A report upon the condition of affairs in the territory of Alaska

Front matter

J± REPORT

UPON TT1E

COITOITTON OF - AFFAIRS

Appendix

I have endeavored in the preparation of this report to be as concise as possible, perhaps so to a fault, but the enumeration of the thousand and one little things that have combined to form opinion, and indirectly influence one's judgment, can interest no one but the writer.

On the subject of Alaska, it is safe to assert that no other unexplored section of the world was ever brought into notice suddenly, about which so much has been emphatically and positively written, based entirely upon the whims and caprices of the writers, and, therefore, it will not be at all surprising if the truth in regard to the Territory does frequently come into conflict with many erroneous popular opinions respecting it.

With the hope that the results of my labor as presented in the following report will meet with your approval and support,

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

HEXKT W. ELLIOTT, Special Agent Treasury Department,.

Secretary of the Treasury,

Chapter I. The Character Of The Country

THE TERRITORY OF ALASKA.

So much has been said pro and con as to tlie natural wealth. and advantages of our new acquisition, the Territory of Alaska, that the widest possible divergence of opinion has arisen upon this subject 5 on the one hand, we hear that here is a country no more rugged or uninviting than is Sweden or Xorway, where a high civilization exists, with just as much natural adaxrtatiou for the home of advancing humanity, with vast forests of the finest ship-timber, with iron, copper, coal, and possibly rich gold and silver mines, with valleys and plains upon which sheep and cattle can be bred and raised without more than ordinary care, so abundant is the grass and other vegetation $ that the climate is extremely mild on the seaboard, no more damp and foggy than on the coast of Oregon, &c. ; while, on the other hand, we areas gravely told that it is an area of total desolation ; that it is locked up in the grasp of winter's frosts for eight or nine months in the year -, that icebergs and snow fill the sea and drift in fathomless rifts; that it is bare and barren, only moss and swale grass 5 that even the inhabitants there drag out a miserable existence on seal-meat, oil, and like food ; and that it will never become the home of white men, because there is no object in the land that will draw them there save the small fur-trading interests.

There is truth in both declarations, but no such thing as a happy medium can be struck between the two views ; a fair, dispassionate statement in regard to this matter, however, at the time of the transfer of the Territory, could hardly have been made, no citizen of the United States having the means or the opportunity to form a proper judgmeut. The Russians did not live here as a people, but as a company of fur-traders only, with a single eye to the getting of skins ; and the matter of their subsistence while so doing was comparatively of little importance,- but it should be said that at all of their posts throughout the Territory they fully tested the capabilities of soil and climate for garden-products, and at many of them gave bogs and cattle a trial, with a deep interest in the success of their experiments. The Eussian American Company in retiring from the country gave us a generally correct map of the Territory, accurate figures as to the numbers and distribution of the natives ; but upon other points the most vague or else conflicting data, and in this condition of knowledge we took possession of the country. Its true status, therefore, and real importance were simply unknown to our people.

Since that time, however, quite a number of adventurers r traders, miners, fishermen, and the like have had their attention and interest centered here, and the resources of the country in small sections have been keenly scrutinized with a view to what the country could or could not yield in supply of human wants.

THE DIVERSIFIED CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY.

Everybody is familiar with the geographical position of Alaska, with its extended area of coast-line, stretching from a trifle south of the 55th parallel of north latitude, above Fort Simpson, on the British Columbian Territory, far to the northward and westward away into the Arctic Ocean and above the arctic circle; and, in describing the character of this vast trend of land, it should be divided into several natural districts, by reason of the local difference between them.

The SitJcan district. — Starting from Portland Canal and running north to Cross Sound and the head of Lynn Canal, the eye glances over a range of country made up of hundreds of islands, large and small, and a bold, mountainous coast, all everywhere rugged and abrupt in contour, aud, with exception of highest summits, the hills, mountains, and valleys, the last always narrow and winding, are covered with a dense jungle of spruce and fir, cedar and shrubbery, so thick, dark, and damp, that it is traversed only by the expenditure of great physical energy, and a clear spot, either on islands or mainland, where an acre of grass might grow by itself, as it does in the little " parks " far in the interior, cannot be found. In these forest-jungles, especially on the lowlands and always by the water-courses, will be found a fair proportion of ordinary timber of the character above designated. The spruce and fir, however, are so heavily charged with resin, that they can be used for nothing but the roughest work; the cedar is, however, an excellent article. But back from the Coast Range here, on which our boundary-line is dotted, springs up quite a different country again, higher everywhere from the sea-level by thousands of feet, dry, with not one-tenth part of the rain-fall, vast rolling plains or table-lauds and rounded mountain- tops, over which fire has swept not many years ago, for the last time, as it has frequently done before, utterly destroying the pine-forests, leaving nothing but the blackened and bleached trunks piled upon and across one another at the sport of fierce gales ; and springing up from beneath this desolation and shutting over it is a new forest of young pine and poplars, with a large number of service-berry and salal bushes interspersed.

The valleys here widen out, and contain large tracts of excellent ground for cultivation, with the significant objection, however, of being subject to frosts so late in the spring as June 10, and so early in tlie summer as the 20th of August. This, of course, excludes the question of agricultural utility ; and although the grass grows everywhere here in the valleys in the most luxuriant manner, yet cattle cannot run out through the winters, which are here bitterly cold ; widely different from those a hundred miles only to the westward across the Coast Eange. Here, under the powerful influence of the great Pacific, winter is never anything but wet and chilly, seldom ever giving the people a week's skating on the small lake back of Sitka. Day after day there are high winds and drizzling rains, with breaks in the leaden sky showing gleams of clear blue and sunlight ; and here the agriculturist or gardener has like cause for discouragement, for nothing will ripen ; whatever he plants grows and enters on its stages of decay without perfecting. It must, moreover, be remarked that there is but very little land fit even for this unsatisfactory and most unprofitable agriculture, i. e., properlydrained and warm soil enough for the very hardiest cereals. There is not one acre of such tillable land to every ten thousand of the objectionable character throughout the larger portion of this area, and certainly not more than one acre to a thousand in the best regions. Grass grows in small localities or areas, wherever it is not smothered by forests and thickets, in the valleys over this whole Sitkan district : its presence, however, is not the rule, but the exception, so vigorous is the growth of shrubbery and timber; and even did it grow in large amount, the curing of hay is simply impracticable. Although the winters are mild, still there is not enough ranging-ground to support herds of cattle throughout the year and have them within control.

Mount Saint Elias district. — Peaching from Cross Sound to Prince William's Sound is a second and clearly-defined region, exhibiting a bald, bare sea-front, with scarcely an island or a rock in its long stretch of over three hundred miles ; little belts of spruce timber skirt the lowlands by the sea, while that which is hilly and mountainous is almost bare ; grass and berries grow, however, in great abundance. It is the most cheerless, but at the same time the most interesting, portion of the Territory, not from any other point of view, however, than that of the tourist or geologist, who will find Mount Saint Elias the highest peak in Korth America, and the superb mountains of Fairweather and Cillon, and the country about them, covered, for miles and miles, with mighty glaciers, a field of most instructive interest. An immense mass of ice comes down into the head of Lyun Canal, which, the Indians say, originates and travels from Mount Fairweather over fifty miles away. This glacier is some eight miles wide where it faces the sea in the channel, and many hundred feet in thickness, perfectly magnificent, and should be visited, for, as yet, this region, like the most of our new Territory, has not been trodden by the foot of white man, and seldom even by the savage. Its exceptional presentation of timber, its long reaches of rounded, low, barren hills, and relative scarcity of both birds and animals, make this section about as uninviting, on economic grounds, as any in the Territory, and the paucity of Indian life within its limits speaks definitely for its poverty as to game and fish.

CooWs Inlet district. — I refrain from giving the reports which I received from this sectiou, inasmuch as they are very contradictory in many leading features ; though, in a general way, the ideas given me are undoubtedly correct. They represent the country similar to Kodiak, with more timber.

The Peninsular and Kodiak Island. — This region, lying between Iliamna Lake and the False Pass, between the head of the Peninsula of Alaska and contiguous islands, is the most valuable section of the entire Territory, possessing the most equable climate, especially so at Kodiak, growing the best garden -supplies of potatoes, turnips, &c, the only place where hay can be made, enough fora few head of stock, with anything likea certainty, from season to season; but the country comprised in this district, which forms the southern and western half of the Peninsula, does not possess any of the above-mentioned qualifications in the same degree by any means. The island of Kodiak and the whole district is, however, rugged and mountainous, with numerous small lakes and tiny rivers or streams, up which a considerable number of salmon run every year. Timber, of spruce and fir, grows in fair quantity in the northern and eastern end of Kodiak, all the islands to the eastward, and down the Peninsula as far as Chignik Bay ; it is not large, but in size for fuel, rough building, &c. Grass grows most luxuriantly, especially on Kodiak, but the area suitable for its support is limited, there being no plains or dry and accessible valleys in which to cut and cure it. There are many winters here in which cattle might be kept in small numbers without exceptional care and expense, i. e., enough to afford milk and beef for a small settlement, and also sheep and hogs. Little patches of land can be found where a small garden will thrive consisting of potatoes, turnips, &c. 5 but reaching down to the Aleutian Islands, and over them, is a region bare entirely of timber and nearly so of shrubbery, rugged, abrupt, and extremely mountainous, the surface broken into patches set, as it were, on end ; this is no country adapted for agriculture, for the prevalence of foggy, dark weather would render even the limited area that could be utilized with sunlight unserviceable for the production of fruits and vegetables.

Soil there is sufficiently rich and deep, but it is too cold to mature or ripen garden-products, except in very favored localities where, as at Ounalashka, a few potatoes of inferior quality, good turnips, and lettuce, are in the favorable seasons raised. The Western Islands are all essentially volcanic, with scarcely a trace of sedimentary rock to be found; consisting of high, steep ridges and peaks of porphyries and volcanic tufa, with here and there syenitic granites. The vegetation, such as it is, principally Empetrum nigrum, grows most rank and luxuriant on the flanks and even the summits of many of these high places, and the light, frail stems of this plant, which are of about the size of strawberry- vines, the natives gather and bring down from the hills in large bundles for fire-wood. The only shrub that lifts its head above the earth, of value as wood, is'a willow, (Salix reticulata,) which grows in scattered clumps along the little water-courses, twisted and contorted, yet of sufficient size to furnish in early days strong and serviceable frames for native skin-boats or "baidars." Scattered over the Aleutian Islands and on the Peninsula are many" small lakes, some of them quite large. The Peninsular country is more rolling and level, on the north shore especially so ; for from Port Moller on up to the head of Bristol Bay extensive flats make out from the highlands and stretch between them and the sea in width varying from ten to sixty miles.

There are a number of volcanoes in this district, such as that of Makooshin, on Ounalashka Island, Akootan and Shishaldin, on Oonimak, which, however, do not eject lava, but emit smoke, steam, and ashes, although in times past and within the memory of man large stones have been thrown out by many of them, and still earlier lavahas been poured out on Oonimak in immense streams. The seared, rugged courses of the once liquid rock make traveling on that island excessively fatiguing. Akootan, on Akootan Island, and Makooshin are, perhaps, the most active, or as lively as any in the Territory to-day. There has been no disturbance on their account in the country for the last thirty years to mention, but previous to that time many severe earthquake shocks have been recorded, and the growth of a new island, Bogaslov, twenty miles north of Oomnak, in Bering Sea, has been witnessed by the present generation, and I think that the phenomena attending the appearance of this island far out at sea and alone must have been coincident with the whole bistory of the formation of the Aleutian Chain, and therefore I may be excused for giving the substance of the story as told by several of the Kussian writers.

In the fall of 1796 the residents of Oonimak and Ounalashka were surprised by a series of loud reports and tremblings of the earth, followed by the appearance of a dense dark cloud, full of gas and ashes, which came down upon them from the sea to the northward, and, after a week or ten days, during which time the cloud hung steadily over them, accompanied with earthquakes and subterrauean thunder, it cleared away somewhat, so that they saw distinctly to the northward a bright light burning above the sea, and, upon closer inspection in their boats, the people found that a small island, elevated about 100 feet above sea-level, had been forced up and was still in the process of elevation and enlargement, formed of lava and scoriae. The volcanic action did not cease on this island until 1825, when it left above the water an oval peak, almost inaccessible, 400 to 500 feet high, and four or five miles in circumference. It was soon after this occupied by sea-lions and resorted to by sea-fowl, which were found here in 1825, when the Russians landed for the first time, and the rocks were still warm.

In this way and recently, geologically speaking, were the Aleutian Islands formed from the Peninsula westward, including the Prybilov Group and Saint Matthew's, their appearance marking the course of a line of least resistance in the earth's crust.

The Yukon District. — In this division may be placed all that country above the head of Bristol Bay and north and west of the Peninsular Eauge of mountains as they extend far into the interior, reaching to the arctic and far beyond, an immense area of desolate sameness, almost unknown, and likely to be so for an indefinite time, the banks of the Yukon Eiver being the only track traversed as yet by white men into the interior. This great range of country may properly be divided into two sections, the hills or timber-lands and the plains or tundra. The former seldom approach the waters of Bering or the Arctic Sea nearer than fifty or sixty miles, and generally trend some two to three hundred miles back. The general contour of the interior is a vast undulating plain, with high, rounded granitic hills and ridges scattered here and there, on the flanks of which, and by the countless lakes and water-courses, grow in tolerable abundance spruce, fir, hemlock, birch, and poplar, with a large number of hardy shrubs indigenous all the world over to these latitudes. The summers short, but warm and pleasant j the winters long, and bitterly cold and inclement.

The tundra, however, which fronts the whole coast-line of this, the most extensive section of the Territory, is, indeed, cheerless and repellant at any season ; in the summer it is a great flat swale, full of bog-holes, slimy, decayed peat, innumerable lakes, shallow, stagnant, and from all places swarm mosquitoes of the most malignant type, while in winter it is a wide snow plain, over which fierce gales of wind, at zero temperature, sweep in constant succession, making travel as painful and dangerous as can be well imagined. In this season all approach to the coast is barred by a great system of shoals and banks, which extend so far out to sea that a vessel drawing 10 feet of water will be hard aground, out of sight of land, off the mouth of the Yukon.

There is a vast area of this district between the head of Cook's Inlet and the Arctic, and far back into the interior, that is entirely unknown, but as traders are extending their routes in all directions, this interior may in time be explored and noted.

The Ounalashlca District. — Under this bead may be placed the Aleutian Islands ; and as Illolook or Ouralashka Village is the most important place among them, both with regard to population and trade, and the best position as a port, its name may be fitly applied to the whole region.

This great chain of rugged islands, enveloped during the greater part of the year in fogs, and swept over by frequent gales, that, in combination with the mists and currents, make it a region dreaded by the mariner, abounds in sharp hills, and hilly or bluffy mountainous masses. Nearly every island — and there are many, small and large — is as it were set up on end T with small patches of bottom-land here and there, in rare intervals, at the base of the hills and mountains.

The appearance of any of these islands from a ship approaching them during the summer, on a clear sunny day — and such days are occasionally known — is most attractive : a rich, dark coat of vivid green clothes the valleys, hills, and mountains, quite to the snow-line. In these narrow defiles and bottomland patches, the grass is most luxuriant, growing waist-high, with low, stunted willow-bushes here and there in small quantity ; and it is at first not apparent, when one strolls about the country on such a day, that it is utterly worthless as an agricultural or stock-raising country. The mountains principally consist of syenitic granites and poq^hyries, with sharp summits and abrupt slopes, and present numerous small water-courses, with little or no valley-ground. The vegetation is rank and luxuriant, and, in favorable seasons, the grasses ripen their seeds well. Quite a variety of berries abound ; for example, salmon, huckle, crow, and blue berries. The only timber is a slight willow, nowhere larger than a man's wrist, and not over 7 or 8 feet high, growing in small, scattered clumps, with stunted specimens climbing way up the hill-sides. The thick, dense carpet of crow-berry plants, into which one sinks at every step ankle-deep, covers the entire country, and makes traveling very tedious for a pedestrian. Several species of grass grow everywhere in patches, and if more sunlight were to fall upon these cold, moist places, where vegetation now springs up every year in such quantities, but of such inferior quality, hay might be cured, and it might be called a fair grazing-country ; but although the islands would amply support herds of cattle and flocks of sheep during the summer-months, these auimals would generally need shelter and feed for three to five months as winter comes on, and far into the spring during late seasons, when high winds rage and keep the snow in drifts. Bailey might also be grown with a little more sunlight ; and potatoes might also be matured year after year in fair quantity, and a good kitchen-garden established in the most favored sections ; but perpetual fogs and mists hang like palls over the land and render it of no agricultural importance.

The summers are mild, foggy, and humid, with an average temperature of 50° Fahrenheit, with winters also mild, foggy, and humid, and an average temperature of 30°. Minimum thermometer here seldom or never falls lower than 10° ; there never has been recorded four consecutive weeks of temperature lower than 3° or 5°. The weather begins to grow colder in October, and does not become milder until April. The natives here thiuk that 12° to 15° is pleasant weather, but if it goes down to 3° or 5°, it is to them, horribly cold. There are, however, exceptional seasons. For instance, the summer of 1831, in July and August the thermometer did not rise above 35°, and evenings were not uncommon with as low a temperature as 12°.

Kain falls at all times and with all winds, but mostly in the autumn, with southeast and easterly winds, and less with southwest winds in w T iuter.

Snow begins to fall in September, (and even in August,) and does not cease earlier than May, although it frequently melts as fast as it falls far into December. It is seen on the higher mountains all the year round. The average snow-fall is from 2 to 5 feet; the high, driving winds make the snow intensely disagreeable and impede traveling.

The cloudiness of the district is remarkable ; there are not a dozen cloudless days in the whole year; about thirty to fifty fine days ; and Teniaminov says, after living there ten years, " that the sun may be seen in a hundred to a hundred and sixty days during the year."

Thunder is seldom ever heard, and lightning never seen ; although the clouds seem to constantly suggest it. Auroras are also almost unknown, and when seen are very faint.

The old Aleuts here say that in early times the snow was deeper and the cold greater than it has been for some time past, while, on the other hand, they assert that the winds are getting stronger and harsher as time rolls on with them. Veni-

2al aminov* says, " In all the time of my living here there was not one day from morning to evening that was entirely without wind, or was a perfect calm." The winds blow here strong from all quarters, strongest in October, November, December, and March. The gales do not usually last more than three days at a time, but they follow in quick succession in the seasons above mentioned.

There are a multitude of little lakes of fresh water on the islands, and in nearly all of the small streams (for there are no large ones) are found brook- trout of good quality.

In view of the foregoing, what shall we say of the resources of Alaska, viewed as regards its agricultural or horticultural capabilities ?

It would seem undeniable that owing to the unfavorable climatic conditions which prevail on the coast and in the interior, the gloomy fogs and dampness of the former, and the intense, protracted severity of the winters, characteristic of the latter, unfit the Territory for the proper support of any considerable civilization.

Men may, and undoubtedly will, soon live here, in comparative comfort, as they labor in mining-camps, lumber and ship-timber mills, and salmon-factories, but they will bring with them everything they want except fish and game, and when they leave the country it will be as desolate as they found it.

Can a country be permanently and prosperously settled that will not in its whole extent allow the successful growth and ripening of a single crop of corn, wheat, or potatoes, and where the most needful of any domestic animals cannot be kept by poor people ?

The Russians, who have subdued a rougher country, and settled in large communities under severer conditions than have been submitted to by any body of our own people as yet, were in this Territory, after some twenty years at least of patient, intelligent trial, obliged to send a colony to California to raise their potatoes, grain, and beef; the history of their settlement there, and forced abandonment in 1842, is well known.

We may with pride refer to the rugged work of settlement so successfully made by our ancestors in New England, but it is idle to talk of the subjugation of Alaska as a task simply requiring a similar expenditure of persistence, energy, aud ability.

* Zapieskie, &c, vol. 1, p. 98.

In Massachusetts* our forefathers had a land in which all the necessaries of life, and many of the luxuries, could be produced from the soil with certainty from year to year; iu Alaska their lot would have been quite the reverse, and they could have maintained themselves therewith no better success than the present inhabitants. Attention should be directed to the development of its mineral wealth, which I have reason to think will yet prove to be considerable, and effort should be made to stimulate and protect the resent available industries of the fur-trade, the canning of salmon, &c.

*"I have seen with surprise and regret, that men whose forefathers ■wielded the ax in the forests of Maine, or gathered scanty crops on the hill-sides of Massachusetts, have seen fit to throw contempt and derision on the acquisition of a great territory naturally far richer than that in which they themselves originated, (!) principally on the ground that it is a ' cold' country." (W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 242, Boston, Lee & Shepard, 1870.)

Chapter II. The Natives Oe People Of Alaska— Their

CONDITION.

THEIR LIFE IN THE PAST, IN THE PRESENT, A27D PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE.

In taking the subject of the condition of the people of Alaska into consideration, the character of the country in which they live should always be kept in mind, for the life of any people is insensibly but surely molded by the climate and land in which they are found : under favorable and genial influences of soil and climate, a rude race may be raised from barbarism, pass into civilization, and be sustained by these favoriug supports.

The inhabitants of the Territory are divided into two decidedly distinct races, widely different in habits and disposition ; one of these two classes consists of the Christian Aleuts, who live upon the Aleutian Islands, the Seal Islands, the Peuinsula of Alaska, the adjacent Islands, and Kodiak ; the Indians, occupying all the rest of the inhabited country, constitute the other. It will be seen by a Russian table which I submit in connection with this subject that quite a large number, in 1863, of the natives, outside of the district above specified, are claimed as Christians, but I cannot recognize the claim to-day ; they have worn off what little Christianity they may have possessed ten years ago, and there is no Christian influence, properly speaking, in the Territory, outside of the Aleutians and the people of Kodiak ; these people are naturally fitted for the reception of the principles of Christianity, or otherwise they would have remained Indians, as the others, who are savages, have done. The Russian Greek Catholic priests spared no effort iu their attempts to convert the Koloshians of Sitka and those of kindred stock elsewhere in the Territory, but met with partial failure in every instance.

The fact that among all the savage races found on the northwest coast by Christian pioneers and teachers the Aleutians are the only practical converts to Christianity, goes far, in my opinion, to set them apart as very differently constituted iu mind and disposition from our aborigines, to whom, however, they are intimately allied. They adopted the Christian faith with very little opposition, readily exchanging their barbarous customs and wild superstitions for the agreeable rites of the Greek Catholic Church and its more refined myths and legends. At the time of their first discovery they were living as savages iu every sense of the word, bold and hardy ; but now, to all outward signs and professions of Christianity they respond as sincerely as our own church-going people.