CHAPTER IV

THE ARMY IN ALASKA

A BRIEF statement as to the work of the army appears desirable, owing to its extended period of occupation and the important part played by it in the government, exploration, and development of the Territory. The general character of its services is set forth by Mr. O. P. Austin in his valuable "Commercial Alaska," where he says:

Since the foundation of our government the lines of the army have advanced simultaneously with the advance of the settler along our vast frontier. It has been the uniform policy of the government to foster the development of the country by exploring and opening up trails for emigrants and prospectors, convoying their supplies, aiding in the transmission of their mail-in all things extending a helping hand to them and in keeping step with the advance of American civilization. The army of the United States has always been the advance guard of civilization. Wherever it has gone its protection has been freely given to every American citizen.

It was General L. H. Rousseau, United States army, who formally accepted Alaska from Russia, and occupied Sitka with a military force on October 18, 1867. Military posts were established at Kenai, Kodiak, Sitka, Tongass, and Wrangell, with detachments on the islands of St. Paul and St. George; all except Sitka were abandoned in 1870.

The duties of the army were neither formulated in regulations nor authorized by law. Their scope as viewed by officers was to prevent difficulties between incoming Americans and the Indians, and properly to enforce the provisions of the Indian trade and intercourse laws regarding arms and liquor. General Howard stated that it would be easy for the army, if duly authorized, to preserve peace and establish police regulations, but authority so to do was questioned by the United States District Court, while the repeated efforts of the commanding general to secure the establishment of a civil government were steadily ignored.

The activity of the army in carrying out its orders elicited bitter criticism. Reporting on affairs at the Seal Islands, prior to the lease of the Alaska Commercial Company, it incurred enmity by officially stating that the Pribilof natives were suffering "enslavement and robbery by an unscrupulous ring of speculators." As Indian wars give local traders patronage and contracts, the tendencies to adjust troubles peacefully with the natives were viewed askant as unmilitary and unbusinesslike. To stimulate industry among the natives, it was recommended that Indians be hired to cut wood, which resulted in attacks from interested contractors. The army's insistence that Alaska was an Indian country, where neither firearms nor liquor could be imported, was bitterly fought by traders and politicians before the department, and it was years before the army's point of view was sustained by Congress and the courts.

Meantime civil regulations authorized the importation by officials of liquor in "limited quantities." Sales of "surplus" liquor, with smuggling of arms and spirits, steadily proceeded, with unfortunate results. Treasury officials sold in Sitka at public auction liquor seized by the army, and then blandly complained that the military was not suppressing the liquor traffic. Repeated requests for a steam vessel to permit raids on smugglers and liquor dealers were without avail.

Disturbed conditions due to the Stikine gold discoveries led to the reoccupation of Fort Wrangell in 1875, the impossibility of otherwise maintaining order and peace being generally recognized. Finallyhappy day for the service, though not for the Territory-the army sailed away from Alaska, after, as we are told by a well-known writer, a service not highly creditable. This local judgment was natural, since the business methods of many of the early Alaskan captains of industry did not accord with army ideals as to probity and propriety.

The army's sins of omission and commission were not specified, but what it did may be stated. It had brought the Indians into a state of submission and peace-its military duty. Moreover, it had fed the starving, cared for the suffering, and nursed the sick; it had largely suppressed smuggling and illegal trade in arms and liquor; it had discouraged corrupt business methods and protested against the enslavement and robbery of natives; it had vainly besought civil government and opened day schools; finally it had

fostered morality by religious teaching of children, established the first native Protestant church in Alaska, and by its initiative and petition led the Christian people of the United States to extend a helping hand to the natives of Alaska. (See Chapter XXIX.) These deeds are not strictly military duties, and while they are extra-legal acts without warrant of law, they were justified by the law of emergency and impelled by the obligations of our higher moral

nature.

As General Howard wrote: "The officers of the army were denied the jurisdiction for an ordinary police, on the one hand, and held responsible for order and enforcement of the law on the other." Whether they did well or ill, at least they tried to do their duty in those early days.

Civil conditions after the departure of the army cannot be recounted without a sense of shame. A pandemonium of drunkenness, disorder, property destruction, and personal violence obtained at Sitka, which eventuated in murder, followed by a threatened Indian uprising and frantic appeals for protection, that was temporarily accorded by a British man-of

war.

The Signal Corps of the army re-entered Alaska for scientific work and occupied twenty-nine different and well-distributed climatic stations, until their discontinuance was practically directed by Congress in 1884 as useless. The contributions to Alaskan knowledge by Ray, Murdock, Turner, Nelson, and Fish were the forerunners of extensive and valuable work

by the various executive departments of the United States.

The second advent of the army in Alaska arose from disturbed conditions connected with the socalled stampede to the gold placers of the Klondike. In the summer of 1897 some 20,000 men came together on the shores of Lynn Canal, a country without law, without courts, without habitations, and almost without food resources. Mostly men of character, though with many reckless adventurers, all were animated by a single aim, to reach with speed the gold fields of the Canadian Klondike, which could only be done by private transportation over almost unknown routes.

Conditions of hardship and lawlessness, of suffering and contention speedily arose, and the army was turned to as the only power that could control and ameliorate the situation. Unwilling, as always, to obtrude its activities into the domain of civil government, the Secretary of War acted promptly through a preliminary reconnoissance, which was sent to the upper Yukon via St. Michael. Two officers-Captain (later General) P. H. Ray and Lieutenant (later General) W. P. Richardson-were directed to investigate conditions and report promptly the lines and places of military operation best calculated to remedy

matters.

In southeastern Alaska affairs steadily grew from bad to worse. Reports as to the number, character, and condition of the gold seekers near Skagway became so alarming, and complications regarding Cana