ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 409 



regular supply of canned salmon some very inferior fish were being 

 packed at some of the canneries that would not have been looked at ot 

 used for any purpose a lew years ago. 1 



One of the most remarkable things I noticed at Karluk was the num- 

 ber of foreigners engaged as fishermen. Scandinavian, Dane, and Ger- 

 man predominated on one side of the stream, and Italians on the other, 

 while Chinese, exclusively, were employed within the canneries, clean- 

 ing and canning the fish and preparing the cases for market. 



It seemed, too, that the bitter rivalries of the corporations are some- 

 times taken up in a more intensified form by the men and carried to 

 the point of explosion. 



However that may be, it is true that the foreigners are brought from 

 San Francisco to fish the streams of Alaska, and that they actually look 

 upon the streams and fish as their own individual property. 



The unfortunate native Aleuts, whose fathers owned Alaska and all 

 its riches of stream and forest long before Columbus was born, are hustled 

 out of the way of these Mediterranean fishermen with scant ceremony, 

 and forbidden to fish in their native streams. 



They must obey. Appeal? To whom are they to appeal? There is 

 no one within reach who would listen to them. 



Dimly, in a sort of dazed way, they know something of a Great Father 

 away, away off in a place called Washington ; but how are they to reach 

 him? Whenever the American flag appears they fly to the vessels car- 

 rying it to present a petition and recount the wrongs and the injustice 

 which they suffer. 



Who cares anything for poor, dirty, ignorant creatures like them? 

 Who believes their story? No one. 2 



Landing at Karluk we met a committee of native men who, through 

 an interpreter, told us of how they were denied the right to fish for 

 themselves, and refused employment by the canners as well. It seems 

 that owing to the fact that seines were stretched across the mouth of 

 the river the salmon could not ascend the stream and consequently 

 there were no fish for the natives to get whenever they did attempt to 

 get any; and being refused employment as regular hands along with 

 the foreigners, they could not make a living. 



That the natives may possibly exaggerate the wrongs inflicted upon 

 them; that they may magnify their suffering whenever they meet a 

 person who will stop and listen to their tales of woe, is possibly true 

 enough; but it is equally 1 true that the conditions existing on the Alas- 

 kan streams, from which so many millions 7 worth of beautiful fish are 

 taken, are not the sort of conditions that will benefit the native Alaskan 

 either morally, physically, or financially. 



Nor is it either just or right that his best interests should be left 

 dependent upon the whim of foreigners who may come in and camp 

 down beside his stream and monopolize its treasures, while refus- 

 ing him either employment to earn or the right to fish to make a 

 living. 



The other side of the story is told, however, by the superintendent of 

 one of the canneries: 



KARLUK, August 17, 1894. 



(iKXTLEMEN: In allowing the natives only to fish in the river I would say that at 

 certain times of the tide we are compelled to lay our seines from the month of the 



1 See letter of Commissioner of Fisheries in Appendix. 



-Incidentally, a letter from an Alaskan cauuer to Hon. Marshall McDonald has 

 been referred to the Department and to the special agent for the protection of the 

 salmon fisheries in Alaska; and as its Htory fully illustrates my meaning I have 

 appended it to this report. It tells its own story. 



