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Updated: June 12, 2025
There are five bays between Frederick Island and Cape Knox a distance of eighteen or twenty miles all of them exposed to westerly winds, excepting in small coves which afford safe canoe landings and harbors. Of these latter TLEDOO, a summer resort of the Massett sea-otter hunters, where there are three cabins, is one of the best and most frequented.
A hole of any size being dug, the sides and bottom are lined with straw, over which skins are laid; on these the fish, after being well dried, are laid, covered with other skins, and the hole is closed with a layer of earth twelve or fifteen inches deep. . . . "We saw no game except a sea-otter, which was shot in the narrow channel as we were coming down, but we could not get it.
The brigades of sea-otter hunters far exceeded in size and wild daring the platoons of beaver hunters, who ranged by pack-horse and canoe from Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains. The Russian ship, provisioned for two or three years, would moor and draw up ashore for the winter on one of the eleven hundred Aleutian Islands.
This chap, whom the people have christened Smudge, takes matters so coolly, that I hardly think he knows anything about the Sea-Otter, which may have been cut off by another gang, altogether." There was good reason in these remarks, and they had their effect on the captain.
As for the foreign fur traders, he conceived the brilliant plan of buying food from them in exchange for Russian furs and of supplying them with brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific for sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern California. This would not only add to stores of Russian furs, but push Russian dominion southward, and keep other nations off the field.
The wilder the turmoil of spray and billows, the more sea-otter would be driven to refuge on the kelp fields. Cross tides like a whirlpool ran on this coast when whipped by the winds. Not a sound from the sea-otter hunters!
A tannery furnished the leather for shoes, made from California hides, and also prepared the lavtaks for the bidarkas for the seal and sea-otter hunters. The burrs for the Sitka mill were of the finest French stone but those at the Redoubt were cut from the granite found on the lake shore.
She laughed at the porpoises rolling their fat sides into sunshine; she brought the sea-otter where it should find fish for its young; she led giant congers to drowned men; she patted the sleek head of the sad-eyed seal.
Last year the captain was in the neighborhood of Kagamale, in quest of sea-otter and other furs and he bore up for the island, with the intention of testing the truth of the tradition he had heard. He had more difficulty in entering the cave than in finding it, his schooner having to beat on and off shore for three days.
Steering to the north, Captain Thorn arrived in a few days at Vancouver's Island, and anchored in the harbor of Neweetee, very much against the advice of his Indian interpreter, who warned him against the perfidious character of the natives of this part of the coast. Numbers of canoes soon came off, bringing sea-otter skins to sell. It was too late in the day to commence a traffic, but Mr.
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