Smoke signals., June 15, 2001, Page 6, Image 6

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Smoke Signals
6 JUNE 15, 2001
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Sea Otter has a Rich History on the Coast
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THE SEA OTTER, continued from page.
Those who lived through the winter survived because
of the natural curiosity of a beautiful and abundant
animal, which was relatively easy to kill. This ani
mal gave them both their food and their clothing. In
those parts the animal was called Kalan, here in these
parts the animal was called Elakha, but most of us
know this animal as the Sea Otter. The survivors
returned with over eight hundred pelts. Empress Anna
immediately commissioned a full-length cloak.
This trip was almost as successful for the Elakha
and my family on the Aleutian Islands as it was for
Vitus Bering. The fur of the Elakha provided the mo
tivation for the Russian invasion of the Americas. In
their quest for fur, the Russians brought along their
unfamiliar diseases and soon learned to enslave the
decimated families by taking the young girls; wives,
daughters and sisters hostage in order to force the men
to hunt for fur, even during the winter storms. After
a few years, in one spot the otter and people popula
tions were pretty much removed and it was time to
move on to the next island.
While the Russians were exploiting their way south,
word was spreading of the valuable fur trade. This
inspired an extension of the Spanish invasion north
ward in 1774. Within a year the Spanish were going
about their business murdering the Alaskan Natives
and the Sea Otter.
Not to be left out, the English, led by James Cook
showed up in 1779 and started renaming the geo
graphic features so recently named by the Russians
and the Spanish. Just prior to his return trip to Ha
waii, where he was killed by the Natives, Cook noted
the potential of the Sea Otter trade:
"The fur of these animals, as mentioned in the Rus
sian accounts, is certainly softer and finer than that
of any others we know of; and therefore the discovery
of this part of the continent of North America, where
so valuable an article of commerce maybe met with,
can not be a matter of indifference."
Just seven years later in 1785, Captain Hanna re
turned to the area in his ship the "Sea Otter" to ini
tiate the commercial fur trade for the English. The
French followed the next year and the year after the
Robert Gray left Boston to represent the Americas.
All of these trips were inspired by the exploitation of
Elakha.
This rush to exploit provided the initial contact be
tween the invaders and the people of the Oregon Coast.
Prior to this contact, Elakha was an important part of
the people's lives. The second most common marine
mammal bone in our middens were the bones of Elakha.
While Lewis and Clark were strolling across the con
tinent with their particular Corps of Discovery, the
Russians were landing ships loaded with fifteen thou
sand fresh Sea Otter pelts. Over and over the pattern
of depopulation was being repeated as the Russian in-
Key Species No Longer
The Sea Otters that used to
flourish on the Oregon Coast no
longer exist. These bones and
this hide were collected by Siletz
Tribal member Dave Hatch in his
pursuit of knowledge about this
one-time keystone species. Otter pelts led to the invasion of the Americas because of their rich, thick
fur. The loss of the otters on the Oregon Coast drastically changed the ecosystem of a century ago.
a
vaders continued their way south. By 1810, the Span
iards were killing the enslaved Aleut hunters as poach
ers in the San Francisco Bay. Fort Ross, just 65 miles
north of San Francisco, was established in 1812 and
stands today as a tourist attraction and monument to
the extent of the Russian invasion.
By the time the wagon trains were arriving in Or
egon it is estimated that more than a million Sea Ot
ters had been slain along the Pacific Coast. The Sea
Otter populations were in such poor shape that the
Alaskan Territory was no longer of interest to the Rus
sians and it was sold to the United States in 1867. In
Oregon, the story of Elakha looked like it was coming
to an end. The Sea Otter was about to assume the
distinction of being Oregon's first population wiped out
by the various invaders.
In 1877, an Englishman named Wallis Nash trav
eled with his English friends from the new town of
Corvallis to a little settlement called Newport. Here
he reports:
"I remember well after supper that evening we three
Englishmen went into "Bush" Hammond's store to chat
and smoke. A smoking wall lamp lighted th'e place.
As the doorbell jingled a couple of Indians came in out
of the dark, one carrying slung over his shoulder, some
long, dark beast which he jerked on the counter before
the storekeeper. Moseley pricked up his ears and came
to take notice. From nose tip to tail the animal was
about four or four and a half feet long, plainly of the
otter type the fur dark brown and glossy: but the
feet were webbed. " I have never met this before,"
Moseley said to me. "It is the Sea Otter of the Pacific."
The Indian began to dicker with "Bush" for the hide:
the bidding started at two hundred dollars, and Moseley's
face fell, for by slow degrees it went to four hundreds,
and changed hands at that. The price was too high for
him and he had to content himself with the skeleton,
which he arranged to have cleaned by the ants at a
neighboring ant-heap. Even then these Sea Otters were
rare not they are all but extinct.
Wallis Nash returned to Corvallis and helped to start
what's now called Oregon State University.
Frank Priest and Joe Biggs killed the last native
Sea Otter reported in Oregon in Newport in 1906. They
sold it for $900.
In 1910, less than 30 Sea Otter skins were taken in
. " i 1
DAVID HATCH, continued from front page
Sea Otters spend the majority of their lives in the
tidal zone. The committee named the boat Elakha,
which means Sea Otter.
"She's a 54 footer; a beautiful boat," Hatch said.
"OSU has a tradition of giving their vessels Na
tive American names."
. That's when Hatch met up with Elizabeth Woody,
a Warm Springs and Navajo Native. Together they
began the process of trying to educate people about the
plight of the Sea Otter on Oregon's Coast. Hatch also
got involved with the Elakha Alliance, an organiza
tion that advocates the preservation of Sea Otters.
"Most people in Oregon think we still have otters, but the last Sea Otter in Oregon was killed in 1906," He
said. "A lot of people see river otters and think they're Sea Otters."
What's the difference between a Sea Otter and a River Otter?
"A Sea Otter is quite a bit bigger,' Hatch said. "And its diet is more specialized. This is very important
to the ecosystem because the otters control the herbivores and urchins that feed on the kelp. Kelp is very
important in the production of oxygen,"
"The otter was also very important to the Natives living here pre-contact," Hatch said.
"Otter skins were used as a sign of wealth, in the form of the three otter skin robe. To give you an idea of
how much one of these robes were, when Lewis and Clark came through, they tried to trade for one, but
didn't have nearly enough wealth."
"The Natives also considered the otter to be their relatives, like the salmon," Hatch said.
"The ocean and river system my father grew up with is not there anymore. He got to see an ecosystem I
never got to see," Hatch said. "...But maybe my son will get to see." D
the entire Pacific Northwest.
Also in 1910, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent a
sixteen-year-old Aleut orphan from Alaska to the Che
mawa Indian School. This Orphan is my grandfa
ther, Nick Hatch.
In 1910, a local census listed nine surviving Siuslaw
people along the Siuslaw River near today's town of
Florence. Fifty years earlier 2,300 Siuslaw people were
estimated to be living along the river. By 1914, two of
the nine were dead and an eleven-year-old orphan was
shipped to the Chemawa Indian School. This orphan
is my grandmother, Hattie Martin.
In 1911, another census estimated that there were be
tween five hundred and a thousand surviving Sea Otter
in thirteen small colonies between Mexico and the Aleu
tian Islands. The 1911, Fur Seal Treaty signed by Rus
sia, Japan, Britain and the United Stated and a 1913 fed
eral law in the United States effectively ended the harvest
of Sea Otter. There were no Sea Otter in Oregon.
Sixty years pass. The surviving Sea Otter popula
tions are making a comeback in Alaska and California
and the Atomic Energy Commission needs to do some
testing. The place chosen for the tests, Amchitka Is
land is conveniently just a few islands away from Rus
sia but it happened to be populated by a protected spe
cies, Kalan, the Sea Otter. This situation was resolved
in the time-tested way of gathering the Natives and
shipping the survivors to Oregon and Washington.
In 1970, 31 extirpated Sea Otter were deposited on
the Oregon coast near Port Orford and the next year
64 more Sea Otters were added to the population that
survived the first year. Young researchers from Or
egon State University including Bruce Mate and Ron
Jameson observed these animals. Their study showed
the Sea Otters wanted to go home and did.
Thirty years pass. The Sea Otter is still missing
from the Oregon Coast, but the other surviving Sea
Otter populations are holding their own. The two or
phaned children who met in Chemawa have six chil
dren, 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Oregon State University has just commissioned their
new Research Vessel Elakha.
We have learned much in these 30 years. We know
that the Elakha is a keystone species. Losing Elakha
resulted in a sea urchin bloom, which clear-cut our
kelp beds and destroyed the homes of animals and fish
that relied on the beds. The fish, which were trapped
in the river fish traps of the original Oregonians are
missing. The ocean we see today is not the healthy
ocean, which belongs here. The once extensive kelp
beds are missing. All of the sun's energy that used to
be converted to food now falls on a desert in an ocean.
Today we know that the northern population of Sea
Otter is genetically dissimilar from the southern popu
lation. Very recently we acquired the scientific tools
to determine which population is most similar to
Oregon's Elakha. This will be done with DNA com
parisons using DNA extracted from the skeleton col
lected so long ago by Wallis Nash and from the ar
chaeological record recovered from our middens. Once
we know which population was most similar to our
Oregon population we will know which direction we
need to look if we can ever be serious about restoring
the health or our ocean.
Just a year ago, a handful of people knew the word
Elakha. Today maybe thousands of people know the
word yet the vast majority of Oregonians think we
have Sea Otter along our coast.
This will change.
We have wonderful Elakha ambassadors now in the
Oregon Zoo and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Perhaps
time is right for the citizens of Oregon to learn and
work in cooperation with all interested parties to de
velop restoration plan for Elakha. B
V