ALASKA. 1 ">j 



of their original customs and peculiarities. They occupy the in- 

 terior and the coast of the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea. The 

 Eskimos are a comparatively gentle and inoffensive people, living 

 mostly upon fish, walrus, u^hale, and other game to be found near 

 the shores and in the water, though they also make long excursions 

 into the interior, hunting reindeer, moose, and other large animals. 

 The interior Indians (Athabascans) live mostly by hunting and 

 fishing in the rivers. A few mission stations along the coast and 

 on the Yukon River have had a little influence upon a very small 

 number of the people. The mining camps on the upper Yukon 

 have also come in contact with the natives to some extent in the 

 way of trade, but they have not in any large degree acted as civ- 

 ilizing agencies. It is said the natives of the upper Yukon region 

 have been very little demoralized by the use of intoxicating liquor, 

 perhaps on account of the difficulty of packing it across the divide. 

 Mr. Chapman, of Anvik, writes that "liquor has not troubled the 

 natives speaking the group of dialects found around Anvik; but 

 almost everywhere else in the Yukon country it has made more or 

 less trouble." The dialects referred to arise from the interrelations 

 of Eskimos and Athabascans at the point of contact. The Eskimos 

 and interior Indians find it necessary to exercise the utmost of their 

 energies and of their ingenuity to secure a bare subsistence, and 

 their ideas have not risen much above the level of animal existence. 

 Physically, they are strong and comparatively healthy; mentally, 

 they lack vigor; morally, they substitute expediency for right. 

 They are comparatively honest, because it is the best policy to be 

 so. They see no moral quality in abstaining from the use of 

 intoxicating liquors, tobacco, or other hurtful things, or in restraints 

 in the relations of the sexes. 



Except as their ideas are modified by relations and intercourse 

 with white people, they have no religion, unless certain indefinite 

 superstitions having no connection with any idea of a supreme 

 spiritual being can be called religion. 



