THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 25 



It will be remembered by many people, that when we were ratifying the negotiation between our government 

 and that of Russia, it was made painfully apparent that nobody in this country knew anything about the subject of 

 Russian America. Every schoolboy knew where it was located, but no professor or merchant, howevep wise or 

 shrewd, knew what was in it. Accordingly, immediately after the purchase was made and the formal transfer 

 effected, a large number of energetic and speculative men, some coming from New England even, but most of them 

 residents of the Pacific coast, turned their attention to Alaska. They went up to Sitka in a little fleet of sail- and 

 steam-vessels, but among their number it appears there were only two of our citizens who knew of or had the 

 faintest appreciation as to the value of the seal-islands. One of these, Mr. II. M. Hutchinson, a native of New 

 Hampshire, and the other a Captain Ebenezer Morgan, a native of Connecticut, turned their faces in 1S(»S toward 

 them. Mr. Hutchinson gathered his information at Sitka — Captain Morgan had gained his years before by 

 experience on the South Sea sealing grounds. Mr. Hutchinson represented a company of San Francisco or California 

 capitalists when he landed on St. Paul ; Captain Morgan represented another company of New Loudon capitalists and 

 whaling merchants. They arrived almost simultaneously, Morgan a few days or weeks anterior to Hutchinson. He 

 had quietly enough commenced to survey and preempt the rookeries on the islands, or, in other words, the work of 

 putting stakes down and recording the fact of claiming the ground, as miners do in the mountains ; but later agreed 

 to cooperate with Mr. Hutchinson. These two parties passed that season of 18G8 in exclusive control of those 

 islands, and they took an immense number of seals. They took so many that it occurred to Mr. Hutchinson 

 unless something was done to check and protect these wonderful rookeries, which he saw here for the first time, 

 and which filled him with amazement, that they would be wiped out by the end of another season ; although he 

 was the gainer then, and would be perhaps at the end, if they should be thus eliminated, yet he could not forbear 

 saying to himself that it was wrong and should not be. To this Captain Morgan also assented. 



Organization of the Alaska Commebctal Company.— In the fall of 1SCS Mr. Ilutchir.son and Captain 

 Morgan, by their personal efforts, interested and aroused the Treasury Department and Congress, so that a special 

 resolution was enacted declaring the seal-islands a governmental reservation, and prohibiting any and all parties 

 from taking seals thereon until further action by Congress. In 1869, seals were taken on those islands, under the 

 direction of the Treasury Department, for the subsistence of the natives only; and in 1870 Congress passed the 

 present law, a copy of which I append, for the protection of the fur-bearing animals on those islands, and under its 

 provisions, and in accordance therewith, after an animated and bitter struggle in competition, the Alaska Commercial 

 Company, of which Mr. Hutchinson was a priine organizer, secured the award and received the franchise which it 

 now enjoys and will enjoy for another decade. The company is an American corporation, with a charter, rules, and 

 regulations, which I reproduce in the appendix to this memoir. They employ a fleet of vessels, sail and steam : four 

 steamers, a dozen or fifteen ships, barks, and sloops. Their principal occupation and attention is given naturally to 

 the seal islands, though they have stations scattered over the Aleutian islands and that portion of Alaska west and 

 north of Kadiak. No post of theirs is less than 700 or 800 miles from Sitka. 



Outside of the seal-islands all trade in this territory of Alaska is entirely open to the public. There is no need 

 of protecting the fur-bearing animals elsewhere, unless it may be by a few wholesome general restrictions in regard 

 to the sea-otter chase. The country itself protects the animals on the mainland and other islands by its rugged, 

 forbidding, and inhospitable exterior. 



The treasury officials on the seal-islands are charged with the careful observance of every act of the company; 

 a copy of the lease and its covenant is conspicuously posted in their office; is translated into Russian, and is 

 familiar to all the natives. The company directs its own labor, in accordance with the law, as it sees fit; selects its 

 time of working, etc. The natives themselves work under the direction of their own chosen foremen, or "toyone". 

 These chiefs call out the men at the break of every working-day, divide them into detachments according to 

 the nature of the service, and order their doing. All communication with the laborers on the sealing ground and 

 the company passes through their hands; these chiefs having every day an understanding with the agent of the 

 company as to his wishes, and they govern themselves thereby. 



Btjsiness-siethods. — The company pays 40 cents for the labor of taking each skin. The natives take the skins 

 on the ground; each man tallying his work and giving the result at the close of the day to his chief or foreman. 

 When the skins are brought up and counted into the salt-houses, where the agent of the company receives them 

 from the hands of the natives, the two tallies usually correspond very closely, if they are not entirely alike. When the 

 quota of skins is taken, at the close of two, three, or four weeks of labor, as the case may be. the total sum for 

 the entire catch is paid over in a lump to the chiefs, and these men divide it among the laborers according to their 

 standing as workmen, which they themselves have exhibited on their special tally -sticks. For instance, at the 

 annual divisions, or "catch" settlement, made by the natives on St. Paul island among themselves, in 1872, when 

 I was present, the proceeds of their work for that season in taking and skinning 75,000 seals, at 40 cents per skin, 

 with extra work connected with it, making the sum of $30,037 37, was divided among them in this way: There 

 were 74 shares made up, representing 74 men, though in fact only 50 men worked, but they wished to give a 

 certain proportion to their church, a certain proportion to their priest, and a certain proportion to their widows; so 

 they water their stock, commercially speaking. The 74 shares were proportioned as follows : 



