ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 261 



What constitutes a native of St. Paul. — Tliere lias been some 

 petty divergence of opinion on the island as to wlio are the real " natives" 

 thereof, because these natives enjoy certain privileges that are very 

 valuable to them and coveted by all outside Alaskan brethren. 



In this connection the people living here are divided into three 

 classes — that is, the males : 



First. The natives, properly speaking, or those who have been born 

 and raised ui)0]i the Pribilof Islands. Xot over one-quarter of the 

 present adult population can lay claim to this title. 



Second. The people who were living" thereon but not born natives at 

 the time of the transfer of all Alaska, July, 1867. This class constitutes 

 a majority of the citizens of the two islands as they exist to-day. 



Third. The people who were living and working as sealers on the 

 Pribilof Islands at the date of the granting by the Government of the 

 present lease to the Alaska Commercial Company, August 31, 1870. 



Of the above three divisions, strict justice and true equity unite in 

 recognizing the third class as the natives of the Pribilof Islands. This 

 settles the question also to the best satisfaction of these people them- 

 selves and removes every quibble of dispute in the premises. Accurate 

 records of the men, women, and children living on each island at the 

 date of the lease in 1871 can be found in the church registers on both 

 St. Paul and St. George. 



Curious derivation of natives' names. — Anyone at all ac- 

 quainted with the Russian language will not fail to notice that the 

 names in the above list have some odd derivations, relating to physical 

 peculiarities, defects, and other originations that are more or less'tom- 

 ical in their suggestions. I was told by a very bright Russian, who 

 spent a season here — 1871-72 — as special agent of the Treasury Depart- 

 ment, that the Aleutian ancestors of these people, when they were 'con- 

 verted and baptized into the Greek Catholic Church, received their 

 names, bran new, from the fertile brains of the priests, who, after 

 exhausting the common run of Muscovitic titles, such as our Smiths 

 and Joneses, were compelled to fall back upou some personal charac- 

 teristics of the new claimant for civilized nomenclature. Thus we have 

 to-day on the seal islands a "Stepan Bayloglazov," or "Son of a White 

 Eye ; " " Oseep Baizyahzeekov," or " Son of a Man without a Tongue." A 

 number of the old Russian governors and admirals of the imperial navy 

 are represented here by their family names, though I do not think, from 

 my full acquaintance with the namesakes, that the distinguished owners 

 in the first place had anything to do with their physical embodiment 

 on the Pribilof Islands. 



Causes of death among the people. — The principal cause of 

 death among the people, by natural infirmity, on the seal islands is the 

 varying forms of consumption and bronchitis, always greatly aggra- 

 vated by that inherited scrofulous taint or stain of blood which was in 

 one way or another flowing through the veins of their recent progeni- 

 tors both here and throughout the Aleutian Islands. There is nothing 

 worth noticing in the line of nervous diseases, unless it be now and 

 then the record of a case of alcoholism superinduced by excessive quas 

 drinking. This "makoolah" intemperance among these people, which 

 was not suppressed until 1876, was a chief factor to the immediate 

 death of infants, for, when they wer-e at the breast, the mothers would 

 drink quas to intoxication, and the stomachs of the newly born Aleuts 

 or Creoles could not stand the infliction which they received, even 

 secoudhand. Had it not been for this wretched spectacle, so often pre- 

 sented to my eyes in 1872-73, I should hardly have taken the active 



