The Alaska sourdough., 1911-12-05
NATIVE CUSTOMS STILL PREVAIL

teacher of sanitation in the southeast ern Alaska district for the United States bureau of education, gives very fair idea of the extent to which native customs still prevail among the Alaska Indians. Miss Mcconnell says:
 The native and tribal customs of the want subject in a report of this kind, vet when a social worker or teacher IS compelled to use drastic measures in order to secure the burial of a child dead for fortnight, or for clearing cut a multitude of kinsmen gathered around sick man for the purpose of exercising the wicked spirits that are the cause of the malady more than the annoying and deleterious companion ship of kinspeople actuated by de sire to cure by witchcraft, or by, per haps the stronger desire to secure a distribution of the blankets and family and tribal relics of great native value, it will be apparent that effective work is secured more certainly when the worker undersands the significance of hideous and savage ceremony and per haps finds something of social value in what would otherwise have no meaning to one who did not realize that, for in stance, even the use of an Indian doc tors rattle is an evidence Of the crude but strong desire of the native to .f- feet cure.
 That the native people are very much more strongly bound to their na tive customs than appears on the sur face seems to be the concensus of opin- ion of workers among them. They have learned to conceal them cleverly or to give them the external semblanee. of white man s customs. ,!
 Witchcraft is still practiced in many villages. The very children at school accuse one another, or are accused by the older people, of casting an evil eye upon one another. This was given as the excuse for the nonattendance of one little girl at Killisnoo.
 A native woman who is rather bet ter educated than the average, took the United States history and turned to the account of the burning of the witches at Salem to prove that the white peo- pie believed in witchcraft. This same woman also read the Bible to show that possession by evil spirits and demons in biblical times was related to witch craft.
 As a matter of fact, witchcraft is still a powerful influence with the Al aska native, and within two years mur- der has been committed because of it., and there is no doubt the crime will occur again.
 Frequently when children are brought for medical attention one reads, in the frantic anxiety of the parents, their fear that medical aid can not overcome the influence of the witch The creed that teaches illness is sent by the Almighty as punish ment or to chasten the spirit, rather than as the result of indifference to or disregard of natures laws, is not far in advance of the natives belief in witchcraft
 The native people have supersti- tious dislike to handle a dead body and hence, when life is despaired of the patient is dressed for burial before life is extinct. Sometimes when I have been working over a patient and have found it necessary to leave the house to procure further remidies, on my re- turn I have found my patient dressed for burial, and I have been requested to do no more. As they can not judg' of the possibility of recovery, refusa
 to allow us to foster the tiny sparl