H^rangell Island 



June. On account of the severe winters they were all 

 compelled to leave the mines the end of September. 

 Perhaps about two thirds of them passed the winter 

 in Portland and Victoria and the towns of Puget 

 Sound. The rest remained here in Wrangell, dozing 

 away the long winter as best they could. 



Indians, mostly of the Stickeen tribe, occupied the 

 two ends of the town, the whites, of whom there were 

 about forty or fifty, the middle portion; but there was 

 no determinate line of demarcation, the dwellings of 

 the Indians being mostly as large and solidly built of 

 logs and planks as those of the whites. Some of them 

 were adorned with tall totem poles. 



The fort was a quadrangular stockade with a dozen 

 block and frame buildings located upon rising ground 

 just back of the business part of the town. It was 

 built by our Government shortly after the purchase 

 of Alaska, and was abandoned in 1872, reoccupied by 

 the military in 1875, and finally abandoned and sold 

 to private parties in 1877. In the fort and about it 

 there were a few good, clean homes, which shone all 

 the more brightly in their sombre surroundings. The 

 ground occupied by the fort, by being carefully 

 leveled and drained was dry, though formerly a por- 

 tion of the general swamp, showing how easily the 

 whole town could have been improved. But in spite 

 of disorder and squalor, shaded with clouds, washed 

 and wiped by rain and sea winds, it was triumphantly 

 salubrious through all the seasons. And though the 

 houses seemed to rest uneasily among the miry rocks 

 and stumps, squirming at all angles as if they had 



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