the mountains around
the head of Silver Bay to Sitka, where they arrived more dead than alive
from hunger and exhaustion. This feud was not settled until 1918, when a
peace treaty was consummated between the kwans on Armistice Day, a
coincidence which is much made of by the tribesmen.

The Kolosh were as firm believers in witchcraft as any of the more
civilized nations. They resorted to their shamans (_ekhts_) or
medicine men in case of illness. If his weird incantations failed to
relieve the sufferer, his resort was that the victim was bewitched and
some poor unfortunate paid the penalty by enduring the most fiendish
torture.

One March day in 1855 a commotion arose in the Kolosh village. A sentry
caught an Indian who was stealing and punished him, for which the tribe
called for vengeance. Some rushed to the stockade and began to cut away
the palisades. Other forced their way into the Koloshian Church through
the outer door. From this vantage point they fired on the garrison and
in return the batteries of the fort blazed back with solid shot and
shrapnel. For two hours the fight continued, when the Kolosh gave up all
hope of success, and ceased the battle. The Russian loss in killed and
wounded was 20 men, while the Kolosh loss was estimated at 60. This was
the last attempt of the natives to destroy the Russian stronghold.

At times during the later days of the colony the Kolosh were employed as
seamen and as workers in the ice trade by the Russians and thus they
occupied a place in the industrial life. Etolin was the most successful
in conciliating them of any of the chief managers, and he at one time
held a fur fair at Sitka to which peltry was brought from far and near,
modeled somewhat upon the idea of the great fur mart of Nizhni Novgorod.
Most of them, however, hunted and fished, lived in their tribal houses,
carved their canoes, wove their baskets, and practiced their witchcraft,
while their civilized neighbors gathered the furs and built ships.

Under the walls of the fort, in the old tribal houses of the Kolosh
which had not been destroyed, lived the Aleuts. Properly speaking the
name belongs to the natives of the Aleutian Islands, but the term was
also applied to the natives of Kodiak Island and the surrounding islets.
These speak a different language from the true Aleuts, but otherwise
resemble them closely. During the hunting season they scoured the seas
in their skin bidarkas, in the pursuit of fur ani