THE NATIVES OF ALASKA by William Wells

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 7, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 27.

THE NATIVES OF ALASKA.

By William Wells

BY WILLIAM WELLS, LL.D.

THE natives of Alaska are a remarkable study in many respects. Indians, in our understanding of the word, they are not. Old navigators among the islands on the coast declare that they have again and again seen Japanese junks wrecked on the coast, carried thither evidently from the Asiatic side by the famous Japanese warm current that makes all southeastern Alaska so different from the interior beyond the mountain range, where everything becomes Siberian in character. These people have also the features, habits, and the peculiar skill of the Japanese; and, like them, when trained in the ways of civilization; are mostly kind and inoffensive. Like the Japanese and Chinese, they are extremely fond of games of chance. As our gamblers have cards they have what are called "gambling sticks." These are small cylindrical pieces of wood carved in antique style, and the game consists in guessing which one of these sticks will come out first or last when shuffled and thrown down on the ground on a board. In this simple game they will, when excited, risk all they have in the world, even to home and wife and children—for the father has limitless power over these, even to selling them into slavery for life.

They have extremely strange ideas of a Supreme Being and a future state. These are so involved with all sorts of superstitious notions that it is difficult to tell what they really believe. They believe in witches, however, and fear them greatly. In this matter they are very cruel. They will accuse young girls of being witches, and scourge them till they sometimes die because they are supposed to have caused the severe illness or death of someone. They have what they call "medicine men," who are mere impostors, and use no remedies for the sick, but simply practice incantations. Failing in this they accuse some person of having interfered with and destroyed their influence by witchcraft. In their turn the medicine men are frequently whipped to death when they fail to cure their patients by their incantations. It seems quite inconsistent that human beings so sensible in many respects should be so wrong headed in this.

They seem in many respects fatalists, and blindly wedded to their ways. They submit quietly to whatever comes, and their relatives pay no attention to them and let them die. When death comes, the body is usually burned. Hence their cemeteries contain not their bodies, but their ashes, which they place in urns as the ancients did. The dead body is never taken out of the house by the door, as this would bring bad luck; an opening is made for the occasion in the back part of the house or hut. In many of these superstitions these people resemble the Orientals—thus proving again that they are of a different origin from our own red-skinned and long-haired savages.

Another peculiar custom is that of making a great feast and giving presents on the occasion of a funeral ceremony, and then raising great carved poles near the door as monuments. They will often leave all they are worth to be expended in this way at their death, instead of dividing it among relatives. The widow is treated very cruelly among them, and is often persecuted to death. At the funeral feast they use a great deal of an intoxicating liquor which they have learned from sailors how to make. It is made out of flour and molasses, fermented so as to be strongly intoxicating. It finally kills a great many of them. . . . They never desire flour and molasses for any other purpose than to make this vile liquor. . . . A small flask of whisky will buy more from these poor creatures than almost any other article that can be offered to them.

They are wonderfully stolid and indifferent to things that are going on around them. They sit all day by their wares and never say a word. You may buy or not buy, as you please; and in one case, when we had not the right change, the woman would not take the most trouble to get it, nor would she accept gold or a banknote; it was the exact price in silver or no sale. Thus we were forced to run around and get change or do without the article. Sometimes the women who were selling would wrap their faces in their blankets and take no notice of anybody until nudged into activity. One day we saw an Indian woman sitting in a squatting position, perfectly immovable, so long that we were absolutely undecided whether the figure was alive or dead, and only settled the doubt by going close to her.—Northern Christian Advocate.