islands, counts these skins into the ship, and one of their number goes down to San Francisco upon her. There the collector of the port details experts of his own, who again count them all out of the hold, and upon that record the tax is paid and the certificate signed by the Government.
It will therefore at once be seen, by examining the state of affairs on the islands, and the conditions upon which the lease is granted, that the most scrupulous care in fulfilling the terms of the contract is compassed, and that this strict fulfilment is the most profitable course for the lessees to pursue; and that it would be downright folly in them to deviate from the letter of the law, and thus lay themselves open at any day to discovery, the loss of their contract, and forfeiture of their bonds. Their action can be investigated at any time, any moment, by Congress; of which they are fully aware. They cannot bribe these three hundred and ninety-eight people on the islands to secrecy, any more successfully than they could conceal their action from them on the sealing fields; and any man of average ability could go, and can go, among these natives and inform himself as to the most minute details of the catch, from the time the lease was granted up to the present hour, should he have reason to suspect the honesty of the Treasury agents. The road to and from the islands is not a difficult one, though it is travelled only once a year.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] It was with peculiar pleasure that the writer undertook, at the suggestion of Professor Baird, who is the honored and beloved secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the task of examining into and reporting upon this subject; and it is also gratifying to add, that the statements of fact and the hypotheses evolved therefrom by him in 1874 have, up to the present time, been verified by an inflexible sequence of events on the ground itself. The concurrent testimony of the numerous agents of the Treasury Department and the Government generally, who have trodden in his footsteps, amply testifies to their stability.
[86] Pribylov, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, was a native of “old Russia.” His father was one of the surviving sailors of the St. Peter, which was wrecked, with Bering in command, November 4, 1741, on Bering Island. The only reference which I can find to him is the vague incidental expressions, used here and there throughout an extended series of lengthy Russian letters published by Techmainov, as illustrative of the condition of affairs in regard to the Russian American Company. Pribylov was, when cruising in 1783-86 for the rumored seal-grounds, merely the first mate of the sloop St. George. The captain and part owner was one M. Subov, who was a member of a trading association then well organized in Alaska, and widely known as the “Laybaidev Lastochin” Company. It does not appear that Pribylov took any part in the business of sealing other than that of remaining in charge of the company’s vessels. He died while in discharge of these duties at Sitka, March, 1796, on his ship The Three Saints.
Pribylov himself called these islands of his discovery after Subov; but the Russians then, and soon after unanimously, indicated the group by its present well-deserved title, “Ostrovie Pribylova.”
[87] Veniaminov says that he does feel inclined to believe this story, as the peaks of Oonimak can be seen occasionally from St. Paul. I have no hesitation in saying that they were never observed by any mortal eye from the Pribylov group. The wide expanse of water between these points, and the thick, foggy air of Bering Sea, especially so at the season mentioned in this story above, will always make the mountains of Oonimak invisible to the eye from Saint Paul Island. A mirage is almost an impossibility. It may have been much more probable if the date was a winter one.—Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, etc., 1842.
[88] A large amount of information in regard to the climate of these islands has been collected and recorded by the signal service, United States Army, and similar observations are still continued by the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company.
[89] The rise and fall of tide at the Seal Islands I carefully watched one whole season at St. Paul. The irregularity, however, of ebb and flow is the most prominent feature of the matter. The highest rise in the spring-tides was a trifle over four feet, while that of the neap-tides not much over two. Owing to the nature of the case, it is impossible to prepare a tidal calendar for Alaska, above the Aleutian Islands, which will even faintly foreshadow a correct registration in advance.
[90] The mosses at Kamminista, St. Paul, are the finest examples of their kind on the islands; they are very perfect, and many species are beautiful.
[91] That spruce-trees can be made to live transplanted from indigenous localities to the barren slopes of the Aleutian Islands, has been demonstrated; but in living these trees do nothing else, and scarcely grow to any appreciable degree. A few spruce were transferred to Oonalashka when Veniaminov was at work there in 1830-35. They are still standing and keep green, but the change which such a long lapse of time should produce by growth has been as difficult to determine as it is to find evidence of increased altitude to the mountains around them since these Sitkan trees were planted with pious hope at their feet fifty years ago. Though I can readily understand why the salmon-berries of Oonalashka should not do well on the Seal Islands (though I think they would at the Garden Cove of St. George), yet I believe that the huckleberries of that section would thrive at many places if carefully transplanted to these localities: the southern slopes of Cemetery Ridge at Zapadnie; the southern slopes of Telegraph Hill, and eastern fall of Tolstoi peninsula down to the shore of the lagoon. They might also do well set out at picked places around the Big Lake and on Northeast Point, around the little lake thereon. If these bushes really throve here, they would be the means of adding greatly to the comfort of the inhabitants; for the Oonalashka huckleberry is an exceeding pleasant, juicy fruit, large and well adapted for canning and preserving. Having less sunshine here than at Illoolook, it may not ripen up as well flavored, but will, I think, succeed. The roots of the bushes when brought up from Oonalashka in April or early May should be kept moist by wet-moss wrappings from the moment they are first taken up until they are reset, with the tops well pruned back, on the Pribylov Islands. The experiment is surely worth all the trouble of making, and I hope it will be done.
[92] Blue foxes were also, and are, natives of the Commander Islands. Steller describes their fearlessness when the shipwrecked crew of the St. Peter landed there, November 6, 1741.
In regard to these foxes the Pribylov natives declare that when the islands were first occupied by their ancestors, 1786-87, the fur was invariably blue; that the present smoky blue, or ashy indigo color, is due to the coming of white foxes across on the ice from the mainland to the eastward. The white-furred vulpes is quite numerous on the islands to-day. I should judge that perhaps one-fifth of the whole number were of this color; they do not live apart from the blue ones, but evidently breed “in and in.” I notice that Veniaminov, also, makes substantially the same statement; only differing by charging this deterioration of the blue foxes’ fur to a deportation from outside of red foxes, on ice-floes, and adds that the natives always hunted down these “krassnie peeschee” as soon as their presence was known; hence my inability, perhaps, to see any sign of their posterity in 1872-76.
The presence of these animals on the Pribylov Islands is a real source of happiness to the natives, especially so to the younger ones. The little pup-foxes make pets and playfellows for the children, while hunting the adults during the winter gives wholesome employment to the mind and body of the native who does so. They are trapped in common dead-falls, steel spring-clips, or beaver traps, and shot. A very large portion of the gossip on the islands is in relation to this business.
[93] The temerity of the fox is wonderful to contemplate, as it goes on a full run or stealthy tread up and down and along the faces of almost inaccessible bluffs, in search of old and young birds and their nests and eggs, for which the “peeschee” have a keen relish. The fox always brings an egg up in its mouth, and, carrying it back a few feet from the brink of the precipice, leisurely and with gusto breaks the larger end and sucks the contents from the shell. One of the curious sights of my notice, in this connection, was the sly, artful, and insidious advances of Reynard at Tolstoi Mees, St. George, where, conspicuous and elegant in its fluffy white dress, it cunningly stretched on its back as though dead, making no sign of life whatever, save to gently hoist its thick brush now and then; whereupon many dull, curious sea-birds, Graculus bicristatus, in their intense desire to know all about it, flew in narrowing circles overhead, lower and lower, closer and closer, until one of them came within the sure reach of a sudden spring and a pair of quick snapping jaws, while the gulls and others, rising safe and high above, screamed out in seeming contempt for the struggles of the unhappy “shag,” and rendered hideous approbation.
[94] Using the egg of our domestic fowl, the hen, as a standard, the following note made in regard to the size and quality of the eggs of the sea-birds of these waters may not be uninteresting to many. When daily served on St. George, during June and July, with eggs of indigenous sea-fowl, I recorded my gastronomic comparisons which occurred then as I ate them. Here follows a recapitulation:
Fresh-laid eggs of “lupus,” or F. glacialis: Best eggs known to the islands; can be soft-boiled or fried, etc., and are as good as our own hens’ eggs; the yolk is light and clear; the size thereof is in shape and bulk like a duck’s egg; it has a white shell. Season: June 1st to 15th, inclusive; scarce on St. Paul, and not abundant on St. George.
Fresh-laid eggs of “arrie,” or L. arra: Very good; can be soft-boiled or fried; are best scrambled; yolks are dark; no strange taste whatever to them; pyriform in shape; large as a goose-egg; shell gayly-colored; they are exceedingly abundant on Walrus Island and St. George; tons of them. Season: June 25th to July 10th, inclusive.
Fresh-laid eggs of gulls, Laridæ: Perceptibly strong; cannot be relished unless in omelettes; yolks very dark; size and shape of our hen’s egg; shell dark, clay-colored ground, mottled. Season: June 5th to July 20th, inclusive; they are in moderate supply only. The other eggs in the list, such as those of the “choochkie,” the “shag,” and the several varieties of water-fowl which breed here, are never secured in sufficient quantity to be of any consideration as articles of diet. It is, perhaps, better that a scarcity of their kind continue, judging from the strong smack of the choochkie’s, the repulsive taint of the shag’s, and the “twang” of the sea-parrot’s, all of which I tasted as a matter of investigation.
[95] The St. George natives have caught codfish just off the Tolstoi Head early in June; but it is a rare occurrence. By going out two or three miles from the village at either island during July and August the native fisherman usually captures large halibut—not in abundance, however. The St. Paul people, as well as their relatives on St. George, fish in small “two-hole” bidarkies. They go out together in squads of four to six. One man alone in the kyack is not able to secure a “bolshoi poltoos.” The method, when the halibut is hooked, is to call for your nearest neighbor in his bidarka, who paddles swiftly up. You extend your paddle to him, retaining your own hold, and he grasps it, while you seize his in turn, thus making it impossible to capsize, while the large and powerfully struggling fish is brought to the surface between the canoes and knocked on the head. It is then towed ashore and carried in triumph to its lucky captor’s house.
[96] Gasterosteus cataphractus; and pungitius; beautiful sticklebacks.
[97] United States Revenue-marine cutter Reliance, June to October, 1874.
[98] To visit Walrus Island in a boat, pleasantly and successfully, it is best to submit to the advice and direction of the natives. They leave the village in the evening, and, taking advantage of the tide, proceed along the coast as far as the bluffs of Polavina, where they rest on their oars, doze, and smoke until the dawning of daylight, or later, perhaps, until the fog lifts enough for them to get a glimpse of the islet which they seek. They row over then in about two hours with their bidarrah. They leave, however, with perfect indifference as to daylight or fog. Nothing but a southeaster can disturb their tranquillity when they succeed in landing on Walrus Island. They would find it as difficult to miss striking the extended reach of St. Paul on their return, as they found it well-nigh impossible to push off from Polavina and find “Morzovia” in a thick, windy fog and running sea.
Otter Island, or “Bobrovia,” is easily reached in almost any weather that is not very stormy, for it looms up high above the water. It takes the bidarrah about two hours to row over from the village, while I have gone across once in a whale-boat with less than one hour’s expenditure of time, sail, and oars en route.
[99] That profile of the south shore, between the village hill and Southwest Point, taken from the steamer’s anchorage off the village cove, shows its characteristic and remarkable alternation of rookery slope and low sea-level flats. This point of viewing is slightly more than half a mile true west of the village hill, to a sight which brings Bogaslov summits and Tolstoi Head nearly in line. At Zapadnie is the place where the Russian discoverers first landed in 1787, July 10th. With the exception of that bluffy west-end Einahnuhto cliffs, the whole coast of St. Paul is accessible, and affords an easy landing, except at the short reach of “Seethah” and the rookery points, as indicated. The great sand beach of this island extends from Lukannon to Polavina, thence to Webster’s house, Novastoshnah; from there over, and sweeping back and along the north shore to Nahsayvernia headland, then between Zapadnie and Tolstoi, together with the beautiful though short sand of Zoltoi. This extensive and slightly broken sandy coast is not described as peculiar to any other island in Alaska, or of Siberian waters.
There are no running streams at any season of the year on St. Paul; but an abundance of fresh water is plainly afforded by the numerous lakes, all of which are “svayjoi,” save the lagoon estuary. The four big reefs which I have located are each awash in every storm that blows from seaward over them; they are all rough, rocky ledges. That little one indicated in English Bay caused the wrecking of a large British vessel in 1847, which was coming in to anchor just without Zapadnie; a number of the crew were “masslucken,” so my native informant averred. Most of the small amount of drift-wood that is found on this island is procured at Northeast Point and Polavina; the north shore from Maroonitch to Tsammanah has also been favored with sea-waif logs in exceptional seasons, to the exclusion of all other sections of the coast. The natives say that the St. George people get much more drift-wood every year, as a rule, than they do on St. Paul. From what I could see during my four seasons of inspection, they never have got much, under the best of circumstances, on either island. They pay little attention to it now, and gather what they do during the winter season, going to Polavina and the north shore with sleds, on which they hoist sails after loading there, and scud home before strong northerly blasts.
Captain Erskine informs me that the water is free and bold all around the north shore, from Cross Hill to Southwest Point; no reefs or shoals up to within half a mile of land anywhere. English Bay is very shallow, and no sea-going vessel should attempt to enter it that draws over six feet.
[100] The profile of the coast of St. George’s Island, which I give on the map, presents clearly an idea of its characteristic, bold, abrupt elevation from the sea. From the Garden Cove around to Zapadnie beach there is no natural opportunity for a man to land; then, again, from Zapadnie beach round to Starry Arteel there is not a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore and reach the plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery there is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level; these, with the landing at Garden Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George coast where we can come ashore. An active person can scramble up at several steep places between the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees, but the rest of that extended bluffy sea-wall, which I have just defined, is wholly inaccessible from the water. A narrow strip of rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm-beaten sea, is all that lies beneath the mural precipices.
In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful cascade is seen at Waterfall Head; its feathery, filmy, silver ribbon of plunging water is thrown out into exquisite relief by the rich background of that brownish basalt and tufa over which it drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be seen just west of the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low range of bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hundred feet in sheer unbroken precipitation.
One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and almost joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the only outlying islets or rocks; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one off the Little Eastern rookery, both of limited reach seaward, are the only hindrances to a ship’s sailing boldly round the island, even to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her yard-arms. I have located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs above; while Captain Baker, of the Reliance, sounded out the other.
[101] Surprise has often been genuine among those who inquire, over the fact that there is no law officer here at either village, and wonder is expressed why such provision is not made by the Government. But when the following facts relative to this subject are understood, it is at once clear that a justice of the peace and his constabulary would be entirely useless if established on the seal-islands. As these natives live here, they live as a single family in each settlement, having one common purpose in life and only one; what one native does, eats, wears, or says, is known at once to all the others, just as whatsoever any member of our household may do will soon be known to us all who belong to its organization; hence if they steal or quarrel among themselves, they keep the matter wholly to themselves, and settle it to their own satisfaction. Were there rival villages on the islands and diverse people and employment, then the case would be reversed, and the need of legal machinery apparent.
[102] The population of St. Paul in 1880 was 298. Of these, 14 were whites (13 males and 1 female), 128 male Aleutians, and 156 females. On St. George we have 92 souls: 4 white males, 35 male Aleutians, and 53 females, a total population on these islands of 390. This is an increase of between thirty and forty people since 1873. Prior to 1873 they had neither much increased nor diminished for fifty years, but would have fallen off rapidly (since the births were never equal to the deaths) had not recruits been regularly drawn from the mainland and other islands every season when the ships came up.
[103] This evil of habitual and gross intoxication under Russian rule was not characteristic of these islands alone. It was universal throughout Alaska. Sir George Simpson, speaking of the subject when in Sitka, April, 1842, says: “Some reformation certainly was wanted in this respect, for of all the drunken as well as of all the dirty places that I had visited, New Archangel (Sitka) was the worst. On the holidays in particular, of which, Sundays included, there are one hundred and sixty-five in the year, men, women, and even children were to be seen staggering about in all directions.”—Simpson: Journey Around the World, 1841-42, p. 88.
[104] I was told by a very bright Russian, who spent a season here, 1871-72, as special agent of the Treasury Department, that the Aleutian ancestors of these people when they were converted and baptized into the Greek Catholic Church received their names, brand new, from the fertile brains of priests, who, after exhausting the common run of Muscovitic titles, such as our Smiths and Joneses, were compelled to fall back upon some personal characteristics of the new claimant for civilized nomenclature. Thus we have to-day on the Seal Islands a “Stepan Bayloglazov,” or, “Son of a White Eye,” “Oseep Baizyahzeekov,” or “Son of Man without a Tongue.” A number of the old Russian governors and admirals of the imperial navy are represented here by their family names, though I do not think, from my full acquaintance with the namesakes, that the distinguished owners in the first place had anything to do with their physical embodiment on the Pribylov Islands.
[105] Living as the Seal-islanders do, and doing what they do, the seal’s life is naturally their great study and objective point. It nourishes and sustains them. Without it they say they could not live, and they tell the truth. Hence, their attention to the few simple requirements of the law, so wise in its provisions, is not forced or constrained, but is continuous. Self-interest in this respect appeals to them keenly and eloquently. They know everything that is done and everything that is said by anybody and by everybody in their little community. Every seal-drive that is made, and every skin that is taken, is recorded and accounted for by them to their chiefs and their church, when they make up their tithing-roll at the close of each day’s labor. Nothing can come to the islands, by day or by night, without being seen by them and spoken of. I regard the presence of these people on the islands at the transfer, and their subsequent retention and entailment in connection with the seal-business, as an exceedingly good piece of fortune, alike advantageous to the Government, to the company, and to themselves.
| 37 | first-class shares, at | $451 22 each. |
| 23 | second-class shares, at | 406 08 each. |
| 4 | third-class shares, at | 360 97 each. |
| 10 | fourth-class shares, at | 315 85 each. |
These shares do not represent more than fifty-six able-bodied men.
In August, 1873, while on St. George Island, I was present at a similar division, under similar circumstances, which caused them to divide among themselves the proceeds of their work in taking and skinning twenty-five thousand seals, at forty cents a skin, $10,000. They made the following subdivision:
| Per share. | ||
| 17 | shares each, 961 skins | $384 40 |
| 2 | shares each, 935 skins | 374 00 |
| 3 | shares each, 821 skins | 328 40 |
| 1 | share each, 820 skins | 328 00 |
| 3 | shares each, 770 skins | 308 00 |
| 3 | shares each, 400 skins | 160 00 |
These twenty-nine shares referred to, as stated above, represent only twenty-five able-bodied men; two of them were women. This method of division as above given is the result of their own choice. It is an impossible thing for the company to decide their relative merits as workmen on the ground, so they have wisely turned its entire discussion over to them. Whatever they do they must agree to—whatever the company might do they possibly and probably would never clearly understand, and hence dissatisfaction and suspicion would inevitably arise. As it is, the whole subject is most satisfactorily settled.