108 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



Since these little villages of Kadiak, Leesnoi, Yealova, and Af- 

 ognak embrace within their limits a large majority of the sixteen 

 or seventeen hundred Creoles who are residents and natives of 

 Alaska, it may be interesting if a sketch be given of the physical 

 and mental characteristics which distinguish them broadly from the 

 aboriginal types. The original Creole was the offspring of a Rus- 

 sian father and an Aleutian or Kaniag mother. He inherited the 

 strong thickset frame and bushy, curly beard and brown hair of 

 his father ; in many cases his eyes were as blue (and his hair some- 

 times red), his skin as white, and his bearing just as good as was 

 his Russian progenitors'. The aggressive energy, however, of the 

 sire seldom was transmitted, the Creole being indolent and very pa- 

 cific in disposition. If this original Creole, in his time and turn, 

 married a full-blooded Aleutian or Kaniag girl, then the offspring 

 would show a marked dominance of the mother's race indeed, the 

 child would be as much like other Aleutian babies as they are re- 

 lated in looks among themselves ; but if this original Creole mar- 

 ries an original Creole girl, sired like himself, then we have a type 

 which cannot be distinguished at all from the full-blooded Sla- 

 vonian, only much less demonstrative, alert, and pugnacious. Most 

 of these old colonial citizens of this district of Kadiak are therefore 

 full-blooded Russian quadroons and octoroons, and in every physi- 

 cal aspect are as much like Russians as if of pure origin. Those 

 early Creoles, male and female, who mated, as they matured, with 

 the native males and females, in so doing caused all their offspring, 

 long ago, to revert to the savage types, and we cannot distinguish 

 them to-day. 



Some of the Creole girls and women whom we observe in these 

 settlements are exceedingly handsome, modest, and the only fault 

 we can find with them is their absolute speechlessness they can- 

 not be induced to chat with us, though they seem to enjoy our 

 presence. Most of them live in scrupulously clean houses, the 

 floors scrubbed and sanded like a well holystoned ship's deck, 

 walls papered and decorated with pictures of saints and other pious 

 subjects ; old Russian furniture, chairs, settees, bureaus, and 



season it is the habit of traders and others to send upon steamers as they go, a 

 few head of beef-steers, which are turned out at Sitka, Kadiak, and Oonalashka 

 to fatten during the summer, and then are slaughtered when winter ensues. 

 Pigs thrive here, but live too much on the sea-refuse for the good of their flesh. 

 So they are not favored. 



