The people in Alaska

The people who lived in Alaska earliest were some tribes of American Indians, and Eskimos, who are related to American Indians. These still live there. They trap bears and otters and foxes and other animals, for their furs and meat; and they fish in the rivers and in the seas around Alaska. These natives do very little farming, and many of them eat nothing but meat and fish, as their ancestors did. (There is a separate article on the ESKIMOS.)

There are about ten thousand Eskimos in Alaska, and about ten thousand members of other Indian tribes. Many of these have adopted the white men's ways, live in the cities or near them, and work in the fishing or canning businesses of southern Alaska. The white people in Alaska, somewhat more than 100,000 of them, are nearly all Americans. Most of them came to Alaska from the United States, and some from Canada. There are about fifteen thousand who came from Norway and other Scandinavian countries, and there are a few thousand whose ancestors were Russians and went to Alaska when it belonged to Russia.

These white Alaskans live chiefly in the southern and western parts, where the cities and towns are. Nearly half of them live in or near the cities or towns. Life there is very much as it is in any part of the United States, except that they do not do nearly as much farming and manufacturing as people in the States do. Their work is mostly fishing and canning (especially of salmon); the cutting of timber from the vast forests; and mining the rich deposits of lead, tin, and precious metals such as gold. WHAT THE LAND IS LIKE Alaska is not nearly as cold as you might suppose. In the southern and western parts, where most of the people live, it seldom goes below freezing. That is, it is warmer in winter than the northern part of the United States is, but neither is Alaska ever very warm in summer.

The average temperature in summer is only 56 degrees; in winter it is about 32 degrees. In the central and northern parts of Alaska the winter temperature is usually a few degrees below zero. There are two big mountain ranges in Alaska. In the southern part there is the Alaska Range, which includes Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America (20,300 feet high). Across the northern part of Alaska is the Brooks Range. Here the highest peaks are less than 10,000 feet high. The big Yukon River runs through central Alaska and empties into the Bering Sea at the west. It is very long—• about 2,100 miles—and deep, so that steamboats and smaller boats can travel almost its entire length. The Yukon is very important in carrying the products of the mines and forests to the sea, where they can be shipped to the United States and other countries. There are very few railroads and highways in Alaska. In the winter, much traveling is done by dogsled as it was long ago, but in modern times the people do most of their traveling by airplane