INVESTIGATION" OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 681 



Third. This suggestion that the men were helped by the "women 

 and children " is simply stupid. The latter only came out to get the 

 choice cuts of seal meat, livers, sinews, paunches, and intestines, etc., 

 when the men had finished driving and skinning the seals. 



Veniaminov says (10, p. 222): 



All without exception (men, women, and children) are armed with clubs. The 

 intent of such an attack is to cut off from the sea as rapidly as possible all animals on 

 shore and to drive them from the beach to the interior of the island. Halting a short 

 distance from the shore, the old males are separated from the females and young, the 

 former being driven back and liberated. The sickatchie and old females having been 

 removed, the others, divided into small squads, are carefully driven to the place where 

 they are to be killed, sometimes more than 10 versts distant. * * * When brought 

 to the killing grounds, the seals are rested for an hour or more and then killed with a 

 club. 



The quite young seals — that is to say only 4 months of age — are killed without excen- 

 tion. Of those 1 year old the males are separated from the females and killed while 

 the latter are driven cautiously back to the beach. 



Because I omitted that sentence which describes the killing of "the 

 quite young seals; that is to say, only 4 months of age," "without 

 exception'' — 



Clark swears to the committee that I have " willfully omitted it," 

 and that this erroneous and self-confessed as such account of that 

 killing of those "4-inonths" old pups "without exception," proves 

 Jordan's claim that the Russians killed males and females alike. on the 

 breeding grounds or as driven from them. 



The reasons, good and proper, for my omitting that sentence are 

 based upon the following facts of positive established record in the 

 premises which declare the statement as to killing seals 4 months old 

 to have been an idle and untruthful one. 



First. This driving, as described, is not from the breeding grounds; 

 it is from the hauling grounds and from the sea margins of them, 

 just as I described it in 1890; and Clark has done so in 1909. 



Second. Those "young seals," or pups "4 months old," when taken 

 up in these drives as Veniaminov describes them driven, were always 

 all of them released when the yearlings were separated and returned 

 to the beaches with the yearling cows in all such drives up to the 

 10th-20th of November annually. 



Third. After the 10th-20th of November, annually, between four 

 and five thousand male "4 months old" pups, or "gray pups," were 

 taken in these drives, separated from the females, or else all driven 

 by themselves, up to the villages for food, and there separated from 

 the females, to last the natives during the winter. In that annual 

 killing of these "gray pups" "4 months old" for food, from 1808 

 up to 1872, as done by the natives on the Pribilov Islands, the same 

 separation of the males from the females was made by them, when 

 the killing was done, that I witnessed in 1872, when some 9,000 of 

 them were driven up to the village on St. Paul, and nearly 5,000 

 males were taken out of the 9,780 driven. 



No man of common sense can read Veniaminov's account and 

 not be impressed with its strange mixture of romance and fact, 

 and the utter worthlessness of it as an evidence of what really was 

 done; here you observe that he states in the same breath, they have 

 killed all of the pups born this year — as, "seals 4 months old," etc. — 

 and yet, have saved all of the yearling females. 



