FUTURE OF THE ESKIMO 1 83 



tusks, and here at Port Clarence were the men who had 

 tails like dogs. 



The outlook for the immediate future for these Eskimo 

 is gloomy. Hitherto they have been well cut off from 

 civilization, meeting only the whalers, who are few in 

 number and are under a certain rude discipline. But a 

 change has come for the Eskimo and this year of 1900 has 

 already witnessed a melancholy alteration in their con- 

 dition. The rush to the coast gold fields has brought to 

 them a horde of miners, who, thinking only of themselves, 

 are devoid of all feeling for others of their kind. There 

 is no law or government in the land, the commanders of 

 the few revenue cutters along the coast being the fountain 

 heads of authority and having extensive areas of sea and 

 land under their jurisdiction. White men, uncontrolled 

 and uncontrollable, already swarm over the Alaska coast, 

 and are overwhelming the Eskimo. They have taken 

 away their women, and debauched their men with liquor; 

 they have brought them strange new diseases that they 

 never knew before, and in a very short time they will 

 ruin and disperse the wholesome, hearty, merry people 

 whom we saw at Port Clarence and at Plover Bay. 



Perhaps for awhile a few may save themselves by re- 

 treating to the Arctic to escape the contaminating touch 

 of the civilized, and thus the extinction of the Alaska 

 Eskimo may be postponed. But there is an inevitable 

 conflict between civilization and savagery, and wherever 

 the two touch each other, the weaker people must be 

 destroyed. 



