ALASKA. 21 



opinion, to set tlicin apart as very differently constituted iu 

 iniiid and disi)osilion from our aborigines, to whom, however, 

 they are intimately allied. Tliey adopted the Christiau faith 

 witli very little o[)j)osition, readily exehanging their barbarous 

 customs and wild superstitions for the agreeable rites of the 

 Greek Catholic Church and its more refined myths and legends. 

 At the time of their first discovery they were living as savages 

 in every sense of the word, bold and hardy ; but now, to all out- 

 ward signs and professions of Christianity they respond as 

 sincerely as our own church-goiug people. 



The question as to the derivation of these i)eople is still a 

 mooted one among ethnologists; in all points of personal bear- 

 ing, intelligeuce, character, as well as physical structure, they 

 seem to form a link of perfect gradation between the Japanese 

 aud Eskimo, although their traditions and language are entirely 

 distinct and peculiar to themselves; they, howev^er, claim to 

 have come first to the Aleutian Islands from a *' big land to the 

 westward," and that when they came liere first they found the 

 land uninhabited, and that they did not meet with any people 

 until their ancestors had pushed on to the eastward asfar as the 

 Peninsular and Kodiak. 



The Aleuts, as they appear to-day, have been so mixed with 

 Eussian, Koloshian, and Kamschadale blood, »&c., that they 

 X)resent characteristics in one way or another of the various 

 races of men from the negro up to the Caucasian. The pre- 

 dominant features among them are small, wide-set, dark eyes, 

 broad and high cheek-bones, causing the jaw, which is full and 

 square, to often appear peaked ; coarse, straight black hair, 

 small, neatly-shaped feet and hands, together with brownish- 

 yellow complexion. The men will average in stature five feet 

 four or five inches; the women less in proportion, although 

 there are exceptions among them, some being over six feet iu 

 height, and others dwarfs. 



The number of these people, including those of Kodiak, who 

 resemble the Aleutians only as Christians, having no other nat- 

 ural or blood afQnity, is about 5,000, but v/heu first discovered 

 by the Russians they were four and five times as many; at least 

 20,000 were living on the Aleutian Islands and the Peninsular in 

 1700; and from that time, in obedience to that natural law 

 which causes an inferior class to succumb to its superior when 

 brought into opposition, the Aleuts were quickly diminished iu 

 Dumber until it became an object of care and solicitude on the 



