Along Alaska's Great River: A Popular Account of the Travels of an Alaska Exploring Expedition along the Great Yukon River, from Its Source to Its Mouth, in the British North-West Territory, and in the Territory of AlaskaSchwatka, Frederick
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Along Alaska's Great River: A Popular Account of the Travels of an Alaska Exploring Expedition along the Great Yukon River, from Its Source to Its Mouth, in the British North-West Territory, and in the Territory of Alaska
Schwatka, Frederick
Alaska -- Description and travel; United States -- Discovery and exploration; Yukon River (Yukon and Alaska) -- Description and travel
The Chilkat country was reached on the morning of the 2d of June and we
dropped anchor in a most picturesque little port called Pyramid Harbor,
its name being derived from a conspicuous conical island that the
Chilkats call Schlay-hotch, and the few whites, Pyramid Island, shown
on page 43. There were two salmon canneries just completed, one on
each side of the inlet, awaiting the "run" or coming of salmon, which
occurred about two weeks later. Each cannery was manned by about a half
dozen white men as directors and workmen in the trades departments,
the Chilkats doing the rougher work, as well as furnishing the fish.
They differed in no material respect from the salmon canneries of the
great Columbia River, so often described. Just above them comes in the
Chilkat river, with a broad shallow mouth, which, at low water (sixteen
feet below high water) looks like a large sand flat forming part of the
shores of the harbor. On these bars the Indians spear the salmon when
the water is just deep enough to allow them to wade around readily.
Up this Chilkat river are the different villages of the Chilkat
Indians, one of fifteen or twenty houses being in sight, on the east
bank, the largest, however, which contains four or five times as many
houses, called Klukwan, being quite a distance up the river. These
Chilkats are subdivided into a number of smaller clans, named after the
various animals, birds and fishes. At about the time of my arrival the
chief of the Crow clan had died, and as he was a very important person,
a most sumptuous funeral was expected to last about a week or ten days.
These funerals are nothing but a series of feasts, protracted according
to the importance of the deceased, and as they are furnished at the
expense of the administrators or executors of the dead man's estate,
every Indian from far and wide, full of veneration for the dead and a
desire for victuals, congregates at the pleasant ceremonies, and gorges
to his utmost, being worthless for work for another week afterward. As
I urgently needed some three or four score of these Indians to carry my
effects on their backs across the Alaskan coast range of mountains to
the head waters of the Yukon river, this prolonged funeral threatened
seriously to prevent my getting away in good time. Ranking me as a
chief, I was invited to the obsequies and promised a very conspicuous
position therein, especially on the last day when the body was to be
burned on a huge funeral pyre of dry resinous woods. Cremation is the
usual method of disposing of the dead among these people, the priests
or medicine men being the only ones exempt. The latter claim a sort
of infallibility and all of their predictions, acts, and influences
capable of survival, live after them so long as their bodies exist,
but should these be lost by drowning, devouring, or cremation, this
infallibility ceases. Therefore these defunct doctors of savage
witch-craft inhabit the greatest portion of the few graveyards that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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