Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

he lived, and kept his people strictly to the faith and the ways of their fathers. If they fell sick, the shaman or medicine-man came with his rattles and charms, and with great hocus-pocus and “Presto change” drove away or propitiated the evil spirits that were tormenting the sufferer. If the patient did not immediately respond to the treatment, the doctor would accuse some one of bewitching his victim, and demand that he should be tortured or put to death in order to relieve the afflicted one. It thus became a serious matter for every one when the doctor was sent for, as not even the chiefs were safe from being denounced by these wizards. No slave could become a shaman, but the profession was open to any one else, regardless of rank or riches, and the medicine man was a self-made grandee, unless some great deformity marked him for that calling from birth. As preparation for his life-work he went off by himself, and fasted in the woods for many days. Returning, he danced in frenzy about the village, seizing and biting the flesh of live dogs, and eating the heads and tongues of frogs. This latter practice accounts for the image of the frog appearing on all the medicine men’s rattles; and in the totemic carvings the frog is the symbol of the shaman, or speaks of some incident connected with him. Each shaman elected to himself a familiar spirit, either the whale, the bear, the eagle, or some one of the mythological beasts, and gifted with its qualities, and under the guidance of this totemic spirit, he performed his cures and miracles. This token was carved on his rattles, his masks, drums, spoons, canoes, and all his belongings. It was woven on his blankets, and after death it was carved on bits of fossil ivory, whale and walrus teeth, and sewed to his grave-clothes. The shaman’s body was never burned, but was laid in state in the large grave boxes that are seen on the outskirts of every village. Columns capped with totemic animals and flags mark these little houses of the dead, and many of them have elaborately carved and painted walls. The shaman’s hair was never cut nor touched by profane hands, and each hair was considered a sacred charm by the people. Captain Merriman, while in command of the U. S. S. Adams, repeatedly interfered with two shamans, who were denouncing and putting to torture the helpless women and children in a village where the black measles was raging. He found the victims of this witchcraft persecution with their ankles fastened to their wrists in dark, underground holes, or tied to the rocks at low tide that they might be slowly drowned by the returning waters. All threats failing, the two shamans were carried on the Adams, and the ship’s barber sheared and shaved their heads. The matted hair was carried down to the boiler room and burned, for if it had been thrown overboard it would have been caught and preserved, and the shamans could have retained at least a vestige of authority. The Indians raised a great outcry at the prospect of harm or indignity being offered their medicine-men, but when the two shaved heads appeared at the gangway, the Indians set up shouts of derision, and there were none so poor as to do them honor after that. A few such salutary examples did much to break up these practices, and though their notions of our medicine are rather crude, they have implicit faith in the white, or “Boston doctors.”

      If these fish-eating, canoe-paddling Indians of the northwest coast are superior to the hunters and horsemen of the western plains, the Haidas are the most remarkable of the coast tribes, and offer a fascinating study to anyone interested in native races and fellow man. From Cape Fox to Mount St. Elias the Indians of the Alaska coast are known by the generic name of Thlinkets, but in the subdivision of the Thlinkets into tribes, or kwans, the Haidas are not included. The Thlinkets consider the Haidas as aliens, but, except in the language, they have many things in common, and it takes the ethnologist’s eye to detect the differences. The greater part of the Haida tribe proper inhabit the Queen Charlotte Islands in the northern part of British Columbia, and the few bands living in villages in the southern part of Alaska are said to be malcontents and secessionists, who paddled away and found homes for themselves across Dixon Entrance. I have heard it stated, without much authority to sustain it, however, that old Skowl was a deserter of this kind, and, not approving of some of the political methods of the other chiefs in his native village, withdrew with his followers and founded a colony in Kasa-an Bay. This aboriginal “mugwump,” as he would be rated in the slang of the day, was conservative in other things, and his people have the same old customs and traditions as the Haidas of the original villages on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

      Where the Haidas really did come from is an unending puzzle, and in Alaska the origin and migration of races are subjects continually claiming one’s attention. There is enough to be seen by superficial glances to suggest an Oriental origin, and those who believe in the emigration of the Indians from Asia by way of Behring Straits, or the natural causeway of the Aleutian Islands, in prehistoric times, find an array of strange suggestions and resemblances among the Haidas to encourage their theories. That the name of this tribe corresponds to the name of the great mountain range of Japan may be a mere coincidence, but a few scholars who have visited them say that there are many Japanese words and idioms in their language, and that the resemblance of the Haidas to the Ainos of northern Japan is striking enough to suggest some kinship. Opposed to this, however, is the testimony of Marchand, the French voyager, who visited the Haidas in 1791, and recognizing Aztec words and terminations in their speech, and resemblances to Aztec work in their monuments and picture-writings, first started the theory that they were from the south, and descendants of those who, driven out of Mexico by Cortez, vanished in boats to the north. To continue the puzzle, the Haidas have some Apache words in their vocabulary, and have the same grotesque dance-masks, and many of the same dances and ceremonies that Cushing describes in his sketches of life among the Zunis in New Mexico. Hon. James G. Swan, of Port Townsend, who has given thirty years to a study of the Indians of the northwest coast, has lately given much attention to the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and has made large collections of their implements and art works for the Smithsonian Institute. He found the Haida tradition and representation of the great spirit—the Thunder Bird—to be the same as that of the Aztecs, and when he showed sketches of Aztec carvings to the Haidas they seemed to recognize and understand them at once. Copper images and relics found in their possession were identical with some silver images found in ruins in Guatemala by a British archæologist. Judge Swan has collected many strange legends and allegories during his canoe journeys to the isolated Haida villages, and his guide and attendant, Johnny Kit-Elswa, who conducts him to the great October feasts and dances, is a clever young Haida silversmith and a remarkable genius. Judge Swan has written a memoir on Haida tattoo masks, paintings, and heraldic columns, which was published as No. 267 of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, January, 1874. In The West Shore magazine of August, 1884, he published a long article with illustrations upon the same subjects, and his library and cabinet, his journals and sketch-books, contain many wonderful things relating to the history and life of these strange people.

CHAPTER V.

       FORT WRANGELL AND THE STIKINE.

       Table of Contents

      Those who believe that all Alaska is a place of perpetual rain, fog, snow, and ice would be quickly disabused could they spend some of the ideal summer days in that most lovely harbor of Fort Wrangell. Each time the sky was clearer and the air milder than before, and on the day of my third visit the fresh beams of the morning sun gave an infinite charm to the landscape, as we turned from Clarence Straits into the narrower pass between the islands, and sailed across waters that reflected in shimmering, pale blue and pearly lights the wonderful panorama of mountains. Though perfectly clear, the light was softened and subdued, and even on such a glorious sunny morning there was no glare nor harshness in the atmosphere. This pale, soft light gave a dreamy, poetic quality to the scenery, and the first ranges of mountains above the water shaded from the deep green and russet of the nearer pine forests to azure and purple, where their further summits were outlined against the sky or the snow-covered peaks that were mirrored so faithfully in the long stretches of the channel. The sea water lost its deep green tints at that point, and was discolored and tinged to a muddy tea green by the fresh current of the Stikine River, which there reaches the ocean.

      The great circle of mountains and snow-peaks, and the stretch of calm waters lying in this vast landlocked harbor, give Fort Wrangell an enviable situation. The little town reached its half-century of existence last summer, but no celebrations stirred the placid, easy-going life of its