ities were completed at Sitka on 18 October (U.S. Congress, 

 House 1868a:4-5; Dall 1870:359; Bancroft 1886:599; Okun 

 1951:272). The act (15 Stat. 241 (1868)) appropriating 

 $7,200,000 in payment for Alaska was passed on 27 July 1868 

 (U.S. Congress, House 1889:ix). 



In 1868, at least four private companies set up sealing camps 

 on the Pribilofs and recklessly took several hundred thousand 

 seals. "Original records for the events of 1868 are practically 

 nonexistent and subsequent statements are often exaggerations 

 or apocryphal. Certainly the combinations of San Francisco 

 business men that sent ships to seek out the trading potential- 

 ities wanted no publicity. There was no government either on 

 the mainland or the islands" (Taggart 1959:353). The first ship 

 to arrive at St. Paul was the brig Constantine. We do not know 

 the date, though it was a few days before 13 April 1868, when 

 the bark Peru under Captain Ebenezar Morgan dropped an- 

 chor. The Peru was owned by Williams, Haven and Company 

 of New London, Conn., and was the first vessel sent from the 

 Atlantic coast to engage in the fur seal business. The first ship 

 to arrive at St. George was the schooner Caldera of San Fran- 

 cisco, owned by John Parrott and Company, under Captain 

 R. H. Waterman. She anchored on 24 April 1868 (Alaska Her- 

 ald 1869:2; Elliott 1886:247; Jordan and Clark 1898a:26). 



Thomas F. Morgan, a sealer here in 1868 estimated the Prib- 

 ilof take at 240,000 (U.S. Congress, Senate 1895, part 3, p. 

 63); Simms (1906:38) estimated it at 242,000; the Jordan Com- 

 mission at 300,000 (U.S. Treasury 1898-99, part 1, p. 26). The 

 Jordan Commission assumed that the slaughter of 1868 "did 

 not in any way injure the herd, being confined as heretofore to 

 the killing of bachelors" (U.S. Treasury 1898-99, part 1, p. 

 28). With modern knowledge of the age and sex composition 

 of the herd, however, we believe that females and yearlings 

 made up half of the kill. 



While the slaughter was under way, Congress enacted on 27 

 July 1 868 a stop-gap measure of protection. It forbade the kill- 

 ing of seals within the Territory of Alaska and obligated the 

 Secretary of the Treasury "to prevent the killing of any fur 

 seal. . .until it shall be otherwise provided by law" (15 Stat. 

 241 (1868)). By this act, responsibility for conserving the seal 

 herd passed from the Secretary of the Interior to the Secretary 

 of the Treasury (Jeffries 1870:2). The "fur-seal service," as it 

 was usually called, remained in Treasury until 1 July 1903, 

 when it became an independent agency under the Secretary of 

 Commerce and Labor. By joint resolution of 3 March 1869 

 "the islands of Saint Paul and Saint George [were] declared a 

 special reservation for Government purposes" and it was 

 made unlawful for any person to land on either of them, ex- 

 cept by authority of the Secretary of the Treasury (U.S. Con- 

 gress, House 1889:ix; U.S. Congress, Senate 1895, part 1, p. 

 38). 



The name of Daniel Webster is associated with the early 

 years of U.S. ownership of the seal islands. Born about 1834, 

 he first entered the Bering Sea on a whaler in 1845. From 1868 

 to 1896 and perhaps longer, he worked as a local sealing fore- 

 man on the islands. He was employed by both the Alaska 

 Commercial Company and the North American Commercial 

 Company (U.S. Congress, Senate 1896a, part 1, p. 147). Up to 

 1878 he lived at Northeast Point, where the remains of "Web- 

 ster House" can still be seen. In 1870 and 1876 he was absent 

 from the Pribilofs, engaged in sealing on the Robben and 

 Commander Islands, respectively (Thompson 1897:34). 



On 7 March 1869, Joseph S. Wilson, inspector of customs 

 for the Treasury Department, arrived on St. Paul island "for 

 the purpose of assisting Inspector La Grange in preventing the 

 landing of persons or merchandise upon any portion of the is- 

 land. . ." (U.S. Congress, House, 1898, part 1, p. 9). "After 

 taking possession of the island for the Government" (U.S. 

 Treasury 1898-99, part 1, p. 10), Wilson arranged for military 

 supervision and departed on 27 May. La Grange is not men- 

 tioned again; he was presumably the first Government admin- 

 istrator on the Pribilofs. 



In 1869, the sealskin harvest was taken by two private firms 

 under Treasury Department regulation. Special agent John T. 

 McLean wrote on 26 October 1869, that "while, from motives 

 of humanity, [the Department] allows the Aleuts to kill the 

 seals for subsistence, the skins of the animals slain are all ap- 

 propriated by the agents of Messrs. Hutchinson, Kohl & Co., 

 of San Francisco, and Williams, Havens & Co., of New Lon- 

 don, no other parties than the agents of these firms being 

 allowed to land on the islands or barter with the natives for the 

 skins" (U.S. Congress, House 1898, part 1, p. 7). During 1870 

 Hutchinson, Kohl & Company took all skins available until 

 the arrival in late summer of the new monopoly lessee, the 

 Alaska Commercial Company (U.S. Congress, House 1898, 

 part 1, p. 365). In actuality, the Alaska Commercial Company 

 was organized by the members of Hutchinson, Kohl & Com- 

 pany. 



Major General George H. Thomas landed at St. George Is- 

 land on 12 August and at St. Paul Island on 13 August 1869. 

 He found on each island, besides native Aleuts, "a revenue of- 

 ficer, detachment of United States troops, and agents of two 

 [sealing] establishments — these latter. . .by permission of the 

 Treasury Department .... The revenue officers stated they 

 had restricted the killing of seals to the smallest number neces- 

 sary for the maintenance of the natives" (Thomas 1870:117). 

 If true, the "natives" must have been very hungry, for the 

 number of skins reported taken was 85,901 (Cobb 1906:32). 



On 8 October 1869, Vincent Colyer, Secretary of the Board 

 of Indian Commissioners, landed on St. Paul Island. He 

 found that the Aleuts were killing seals three times a week, tak- 

 ing a total of about 8,000 skins per week (U.S. Congress, 

 House 1870b). He estimated that there were 60,000 skins in the 

 salt houses, and he was told that a steamer had removed a load 

 of skins from Southwest Bay salt house in late summer. 



Domestic dogs were prohibited on the Pribilofs in 1869 or 

 1870. Henriques (1874:15) stated that "during the prohibition 

 of seal killing pending the action of Congress, I was instructed 

 to visit the seal islands . . . and notify the inhabitants of the pro- 

 hibition, as well as inform them. . . that all guns must be given 

 up and all dogs killed." "In September 1870, the Secretary of 

 the Treasury gave written authority to the Company to use 

 fire-arms in protecting the rookeries against marauders.... 

 Between 1871 and 1880 several actual raids were reported, one 

 of the earliest being one by the 'Cygnet' . . . caught on the 30th 

 August, 1874, shooting seals close to Otter Island, and which 

 raided the rookeries at Zapadnie, St. George Island, on the 1st 

 September, 1874, and again in 1875" (Baden-Powell and Daw- 

 son 1893:186). In 1874, Maynard (1898:298) noted that "the 

 use of firearms [for hunting?] is prohibited except in winter." 



Information on the first year of controlled sealing, 1869, 

 was summed up in a report dated 9 December 1869 from H. H. 

 Mclntyre, "late special agent" of the Treasury Department 



