Travels in Alaska 



animals under different circumstances, manner of 

 getting a living, etc. When our talk was interrupted 

 by the howling of a wolf on the opposite side of the 

 strait, Kadachan puzzled the minister with the ques- 

 tion, "Have wolves souls?" The Indians believe that 

 they have, giving as foundation for their belief that 

 they are wise creatures who know how to catch seals 

 and salmon by swimming slyly upon them with their 

 heads hidden in a mouthful of grass, hunt deer in com- 

 pany, and always bring forth their young at the same 

 and most favorable time of the year. I inquired how 

 it was that with enemies so wise and powerful the 

 deer were not all killed. Kadachan replied that 

 wolves knew better than to kill them all and thus cut 

 off their most important food-supply. He said they 

 were numerous on all the large islands, more so than 

 on the mainland, that Indian hunters were afraid of 

 them and never ventured far into the woods alone, 

 for these large gray and black wolves attacked man 

 whether they were hungry or not. When attacked, 

 the Indian hunter, he said, climbed a tree or stood 

 with his back against a tree or rock as a wolf never 

 attacks face to face. Wolves, and not bears, Indians 

 regard as masters of the woods, for they sometimes 

 attack and kill bears, but the wolverine they never 

 attack, "for," said John, "wolves and wolverines are 

 companions in sin and equally wicked and cunning." 

 On one of the small islands we found a stockade, 

 sixty by thirty-five feet, built, our Indians said, by 

 the Kake tribe during one of their many warlike 

 quarrels. Toyatte and Kadachan said these forts 



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