The Seal Pup Wars: A Local Naturalist vs. The Smithsonian’s ‘Sense-Keeper’

Judge Swan Insists That the Little Ones Can Swim.

NEAH BAY FULL OF PUPS. Old Hunters Deny That the Pribilof Islands Are the Only Cradle of the Sealskin Race.

Port Townsend, Jan. 25.—In the Post-Intelligencer of the 24th is a letter from Henry W. Elliot in which he asks, "Will any reader of the Post-Intelligencer come forward and declare that he has seen fur seal pups born in the open waters of the sea?" James G. Swan first states, in 1890, that he has personal knowledge of its being so.

In 1880 I was assigned by Professor Baird the duty of reporting upon the fisheries of Cape Flattery. I was then residing at Neah Bay as an inspector of customs, and had plenty of leisure to attend to that duty. I had resided from 1861 to 1866 at Neah Bay in the employ of the Indian agency, and have lived there in all nearly sixteen years, and all that time was making collections and reports for the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Elliott was employed in 1880 by the Smithsonian Institution on the Pribilof Islands. We were a great ways apart, but seem to have come together recently with a clash. Mr. Elliott is evidently much excited.

It is a well-known fact that at the close of the season there are plenty of little pups at Neah Bay. The question is, Where do they come from? This is a question that should be settled scientifically by careful observation, and not by dogmatic assertion. The fact that those little pups are seen and taken each year by the Neah Bay Indians is beyond dispute, and yet Mr. Elliott says that pups will "sink like a stone," and has continued to reiterate this assertion in a most vicious manner every year for the past twenty years.

In his work on fur seals, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1883, Mr. Elliott saw fit to attack me in a most ungentlemanly manner because I had dared to mention, in my correspondence with Professor Baird, about the pups at Neah Bay. I resented this impertinence, and Professor Baird requested me to make another report, which I did, and this last report was published in the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, volume 3, 1893. In that report I give the statements of twelve witnesses, and among others that of Captain Elijah H. McAlmond, of Dungeness, at that time owner and commander of sealing schooner Champion.

On pages 30-34 of this volume may be found Captain McAlmond's statement, which will answer Mr. Elliott's pompous inquiry. "If any reader of the POST-INTELLIGENCER has seen fur seal pups born in the open water?" Captain McAlmond says:

"In the latter part of June, 1892, while cruising forty or fifty miles off Cape Flattery about southwest, I saw a thick bed of kelp, about which fur seals were playing. I noticed one in particular, a female, on this bed of kelp. Her actions indicated that she was about to give birth to a pup, as she paid no attention to us, but kept moving about as if she was making a bed. After a while I sent a canoe and the Indian killed the seal and brought it on board. On opening it the young pup was taken out alive and it traveled about the deck, raising itself on its fore flippers and making a bleating cry. It was perfectly formed and there was every evidence from the appearance of both the mother and the maturity of the pup that it would have been born 'on that bed of kelp in a very short time if we had not disturbed the mother. The Indians carried the pup ashore, where I saw it alive several days after. I tried to buy it, but they refused to sell. I have no doubt that if this pup had been properly fed and cared for that it would have lived to have grown to maturity. I have had many years' experience in the sealing business at Cape Flattery, and every reason at its close the young pups are plenty. I think, as the Indians do, that these pups are born in the water or on the kelp beds. My opinion is that the fur seal of the cape come from Lower California, and that they do not go to the Pribilof islands. I think their habits are different from the fur seals of Saint Paul's."

Captain McAlmond's testimony of what he had seen is of as much value as Mr. Elliott's testimony of what he has seen, and is entitled to quite as much credence.

WHO EVER SAW A FUR SEAL PUP SINK LIKE A STONE?

Now I will ask if there is any reader of the Post-Intelligencer who has seen a fur seal pup sink like a stone, and I will venture the remark that there is not a man living, except Henry W. Elliott, whoever saw a fur seal pup "sink like a stone," and he never has, because in one of his late epistles he admits that they will "flop around a little." A stone does not flop around; it goes down at once. For twenty years Mr. Elliott has audaciously and arrogantly repeated this assertion till lately he admits they "will flop round," and I assert they swim. Yes, my friend, they do flop around, and by your own admission I have made you flop around from your twenty years assertion.

WHO IS HENRY W. ELLIOTT?

No doubt many of the readers of the Post-Intelligencer, and particularly those of the sealing population, have asked this question. I will answer it by quoting from an official document.

In 1879 Major William Gouverneur Morris, special agent of the treasury department, made a report regarding Alaska territory, which may be found in Senate Executive No. 64, Forty-fifth congress, third session, on page 135, under the head of "The Sense-Keeper of Alaska." Major Morris writes:

"So little is known about Alaska that whenever anything comes up in congress relating to it, information is sought wherever it can be readily found. The 'informant' is ever on hand with his work on fur seals comfortably tucked underneath his left arm to impart all the knowledge extant about the country, 'for he knows more about Alaska than any man living.'

'A decade has passed since we acquired this territory, and for a decade has it offered employment and subsistence for its present sense-keeper, but the next decade is warming into national existence, and it is about time this bubble was pricked and the bladder not quite so much inflated.

'I am fully aware of all the consequences to be dreaded, the responsibility assumed, when rash enough to dispute the heretofore self-established authority from the Arctic ocean to Portland canal.

'I will not pretend to deny his valuable contributions to the ethnology of the Aleutian race... But when he comes to denounce a whole country and its people, and set himself up as the vast center of popular intelligence, the great 'I am' of a whole territory and population; sneers at any prospect of a change for the better, and ventures to suggest to congress what they shall and shall not do... I say, yea, I repeat it, it is time the impostor is exposed... This man seems to be the natural foe of Alaska prosecution, and persecutes her with the brush of the pencil and the pen of an expert..."

What Major Morris wrote twelve years ago about the "sense-keeper of Alaska" is true today. If anyone makes an assertion which differs from his views, instead of quietly examining to see if any natural cause exists why certain conditions may not produce certain changes, he pompously and arrogantly asserts that he is right and everyone else wrong.

I reported to Professor Baird the fact which I substantiated by witnesses, that at the close of the season there are every year to be seen these young seal pups. It is simply a question of natural history which I was investigating, and as I remarked to Professor Baird, "I hope that it may be fully and thoroughly discussed." Instead of that, I am attacked by Mr. Elliott and denounced for assertions which I have proved, while he has never deemed it necessary to substantiate his idle assertions that a seal pup will "sink like a stone."

Captain McAlmond's statement of what he witnessed is the testimony of a truthful man, and yet no doubt Mr. Elliott will reject it with a contemptuous gesture, because Captain McAlmond did not actually witness the act of parturition, or if he had it would have been pronounced "physically impossible."

Since Mr. Elliott's wild assertions have appeared in the Post-Intelligencer I have been called upon by several sealing captains, who were indignant that such unblushing falsehoods should go unrebuked, and I have several sworn statements from these sealers, which will duly appear, because I have by no means "finished with Mr. Henry W. Elliott." He has forced this discussion on me, and I will say: "Come on, Macduff, and damned be he who first cries hold, enough." I intend to go to the bottom of this matter and show the animus of his attack, and will "fight it out on this line if it takes me all summer."

James G. Swan