Visual Education (Jan 1923-Dec 1924)

September, 1924 PICTURED LIFE FOR HOME, SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY 281 cated reindeer furnish them with food and clothing, and dried salmon is one of their main foods. Huckleberries, wild apples, and salmon and service-berries grow profusely quite a distance north. Huckleberries, which are especially abundant, furnish one of the staples of the Indian's diet. The berries, are gathered in large quantities and pressed into paste. This paste is kneeded into cakes and dried over a fire. The sour salmon and service-berries and wild apples are used to flavor the fat dried salmon. The Alaskan Indians differ greatly from the typical American Indians of the interior of the continent. They are apparently of Mongol stock, having broad round faces, high cheek-bones, narrow eyes, straight jet-black hair, very thin beard, brown skin, and well built bodies of great muscular development. They feed themselves well and build good substantial houses. They are brave fighters, love their families and have a keen sense of honor. They are fond and indulgent parents. The children are dressed in fur and downy bird skins. Every family owns its dog team. During the hunting season the entire family travel in search of game. The women dress the hides so skillfully that the fur holds well and the skin is as soft and pliable as velvet. During the summer they collect and dry the "candle-fish"; which with a wick of pith furnishes them light during the long, dark winter. Previous to the coming of the white man the religion of the Alaskan Indians consisted mainly in a belief in demons which ruled the sea. Besides the special duty of the Shaman or medicine man, which wras to propitiate these dark powers, he cured bodily ills, and was the tribal prophet as well, of whom all stood in awe, and whose edicts were never disputed. They were christianized, however, by Russian missionaries early in the 18th century. The Episcopalians and Presbyterians are especially active in missionary work among the natives, the latter having a large industrial school at Sitka. The men who have undertaken missionary work in Alaska are men of unusual mental, moral and physical caliber, and have entered helpfully into the lives of the people. Most of the groups that have not come into contact with the white man belong in points of development to the ground-stone age, although the Smith Sound natives tipped their arrows with iron before they met the whites. Records of prehistoric life in bones, implements, utensils and ornaments have been discovered in the shell-mounds or middens near Bering Strait. Fossil elephant ivory has been found by the Esquimaux. In ancient geological times Alaska must have been the home of great herds of mammoths, huge, hairy, elephant-like animals. The Tlinket tribes have a set of unusual animal dances. The dancer studies the animal which he chooses to represent, and clothing himself in its skin imitates its various postures and movements. The Resources of a Great Land Mining is the chief industry throughout Alaska. Interior mining is handicapped by severe weather, the shortness of the open season, costly transportation, insufficient water supply, expensive fuel, frozen ground and uncertain labor. Although lode mining is now the greatest industry in Southeastern Alaska, placer mining and beach washing have not entirely passed. Placer mining is used almost exclusively in the Seward Peninsula. Gold is by far the most important mineral found in Alaska. Gold exists in the sands of practically every river and gulch, and in the quartz ledges of almost every mountain range, from the far north to the most southern boundary. Although prospecting began in 1870 it was not until 1880 that placers and quartz veins were found on Douglas Island, thus founding the city of Juneau. In 1880, $20,000 worth of gold was taken from this locality. Between 1880 and 1920 the total output of gold was about $350,000,000. In 1896 gold was discovered in the Klondike region. Many thousands of men packed their outfits over the thirty terrible miles of the Chilkoot Pass, then travelled by land and water until they reached Klondike. After months of disappointments and hardships reports of a new "strike" on the Seward Peninsula reached the weary prospectors — reports of gold not hidden deeply in the frozen gravel, but yellow nuggets lying like pebbles in the creek beds and the tundra about Nome. Thus began "the raw, crazy, confused stampede of Nome." Silver ore and lead have always been found in Alaska, wherever gold abounds. Copper is mined in Prince William Sound, Ketchikan and Copper River districts ; tin on ..*■ . <* ~~ &&' m W'f "^o^ •NjV i ■■■■ «*. ■p .^ Br m'#w •'* """ .-fc 1 ■ ■ ^^ jjggpl ^x ■ : / HkHS" A TYPICAL MINING TOWN ON A WINTER NIGHT