CAUSE. 181 



six or seven I would have great luck. I liaye to Indian Luuters. 

 go a long distance to get seals now. Seals are 

 wild and afraid of an Indian. They have 

 become so since the white man and the trader 

 began to shoot them with shotguns and rifles. 

 In a short time there will be no seals left for the 

 Indian to kill with the spear." ^ Watkins, also a 

 a Makali Indian, who has hunted seals for forty 

 years in a canoe off Cape Flattery, after men- 

 tioning the decrease in the seals, says : "So 

 many schooners and white men are hunting them 

 with guns all along the coast that they are get- 

 ling all killed off." " Many other members of the 

 same and other tribes also add their testimony 

 that the cause of decrease in the migrating 

 herd is due to pelagic sealing by white men. ^ 



Numerous pelagic sealers also, in spite of their WLite seait^rs. 

 interest being contrary to such a conclusion, ad- 

 mit, not only the decrease in the number of seals, 

 but that such decrease has been caused by those 

 engaged in their occupation. Frank Johnson, for 

 ten years a seal hunter, on being asked the ques- 

 tion to what he attributed the decrease, replied: 

 "The increase of the fleet and killing of all the 



' Vol. II, p. 385. 



2Vol.n,p.395. 



^Ishka, Vol.II, p. 388; Wispoo, Vol. II, p. 397; George La Cheek, 

 Vol. II, p. 265; Jim Kasooh, Vol. II, p. 296; King Kaskwa, Vol. 

 II, p. 295; Percy Kaliiktday, Vol. II, p. 261. 



