Chapter IX · WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. (continued 2)

When Pribylov, in taking possession, landed on St. George a part of his little ship’s crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was uninhabited, it would be necessary to establish a colony there from which to draft laborers to do all killing, skinning, and curing of the peltries; therefore he and his associates, and his rivals after him, imported natives of Oonalashka and Atkha—passive, docile Aleutes. They founded their first village a quarter of a mile to the eastward of one of the principal rookeries on St. George, now called “Starry Arteel,” or “Old Settlement”; a village was also located at Zapadnie, and a succession of barraboras planted at Garden Cove. Then, during the following season, more men were brought up from Atkha and taken over to St. Paul, where five or six rival traders posted themselves on the north shore, near and at “Maroonitch,” and at the head of the Big Lake, among the sand-dunes there. They were then, as they are now, somewhat given to riotous living if they only had the chance, and the ruins of the Big Lake settlement are pleasantly remembered by the descendants of those pioneers to-day, on St. Paul, who take off their hats as they pass by to affectionately salute, and call the place “Vesolia Mista,” or “Jolly Spot”—the aged men telling me, in a low whisper, that “in those good old days they had plenty of rum.” But, when the pressure of competition became great, another village was located at Polavina, and still another at Zapadnie, until the activity and unscrupulous energy of all these rival settlements well-nigh drove out and eliminated the seals in 1796. Three years later the whole territory of Alaska passed into the hands of the absolute power vested in the Russian American Company. These islands were in the bill of sale, and early in 1799 the competing traders were turned off neck and heels from them, and the Pribylov group passed under the control of a single man, the iron-willed Baranov. The people on St. Paul were then all drawn together, for economy and warmth, into a single settlement at Polavina. Their life in those days must have been miserable. They were mere slaves, without the slightest redress from any insolence or injury which their masters might see fit, in petulance or brutal orgies, to inflict upon them. Here they lived and died, unnoticed and uncared for, in large barracoons half under ground and dirt-roofed, cold and filthy. Along toward the beginning or end of 1825, in order that they might reap the advantage of being located best to load and unload ships, the Polavina settlement was removed to the present village site, as indicated on the map, and the natives have lived there ever since.

On St. George the several scattered villages were abandoned, and consolidated at the existing location some years later, but for a different reason. The labor of bringing the seal-skins over to Garden Cove, which is the best and surest landing, was so great, and that of carrying them from the north shore to Zapadnie still greater, that it was decided to place the consolidated settlement at such a point between them, on the north shore, that the least trouble and exertion of conveyance would be necessary. A better place, geographically, for the business of gathering the skins and salting them down at St. George cannot be found on the island, but a poorer place for a landing it is difficult to pick out, though in this respect there is not much choice outside of Garden Cove.

Up to the time of the transfer of the territory and leasing of the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, in August, 1870, these native inhabitants all lived in huts or sod-walled and dirt-roofed houses, called “barrabkies,” partly under ground. Most of these huts were damp, dark, and exceedingly filthy: it seemed to be the policy of a short-sighted Russian management to keep them so, and to treat the natives not near so well as they treated the few hogs and dogs which they brought up there for food and for company. The use of seal-fat for fuel, caused the deposit upon everything within doors of a thick coat of greasy, black soot, strongly impregnated with a damp, moldy, and indescribably offensive odor. They found along the north shore of St. Paul and at Northeast Point, occasionally scattered pieces of drift-wood, which was used, carefully soaked anew in water if it had dried out, split into little fragments, and, trussing the blubber with it when making their fires, the combination gave rise to a roaring, spluttering blaze. If this drift-wood failed them at any time when winter came round, they were obliged to huddle together beneath skins in their cold huts, and live or die, as the case might be. But the situation to-day has changed marvellously. We see here now at St. Paul, and on St. George, in the place of the squalid, filthy habitations of the immediate past, two villages, neat, warm, and contented. Each family lives in a snug frame-dwelling; every house is lined with tarred paper, painted, furnished with a stove, with out-houses, etc., complete; streets laid out, and the foundations of these habitations regularly plotted thereon. There is a large church at St. Paul, and a less pretentious but very creditable structure of the same character on St. George; a hospital on St. Paul, with a full and complete stock of drugs, and skilled physicians on both islands to take care of the people, free of cost. There is a school-house on each island, in which teachers are also paid by the company eight months in the year, to instruct the youth, while the Russian Church is sustained entirely by the pious contributions of the natives themselves on these two islands, and sustained well by each other. There are eighty families, or eighty houses, on St. Paul, in the village, with twenty or twenty-four such houses to as many families at St. George, and eight other structures. The large warehouses and salt-sheds of the Alaska Commercial Company, built by skilful mechanics, as have been the dwellings just referred to, are also neatly painted; and, taken in combination with the other features, constitute a picture fully equal to the average presentation of any one of our small eastern towns There is no misery, no downcast, dejected, suffering humanity here to-day. These Aleutes, who enjoy as a price of their good behavior, the sole right to take and skin seals for the company, to the exclusion of all other people, are known to and by their less fortunate neighbors elsewhere in Alaska as the “Bogatskie Aloutov,” or the “rich Aleutes.” The example of the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, on both islands, from the beginning of its lease, and the course of the Treasury agents during the last eight or nine years, have been silent but powerful promoters of the welfare of these people. They have maintained perfect order; they have directed neatness, and cleanliness, and stimulated industry, such as those natives had never before dreamed of.[101] The chief source of sickness used to arise from the wretched character of the barrabkies in which they lived; but it was, at first, a very difficult matter to get frame-houses to supplant successfully the sod-walled and dirt-roofed huts of the islands.

Many experiments, however, were made, and a dozen houses built, ere the result was as good as the style of primitive housing, when it had been well done and kept in best possible repair. In such a damp climate, naturally, a strong moldy smell pervades all inclosed rooms which are not thoroughly heated and daily dried by fires; and, in the spring and fall, frost works through and drips and trickles like rain adown the walls. The present frame-houses occupied by the natives owe their dryness, their warmth, and protection from the piercing “boorgas” to the liberal use of stout tarred paper in the lining. An overpowering mustiness of the hallways, out-houses, and, in fact, every roofed-in spot, where a stove is not regularly used, even in the best-built residences, is one of the first disagreeable sensations which the new arrivals always experience when they take up their quarters here. Perhaps, if it were not for the nasal misery that floats in from the killing-grounds to the novice, this musty, moldy state of things up here would be far more acute, as an annoyance, than it is now. The greater grief seems to soon fully absorb the lesser one; at least, in my own case, I can affirm the result.

As they lived in early time, it was a physical impossibility for them to increase and multiply;[102] but, since their elevation and their sanitary advancement are so marked, it may be reasonably expected that those people for all time to come will at least hold their own, even though they do not increase to any remarkable degree. Perhaps it is better that they should not. But it is exceedingly fortunate that they do sustain themselves so as to be, as it were, a prosperous corporate factor, entitled to the exclusive privilege of labor on these islands. As an encouragement for their good behavior the Alaska Commercial Company, in pursuance of its enlightened treatment of the whole subject, so handsomely exhibited by its housing of these people, has assured them that so long as they are capable and willing to perform the labor of skinning the seal-catch every year, so long will they enjoy the sole privilege of participating in that toil and its reward. This is wise on the part of the company, and it is exceedingly happy for the people. They are, of all men, especially fitted for the work connected with the seal-business—no comment is needed—nothing better in the way of manual labor, skilled and rapid, could be rendered by any body of men, equal in numbers, living under the same circumstances, all the year round. They appear to shake off the periodic lethargy of winter and its forced inanition, to rush with the coming of summer into the severe exercise and duty of capturing, killing, and skinning the seals, with vigor and with persistent and commendable energy.

To-day only a very small proportion of the population are descendants of the pioneers who were brought here by the several Russian companies in 1787 and 1788; a colony of one hundred and thirty-seven souls, it is claimed, principally recruited at Oonalashka and Atkha.

The Aleutes on the islands as they appear to-day have been so mixed in with Russian, Koloshian, and Kamschadale blood that they present characteristics, in one way or another, of all the various races of men from the negro up to the Caucasian. The predominant features among them are small, wide-set eyes, broad and high cheek-bones, causing the jaw, which is full and square, to often appear peaked; coarse, straight, black hair, small, neatly-shaped feet and hands, together with brownish-yellow complexion. The men will average in stature five feet four or five inches; the women less in proportion, although there are exceptions to this rule among them, some being over six feet in height, and others are decided dwarfs. The manners and customs of these people to-day possess nothing in themselves of a barbarous or remarkable character aside from that which belongs to an advanced state of semi-civilization. They are exceedingly polite and civil, not only in their business with the agents of the company on the seal-islands, but among themselves, and they visit, the one with the other, freely and pleasantly, the women being great gossips; but, on the whole, their intercourse is subdued, for the simple reason that the topics of conversation are few: and, judging from their silent but unconstrained meetings, they seem to have a mutual knowledge, as if by sympathy, as to what may be occupying each other’s minds, rendering speech superfluous. It is only when under the influence of beer or strong liquor that they lose their naturally quiet and amiable disposition. They then relapse into low, drunken orgies and loud, brawling noises.[103] Having been so long under the control and influence of the Russians, they have adopted many Slavic customs, such as giving birthday-dinners, naming their children, etc. They are remarkably attached to their church, and no other form of religion could be better adapted or have a firmer hold upon the sensibilities of the people. Their inherent chastity and sobriety cannot be commended. They have long since thrown away the uncouth garments of Russian rule—those shaggy dog-skin caps, with coats half seal and half sea-lion—for a complete outfit, cap-à-pie, such as our own people buy in any furnishing house, the same boots, socks, underclothing, and clothing, with ulsters and ulsterettes; but the violence of the wind prevents their selecting the hats of our fashion and sporting fraternity. As for the women, they, too, have kept pace and even advanced to the level of the men, for in these lower races there is usually more vanity displayed by the masculine element than the feminine, according to my observation. In other words, I have noticed a greater desire among the young men than among the young women of savage and semi-civilized people to be gaily dressed, and to look fine; but the visits of the wives of our treasury officials and the company’s agents to these islands during the last ten years, bringing with them a full outfit, as ladies always do, of everything under the sun that women want to wear, has given the native female mind an undue expansion up there and stimulated it to unwonted activity. They watch the cut of the garments and borrow the patterns, and some of them are very expert dressmakers to-day. When the Russians controlled affairs, the women were the hewers of drift-wood and the drawers of water. At St. Paul there was no well of drinking-fluid about the village, nor within half a mile of the village. There was no drinking-water unless it was caught in reservoirs, and the cistern-water, owing to those particles of seal-fat soot which fall upon the roofs of the houses, is rendered undrinkable, so that the supply for the town until quite recently used to be carried by women from two little lakes at the head of the lagoon, a mile and a half as the crow flies from the village, and right under Telegraph Hill. This is quite a journey, and when it is remembered that they drink so much tea, and that water has to go with it, some idea of the labor of the old and young females can be derived from an inspection of the map. Latterly, within the last four or five years, the company have opened a spring less than half a mile from the “gorode,” which they have plumbed and regulated, so that it supplies them with water now and renders the labor next to nothing, compared with all former difficulty. But to-day, when water is wanted in the Aleutian houses at St. Paul, the man has to get it—the woman does not; he trudges out with a little wooden firkin or tub on his back and brings it to the house.

Some of the natives save their money; yet there are very few among them, perhaps not more than a dozen, who have the slightest economical tendency. What they cannot spend for luxuries, groceries, and tobacco they manage to get away with at the gaming-table. They have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they have the usual small proportion who know how to make money, and then how to spend it. A few among them who are in the habit of saving have opened a regular bank-account with the company. Some of them have to-day two or three thousand dollars saved, drawing an interest of nine per cent.

When the ships arrive and go, the severe and necessary labor of lightering their cargoes off and on from the roadsteads where they anchor is principally performed by these people, and they are paid so much a day for their labor: from fifty cents to one dollar, according to the character of the service they render. This operation, however, is much dreaded by the ship-captains and sea-going men, whose habits of discipline and automatic regularity and effect of working render them severe critics and impatient coadjutors of the natives, who, to tell the truth, hate to do anything after they have pocketed their reward for sealing; and when they do labor after this, they regard it as an act of very great condescension on their part.

As they are living to-day up there, there is no restraint, such as the presence of policemen, courts of justice, fines, etc., which we employ for the suppression of disorder and maintenance of the law in our own land. They understand that if it is necessary to make them law-abiding, and to punish crime, such officers will be among them, and hence, perhaps, is due the fact that from the time that the Alaska Commercial Company has taken charge, in 1870, there has not been one single occasion where the simplest functions of a justice of the peace would or could have been called in to settle any difficulty. This speaks eloquently for their docile nature and their amiable disposition.

These people are singularly affectionate and indulgent toward their children. There are no “bald-headed” tyrants in our homes as arbitrary and ruthless in their rule as are those snuffly babies and young children on the Seal Islands. While it is very young, the Aleut gives up everything to the caprice of his child, and never crosses its path or thwarts its desire; the “deetiah” literally take charge of the house; but as soon as these callow members of the family become strong enough to bear burdens and to labor, generally between twelve and fifteen years of age, they are then pressed into hard service relentlessly by their hitherto indulgent parents. The extremes literally meet in this application.

They have another peculiarity: when they are ill, slightly or seriously, no matter which, they maintain or affect a stolid resignation, and are patient to positive apathy. This is not due to deficiency of nervous organization, because those among them who exhibit examples of intense liveliness and nervous activity behave just as stolidly when ill as their more lymphatic townsmen do. Boys and girls, men and women, all alike, are patient and resigned when ailing and under treatment; but it is a bad feature after all, inasmuch as it is well-nigh impossible to rally a very sick man who himself has no hope, and who seems to mutely deprecate every effort to save his life. The principal cause of death among the people, by natural infirmity, on the Seal Islands is the varying forms of consumption and bronchitis, always greatly aggravated by that inherited scrofulous taint or stain of blood which was, in one way or another, flowing through the veins of their recent progenitors, both here and throughout the Aleutian Islands. There is nothing worth noticing in the line of nervous diseases, unless it be now and then the record of a case of alcoholism superinduced by excessive quass drinking. The “makoolah” intemperance among these people, which was not suppressed until 1876, was a chief factor to an immediate death of infants; for, when they were at the breast, their mothers would drink quass to intoxication, and the stomachs of newly-born Aleutes or Creoles could not stand the infliction which they received, even second-hand. Had it not been for this wretched spectacle, so often presented to my eyes in 1872-73, I should hardly have taken the active steps which I did to put the nuisance down; for it involved me, at first, in a bitter personal controversy, which, although I knew at the outset was inevitable, still it weighed nothing in the scales against the evil itself. A few febrile disorders are occurring, yet they yield readily to good treatment.

The inherent propensity of man to gamble is developed here to a very appreciable degree, but it in no way whatever suggests the strange gaming love and infatuation with which all Indians and Eskimo elsewhere of Alaska are possessed. The chief delight of men and boys in the two villages is to stand on the street corners “pitching” half-dollars. So devoted, indeed, have I found the native mind to this hap-hazard sport, that frequently I would detect groups of them standing out in pelting gales of wind and of rain, “shying” silver coins at the little dirt-driven pegs. A few of them, men and women, play cards with much skill and intelligence.

One of the peculiarities[104] of these people is that they seldom undress when they go to bed—neither the men, women, nor children; and also that at any and all hours of the night during the summer season, when I have passed in and out of the village to and from the rookeries, I always found several of the natives squatting before their house-doors or leaning against the walls, stupidly staring out into the misty darkness of the fog, or chatting one with the other over their pipes. A number of the inhabitants, by this disposition, are always up and around throughout the settlement during the entire night and day. In olden times, and even recently, these involuntary sentinels of the night have often startled the whole village by shouting at the top of their voices the pleasant and electric announcement of the “ship’s light!” or they have frozen it with superstitious horror at daybreak by then reciting some ghostly vision that had appeared to them.

The urchins play marbles, spin tops, and fly kites, intermittently, with all the feverish energy displayed by such youth of our own surroundings; they frolic at base-ball, and use “shinny” sticks with great volubility and activity. The girls are, however, much more repressed, and, though they have a few games, and play quietly with quaintly dressed dolls, yet they do not appear to be possessed of that usual feminine animation so conspicuously marked in our home-life.

The attachment which the natives have for their respective islands was well shown to me in 1874. Then a number of St. George people were taken over to St. Paul, temporarily, to do the killing incidental to a reduction of the quota of twenty-five thousand for their island and a corresponding increase at St. Paul. They became homesick immediately, and were never tired of informing the St. Paul natives that St. George was a far handsomer and more enjoyable island to live upon; that walking over the long sand reaches of “Pavel” made their legs grievously weary, and that the whole effect of this change of residence was “ochen scootchnie.” Naturally the ire of the St. Paul people rose at once, and they retorted in kind, indicating the rocky surface of St. George and its great inferiority as a seal-island. I was surprised at the genuine feeling on both sides, because, as far as I could judge from a residence on each island, it was a clear case of tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum between them as to opportunities and climate necessary for a pleasurable existence. The natives themselves are of one and common stock, though the number of Creoles on St. George is relatively much larger than on St. Paul. Consequently the tone of the St. George village is rather more sprightly and vivacious.

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.

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