132 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



islands from any other land masses would result unfavorably, since it is likely that the 

 birds would attempt to migrate from the new habitat forced upon them, and in that 

 event their loss would be inevitable. Therefore the project does not seem feasible. 



THE NATIVES. 



ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY. 



When the eager search for the unknown land resorted to by the fur-seal millions 

 was rewarded by the discovery of St. George Island in 1786, no signs of human occupancy 

 were found. St. Paul was not visited until the following summer, and although the first 

 party which landed there is said to have found the remains of a recent fire, proving that 

 they had been preceded by some chance visitors, no evidence that human beings had 

 previously made the islands their home has ever been discovered. 



The exploitation of the mine of wealth thus fallen into the hands of the discoverers 

 demanded the services of laborers — a people accustomed to the peculiar climate and 

 inured to the life of hardship which must become their lot. . The Russians turned natu- 

 rally to the near-by islands, whose inhabitants, already in a state of virtual slavery, offered 

 no opposition to the will of their masters. Unalaska and Atka islands furnished the bulk 

 of the natives, said to be about 140 in number, who constituted the nucleus of the present 

 population. Villages were founded at Staraya Artel (Old Settlement), Zapadni Bay, 

 and Garden Cove on St. George; and on the North Shore, near Big Lake, and at Polovina 

 and Zapadni on St. Paul. 



In 1799 the government of the whole region passed into the hands of the Russian- 

 American Co. The various rival traders whose dependents had inhabited the different 

 villages were banished from the islands and all the inhabitants on each island were finally 

 gathered into single settlements, the sites of which are now occupied by the villages of 

 St. George and St. Paul. In the early days the natives were in a state of practical 

 bondage, and were in many respects worse off than slaves. They lived crowded together 

 in semisubterranean huts, subject to the whims of their brutal masters. Scanty fires 

 of driftwood and blubber, which added greasy smoke to the filth which naturally per- 

 vaded their hovels, were their only means of cooking and keeping warm. In winter, 

 crowded together in their squalor, neglected and unnoticed, they perished or survived 

 as it happened, and when the sealing season came they slaughtered and skinned the seals 

 for their masters until another winter rolled around. The number necessary for the work 

 was kept up not by natural increase but by annual recruits from other parts of the region, 

 including Sitka and Kodiak. On the heterogeneous mixture naturally resulting from 

 the intermarriage of these diverse native peoples, their Russian masters, and to a less 

 extent people of other nationalities who have since from time to time made the islands 

 their home, have left their impress. The resulting combination is a people having many 

 characteristics in common, yet probably including individuals as different in appearance 

 and character as can be found in any isolated community of this size anywhere in the 



world. 



RELATION TO LESSEES. 



In 1870, shortly after the purchase of Alaska by the United States, the Alaska 

 Commercial Co. was formed by the banding of several enterprising traders who had 

 taken advantage of the cessation of Russian monopoly to gain a foothold on the islands. 



