The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 5, 1902, Page 4

/HE DEFIELD THE SUNDAY CALL. ( Avcoox .oHE OF MArvY) ADOPTED CHILDRE \/ s LI SRR RS i - TMary Makridoff i Who Owns Over 400 Reindeer Valued| ' at £890,000 and Who Allowed Her Husband to Die in the House. their fathers before them to punish her for her love. Sinrock Charlie died in her arms. Not far from her ground, which is There lies. or house is the not a pleasant lie, the body of Charli and of all other dead members tribe. It is a pen fenced in with wood, a mere pen built out on the drift- cold tundra, and there the dead bodies are flung. Malamut dogs prowl there by night. Mary is the widow of a much-loved hus- band, but she does not « mourning. vote her time to a gorgeous luded no white wo- or, but there onality She recently were white men of every = sueh vy mining countries know. The native women were not around. but nobody played 18 o THE GOD OF - =g} FATHER/ — T hand for An accordeon furnished the music. The company danced until the little Klon- there was too much gayety on that. TMAKING MUCKLUCK /- dike stove with glowing box had to be squelched. They were put through a quadrille under the white visitors’ leader- ship and they fell to with magnificent spirit, caring not a whit for mistakes and making fewer, she says, than seemed pos- sible for a first attempt. “DIED ITi BHER AURTY they make for up there. Th mber 1l and draw micircle t sight of th» herd known T were imported government y cven before he was dead, and ) Ties RarT = N\ sound or the he was allowed one hundred and twenty- come out to meet you dressed in her best, which is a costume of such furs as a queen may well wear. The parka is of the finest reindeer fur. spotted and dap- pled. It is tremendous and flowing. The sleeves are, either ene, large encugh for an ordinary shoulder cape. The parka de- velops into a sort of hood at the top and flares at the edges, being bordered with long red fox fur that makes a halo around her face. No wonder Mary's people look upon her as the Rising Sun. Mgry's home is a good-sized clapboard house that accommodates her and her ‘adopted children and her servants. The servants attend to the work of the house and help Mary in her immense business of raising reindeer. The children are countless. They swarm. They have been picked up here, there, everywhere, when- and furry and dirty one, but you vl like it. He will reach out his little arms to vou, cut of the far, frozen-up North, where even little bdys' hearts are frozen most of the year. The house contains a wonderful room, with a dresser and looking-glass. There is no such thing as this in any other Es- kimo house. It is on display in the parlor and the proudest Eskimo is always over- whelmed with its magnificence. A sight of that dresser alone would quell an un- ruly cubject if Mary ever had one. The sleeping rooms are in a loft above. Thither one must climb every night by means of a shaky ladder. Odds and ends of rooms are used for the servants and the work. For Mary. although a Queen, Wworks like all of her people, except that she car- The moss is fufficient to keep them in £00d condition the year round. They need no other food. Tt will sustain human life. by the way. and might have saved many a traveler if he had known it. The deer are estimated at a value of about $200 apiece. This means a fortune of $80,000, which is in zealth to an Indian. The income is Iz fo Mary than it would be to most peeple, for she is s weman bo: il made, and she cent out of those deer that there iz to get. She gets it in different ways, by a sys- tem of economic industry that is as up-to- date as a great American packing héuse or cotton factory. Not one product is lost in working for others. + Some of the deer bring in an income for use in transportation. The troops hire them for this purpose. One is furnished by the shrewd lady for something ltke $100 a month. The creatures are well worth the money she gets for their hire, how- ever, for they can travel ten miles an hour over frozen snow, drawing as much as 200 pounds of freight, to say nothing of the sledge. They sometimes cover 100 miles in a day. The deer are at certain times killed and sold for food. This is when they could not bring in a better income by hauling. Mary watches and she never slips on her transactions. Reindeer porterhouse steak is a Nome delicacy, and it brings a fancy price in the market. But the dead deer Is worth far more o sets every than his price as steaks. His skin is pre-' cious as cloth of gold, and when Mary ard her women have wrought it into par- kas and mucklucks it brings in a goodly sum. Day after day they sit and cut and sew, making the garments, which are later on sent;down the thirty-mile road that leads south to Nome. On the cold- est days they work indoors: when the sun makes it possible, they may be seen sitting under the shelter of an up-turned “fr 512 or 315 a pair. Plainer onss as much as $10. A parka ny price from $15 to $100, the' valve of the fur used bora s of the style of mak- It costs moticy, you see, to live in the far north, and Mary takes advantage of the fact Mary i fore retharkable. may be according to 1 the healthy specimen and there- She has never taken to the houeh habit, which is killing off tha Alaska Indian in great numbers. She 1s too keen on business to be intempcrate and she has no use for drunKenness. She is an immense woman. tall and bros iline face and a shock with a heavy, mas of straight, coarse black hafr. Her right arm is a solendid one and deals promptly with emergency cases. but never under the influence of liquor. Her education is profound, as the In- dian regards it. She knows a few words of English. also of Russi. This is be- cholar. She is wonderfully quick ideas and can be taught ing a Mary Makridoff Is as superstitious as the rest of her race. but her great love for Sinrock Charlie broke down her super- stition upon the occasion of his death. She let him die in the house. Such a privilege has never been accorded to any other Eskimo by his people. The Eski- mo’s terror of death is supreme, born and bred in him. A dying parent. child. hus- band or wife is cast out of doors like a poisoned rat and left to finjsh what little life may be left on the snow ,covered bleakness of the tundra. But it was not so with Sinrock Charlie Augensook. Mary loved him. It was the love of her life, a romance that had lasted for years. Charlie was a good Indian, a busy, Intel- ligent and faithful one, and Mary loved him with all the heart there was in her. ‘When she knew that he was going to die she did not care if his cold body lying in the house brought destruction to all the Mary watched with tremendous delight while she, three Eskimo women and four miners went through the figures. She was delighted again when the guest sang “The Irish Washerwoman,” and returned the compliment by chanting her own na- tive songs and some Russian ones as well which she had learned from her father. American games followed: the Indlans became =0 excited over “button, button, who's got the button?”’ that Mary had to break the string on which they were ps ing it in order to get them away to sup- per. The supper was a marvelous conglom- eration. Sherry could never There were seal meat and porterhouse deer steak; there was dried codfish dipped in seal ofl for an entree, together with cold unleavened bread spread with lard. The dessert was the plece de resistance: a splendld pudding made of blueberries, stirred into a mixture of flour and mashed fresh fish Iiver. Mary is a roval entertainer, and few who are privilgged to enjoy & pitality it is worth many miles of me ing over snow and ice to rea deer Queen’s palace by UNCLAIMED GOLD. match it. h- he Rein- T is shown by official ret to Par- liament that in the Eng chaneery there is about £36,000,000, or say, $280,- 000,000, of which all but about $6,000,000 is kept subject to the orders of the court in cases now before it. This sum of $,- 000,000, known officially as “dormant funds in chancery,” is the only amount of chan- cery for which owners are not absolutely visible, and for a large part of these dor- mant funds owners are pretty certainly known. » The statement ought to have some ef- fect on the well-established business of finding “heirs” for vast estates. Dozens of astute persons, disinclined for ordinary labor, have made comfortable livings out of credulous people whe have contributed resches their ears or their noses, the great herd of four hundred come like whirlwind over the tundra. The word ha been pessed among them that there is a excitement They come to see, @s boys rush to & fire. They come to Jis they come to smell. isc a trained chorus entering for to funds to secure these estates. to which they believed themselves entitled'as heirs. The claim agents have not restricted their operations to any one country—Canada, the Uuited States, the Continent of Eu- rope, the British colonies, have provided a lving for them. Great Britain and Irelond have done so, too, though it is erican estates™ that have been used it n England to some extent. five of the deer. He was so successful in 1 raising them that he increased his herd to four hundred and died then, leaving Mary, his wife, to care for his property. ‘This she has done ever since, and she has shown as good business ability as Charlie did. If Mary decides to recelve you she will ever Mary has happened upon a waif who was cold or in a hurry for his dinner which was not forthcoming. They are lit- tle &nd brown and greasy and they are buniled in miniature parkas with minia- ture halos around their dirty little faces. Augook is ihe mc ul of them and the most promising. ki3 hug is a very warm boat, all bundled in their own parkas, cach with her halo of fur thrown back that she may see. It is this"same halo that can be drawn over the face in a snowstorm to break the force of the cut- ting drift. The fancy mucklucks, made of the fin- est reindeer fur and exquisitely stitched, <ries on business on a larger scale. She lives by the profits that her reindeer bring her, and those are large. In the first place, the deer cost almost nothing. The land is as good as hers. The food upon which the animals live is the white moss which covers the tundra and grows of its own free will in great plenty. members thereof. It might, for all she cared. She was going to care for him until the last bitter moment when she had to let him slip from her hold—care for him as she always had done. She gave him food and warmth and tenderness as long as he could feel them and she defled the god of her pcople, of her fathers and an arrival.