724

THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

agreed to give up their medicine men and observe the Sabbath. What is the result of twenty-three years’ labor? A nicely laid out village of frame houses, a beautiful church, a schoolhouse, and best of all, an industrial school where the girls are taught all kinds of domestic labor. The missionary’s wife was the only white woman in the village. She devoted her whole time to teaching the women how to make their' homes comfortable. The women were modest in their dress and very industrious. These Indians have discarded all forms of the Anglican Church and have organized themselves into the Christian Church of Mat-lah-cat-la, pledging themselves to exclu­sively following the teachings of the Bible without ritual or discipline. I was im­pressed with the simplicity of this teaching, because I do believe that the teaching of the different creeds to any heathen to be most disastrous. Who knows, they may be the first to tell us what the Bible does teach, for the fifty-eight denominations of the United States have failed so far, else there would be only one united church.

We bade adieu to these kind friends, and on a dark and rainy night we landed at Fort Urangel; however, fortune favored us, the morning dawned bright. We went on shore to pay our first visit to our Alaskan sister in her native element. As far as the eye could see the tall totems loomed up, each telling its own story, intelligible to none but the natives. Only the powerful and wealthy can afford these expensive affairs. They are the actual historians of these very odd people, and show the descent and alliances of the great families. It is gratifying to know that the descent is counted on the female side. The first emblem is the eagle on the mother’s side, next the image of a child, a beaver or a frog, as the families have intermarried. Sometimes there are two totems, if the father happens to be a chief. If feuds arise, the husband must fight with the wife’s family. Their houses are usually about eighteen or twenty feet square, having one door, and in the center of the room an excavation of perhaps four feet square, which is filled in with stone, on which all the family cooking is done. Two or three families often occupy one house. I saw the men and children huddled in the corners heedless of our presence, while the women were preparing the breakfast. They sit on the floor while they eat with their large spoons made from the horns of the mountain sheep. When one of the family dies the body is never taken out through the door, but a board is taken off the side of the house and the corpse passed through the hole or through the smoke-escape in the roof; this keeps the spirit away. The Indians cremated their dead until the missionaries, I regret to say, taught them burial.

The women make all the bargains, and if you are not informed of their tricks you may be the loser. They will ask two prices for everything, from the fifty cent horn spoon to the bracelet of gold, the price of which is sometimes fifty dollars. The nose ring was common, but I was most curious to know what the button in the chin meant. On the older women it was of ivory or wood, but on the young woman it was small and of highly polished silver, and indicated that she had arrived at the proper age to marry. I think this rather a pretty and modest manner of revealing the state of affairs, and is a vast improvement on the common law of Massachusetts wherein a girl of seven years may become a candidate for matrimony. The law stands very much this way: If a child below the legal age should marry, the marriage is not necessarily invalid, provided either she or he be above the age of seven years. If the parties continue to live together after both have attained legal age, fourteen for boys and twelve for girls, the marriage is thus ratified, but either party may disaffirm it by ceasing to live with the other before that time arrives. This is the common law rule, and is still law where it has not been set aside by statute. No statute in Massachu­setts has ever established any other rule, so you see the extremely intellectual on one coast and the barbarous on the other differ widely on these marital questions. The great objection I have to the Massachusetts law is the partiality shown the youth and the disadvantage it places on the sixty thousand unmarried women of mature years. At Fort Urangel, instead of the fashionable door-plate of civilization, if they have a door at all, there is placed over it an inscription. A man of much wealth makes a will and