Part 4 (2/2)
The hat of the Aleut is the most peculiar part of his dress. It consists of a helmet-shaped crown of wood or leather, with an exceedingly long brim in front, so as to protect the eyes from the sun's reflection upon the water and snow. Upon the apex is a small carving, down the back part hang the beards of sea-lions, while carved strips of bone and paint ornament the whole. This hat also serves as a s.h.i.+eld against arrows. The Fox Islanders have caps of bird-skin, on which are left the bright-colored feathers, wings, and tail.[119] As a rule, the men adopt bird-skin clothing, and the women furs, the latter highly ornamented with beads and fringes.[120]
The habitations of the Fox Islanders are called _Ullaa_, and consist of immense holes from one to three hundred feet in length, and from twenty to thirty feet wide. They are covered with poles and earthed over, leaving several openings at the top through which descent is made by ladders. The interior is part.i.tioned by stakes, and three hundred people sometimes occupy one of these places in common. They have no fire-place, since lamps hollowed from flat stones answer every purpose for cooking and light.[121] A boat turned bottom upward is the summer house of the Aleut.[122]
Raw seal and sea-otter, whale and sea-lion blubber, fish, roots, and berries are staple articles of food among the Aleuts. To procure vegetable food is too much trouble. A dead, half-putrefied whale washed ash.o.r.e is always the occasion of great rejoicing. From all parts the people congregate upon the sh.o.r.e, lay in their winter supplies, and stuff themselves until not a morsel remains. November is their best hunting-season. Whale-fis.h.i.+ng is confined to certain families, and the spirit of the craft descends from father to son. Birds are caught in a net attached to the end of a pole; sea-otter are shot with arrows; spears, bone hooks, and nets are used in fis.h.i.+ng.[123] After the advent of the Russians, the natives were not allowed to kill fur-animals without accounting to them therefor.[124]
Their weapons are darts with single and double barbs, which they throw from boards; barbed, bone-pointed lances; spears, harpoons, and arrows, with bone or stone points. At their side is carried a sharp stone knife ten or twelve inches long, and for armor they wear a coat of plaited rushes, which covers the whole body.[125] An Aleut bear-trap consists of a board two feet square and two inches thick, planted with barbed spikes, placed in bruin's path and covered with dust. The unsuspecting victim steps firmly upon the smooth surface offered, when his foot sinks into the dust. Maddened with pain, he puts forward another foot to a.s.sist in pulling the first away, when that too is caught. Soon all four of the feet are firmly spiked to the board; the beast rolls over on his back, and his career is soon brought to an end.
[Sidenote: CUSTOMS OF THE ALEUTS.]
Notwithstanding their peaceful character, the occupants of the several islands were almost constantly at war. Blood, the only atonement for offense, must be washed out by blood, and the line of vengeance becomes endless. At the time of discovery, the Unimak Islanders held the supremacy.
The fabrications of the Aleuts comprise household utensils of stone, bone, and wood; missiles of war and the chase; mats and baskets of gra.s.s and the roots of trees, neat and strong; bird-beak rattles, tambourines or drums, wooden hats and carved figures. From the wing-bone of the sea-gull, the women make their needles; from sinews, they make thread and cord.[126] To obtain glue for mending or manufacturing purposes, they strike the nose until it bleeds.[127] To kindle a fire, they make use of sulphur, in which their volcanic islands abound, and the process is very curious. First they prepare some dry gra.s.s to catch the fire; then they take two pieces of quartz, and, holding them over the gra.s.s, rub them well with native sulphur. A few feathers are scattered over the gra.s.s to catch the particles of sulphur, and, when all is ready, holding the stones over the gra.s.s, they strike them together; a flash is produced by the concussion, the sulphur ignites, and the straw blazes up.[128]
The Aleuts have no marriage ceremony. Every man takes as many women to wife as he can support, or rather as he can get to support him. Presents are made to the relatives of the bride, and when she ceases to possess attractions or value in the eyes of her proprietor, she is sent back to her friends. Wives are exchanged by the men, and rich women are permitted to indulge in two husbands. Male concubinage obtains throughout the Aleutian Islands, but not to the same extent as among the Koniagas.[129] Mothers plunge their crying babies under water in order to quiet them. This remedy performed in winter amid broken ice, is very effectual.[130]
Every island, and, in the larger islands, every village, has its _toyon_, or chief, who decides differences, is exempt from work, is allowed a servant to row his boat, but in other respects possesses no power. The office is elective.[131]
The Aleuts are fond of dancing and given to hospitality. The stranger guest, as he approaches the village, is met by dancing men and dancing women, who conduct him to the house of the host, where food is given him. After supper, the dancing, now performed by naked men, continues until all are exhausted, when the hospitalities of the dwelling are placed at the disposal of the guest, and all retire.[132] A religious festival used to be held in December, at which all the women of the village a.s.sembled by moonlight, and danced naked with masked faces, the men being excluded under penalty of death. The men and women of a village bathe together, in aboriginal innocency, unconscious of impropriety. They are fond of pantomimic performances; of representing in dances their myths and their legends; of acting out a chase, one a.s.suming the part of hunter, another of a bird or beast trying to escape the snare, now succeeding, now failing--the piece ending in the transformation of a captive bird into a lovely woman, who falls exhausted into the arms of the hunter.
The dead are clothed and masked, and either placed in the cleft of a rock, or swung in a boat or cradle from a pole in the open air. They seem to guard the body as much as possible from contact with the ground.[133]
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE ALEUTS.]
In their nature and disposition, these islanders are sluggish but strong. Their sluggishness gives to their character a gentleness and obsequiousness often remarked by travelers; while their inherent strength, when roused by brutal pa.s.sions, drives them on to the greatest enormities. They are capable of enduring great fatigue, and, when roused to action by necessity, they will perform an incredible amount of work, suffering the severest cold or heat or hunger with the most stoical calmness. They are very quiet in their demeanor; sometimes sitting in companies within their dens, or on their house-tops gazing at the sea for hours, without speaking a word. It is said that formerly they were much more gay and cheerful, but that an acquaintance with civilization has been productive of the usual misfortune and misery.[134]
It does not appear that the Russians were behind the Spaniards in their barbarous treatment of the natives.[135] Notwithstanding their interest lay in preserving life, and holding the natives in a state of serfdom as fishers and hunters, the poor people were soon swept away. Father Innocentius Veniaminoff, a Russian missionary who labored among the islanders long and faithfully, gives them the highest character for probity and propriety. Among other things, he affirms that during a residence of ten years in Unalaska, there did not occur a single fight among the natives. Proselytes were made by the Russians with the same facility as by the Spaniards. Tribute was levied by the Russians upon all the islanders, but, for three years after their conversion, neophytes were exempt; a cheap release from hateful servitude, thought the poor Aleut; and a polity which brought into the folds of the church pagan mult.i.tudes.
[Sidenote: THE THLINKEETS.]
THE THLINKEETS, as they call themselves, or _Kolosches_, as they are designated by the Russians, inhabit the coast and islands from Mount St Elias to the river Na.s.s. The name Thlinkeet signifies 'man,' or 'human being.' Kolosch,[136] or more properly _Kaluga_, is the Aleutian word for 'dish,' and was given to this people by Aleutian seal-hunters whom the Russians employed during their first occupation of the Island of the Sitkas. Perceiving a resemblance in the shape of the Thlinkeet lip-ornament, to the wooden vessels of their own country, they applied to this nation the name Kaluga, whence the Kolosches of the Russians.
Holmberg carries their boundaries down to the Columbia River; and Wrangell perceives a likeness, real or imaginary, to the Aztecs.[137]
Indeed the differences between the Thlinkeets and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Oregon, are so slight that the whole might without impropriety be called one people. The Thlinkeets have, however, some peculiarities not found elsewhere; they are a nation distinct from the Tinneh upon their eastern border, and I therefore treat of them separately.
The three families of nations already considered, namely, the Eskimos, the Koniagas, and the Aleuts, are all designated by most writers as Eskimos. Some even include the Thlinkeets, notwithstanding their physical and philological differences, which, as well as their traditions, are as broadly marked as those of nations that these same ethnologists separate into distinct families. Nomadic nations, occupying lands by a precarious tenure, with ever-changing boundaries, engaged in perpetual hostilities with conterminous tribes that frequently annihilate or absorb an entire community, so graduate into one another that the dividing line is often with difficulty determined. Thus the Thlinkeets, now almost universally held to be North American Indians proper, and distinct from the Eskimos, possess, perhaps, as many affinities to their neighbors on the north, as to those upon the south and east. The conclusion is obvious. The native races of America, by their geographical position and the climatic influences which govern them, are of necessity to a certain degree similar; while a separation into isolated communities which are acted upon by local causes, results in national or tribal distinctions. Thus the human race in America, like the human race throughout the world, is uniform in its variety, and varied in its unity.
The Thlinkeet family, commencing at the north, comprises the _Ugalenzes_,[138] on the sh.o.r.e of the continent between Mount St Elias and Copper River; the _Yakutats_, of Bering Bay; the _Chilkats_, at Lynn Ca.n.a.l; the _Hoodnids_, at Cross Sound; the _Hoodsinoos_, of Chatham Strait; and, following down the coast and islands, the _Takoos_, the _Auks_, the _Kakas_, the _Sitkas_,[139] the _Stikines_,[140] and the _Tunga.s.s_. The Sitkas on Baranoff Island[141] are the dominant tribe.
Descending from the north into more genial climes, the physical type changes, and the form a.s.sumes more graceful proportions. With the expansion of nature and a freer play of physical powers, the mind expands, native character becomes intensified, instinct keener, savage nature more savage, the n.o.bler qualities become more n.o.ble; cruelty is more cruel, torture is elevated into an art, stoicism is cultivated,[142] human sacrifice and human slavery begin, and the oppression and degradation of woman is systematized. ”If an original American race is accepted,” says Holmberg, ”the Thlinkeets must be cla.s.sed with them.” They claim to have migrated from the interior of the continent, opposite Queen Charlotte Island.
The Ugalenzes spend their winters at a small bay east from Kadiak, and their summers near the mouth of Copper River, where they take fish in great quant.i.ties. Their country also abounds in beaver. The Chilkats make two annual trading excursions into the interior. The Tacully tribes, the Sicannis and Nehannes, with whom the Chilkats exchange European goods for furs, will allow no white man to ascend their streams.
[Sidenote: THLINKEET PECULIARITIES.]
Naturally, the Thlinkeets are a fine race; the men better formed than the boatmen of the north;[143] the women modest, fair, and handsome;[144] but the latter have gone far out of their way to spoil the handiwork of nature. Not content with daubing the head and body with filthy coloring mixtures; with adorning the neck with copper-wire collars, and the face with grotesque wooden masks; with scarring their limbs and breast with keen-edged instruments; with piercing the nose and ears, and filling the apertures with bones, sh.e.l.ls, sticks, pieces of copper, nails, or attaching to them heavy pendants, which drag down the organs and pull the features out of place;[145] they appear to have taxed their inventive powers to the utmost, and with a success unsurpa.s.sed by any nation in the world, to produce a model of hideous beauty.
[Sidenote: THLINKEET LIP-ORNAMENT.]
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