Camp just inside Arctic Circle below Fort Yukon.

From a photograph by H. B. Goodrich of the Spurr Expedition, August 22, 1896.

the canoe and with fishing. They are Christianized to some extent by the missionaries of the Church of England. They have Sunday services with Bible lessons, readings and prayers, and according to Ogilvie never go on a journey of any length without their religious books, from which they always read a portion before going to sleep. They are greedy and selfish in their transactions with the whites. Ogilvie estimates the total number of Indians on the upper Yukon at 482, of whom 136 are on the United States side of the boundary.

All the Indians of this section have peculiar ideas of right and honor. They apparently never hesitate about making way with anything that happens to suit their fancy, provided it is not stored away, but if it is "cached" or pocketed away, at a distance from the owner, they will not touch it, and it is said that they will starve almost before helping themselves to food stored in this

manner.

Lieut. Henry T. Allen, U. S. A., who made a military reconnoisance in 1885 exploring the country from the mouth of the Copper River northward along the Tanana and following the Tanana from its source to its junction with the

Yukon made some exceedingly interesting observations concerning the Indians of those regions. The region drained by the Copper and its tributaries is about 25,000 square miles in extent, and the Indians in this region, according to Allen, number only about 400. The families are small; the men are capable of great endurance, although not muscular. Special food is always cooked for the men and the refuse given to the women. A boy of five years has precedence over his mother at meals.

The social organization is very rigid. The tribes are divided strictly into classes. The "tyones" are the leaders. They scorn work, and never condescend to carry a pack or pull a rope, but other members of the tribe yield absolute allegiance to them. The "skillies" are near relatives of the tyones, and come next in rank. Then come the "shamans," or medicine men, and then the vassals of various degree. In all assemblies seats are assigned absolutely according to rank. Many of the skillies have vassals at their beck and call. Allen saw one of them, fourteen or fisteen years of age, sitting within a few feet of the river, order a man six feet high, a vassal, to bring him water. The wives are treated with little consider

ation, and are valued in proportion to their ability to pack and do general work.

Every house has a sweat bath. It is about ten feet square and four or five feet high, nearly all under ground. It is lighted by a small aperture, over which the intestines of a bear are stretched. Stones are heated by placing them on a close frame of logs in the main room, after the fashion of the old-fashioned lime kiln, and they are transferred to the sweat room by sticks used as tongs. The aperture is closed and water is poured on till the necessary amount of heated vapor is produced. All the traits of which mention is made grow less pronounced the farther into the interior one penetrates.

CHAPTER XVII.

A BIT OF HISTORY.

When Seward negotiated the treaty with Russia in 1867, providing for the purchase of Russian America by the United States, it appears that

none of the public men of the day were taken into the secret until just before the treaty was sent to the Senate. During the summer of 1867 Congress took recesses from time to time with a view to holding President Johnson in check, and a resolution had been adopted providing for a recess from March 30 to July 3. Late on the evening of March 29 Senator Sumner, who was chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, found a note from Mr. Seward awaiting him: "Can you come to my house this evening? I have a matter of public business in regard to which it is desirable that I should confer with you at once." Responding to this note he learned for the first time that a treaty had been negotiated and was on the point of being signed. The signatures of Mr. Seward and of the Russian Minister, Mr. de Stoeckel, were affixed to the document at four o'clock the next morning, and the treaty was transmitted to the Senate the same day. On April 1 an executive session of the Senate was convened by proclamation to consider it, and on the 9th of April Sumner, with a single sheet of paper before him, delivered an oration lasting several hours, which was a mine of information with regard to the Russian possessions, and which has