Читать книгу The Native Races (Complete 5 Part Edition) - Hubert Howe Bancroft - Страница 6

Table of Contents

General Divisions—Hyperborean Nations—Aspects of Nature—Vegetation—Climate—Animals—The Eskimos—Their Country—Physical Characteristics—Dress—Dwellings—Food—Weapons—Boots—Sledges—Snow-Shoes—Government—Domestic Affairs—Amusements—Diseases—Burial—The Koniagas, their Physical and Social Condition—The Aleuts—The Thlinkeets—The Tinneh.

I shall attempt to describe the physical and mental characteristics of the Native Races of the Pacific States under seven distinctive groups; namely, I. Hyperboreans, being those nations whose territory lies north of the fifty-fifth parallel; II. Columbians, who dwell between the fifty-fifth and forty-second parallels, and whose lands to some extent are drained by the Columbia River and its tributaries; III. Californians, and the Inhabitants of the Great Basin; IV. New Mexicans, including the nations of the Colorado River and northern Mexico; V. Wild Tribes of Mexico; VI. Wild Tribes of Central America; VII. Civilized Nations of Mexico and Central America. It is my purpose, without any attempt at ethnological classification, or further comment concerning races and stocks, plainly to portray such customs and characteristics as were peculiar to each people at the time of its first intercourse with European strangers; leaving scientists to make their own deductions, and draw specific lines between linguistic and physiological families, as they may deem proper. I shall endeavor to picture these nations in their aboriginal condition, as seen by the first invaders, as described by those who beheld them in their savage grandeur, and before they were startled from their lair by the treacherous voice of civilized friendship. Now they are gone—those dusky denizens of a thousand forests—melted like hoar-frost before the rising sun of a superior intelligence; and it is only from the earliest records, from the narratives of eye witnesses, many of them rude unlettered men, trappers, sailors, and soldiers, that we are able to know them as they were. Some division of the work into parts, however arbitrary it may be, is indispensable. In dealing with Mythology, and in tracing the tortuous course of Language, boundaries will be dropped and beliefs and tongues will be followed wherever they lead; but in describing Manners and Customs, to avoid confusion, territorial divisions are necessary.

GROUPINGS AND SUBDIVISIONS.

In the groupings which I have adopted, one cluster of nations follows another in geographical succession; the dividing line not being more distinct, perhaps, than that which distinguishes some national divisions, but sufficiently marked, in mental and physical peculiarities, to entitle each group to a separate consideration.

The only distinction of race made by naturalists, upon the continents of both North and South America, until a comparatively recent period, was by segregating the first of the above named groups from all other people of both continents, and calling one Mongolians and the other Americans. A more intimate acquaintance with the nations of the North proves conclusively that one of the boldest types of the American Indian proper, the Tinneh, lies within the territory of this first group, conterminous with the Mongolian Eskimos, and crowding them down to a narrow line along the shore of the Arctic Sea. The nations of the second group, although exhibiting multitudinous variations in minor traits, are essentially one people. Between the California Diggers of the third division and the New Mexican Towns-people of the fourth, there is more diversity; and a still greater difference between the savage and civilized nations of the Mexican table-land. Any classification or division of the subject which could be made would be open to criticism. I therefore adopt the most simple practical plan, one which will present the subject most clearly to the general reader, and leave it in the best shape for purposes of theorizing and generalization.

In the first or Hyperborean group, to which this chapter is devoted, are five subdivisions, as follows: The Eskimos, commonly called Western Eskimos, who skirt the shores of the Arctic Ocean from Mackenzie River to Kotzebue Sound; the Koniagas or Southern Eskimos, who, commencing at Kotzebue Sound, cross the Kaviak Peninsula, border on Bering Sea from Norton Sound southward, and stretch over the Alaskan1 Peninsula and Koniagan Islands to the mouth of the Atna or Copper River, extending back into the interior about one hundred and fifty miles; the Aleuts, or people of the Aleutian Archipelago; the Thlinkeets, who inhabit the coast and islands between the rivers Atna and Nass; and the Tinneh, or Athabascas, occupying the territory between the above described boundaries and Hudson Bay. Each of these families is divided into nations or tribes, distinguished one from another by slight dialectic or other differences, which tribal divisions will be given in treating of the several nations respectively.

Let us first cast a glance over this broad domain, and mark those aspects of nature which exercise so powerful an influence upon the destinies of mankind. Midway between Mount St. Elias and the Arctic seaboard rise three mountain chains. One, the Rocky Mountain range, crossing from the Yukon to the Mackenzie River, deflects southward, and taking up its mighty line of march, throws a barrier between the east and the west, which extends throughout the entire length of the continent. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, interposes another called in Oregon the Cascade Range, and in California the Sierra Nevada; while from the same starting-point, the Alaskan range stretches out to the southwest along the Alaskan Peninsula, and breaks into fragments in the Aleutian Archipelago. Three noble streams, the Mackenzie, the Yukon, and the Kuskoquim, float the boats of the inland Hyperboreans and supply them with food; while from the heated waters of Japan comes a current of the sea, bathing the icy coasts with genial warmth, tempering the air, and imparting gladness to the oily watermen of the coast, to the northernmost limit of their lands. The northern border of this territory is treeless; the southern shore, absorbing more warmth and moisture from the Japan current, is fringed with dense forests; while the interior, interspersed with hills, and lakes, and woods, and grassy plains, during the short summer is clothed in luxuriant vegetation.

Notwithstanding the frowning aspect of nature, animal life in the Arctic regions is most abundant. The ocean swarms with every species of fish and sea-mammal; the land abounds in reindeer, moose, musk-oxen; in black, grizzly, and Arctic bears; in wolves, foxes, beavers, mink, ermine, martin, otters, raccoons, and water-fowl. Immense herds of buffalo roam over the bleak grassy plains of the eastern Tinneh, but seldom venture far to the west of the Rocky Mountains. Myriads of birds migrate to and fro between their breeding-places in the interior of Alaska, the open Arctic Sea, and the warmer latitudes of the south. From the Gulf of Mexico, from the islands of the Pacific, from the lakes of California, of Oregon, and of Washington they come, fluttering and feasting, to rear their young during the sparkling Arctic summer-day.

MAN AND NATURE.

The whole occupation of man throughout this region, is a struggle for life. So long as the organism is plentifully supplied with heat-producing food, all is well. Once let the internal fire go down, and all is ill. Unlike the inhabitants of equatorial latitudes, where, Eden-like, the sheltering tree drops food, and the little nourishment essential to life may be obtained by only stretching forth the hand and plucking it, the Hyperborean man must maintain a constant warfare with nature, or die. His daily food depends upon the success of his daily battle with beasts, birds, and fishes, which dispute with him possession of sea and land. Unfortunate in his search for game, or foiled in his attempt at capture, he must fast. The associate of beasts, governed by the same emergencies, preying upon animals as animals prey upon each other, the victim supplying all the necessities of the victor, occupying territory in common, both alike drawing supplies directly from the storehouse of nature—primitive man derives his very quality from the brute with which he struggles. The idiosyncrasies of the animal fasten upon him, and that upon which he feeds becomes a part of him.

Thus, in a nation of hunters inhabiting a rigorous climate, we may look for wiry, keen-scented men, who in their war upon wild beasts put forth strength and endurance in order to overtake and capture the strong; cunning is opposed by superior cunning; a stealthy watchfulness governs every movement, while the intelligence of the man contends with the instincts of the brute. Fishermen, on the other hand, who obtain their food with comparatively little effort, are more sluggish in their natures and less noble in their development. In the icy regions of the north, the animal creation supplies man with food, clothing, and caloric; with all the requisites of an existence under circumstances apparently the most adverse to comfort; and when he digs his dwelling beneath the ground, or walls out the piercing winds with snow, his ultimate is attained.

The chief differences in tribes occupying the interior and the seaboard—the elevated, treeless, grassy plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and the humid islands and shores of the great Northwest—grow out of necessities arising from their methods of procuring food. Even causes so slight as the sheltering bend of a coast-line; the guarding of a shore by islands; the breaking of a seaboard by inlets and covering of the strand with sea-weed and polyps, requiring only the labor of gathering; or the presence of a bluff coast or windy promontory, whose occupants are obliged to put forth more vigorous action for sustenance—all govern man in his development. Turn now to the most northern division of our most northern group.

THE ESKIMOS.

The Eskimos, Esquimaux, or as they call themselves, Innuit, 'the people,' from inuk, 'man,'2 occupy the Arctic seaboard from eastern Greenland along the entire continent of America, and across Bering3 Strait to the Asiatic shore. Formerly the inhabitants of our whole Hyperborean sea-coast, from the Mackenzie River to Queen Charlotte Island—the interior being entirely unknown—were denominated Eskimos, and were of supposed Asiatic origin.4 The tribes of southern Alaska were then found to differ essentially from those of the northern coast. Under the name Eskimos, therefore, I include only the Western Eskimos of certain writers, whose southern boundary terminates at Kotzebue Sound.5

ESKIMO LAND.

Eskimo-land is thinly peopled, and but little is known of tribal divisions. At the Coppermine River, the Eskimos are called Naggeuktormutes, or deer-horns; at the eastern outlet of the Mackenzie, their tribal name is Kittegarute; between the Mackenzie River and Barter Reef, they go by the name of Kangmali Innuit; at Point Barrow they call themselves Nuwungmutes; while on the Nunatok River, in the vicinity of Kotzebue Sound, they are known as Nunatangmutes. Their villages, consisting of five or six families each,6 are scattered along the coast. A village site is usually selected upon some good landing-place, where there is sufficient depth of water to float a whale. Between tribes is left a spot of unoccupied or neutral ground, upon which small parties meet during the summer for purposes of trade.7

The Eskimos are essentially a peculiar people. Their character and their condition, the one of necessity growing out of the other, are peculiar. First, it is claimed for them that they are the anomalous race of America—the only people of the new world clearly identical with any race of the old. Then they are the most littoral people in the world. The linear extent of their occupancy, all of it a narrow seaboard averaging scarcely one hundred miles in width, is estimated at not less than five thousand miles. Before them is a vast, unknown, icy ocean, upon which they scarcely dare venture beyond sight of land; behind them, hostile mountaineers ever ready to dispute encroachment. Their very mother-earth, upon whose cold bosom they have been borne, age after age through countless generations,8 is almost impenetrable, thawless ice. Their days and nights, and seasons and years, are not like those of other men. Six months of day succeed six months of night. Three months of sunless winter; three months of nightless summer; six months of glimmering twilight.

About the middle of October9 commences the long night of winter. The earth and sea put on an icy covering; beasts and birds depart for regions sheltered or more congenial; humanity huddles in subterraneous dens; all nature sinks into repose. The little heat left by the retreating sun soon radiates out into the deep blue realms of space; the temperature sinks rapidly to forty or fifty degrees below freezing; the air is hushed, the ocean calm, the sky cloudless. An awful, painful stillness pervades the dreary solitude. Not a sound is heard; the distant din of busy man, and the noiseless hum of the wilderness alike are wanting. Whispers become audible at a considerable distance, and an insupportable sense of loneliness oppresses the inexperienced visitor.10 Occasionally the aurora borealis flashes out in prismatic coruscations, throwing a brilliant arch from east to west—now in variegated oscillations, graduating through all the various tints of blue, and green, and violet, and crimson; darting, flashing, or streaming in yellow columns, upwards, downwards; now blazing steadily, now in wavy undulations, sometimes up to the very zenith; momentarily lighting up in majestic grandeur the cheerless frozen scenery, but only to fall back with exhausted force, leaving a denser obscurity. Nature's electric lantern, suspended for a time in the frosty vault of heaven;—munificent nature's fire-works; with the polar owl, the polar bear, and the polar man, spectators.

In January, the brilliancy of the stars is dimmed perceptibly at noon; in February, a golden tint rests upon the horizon at the same hour; in March, the incipient dawn broadens; in April, the dozing Eskimo rubs his eyes and crawls forth; in May, the snow begins to melt, the impatient grass and flowers arrive as it departs.11 In June, the summer has fairly come. Under the incessant rays of the never setting sun, the snow speedily disappears, the ice breaks up, the glacial earth softens for a depth of one, two, or three feet; circulation is restored to vegetation,12 which, during winter, had been stopped—if we may believe Sir John Richardson, even the largest trees freezing to the heart. Sea, and plain, and rolling steppe lay aside their seamless shroud of white, and a brilliant tint of emerald overspreads the landscape.13 All Nature, with one resounding cry, leaps up and claps her hands for joy. Flocks of birds, lured from their winter homes, fill the air with their melody; myriads of wild fowls send forth their shrill cries; the moose and the reindeer flock down from the forests;14 from the resonant sea comes the noise of spouting whales and barking seals; and this so lately dismal, cheerless region, blooms with an exhuberance of life equaled only by the shortness of its duration. And in token of a just appreciation of the Creator's goodness, this animated medley—man, and beasts, and birds, and fishes—rises up, divides, falls to, and ends in eating or in being eaten.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

The physical characteristics of the Eskimos are: a fair complexion, the skin, when free from dirt and paint, being almost white;15 a medium stature, well proportioned, thick-set, muscular, robust, active,16 with small and beautifully shaped hands and feet;17 a pyramidal head;18 a broad egg-shaped face; high rounded cheek-bones; flat nose; small oblique eyes; large mouth; teeth regular, but well worn;19 coarse black hair, closely cut upon the crown, leaving a monk-like ring around the edge,20 and a paucity of beard.21 The men frequently leave the hair in a natural state. The women of Icy Reef introduce false hair among their own, wearing the whole in two immense bows at the back of the head. At Point Barrow, they separate the hair into two parts or braids, saturating it with train-oil, and binding it into stiff bunches with strips of skin. Their lower extremities are short, so that in a sitting posture they look taller than when standing.

IMPROVEMENTS UPON NATURE.

Were these people satisfied with what nature has done for them, they would be passably good-looking. But with them as with all mankind, no matter how high the degree of intelligence and refinement attained, art must be applied to improve upon nature. The few finishing touches neglected by the Creator, man is ever ready to supply.

Arrived at the age of puberty, the great work of improvement begins. Up to this time the skin has been kept saturated in grease and filth, until the natural color is lost, and until the complexion is brought down to the Eskimo standard. Now pigments of various dye are applied, both painted outwardly and pricked into the skin; holes are cut in the face, and plugs or labrets inserted. These operations, however, attended with no little solemnity, are supposed to possess some significance other than that of mere ornament. Upon the occasion of piercing the lip, for instance, a religious feast is given.

On the northern coast the women paint the eyebrows and tattoo the chin; while the men only pierce the lower lip under one or both corners of the mouth, and insert in each aperture a double-headed sleeve-button or dumb-bell-shaped labret, of bone, ivory, shell, stone, glass, or wood. The incision when first made is about the size of a quill, but as the aspirant for improved beauty grows older, the size of the orifice is enlarged until it reaches a width of half or three quarters of an inch.22 In tattooing, the color is applied by drawing a thread under the skin, or pricking it in with a needle. Different tribes, and different ranks of the same tribe, have each their peculiar form of tattooing. The plebeian female of certain bands is permitted to adorn her chin with but one vertical line in the centre, and one parallel to it on either side, while the more fortunate noblesse mark two vertical lines from each corner of the mouth.23 A feminine cast of features, as is common with other branches of the Mongolian race, prevails in both sexes. Some travelers discover in the faces of the men a characteristic expression of ferociousness, and in those of the women, an extraordinary display of wantonness. A thick coating of filth and a strong odor of train-oil are inseparable from an Eskimo, and the fashion of labrets adds in no wise to his comeliness.24

ESKIMO DRESS.

For covering to the body, the Eskimos employ the skin of all the beasts and birds that come within their reach. Skins are prepared in the fur,25 and cut and sewed with neatness and skill. Even the intestines of seals and whales are used in the manufacture of water-proof overdresses.26 The costume for both sexes consists of long stockings or drawers, over which are breeches extending from the shoulders to below the knees; and a frock or jacket, somewhat shorter than the breeches with sleeves and hood. This garment is made whole, there being no openings except for the head and arms. The frock of the male is cut at the bottom nearly square, while that of the female reaches a little lower, and terminates before and behind in a point or scollop. The tail of some animal graces the hinder part of the male frock; the woman's has a large hood, in which she carries her infant. Otherwise both sexes dress alike; and as, when stripped of their facial decorations, their physiognomies are alike, they are not unfrequently mistaken one for the other.27 They have boots of walrus or seal skin, mittens or gloves of deer-skin, and intestine water-proofs covering the entire body. Several kinds of fur frequently enter into the composition of one garment. Thus the body of the frock, generally of reindeer-skin, may be of bird, bear, seal, mink, or squirrel skin; while the hood may be of fox-skin, the lining of hare-skin, the fringe of wolverine-skin, and the gloves of fawn-skin.28 Two suits are worn during the coldest weather; the inner one with the fur next the skin, the outer suit with the fur outward.29 Thus, with their stomachs well filled with fat, and their backs covered with furs, they bid defiance to the severest Arctic winter.30

DWELLINGS OF THE ESKIMOS.

In architecture, the Eskimo is fully equal to the emergency; building, upon a soil which yields him little or no material, three classes of dwellings. Penetrating the frozen earth, or casting around him a frozen wall, he compels the very elements from which he seeks protection to protect him. For his yourt or winter residence he digs a hole of the required dimensions, to a depth of about six feet.31 Within this excavation he erects a frame, either of wood or whalebone, lashing his timbers with thongs instead of nailing them. This frame is carried upward to a distance of two or three feet above the ground,32 when it is covered by a dome-shaped roof of poles or whale-ribs turfed and earthed over.33 In the centre of the roof is left a hole for the admission of light and the emission of smoke. In absence of fire, a translucent covering of whale-intestine confines the warmth of putrifying filth, and completes the Eskimo's sense of comfort. To gain admittance to this snug retreat, without exposing the inmates to the storms without, another and a smaller hole is dug to the same depth, a short distance from the first. From one to the other, an underground passage-way is then opened, through which entrance is made on hands and knees. The occupants descend by means of a ladder, and over the entrance a shed is erected, to protect it from the snow.34 Within the entrance is hung a deer-skin door, and anterooms are arranged in which to deposit frozen outer garments before entering the heated room. Around the sides of the dwelling, sleeping-places are marked out; for bedsteads, boards are placed upon logs one or two feet in diameter, and covered with willow branches and skins. A little heap of stones in the centre of the room, under the smoke-hole, forms the fireplace. In the corners of the room are stone lamps, which answer all domestic purposes in the absence of fire-wood.35 In the better class of buildings, the sides and floor are boarded. Supplies are kept in a store house at a little distance from the dwelling, perched upon four posts, away from the reach of the dogs, and a frame is always erected on which to hang furs and fish. Several years are sometimes occupied in building a hut.36

Mark how nature supplies this treeless coast with wood. The breaking-up of winter in the mountains of Alaska is indeed a breaking-up. The accumulated masses of ice and snow, when suddenly loosened by the incessant rays of the never-setting sun, bear away all before them. Down from the mountain-sides comes the avalanche, uprooting trees, swelling rivers, hurrying with its burden to the sea. There, casting itself into the warm ocean current, the ice soon disappears, and the driftwood which accompanied it is carried northward and thrown back upon the beach by the October winds. Thus huge forest-trees, taken up bodily, as it were, in the middle of a continent, and carried by the currents to the incredible distance, sometimes, of three thousand miles, are deposited all along the Arctic seaboard, laid at the very door of these people, a people whose store of this world's benefits is none of the most abundant.37 True, wood is not an absolute necessity with them, as many of their houses in the coldest weather have no fire; only oil-lamps being used for cooking and heating. Whale-ribs supply the place of trees for house and boat timbers, and hides are commonly used for boards. Yet a bountiful supply of wood during their long, cold, dark winter comes in no wise amiss.38 Their summer tents are made of seal or untanned deer skins with the hair outward, conical or bell-shaped, and without a smoke-hole as no fires are ever kindled within them. The wet or frozen earth is covered with a few coarse skins for a floor.39

SNOW HOUSES.

But the most unique system of architecture in America is improvised by the Eskimos during their seal-hunting expeditions upon the ice, when they occupy a veritable crystal palace fit for an Arctic fairy. On the frozen river or sea, a spot is chosen free from irregularities, and a circle of ten or fifteen feet in diameter drawn on the snow. The snow within the circle is then cut into slabs from three to four inches in thickness, their length being the depth of the snow, and these slabs are formed into a wall enclosing the circle and carried up in courses similar to those of brick or stone, terminating in a dome-shaped roof. A wedge-like slab keys the arch; and this principle in architecture may have first been known to the Assyrians, Egyptians, Chinese or Eskimos.40 Loose snow is then thrown into the crevices, which quickly congeals; an aperture is cut in the side for a door; and if the thin wall is not sufficiently translucent, a piece of ice is fitted into the side for a window. Seats, tables, couches, and even fireplaces are made with frozen snow, and covered with reindeer or seal skin. Out-houses connect with the main room, and frequently a number of dwellings are built contiguously, with a passage from one to another. These houses are comfortable and durable, resisting alike the wind and the thaw until late in the season. Care must be taken that the walls are not so thick as to make them too warm, and so cause a dripping from the interior. A square block of snow serves as a stand for the stone lamp which is their only fire.41

"The purity of the material," says Sir John Franklin, who saw them build an edifice of this kind at Coppermine River, "of which the house was framed, the elegance of its construction, and the translucency of its walls, which transmitted a very pleasant light, gave it an appearance far superior to a marble building, and one might survey it with feelings somewhat akin to those produced by the contemplation of a Grecian temple, reared by Phidias; both are triumphs of art, inimitable in their kind."42

Eskimos, fortunately, have not a dainty palate. Everything which sustains life is food for them. Their substantials comprise the flesh of land and marine animals, fish and birds; venison, and whale and seal blubber being chief. Choice dishes, tempting to the appetite, Arctic epicurean dishes, Eskimo nectar and ambrosia, are daintily prepared, hospitably placed before strangers, and eaten and drunk with avidity. Among them are: a bowl of coagulated blood, mashed cranberries with rancid train-oil, whortleberries and walrus-blubber, alternate streaks of putrid black and white whale-fat; venison steeped in seal-oil, raw deer's liver cut in small pieces and mixed with the warm half-digested contents of the animal's stomach; bowls of live maggots, a draught of warm blood from a newly killed animal.43 Fish are sometimes eaten alive. Meats are kept in seal-skin bags for over a year, decomposing meanwhile, but never becoming too rancid for our Eskimos. Their winter store of oil they secure in seal-skin bags, which are buried in the frozen ground. Charlevoix remarks that they are the only race known who prefer food raw. This, however, is not the case. They prefer their food cooked, but do not object to it raw or rotten. They are no lovers of salt.44

MIGRATIONS FOR FOOD.

In mid-winter, while the land is enveloped in darkness, the Eskimo dozes torpidly in his den. Early in September the musk-oxen and reindeer retreat southward, and the fish are confined beneath the frozen covering of the rivers. It is during the short summer, when food is abundant, that they who would not perish must lay up a supply for the winter. When spring opens, and the rivers are cleared of ice, the natives follow the fish, which at that time ascend the streams to spawn, and spear them at the falls and rapids that impede their progress. Small wooden fish are sometimes made and thrown into holes in the ice for a decoy; salmon are taken in a whalebone seine. At this season also reindeer are captured on their way to the coast, whither they resort in the spring to drop their young. Multitudes of geese, ducks, and swans visit the ocean during the same period to breed.45

August and September are the months for whales. When a whale is discovered rolling on the water, a boat starts out, and from the distance of a few feet a weapon is plunged into its blubbery carcass. The harpoons are so constructed that when this blow is given, the shaft becomes disengaged from the barbed ivory point. To this point a seal-skin buoy or bladder is attached by means of a cord. The blows are repeated; the buoys encumber the monster in diving or swimming, and the ingenious Eskimo is soon able to tow the carcass to the shore. A successful chase secures an abundance of food for the winter.46 Seals are caught during the winter, and considerable skill is required in taking them. Being a warm-blooded respiratory animal, they are obliged to have air, and in order to obtain it, while the surface of the water is undergoing the freezing process, they keep open a breathing-hole by constantly gnawing away the ice. They produce their young in March, and soon afterward the natives abandon their villages and set out on the ice in pursuit of them. Seals, like whales, are also killed with a harpoon to which is attached a bladder. The seal, when struck, may draw the float under water for a time, but is soon obliged to rise to the surface from exhaustion and for air, when he is again attacked and soon obliged to yield.

The Eskimos are no less ingenious in catching wild-fowl, which they accomplish by means of a sling or net made of woven sinews, with ivory balls attached. They also snare birds by means of whalebone nooses, round which fine gravel is scattered as a bait. They manœuvre reindeer to near the edge of a cliff, and, driving them into the sea, kill them from canoes. They also waylay them at the narrow passes, and capture them in great numbers. They construct large reindeer pounds, and set up two diverging rows of turf so as to represent men; the outer extremities of the line being sometimes two miles apart, and narrowing to a small enclosure. Into this trap the unsuspecting animals are driven, when they are easily speared.47

BEAR-HUNTING.

To overcome the formidable polar bear the natives have two strategems. One is by imitating the seal, upon which the bear principally feeds, and thereby enticing it within gunshot. Another is by bending a piece of stiff whalebone, encasing it in a ball of blubber, and freezing the ball, which then holds firm the bent whalebone. Armed with these frozen blubber balls, the natives approach their victim, and, with a discharge of arrows, open the engagement. The bear, smarting with pain, turns upon his tormentors, who, taking to their heels, drop now and then a blubber ball. Bruin, as fond of food as of revenge, pauses for a moment, hastily swallows one, then another, and another. Soon a strange sensation is felt within. The thawing blubber, melted by the heat of the animal's stomach, releases the pent-up whalebone, which, springing into place, plays havoc with the intestines, and brings the bear to a painful and ignominious end. To vegetables, the natives are rather indifferent; berries, acid sorrel leaves, and certain roots, are used as a relish. There is no native intoxicating liquor, but in eating they get gluttonously stupid.

Notwithstanding his long, frigid, biting winter, the Eskimo never suffers from the cold so long as he has an abundance of food. As we have seen, a whale or a moose supplies him with food, shelter, and raiment. With an internal fire, fed by his oily and animal food, glowing in his stomach, his blood at fever heat, he burrows comfortably in ice and snow and frozen ground, without necessity for wood or coal.48 Nor are those passions which are supposed to develop most fully under a milder temperature, wanting in the half-frozen Hyperborean.49 One of the chief difficulties of the Eskimo during the winter is to obtain water, and the women spend a large portion of their time in melting snow over oil-lamps. In the Arctic regions, eating snow is attended with serious consequences. Ice or snow, touched to the lips or tongue, blisters like caustic. Fire is obtained by striking sparks from iron pyrites with quartz. It is a singular fact that in the coldest climate inhabited by man, fire is less used than anywhere else in the world, equatorial regions perhaps excepted. Caloric for the body is supplied by food and supplemented by furs. Snow houses, from their nature, prohibit the use of fire; but cooking with the Eskimo is a luxury, not a necessity. He well understands how to utilize every part of the animals so essential to his existence. With their skins he clothes himself, makes houses, boats, and oil-bags; their flesh and fat he eats. He even devours the contents of the intestines, and with the skin makes water-proof clothing. Knives, arrow-points, house, boat, and sledge frames, fish-hooks, domestic utensils, ice-chisels, and in fact almost all their implements, are made from the horns and bones of the deer, whale, and seal. Bowstrings are made of the sinews of musk-oxen, and ropes of seal-skin.50 The Eskimo's arms are not very formidable. Backed by his ingenuity, they nevertheless prove sufficient for practical purposes; and while his neighbor possesses none better, all are on an equal footing in war. Their most powerful as well as most artistic weapon is the bow. It is made of beech or spruce, in three pieces curving in opposite directions and ingeniously bound by twisted sinews, so as to give the greatest possible strength. Richardson affirms that "in the hands of a native hunter it will propel an arrow with sufficient force to pierce the heart of a musk-ox, or break the leg of a reindeer." Arrows, as well as spears, lances, and darts, are of white spruce, and pointed with bone, ivory, flint, and slate.51 East of the Mackenzie, copper enters largely into the composition of Eskimo utensils.52 Before the introduction of iron by Europeans, stone hatchets were common.53

SLEDGES, SNOW-SHOES, AND BOATS.

The Hyperboreans surpass all American nations in their facilities for locomotion, both upon land and water. In their skin boats, the natives of the Alaskan seaboard from Point Barrow to Mount St. Elias, made long voyages, crossing the strait and sea of Bering, and held commercial intercourse with the people of Asia. Sixty miles is an ordinary day's journey for sledges, while Indians on snow-shoes have been known to run down and capture deer. Throughout this entire border, including the Aleutian Islands, boats are made wholly of the skins of seals or sea-lions, excepting the frame of wood or whale-ribs. In the interior, as well as on the coast immediately below Mount St. Elias, skin boats disappear, and canoes or wooden boats are used.

Two kinds of skin boats are employed by the natives of the Alaskan coast, a large and a small one. The former is called by the natives oomiak, and by the Russians baidar. This is a large, flat-bottomed, open boat; the skeleton of wood or whale-ribs, fastened with seal-skin thongs or whale's sinews, and covered with oiled seal or sea-lion skins, which are first sewed together and then stretched over the frame. The baidar is usually about thirty feet in length, six feet in extreme breadth, and three feet in depth. It is propelled by oars, and will carry fifteen or twenty persons, but its capacity is greatly increased by lashing inflated seal-skins to the outside. In storms at sea, two or three baidars are sometimes tied together.54 The small boat is called by the natives kyak, and by the Russians baidarka. It is constructed of the same material and in the same manner as the baidar, except that it is entirely covered with skins, top as well as bottom, save one hole left in the deck, which is filled by the navigator. After taking his seat, and thereby filling this hole, the occupant puts on a water-proof over-dress, the bottom of which is so secured round the rim of the hole that not a drop of water can penetrate it. This dress is provided with sleeves and a hood. It is securely fastened at the wrists and neck, and when the hood is drawn over the head, the boatman may bid defiance to the water. The baidarka is about sixteen feet in length, and two feet in width at the middle, tapering to a point at either end.55 It is light and strong, and when skillfully handled is considered very safe. The native of Norton Sound will twirl his kyak completely over, turn an aquatic somersault, and by the aid of his double-bladed paddle come up safely on the other side, without even losing his seat. So highly were these boats esteemed by the Russians, that they were at once universally adopted by them in navigating these waters. They were unable to invent any improvement in either of them, although they made a baidarka with two and three seats, which they employed in addition to the one-seated kyak. The Kadiak baidarka is a little shorter and wider than the Aleutian.56

Sleds, sledges, dogs, and Arctic land-boats play an important part in Eskimo economy. The Eskimo sled is framed of spruce, birch, or whalebone, strongly bound with thongs, and the runners shod with smooth strips of whale's jaw-bone. This sled is heavy, and fit only for traveling over ice or frozen snow. Indian sleds of the interior are lighter, the runners being of thin flexible boards better adapted to the inequalities of the ground. Sledges, such as are used by the voyagers of Hudson Bay, are of totally different construction. Three boards, each about one foot in width and twelve feet in length, thinned, and curved into a semicircle at one end, are placed side by side and firmly lashed together with thongs. A leathern bag or blanket of the full size of the sled is provided, in which the load is placed and lashed down with strings.57 Sleds and sledges are drawn by dogs, and they will carry a load of from a quarter to half a ton, or about one hundred pounds to each dog. The dogs of Alaska are scarcely up to the average of Arctic canine nobility.58 They are of various colors, hairy, short-legged, with large bushy tails curved over the back; they are wolfish, suspicious, yet powerful, sagacious, and docile, patiently performing an incredible amount of ill-requited labor. Dogs are harnessed to the sledge, sometimes by separate thongs at unequal distances, sometimes in pairs to a single line. They are guided by the voice accompanied by a whip, and to the best trained and most sagacious is given the longest tether, that he may act as leader. An eastern dog will carry on his back a weight of thirty pounds. The dogs of the northern coast are larger and stronger than those of the interior. Eskimo dogs are used in hunting reindeer and musk-oxen, as well as in drawing sledges.59 Those at Cape Prince of Wales appear to be of the same species as those used upon the Asiatic coast for drawing sledges.

Snow-shoes, or foot-sledges, are differently made according to the locality. In traveling over soft snow they are indispensable. They consist of an open light wooden frame, made of two smooth pieces of wood each about two inches wide and an inch thick; the inner part sometimes straight, and the outer curved out to about one foot in the widest part. They are from two to six feet in length, some oval and turned up in front, running to a point behind; others flat, and pointed at both ends, the space within the frame being filled with a network of twisted deer-sinews or fine seal-skin.60 The Hudson Bay snow-shoe is only two and a half feet in length. The Kutchin shoe is smaller than that of the Eskimo.

PROPERTY.

The merchantable wealth of the Eskimos consists of peltries, such as wolf, deer, badger, polar-bear, otter, hare, musk-rat, Arctic-fox, and seal skins; red ochre, plumbago, and iron pyrites; oil, ivory, whalebone; in short, all parts of all species of beasts, birds, and fishes that they can secure and convert into an exchangeable shape.61 The articles they most covet are tobacco, iron, and beads. They are not particularly given to strong drink. On the shore of Bering Strait the natives have constant commercial intercourse with Asia. They cross easily in their boats, carefully eluding the vigilance of the fur company. They frequently meet at the Gwosdeff Islands, where the Tschuktschi bring tobacco, iron, tame-reindeer skins, and walrus-ivory; the Eskimos giving in exchange wolf and wolverine skins, wooden dishes, seal-skins and other peltries. The Eskimos of the American coast carry on quite an extensive trade with the Indians of the interior,62 exchanging with them Asiatic merchandise for peltries. They are sharp at bargains, avaricious, totally devoid of conscience in their dealings; will sell their property thrice if possible, and, if caught, laugh it off as a joke. The rights of property are scrupulously respected among themselves, but to steal from strangers, which they practice on every occasion with considerable dexterity, is considered rather a mark of merit than otherwise. A successful thief, when a stranger is the victim, receives the applause of the entire tribe.63 Captain Kotzebue thus describes the manner of trading with the Russo-Indians of the south and of Asia.

"The stranger first comes, and lays some goods on the shore and then retires; the American then comes, looks at the things, puts as many things near them as he thinks proper to give, and then also goes away. Upon this the stranger approaches, and examines what is offered him; if he is satisfied with it, he takes the skins and leaves the goods instead; but if not, then he lets all the things lie, retires a second time, and expects an addition from the buyer." If they cannot agree, each retires with his goods.

SOCIAL ECONOMY.

Their government, if it can be called a government, is patriarchal. Now and then some ancient or able man gains an ascendency in the tribe, and overawes his fellows. Some tribes even acknowledge an hereditary chief, but his authority is nominal. He can neither exact tribute, nor govern the movements of the people. His power seems to be exercised only in treating with other tribes. Slavery in any form is unknown among them. Caste has been mentioned in connection with tattooing, but, as a rule, social distinctions do not exist.64

AMUSEMENTS.

The home of the Eskimo is a model of filth and freeness. Coyness is not one of their vices, nor is modesty ranked among their virtues. The latitude of innocency marks all their social relations; they refrain from doing in public nothing that they would do in private. Female chastity is little regarded. The Kutchins, it is said, are jealous, but treat their wives kindly; the New Caledonians are jealous, and treat them cruelly; but the philosophic Eskimos are neither jealous nor unkind. Indeed, so far are they from espionage or meanness in marital affairs, that it is the duty of the hospitable host to place at the disposal of his guest not only the house and its contents, but his wife also.65 The lot of the women is but little better than slavery. All the work, except the nobler occupations of hunting, fishing, and fighting, falls to them. The lesson of female inferiority is at an early age instilled into the mind of youth. Nevertheless, the Eskimo mother is remarkably affectionate, and fulfills her low destiny with patient kindness. Polygamy is common; every man being entitled to as many wives as he can get and maintain. On the other hand, if women are scarce, the men as easily adapt themselves to circumstances, and two of them marry one woman. Marriages are celebrated as follows: after gaining the consent of the mother, the lover presents a suit of clothes to the lady, who arrays herself therein and thenceforth is his wife.66 Dancing, accompanied by singing and violent gesticulation, is their chief amusement. In all the nations of the north, every well-regulated village aspiring to any degree of respectability has its public or town house, which among the Eskimos is called the Casine or Kashim. It consists of one large subterranean room, better built than the common dwellings, and occupying a central position, where the people congregate on feast-days.67 This house is also used as a public work-shop, where are manufactured boats, sledges, and snow-shoes. A large portion of the winter is devoted to dancing. Feasting and visiting commence in November. On festive occasions, a dim light and a strong odor are thrown over the scene by means of blubber-lamps. The dancers, who are usually young men, strip themselves to the waist, or even appear in puris naturalibus, and go through numberless burlesque imitations of birds and beasts, their gestures being accompanied by tambourine and songs. Sometimes they are fantastically arrayed in seal or deer skin pantaloons, decked with dog or wolf tails behind, and wear feathers or a colored handkerchief on the head. The ancients, seated upon benches which encircle the room, smoke, and smile approbation. The women attend with fish and berries in large wooden bowls; and, upon the opening of the performance, they are at once relieved of their contributions by the actors, who elevate the provisions successively to the four cardinal points and once to the skies above, when all partake of the feast. Then comes another dance. A monotonous refrain, accompanied by the beating of an instrument made of seal-intestines stretched over a circular frame, brings upon the ground one boy after another, until about twenty form a circle. A series of pantomimes then commences, portraying love, jealousy, hatred, and friendship. During intervals in the exercises, presents are distributed to strangers. In their national dance, one girl after another comes in turn to the centre, while the others join hands and dance and sing, not unmusically, about her. The most extravagant motions win the greatest applause.68

Among other customs of the Eskimo may be mentioned the following. Their salutations are made by rubbing noses together. No matter how oily the skin, nor how rank the odor, he who would avoid offense must submit his nose to the nose of his Hyperborean brother,69 and his face to the caressing hand of his polar friend. To convey intimations of friendship at a distance, they extend their arms, and rub and pat their breast. Upon the approach of visitors they form a circle, and sit like Turks, smoking their pipes. Men, women, and children are inordinately fond of tobacco. They swallow the smoke and revel in a temporary elysium. They are called brave, simple, kind, intelligent, happy, hospitable, respectful to the aged. They are also called cruel, ungrateful, treacherous, cunning, dolorously complaining, miserable.70 They are great mimics, and, in order to terrify strangers, they accustom themselves to the most extraordinary contortions of features and body. As a measure of intellectual capacity, it is claimed for them that they divide time into days, lunar months, seasons, and years; that they estimate accurately by the sun or stars the time of day or night; that they can count several hundred and draw maps. They also make rude drawings on bone, representing dances, deer-hunting, animals, and all the various pursuits followed by them from the cradle to the grave.

But few diseases are common to them, and a deformed person is scarcely ever seen. Cutaneous eruptions, resulting from their antipathy to water, and ophthalmia, arising from the smoke of their closed huts and the glare of sun-light upon snow and water, constitute their chief disorders.71 For protection to their eyes in hunting and fishing, they make goggles by cutting a slit in a piece of soft wood, and adjusting it to the face.

The Eskimos do not, as a rule, bury their dead; but double the body up, and place it on the side in a plank box, which is elevated three or four feet from the ground, and supported by four posts. The grave-box is often covered with painted figures of birds, fishes, and animals. Sometimes it is wrapped in skins, placed upon an elevated frame, and covered with planks, or trunks of trees, so as to protect it from wild beasts. Upon the frame or in the grave-box are deposited the arms, clothing, and sometimes the domestic utensils of the deceased. Frequent mention is made by travelers of burial places where the bodies lie exposed, with their heads placed towards the north.72

THE KONIAGAS.

The Koniagas derive their name from the inhabitants of the island of Kadiak, who, when first discovered, called themselves Kanagist.73 They were confounded by early Russian writers with the Aleuts. English ethnologists sometimes call them Southern Eskimos. From Kadiak they extend along the coast in both directions; northward across the Alaskan Peninsula to Kotzebue Sound, and eastward to Prince William Sound. The Koniagan family is divided into nations as follows: the Koniagas proper, who inhabit the Koniagan Archipelago; the Chugatshes,74 who occupy the islands and shores of Prince William Sound; the Aglegmutes, of Bristol Bay; the Keyataigmutes, who live upon the river Nushagak and the coast as far as Cape Newenham; the Agulmutes, dwelling upon the coast between the Kuskoquim and Kishunak rivers; the Kuskoquigmutes,75 occupying the banks of the river Kuskoquim; the Magemutes, in the neighborhood of Cape Romanzoff; the Kwichpagmutes, Kwichluagmutes, and Pashtoliks, on the Kwichpak, Kwickluak, and Pashtolik rivers; the Chnagmutes, near Pashtolik Bay; the Anlygmutes, of Golovnin Bay, and the Kaviaks and Malemutes, of Norton Sound.76 "All of these people," says Baron von Wrangell, "speak one language and belong to one stock."

The most populous district is the Kuskoquim Valley.77 The small islands in the vicinity of Kadiak were once well peopled; but as the Russians depopulated them, and hunters became scarce, the natives were not allowed to scatter, but were forced to congregate in towns.78 Schelikoff, the first settler on Kadiak, reported, in that and contiguous isles, thirty thousand natives. Thirty years later, Saritsheff visited the island and found but three thousand. The Chugatshes not long since lived upon the island of Kadiak, but, in consequence of dissensions with their neighbors, they were obliged to emigrate and take up their residence on the main land. They derived their manners originally from the northern nations; but, after having been driven from their ancient possessions, they made raids upon southern nations, carried off their women, and, from the connections thus formed, underwent a marked change. They now resemble the southern rather than the northern tribes. The Kadiaks, Chugatshes, Kuskoquims, and adjacent tribes, according to their own traditions, came from the north, while the Unalaskas believe themselves to have originated in the west. The Kaviaks intermingle to a considerable extent with the Malemutes, and the two are often taken for one people; but their dialects are quite distinct.

LAND OF THE KONIAGAS.

The country of the Koniagas is a rugged wilderness, into many parts of which no white man has ever penetrated. Mountainous forests, glacial cañons, down which flow innumerable torrents, hills interspersed with lakes and marshy plains; ice-clad in winter, covered with luxuriant vegetation in summer. Some sheltered inlets absorb an undue proportion of oceanic warmth. Thus the name Aglegmutes signifies the inhabitants of a warm climate.

Travelers report chiefs among the Koniagas seven feet in height, but in general they are of medium stature.79 Their complexion may be a shade darker than that of the Eskimos of the northern coast, but it is still very light.80 The Chugatshes are remarkable for their large heads, short necks, broad faces, and small eyes. Holmberg claims for the Koniagas a peculiar formation of the skull; the back, as he says, being not arched but flat. They pierce the septum of the nose and the under lip, and in the apertures wear ornaments of various materials; the most highly prized being of shell or of amber. It is said that at times amber is thrown up in large quantities by the ocean, on the south side of Kadiak, generally after a heavy earthquake, and that at such times it forms an important article of commerce with the natives. The more the female chin is riddled with holes, the greater the respectability. Two ornaments are usually worn, but by very aristocratic ladies as many as six.81 Their favorite colors in face-painting are red and blue, though black and leaden colors are common.82 Young Kadiak wives secure the affectionate admiration of their husbands by tattooing the breast and adorning the face with black lines; while the Kuskoquim women sew into their chin two parallel blue lines. The hair is worn long by men as well as women. On state occasions, it is elaborately dressed; first saturated in train-oil, then powdered with red clay or oxide of iron, and finished off with a shower of white feathers. Both sexes wear beads wherever they can find a place for them, round the neck, wrists, and ankles, besides making a multitude of holes for them in the ears, nose, and chin. Into these holes they will also insert buttons, nails, or any European trinket which falls into their possession.83

KADIAK AND KUSKOQUIM DRESS.

The aboriginal dress of a wealthy Kadiak was a bird-skin parka, or shirt, fringed at the top and bottom, with long wide sleeves out of which the wearer slipped his arms in an emergency. This garment was neatly sewed with bird-bone needles, and a hundred skins were sometimes used in the making of a single parka. It was worn with the feathers outside during the day, and inside during the night. Round the waist was fastened an embroidered girdle, and over all, in wet weather, was worn an intestine water-proof coat. The Kadiak breeches and stockings were of otter or other skins, and the boots, when any were worn, were of seal-neck leather, with whale-skin soles. The Russians in a measure prohibited the use of furs among the natives, compelling them to purchase woolen goods from the company, and deliver up all their peltries. The parkas and stockings of the Kuskoquims are of reindeer-skin, covered with embroidery, and trimmed with valuable furs. They also make stockings of swamp grass, and cloaks of sturgeon-skin. The Malemute and Kaviak dress is similar to that of the northern Eskimo.84

The Chugatshes, men, women, and children, dress alike in a close fur frock, or robe, reaching sometimes to the knees, but generally to the ankles. Their feet and legs are commonly bare, notwithstanding the high latitude in which they live; but they sometimes wear skin stockings and mittens. They make a truncated conic hat of straw or wood, in whimsical representation of the head of some fish or bird, and garnished with colors.85

DWELLINGS AND FOOD OF THE KONIAGAS.

The Koniagas build two kinds of houses; one a large, winter village residence, called by the Russians barabara, and the other a summer hunting-hut, placed usually upon the banks of a stream whence they draw food. Their winter houses are very large, accommodating three or four families each. They are constructed by digging a square space of the required area to a depth of two feet, placing a post, four feet high above the surface of the ground, at every corner, and roofing the space over to constitute a main hall, where eating is done, filth deposited, and boats built. The sides are of planks, and the roof of boards, poles, or whale-ribs, thickly covered with grass. In the roof is a smoke-hole, and on the eastern side a door-hole about three feet square, through which entrance is made on hands and knees, and which is protected by a seal or other skin. Under the opening in the roof, a hole is dug for fire; and round the sides of the room, tomb-like excavations are made, or boards put up, for sleeping-places, where the occupant reposes on his back with his knees drawn up to the chin. Adjoining rooms are sometimes made, with low underground passages leading off from the main hall. The walls are adorned with implements of the chase and bags of winter food; the latter of which, being in every stage of decay, emits an odor most offensive to unhabituated nostrils. The ground is carpeted with straw. When the smoke-hole is covered by an intestine window, the dwellings of the Koniagas are exceedingly warm, and neither fire nor clothing is required.86 The kashim, or public house of the Koniagas, is built like their dwellings, and is capable of accommodating three or four hundred people.87 Huts are built by earthing over sticks placed in roof-shape; also by erecting a frame of poles, and covering it with bark or skins.

The Koniagas will eat any digestible substance in nature except pork; from which fact Kingsborough might have proven incontestably a Jewish origin. I should rather give them swinish affinities, and see in this singularity a hesitancy to feed upon the only animal, except themselves, which eats with equal avidity bear's excrements, carrion birds, maggoty fish, and rotten sea-animals.88 When a whale is taken, it is literally stripped of everything to the bare bones, and these also are used for building huts and boats.89 These people can dispose of enormous quantities of food; or, if necessary, they can go a long time without eating.90 Before the introduction of intoxicating drinks by white men, they made a fermented liquor from the juice of raspberries and blueberries. Tobacco is in general use, but chewing and snuffing are more frequent than smoking. Salmon are very plentiful in the vicinity of Kadiak, and form one of the chief articles of diet. During their periodical ascension of the rivers, they are taken in great quantities by means of a pole pointed with bone or iron. Salmon are also taken in nets made of whale-sinews. Codfish are caught with a bone hook. Whales approach the coast of Kadiak in June, when the inhabitants pursue them in baidarkas. Their whale-lance is about six feet in length, and pointed with a stone upon which is engraved the owner's mark. This point separates from the handle and is left in the whale's flesh, so that when the body is thrown dead upon the beach, the whaler proves his property by his lance-point. Many superstitions are mentioned in connection with the whale-fishery. When a whaler dies, the body is cut into small pieces and distributed among his fellow-craftsmen, each of whom, after rubbing the point of his lance upon it, dries and preserves his piece as a sort of talisman. Or the body is placed in a distant cave, where, before setting out upon a chase, the whalers all congregate, take it out, carry it to a stream, immerse it and then drink of the water. During the season, whalers bear a charmed existence. No one may eat out of the same dish with them, nor even approach them. When the season is over, they hide their weapons in the mountains.

In May, the Koniagas set out in two-oared baidarkas for distant islands, in search of sea-otter. As success requires a smooth sea, they can hunt them only during the months of May and June, taking them in the manner following. Fifty or one hundred boats proceed slowly through the water, so closely together that it is impossible for an otter to escape between them. As soon as the animal is discovered, the signal is given, the area within which he must necessarily rise to the surface for air, is surrounded by a dozen boats, and when he appears upon the surface he is filled with arrows. Seals are hunted with spears ten or twelve feet in length, upon the end of which is fastened an inflated bladder, in order to float the animal when dead.

THE KUSKOKWIGMUTES AND MALEMUTES.

The Kuskokwigmutes are less nomadic than their neighbors; being housed in permanent settlements during the winter, although in summer they are obliged to scatter in various directions in quest of food. Every morning before break of day, during the hunting-season, a boy lights the oil-lamps in all the huts of the village, when the women rise and prepare the food. The men, excepting old men and boys, all sleep in the kashim, whither they retire at sunset. In the morning they are aroused by the appearance of the shamán, arrayed in his sacerdotal robes, and beating his sacred drum. After morning worship, the women carry breakfast to their husbands in the kashim. At day-break the men depart for their hunting or fishing, and when they return, immediately repair to the kashim, leaving the women to unload and take care of the products of the day's work. During the hunting-season the men visit their wives only during the night, returning to the kashim before daylight.

The Malemutes leave their villages upon the coast regularly in February, and, with their families, resort to the mountains, where they follow the deer until snow melts, and then return to catch water-fowl and herring, and gather eggs upon the cliffs and promontories of the coast and islands. In July is their salmon feast. The fawns of reindeer are caught upon the hills by the women in August, either by chasing them down or by snaring them. Deer are stalked, noosed in snares, or driven into enclosures, where they are easily killed. At Kadiak, hunting begins in February, and in April they visit the smaller islands for sea-otter, seals, sea-lions, and eggs. Their whale and other fisheries commence in June and continue till October, at which time they abandon work and give themselves up to festivities. The seal is highly prized by them for its skin, blubber, and oil. One method of catching seals illustrates their ingenuity. Taking an air-tight seal-skin, they blow it up like a bladder, fasten to it a long line, and, concealing themselves behind the rocks, they throw their imitation seal among the live ones and draw it slowly to the shore. The others follow, and are speared or killed with bow and arrows. Blueberries and huckleberries are gathered in quantities and dried for winter use; they are eaten mixed with seal-oil. The Koniagas are also very fond of raw reindeer-fat. They hunt with guns, and snare grouse, marten, and hares. A small white fish is taken in great quantities from holes in the ice. They are so abundant and so easily caught that the natives break off the barbs from their fish-hooks in order to facilitate their operations.

The white polar bear does not wander south of the sixty-fifth parallel, and is only found near Bering Strait. Some were found on St. Matthew Island, in Bering Sea, but were supposed to have been conveyed thither upon floating ice. The natives approach the grizzly bear with great caution. When a lair is discovered, the opening is measured, and a timber barricade constructed, with an aperture through which the bear may put his head. The Indians then quietly approach and secure their timbers against the opening of the den with stones, and throw a fire-brand into the den to arouse the animal, who thereupon puts his head out through the hole and meets with a reception which brings him to an untimely end.91

WAR, IMPLEMENTS, AND GOVERNMENT.

In former times, the Koniagas went to war behind a huge wooden shield a foot thick and twelve feet in width. It was made of three thicknesses of larch-wood, bound together with willows, and with it they covered thirty or forty lancers.92 They poisoned their arrow and lance points with a preparation of aconite, by drying and pulverizing the root, mixing the powder with water, and, when it fermented, applying it to their weapons.93 They made arrow-points of copper, obtaining a supply from the Kenai of Copper River;94 and the wood was as finely finished as if turned in a lathe.

The boats of the Koniagas are similar to those of the north, except that the bow and stem are not alike, the one turning up to a point and the other cut off square.95 Needles made of birds' bones, and thread from whale-sinews, in the hands of a Kadiak woman, produced work, "many specimens of which," says Lisiansky, "would do credit to our best seamstresses."96 They produced fire by revolving with a bow-string a hard dry stick upon a soft dry board, one end of the stick being held in a mouth-piece of bone or ivory. Their implements were few—a stone adze, a shell or flint knife, a polishing stone, and a handled tooth.97 Yet they excel in carving, and in working walrus-teeth and whalebone, the former being supplied them mostly by the Aglegmutes of the Alaskan Peninsula. The tools used in these manufactures were of stone, and the polishing tools of shell. Traces of the stone age are found in lamps, hammers and cutting instruments, wedges and hatchets. Carving is done by the men, while the women are no less skillful in sewing, basket-making, crocheting, and knitting. The women tan, and make clothing and boat-covers from skins and intestines.98 The Agulmutes are skilled in the carving of wood and ivory; the Kuskoquims excel in wood and stone carving. They make in this manner domestic utensils and vases, with grotesque representations of men, animals, and birds, in relief.

Authority is exercised only by heads of households, but chiefs may, by superior ability, acquire much influence.99 Before they became broken up and demoralized by contact with civilization, there was a marked division of communities into castes; an hereditary nobility and commonalty. In the former was embodied all authority; but the rule of American chieftains is nowhere of a very arbitrary character. Slavery existed to a limited extent, the thralls being mostly women and children. Their male prisoners of war, they either killed immediately or reserved to torture for the edification and improvement of their children.100 Upon the arrival of the Russians, the slaves then held by the natives, thinking to better their condition, left their barbaric masters and placed themselves under the protection of the new comers. The Russians accepted the trust, and set them to work. The poor creatures, unable to perform the imposed tasks, succumbed; and, as their numbers were diminished by ill treatment, their places were supplied by such of the inhabitants as had been guilty of some misdemeanor; and singularly enough, misdemeanors happened to be about in proportion to the demand for slaves.101

MORALITY OF THE KONIAGAS.

The domestic manners of the Koniagas are of the lowest order. In filth they out-do, if possible, their neighbors of the north.102 Thrown together in little bands under one roof, they have no idea of morality, and the marriage relation sits so loosely as hardly to excite jealousy in its abuse. Female chastity is deemed a thing of value only as men hold property in it. A young unmarried woman may live uncensured in the freest intercourse with the men; though, as soon as she belongs to one man, it is her duty to be true to him. Sodomy is common; the Kaviaks practice polygamy and incest; the Kadiaks cohabit promiscuously, brothers and sisters, parents and children.103 The Malemutes are content with one wife, but they have no marriage ceremony, and can put her away at pleasure. They prize boy babies, but frequently kill the girls, taking them out into the wilderness, stuffing grass into their mouth and abandoning them; yet children are highly esteemed, and the barren woman is a reproach among her people. Such persons even go so far as to make a doll or image of the offspring which they so greatly desire, and fondle it as if it were a real child.104 Two husbands are also allowed to one woman; one the chief or principal husband, and the other a deputy, who acts as husband and master of the house during the absence of the true lord; and who, upon the latter's return, not only yields to him his place, but becomes in the meantime his servant.

But the most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at woman's work, associating him only with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man, who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male wives are called achnutschik or schopans.105

KONIAGAN SWEAT-HOUSES.

A most cruel superstition is enforced upon maidens at the age of puberty; the victim being confined for six months in a hut built for the purpose, apart from the others, and so small that the poor inmate cannot straighten her back while upon her knees. During the six months following, she is allowed a room a little larger, but is still permitted no intercourse with any one. Daughters of principal men obtain the right of access to the kashim by undergoing a ceremonial yielding up of their virginity to the shamán.106 Marriage ceremonies are few, and marriage engagements peculiar. The consent of the father of the intended bride being obtained, the aspirant for nuptial honors brings wood and builds a fire in the bath-room; after which, he and the father take a bath together. The relatives meanwhile congregate, a feast is held, presents are made, the bridegroom takes the name of the bride's father, the couple are escorted to a heated vapor-bath and there left together. Although extremely filthy in their persons and habits, all Indians attach great importance to their sweat-baths. This peculiar institution extends through most of the nations of our territory, from Alaska to Mexico, with wonderful uniformity. Frequently one of the side subterranean apartments which open off from the main hall, is devoted to the purposes of a sweat-house. Into one of these caverns a Kadiak will enter stripped. Steam is generated by throwing water upon heated stones. After sweltering for a time in the confined and heated atmosphere, and while yet in a profuse perspiration, the bather rushes out and plunges into the nearest stream or into the sea, frequently having to break the ice before being able to finish his bath. Sometimes all the occupants of the house join in a bath. They then clear the floor of the main room from obstructions, and build a hot fire under the smoke-hole. When the fire is reduced to coals, a covering is placed over the smoke-hole, and the bathers proceed to wash themselves in a certain liquid, which is carefully saved for this and other cleansing purposes, and also for tanning. The alkali of the fluid combines with the grease upon their persons, and thus a lather is formed which removes dirt as effectually as soap would. They then wash in water, wrap themselves in deer-skins, and repose upon shelves until the lassitude occasioned by perspiration passes away.

Festivals of various kinds are held; as, when one village is desirous of extending hospitality to another village, or when an individual becomes ambitious of popularity, a feast is given. A ceremonial banquet takes place a year after the death of a relative; or an entertainment may be announced as a reparation for an injury done to one's neighbor. At some of these feasts only men dance, and at others the women join. Upon these occasions, presents are exchanged, and the festivities sometimes continue for several days. The men appear upon the scene nearly or quite naked, with painted faces, and the hair fantastically decorated with feathers, dancing to the music of the tambourine, sometimes accompanied by sham fights and warlike songs. Their faces are marked or fantastically painted, and they hold a knife or lance in one hand and a rattle in the other. The women dance by simply hopping forward and backward upon their toes.107 A visitor, upon entering a dwelling, is presented with a cup of cold water; afterward, fish or flesh is set before him, and it is expected that he will leave nothing uneaten. The more he eats, the greater the honor to the host; and, if it be impossible to eat all that is given him, he must take away with him whatever remains. After eating, he is conducted to a hot bath and regaled with a drink of melted fat.

Sagoskin assisted at a ceremony which is celebrated annually about the first of January at all the villages on the coast. It is called the festival of the immersion of the bladders in the sea. More than a hundred bladders, taken only from animals which have been killed with arrows, and decorated with fantastic paintings, are hung upon a cord stretched horizontally along the wall of the kashim. Four birds carved from wood, a screech-owl with the head of a man, a sea-gull, and two partridges, are so disposed that they can be moved by strings artfully arranged; the owl flutters his wings and moves his head; the gull strikes the boards with his beak as if he were catching fish, and the partridges commence to peck each other. Lastly, a stake enveloped in straw is placed in the centre of the fire-place. Men and women dance before these effigies in honor of Jug-jak, the spirit of the sea. Every time the dancing ceases, one of the assistants lights some straw, burning it like incense before the birds and the bladders. The principal ceremony of the feast consists, as its name indicates, in the immersion of the bladders in the sea. It was impossible to discover the origin of this custom; the only answer given to questions was, that their ancestors had done so before them.

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE KONIAGAS.

The shamán, or medicine-man of the Koniagas, is the spiritual and temporal doctor of the tribe; wizard, sorcerer, priest, or physician, as necessity demands. In the execution of his offices, the shamán has several assistants, male and female, sages and disciples; the first in rank being called kaseks, whose duty it is to superintend festivals and teach the children to dance. When a person falls sick, some evil spirit is supposed to have taken possession of him, and it is the business of the shamán to exorcise that spirit, to combat and drive it out of the man. To this end, armed with a magic tambourine, he places himself near the patient and mutters his incantations. A female assistant accompanies him with groans and growls. Should this prove ineffectual, the shamán approaches the bed and throws himself upon the person of the sufferer; then, seizing the demon, he struggles with it, overpowers and casts it out, while the assistants cry, "He is gone! he is gone!" If the patient recovers, the physician is paid, otherwise he receives nothing.108 Colds, consumption, rheumatism, itch, boils, ulcers, syphilis, are among their most common diseases. Blood-letting is commonly resorted to as a curative, and except in extreme cases the shamán is not called. The Koniagas bleed one another by piercing the arm with a needle, and then cutting away the flesh above the needle with a flint or copper instrument. Beaver's oil is said to relieve their rheumatism.

"The Kadiak people," says Lisiansky, "seem more attached to their dead than to their living." In token of their grief, surviving friends cut the hair, blacken the face with soot, and the ancient custom was to remain in mourning for a year. No work may be done for twenty days, but after the fifth day the mourner may bathe. Immediately after death, the body is arrayed in its best apparel, or wrapped with moss in seal or sea-lion skins, and placed in the kashim, or left in the house in which the person died, where it remains for a time in state. The body, with the arms and implements of the deceased, is then buried. It was not unfrequent in former times to sacrifice a slave upon such an occasion. The grave is covered over with blocks of wood and large stones.109 A mother, upon the death of a child, retires for a time from the camp; a husband or wife withdraws and joins another tribe.110

The character of the Koniagas may be drawn as peaceable, industrious, serviceable to Europeans, adapted to labor and commerce rather than to war and hunting. They are not more superstitious than civilized nations; and their immorality, though to a stranger most rank, is not to them of that socially criminal sort which loves darkness and brings down the avenger. In their own eyes, their abhorrent practices are as sinless as the ordinary, openly conducted avocations of any community are to the members thereof.

THE ALEUTS.

The Aleuts are the inhabitants of the Aleutian Archipelago. The origin of the word is unknown;111 the original name being Kagataya Koung'ns, or 'men of the east,' indicating an American origin.112 The nation consists of two tribes speaking different dialects; the Unalaskans, occupying the south-western portion of the Alaskan Peninsula, the Shumagin Islands, and the Fox Islands; and the Atkhas, inhabiting the Andreanovski, Rat, and Near Islands. Migrations and intermixtures with the Russians have, however, nearly obliterated original distinctions.

The earliest information concerning the Aleutian Islanders was obtained by Michael Nevodtsikoff, who sailed from Kamchatka in 1745. Other Russian voyagers immediately followed, attracted thither in search of sea-animal skins, which at that time were very plentiful.113 Tribute was levied upon the islanders by the Russians, and a system of cruelty commenced which soon reduced the natives from ten thousand to but little more than one thousand.

The Aleuts, to Langsdorff, "appear to be a sort of middle race between the mongrel Tartars and the North Americans." John Ledyard, who visited Unalaska with Captain Cook, saw "two different kinds of people; the one we knew to be the aborigines of America, while we supposed the others to have come from the opposite coasts of Asia."114 Their features are strongly marked, and those who saw them as they originally existed, were impressed with the intelligent and benevolent expression of their faces.115 They have an abundance of lank hair, which they cut with flints—the men from the crown, and the women in front.116 Both sexes undergo the usual face-painting and ornamentations. They extend their nostrils by means of a bow-cylinder. The men wear a bone about the size of a quill in the nose, and the women insert pieces of bone in the under lip.117 Their legs are bowed, from spending so much of their time in boats; they frequently sitting in them fifteen or twenty hours at a time. Their figure is awkward and uncouth, yet robust, active, capable of carrying heavy burdens and undergoing great fatigue.118

ALEUTIAN HAT AND HABITATION.

The hat of the Aleut is the most peculiar part of his dress. It consists of a helmet-shaped crown of wood or leather, with an exceedingly long brim in front, so as to protect the eyes from the sun's reflection upon the water and snow. Upon the apex is a small carving, down the back part hang the beards of sea-lions, while carved strips of bone and paint ornament the whole. This hat also serves as a shield against arrows. The Fox Islanders have caps of bird-skin, on which are left the bright-colored feathers, wings, and tail.119 As a rule, the men adopt bird-skin clothing, and the women furs, the latter highly ornamented with beads and fringes.120

The habitations of the Fox Islanders are called Ullaa, and consist of immense holes from one to three hundred feet in length, and from twenty to thirty feet wide. They are covered with poles and earthed over, leaving several openings at the top through which descent is made by ladders. The interior is partitioned by stakes, and three hundred people sometimes occupy one of these places in common. They have no fire-place, since lamps hollowed from flat stones answer every purpose for cooking and light.121 A boat turned bottom upward is the summer house of the Aleut.122

Raw seal and sea-otter, whale and sea-lion blubber, fish, roots, and berries are staple articles of food among the Aleuts. To procure vegetable food is too much trouble. A dead, half-putrefied whale washed ashore is always the occasion of great rejoicing. From all parts the people congregate upon the shore, lay in their winter supplies, and stuff themselves until not a morsel remains. November is their best hunting-season. Whale-fishing is confined to certain families, and the spirit of the craft descends from father to son. Birds are caught in a net attached to the end of a pole; sea-otter are shot with arrows; spears, bone hooks, and nets are used in fishing.123 After the advent of the Russians, the natives were not allowed to kill fur-animals without accounting to them therefor.124

Their weapons are darts with single and double barbs, which they throw from boards; barbed, bone-pointed lances; spears, harpoons, and arrows, with bone or stone points. At their side is carried a sharp stone knife ten or twelve inches long, and for armor they wear a coat of plaited rushes, which covers the whole body.125 An Aleut bear-trap consists of a board two feet square and two inches thick, planted with barbed spikes, placed in bruin's path and covered with dust. The unsuspecting victim steps firmly upon the smooth surface offered, when his foot sinks into the dust. Maddened with pain, he puts forward another foot to assist in pulling the first away, when that too is caught. Soon all four of the feet are firmly spiked to the board; the beast rolls over on his back, and his career is soon brought to an end.

CUSTOMS OF THE ALEUTS.

Notwithstanding their peaceful character, the occupants of the several islands were almost constantly at war. Blood, the only atonement for offense, must be washed out by blood, and the line of vengeance becomes endless. At the time of discovery, the Unimak Islanders held the supremacy.

The fabrications of the Aleuts comprise household utensils of stone, bone, and wood; missiles of war and the chase; mats and baskets of grass and the roots of trees, neat and strong; bird-beak rattles, tambourines or drums, wooden hats and carved figures. From the wing-bone of the sea-gull, the women make their needles; from sinews, they make thread and cord.126 To obtain glue for mending or manufacturing purposes, they strike the nose until it bleeds.127 To kindle a fire, they make use of sulphur, in which their volcanic islands abound, and the process is very curious. First they prepare some dry grass to catch the fire; then they take two pieces of quartz, and, holding them over the grass, rub them well with native sulphur. A few feathers are scattered over the grass to catch the particles of sulphur, and, when all is ready, holding the stones over the grass, they strike them together; a flash is produced by the concussion, the sulphur ignites, and the straw blazes up.128

The Aleuts have no marriage ceremony. Every man takes as many women to wife as he can support, or rather as he can get to support him. Presents are made to the relatives of the bride, and when she ceases to possess attractions or value in the eyes of her proprietor, she is sent back to her friends. Wives are exchanged by the men, and rich women are permitted to indulge in two husbands. Male concubinage obtains throughout the Aleutian Islands, but not to the same extent as among the Koniagas.129 Mothers plunge their crying babies under water in order to quiet them. This remedy performed in winter amid broken ice, is very effectual.130

Every island, and, in the larger islands, every village, has its toyon, or chief, who decides differences, is exempt from work, is allowed a servant to row his boat, but in other respects possesses no power. The office is elective.131

The Aleuts are fond of dancing and given to hospitality. The stranger guest, as he approaches the village, is met by dancing men and dancing women, who conduct him to the house of the host, where food is given him. After supper, the dancing, now performed by naked men, continues until all are exhausted, when the hospitalities of the dwelling are placed at the disposal of the guest, and all retire.132 A religious festival used to be held in December, at which all the women of the village assembled by moonlight, and danced naked with masked faces, the men being excluded under penalty of death. The men and women of a village bathe together, in aboriginal innocency, unconscious of impropriety. They are fond of pantomimic performances; of representing in dances their myths and their legends; of acting out a chase, one assuming the part of hunter, another of a bird or beast trying to escape the snare, now succeeding, now failing—the piece ending in the transformation of a captive bird into a lovely woman, who falls exhausted into the arms of the hunter.

The dead are clothed and masked, and either placed in the cleft of a rock, or swung in a boat or cradle from a pole in the open air. They seem to guard the body as much as possible from contact with the ground.133

CHARACTER OF THE ALEUTS.

In their nature and disposition, these islanders are sluggish but strong. Their sluggishness gives to their character a gentleness and obsequiousness often remarked by travelers; while their inherent strength, when roused by brutal passions, drives them on to the greatest enormities. They are capable of enduring great fatigue, and, when roused to action by necessity, they will perform an incredible amount of work, suffering the severest cold or heat or hunger with the most stoical calmness. They are very quiet in their demeanor; sometimes sitting in companies within their dens, or on their house-tops gazing at the sea for hours, without speaking a word. It is said that formerly they were much more gay and cheerful, but that an acquaintance with civilization has been productive of the usual misfortune and misery.134

It does not appear that the Russians were behind the Spaniards in their barbarous treatment of the natives.135 Notwithstanding their interest lay in preserving life, and holding the natives in a state of serfdom as fishers and hunters, the poor people were soon swept away. Father Innocentius Veniaminoff, a Russian missionary who labored among the islanders long and faithfully, gives them the highest character for probity and propriety. Among other things, he affirms that during a residence of ten years in Unalaska, there did not occur a single fight among the natives. Proselytes were made by the Russians with the same facility as by the Spaniards. Tribute was levied by the Russians upon all the islanders, but, for three years after their conversion, neophytes were exempt; a cheap release from hateful servitude, thought the poor Aleut; and a polity which brought into the folds of the church pagan multitudes.

THE THLINKEETS.

The Thlinkeets, as they call themselves, or Kolosches, as they are designated by the Russians, inhabit the coast and islands from Mount St. Elias to the river Nass. The name Thlinkeet signifies 'man,' or 'human being.' Kolosch,136 or more properly Kaluga, is the Aleutian word for 'dish,' and was given to this people by Aleutian seal-hunters whom the Russians employed during their first occupation of the Island of the Sitkas. Perceiving a resemblance in the shape of the Thlinkeet lip-ornament, to the wooden vessels of their own country, they applied to this nation the name Kaluga, whence the Kolosches of the Russians.

Holmberg carries their boundaries down to the Columbia River; and Wrangell perceives a likeness, real or imaginary, to the Aztecs.137 Indeed the differences between the Thlinkeets and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, Washington, and Oregon, are so slight that the whole might without impropriety be called one people. The Thlinkeets have, however, some peculiarities not found elsewhere; they are a nation distinct from the Tinneh upon their eastern border, and I therefore treat of them separately.

The three families of nations already considered, namely, the Eskimos, the Koniagas, and the Aleuts, are all designated by most writers as Eskimos. Some even include the Thlinkeets, notwithstanding their physical and philological differences, which, as well as their traditions, are as broadly marked as those of nations that these same ethnologists separate into distinct families. Nomadic nations, occupying lands by a precarious tenure, with ever-changing boundaries, engaged in perpetual hostilities with conterminous tribes that frequently annihilate or absorb an entire community, so graduate into one another that the dividing line is often with difficulty determined. Thus the Thlinkeets, now almost universally held to be North American Indians proper, and distinct from the Eskimos, possess, perhaps, as many affinities to their neighbors on the north, as to those upon the south and east. The conclusion is obvious. The native races of America, by their geographical position and the climatic influences which govern them, are of necessity to a certain degree similar; while a separation into isolated communities which are acted upon by local causes, results in national or tribal distinctions. Thus the human race in America, like the human race throughout the world, is uniform in its variety, and varied in its unity.

The Thlinkeet family, commencing at the north, comprises the Ugalenzes,138 on the shore of the continent between Mount St. Elias and Copper River; the Yakutats, of Bering Bay; the Chilkats, at Lynn Canal; the Hoodnids, at Cross Sound; the Hoodsinoos, of Chatham Strait; and, following down the coast and islands, the Takoos, the Auks, the Kakas, the Sitkas,139 the Stikines,140 and the Tungass. The Sitkas on Baranoff Island141 are the dominant tribe.

Descending from the north into more genial climes, the physical type changes, and the form assumes more graceful proportions. With the expansion of nature and a freer play of physical powers, the mind expands, native character becomes intensified, instinct keener, savage nature more savage, the nobler qualities become more noble; cruelty is more cruel, torture is elevated into an art, stoicism is cultivated,142 human sacrifice and human slavery begin, and the oppression and degradation of woman is systematized. "If an original American race is accepted," says Holmberg, "the Thlinkeets must be classed with them." They claim to have migrated from the interior of the continent, opposite Queen Charlotte Island.

The Ugalenzes spend their winters at a small bay east from Kadiak, and their summers near the mouth of Copper River, where they take fish in great quantities. Their country also abounds in beaver. The Chilkats make two annual trading excursions into the interior. The Tacully tribes, the Sicannis and Nehannes, with whom the Chilkats exchange European goods for furs, will allow no white man to ascend their streams.

THLINKEET PECULIARITIES.

Naturally, the Thlinkeets are a fine race; the men better formed than the boatmen of the north;143 the women modest, fair, and handsome;144 but the latter have gone far out of their way to spoil the handiwork of nature. Not content with daubing the head and body with filthy coloring mixtures; with adorning the neck with copper-wire collars, and the face with grotesque wooden masks; with scarring their limbs and breast with keen-edged instruments; with piercing the nose and ears, and filling the apertures with bones, shells, sticks, pieces of copper, nails, or attaching to them heavy pendants, which drag down the organs and pull the features out of place;145 they appear to have taxed their inventive powers to the utmost, and with a success unsurpassed by any nation in the world, to produce a model of hideous beauty.

THLINKEET LIP-ORNAMENT.

This success is achieved in their wooden lip-ornament, the crowning glory of the Thlinkeet matron, described by a multitude of eye-witnesses; and the ceremony of its introduction may be not inappropriately termed, the baptism of the block. At the age of puberty—some say during infancy or childhood—in the under lip of all free-born female Thlinkeets,146 a slit is made parallel with the mouth, and about half an inch below it.147 If the incision is made during infancy, it is only a small hole, into which a needle of copper, a bone, or a stick is inserted, the size being increased as the child grows. If the baptism is deferred until the period when the maiden merges into womanhood, the operation is necessarily upon a larger scale, and consequently more painful.148 When the incision is made, a copper wire, or a piece of shell or wood, is introduced, which keeps the wound open and the aperture extended; and by enlarging the object and keeping up a continuous but painful strain, an artificial opening in the face is made of the required dimensions. On attaining the age of maturity, this wire or other incumbrance is removed and a block of wood inserted. This block is oval or elliptical in shape, concaved or hollowed dish-like on the sides, and grooved like the wheel of a pulley on the edge in order to keep it in place.149 The dimensions of the block are from two to six inches in length, from one to four inches in width, and about half an inch thick round the edge, and highly polished.150 Old age has little terror in the eyes of a Thlinkeet belle, for larger lip-blocks are introduced as years advance, and each enlargement adds to the lady's social status, if not to her facial charms. When the block is withdrawn, the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather, displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle.151 This custom is evidently associated in their minds with womanly modesty, for when La Pérouse asked them to remove their block, some refused; those who complied manifesting the same embarrassment shown by a European woman who uncovers her bosom. The Yakutats alone of all the Thlinkeet nation have never adopted this fashion.

DRESS OF THE THLINKEETS.

Their dress, which is made from wolf, deer, bear, or other skin, extends from the shoulder to the knee, and consists of a mantle, or cape, with sleeves, which reaches down to the waist, and to which the women attach a skirt, or gown, and the men a belt and apron. A white blanket is made from the wool of the wild sheep, embroidered with figures, and fringed with furs, all of native work. This garment is most highly prized by the men. They wear it thrown over the shoulder so as to cover the whole body.

Vancouver thus describes the dress of a chief at Lynn Canal. His "external robe was a very fine large garment, that reached from his neck down to his heels, made of wool from the mountain sheep, neatly variegated with several colors, and edged and otherwise decorated with little tufts or frogs of woolen yarn, dyed of various colors. His head-dress was made of wood, much resembling in its shape a crown, adorned with bright copper and brass plates, from whence hung a number of tails or streamers, composed of wool and fur, wrought together, dyed of various colors, and each terminating in a whole ermine skin. The whole exhibited a magnificent appearance, and indicated a taste for dress and ornament that we had not supposed the natives of these regions to possess."

The men make a wooden mask, which rests on a neckpiece, very ingeniously carved, and painted in colors, so as to represent the head of some bird or beast or mythological being. This was formerly worn in battle, probably, as La Pérouse suggests, in order to strike terror into the hearts of enemies, but is now used only on festive occasions.152

A small hat of roots and bark, woven in the shape of a truncated cone, ornamented with painted figures and pictures of animals, is worn by both sexes.153 Ordinarily, however, the men wear nothing on the head; their thick hair, greased and covered with ochre and birds' down, forming a sufficient covering. The hat is designed especially for rainy weather, as a protection to the elaborately dressed hair.154 Besides their every-day dress, they have a fantastic costume for tribal holidays.

For their winter habitations, a little back from the ocean, the Thlinkeets build substantial houses of plank or logs, sometimes of sufficient strength to serve as a fortress. They are six or eight feet in height, the base in the form of a square or parallelogram, the roof of poles placed at an angle of forty-five degrees and covered with bark. The entrance is by a small side door. The fire, which is usually kept burning night and day, occupies the centre of the room; over it is a smoke-hole of unusual size, and round the sides of the room are apartments or dens which are used as store-houses, sweat-houses, and private family rooms. The main room is very public and very filthy.155 Summer huts are light portable buildings, thrown up during hunting excursions in the interior, or on the sea-beach in the fishing-season. A frame is made of stakes driven into the ground, supporting a roof, and the whole covered with bark, or with green or dry branches, and skins or bark over all. The door is closed by bark or a curtain of skins. Each hut is the rendezvous for a small colony, frequently covering twenty or thirty persons, all under the direction of one chief.156

FOOD OF THE THLINKEETS.

The food of the Thlinkeets is derived principally from the ocean, and consists of fish, mussels, sea-weeds, and in fact whatever is left upon the beach by the ebbing tide—which at Sitka rises and falls eighteen feet twice a day—or can be caught by artificial means. Holmberg says that all but the Yakutats hate whale as the Jews hate pork. Roots, grasses, berries, and snails are among their summer luxuries. They chew a certain plant as some chew tobacco, mixing with it lime to give it a stronger effect,157 and drink whale-oil as a European drinks beer. Preferring their food cooked, they put it in a tight wicker basket, pouring in water, and throwing in heated stones, until the food is boiled.158 For winter, they dry large quantities of herring, roes, and the flesh of animals.

For catching fish, they stake the rivers, and also use a hook and line; one fisherman casting from his canoe ten or fifteen lines, with bladders for floats. For herring, they fasten to the end of a pole four or five pointed bones, and with this instrument strike into a shoal, spearing a fish on every point. They sometimes make the same instrument in the shape of a rake, and transfix the fish with the teeth. The Sitkas catch halibut with large, wooden, bone-pointed hooks.159

The arms of the Thlinkeets denote a more warlike people than any we have hitherto encountered. Bows and arrows; hatchets of flint, and of a hard green stone which cuts wood so smoothly that no marks of notches are left; great lances, six or eight varas in length, if Bodega y Quadra may be trusted, hardened in the fire or pointed with copper, or later with iron; a large, broad, double-ended dagger, or knife—are their principal weapons. The knife is their chief implement and constant companion. The handle is nearer one end than the other, so that it has a long blade and a short blade, the latter being one quarter the length of the former. The handle is covered with leather, and a strap fastens it to the hand when fighting. Both blades have leathern sheaths, one of which is suspended from the neck by a strap.160

THE THLINKEETS IN WAR.

They also encase almost the entire body in a wooden and leathern armor. Their helmets have curiously carved vizors, with grotesque representations of beings natural or supernatural, which, when brilliantly or dismally painted, and presented with proper yells, and brandishings of their ever-glittering knives, are supposed to strike terror into the heart of their enemies. They make a breast-plate of wood, and an arrow-proof coat of thin flexible strips, bound with strings like a woman's stays.161

When a Thlinkeet arms for war, he paints his face and powders his hair a brilliant red. He then ornaments his head with white eagle-feathers, a token of stern, vindictive determination. During war they pitch their camp in strong positions, and place the women on guard. Trial by combat is frequently resorted to, not only to determine private disputes, but to settle quarrels between petty tribes. In the latter case, each side chooses a champion, the warriors place themselves in battle array, the combatants armed with their favorite weapon, the dagger, and well armored, step forth and engage in fight; while the people on either side engage in song and dance during the combat. Wrangell and Laplace assert that brave warriors killed in battle are devoured by the conquerors, in the belief that the bravery of the victim thereby enters into the nature of the partaker.162

Coming from the north, the Thlinkeets are the first people of the coast who use wooden boats. They are made from a single trunk; the smaller ones about fifteen feet long, to carry from ten to twelve persons; and the larger ones, or war canoes, from fifty to seventy feet long; these will carry forty or fifty persons. They have from two and a half to three feet beam; are sharp fore and aft, and have the bow and stern raised, the former rather more than the latter. Being very light and well modeled, they can be handled with ease and celerity. Their paddles are about four feet in length, with crutch-like handles and wide, shovel-shaped blades. Boats as well as paddles are ornamented with painted figures, and the family coat-of-arms. Bodega y Quadra, in contradiction to all other authorities, describes these canoes as being built in three parts; with one hollowed piece, which forms the bottom and reaches well up the sides, and with two side planks. Having hollowed the trunk of a tree to the required depth, the Thlinkeet builders fill it with water, which they heat with hot stones to soften the wood, and in this state bend it to the desired shape. When they land, they draw their boats up on the beach, out of reach of the tide, and take great care in preserving them.163

INDUSTRIES OF THE THLINKEETS.

The Thlinkeets manifest no less ingenuity in the manufacture of domestic and other implements than in their arms. Rope they make from sea-weed, water-tight baskets and mats from withes and grass; and pipes, bowls, and figures from a dark clay. They excel in the working of stone and copper, making necklaces, bracelets, and rings; they can also forge iron. They spin thread, use the needle, and make blankets from the white native wool. They exhibit considerable skill in carving and painting, ornamenting the fronts of their houses with heraldic symbols, and allegorical and historical figures; while in front of the principal dwellings, and on their canoes, are carved parts representing the human face, the heads of crows, eagles, sea-lions, and bears.164 La Pérouse asserts that, except in agriculture, which was not entirely unknown to them, the Thlinkeets were farther advanced in industry than the South Sea Islanders.

Trade is carried on between Europeans and the interior Indians, in which no little skill is manifested. Every article which they purchase undergoes the closest scrutiny, and every slight defect, which they are sure to discover, sends down the price. In their commercial intercourse they exhibit the utmost decorum, and conduct their negotiations with the most becoming dignity. Nevertheless, for iron and beads they willingly part with anything in their possession, even their children. In the voyage of Bodega y Quadra, several young Thlinkeets thus became the property of the Spaniards, as the author piously remarks, for purposes of conversion. Sea-otter skins circulate in place of money.165

The office of chief is elective, and the extent of power wielded depends upon the ability of the ruler. In some this authority is nominal; others become great despots.166 Slavery was practiced to a considerable extent; and not only all prisoners of war were slaves, but a regular slave-trade was carried on with the south. When first known to the Russians, according to Holmberg, most of their slaves were Flatheads from Oregon. Slaves are not allowed to hold property or to marry, and when old and worthless they are killed. Kotzebue says that a rich man "purchases male and female slaves, who must labor and fish for him, and strengthen his force when he is engaged in warfare. The slaves are prisoners of war, and their descendants; the master's power over them is unlimited, and he even puts them to death without scruple. When the master dies, two slaves are murdered on his grave that he may not want attendance in the other world; these are chosen long before the event occurs, but meet the destiny that awaits them very philosophically." Simpson estimates the slaves to be one third of the entire population. Interior tribes enslave their prisoners of war, but, unlike the coast tribes, they have no hereditary slavery, nor systematic traffic in slaves.

CASTE AND CLANSHIP.

With the superior activity and intelligence of the Thlinkeets, social castes begin to appear. Besides an hereditary nobility, from which class all chiefs are chosen, the whole nation is separated into two great divisions or clans, one of which is called the Wolf, and the other the Raven. Upon their houses, boats, robes, shields, and wherever else they can find a place for it, they paint or carve their crest, an heraldic device of the beast or the bird designating the clan to which the owner belongs. The Raven trunk is again divided into sub-clans, called the Frog, the Goose, the Sea-Lion, the Owl, and the Salmon. The Wolf family comprises the Bear, Eagle, Dolphin, Shark, and Alca. In this clanship some singular social features present themselves. People are at once thrust widely apart, and yet drawn together. Tribes of the same clan may not war on each other, but at the same time members of the same clan may not marry with each other. Thus the young Wolf warrior must seek his mate among the Ravens, and, while celebrating his nuptials one day, he may be called upon the next to fight his father-in-law over some hereditary feud. Obviously this singular social fancy tends greatly to keep the various tribes of the nation at peace.167

Although the Thlinkeet women impose upon themselves the most painful and rigorous social laws, there are few savage nations in which the sex have greater influence or command greater respect. Whether it be the superiority of their intellects, their success in rendering their hideous charms available, or the cruel penances imposed upon womanhood, the truth is that not only old men, but old women, are respected. In fact, a remarkably old and ugly crone is accounted almost above nature—a sorceress. One cause of this is that they are much more modest and chaste than their northern sisters.168 As a rule, a man has but one wife; more, however, being allowable. A chief of the Nass tribe is said to have had forty.

A young girl arrived at the age of maturity is deemed unclean; and everything she comes in contact with, or looks upon, even the clear sky or pure water, is thereby rendered unpropitious to man. She is therefore thrust from the society of her fellows, and confined in a dark den as a being unfit for the sun to shine upon. There she is kept sometimes for a whole year. Langsdorff suggests that it may be during this period of confinement that the foundation of her influence is laid; that in modest reserve, and meditation, her character is strengthened, and she comes forth cleansed in mind as well as body. This infamous ordeal, coming at a most critical period, and in connection with the baptism of the block, cannot fail to exert a powerful influence upon her character.

It is a singular idea that they have of uncleanness. During all this time, according to Holmberg, only the girl's mother approaches her, and that only to place food within her reach. There she lies, wallowing in her filth, scarcely able to move. It is almost incredible that human beings can bring themselves so to distort nature. To this singular custom, as well as to that of the block, female slaves do not conform. After the girl's immurement is over, if her parents are wealthy, her old clothing is destroyed, she is washed and dressed anew, and a grand feast given in honor of the occasion.169 The natural sufferings of mothers during confinement are also aggravated by custom. At this time they too are considered unclean, and must withdraw into the forest or fields, away from all others, and take care of themselves and their offspring. After the birth of a child, the mother is locked up in a shed for ten days.

A marriage ceremony consists in the assembling of friends and distribution of presents. A newly married pair must fast for two days thereafter, in order to insure domestic felicity. After the expiration of that time they are permitted to partake of a little food, when a second two days' fast is added, after which they are allowed to come together for the first time; but the mysteries of wedlock are not fully unfolded to them until four weeks after marriage.

Very little is said by travelers regarding the bath-houses of the Thlinkeets, but I do not infer that they used them less than their neighbors. In fact, notwithstanding their filth, purgations and purifications are commenced at an early age. As soon as an infant is born, and before it has tasted food, whatever is in the stomach must be squeezed out. Mothers nurse their children from one to two and a half years. When the child is able to leave its cradle, it is bathed in the ocean every day without regard to season, and this custom is kept up by both sexes through life. Those that survive the first year of filth, and the succeeding years of applied ice water and exposure, are very justly held to be well toughened.

The Thlinkeet child is frequently given two names, one from the father's side and one from the mother's; and when a son becomes more famous than his father, the latter drops his own name, and is known only as the father of his son. Their habits of life are regular. In summer, at early dawn they put out to sea in their boats, or seek for food upon the beach, returning before noon for their first meal. A second one is taken just before night. The work is not unequally divided between the sexes, and the division is based upon the economical principles of civilized communities. The men rarely conclude a bargain without consulting their wives.

Marchand draws a revolting picture of their treatment of infants. The little bodies are so excoriated by fermented filth, and so scarred by their cradle, that they carry the marks to the grave. No wonder that when they grow up they are insensible to pain. Nor are the mothers especially given to personal cleanliness and decorum.170

Music, as well as the arts, is cultivated by the Thlinkeets, and, if we may believe Marchand, ranks with them as a social institution. "At fixed times," he says, "evening and morning, they sing in chorus, every one takes part in the concert, and from the pensive air which they assume while singing, one would imagine that the song has some deep interest for them." The men do the dancing, while the women, who are rather given to fatness and flaccidity, accompany them with song and tambourine.171

Their principal gambling game is played with thirty small sticks, of various colors, and called by divers names, as the crab, the whale, and the duck. The player shuffles together all the sticks, then counting out seven, he hides them under a bunch of moss, keeping the remainder covered at the same time. The game is to guess in which pile is the whale, and the crab, and the duck. During the progress of the game, they present a perfect picture of melancholic stoicism.172

The Thlinkeets burn their dead. An exception is made when the deceased is a shamán or a slave; the body of the former is preserved, after having been wrapped in furs, in a large wooden sarcophagus; and the latter is thrown out into the ocean or anywhere, like a beast. The ashes of the burned Thlinkeet are carefully collected in a box covered with hieroglyphic figures, and placed upon four posts. The head of a warrior killed in battle is cut off before the body is burned, and placed in a box supported by two poles over the box that holds his ashes.173 Some tribes preserve the bodies of those who die during the winter, until forced to get rid of them by the warmer weather of spring. Their grandest feasts are for the dead. Besides the funeral ceremony, which is the occasion of a festival, they hold an annual 'elevation of the dead,' at which times they erect monuments to the memory of their departed.

The shamáns possess some knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs, but the healing of the body does not constitute so important a part of their vocation as do their dealings with supernatural powers.

THLINKEET CHARACTER.

To sum up the character of the Thlinkeets, they may be called bold, brave, shrewd, intelligent, industrious, lovers of art and music, respectful to women and the aged; yet extremely cruel, scalping and maiming their prisoners out of pure wantonness, thievish, lying, and inveterate gamblers. In short they possess most of the virtues and vices incident to savagism.

THE TINNEH.

The Tinneh, the fifth and last division of our Hyperborean group, occupy the 'Great Lone Land,' between Hudson Bay and the conterminous nations already described; a land greater than the whole of the United States, and more 'lone,' excepting absolute deserts, than any part of America. White men there are scarcely any; wild men and wild beasts there are few; few dense forests, and little vegetation, although the grassy savannahs sustain droves of deer, buffalo, and other animals. The Tinneh are, next to the Eskimos, the most northern people of the continent. They inhabit the unexplored regions of Central Alaska, and thence extend eastward, their area widening towards the south to the shores of Hudson Bay. Within their domain, from the north-west to the south-east, may be drawn a straight line measuring over four thousand miles in length.

The Tinneh,174 may be divided into four great families of nations; namely, the Chepewyans, or Athabascas, living between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains; the Tacullies, or Carriers, of New Caledonia or North-western British America; the Kutchins, occupying both banks of the upper Yukon and its tributaries, from near its mouth to the Mackenzie River; and the Kenai, inhabiting the interior from the lower Yukon to Copper River.

The Chepewyan family is composed of the Northern Indians, so called by the fur-hunters at Fort Churchill as lying along the shores of Hudson Bay, directly to their north; the Copper Indians, on Coppermine River; the Horn Mountain and Beaver Indians, farther to the west; the Strong-bows, Dog-ribs, Hares, Red-knives, Sheep, Sarsis, Brush-wood, Nagailer, and Rocky-Mountain Indians, of the Mackenzie River and Rocky Mountains.175

The Tacully176 nation is divided into a multitude of petty tribes, to which different travelers give different names according to fancy. Among them the most important are the Talkotins and Chilkotins, Nateotetains and Sicannis, of the upper branches of Fraser River and vicinity. It is sufficient for our purpose, however, to treat them as one nation.

The Kutchins,177 a large and powerful nation, are composed of the following tribes. Commencing at the Mackenzie River, near its mouth, and extending westward across the mountains to and down the Yukon; the Loucheux or Quarrellers, of the Mackenzie River; the Vanta Kutchin, Natche Kutchin, and Yukuth Kutchin, of Porcupine River and neighborhood; the Tutchone Kutchin, Han Kutchin, Kutcha Kutchin, Gens de Bouleau, Gens de Milieu, Tenan Kutchin, Nuclukayettes, and Newicarguts, of the Yukon River. Their strip of territory is from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in width, lying immediately south of the Eskimos, and extending westward from the Mackenzie River about eight hundred miles.178

The Kenai179 nation includes the Ingaliks, of the Lower Yukon; the Koltchanes, of the Kuskoquim River; and to the south-eastward, the Kenais, of the Kenai Peninsula, and the Atnas, of Copper River.180

Thus we see that the Tinneh are essentially an inland people, barred out from the frozen ocean by a thin strip of Eskimo land, and barely touching the Pacific at Cook Inlet. Philologists, however, find dialectic resemblances, imaginary or real, between them and the Umpquas181 and Apaches.182

THE CHEPEWYANS.

The name Chepewyan signifies 'pointed coat,' and derives its origin from the parka, coat, or outer garment, so universally common throughout this region. It is made of several skins differently dressed and ornamented in different localities, but always cut with the skirt pointed before and behind. The Chepewyans believe that their ancestors migrated from the east, and therefore those of them who are born nearest their eastern boundary, are held in the greatest estimation. The Dog-ribs alone refer their origin to the west.

The Chepewyans are physically characterized by a long full face,183 tall slim figure;184 in complexion they are darker than coast tribes,185 and have small piercing black eyes,186 flowing hair,187 and tattooed cheeks and forehead.188 Altogether they are pronounced an inferior race.189 Into the composition of their garments enter beaver, moose, and deer-skin, dressed with and without the hair, sewed with sinews and ornamented with claws, horns, teeth, and feathers.190

THE NORTHERN INDIANS.

The Northern Indian man is master of his household.191 He marries without ceremony, and divorces his wife at his pleasure.192 A man of forty buys or fights for a spouse of twelve,193 and when tired of her whips her and sends her away. Girls on arriving at the age of womanhood must retire from the village and live for a time apart.194 The Chepewyans inhabit huts of brush and portable skin tents. They derive their origin from a dog. At one time they were so strongly imbued with respect for their canine ancestry that they entirely ceased to employ dogs in drawing their sledges, greatly to the hardship of the women upon whom this laborious task fell.

Their food consists mostly of fish and reindeer, the latter being easily taken in snares. Much of their land is barren, but with sufficient vegetation to support numerous herds of reindeer, and fish abound in their lakes and streams. Their hunting grounds are held by clans, and descend by inheritance from one generation to another, which has a salutary effect upon the preservation of game. Indian law requires the successful hunter to share the spoils of the chase with all present. When game is abundant, their tent-fires never die, but are surrounded during all hours of the day and night by young and old cooking their food.195

Superabundance of food, merchandise, or anything which they wish to preserve without the trouble of carrying it about with them while on hunting or foraging expeditions, is cached, as they term it; from the French, cacher, to conceal. Canadian fur-hunters often resorted to this artifice, but the practice was common among the natives before the advent of Europeans. A sudden necessity often arises in Indian countries for the traveler to relieve himself from burdens. This is done by digging a hole in the earth and depositing the load therein, so artfully covering it as to escape detection by the wily savages. Goods may be cached in a cave, or in the branches of a tree, or in the hollow of a log. The camp-fire is frequently built over the spot where stores have been deposited, in order that the disturbance of the surface may not be detected.

Their weapons196 and their utensils197 are of the most primitive kind—stone and bone being used in place of metal.

Their dances, which are always performed in the night, are not original, but are borrowed from the Southern and Dog-rib Indians. They consist in raising the feet alternately in quick succession, as high as possible without moving the body, to the sound of a drum or rattle.198

They never bury their dead, but leave the bodies where they fall, to be devoured by the birds and beasts of prey.199 Their religion consists chiefly in songs and speeches to these birds and beasts and to imaginary beings, for assistance in performing cures of the sick.200 Old age is treated with disrespect and neglect, one half of both sexes dying before their time for want of care. The Northern Indians are frequently at war with the Eskimos and Southern Indians, for whom they at all times entertain the most inveterate hatred. The Copper Indians, bordering on the southern boundary of the Eskimos at the Coppermine River, were originally the occupants of the territory south of Great Slave Lake.

The Dog-ribs, or Slavés as they are called by neighboring nations, are indolent, fond of amusement, but mild and hospitable. They are so debased, as savages, that the men do the laborious work, while the women employ themselves in household affairs and ornamental needlework. Young married men have been known to exhibit specimens of their wives' needle-work with pride. From their further advancement in civilization, and the tradition which they hold of having migrated from the westward, were it not that their language differs from that of contiguous tribes only in accent, they might naturally be considered of different origin. Bands of Dog-ribs meeting after a long absence greet each other with a dance, which frequently continues for two or three days. First clearing a spot of ground, they take an arrow in the right hand and a bow in the left, and turning their backs each band to the other, they approach dancing, and when close together they feign to perceive each other's presence for the first time; the bow and arrow are instantly transferred from one hand to the other, in token of their non-intention to use them against friends. They are very improvident, and frequently are driven to cannibalism and suicide.201

HARES, DOG-RIBS, AND TACULLIES.

The Hare Indians, who speak a dialect of the Tinneh scarcely to be distinguished from that of the Dog-ribs, are looked upon by their neighbors as great conjurers. The Hare and Sheep Indians look upon their women as inferior beings. From childhood they are inured to every description of drudgery, and though not treated with special cruelty, they are placed at the lowest point in the scale of humanity. The characteristic stoicism of the red race is not manifested by these tribes. Socialism is practiced to a considerable extent. The hunter is allowed only the tongue and ribs of the animal he kills, the remainder being divided among the members of the tribe.

The Hares and Dog-ribs do not cut the finger-nails of female children until four years of age, in order that they may not prove lazy; the infant is not allowed food until four days after birth, in order to accustom it to fasting in the next world.

The Sheep Indians are reported as being cannibals. The Red-knives formerly hunted reindeer and musk-oxen at the northern end of Great Bear Lake, but they were finally driven eastward by the Dog-ribs. Laws and government are unknown to the Chepewyans.202

THE TACULLIES, OR CARRIERS.

The Tacullies, or, as they were denominated by the fur-traders, 'Carriers,' are the chief tribe of New Caledonia, or North-western British America. They call themselves Tacullies, or 'men who go upon water,' as their travels from one village to another are mostly accomplished in canoes. This, with their sobriquet of 'Carriers,' clearly indicates their ruling habitudes. The men are more finely formed than the women, the latter being short, thick, and disproportionately large in their lower limbs. In their persons they are slovenly; in their dispositions, lively and contented. As they are able to procure food203 with but little labor, they are naturally indolent, but appear to be able and willing to work when occasion requires it. Their relations with white people have been for the most part amicable; they are seldom quarrelsome, though not lacking bravery. The people are called after the name of the village in which they dwell. Their primitive costume consists of hare, musk-rat, badger, and beaver skins, sometimes cut into strips an inch broad, and woven or interlaced. The nose is perforated by both sexes, the men suspending therefrom a brass, copper, or shell ornament, the women a wooden one, tipped with a bead at either end.204 Their avarice lies in the direction of hiaqua shells, which find their way up from the sea-coast through other tribes. In 1810, these beads were the circulating medium of the country, and twenty of them would buy a good beaver-skin. Their paint is made of vermilion obtained from the traders, or of a pulverized red stone mixed with grease. They are greatly addicted to gambling, and do not appear at all dejected by ill fortune, spending days and nights in the winter season at their games, frequently gambling away every rag of clothing and every trinket in their possession. They also stake parts of a garment or other article, and if losers, cut off a piece of coat-sleeve or a foot of gun-barrel. Native cooking vessels are made of bark, or of the roots or fibres of trees, woven so as to hold water, in which are placed heated stones for the purpose of cooking food.205 Polygamy is practiced, but not generally. The Tacullies are fond of their wives, performing the most of the household drudgery in order to relieve them, and consequently they are very jealous of them. But to their unmarried daughters, strange as it may seem, they allow every liberty without censure or shame. The reason which they give for this strange custom is, that the purity of their wives is thereby better preserved.206

During a portion of every year the Tacullies dwell in villages, conveniently situated for catching and drying salmon. In April they visit the lakes and take small fish; and after these fail, they return to their villages and subsist upon the fish they have dried, and upon herbs and berries. From August to October, salmon are plentiful again. Beaver are caught in nets made from strips of cariboo-skins, and also in cypress and steel traps. They are also sometimes shot with guns or with bows and arrows. Smaller game they take in various kinds of traps.

The civil polity of the Tacullies is of a very primitive character. Any person may become a miuty or chief who will occasionally provide a village feast. A malefactor may find protection from the avenger in the dwelling of a chief, so long as he is permitted to remain there, or even afterwards if he has upon his back any one of the chief's garments. Disputes are usually adjusted by some old man of the tribe. The boundaries of the territories belonging to the different villages are designated by mountains, rivers, or other natural objects, and the rights of towns, as well as of individuals, are most generally respected; but broils are constantly occasioned by murders, abduction of women, and other causes, between these separate societies.207

When seriously ill, the Carriers deem it an indispensable condition to their recovery that every secret crime should be confessed to the magician. Murder, of any but a member of the same village, is not considered a heinous offense. They at first believed reading and writing to be the exercise of magic art. The Carriers know little of medicinal herbs. Their priest or magician is also the doctor, but before commencing his operations in the sick room, he must receive a fee, which, if his efforts prove unsuccessful, he is obliged to restore. The curative process consists in singing a melancholy strain over the invalid, in which all around join. This mitigates pain, and often restores health. Their winter tenements are frequently made by opening a spot of earth to the depth of two feet, across which a ridge-pole is placed, supported at either end by posts; poles are then laid from the sides of the excavation to the ridge-pole and covered with hay. A hole is left in the top for purposes of entrance and exit, and also in order to allow the escape of smoke.208

Slavery is common with them; all who can afford it keeping slaves. They use them as beasts of burden, and treat them most inhumanly. The country of the Sicannis in the Rocky Mountains is sterile, yielding the occupants a scanty supply of food and clothing. They are nevertheless devotedly attached to their bleak land, and will fight for their rude homes with the most patriotic ardor.

NEHANNES AND TALKOTINS.

The Nehannes usually pass the summer in the vicinity of the sea-coast, and scour the interior during the winter for furs, which they obtain from inland tribes by barter or plunder, and dispose of to the European traders. It is not a little remarkable that this warlike and turbulent horde was at one time governed by a woman. Fame gives her a fair complexion, with regular features, and great intelligence. Her influence over her fiery people, it is said, was perfect; while her warriors, the terror and scourge of the surrounding country, quailed before her eye. Her word was law, and was obeyed with marvelous alacrity. Through her influence the condition of the women of her tribe was greatly raised.

Great ceremonies, cruelty, and superstition attend burning the dead, which custom obtains throughout this region,209 and, as usual in savagism, woman is the sufferer. When the father of a household dies, the entire family, or, if a chief, the tribe, are summoned to present themselves.210 Time must be given to those most distant to reach the village before the ceremony begins.211 The Talkotin wife, when all is ready, is compelled to ascend the funeral pile, throw herself upon her husband's body and there remain until nearly suffocated, when she is permitted to descend. Still she must keep her place near the burning corpse, keep it in a proper position, tend the fire, and if through pain or faintness she fails in the performance of her duties, she is held up and pressed forward by others; her cries meanwhile are drowned in wild songs, accompanied by the beating of drums.212

When the funeral pile of a Tacully is fired, the wives of the deceased, if there are more than one, are placed at the head and foot of the body. Their duty there is to publicly demonstrate their affection for the departed; which they do by resting their head upon the dead bosom, by striking in frenzied love the body, nursing and battling the fire meanwhile. And there they remain until the hair is burned from their head, until, suffocated and almost senseless, they stagger off to a little distance; then recovering, attack the corpse with new vigor, striking it first with one hand and then with the other, until the form of the beloved is reduced to ashes. Finally these ashes are gathered up, placed in sacks, and distributed one sack to each wife, whose duty it is to carry upon her person the remains of the departed for the space of two years. During this period of mourning the women are clothed in rags, kept in a kind of slavery, and not allowed to marry. Not unfrequently these poor creatures avoid their term of servitude by suicide. At the expiration of the time, a feast is given them, and they are again free. Structures are erected as repositories for the ashes of their dead,213 in which the bag or box containing the remains is placed. These grave-houses are of split boards about one inch in thickness, six feet high, and decorated with painted representations of various heavenly and earthly objects.

The Indians of the Rocky Mountains burn with the deceased all his effects, and even those of his nearest relatives, so that it not unfrequently happens that a family is reduced to absolute starvation in the dead of winter, when it is impossible to procure food. The motive assigned to this custom is, that there may be nothing left to bring the dead to remembrance.

A singular custom prevails among the Nateotetain women, which is to cut off one joint of a finger upon the death of a near relative. In consequence of this practice some old women may be seen with two joints off every finger on both hands. The men bear their sorrows more stoically, being content in such cases with shaving the head and cutting their flesh with flints.214

KUTCHIN CHARACTERISTICS.

The Kutchins are the flower of the Tinneh family. They are very numerous, numbering about twenty-two tribes. They are a more noble and manly people than either the Eskimos upon the north or the contiguous Tinneh tribes upon their own southern boundary. The finest specimens dwell on the Yukon River. The women tattoo the chin with a black pigment, and the men draw a black stripe down the forehead and nose, frequently crossing the forehead and cheeks with red lines, and streaking the chin alternately with red and black. Their features are more regular than those of their neighbors, more expressive of boldness, frankness, and candor; their foreheads higher, and their complexions lighter. The Tenan Kutchin of the Tananah River, one of the largest tribes of the Yukon Valley, are somewhat wilder and more ferocious in their appearance. The boys are precocious, and the girls marry at fifteen.215 The Kutchins of Peel River, as observed by Mr. Isbister, "are an athletic and fine-looking race; considerable above the average stature, most of them being upwards of six feet in height and remarkably well proportioned."

Their clothing is made from the skins of reindeer, dressed with the hair on; their coat cut after the fashion of the Eskimos, with skirts peaked before and behind, and elaborately trimmed with beads and dyed porcupine-quills. The Kutchins, in common with the Eskimos, are distinguished by a similarity in the costume of the sexes. Men and women wear the same description of breeches. Some of the men have a long flap attached to their deer-skin shirts, shaped like a beaver's tail, and reaching nearly to the ground.216 Of the coat, Mr. Whymper says: "If the reader will imagine a man dressed in two swallow-tailed coats, one of them worn as usual, the other covering his stomach and buttoned behind, he will get some idea of this garment." Across the shoulders and breast they wear a broad band of beads, with narrower bands round the forehead and ankles, and along the seams of their leggins. They are great traders; beads are their wealth, used in the place of money, and the rich among them literally load themselves with necklaces and strings of various patterns.217 The nose and ears are adorned with shells.218 The hair is worn in a long cue, ornamented with feathers, and bound with strings of beads and shells at the head, with flowing ends, and so saturated with grease and birds' down as to swell it sometimes to the thickness of the neck. They pay considerable attention to personal cleanliness. The Kutchins construct both permanent underground dwellings and the temporary summer-hut or tent.219

FOOD OF THE KUTCHINS.

On the Yukon, the greatest scarcity of food is in the spring. The winter's stores are exhausted, and the bright rays of the sun upon the melting snow almost blind the eyes of the deer-hunter. The most plentiful supply of game is in August, September, and October, after which the forming of ice on the rivers prevents fishing until December, when the winter traps are set. The reindeer are in good condition in August, and geese are plentiful. Salmon ascend the river in June, and are taken in great quantities until about the first of September; fish are dried or smoked without salt, for winter use. Fur-hunting begins in October; and in December, trade opens with the Eskimos, with whom furs are exchanged for oil and seal-skins.

The Kutchin of the Yukon are unacquainted with nets, but catch their fish by means of weirs or stakes planted across rivers and narrow lakes, having openings for wicker baskets, by which they intercept the fish. They hunt reindeer in the mountains and take moose-deer in snares.220

Both Kutchins and Eskimos are very jealous regarding their boundaries; but the incessant warfare which is maintained between the littoral and interior people of the northern coast near the Mackenzie river, is not maintained by the north-western tribes. One of either people, however, if found hunting out of his own territory, is very liable to be shot. Some Kutchin tribes permit the Eskimos to take the meat of the game which they kill, provided they leave the skin at the nearest village.221

The Kutchins of the Yukon River manufacture cups and pots from clay, and ornament them with crosses, dots, and lines; moulding them by hand after various patterns, first drying them in the sun and then baking them. The Eskimo lamp is also sometimes made of clay. The Tinneh make paint of pulverized colored stones or of earth, mixed with glue. The glue is made from buffalo feet and applied by a moose-hair brush.

In the manufacture of their boats the Kutchins of the Yukon use bark as a substitute for the seal-skins of the coast. They first make a light frame of willow or birch, from eight to sixteen feet in length. Then with fine spruce-fir roots they sew together strips of birch bark, cover the frame, and calk the seams with spruce gum. They are propelled by single paddles or poles. Those of the Mackenzie River are after the same pattern.222

In absence of law, murder and all other crimes are compounded for.223 A man to be well married must be either rich or strong. A good hunter, who can accumulate beads, and a good wrestler, who can win brides by force, may have from two to five wives. The women perform all domestic duties, and eat after the husband is satisfied, but the men paddle the boats, and have even been known to carry their wives ashore so that they might not wet their feet. The women carry their infants in a sort of bark saddle, fastened to their back; they bandage their feet in order to keep them small.224 Kutchin amusements are wrestling, leaping, dancing, and singing. They are great talkers, and etiquette forbids any interruption to the narrative of a new comer.225

THE TENAN KUTCHIN.

The Tenan Kutchin, 'people of the mountains,' inhabiting the country south of Fort Yukon which is drained by the river Tananah, are a wild, ungovernable horde, their territory never yet having been invaded by white people. The river upon which they dwell is supposed to take its rise near the upper Yukon. They allow no women in their deer-hunting expeditions. They smear their leggins and hair with red ochre and grease. The men part their hair in the middle and separate it into locks, which, when properly dressed, look like rolls of red mud about the size of a finger; one bunch of locks is secured in a mass which falls down the neck, by a band of dentalium shells, and two smaller rolls hang down either side of the face. After being soaked in grease and tied, the head is powdered with finely cut swan's down, which adheres to the greasy hair. The women wear few ornaments, perform more than the ordinary amount of drudgery, and are treated more like dogs than human beings. Chastity is scarcely known among them. The Kutcha Kutchin, 'people of the lowland,' are cleaner and better mannered.

The Kutchins have a singular system of totems. The whole nation is divided into three castes, called respectively Chitcheah, Tengratsey, and Natsahi, each occupying a distinct territory. Two persons of the same caste are not allowed to marry; but a man of one caste must marry a woman of another. The mother gives caste to the children, so that as the fathers die off the caste of the country constantly changes. This system operates strongly against war between tribes; as in war, it is caste against caste, and not tribe against tribe. As the father is never of the same caste as the son, who receives caste from his mother, there can never be intertribal war without ranging fathers and sons against each other. When a child is named, the father drops his former name and substitutes that of the child, so that the father receives his name from the child, and not the child from the father.

They have scarcely any government; their chiefs are elected on account of wealth or ability, and their authority is very limited.226 Their custom is to burn the dead, and enclose the ashes in a box placed upon posts; some tribes enclose the body in an elevated box without burning.227

THE KENAI.

The Kenai are a fine, manly race, in which Baer distinguishes characteristics decidedly American, and clearly distinct from the Asiatic Eskimos. One of the most powerful Kenai tribes is the Unakatanas, who dwell upon the Koyukuk River, and plant their villages along the banks of the lower Yukon for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. They are bold and ferocious, dominative even to the giving of fashion in dress.

That part of the Yukon which runs through their territory abounds with moose, which during the summer frequent the water in order to avoid the mosquitos, and as the animals are clumsy swimmers, the Indians easily capture them. Their women occupy a very inferior position, being obliged to do more drudgery and embellish their dress with fewer ornaments than those of the upper tribes. The men wear a heavy fringe of beads or shells upon their dress, equal sometimes to two hundred marten-skins in value.

At Nuklukahyet, where the Tananah River joins the Yukon, is a neutral trading-ground to which all the surrounding tribes resort in the spring for traffic. Skins are their moneyed currency, the beaver-skin being the standard; one 'made' beaver-skin represents two marten-skins.

The Ingaliks inhabiting the Yukon near its mouth call themselves Kaeyah Khatana. Their dialect is totally distinct from the Malemutes, their neighbors on the west, but shows an affinity with that of the Unakatanas to their east. Tobacco they both smoke and snuff. The smoke they swallow; snuff is drawn into the nostrils through a wooden tube. They manufacture snuff from leaf tobacco by means of a wooden mortar and pestle, and carry bone or wooden snuff-boxes. They are described by travelers as a timid, sensitive people, and remarkably honest. Ingalik women are delivered kneeling, and without pain, being seldom detained from their household duties for more than an hour. The infant is washed, greased, and fed, and is seldom weaned under two or three years. The women live longer than the men; some of them reaching sixty, while the men rarely attain more than forty-five years.

The Koltschanes, whose name in the dialect of the Kenai signifies 'guest,' and in that of the Atnas of Copper River, 'stranger,' have been charged with great cruelty, and even cannibalism, but without special foundation. Wrangell believes the Koltschanes, Atnas, and Kolosches to be one people.

The Kenai, of the Kenaian peninsula, upon recovery from dangerous illness, give a feast to those who expressed sympathy during the affliction. If a bounteous provision is made upon these occasions, a chieftainship may be obtained thereby; and although the power thus acquired does not descend to one's heir, he may be conditionally recognized as chief. Injuries are avenged by the nearest relative, but if a murder is committed by a member of another clan, all the allied families rise to avenge the wrong. When a person dies, the whole community assemble and mourn. The nearest kinsman, arrayed in his best apparel, with blackened face, his nose and head decked with eagle's feathers, leads the ceremony. All sit round a fire and howl, while the master of the lamentation recounts the notable deeds of the departed, amidst the ringing of bells, and violent stampings, and contortions of his body. The clothing is then distributed to the relatives, the body is burned, the bones collected and interred, and at the expiration of a year a feast is held to the memory of the deceased, after which it is not lawful for a relative to mention his name.

The lover, if his suit is accepted, must perform a year's service for his bride. The wooing is in this wise: early some morning he enters the abode of the fair one's father, and without speaking a word proceeds to bring water, prepare food, and to heat the bath-room. In reply to the question why he performs these services, he answers that he desires the daughter for a wife. At the expiration of the year, without further ceremony, he takes her home, with a gift; but if she is not well treated by her husband, she may return to her father, and take with her the dowry. The wealthy may have several wives, but the property of each wife is distinct. They are nomadic in their inclinations and traverse the interior to a considerable distance in pursuit of game.

The Atnas are a small tribe inhabiting the Atna or Copper River. They understand the art of working copper, and have commercial relations with surrounding tribes. In the spring, before the breaking up of ice upon the lakes and rivers, they hunt reindeer, driving them into angle-shaped wicker-work corrals, where they are killed. In the autumn another general hunt takes place, when deer are driven into lakes, and pursued and killed in boats. Their food and clothing depend entirely upon their success in these forays, as they are unable to obtain fish in sufficient quantities for their sustenance; and when unsuccessful in the chase, whole families die of starvation. Those who can afford it, keep slaves, buying them from the Koltschanes. They burn their dead, then carefully collect the ashes in a new reindeer-skin, enclose the skin in a box, and place the box on posts or in a tree. Every year they celebrate a feast in commemoration of their dead. Baer asserts that the Atnas divide the year into fifteen months, which are designated only by their numbers; ten of them belong to autumn and winter, and five to spring and summer.

TINNEH CHARACTER.

The Tinneh character, if we may accept the assertions of various travelers, visiting different parts under widely different circumstances, presents a multitude of phases. Thus it is said of the Chepewyans by Mackenzie, that they are "sober, timorous, and vagrant, with a selfish disposition which has sometimes created suspicions of their integrity. They are also of a quarrelous disposition, and are continually making complaints which they express by a constant repetition of the word edmy, 'it is hard,' in a whiny and plaintive tone of voice. So indolent that numbers perish every year from famine. Suicide is not uncommon among them." Hearne asserts that they are morose and covetous; that they have no gratitude; are great beggars; are insolent, if any respect is shown them; that they cheat on all opportunities; yet they are mild, rarely get drunk; and "never proceed to violence beyond bad language;" that they steal on every opportunity from the whites, but very rarely from each other; and although regarding all property, including wives, as belonging to the strongest, yet they only wrestle, and rarely murder. Of the same people Sir John Franklin says, that they are naturally indolent, selfish, and great beggars. "I never saw men," he writes, "who either received or bestowed a gift with such bad grace." The Dog-ribs are "of a mild, hospitable, but rather indolent disposition," fond of dancing and singing. According to the same traveler the Copper Indians are superior, in personal character, to any other Chepewyans. "Their delicate and humane attentions to us," he remarks, "in a period of great distress, are indelibly engraven on our memories." Simpson says that it is a general rule among the traders not to believe the first story of an Indian. Although sometimes bearing suffering with fortitude, the least sickness makes them say, "I am going to die," and the improvidence of the Indian character is greatly aggravated by the custom of destroying all the property of deceased relatives. Sir John Richardson accuses the Hare Indians of timidity, standing in great fear of the Eskimos, and being always in want of food. They are practical socialists, 'great liars,' but 'strictly honest.' Hospitality is not a virtue with them. According to Richardson, neither the Eskimos, Dog-ribs, nor Hare Indians, feel the least shame in being detected in falsehood, and invariably practice it if they think that they can thereby gain any of their petty ends. Even in their familiar intercourse with each other, the Indians seldom tell the truth in the first instance, and if they succeed in exciting admiration or astonishment, their invention runs on without check. From the manner of the speaker, rather than by his words, is his truth or falsehood inferred, and often a very long interrogation is necessary to elicit the real fact. The comfort, and not unfrequently even the lives of parties of the timid Hare Indians are sacrificed by this miserable propensity. The Hare and Dog-rib women are certainly at the bottom of the scale of humanity in North America. Ross thinks that they are "tolerably honest; not bloodthirsty, nor cruel;" "confirmed liars, far from being chaste."

According to Harmon, one of the earliest and most observing travelers among them, the Tacullies "are a quiet, inoffensive people," and "perhaps the most honest on the face of the earth." They "are unusually talkative," and "take great delight in singing or humming or whistling a dull air." "Murder is not considered as a crime of great magnitude." He considers the Sicannis the bravest of the Tacully tribes.

But the Kutchins bear off the palm for honesty. Says Whymper: "Finding the loads too great for our dogs, we raised an erection of poles, and deposited some bags thereon. I may here say, once for all, that our men often left goods, consisting of tea, flour, molasses, bacon, and all kinds of miscellaneous articles, scattered in this way over the country, and that they remained untouched by the Indians, who frequently traveled past them." Simpson testifies of the Loucheux that "a bloody intent with them lurks not under a smile." Murray reports the Kutchins treacherous; Richardson did not find them so. Jones declares that "they differ entirely from the Tinneh tribes of the Mackenzie, being generous, honest, hospitable, proud, high-spirited, and quick to revenge an injury."