80 I. C. PiUssell — Expedition to Mount St. Elias. 



log, after the manner of the ThHnkets generally. They are rect- 

 angular, and have openings in the roofs, with wind guards, for 

 the escape of smoke. The fires, around which the families 

 gather, are built in the centers of the spaces below. The houses 

 are entered by means of oval openings, elevated tAVO feet above 

 the ground on platforms along their fronts. In the interior of 

 each there is a rectangular space about twenty feet square sur- 

 rounded by raised platforms, the outer portions of which are 

 shut off by partitions and divided into smaller chambers. 



The canoes used at Yakutat are each hewn from a single 

 spruce log, and are good exam^Dles of the boats in use throughout 

 southern Alaska. They are of all sizes, from a small craft 

 scarcely large enough to hold a single Indian to graceful boats 

 forty or fifty feet in length and capable of carrying a ton of mer- 

 chandise with a dozen or more men. They have high, over- 

 reaching stems and sterns, which give them a picturesque, 

 gondola-like appearance. 



The village on the mainland is less picturesque, if such a term 

 may be allowed, than the group of houses already described, 

 but it is of the same type. Near at hand, along the shore to the 

 southward, there are two log houses, one of which is used at 

 present as a mission liy Reverend Carl J. Hendriksen and his 

 assistant, the other being occupied as a trading post by Sitka 

 merchants. 



The Yakutat Indians are the most westerly branch of the 

 great Thlinket famil,y which inhabits all of southeastern Alaska 

 and a portion of British Columbia. In intelligence they are 

 above the average of Indians generally, and are of a much higher 

 type than the native inhabitants of the older portion of the 

 United States. They are quick to learn the ways of the white 

 man, and are especially shrewd in bargaining. They are canoe 

 Indians jjar excellence, and pass a large part of their lives on the 

 water in quest of salmon, seals, and sea-otter. During the sum- 

 mer of our visit, about thirty sea-otter were taken. They are 

 usually shot in the primitive manner with copper-pointed arrows, 

 although repeating rifles of the most improved patterns are 

 owned by the natives, in spite of existing laws against selling 

 breech-loading arms to Indians. The fur of the sea-otter is 

 acknowledged to be the most beautiful, and is the most highly 

 prized of all pelts. Those taken at Yakutat during our visit 

 were sold at an average price of about seventy-five dollars. This, 



