page_title: USRC Wayanda
section_title: Alaskan survey, 1868
hierarchical_section_title: USRC Wayanda / Service history / Alaskan survey, 1868
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of men's and women's dress, Aleutian Islands, ca. 1820 from http://content.lib.washington.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/alaskawcanada&amp;CISOPTR=809&amp;CISORESTMP=&amp;CISOVIEWTMP=
context_page_description: USRC Wayanda was a Pawtuxet-class screw steam revenue cutter built for the United States Revenue Cutter Service during the American Civil War.
  Commissioned in the closing months of the war, Wayanda briefly operated as a convoy escort before the close of hostilities. After the war, she was placed at the disposal of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase for a tour of the defeated Confederacy. Chase recommended extending suffrage to the South's black population, but his recommendations were ignored by the Johnson administration.
  In 1866–67, Wayanda made the long journey around Cape Horn to the West Coast, where she would spend the rest of her career. In 1868, Wayanda carried out an important survey of the newly acquired territory of Alaska. Her commander, John W. White's recommendation that a federal reserve be established in the Pribilof Islands to protect both the Northern fur seals and the Aleut people who hunted them, was quickly acted on by the government.
  Wayanda was sold in 1873 and refitted for commercial service as a freight and passenger steamer named Los Angeles, continuing in this role for some twenty years. She was wrecked off Point Sur in April 1894 with the loss of six lives.
context_section_description: In March 1868, Wayanda was ordered to the newly acquired territory of Alaska to conduct a survey of the coastline and to discourage the overhunting of Northern fur seals in the Pribilof Islands. Prior to departure, Wayanda exchanged her officers and crew with the revenue cutter Lincoln, who had conducted a preliminary survey of the Alaskan coast the previous year.
  During her long cruise, which ended in November, Wayanda, now under the command of Captain John W. White, gathered a considerable amount of valuable information. White conducted a careful charter of Cook Inlet, correcting numerous errors by earlier cartographers. He sent a party by boat along the Kukuy River, who reported the eastern shore of the Inlet to be good agricultural land, with the potential to support a large population. White noted the existence of thick coal beds on the eastern shore in the vicinity of Kenai, and he also reported "rich specimens of gold-bearing quartz and silver ore" on Baranof Island (part of modern-day Sitka) as well as "very rich specimens of copper ore and galena" on nearby islands. Further up the coast, off the Aleutians, White discovered, contrary to earlier reports, promising fishing grounds, especially for codfish and halibut.
  At the Pribilof Islands, White discovered that the fur companies had engaged in indiscriminate slaughter of the seal population since the departure of the Russian authorities, threatening the sustainability of the seal hunt. White ordered the companies to restrict their slaughter to "a limited number of the two-year-old males". Noting that the traditional lifestyle of the native Aleut people had been disrupted by the fur companies, White destroyed the fur companies' stocks of whiskey, used to pay their Aleut hunters, ordering that the hunters be paid in "provisions, clothing, and other needful articles" instead.
  On Wayanda's return from Alaska, Captain White recommended the establishment of a federal reserve on the main Pribilof islands of St. George and St. Paul, to protect both the seals and the Aleut population. The government took his advice in 1870, leasing out hunting on the islands to one firm, the Alaska Commercial Company. Though the Revenue Service did a "creditable job" of trying to protect the seals, the federal reserve area was not large enough to provide adequate protection. White's report on the problems caused by alcohol in the region may also have influenced the government's decision to ban the importation of alcohol into Alaska the same year.
caption: Aleuts in traditional dress. Wayanda's Captain, J. W. White, took action to protect the Aleuts from exploitation by the fur companies in 1868
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