Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
Here the governor told me there was somewhere a skull waiting for me,
and the storekeeper would tell me of it. But when we arrive there are
only two or three natives to meet us. The storekeeper, who is also
postmaster, is said to be sick in bed. He is supposed to have an ulcer
or some other bad thing of the stomach. So we go to his house and find
him in bed, with a lot of medicine bottles on a table next to him. Is
alone; no wife. Shows no enthusiasm in seeing me, though heard of my
coming. Reads letters--no attention to me. Gets up--I ask him about his
illness--answers like a man carrying a chip on his shoulder. Goes to
store to attend to mail, and barely asks me to follow. I wait in store;
he finishes mail and goes out--orders the Eskimo present out gruffly,
and to me says, "You may stay in the store; I'll be back." But I wait
and wait, and finally decide the man for some reason is unwilling
to help me. Asked him before he went out about the _Matanuska_, but
he told me she might not be back from Holy Cross in a month, trying
doubtless to discourage me to stay. On going toward the _Agnes_ I find
him sitting on a log and talking to a couple of men from a tugboat that
has arrived--just talk, no business, judging from their laughing. So
I go on the boat, write a few words to Mr. Townsend of the Bureau of
Fisheries, who makes this place his headquarters, and with some feeling
hand this to the man, telling him at the same time that plainly he does
not wish to assist me in any way. This, of course, rouses him; he gets
red and says a few lame words, ending with, "Do you think I would touch
any of them dam things or that I would let any of my men (natives)
touch them? Not on your life!" So I leave Old Hamilton, for he is the
only white man there now. But the place had other distinctions. Until
recently, I am told, they have had a teacher, a young girl, who in her
zeal had the natives collect all the burial boxes with their contents
and had them all thrown into the river. Not long after she accomplished
that she left. The storekeeper told me that "If I want them so bad I
could pick them up (skulls and bones) along the river where the water
washed them out after the teacher threw them in." Luckily there were
not many "Old Hamiltons."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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