They are firm believers in signs and omens. When Rev. Mr. Willard and wife first came to the Chilcat country the winter was one of deep snows and stormy weather. The natives said that the weather-gods were angry at the new ways of the missionaries. A child had been buried instead of burned on the funeral pyre in accordance with their customs. The mother of the child became alarmed and felt that her life was in jeopardy for permitting her child to be buried, so she kindled a fire over the grave in order to appease the gods and bring fair weather. At school the children had played new games and mocked wild geese. So the girls of the Sitka Training School brought on a very cold spell of weather by playing a game called “cat’s-back,” and which caused a commotion at the native village. A white man out with some natives picked up some large clam-shells on the beach to bring home with him; the natives remonstrated with him, saying that “a big storm may overtake us, our canoe might capsize, and all be drowned the next time we go on the water.” In tempestuous weather the native propitiates the spirit of the storm by leaving a portion of tobacco in the rock-caves alongshore, but in calm weather he smokes the weed himself. It was noticed, however, that the aboriginal Alaskans were little given to the use of tobacco, less, indeed, than any semi-civilized race whom the writer has ever visited. Governor Swineford, in his annual report to the department at Washington, dated 1886, says: “I have no reason to change or modify the estimate I had formed on very short acquaintance of the character of the native Alaskans. They are a very superior race intellectually as compared with the people generally known as North American Indians, and are as a rule industrious and provident, being wholly self-sustaining. They are shrewd and natural-born traders. Some are good carpenters, others are skillful workers in wood and metals. Not a few among them speak the English language, and some of the young men and women have learned to read and write, and nearly all are anxious for the education of their children.”