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Updated: May 31, 2025
Most people have an exaggerated idea of the number of bears on the Kadiak Islands. Personally I believe that they are too few ever to make shooting them popular. In fact, it was only by the hardest kind of careful and constant work that I was finally successful in bagging my first bear on Kadiak.
The Indians in their light boats of sea-lion skin on whalebone, the Russians in their sail-boats, Baranof set out in April from St. Paul, Kadiak, with his thousand followers to wreak vengeance on the tribes of Sitka. Sea-otter were hunted on the way, so that it was well on in September before the brigades entered Sitka waters. Meanwhile aid from an unexpected quarter had come to the fur company.
"Distances are long up here, and wind and tide have something to do with even a steamer's speed." Sure enough, it took five days more of steady steaming before the Nora approached the shores of far-off Kadiak Island. In the nighttime the boys heard the steamer's whistle going, and knew that Captain Zim was sounding the echoes to get his bearings in the thick weather then prevailing.
We had a very bad time of it on the night of April 30, which showed me what I had long felt, that the dangers of Kadiak were not centered in the bear, but in the tremendous wind blows and tide rips in its fjords. A strong wind came on from the east, and fairly howled through the ravine opposite our anchorage, catching our little sloop with full force.
I hope to send this by a steamer from the north, said to be due. We have lectures and concerts and games and the people enjoy themselves much. I keep aloof much of the time. I hope you both keep well. Love to you both. From Kadiak Father wrote of the "epidemic of verse writing" that broke out among the members of the expedition.
The lance was held fast by the native, and the bear was often mortally wounded by forcing the lance into himself in his struggles to reach his enemy. This class of native no longer exists on Kadiak, but it is said there is one famous old Aleut near Iliamna Lake on the mainland who scorns any but this method of hunting.
I therefore determined to take my two natives and hunt from a baidarka the deep bays of the Island of Afognak, while Blake, not yet having obtained his bear from Kadiak, went back to hunt there. He had been extremely good to his men, and in settling with them on his return from the Alaska Peninsula had good-naturedly paid the excessive demands they made.
More sunshine and wind, double-bladed paddles for the little boats, strong oars and a sail for the big ones, and the skiffs were ready for water. Eastward of Kadiak, particularly south of Sitka, the boats might be hollowed trees, carved wooden canoes, or dugouts not half so light to ride shallow, tempestuous seas as the skin skiff of the Aleut hunter.
A noble task's before us And we'll do it ere we go We'll cut the Arctic circle And take the thing in tow And put it round the Philippines And cool 'em off with snow. Our boys will hail our coming, But a chill will seize the foe. And we'll end the war in triumph Go you homeward fast or slow. Kadiak, July 2, 1899.
"Kadiak Island was once near the mainland," said Kalitan. "There was only the narrowest passage of water, but a great Kenai otter tried to swim the pass, and was caught fast. He struggled so that he made it wider and wider, and at last pushed Kadiak way out to sea." "He must have been a whopper," said Ted, "to push it so far away. Is that the island?" "Yes," said his father.
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