A species that grows well up
on the mountains is the best and largest, a half-inch and more in
diameter and delicious in flavor.
These grow on bushes three or four
inches to a foot high. The berries of the commonest species are
smaller and grow almost everywhere on the low grounds on bushes from
three to six or seven feet high. This is the species on which the
Indians depend most for food, gathering them in large quantities,
beating them into a paste, pressing the paste into cakes about an
inch thick, and drying them over a slow fire to enrich their winter
stores. Salmon-berries and service-berries are preserved in the same
way.
A little excursion to one of the best huckleberry fields adjacent to
Wrangell, under the direction of the Collector of Customs, to which I
was invited, I greatly enjoyed. There were nine Indians in the party,
mostly women and children going to gather huckleberries. As soon
as we had arrived at the chosen campground on the bank of a trout
stream, all ran into the bushes and began eating berries before
anything in the way of camp-making was done, laughing and chattering
in natural animal enjoyment. The Collector went up the stream to
examine a meadow at its head with reference to the quantity of hay it
might yield for his cow, fishing by the way. All the Indians except
the two eldest boys who joined the Collector, remained among the
berries.
The fishermen had rather poor luck, owing, they said, to the sunny
brightness of the day, a complaint seldom heard in this climate. They
got good exercise, however, jumping from boulder to boulder in the
brawling stream, running along slippery logs and through the bushes
that fringe the bank, casting here and there into swirling pools at
the foot of cascades, imitating the tempting little skips and whirls
of flies so well known to fishing parsons, but perhaps still better
known to Indian boys. At the lake-basin the Collector, after he had
surveyed his hay-meadow, went around it to the inlet of the lake with
his brown pair of attendants to try their luck, while I botanized in
the delightful flora which called to mind the cool sphagnum and carex
bogs of Wisconsin and Canada. Here I found many of my old favorites
the heathworts - kalmia, pyrola, chiogenes, huckleberry, cranberry,
etc. On the margin of the meadow darling linnaea was in its glory;
purple panicled grasses in full flower reached over my head, and some
of the carices and ferns were almost as tall. Here, too, on the edge
of the woods I found the wild apple tree, the first I had seen in
Alaska. The Indians gather the fruit, small and sour as it is, to
flavor their fat salmon. I never saw a richer bog and meadow growth
anywhere. The principal forest-trees are hemlock, spruce, and Nootka
cypress, with a few pines (P. contorta) on the margin of the meadow,
some of them nearly a hundred feet high, draped with gray usnea, the
bark also gray with scale lichens.
We met all the berry-pickers at the lake, excepting only a small girl
and the camp-keeper. In their bright colors they made a lively
picture among the quivering bushes, keeping up a low pleasant
chanting as if the day and the place and the berries were according
to their own hearts. The children carried small baskets, holding two
or three quarts; the women two large ones swung over their shoulders.
In the afternoon, when the baskets were full, all started back to the
camp-ground, where the canoe was left. We parted at the lake, I
choosing to follow quietly the stream through the woods. I was the
first to arrive at camp. The rest of the party came in shortly
afterwards, singing and humming like heavy-laden bees. It was
interesting to note how kindly they held out handfuls of the best
berries to the little girl, who welcomed them all in succession with
smiles and merry words that I did not understand. But there was no
mistaking the kindliness and serene good nature.
While I was at Wrangell the chiefs and head men of the Stickeen tribe
got up a grand dinner and entertainment in honor of their
distinguished visitors, three doctors of divinity and their wives,
fellow passengers on the steamer with me, whose object was to
organize the Presbyterian church. To both the dinner and dances I was
invited, was adopted by the Stickeen tribe, and given an Indian name
(Ancoutahan) said to mean adopted chief. I was inclined to regard
this honor as being unlikely to have any practical value, but I was
assured by Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Young, and others that it would be a
great safeguard while I was on my travels among the different tribes
of the archipelago. For travelers without an Indian name might be
killed and robbed without the offender being called to account as
long as the crime was kept secret from the whites; but, being adopted
by the Stickeens, no one belonging to the other tribes would dare
attack me, knowing that the Stickeens would hold them responsible.
The dinner-tables were tastefully decorated with flowers, and the
food and general arrangements were in good taste, but there was no
trace of Indian dishes. It was mostly imported canned stuff served
Boston fashion. After the dinner we assembled in Chief Shakes's large
block-house and were entertained with lively examples of their dances
and amusements, carried on with great spirit, making a very novel
barbarous durbar. The dances seemed to me wonderfully like those of
the American Indians in general, a monotonous stamping accompanied by
hand-clapping, head-jerking, and explosive grunts kept in time to
grim drum-beats. The chief dancer and leader scattered great
quantities of downy feathers like a snowstorm as blessings on
everybody, while all chanted, "Hee-ee-ah-ah, hee-ee-ah-ah," jumping
up and down until all were bathed in perspiration.
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