Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ALASKAN NATIVE TRIBES. AND this land so fraught with promise— Teeming full of grandest beauty— Bearing untold stores of fortune Underneath its varied surface— Long has held its hidden millions For its own poor heathen natives. Some, alas, how few the number! Ages back received and cherished, And they still hold fast the doctrines Which the old Greek Church bestowed them ; More, with souls all warped by witchcraft And with threatening demon-worship, Live like hunted beasts, in terror Of some lurking danger waiting To destroy them or to dog them With persistent, vengeful venom ! Others, taking life more gayly, Trust to spirits, good or evil, Who with fateful power will bear them To some place beyond life's border, When or where they do not question. Yet these soul-warped people ever Live to rules firm set and guarded, By which tribes and subdivisions Know and hold the land assigned them, Certain that the bold encroacher Pays most sadly for his folly. The Orarians take precedence, Classed as Esquimaux or Innuits, Dark Creoles, and sturdy Aleuts— These hold close along the seaboard, Claiming nearly all the coast line And the islands near adjoining ;— Save where here and there the Indians Have and hold small coast possessions, Which they won by force or cunning.— Living close beside the ocean, These brave tribes fear not its raging, But they face its foaming billows Coolly daring, using mostly Boats their own skilled hands have fashioned From the skins of great sea-lions, From the hides of seal or walrus, Called Bidarras or Bidarkas,— As their size and weight should warrant,— Or canoes of graceful outline— Light kyacks, that skim the water— Made from logs of fragrant cedar, Made from graceful trunks of cedar, Which they scoop out smooth...