Along Alaska's Great River - Frederick Schwatka

Скачать книгу

to bottom, for a height of from five to thirty feet, with the most curious carvings, as shown to a limited extent on page 19. The "totem" or tribal symbol, which may be a wolf, a bear, a raven, or a fish, often predominates, while representations of crouching human figures are favorite designs. The making of totem poles has ceased among the Indians, although they carefully preserve those that still exist. Still many of them fall into the clutches of white men in compensation for a few dollars, and hardly a museum of note in the country but displays a Tlinkit totem pole or two, while some possess extensive collections. The best carving is shown in the isolated poles standing in front of the houses, but frequently the houses themselves are fantastically carved in conspicuous places to suit the owner's fancy.

      PYRAMID HARBOR, CHILKAT INLET. (Chilkat Indian Canoe in the foreground.)

      Some of these houses are quite respectable for savage house-making, the great thick puncheon planks of the floor being often quite well polished, or at any rate neatly covered with white sand. Attempts at civilization are made in the larger and more aristocratic abodes by partitioning the huge hovel into rooms by means of draperies of cloth or canvas. In some the door is made as high as it can be cut in the wall and is reached by steps from the outside, while a similar flight inside gives access to the floor. The fire occupies the center of the room, enough of the floor being removed to allow it to be kindled directly on the ground, the smoke escaping by a huge hole in the roof. The vast majority of the houses are squalid beyond measure, and the dense resinous smoke of the spruce and pine blackens the walls with a funereal tinge, and fills the house with an odor which, when mingled with that of decayed salmon, makes one feel like leaving his card at the door and passing on. It takes no stretch of the imagination to conceive that such architecture provides the maximum of ventilation when least needed, and it is a fact that the winter hours of the Chilkats are cold and cheerless in the extreme. They sit crouched around the fire with their blankets closely folded about them and even drawn over their heads, the house serving indeed as a protection from the fierce wind and deep snow drifts, but no more. They look on all this foolishness, however, with a sort of Spartan fortitude as necessary to toughen them and inure them to the rough climate, and at times, impelled by this belief, they will deliberately expose themselves with that object in view. When the rivers and lakes are frozen over the men and boys break great holes in the ice and plunge in for a limited swim, then come out, and if a bank of soft snow is convenient roll around in it like so many polar bears; and when they get so cold that they can't tell the truth they wander leisurely back to the houses and remark that they have had a nice time, and believe they have done something toward making themselves robust Chilkat citizens able to endure every thing. There is no wonder that such people adopt cremation; and in fact one interpretation of its religious significance is based on the idea of future personal warmth in the happy hunting grounds, which they regard as a large island, whose shores are unattainable except by those whose bodies have been duly consumed by fire. Unless the rite of cremation has been performed the unhappy shade shivers perpetually in outer frost. It is the impossibility of cremation which makes death by drowning so terrible to a Chilkat.

      The reason that the shamans, or medicine men (whose bodies are not cremated) have no such dread, is that their souls do not pass to the celestial island, but are translated into the bodies of infants, and in this way the crop of medicine men never diminishes, whatever may be the status of the rest of the population. Dreams and divinations, or various marks of the child's hair or face, are relied upon to determine into which infant the supreme and mysterious power of the defunct doctor of Tlinkit divinity has entered. To enumerate all of these signs would consume more of my space than the subject is worth. When a Chilkat dies the body is burned at sunrise, having first been dressed for the ceremony in a costume more elaborate than any which it ever wore in life. The corpse must not be carried out at the door, which is deemed sacred, a superstition very common among savage races. A few boards may be taken from the rear or side of the hovel, or the body may be hoisted through the capacious chimney in the roof; but when the Chilkat in his last illness sought his house to lie down and die in it he passed over its threshold for the last time. Demons and dark spirits hover around like vultures, and are only kept out of doors by the dreaded incantations of the medicine men, and these may seize the corpse as it passes out. So fiendishly eager are they to secure and stab their prey that all that is needed is to lead out a dog from the house, which has been brought into it at night, when the witches fall upon it and exhaust their strength in attacking it before they discover their mistake. The cremation is seldom perfect, and the charred bones and remnants are collected and put into a small box standing on four posts in the nearest graveyard. In the burial of medicine men, or before cremation with others, the bodies are bent into half their length, the knees drawn up to the breast and secured by thongs and lashings.

      A walk into the woods around Chilkat shows the traveling to be somewhat better than in equally mountainous country near the coast, and where paths had been cut through the dense timber to the charcoal pits formed and maintained by the canneries, the walking was exceedingly agreeable and pleasant, especially by way of contrast. As one recedes from the coast and gets beyond the influence of the warm Japanese current with its ceaseless fogs, rains and precipitation generally, the woods and marshes become more and more susceptible of travel, and by the time the Alaska coast range of mountains is crossed and the interior reached, one finds it but little worse than the tangle-woods and swamps of lower latitudes. The waters swarm with life, which is warmed by this heat-bearing current, and I think I do not exaggerate in saying that Alaska and its numerous outlying islands will alone, in the course of a short time, repay us annually more than the original cost of the great territory. By means of these industries the wedge has begun to enter, and we may hope it will be driven home by means of a wise administration of government, a boon which has been denied to Alaska since the Russians left the territory.

      The principal fisheries will always be those of salmon and cod, since these fish are most readily prepared for export, while halibut, Arctic smelt or candle-fish, brook trout, flounders and other species will give ample variety for local use. The salmon has long been the staple fish food of the Chilkats, but this is slowly giving way to the products of civilization which they acquire in return for services at the canneries and for loading and unloading the vessels which visit the port. The salmon season is ushered in with considerable ceremony by the Chilkats, numerous festivals mark its success and its close is celebrated by other feasts. A Chilkat village during the salmon fishing season is a busy place. Near the water, loaded with the fish, their pink sides cut open ready for drying, are the scaffoldings, which are built just high enough, to prevent the dogs from investigating too closely; while out in the shallow water of the shoals or rapids, which often determine the site of a village, may be seen fish-weirs looking like stranded baskets that had served their purpose elsewhere and been thrown away up the stream, and which had lodged here as they floated down. Many of the salmon are converted into fish-oil, which is used by the Chilkats as food, and resembles a cross between our butter and the blubber of the Eskimo. Taking a canoe that is worn out, yet not so badly damaged as not to be completely water-tight, it is filled some six to eight inches deep with salmon, over which water is poured until the fish are well covered. This being done on the beach there are always plenty of stones around, and a number of these are heated to as high a temperature as possible in an open fire alongside of the canoe, and are then rapidly thrown into the water, bringing it to a boiling heat, and cooking the mass. As the oil of the fat fish rises to the surface it is skimmed off with spoons, and after all has been procured that it is possible to obtain by this means, the gelatinous mass is pressed so as to get whatever remains, and all is preserved for winter food. The salmon to be dried are split open along the back until they are as flat as possible, and then the flesh is split to the skin in horizontal and vertical slices about an inch to an inch and a half apart, which facilitates the drying process. Each little square contracts in drying and makes a convenient mouthful for them as they scrape it from the skin with their upper canine teeth like a beaver peeling the bark from a cottonwood tree. In packing over the Alaska coast range of mountains, a task which keeps the Indians absent from three to five days, a single salmon and a quart of flour are considered a sufficient ration per man for even that severe trip. If they are working for white men the employers

Скачать книгу