144 
BALL. 
shall not enter, but must observe that among the numerous 
ill-paid officials few are well prepared to handle all the diffi¬ 
cult questions presented in such a community, and the ex¬ 
ecutive, such as it is, is without the legal authority or the 
proper facilities for governing or even visiting the greater 
part of the region it is supposed to control. The state of the 
law is uncertain, the seat of authority obscure, divided ille¬ 
gitimately between naval officers, the revenue-cutter service, 
and a powerless governor, who, whatever his wishes and 
intentions, is not permitted by the law to control anything. 
If it were not for the orderly character and good sense of 
the white population, the territory might easily become a 
pandemonium. This condition of things is disgraceful, and 
reform is urgently needed. 
The change in the native population of southeastern 
Alaska is very rqarked. In a general way a similar change 
has taken place all over the territory. The primitive con¬ 
dition of the natives has almost wholly disappeared. The 
turf-covered hut has given way to frame shanties; log houses 
are rarely built; the native dress has disappeared, replaced 
by cheap ready-made clothing; native manufactures, uten¬ 
sils, weapons, curios, all are gone, or made only in coarse 
facsimile for sale to tourists; the native buys flour and tea, 
cooks his salmon in a frying-pan, and catches his cod or 
halibut with a Birmingham hook and a Gloucester line. In 
the whole of southern Alaska, thanks to the schools, the 
children and many young people speak fairly good English. 
If the present influences continue, another generation will 
see the use of English universal and the native languages 
chiefly obsolete. The day of the ethnological collector is 
past. Southeastern Alaska is swept clean of relics; hardly 
a shaman’s grave remains inviolate. 
In other parts of the territory the same is more or less 
true. The native population is focusing about the commer¬ 
cial centers. The people gather where work and trade afford 
opportunities, and I have seen more than one pretentious 
church standing empty among the abandoned houses of a 
