FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 127 



sealinj,^ ^iiiiy: into tliose lower grades of the division and putting better 

 men up. The loafers were usually men of influence with the church, 

 and, strange as it nuiy seem, with their own industrious townsmen, so 

 they were able to have their namas generally placed at the top of this 

 list. Strictly speaking, this action of the agents of the company and 

 Government in revising the list, was entirely in the right, but the natives 

 were better satisfied with their old way of 1872-1874, for the reasons 

 which I give in the citation above. 



This payment of R) cents per skin taken by the natives covers 

 nothing except the labor of driving the seals, skinning them, and help- 

 ing the outside employees of the lessees to salt them in the salt houses. 

 The extra work of bundling these skins for shipment was paid for by 

 the bundle — 1 cent per bundle — so that a smart native could make $2 

 per day while at this work. Then, when the ships arrived and sailed, 

 the great and necessary labor of lightering their cargoes, off and on, 

 from the roadsteads where vessels anchor, was i)rincipally performed by 

 these i)eople: and they were paid so much a day for tlieir labor, from 50 

 cents-to §1, according to the character of the service they rendered. 

 This operation, howevci, is nnu-h dreaded by the ship captains and 

 seagoing men, whose habits of discipline and automatic regularity and 

 eft'ect of working, render them severe critics and impatient coadjutors 

 of the natives: wlio, to tell the truth, hated to do anything after they 

 liad pocketed their reward for sealing; and, when they did labor after 

 this, they regarded it as an act of very great condescension on their part. 



Until 1882, all the labor outside of sealing incident to the business on 

 these islands, was executed by the natives of the two settlements of St. 

 Paul and St. George, with the aid of a half dozen white men on shore, 

 emi)loyees of the lessees, and the crews of their vessels. But in 1882 

 an epidemic of typhoid pneumonia scourged the village of St. Paul, 

 and fully one half of the able-bodied men were dead when it subsided 

 in 1883. This made it necessary for the lessees to bring up thirty 

 or forty natives from Oonalashka every sealing season thereafter, to do 

 this work of salting and bundling skins and unloading and loading the 

 vessels. These outside laborers caine up on the lessees' steamer every 

 May, or by the 1st of June: were quartered ashore: and worked here 

 until the close of the season in July; theii returned by the 3d to 10th of 

 August, to Unalashka, receiving i)ay at the rate of $40 per month and 

 found. They never have been ])('rmitted to drive or skin seals. That 

 work has been done entirely by the Pribilov men ever since 1870, up to 

 the i)resent hour. 



In 1872-1874 and up to 1885, these seal islanders elected their chiefs 

 after their own choice. They tinally got into so much internal liking 

 and disliking over this selection that the chiefs so elected began to be 

 disobeyed and slighted by many of tlieir men. Thereupon, the Treas- 

 ury- agent and the company's representative in charge, took the nuitter 

 up, selected a new man, and pronounced him chief. That settle<l the 

 difficulty and ended it; he was prom])tly obeyed. 



Some of the natives save their money: but there are very few among 

 them, perhaps not more than a dozen, who have the slightest econom- 

 ical tendency. What they can not spend for luxuries, groceries, and 

 tobacco, they manage to get away with at the gaming table. They 

 have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they have the usual small 

 proportion who know ho-^ to make money and then how to spend it. 

 A few among them who are in the habit of saving, opened a regular 

 bank account with the company. Some of them have to-day $2,000 or 

 $3,000 saved, drawing interest at 4 per cent. 



