Kin-Da-Shon's Wife. An Alaskan story

Preface

. " TELL me something of 's history, can't you ? Do you know anything of his father and mother ? " asked a friend of Alaska missions some time ago. " Yes," was my reply, " I know a good deal more of them than he does, but it is too much of a story to tell — I have written it. You must read ' Kin-da-shon's Wife ' if you would know more of Kin-da-shon's son." And this reply will answer in part another question : " Is this Alaskan story trues" " It is true in every particular essential to history; it is true in its representations of Kling-get life and customs, of the character and productions of the country, and as a story — well, it is Kin da-shon's story, for the most part from his own lips. The other characters introduced are drawn from life, as indeed are all the principal scenes and incidents of the tale, only in the grouping of them I have sometimes used a story-teller's license. ' A Bit of History ' — that is photographed."

To those who know Alaska only as it is, and to those who know it not at all, some explanations may be necessary ; such explanations will be no less appreciated by our best-knowing and best-loving friends. The writing of this simple story, begun nine years ago, is not the result of an ambition on the part of the writer to be known as a novelist — let me tell you a little of how and why it was written. Two hundred and fifty miles lay between the furthermost Protestant mission of Alaska and the country of the Chilkats be yond, when we went early in 1881 to take to them the "good news" and to make our home among them. A white trader with a native wife had preceded us by several months ; with this single exception we were the only whites in the country.

PREFACE.

. II The Chilkats were the master tribe among the Kling-gets, holding themselves aloof from their " poor relations " and priding themselves on their rank and their adherence to old customs. They were regarded with awe and fear by the other tribes. Our association with the people was peculiarly close as minister, teacher, physician, and friend, and gave us unequalled opportunities for not only seeing and hearing their customs and traditions, but gradually, as we came to understand their language, we came to know the people themselves in heart and thought by their confided life-stories and experiences. During those early days we fully realized that great changes awaited these people, changes to be accomplished not only by the Gospel, but by the inevitable contact of an incoming civil ization, with its various blessings and cursings.

We knew that these changes must come soon and that the new generation would be left in ignorance of the original beliefs and manners of their fathers. Knowing, too, that the transitional period must necessarily be, to a large extent, one of demoralization, we longed to put on record our knowledge of what they were and had been — the better and the worse — and so to preserve for our children, both white and brown, something of the old times. With such an object the writing of this story was begun. Time for it could only be taken from the night's rest time, and after the long, busy day among the people the chapter was written from what we had heard or seen. But after a time the slowly growing manuscript was laid away, and for nearly eight years it never saw the light ; then other reasons urged its completion.

Many of the changes by us foreseen have taken place. The people are both better and worse. The weakest and the worst are sneered at as the product of Christian missions— the sneer reveals the character of the sneerer. Many of the people are what they are to-day as a result of the devil's missions to Alaska, prosecuted by the whiskey smuggler, the license ven der, the dance-house proprietor, and by men who have forsaken the teaching of good mothers and have prostituted the noblest instincts that God gives— who, instead of making a pure and happy home with a woman of their own race and intelligence. PREFA CE. III take advantage of the native custom of marriage to build a domestic structure which cannot endure and which works ruin to all concerned. Then, too, the natural thrift of the people has been unduly stim ulated in some instances into a greed for gold ; though the larger number are good spenders as well as industrious laborers, and real homes — Christian homes — in houses " just big enough for Tashekah and me " are clustering about the missions to the grad ual exclusion of the big native house with its homeless inmates.

The Chilkats of to-day are being brought into prominence as a people wholly villanous. Yet the persons who call down the curses of the Government upon their heads and would have them exterminated as enemies to progress and the white man are the very men who insist upon their own undeniable right to introduce the very essence of trouble. With the truly intelligent, our " century of dishonor" is a fact to which may be traced the loss of many precious lives, the loss of untold wealth from our country's treasury, and the loss — more than equally great — of a people powerful in character and in numbers, who might have been to-day the sinew of our nation as educated Christianized men and women, instead of the depen dent, rebelling, bitter-hearted savages whom our Government seems unable to fully decide what to do with.

The " land in severalty" law is a grand step, though tardy, in the right direction, and it raises a hope that the old road need not be travelled in Alaska, that the old mistakes may be avoided. Just as there was clashing between those who would (without treaty or any recognition of the rights of original Americans) displace the possessions and destroy the hunting-grounds handed down through generations, so there is a growing trouble between the natives of Alaska and the canneries. The streams are the Alaskan's hunting-grounds, the salmon is his buffalo. Each family has by direct inheritance its own catching-place, often marked by stakes, and for even a relative to take fish there with out permission is a serious offence. This is the case also with their hunting-lodges where they go to take animal game. The canneries were at first not unwelcome to the people, who were employed at good wages or paid generously for fish brought

PREFACE.

. IV from their own streams ; but when the Chilkats asked for higher wages or were given less, a difference occurred which has been apparently developing a policy among the canneries of getting on without the consent or assistance of the natives. The building of fish-traps across the streams and the use of seines the natives have also deeply resented. The adjustment of this difficulty should not be left to the parties themselves, nor indeed to a jury, but it is a matter truly demanding the attention of the United States Government. Another thing : if education, however generously provided for, is not made compulsory it is an effort without result, an invest ment with no profit. It is a nation's right to not only offer instruction and drill to its army's recruits, but to command their acceptance of such advantages.

It has been asserted by some who might be better informed that witchcraft and torture and slavery do not exist in Alaska to day. Let me here assert, with all necessary proof at hand, that these things do exist to-day, and that within hearing (were the subjects not gagged) of the district courts — not that the officers would be unwilling to hear or to punish in such cases as these. It is here, in connection with the mention of these crimes, that I would speak of their prime instigator — the Kling-get fiend, the Icht, or medicine-man, and beg of those in authority to cause his extermination. His incantations should be held a crime, and his uncut hair — his touch of power — should be shaved clean to the head ; the whipping-post and work under guard on public improvements would be better than a prison.

One last word, and I shall have at least touched upon some of the reasons for " Kin-da-shon's Wife " being brought before the world with so little effort at elaboration. It has been asked, " Are the missions of Alaska a success?" My answer is, Yes, emphatically yes. " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. " The evidences of success will be greater by and by. What though some stalks are broken and trailing, some ears showing blight even in our schools ? There is in others strong principle and upright life and the corn in the ear which shall be " full. " Carrie M. White Willard. October 3, 1892. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Summer Days In The Chilkat Country

V I "WAS in the month of Alaska's glory — June — when, waking from her deep, white sleep, the natural world proclaimed the power of the resurrection and of life. Eight months earlier, almost before the harsh nurse, Frost, had disrobed the flower-children of the year, Mother Nature threw about them her beautiful blanket of snow, and, tucking them cozily in, brought another and still others with which she raised a barrier secure against Winter's warfare. Ten, twelve, even twenty feet beneath the glistening surface, shut in to sleep around their mother's great house-fire, these little ones had slept well. The sun, as if fearful of disturbing their dreams, had but occasionally peeped over the shoulder of Ut-undy-sha (Shooting Mountain) to the south, then quickly disappeared again from sight. But, as May approached, he lingered long — not over Undy-sha, but, rising from behind Sha-Gitk to the northeast, his course he slowly took around the horizon to Ga-sun in the northwest — there disappearing for only four hours of the long day.

A fortnight of such shining had sufficed to awaken the sleep ing world, only another had been required to clothe it in KIN-DA-SHON' S WIFE: 10 tropical beauty. And on this bright morning the little lake of Chilkoot mirrors back from its clear face a sky warm and bright and blue, against which loom the great peaks forever ice-crowned, and from which slide invisibly the glaciers blue and cold. Further down, blending with the golden browns and the purple of the granite, lie the tender yellows of the sheep pastures, dotted, to the trained eye, with flocks, flocks untended by earthly shepherd. Then, with almost im perceptible gradations of color, come the blue and black greens of the stunted pine and huckleberry-brush — guarded by the forests primeval, spruce, hemlock, fir, and cedar; and mingling with these their own lighter and more graceful foliage are the cottonwood, wild-apple, and the alder.

Every limb is clothed with rnoss, and its festoons float from pillar to pillar in this vast temple. The air is red olent with the breath of roses, as the mountain drops to the water's brink, roses as red and sweet as ever grew along the valley roadways in the dear home-land, and far more fresh and luxuriant. The sweet-pea, whose buds are just bursting, creeps over the brink of the lake, hiding full nests of the numberless water-fowl whose peculiar call, broken into a hundred echoes, falls again in a shower of sound and vanishes amid the solitudes. The tender notes of the robin and the blue-bird mingle with the croak of the raven and the cry of the eagle. The cinnamon bear walks fearlessly down the track of the avalanche and feeds upon the abundant trout of the noisy mountain stream. The village lies just beyond, nestling at the foot of the great mountain range that divides this southeastern strip of Alaska from the interior, the land of the Gun-un-uh.

Rushing from the lake southward is Chilkoot River; at this point scarcely more than a saucy brook, which, held sternly on the one side by the unyielding height of rock, dashes the more impetuously over the lesser barriers and sends its white spray far up the bank and into the face of the village, laughing uproariously at its own frolicking. Passing the village, it plunges through the rapids for half a mile of loveliness, then suddenly widens and calms under the influence of the sea. The tides are exacting teachers, and soon the rollicking laughter of the brook has ceased — though far down the inlet we can trace, in the midst of the outgoing tide, the clear, fresh stream. Soon there comes another sound — not at first distin guishable from that of the water as it trickles and drips from the rocks or rushes down the gorge — but it is as though all the sweet, low tones of nature mingled and flowed on together in rhythmic utterance.

We distinguish at length the dip of a paddle and its accompanying canoe song — low, liquid, and melodious; it is the water; now flowing softly, then breaking tempestuously, pierced now and again with the shriek of the sea-gulls, and falling to the beating of their wings. The little bark advances from out the shadows of the narrow river course into the broad, full light of the lake, revealing the figures of those who sing. An old woman sits in the middle of the canoe making thread from the dry sinew of the reindeer. A girl of twelve lies curled in the prow, toying dreamily with the grass and flowers she has plucked from the banks as the canoe glided through the river — she carries the high, tenor-like soprano of the song; her brother, perhaps two years the girl's senior, with his single paddle both propelling and guiding the boat — so leisurely that we know it to be a pleasure-party — occupies the stern.

He, too, is singing; and under the young voices is the crooning of the woman: " Oh, my mother— I am sick! " "Where, my child — is it head or foot — The arm or the back ? " "No: my heart, my heart is sick." " Why is it sick ? What is its ailment ? " " That thou art gone — nowhere can I find the& Come to me — come to me. Where art thou, O my mother ? Now e'en thy voice is lost — Why did it mock me ? Art thou gone to the clouds or Have the waters swallowed thee up t Surely water enough Flowed through our eyes To drain dry that great river — That thou mightest pass in safety. Mother — mother ! Come to me — come to me ! Where art thou ? My heart is sick ! " "Grannie," says the child, suddenly rousing from the dreamful silence which has followed the song, dropping her flowers into the water and trailing through it her slender fingers — "Grannie, when will our father come again to his own country ?

He told us he would tarry but a moon and a half, and I know I have counted twenty." "Gah! " cries the boy; "you've counted every night a moon! My father cut the first day on my stick, and I have given it now just forty other marks — less one. He will bring much trade if he is not on the mountain now." While the boy was speaking the old woman drew from her bosom a slender tape of deer-skin, on which are strung a few beads of curious design — treasures of Russia, and some from " King George's land," with other rudely carved medicine charms of green stone. In the long end which hangs from the fastening of this necklace a number of knots have been tied, and these she begins to count: " One, two, three — that was the day the medicine-man told of foul weather; four, five — and the storm came; six, you know how the wind howled, and Ha-nedt was beaten for bringing it — he killed a fish with a stone when it would have gotten out of his canoe again; seven, we built the great fires to appease the Spirit of the Wind, so that our men might be able to cross the mountains; eight, nine, and the red sun had turned white again, the wind was still; ten, ten and one, ten and two, ten and three," and with the recalling of many similar incidents the woman counts off the forty knots on her string.

"You are right, Kasko," she says, tucking the record into her bosom again and resuming her thread-making; "maybe on the mountain he is coming now; on the morrow he may be with us." At this the little maiden smiles and claps her hands, while the boy, whose paddle has trailed idly while they talked, now takes it up, and, with a whoop which makes the mountains ring again, drives it into the water with ■such sweeping force as sends the little boat bounding forward with reckless speed. "Take a paddle, Tashekah," he cries, "and let us over the lake like an arrow." Seizing a paddle which has lain in the bottom of the canoe, the girl enters the race with as much skill as her brother, and with quite as much spirit. Their course seems indeed that of an arrow, so straight and swift it proves. Tashekah, though slender, is not tall for her age.

Her face is round and her lips and cheeks are rosy-red; the mouth is large, with full, even sets of teeth, showing very white in her frequent laugh. A silver ring, smooth and small, hangs from the little pug nose, and each ear is similarly ornamented. Her hair, soft, glossy, and fine, hangs below her shoulders, and, in falling unrestrained, almost hides her low forehead — it is a black cloud from which shine out big eyes of wondrous lustre; and these, except when, as now, the face is filled with merriment, are full of that strange pathos and pleading which are so often seen in the eyes of these Alaskan children. Her only article of dress is a cotton " slip " — a width and a half of large-figured print, gathered into a band about the neck, and with straight, full sleeves. Her brother is a typical native boy — tall, slender, and well formed, supple, active, and graceful.

His face is decidedly of the Jewish cast, oval-shaped, with a large, strong nose, keen and laughing eyes, a good forehead, and closely cropped hair. His ornaments are more con spicuous than his dress, being the counterparts of those adorning Tashekah's nose and ears; but in addition to these he wears a necklace of small and variously colored stdnes, shells, and shark's teeth. The boy's dress consists solely of a blanket or robe made of squirrel-skins sewed together with the sinew thread, and this he dons or doffs at pleasure. It is his bed, his cloak, his girdle, or travel ling valise, as he may choose or require. The grandmother's garment is like that of Tashekah's; but now about her waist she has gathered an old woollen blanket. Her face is furrowed and her form much bent. The hair is slightly gray; and short, as though mourning for the dead were not long past.

The face is pitched with black, and the silver pin protruding through the lower lip glistens more brightly by contrast. Two sets of rings hang in her ears, one ring above the other; and her nose ring is large. The wrinkled, bony hands have fallen to her lap now, and she pridefully watches the movements of the boy, who for a moment has dropped his paddle and drawn his bow. A great bald eagle sinks, uncertainly, till another arrow pierces him and Tasheka has skilfully sent her boat under the fallen bird. Six months before Tul-ga-us had died, leaving her children to the Kog-won-tons (the children of the Chilkats and of all other Kling-get people belong to their mother's tribe) ; but they had, since her death, continued to live on with their father, Kah-sha, who loved his children with a great and tender love.

The babe of two days had not died with its mother, and the father, yielding it to others only to be suckled, held the wee thing in his own bosom day and night. But ere long, despite his care, the feeble spark of its life went out, as he had seen it go from five other little ones before. When the babe's ashes had been gathered and laid beside its mother's and those of her other dead babes, Kah-sha had put together some bits of cotton print and a few buttons — gotten in trade with more southern tribes — and at the close of the herring season joined others of his people going into the interior to trade for furs. The children were longing for his return, and spent the time rambling about the woods, or, as now, with their grannie on the water. This day has been beguiled with song, story-telling, and spearing fish, so that the sun has almost completed his long day's journey when they turn their faces southward, and, having entered the river, trail paddles until the current has borne them to the village.

And now, leaving his robe where he sat, Kasko dives into the water, and, reappearing in a moment, draws the canoe to shore, wdiere with Tashekah's ready help it is soon landed, overturned, and covered with the heavy grass which grows so rankly on the bank. Following the almost hidden path, so overhung with the spring blooms, they pass the fish-traps and enter the broader and more beaten way between the long row of native houses which face the river, and the great, close-set drying-racks on its bank, which in salmon-time become a flaming spectacle, hung as they then are with the brill iant-colored fish. Lower down, in the river itself, stand the guard-stakes of the fish gardens. Each family has its own, inherited through generations, and guarded as jeal ously as ever crown was held by royal heir or hunting field by the buffalo lovers of the plains.

That one man had taken fish from between the stakes of another would be cause enough for bloodshed, and has more than once wrought serious mischief among the people. The population, as usual through the summer, has turned out of doors, and the way is thronged. There are huddling groups of women — many with no other employ ment than that of nursing the babies in their arms and gossiping quietly with those whose busy fingers fly deftly in and out among the fine grasses of their basket-weaving. A few men lie stretched out here and there silently smok ing, while the children and the dogs, playing hide-and seek, dash about and around with laughter and clatter un restrained, except as they too nearly approach their elders. Our little party, with friendly, common interests, moves but slowly through the chatting crowd.

Before they have reached their own house a shout goes up announcing the appearance of a canoe just making the turn in the rapids below. Alertly the men, without removing their pipes, turn over and raise themselves upon their elbows. The women sit still, but cease their talking to look in the direction of the new-comers. Only the children, with the dogs at their heels, go yelling and yelping down to the landing-place. Kasko, at the first cry, has flung from him every im pediment, and speeds as a deer toward the stream.

Chapter II. Return Of The Trading Party

T^HE river Chilkat is separated from that of Chilkoot by the Chilkat country, which takes the form of a peninsula by the southward flowing together of these streams (forming Lynn Channel) twenty-five or thirty miles below Chilkoot Lake. At first the separation is wide and mountainous, but at Da-shu, or Half-trail, fifteen miles from the point, the Chilkoot shore is in dented by a lovely bay, and the land drops into beautiful and fertile meadows, threaded with bright little streams and belted with dark forests. Crossing here is the trail, or portage, less than a mile from river to river, over which canoes are carried to avoid the thirty miles' journey around the point of the peninsula in passing from the eastern to the western villages. The Chilkoot people are also Chilkats; their village lying on the west shore of Chilkoot River, while the three Chilkat villages are on the eastern shore of the broader river.

These four are the permanent settlements of the Chilkat country. There are also several less substantially built places occupied at certain seasons of the year for fishing and hunting. Each permanent village has its chiefs. The Chilkats, in common with other Kling-get tribes, are divided into two distinct families, who intermarry with each other and cannot marry among themselves; who compliment each other in feasts and fight against each other in war. In fact, the tribal family is bound together with far closer and more rigid laws than any which protect the private domestic relation. Husbands and wives, among all Kling-get tribes, must be of opposite families. The children always belong to their mother's family, so that they are, by law, nothing to their father. Should the family of the father be at war with that of the mother, regard less of personal feeling the children must enter the lists against their father.

Children may marry their own father's brother, or their own mother's father — they are not related by their law — but to marry one of their own tribe-family, though blood relation were untraceable, the shame would be past blotting out. In the Chilkat country these two great families are known as the Klee-qua-hutte and the Kog-won-ton. To the former belong the clans represented by their totems, the raven, the sea-gull, and many others. Among the Kog-won-tons are the Cinnamon Bear, Eagle, Petrel, Wolf, Whale, and so on. In each village are members of both families and of almost every clan. The northernmost settlement on the Chilkat River is Klok won. Its chief is a Kog-won-ton, of the Bear clan. Klok-won being the largest of the four villages and its chief the richest of all the chiefs, the Bears rank highest in caste among the Chilkat people.

The village Kut-wulh-too is but two miles south of Klok-won, yet it is under the chiefs of Yhin-da-stachy, twenty miles or more to the south. From this latter place the river is followed by a trail for three or four miles, which then strikes the portage. Chilkoot River becomes the Inlet when it is joined by the Dy-ya, at a short dis tance above Portage Bay. Dy-ya is the water-front of the great interior. Even while his children were speaking of him on the lake, Kah-sha and his companions were descending the precipitous mountain trail at Dy-ya's head. Very profit able had been their expedition, and their packs were large and heavy. But even now, after days of toiling through stream, forest, and snow, scaling cliff and descending gulch, where a misstep would be fatal, their burdens are borne with a certain dignity which proclaims the bearers men of spirit and of great endurance.

What if shoulders are galled — the trail is no becoming place for the mention of it. As in single file they are coming down the pass we have an opportunity for more particular notice. The packs are made up square and tied securely with ropes made of dressed reindeer skin, of which slender strips are braided together. Into this rope are fastened the carved bone pins of the pack straps — a strap made from the hide of a young deer's shank, tanned and finished with the hair side out; it is two or three inches wide and from one and a half to two feet long, worn on the forehead to raise the burden high on the shoulders, or, corresponding to the breast strap of a harness, across the breast and over the shoulders. In this way a Chilkat man will carry the av erage pack of a hundred pounds every day in the week, making from six to twenty miles a day, according to the character of the trail.

There are fifteen men in the party, great stalwart fellows; and, with somewhat lighter packs, several boys from twelve to sixteen years of age, to whom this has been the initiatory of Gun-un-uh trading. One of the older lads leads the file, now that they are on familiar ground, and now and again he proudly shouts back to his companions, as the view rapidly narrows down to the lit tle valley they are entering and he recognizes each rock and tree. It is Kin-da-shon, a high-class Raven of the village Klok-won. Immediately following him is a young man of twenty, whose physique, even among so many of fine proportions, is striking. His mouth is smiling, but his eyes, though singularly keen and intelligent, are strangely sad in ex pression — Klune is deaf and dumb. He is the only son of aged Toots and his old wife, of Yhin-da-stachy.

Klune is bearing the pack of his old chief Kood-wot, who is close behind him. Then follow Ka-kee, the medicine man, Turn-turn the dwarf, and, near the latter end of the line, Kah-sha, whom his children await so eagerly. There is a roaring of water now distinctly heard, and, with a sudden turn of the little path, they have reached the bank of the torrent. Kin-da-shon has come upon it with a bound and a whoop. Sitting down he speedily throws himself back, slips the strap over his head, and springs upon the shoulders of Klune, who as quickly, though silently, has freed him self from his burden, and they roll together over and over on the fresh green and fragrant sward; the shouting laughter of the boy more than matched by the ludicrous antics and perfectly intelligible signs of the mute. Very soon all the packs are on the ground, and for a few moments the older men rest upon theirs — having first lighted their pipes.