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WRANGELL ISLAND is about
fourteen miles long, separated from the mainland by a narrow channel or
fiord, and trending in the direction of the flow of the ancient ice-sheet.
Like all its neighbors, it is densely forested down to the water's edge with
trees that never seem to have suffered from thirst or fire or the axe of the
lumberman in all their long century lives. Beneath soft, shady clouds, with
abundance of rain, they flourish in wonderful strength and beauty to a good
old age, while the many warm days, half cloudy, half clear, and the little
groups of pure sun-days enable them to ripen their cones and send myriads of
seeds flying every autumn to insure the permanence of the forests and feed
the multitude of animals.
The Wrangell village was a
rough place. No mining hamlet in the placer gulches of California, nor any
backwoods village I ever saw, approached it in picturesque, devil-may-care
abandon. It was a lawless draggle of wooden huts and houses, built in
crooked lines, wrangling around the boggy shore of the island for a mile or
so in the general form of the letter S, without the slightest subordination
to the points of the compass or to building laws of any kind. Stumps and
logs, like precious monuments, adorned its two streets, each stump and log,
on account of the moist climate, moss-grown and tufted with grass and
bushes, but muddy on the sides below the limit of the bog-line. The ground
in general was an oozy, mossy bog on a foundation of jagged rocks, full of
concealed pit-holes. These picturesque rock, bog, and stump obstructions,
however, were not so very much in the way, for there were no wagons or
carriages there. There was not a horse on the island. The domestic animals
were represented by chickens, a lonely cow, a few sheep, and hogs of a breed
well calculated to deepen and complicate the mud of the streets.
Most of the permanent
residents of Wrangell were engaged in trade. Some little trade was carried
on in fish and furs, butt most of the quickening business of the place was
derived from the Cassiar gold-mines, some two hundred and fifty or three
hundred miles inland, by way of the Stickeen River and Dease Lake. Two
stern-wheel steamers plied on the river between Wrangell and Telegraph Creek
at the head of navigation, a hundred and fifty miles from Wrangell, carrying
freight and passengers and connecting with pack-trains for the mines. These
placer mines, on tributaries of the Mackenzie River, were discovered in the
year 1874. About eighteen hundred miners and prospectors were said to have
passed through Wrangell that season of 1879, about half of them being
Chinamen. Nearly a third of this whole number set out from here in the month
of February, traveling on the Stickeen River, which usually remains safely
frozen until toward the end of April. The main body of the miners, however,
went up on the steamers in May and June. On account of the severe winters
they were all compelled to leave the mines the end of September. Perhaps
about two thirds of them passed the winter in Portland and Victoria and the
towns of Puget Sound. The rest remained here in Wrangell, dozing away the
long winter as best they could.
Indians, mostly of the
Stickeen tribe, occupied the two ends of the town, the whites, of whom there
were about forty or fifty, the middle portion; but there was no determinate
line of demarcation, the dwellings of the Indians being mostly as large and
solidly built of logs and planks as those of the whites. Some of them were
adorned with tall totem poles.
The fort was a quadrangular
stockade with a dozen block and frame buildings located upon rising ground
just back of the business part of the town. It was built by our Government
shortly after the purchase of Alaska, and was abandoned in 1872, reoccupied
by the military in 1875, and finally abandoned and sold to private parties
in 1877. In the fort and about it there were a few good, clean homes, which
shone all the more brightly in their somber surroundings. The ground
occupied by the fort, by being carefully leveled and drained was dry, though
formerly a portion of the general swamp, showing how easily the whole town
could have been improved. But in spite of disorder and squalor, shaded with
clouds, washed and wiped by rain and sea winds, it was triumphantly
salubrious through all the seasons. And though the houses seemed to rest
uneasily among the miry rocks and stumps, squirming at all angles as if they
had been tossed and twisted by earthquake shocks, and showing but little
more relation to one another than may be observed among moraine boulders,
Wrangell was a tranquil place. I never heard a noisy brawl in the streets,
or a clap of thunder, and the waves seldom spoke much above a whisper along
the beach. In summer the rain comes straight down, steamy and tepid. The
clouds are usually united, filling the sky, not racing along in threatening
ranks suggesting energy of an overbearing destructive kind, but forming a
bland, mild, laving bath. The cloudless days are calm, pearl-gray, and
brooding in tone, inclining to rest and peace; the islands seem to drowse
and float on the glassy water, and in the woods scarce a leaf stirs.
The very brightest of
Wrangell days are not -what Californians would call bright. The tempered
sunshine sifting through the moist atmosphere makes no dazzling glare, and
the town, like the landscape, rests beneath a hazy, hushing, Indian-summerish
spell. On the longest days the sun rises about three o'clock, but it is
daybreak at midnight. The cocks crowed when they woke, without reference to
the dawn, for it is never quite dark; there were only a few full-grown
roosters in Wrangell, half a dozen or so, to awaken the town and give it a
civilized character. After sunrise a few languid smoke-columns might be
seen, telling the first stir of the people. Soon an Indian or two might be
noticed here and there at the doors of their barnlike cabins, and a merchant
getting ready for trade; but scarcely a sound was heard, only a dull muffled
stir gradually deepening. There were only two white babies in the town, so
far as I saw, and as for Indian babies, they woke and ate and made no crying
sound. Later you might hear the croaking of ravens, and the strokes of an
axe on firewood. About eight or nine o'clock the town was awake, Indians,
mostly women and children, began to gather on the front platforms of the
half-dozen stores, sitting carelessly on their blankets, every other face
hideously blackened, a naked circle around the eyes, and perhaps a spot on
the cheek-bone and the nose where the smut has been rubbed off. Some of the
little children were also blackened, and none were over-clad, their light
and airy costume consisting of a calico shirt reaching only to the waist.
Boys eight or ten years old sometimes had an additional garment, — a pair of
castaway miner's overalls wide enough and ragged enough for extravagant
ventilation. The larger girls and young women were arrayed in showy calico,
and wore jaunty straw hats, gorgeously ribboned, and glowed among the
blackened and blanketed old crones like scarlet tanagers in a flock of
blackbirds. The women, seated on the steps and platform of the traders'
shops, could hardly be called loafers, for they had berries to sell,
basketfuls of huckleberries, large yellow salmon-berries, and bog
raspberries that looked wondrous fresh and clean amid the surrounding
squalor. After patiently waiting for purchasers until hungry, they ate what
they could not sell, and went away to gather more.
Yonder you see a canoe
gliding out from the shore, containing perhaps a man, a woman, and a child
or two, all paddling together in natural, easy rhythm. They are going to
catch a fish, no difficult matter, and when this is done their day's work is
done. Another party puts out to capture bits of driftwood, for it is easier
to procure fuel in this way than to drag it down from the outskirts of the
woods through rocks and bushes. As the day advances, a fleet of canoes may
be seen along the shore, all fashioned alike, high and long beak-like prows
and sterns, with lines as fine as those of the breast of a duck. What the
mustang is to the Mexican vaquero, the canoe is to these coast Indians. They
skim along the shores to fish and hunt and trade, or merely to visit their
neighbors, for they are sociable, and have family pride remarkably well
developed, meeting often to inquire after each other's health, attend
potlatches and dances, and gossip concerning coming marriages, births,
deaths, etc. Others seem to sail for the pure pleasure of the thing, their
canoes decorated with handfuls of the tall purple epilobium.
Yonder goes a whole family,
grandparents and all, making a direct course for some favorite stream and
camp-ground. They are going to gather berries, as the baskets tell. Never
before in all my travels, north or south, had I found so lavish an abundance
of berries as here. The woods and meadows are full of them, both on the
lowlands and mountains — huckleberries of many species, salmon-berries,
blackberries, raspberries, with service-berries on dry open places, and
cranberries in the bogs, sufficient for every bird, beast, and human being
in the territory and thousands of tons to spare. The huckleberries are
especially abundant. A species that grows well up on the mountains is the
best and largest, a half-inch and more in diameter and delicious in flavor.
These grow on bushes three or four inches to a foot high. The berries of the
commonest species are smaller and grow almost everywhere on the low grounds
on bushes from three to six or seven feet high. This is the species on which
the Indians depend most for food, gathering them in large quantities,
beating them into a paste, pressing the paste into cakes about an inch
thick, and drying them over a slow fire to enrich their winter stores.
Salmon-berries and service-berries are preserved in the same way.
A little excursion to one of
the best huckleberry-fields adjacent to Wrangell, under the direction of the
Collector of Customs, to which I was invited, I greatly enjoyed. There were
nine Indians in the party, mostly women and children going to gather
huckleberries. As soon as we had arrived at the chosen camp-ground on the
bank of a trout stream, all ran into the bushes and began eating berries
before anything in the way of camp-making was done, laughing and chattering
in natural animal enjoyment. The Collector went up the stream to examine a
meadow at its head with reference to the quantity of hay it might yield for
his cow, fishing by the way. All the Indians except the two eldest boys who
joined the Collector, remained among the berries.
The fishermen had rather poor
luck, owing, they said, to the sunny brightness of the day, a complaint
seldom heard in this climate. They got good exercise, however, jumping from
boulder to boulder in the brawling stream, running along slippery logs and
through the bushes that fringe the bank, casting here and there into
swirling pools at the foot of cascades, imitating the tempting little skips
and whirls of flies so well known to fishing parsons, but perhaps still
better known to Indian boys. At the lake-basin the Collector, after he had
surveyed his hay-meadow, went around it to the inlet of the lake with his
brown pair of attendants to try their luck, while I botanized in the
delightful flora which called to mind the cool sphagnum and carex bogs of
Wisconsin and Canada. Here I found many of my old favorites the heathworts —
kalmia, pyrola, chiogenes, huckleberry, cranberry, etc. On the margin of the
meadow darling linna a was in its glory; purple panicled grasses in full
flower reached over my head, and some of the carices and ferns were almost
as tall. Here, too, on the edge of the woods I found the wild apple tree,
the first I had seen in Alaska. The Indians gather the fruit, small and sour
as it is, to flavor their fat salmon. I never saw a richer bog and meadow
growth anywhere. The principal forest-trees are hemlock, spruce, and Nootka
cypress, with a few pines (P. contorta) on the margin of the meadow, some of
them nearly a hundred feet high, draped with gray usnea, the bark also gray
with scale lichens.
We met all the berry-pickers
at the lake, excepting only a small girl and the camp-keeper. In their
bright colors they made a lively picture among the quivering bushes, keeping
up a low pleasant chanting as if the day and the place and the berries were
according to their own hearts. The children carried small baskets, holding
two or three quarts; the women two large ones swung over their shoulders. In
the afternoon, when the baskets were full, all started back to the
camp-ground, where the canoe was left. We parted at the lake, I choosing to
follow quietly the stream through the woods. I was the first to arrive at
camp. The rest of the party came in shortly afterwards, singing and humming
like heavy-laden bees. It was interesting to note how kindly they held out
handfuls of the best berries to the little girl, who welcomed them all in
succession with smiles and merry words that I did not understand. But there
was no mistaking the kindliness and serene good nature.
While I was at Wrangell the
chiefs and head men of the Stickeen tribe got up a grand dinner and
entertainment in honor of their distinguished visitors, three doctors of
divinity and their wives, fellow passengers on the steamer with me, whose
object was to organize the Presbyterian church. To both the dinner and
dances I was invited, was adopted by the Stickeen tribe, and given an Indian
name (Ancoutahan) said to mean adopted chief. I was inclined to regard this
honor as being unlikely to have any practical value, but I was assured by
Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Young, and others that it would be a great safeguard
while I was on my travels among the different tribes of the archipelago. For
travelers without an Indian name might be killed and robbed without the
offender being called to account as long as the crime was kept secret from
the whites; but, being adopted by the Stickeens, no one belonging to the
other tribes would dare attack me, knowing that the Stickeens would hold
them responsible.
The dinner-tables were
tastefully decorated with flowers, and the food and general arrangements
were in good taste, but there was no trace of Indian dishes. It was mostly
imported canned stuff served Boston fashion. After the dinner we assembled
in Chief Shakes's large block-house and were entertained with lively
examples of their dances and amusements, carried on with great spirit,
making a very novel barbarous durbar. The dances seemed to me wonderfully
like those of the American Indians in general, a monotonous stamping
accompanied by hand-clapping, head-jerking, and explosive grunts kept in
time to grim drumbeats. The chief dancer and leader scattered great
quantities of downy feathers like a snowstorm as blessings on everybody,
while all chanted, "Hee-ee-ah-ah, hee-ee-ahah," jumping up and down until
all were bathed in perspiration.
After the dancing excellent
imitations were given of the gait, gestures, and behavior of several animals
under different circumstances — walking, hunting, capturing, and devouring
their prey, etc. 'While all were quietly seated, waiting to see what next
was going to happen, the door of the big house was suddenly thrown open and
in bounced a bear, so true to life in form and gestures we were all
startled, though it was only a bear-skin nicely fitted on a man who was
intimately acquainted with the animals and knew how to imitate them. The
bear shuffled down into the middle of the floor and made the motion of
jumping into a stream and catching a wooden salmon that was ready for him,
carrying it out on to the bank, throwing his head around to listen and see
if any one was coming, then tearing it to pieces, jerking his head from side
to side, looking and listening in fear of hunters' rifles. Besides the bear
dance, there were porpoise and deer dances with one of the party imitating
the animals by stuffed specimens with an Indian inside, and the movements
were so accurately imitated that they seemed the real thing.
These animal plays were
followed by serious speeches, interpreted by an Indian woman: "Dear Brothers
and Sisters, this is the way we used to dance. We liked it long ago when we
were blind, we always danced this way, but now we are not blind. The Good
Lord has taken pity upon us and sent his son, Jesus Christ, to tell us what
to do. We have danced to-day only to show you how blind we were to like to
dance in this foolish way. We will not dance any more."
Another speech was
interpreted as follows: "'Dear Brothers and Sisters,' the chief says, `this
is the way we used to dance and play. We do not wish to do so any more. We
will give away all the dance dresses you have seen us wearing, though we
value them very highly.' He says he feels much honored to have so many white
brothers and sisters at our dinner and plays."
Several short explanatory
remarks were all made through the exercises by Chief Shakes, presiding with
grave dignity. The last of his speeches concluded thus: "Dear Brothers and
Sisters, we have been long, long in the dark. You have led us into strong
guiding light and taught us the right way to live and the right way to die.
I thank you for myself and all my people, and I give you my heart."
At the close of the
amusements there was a potlatch when robes made of the skins of deer, wild
sheep, marmots, and sables were distributed, and many of the fantastic
headdresses that had been worn by Shamans. One of these fell to my share.
The floor of the house was
strewn with fresh hemlock boughs, bunches of showy wild flowers adorned the
walls, and the hearth was filled with huckleberry branches and epilobium.
Altogether it was a wonderful show.
I have found southeastern
Alaska a good, healthy country to live in. The climate of the islands and
shores of the mainland is remarkably bland and temperate and free from
extremes of either heat or cold throughout the year. It is rainy, however, —
so much so that hay-making will hardly ever be extensively engaged in here,
whatever the future may show in the way of the development of mines,
forests, and fisheries. This rainy weather, however, is of good quality, the
best of the kind I ever experienced, mild in temperature, mostly gentle in
its fall, filling the fountains of the rivers and keeping the whole land
fresh and fruitful, while anything more delightful than the shining weather
in the midst of the rain, the great round sun-days of July and August, may
hardly be found anywhere, north or south. An Alaska summer day is a day
without night. In the Far North, at Point Barrow, the sun does not set for
weeks, and even here in southeastern Alaska it is only a few degrees below
the horizon at its lowest point, and the topmost colors of the sunset blend
with those of the sunrise, leaving no gap of darkness between. Midnight is
only a low noon, the middle point of the gloaming. The thin clouds that are
almost always present are then colored yellow and red, making a striking
advertisement of the sun's progress beneath the horizon. The day opens
slowly. The low are of light steals around to the northeastward with gradual
increase of height and span and intensity of tone; and when at length the
sun appears, it is without much of that stirring, impressive pomp, of
flashing, awakening, triumphant energy, suggestive of the Bible imagery, a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoicing like a strong man to run
a race. The red clouds with yellow edges dissolve in hazy dimness; the
islands, with grayish-white ruffs of mist about them, cast ill-defined
shadows on the glistening waters, and the whole down-bending firmament
becomes pearl-gray. For three or four hours after sunrise there is nothing
especially impressive in the landscape. The sun, though seemingly unclouded,
may almost be looked in the face, and the islands and mountains, with their
wealth of woods and snow and varied beauty of architecture, seem
comparatively sleepy and uncommunicative.
As the day advances toward
high noon, the sun-flood streaming through the damp atmosphere lights the
water levels and the sky to glowing silver. Brightly play the ripples about
the bushy edges of the islands and on the plume-shaped streaks between them,
ruffled by gentle passing wind-currents. The warm air throbs and makes
itself felt as a life-giving, energizing ocean, embracing all the landscape,
quickening the imagination, and bringing to mind the life and motion about
us — the tides, the rivers, the flood of light streaming through the satiny
sky; the marvelous abundance of fishes feeding in the lower ocean; the misty
flocks of insects in the air; wild sheep and goats on a thousand grassy
ridges; beaver and mink far back on many a rushing stream; Indians floating
and basking along the shores; leaves and crystals drinking the sunbeams; and
glaciers on the mountains, making valleys and basins for new rivers and
lakes and fertile beds of soil.
Through the afternoon, all
the way down to the sunset, the day grows in beauty. The light seems to
thicken and become yet more generously fruitful without losing its soft,
mellow brightness. Everything seems to settle into conscious repose. The
winds breathe gently or are wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy
and luminous and combed out fine on the edges. Gulls here and there,
winnowing the air on easy wing, are brought into striking relief; and every
stroke of the paddles of Indian hunters in their canoes is told by a quick,
glancing flash. Bird choirs in the grove are scarce heard as they sweeten
the brooding stillness; and the sky, land, and water meet and blend in one
inseparable scene of enchantment. Then comes the sunset with its purple and
gold, not a narrow arch on the horizon, but oftentimes filling all the sky.
The level cloud-bars usually present are fired on the edges, and the spaces
of clear sky between them are greenish-yellow or pale amber, while the
orderly flocks of small overlapping clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly
touched with crimson like the out-leaning sprays of maple-groves in the
beginning of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes the sky
to the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and transfiguring the
islands and making all the water look like wine. After the sun goes down,
the glowing gold vanishes, but because it descends on a curve nearly in the
same plane with the horizon, the glowing portion of the display lasts much
longer than in more southern latitudes, while the upper colors with
gradually lessening intensity of tone sweep around to the north, gradually
increase to the eastward, and unite with those of the morning.
The most extravagantly
colored of all the sunsets I have yet seen in Alaska was one I enjoyed on
the voyage from Portland to Wrangell, when we were in the midst of one of
the most thickly islanded parts of the Alexander Archipelago. The day had
been showery, but late in the afternoon the clouds melted away from the
west, all save a few that settled down in narrow level bars near the
horizon. The evening was calm and the sunset colors came on gradually,
increasing in extent and richness of tone by slow degrees as if requiring
more time than usual to ripen. At a height of about thirty degrees there was
a heavy cloud-bank, deeply reddened on its lower edge and the projecting
parts of its face. Below this were three horizontal belts of purple edged
with gold, while a vividly defined, spreading fan of flame streamed upward
across the purple bars and faded in a feather edge of dull red. But
beautiful and impressive as was this painting on the sky, the most novel and
exciting effect was in the body of the atmosphere itself, which, laden with
moisture, became one mass of color — a fine, translucent purple haze in
which the islands with softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red
ring lay around the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks,
too, in the distance, and the snow-fields and glaciers and fleecy rolls of
mist that lay in the hollows, were flushed with a deep, rosy alpenglow of
ineffable loveliness. Everything near and far, even the ship, was
comprehended in the glorious picture and the general color effect. The
mission divines we had aboard seemed then to be truly divine as they gazed
transfigured in the celestial glory. So also seemed our bluff,
storm-fighting old captain, and his tarry sailors and all.
About one third of the summer
days I spent in the Wrangell region were cloudy with very little or no rain,
one third decidedly rainy, and one third clear. According to a record kept
here of a hundred and forty-seven days beginning May 17 of that year, there
were sixty-five on which rain fell, forty-three cloudy with no rain, and
thirty-nine clear. In June rain fell on eighteen days, in July eight days,
in August fifteen days, in September twenty days. But on some of these days
there was only a few minutes' rain, light showers scarce enough to count,
while as a general thing the rain fell so gently and the temperature was so
mild, very few of them could be called stormy or dismal; even the bleakest,
most bedraggled of them all usually had a flush of late or early color to
cheer them, or some white illumination about the noon hours. I never before
saw so much rain fall with so little noise. None of the summer winds make
roaring storms, and thunder is seldom heard. I heard none at all. This wet,
misty weather seems perfectly healthful. There is no mildew in the houses,
so far as I have seen, or any tendency toward mouldiness in nooks hidden
from the sun; and neither, among the people nor the plants do we find
anything flabby or dropsical.
In September clear days were
rare, more than three fourths of them were either decidedly cloudy or rainy,
and the rains of this month were, with one wild exception, only moderately
heavy, and the clouds between showers drooped and crawled in a ragged,
unsettled way without betraying hints of violence such as one often sees in
the gestures of mountain storm-clouds.
July was the brightest month
of the summer, with fourteen days of sunshine, six of them in uninterrupted
succession, with a temperature at 7 A.M. of about 600, at 12 i., 70°. The
average 7 A.M. temperature for June was 54.3°; the average 7 A.M.
temperature for July was 55.3°; at 12 M. the average temperature was 61.45°;
the average 7 A.M. temperature for August was 54.12°; 12 M., 61.48° the
average 7 A.M. temperature for September was 52.14°; and 12 ii., 56.12°.
The highest temperature
observed here during the summer was seventy-six degrees. The most remarkable
characteristic of this summer weather, even the brightest of it, is the
velvet softness of the atmosphere. On the mountains of California,
throughout the greater part of the year, the presence of an atmosphere is
hardly recognized, and the thin, white, bodiless light of the morning comes
to the peaks and glaciers as a pure spiritual essence, the most impressive
of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. The clearest of Alaskan air is
always appreciably substantial, so much so that it would seem as if one
might test its quality by rubbing it between the thumb and finger. I never
before saw summer days so white and so full of subdued luster.
The winter storms, up to the
end of December when I left Wrangell, were mostly rain at a temperature of
thirty-five or forty degrees, with strong winds which sometimes roughly lash
the shores and carry scud far into the woods. The long nights are then
gloomy enough and the value of snug homes with crackling yellow cedar fires
may be finely appreciated. Snow falls frequently, but never to any great
depth or to lie long. It is said that only once since the settlement of Fort
Wrangell has the ground been covered to a depth of four feet. The mercury
seldom falls more than five or six degrees below the freezing-point, unless
the wind blows steadily from the mainland. Back from the coast, however,
beyond the mountains, the winter months are very cold. On the Stickeen River
at Glenora, less than a thousand feet above the level of the sea, a
temperature of from thirty to forty degrees below zero is not uncommon. |
