Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1883-08-29
NO.. 46
GLIMPSES OF ALASKA.

CdtIOu LFlp W Alaska. lie writes from
Fort WrangelI as follows:
Three sunny and beautiful days were
spent sailing through the enchanted is
lands, with steep mountain sides and bold
rocks reflected in clear waters. cascades
dashing down between pine trees and
lofty snow peaks taking on the delicate
glow and flush of the late sunset light.
The midnight skies had been dyed with
the flames of the aurora, and the early
sunrise was a dream of faint and misty
colOring just before we rounded the point
of green island one morning and saw
the town and totem poles of Fort Wran-
gell before US. Next to Kodiak and Sit
ka, Wrangell is one of the oldest settle
ments IN Alaska, and for eighty years has
been great trading post along the coast
The Hudson Bay Company and tie Rus
sian Government had forts and stations
here, and for few years after the pur-
chase of Alaska, a garrison of United
States troops were maintained at Fort
Wrangell. AS different counsels prevail
ed at headquarters, the troops were with
drawn and then returned, and after a
small fortune had been expended in this
abandonment and restoration of the mil
itary, the soldiers took final leave p
years ago, and the blockhouse, stockade,
and the log quarters were given over to
qicturesqueness and decay.
AS point of departure for the Casiar
mines On the Stickeen River, Wrangell
has maintained its Importance even after
the withdrawal of troops, and the miners
and prospectors Of the gold region make
it base of supplies in all seasons, and a
place for social hibernation when the snow
and ice drive them down from their
mountain retreats. A few trading stores
straggle up the main street that runs par
alleI with the beach. At one end this
thoroughfare is guarded by the stockade
and sally port of the old fort, while at
the other it gradually changes into
ruin bling Indian village, set with totem
posts and fringed along the water front
with long cedar canoes. The Indian
houses front directly on the beach, and
behind them are the grass-groWn ruins of
the old Russian fort and its outlying
graveyard. The houses are low and
square, built Of rough -hewn cedar planks
with few attempts at paint and outer de-
guard the doorways of the great chiefs
and the other great men. These totems
are the shrines and show places of Wran-
gell, and the ordinary tourist can appre-
clate something of the great interest that
ethnologists have taken in them. A pair
of especially fine totems were taken from
here in 1875 and sent to the Centennial
Exposition and since then they have oc-
cupied place in the great halls of the
Smithsonian Institute.
The totems of Wrangell are ancient,
and weather worn, spotted with moss and
linchens and bearing tufts of grass and
waving bushes in the crevices, and the
heraldic carving and coloring is wonder
fully improved by this toning and soften~
ing of the elements. The totems by the
doorways stand forty and sixty feet high;
carved from base to crown with huge,
grotesque faces of men and animals, the
bear, the wolf, the whale and the raven
standing as most prominent among the
herealdic beasts that represent the great
families Of the Thlinkets. Each one of
these faces has significance equivalent
to the quarterings on the shield Of no
BILE family, and mans ancestors are to
be read on his totem posts by all who
run. The carving and painting of the
symbolic heads is work of savage skill,
and the cost of these poles is astonishing,
even in this day of extravaganza in the
decorative art. The noble Thlinket must
fell his tall cedars and set the artist to
work, then comes the grand ceremony of
erecting the posts before his home. A feast
is given of all the delicacies the Alaska
market can afford, and potyatch, or gifts,
blankets and calico, are given away so
generously that the totem party often
costs as nigh as $1,000 to $4,000. A
mans rank and riches are considered
greater the more he gives away, and as
the blanket is the unit of value, his
wealth and standard increases according
as he tears and distributes blankets on
the occasion of his house-warming and
poleeraising parties Totems are also
erected over the square-box houses in
which they deposit the ashes of their
cremated dead, and the town abounds in
picturesque little tombs niched in be-
tween the houses of the living. Sur
mounted by fox or whale, once paint
ed in brilliant colors but now toned down
by the MOSES, the ferns, trailers and rank
vegetation that rapidly creeps over and
conceals everything in this moist, temper
ate climate, the houses of the dead are
even more picturesque than those of the
living.
At this season of the year Wrangell
enjoys It's dull times, the Indians be-
ing scattered on their annual fishing trips,
and the miners being hard at work at the
mines up the Stickney River. The house
of Sitka Jack, a great chief among these
people, was locked and deserted, the great
man having gone up the coast 10 spend
short time at one Of his many summer
residences. Over one locked doorway
was mis- name and legend, which combines
a well-witnessed and legal testament, to-
gether with the conventional door-plate
of the white man:
ANATLASH.
Let all that read know that
Am a friend to the whites. Let no
One molest this house. In case of my
Death it belongs to my wife.
Thus wrote Anatlash, a man Of tall