106 ALASKA FISHERIES AND FUR INDUSTRIES IN 1916. 
and provided that such aborigines are not in the employment of other 
persons, or under contract to deliver the skins to any person. By 
the act of Congress, approved August 24, 1912, giving effect to the 
convention, the privileges accorded to these aborigines were restricted 
by a provision which prohibited for a period of five years the killing of 
fur seals by any person in the waters of Alaska within the 3-mile limit. 
The law provides that no skins taken from seals belonging to the 
American fur-seal herd of the North Pacific Ocean may be brought 
into the United States unless they are officially marked and certified 
as having been legally taken. The Department of Commerce has 
arranged for the marking and certifying of skins lawfully taken by 
Indians or other aborigines, and any skins taken by these people 
should be promptly reported so that the proper steps may be taken 
to authenticate them. 
No fur-seal skins have been reported as having been taken by 
natives of Alaska in the year 1916. 
Indians of the State of Washington took about 470 fur-seal skins 
in 1916. Dr. C. L. Woods, superintendent and physician, United 
States Indian Service, Neah Bay, Wash., at the request of the Bureau, 
marked and authenticated 380 of these skins as having been lawfully 
taken. The authenticated skins were taken from seals speared from 
canoes west of La Push, Wash., and a compilation of the records 
made in respect to these skins shows that 313 were taken from female 
seals and 66 from males, the sex of one not having been indicated. 
SHIPMENT OF SKINS FROM PRIBILOF ISLANDS IN 1916. 
Fur-seal skins.—The 1916 shipment of fur-seal skins, consisting 
of 4,282 skins from St. Paul Island and 2,779 from St. George Island, 
a total of 7,061 skins, was made from the Pribilof Islands in October. 
The skins were transported from the islands to Seattle by the steamer 
Elihu Thomson. From Seattle they were shipped by freight via the 
Northern Pacific Railroad to Funsten Bros. & Co., St. Louis. All of 
theseskins remained on hand at the end of the year, December 31, 1916. 
Fox skins.—The fox skins taken on St. Paul and St. George Islands 
in the season of 1915-16 (420 blues and 20 whites) were shipped 
from the islands on the Coast Guard cutter Unalga in June. They 
were taken by the cutter to Seward, from which point they were 
shipped by Wells Fargo & Co. Express to Funsten Bros. & Co., St. 
Louis, Mo. 
SALE OF FUR-SEAL SKINS. 
On September 20, 1916, there were sold at St. Louis, Mo., by 
Funsten Bros. & Co., 1,900 fur-seal skins taken at the Pribilof 
Islands. The skins sold for $74,530, an average of $39.23 each. 
These skins before being sold had been dressed, dyed, and machined 
by the Gibbins & Lohn Fur Skin Dressing & Dyeing Co., and were 
the first of the Government’s skins so treated to be offered for sale. 
