Article April 26, 1900 Issue

Natives of Alaska

A Distinct Race with no American Indian Blood.

Novelists , poets, historians, magazine writers, and newspaper scribes have for years rung the changes on the theme of the North American Indian, writes a contributor to the Providence Journal. He has been the most talked-about man on earth. This prodigality of Indian literature has been confined entirely to the Indian of the plains. The subject has been an interesting and picturesque one, but not more so than that of the Indian of Alaska, about whom almost nothing has been given to the world. Fully as interesting, fully as unique, his origin just as shrouded in mystery as that of the plains Indian, he has yet been passed by as unworthy of the pen of the humblest hack-writer. A cruise of five months along the Alaskan coast, during which nearly all the larger coast villages and settlements were visited, has afforded the writer unusual facilities for observing the native of southeastern Alaska and learning something of his character, customs, and history. It requires but a slight acquaintance with these natives, who, for want of a better term, are called Indians, to convince one that they are a distinct race without a drop of the blood of the true American Indian in their veins, unless this has come about through intermarriage. The natives of this part of Alaska are not, strictly speaking, Indians, but are undoubtedly of Asiatic origin, resembling in stature, physiognomy, and many personal characteristics the people of Corea.

Tribal relationship between the natives of Alaska is not very close. They are divided into clans, two or more clans living in the same village, each having its own chief, who is usually self-constituted and has no authority whatever. He is, however, very proud of his office and always has a number of large, grotesque paintings across the front of his house, and a painted sign over the door announcing his chieftainship. This sign is often in verse written by some waggish trader who attributes to the chief the possession of qualities that are anything but laudable; fortunately for the trader, the trusting chief is ignorant of its meaning and proudly points to it, thinking that it contains a catalogue of his virtues. Often a totem pole with the animal after which the tribe is named surmounts it. A very curious custom still rigidly adhered to among these natives is that which prohibits the marriage of two members of the same clan. For example, a member of the Bear family cannot marry another of that clan, but her husband must come from the Crow, or Eagle, or Whale clan. The wife then becomes a member of the husband's clan.

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