The family groups within the houses were as interesting and picturesque as the totem poles without; and strangers were free to enter without formality, and study the ways of the best native society without hindrance. These people nearly all wear civilized garments, and in the baronial halls of Fort Wrangell there are imposing heaps of red-covered and brass-bound trunks that contain stores of blankets, festal garments, and family treasures. In all the houses the Indians went right on with their breakfasts and domestic duties regardless of our presence; and the white visitors made themselves at home, scrutinized and turned over everything they saw with an effrontery that would be resented, if indulged in in kind by the Indians. The women had the shrewdest eye to money-making, and tried to sell ancient and greasy baskets and broken spoons when they had nothing else in the curio line. In one house two giggling damsels were playing on an accordeon when we entered, but stopped and hid their heads in their blankets at sight of us. An old gentleman, in a single abbreviated garment, crouched by the fireside, frying a dark and suspicious-looking dough in seal oil; and the coolness and self-possession with which he rose and stepped about his habitation were admirable. He was a grizzled and surly-looking old fellow, but from the number of trunks and fur robes piled around the walls, he was evidently a man of wealth, and his airy costume rather a matter of taste than economy. Many of the men showed us buckskin pouches containing little six-inch sticks of polished cedar that they use in their great social games. These gambling sticks are distinguished by different markings in red and black lines, and the game consists in one man taking a handful, shuffling them around under his blanket, and making the others guess the marks of the first stick drawn out. These Indians are great gamblers, and they spend hours and days at their fascinating games. They shuffle the sticks to see who shall go out to cut and gather firewood in winter, and if a man is seen crawling out after an armful of logs, his neighbors shout with derision at him as a loser.
SILVER BRACELETS.
LABRETTES.
In addition to their silver bracelets, their silver earrings and finger rings, many of the women keep up the old custom of wearing nose rings and lip rings, that no amount of missionary and catechism, seemingly, can break them of. The lip rings used to be worn by all but slaves, and the three kinds worn by the women of all the island tribes are marks of age that take the place of family records. When a young girl reaches marriageable age, a long, flat-headed silver pin, an inch in length, is thrust through the lower lip. After the marriage festival the Thlinket dame assumes a bone or ivory button a quarter or half inch across. This matronly badge is a mere collar-button compared to the two-inch plugs of wood that they wear in their under lips when they reach the sere and yellow leaf of existence. This big labrette gives the last touch of hideousness to the wrinkled and blear-eyed old women that one finds wearing them, and it was from the Russian name for this trough in the lip—kolosh—that all the tribes of the archipelago were known as Koloshians, as distinguished from the Aleuts, the Innuits, and Esquimaux of the northwest.
Far less picturesque than the natives in their own houses were the little Indian girls at the mission-school in the old fort. Combed, cleaned, and marshalled in stiff rows to recite, sing, and go through calisthenic exercises, they were not nearly so striking for studies and sketches aboriginal, but more hopeful to contemplate as fellow-beings. Clah, a Christianized Indian from Fort Simpson, BC, was the first to attempt mission work among the Indians at Fort Wrangell. In 1877 Mrs. McFarland was sent out by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, after years of mission work in Colorado and the west, and, taking Clah on her staff, she labored untiringly to establish the school and open the home for Indian girls. Others have joined her in the work at Fort Wrangell, and everyone on the coast testifies to good results already attained by her labors and example. She is known and reverenced among all the tribes, and the Indians trust in her implicitly, and go to her for advice and aid in every emergency. With the establishment of the new industrial mission-school at Sitka, Mrs. McFarland will be transferred to the girls’ department of that institution. The Rev. Hall Young and his wife have devoted themselves to the good cause at Fort Wrangell, and will continue there in charge of the church and school. The Presbyterian missions have the strongest hold on the coast, and the Catholics, who built a church at Fort Wrangell, have given up the mission there, and the priest from Nanaimo makes only occasional visits to his dusky parishioners.
The steep hillside back of Fort Wrangell was cleared of timber during military occupancy, and on the lower slopes the companies had fine gardens, which remain as wild overgrown meadows now. In them the wild timothy grows six feet high, the blueberry bushes are loaded with fruit, salmon berries show their gorgeous clusters of gold and scarlet, and the white clover grows on long stems and reaches to a fulness and perfection one can never imagine. This Wrangell clover is the common clover of the East looked at through a magnifying glass, each blossom as large and wide-spread as a double carnation pink, and the fragrance has a strong spicy quality with its sweetness. The red clover is not common, but the occasional tops are of the deepest pink that these huge clover blossoms can wear. While the hillside looked cleared, there was a deep and tangled thicket under foot, the moss, vines, and runners forming a network that it took some skill to penetrate; but the view of the curved beach, the placid channel sleeping in the warm summer sunshine like a great mountain lake, and the ragged peaks of the snowy range showing through every notch and gap, well repaid the climb through it. It was a most perfect day when we climbed the ridge, the air as warm and mellow as Indian summer, with even its soft haze hung round the mountain walls in the afternoon, and from those superior heights we gazed in ecstasy on the scene and pitied all the people who know not Alaska.
When Professor Muir was at Fort Wrangell one autumn, he climbed to the summit of this first mountain on a stormy night to listen to the fierce music of the winds in the forest. Just over the ridge he found a little hollow, and gathering a few twigs and branches he started a fire that he gradually increased to quite a blaze. The wind howled and roared through the forest, and the scientist enjoyed himself to the utmost; but down in the village the Indians were terrified at the glow that illuminated the sky and the tree-tops. No one could explain the phenomenon, as they could not guess that it was Professor Muir warming himself during his nocturnal ramble in the forest, and it was with difficulty that the minister and the teachers at the mission could calm the frightened Indians.
On a second visit to Fort Wrangell on the Idaho, there was the same warm, lazy sunshine and soft still air, and as connoisseurs we could the better appreciate the fine carvings and ornamental work of these æsthetic people, who decorate every household utensil with their symbols of the beautiful. Mr. Lear, or “King Lear,” welcomed us back to his comfortable porch, and as a special mark brought forth his great horn spoon, a work of the highest art, and a bit of bric-a-brac that cost its possessor some four hundred dollars. Mr. Lear is that famous man, who “swears by the great horn spoon,” and this elaborately carved spoon, made from the clear, amber-tinted horn of the musk ox, is more than eighteen inches long, with a smooth, graceful bowl that holds at least a pint. This spoon constituted the sole assets of a bankrupt debtor, who failed, owing Mr. Lear a large sum; and the jocose trader first astonished us by saying that he had a carved spoon that cost him four hundred dollars. The amateur photographers on shipboard raved at sight of the beautiful amber spoon with its carved handle inlaid with abalone shell, and, rushing for their cameras, photographed it against a gay background of Chilkat blankets. Mr. Lear has refused all offers to buy his great horn spoon, routing one persistent collector by assuring him that he must keep it to take his medicines in.
The skies were as blue as fabled Italy when the Idaho “let go” from Fort Wrangell wharf that glorious afternoon, and we left with genuine regret. The Coast-Survey steamer Hassler came smoking around the point of an island just as we were leaving Fort Wrangell; and our captain, who would rather lose his dinner than miss a joke, fairly shook with laughter when he saw the frantic signals of the Hassler, and knew the tempestuous frame of mind its commander was working himself up to.
