SEAL LIFE ON THE PKIB1LOF ISLANDS. 145 



and others who were employed in pelagic sealing have informed me that 

 they usually use rifles in shooting seals in the water. Some, however, 

 use shotguns, but to no great extent. From these conversations I should 

 judge they did not secure more than one-half of the seals killed, and 

 this, I think, is a large estimate of the number secured. 1 am of the 

 opinion that the Pribilof seal herd should be protected both in Bering 

 Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. If an imaginary line were drawn 

 about the islands, 30 or 40 miles distant therefrom, within which sealing 

 would be prohibited, this would be littie protection to seal life, for all 

 the poachers whom I interviewed acknowledged that they could get 

 more seals in the water near the fishing banks, 30, 40, or more miles from 

 the islands, than in the immediate vicinity thereof, and the hunters on 

 the schooners always complained if they got much nearer than 40 miles 

 of the islands. I am certain that even if sealing were prohibited entirely 

 upon the islands the seal herd would in a short time be ex terminated by 

 pelagic sealing, if permitted, because the females that is, the pro- 

 ducers are the seals principally killed by open-sea sealing. 



ABIAL P. LOUD. 



PELAGIC SEALING MANAGEMENT. 



Deposition ofKerrick Artomanoff, native chief, resident of 8t. Paul Island. 



ALASKA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



St. Paul Island, Pribilof Group, ss : 



Kerrick Artomanoff, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I am a 

 native Aleut and reside on St. Paul Island, Pribilof group, Alaska. 

 I was born at Northeast Point, on St. Paul Island, and am 67 years of 

 age. I have worked on the sealing grounds for the last fifty years and 

 am well acquainted with the methods adopted by the Russian and 

 American Governments in taking of fur-seal skins and in protecting 

 and preserving the herds on the island. In 1870, when the Alaska Com- 

 mercial Company obtained a lease of the islands, I was made chief, and 

 held the position for seventeen years. 



It was my duty as chief to take charge of and conduct the drives 

 with my people from the hauling to the killing grounds. The methods 

 used by the Alaska Commercial Company and the American Govern- 

 ment for the care and preservation of the seals were much better than 

 those used by the Russian Government. In old Russian times we used 

 to drive seals from Northeast Point to the village, a distance of nearly 

 13 miles, and we used to drive 5 or 6 miles from other hauling grounds; 

 but when the Americans got the islands they soon after shortened all 

 the drives to less than 3 miles. 



From 1870 to 1884 the seals were swarming on the hauling grounds 

 and the rookeries, and for many years they spread out more and more. 

 All of a sudden, in 1884, we noticed there were not so many seals, and 

 they have been decreasing very rapidly ever since. My people won- 

 dered why this was so, and no one could tell why until we learned that 

 hunters in schooners were shooting and destroying them in the sea. 

 Then we knew what the trouble was, for we knew the seals they killed 

 and destroyed must be cows, for mostly all the males remain on or near 

 the islands until they go away in the fall or fore part of the winter. 

 We also noticed dead pups on the rookeries that had been starved to 

 death. These young pups have increased from year to year since 1887, 

 S. Doc. 137, pt. 1 10 



