Alaska Native Story

A man named Natsalane, who belonged to the seal people tribe, was trying to create killer whales out of wood carvings. He tried different types of wood: red cedar, hemlock, and others. Each time he carved them into the shape of an orca and set them in the beach to swim, but none did. All the carvings just floated on the top of the water, except the ones the craftsman made out of yellow cedar. Those carvings came to life and could swim through the water.

Natsalane put white chalk markings around the whale’s mouth to the back of its head and he called it the white mouth killer whale. He told them that they were to hunt seal and halibut, as well as many other sea creatures. The craftsman also said that it was not allowed to hurt any human beings.

During this time killer whales were able to camp on beaches and go on land. A young man and his wife were floating down the canal to find a camping spot for there honeymoon. They noticed a camp fire on the beach so they went to go greet the people, but when they arrived they realized that they weren’t people, they were killer whales. The man and the woman jumped back in fear. The killer whales, not knowing what to do, jumped in the water and swam away.

 The couple went onto the camp site and saw a bunch of different foods, such as halibut, salmon, and seal. They decided to cook some to eat. Shortly after, the killer whales returned and kidnaped the man’s new wife because the man and woman had taken their food. The whales dragged her into the water. The man followed them along the shore line until they arrived under a cliff where they dove down out of sight. So the man followed, but was somehow knocked out and awoke at the bottom near a large town. He quickly went into a house, which belonged to the chief of the shark people. In this house he saw a slave man with a crooked mouth and a fishing hook sticking out of the corner. The hook had belonged to the man. The slave man with a crooked smile had been made a slave by the sharks. The man then asked the slave man if there was any news in that town. But there was no news except that the nearby killer whale town had captured a woman and were making her the wife of the killer whale chief. He continued to say that if you were to go to this town, there would be a slave outside chopping wood in the forest. “When you see him repeatedly say to yourself that you wish for his stone axe to break.”

Once the man reached the slave he did as he was told and the axe broke. The man rushed in and said that he would fix the axe, if in return the slave would tell him where his wife was. The slave agreed to his offer and said that after he gets wood for the fire he is supposed to go get water to put out fire. When he pours the water on the fire there will be a great multitude of steam, so the man should quickly grab his wife and hurry out.

Desperate, the man did as he was told and the two ran. They were greeted with the voice of the crooked mouth slave, who was telling him to run toward the shark people’s town. Thinking the shark people were behind this, the killer whales attacked the sharks and killed many of them. After this attack, the sharks regrouped and started to sharpen their teeth on the rocks so that any time a killer whale would attack they would run their teeth along the orcas belly, spilling their entrails all over the place. By the end of the battle there was no winner and the bay was red with the blood of sharks and killer whales.

Nobody knows what happened to the couple or even if they survived the battle.

Ch.6 Fifteen Important Things

1. Warren G. Harding was very unhappy with his job as president and had many scandals.
2. President Harding liked Alaska very much and had visited the state in 1923, he promised that his administration would help in developing the state, but died in San Francisco on his way back to Washington. 
3. In 1889 congress passed a law forbidding damming as a method of fishing in order to allow the salmon to spawn. 
4. In the 1990's many scientists believed that the artificial propagation or salmon was the answer to Alaska's problems. 
5. Local fisheries preferred federal instead of local regulations, because they were able to convince people in Washington, who were poorly informed on the topic, that they had good intentions.   
6. In the late 1910's a spokesman for the packers revealed that over fishing is taking place and they need to take action.
7. An executive order was given by president Hoover which required permits in order to fish. This was a way to reduce the over fishing in Alaska.
8. Because of the law requiring permits only employees of large companies were able to get permits because they would buy them all.
9. The rail road in Alaska was very expensive to build and was very inefficient. 
10. The rail road got it's first profitable year 1938 fifteen years after it opened. 
11. In the 1920's the air age had started in Alaska which was faster and more adaptable then any other method of transportation. 
12. In 1929 navy pilots mapped 10,000 miles of Alaskan territory.
13. Before World War II there were 116 times as many planes and carried 48 times as much mail than the U.S. on a per capita basis.
14. Since Alaska was a territory it didn't reap the same rewards as the rest of America during the 1920's. this turned around in the 1930's during the great depression, when the nation was at one of its poorest points Alaska wasn't affected as harshly. 
15. In the 1930's many Americans thought that they would move to Alaska to get away from their economic troubles because of the abundance of moose, caribou, salmon, and land just waiting to be taken advantage of.

Elizabeth Peratrovich

            Elizabeth Peratrovich was born July 4, 1911 in Petersburg and later grew into one of the most important in Alaska history. Elizabeth was well educated and attended Sheldon Jackson College as well as Western Washington University. She married a Tlingit man named Roy Peratrovich December 15, 1913. They lived in Klawock where Roy served four terms as mayor. After having three children, one daughter and two sons, they moved to Juneau seeking better job opportunities but were instead greeted with a large amount of discrimination. Roy and Elizabeth Peratrovich became the leaders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood/ Sisterhood. This couple they presented the territorial governor, Ernest Gruening to ban racial discrimination in Alaska. In 1945 the bill reached the territory’s legislator and was passed after Elizabeth gave a very convincing testimony which swayed the majority of the counsel. Elizabeth Peratrovich died of cancer December 1, 1958 and was buried at the evergreen cemetery in Juneau, Alaska.

Ch. 5 Answers

1) Outline the Yukon Gold Rush make sure to include the routes to Klondike, Canadian 
Requirements, and the development of Skagway.

 During this time there were only three different ways of getting to the Klondike the most expensive and time consuming was by water where you would sail to saint Michel then people would finish their journey by going to Dawson on a hand made river craft. another was by taking the Chilkoot trail which was short but steep and started out of Dyea. the last of the three was the white pass trail which started out of Skagway and was longer but less steep.
the Canadians were requiring that any person that wanted to enter the country had to have the proper provisions which included a years worth of food, medical supplies, tools, and camping equipment.
Skagway was created because of the gold rush and was at one point the biggest city in Alaska. It was also one of the most crime riddled the city contained many saloons, murderers, and con men.

2) Who was Soapy Smith?

 Soapy Smith was a con man who lived in Skagway before he was shot and killed by Frank Reid. Jefferson Smith controlled a gang in Alaska where they spent their time robbing new, naive prospectors of there money so they were unable to continue there journey.

3) Outline the Nome Gold Rush.

 Daniell libby was first to find gold near Nome in 1866 but didn't come back for it until 1897 and brought many men to help with the mining of the gold. October 1899 there were over three thousand people in Nome. Soon after arriving many realized that they were ill prepared, because there are limited building resources, mostly lumber. As time went of, like Skagway the town was very lawless and had many saloons.

4) Outline the gold rush in Fairbanks.

Felix Pedro and E.T. Barnette set up a trading post near the Tanana river which was a good place because gold was found further North. Many individuals came to find their fortune but were not lucky, because the ground was frozen and required expensive machinery to remove it, this is why the majority of the mining was done by small companies.  

5) Who was Judge Wickersham?

James Wickersham was a district judge for Alaska, appointed by U.S. President William McKinley to the Third Judicial District in 1900

6) How did all these gold rushes change Alaska?

These gold rushes created attention which attracted many people to come make their lives in Alaska. New jobs were created as a result of all the new mining companies. All this attention gave Alaska some more popularity which lead to the creation of government for the Alaska which later became a state