22 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



a greater desire among the young men than among the young women of savage and semi civilized people to be 

 gaily dressed, and to look fine. But the visits of the wives of our treasury officials and the company's agents to 

 these islands, during the last ten years, hriuging with them a full outfit, as ladies always do, of everything under 

 the sun that women want to wear, has given the native female mind an undue expansion up there, and stimulated' 

 it to unwonted activity. They watch the cut of the garments, and borrow the patterns; and some of them are 

 very expert dressmakers today. When the Russians controlled affairs the women were the hewers of the drift-wood 

 and the drawers of the water. At St. Paul there was no well of drinking-fliud about the village, nor witfiin 

 half a mile of the village ; there was no drinking-water unless it was caught in cisterns, and the cistern-water, 

 owing to the particles of seal-fat soot which fall upon the roofs of the houses, is rendered undrinkable; so that the 

 supply for the town, until quite recently, used to be carried by the women from two little lakes at the head of the 

 lagoon, a mile and a half, as the crow flies, from the village, and right under Telegraph hill. This is quite a journey, 

 and when it is remembered that they drink so much tea, and that water has to go with it, some idea of the labor 

 of the old and young females can be derived from an inspection of the map. Latterly, within the last four or five, 

 years, the company have opened a spring less than half a mile from the " gorode", which they have plumbed and 

 regulated, so that it supplies them with water now, and renders the labor next to nothing, compared with the 

 former difficulty. But to-day, when water is wanted in the Aleutian houses at St. Paul, the man has to get it, the 

 woman does not ; he trudges out with a little wooden firkin or tub on his back, and brings it to the house. 



Some of the natives save their money; but there are very few among them, perhaps not more than a dozen, 

 who have the slightest economical tendency. What they cannot spend for luxuries, groceries, and tobacco, they 

 manage to get away with at the gaming-table. They have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they have the 

 usual small proportion who know how to make money and then how to spend it. A few among them who are in 

 the habit of saving, have opened a regular bank-account with the company; some of them have to-day two or three 

 thousand dollars saved, drawing an interest of 9 per cent. 



When the ships arrive and go, the great and necessary labor of lightering their cargoes off and on from the 

 roadsteads where they anchor, is principally performed by these people, and they are paid so much a day for their 

 labor, from 50 cents to $1, according to the character of the service they render; this operation, however, is 

 much dreaded by the ship-captains and sea-going men, whose habits of discipline and automatic regularity and 

 effect of working render them severe critics and impatient coadjutors of the natives, who, to tell the truth, hate to 

 do anything after they have pocketed their reward for sealing; and wheu they do labor after this, they regard it as 

 an act of very great condescension on their part. 



As they are living to-day up there, there is no restraint, such as the presence of policemen, courts of justice, 

 fines, etc., which we employ for the suppression of disorder and maintenance of the law in our own land. They 

 understand that if it is necessary to make them law-abiding, and to punish crime, that such officers will be among 

 them; and hence, perhaps, is due the fact that, from the time that the Alaska Commercial Company has taken 

 charge, in 1870, there has not been one single occasion where the simplest functions of a justice of the pea.ce would 

 or could have been called in to settle any difficulty. This speaks eloquently for their docile nature and their amiable 

 disposition. 



Food. — Seal-meat is their staple food, and in the village of St. Paul they consume on an average fully 500 

 pounds a day the year round ; and they are, by the permission of the Secretary of the Treasury, allowed every fall 

 to kill 5,000 or 0,000 seal-pups, or an average of 22 to 30 young "kotickie" for each man, woman, and child in the 

 settlements. The pups will dress 10 pounds each. This shows an average consumption of nearly GOO pounds of 

 seal meat by each person, large and small, daring the year. To this diet the natives add a great deal of butter and 

 many sweet crackers. They are passionately fond of butter — no epicure at home, or butter-taster in Goshen, knows 

 or appreciates that article better than these people do. If they could get all that they desire, they would consume 

 1,000 pounds of butter and 500 pounds of sweet crackers every week, and indefinite quantities of sugar — the 

 sweetest of all sweet teeth are found in the jaw of the average Aleut. But it is of course unwise to allow them full 

 swing in this matter, for they would turn their stomachs into fermenting tanks if they had full access to an 

 unlimited supply of saccharine food. The company allows them 200 pounds a week. If unable to get sweet 

 crackers they will eat about 300 pounds of hard or pilot bread every week, and in addition to this nearly 700 

 pounds of flour at the same time. Of tobacco they are allowed 50 pounds per week ; candles, 75 pounds ; rice, 50 

 pounds. They burn, strange as it may seem, kerosene oil here to the exclusion of the seal-fat, which literally 

 overruns the island. They ignite and consume over 600 gallons of kerosene oil a year in the village of St. Paid 

 alone. They do not fancy vinegar very much — perhaps 50 gallons a year is used up there. Mustard and pepper 

 are sparingly used, one to one and a half pounds a week for the whole village; beans they peremptorily reject — for 

 some reason or other they cannot be induced to use them. Those who go about the vessels contract a taste tor 

 split-pea soup, and a few of them are sold in the village-store. Salt meat, beef or pork, they will take reluctantly, 

 if it is given to and pressed upon them, but they will never buy it. I remember, in this connection, seeing two 

 barrels of prime salt pork and a barrel of prime mess salt beef opened in the company's store, shortly after my 

 arrival in 1872, and, though the people of the village were invited to help themselves, I think I am right in saying 



