ALASKA. 
J 3 
of their original customs and peculiarities. They occupy the in¬ 
terior and the coast of the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea. The 
Eskimos are a comparatively gentle and inoffensive people, living 
mostly upon fish, walrus, whale, and other game to be found near 
the shores and in the water, though they also make long excursions 
into the interior, hunting reindeer, moose, and other large animals. 
The interior Indians (Athabascans) live mostly by hunting and 
fishing in the rivers. A few mission stations along the coast and 
on the Yukon River have had a little influence upon a very small 
number of the people. The mining camps on the upper Yukon 
have also come in contact with the natives to some extent in the 
way of trade, but they have not in any large degree acted as civ¬ 
ilizing agencies. It is said the natives of the upper Yukon region 
have been very little demoralized by the use of intoxicating liquor, 
perhaps on account of the difficulty of packing it across the divide. 
Mr. Chapman, of Anvik, writes that “liquor has not troubled the 
natives speaking the group of dialects found around Anvik; but 
almost everywhere else in the Yukon country it has made more or 
less trouble.” The dialects referred to arise from the interrelations 
of Eskimos and Athabascans at the point of contact. The Eskimos 
and interior Indians find it necessary to exercise the utmost of their 
energies and of their ingenuity to secure a bare subsistence, and 
their ideas have not risen much above the level of animal existence. 
Physically, they are strong and comparatively healthy; mentally, 
they lack vigor; morally, they substitute expediency for right. 
They are comparatively honest, because it is the best policy to be 
so. They see no moral quality in abstaining from the use of 
intoxicating liquors, tobacco, or other hurtful things, or in restraints 
in the relations of the sexes. 
Except as their ideas are modified by relations and intercourse 
with white people, they have no religion, unless certain indefinite 
superstitions having no connection with any idea of a supreme 
spiritual being can be called religion. 
