Travels Among the Dena : Exploring Alaska's Yukon Valley [1 ed.] 029597902X, 9780295979021

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ALASKA 1935 0

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Jt. Ho’(tth’), c’ (ts’), 9’ (tr’), c’ (ch’). In Ingalik and Holikachuk, the full, long vowels are: e (e), a (a), 9 (o), u (00); the reduced, short vowels: 9 [with several allophones], u (i, u).

TRAVELS AMONG THE DENA

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TO ALASKA

THE UNDERTAKING

On the Track of the First Americans Up until 1926, the claims made by many prehistorians for the great antiquity of human remains in the New World rested more upon faith than upon facts. Al¬ though there were doubtless a number of archaeologists who accepted some of the finds made during the previous century as proof that the “First Americans” had reached this continent during or just after the close of the Pleistocene (or Ice Age), there were so many obviously spurious “proofs” that scientists were loath to accept any without the clearest evidence. Many were the fanatics, however, who rallied to the cause of the Paleolithic Indian, and so strident were their voices that they seemed to drown out the more conservative archaeologists who disputed their farfetched claims. But they did not silence the redoubtable and vocal Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian, who stood, as I heard Harvard’s Dr. E. A. Hooton say, “like Horatio at the bridge, striking down all pretenders to great antiquity who attempted to cross at Bering Strait.” I suspect that many American archaeol¬ ogists hesitated to glance down when walking over Pleistocene deposits for fear that they might find a human bone or artifact in that ancient soil, and so ruin their reputations. But in 1926 some beautifully flaked stone weapon points were found among the ribs of an extinct species of bison in a deposit of indisputable late Pleistocene age near Folsom, New Mexico. In fact, there were several of these fluted points and several bison skeletons, for the Paleolndians had apparently had a very suc¬ cessful hunt. The association of human beings with late Ice Age animals was now accepted, and archaeologists began to hunt avidly for more evidence of Paleo¬ lndians. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that remains of a campsite of hunters using the same fluted Folsom points were found at Findenmeier, Colorado, and that some older and larger fluted points were found near Clovis, New Mexico,

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where the Paleolndians had been killing mammoths, and later the extinct type of bison, at their watering holes along Blackwater Draw. At the University (of Pennsylvania) Museum in Philadelphia, the institution that had sponsored my previous archaeological work in Alaska, Dr. Edgar B. Howard was among the most active investigators of early man in America. It was he who made the exciting discoveries at Clovis in 1936. He was also very much in¬ terested in the problem of what route or routes the first people may have taken before and after reaching the New World. Geologists seemed to agree that during the Pleistocene so much of the earth’s water had been taken up into the great continental glaciers that the sea level had been significantly lowered. Instead of water at Bering Strait to separate Alaska from Siberia, there had been land, “Beringia.” Not only could the Paleolndians have crossed here dry-shod, they probably would not even have noticed that they had left the Old World for a new land. Furthermore, the glaciers of the late Pleistocene, the critical period for such a migration, did not cover all of Alaska. The great valley of the Yukon River was unglaciated and offered an open route through the interior, leading over the height of land and onto the high plains east of the Rockies, and thence to the Southwest. Just as late Pleistocene animals had taken this route, so had their hunters, it was argued. Dr. Howard wanted to test this thesis by looking for sites of human occupancy in Alaska’s Yukon valley in geologically datable de¬ posits. It must be remembered that this was 1935, long before the development of carbon-14 or potassium/argon dating methods. At this time, one site in Alaska seemed to support the idea of a Pleistocene migration via the Yukon valley, and that was on the grounds of the Alaska Col¬ lege (now University) at Fairbanks. Here the steep hillside overlooking the valley of the Chena River, a tributary of the Tanana, was covered with a thin veneer of silt, in the upper eighteen inches of which were found particles of charcoal and stone artifacts. These comprised chipped blades for small weapons (arrow or dart) with tangs but without pronounced shoulders or barbs; end-scrapers; re¬ touched flakes that probably served as knives or scrapers; ulu-shaped (semilunar) scrapers, like those now used for scraping hides; and a number of very slender flakes or bladelets and the carefully shaped flint cores from which they had been struck. Dr. Neils Nelson, an experienced prehistorian with knowledge of Old World Stone Age cultures (as his Danish name might suggest), had studied these Fairbanks flints and found them very similar to Siberian Upper Paleolithic or epiPaleolithic flints (Old Stone Age and later) that he had excavated in Mongolia (N. C. Nelson 1937). Other specimens resembled much more recent stone work from Kamchatka, or even Indian specimens from the Yukon valley. While there were no geological clues to date the site, it certainly looked as if successive band£ of ancient hunters, while waiting on the hillside for caribou (reindeer) to come along the valley, had passed the time making implements.

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Of less certain value were objects recovered from the placer mines near Fair¬ banks. Here great dredges and floods of water from massive rams (hoses) were re¬ moving the late Pleistocene silt that overlay the gold-bearing gravels, and in so doing, had washed out a number of ancient-looking artifacts, as well as the bones of Pleistocene mammoth, horse, and caribou, all drift materials that had been swept up by ancient streams and deposited on sandbars. Occasionally a complete or almost complete skeleton of a mammoth might be found, but this was rare. Since some ground slate weapon blades of recent Indian manufacture were also washed out in the placer mines, it was impossible to accept any single artifact as truly ancient. Of course, if one found a Clovis point stuck in a mammoth rib.... But that was only a dream.

The Party Since I already had archaeological experience in Alaska, although on the coast and not the interior, and was also somewhat familiar with Upper Paleolithic sites and industries of western Europe, Dr. Howard proposed that I be entrusted with the task of leading a party sponsored by the University Museum to look for more certain evidence of human occupation in the Yukon valley during the late Pleis¬ tocene or early post-Pleistocene, and he approached the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia for funding. The officers of the society agreed, provided I take with me a good geologist of their own choice. (At one time, we also con¬ templated adding a paleontologist, but this suggestion was dropped, wisely, I believe, since we found relatively few Pleistocene animal remains.) The geologist selected was Dr. A. J. (Jack) Eardley, a young professor at the University of Michi¬ gan whom I had never met. He was to bring a graduate student as his assistant, Kenneth Gorton. I had already selected mine, Norman (Sandy) Reynolds, a grad¬ uate student in anthropology at the University of Washington who had been with me in Alaska in 1933. This made up the party of four, half of whom were unac¬ quainted with the other half, and none of whom had ever seen the interior of Alaska, much less traveled down its great river. Jack Eardley and Ken Gorton were to join me in Seattle, but Sandy, delayed by exams, would follow us to Nenana in Alaska.

Outfitting The winter and early spring of 1935 were filled with our preparations for the great adventure. We were to go down the Tanana and Yukon rivers from the rail¬ way crossing at Nenana on the Tanana below Fairbanks, to Holy Cross, the last Indian settlement on the lower Yukon, and also the last exposure of bedrock for¬ mations on the river. Since we probably would not be able to find boats that we

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could use, we would build our own two skiffs, a task that Jack Eardley and Ken Gorton were ready to tackle. Jack was able to get plans for a good skiff from a pro¬ fessor of naval engineering who had once built boats on the Yukon. Jack’s father ran a lumber mill near Salt Lake City, and Jack had considerable experience in woodworking and carpentry. He sent me a copy of the boat plans, and I had can¬ vas covers made to fit them when I was ordering our tents. I also made two pen¬ nants for the skiffs, the device a red mammoth (copied from a famous French cave painting) on a white held. I still had the outboard motor used in Alaska in i930-33, and purchased another 12-horsepower Johnson Seahorse like it, to be shipped to the Alaska Steamship Company in Seattle. The cook tent was of my own design, a wall tent with a netted inner door and a netted skylight above the stove. It was made for us by Abercrombie of Philadel¬ phia (not to be confused with Abercrombie & Fitch) of a very lightweight but tightly woven fabric (Aberlite). The other wall tent, which I had first used in the Arctic in 1929, also had a netted door. The doors on both tents were closed by long zippers that ran from the ridgepole to the ground. (A third tent, a mail-order tipi, had to be discarded as unusable when we got to Alaska.) Since I knew that mos¬ quitoes can somehow get into even the most tightly sealed tent, I had made our four bed nets from the finest-mesh curtain material available. These had rein¬ forced seams, complete even to tapes with safety pins sewed at the ends, by which we could hang the nets from the selvage of the seams in the tent roofs. Our camping equipment included a folding, wood-burning Yukon stove, a Coleman gasoline stove, a set of dishes and cooking utensils, an axe and a hatchet, four aluminum wash basins and trays, four army cots, and so on. For archaeo¬ logical work, we had shovels, trowels, whisk brooms, graph paper, a simple ali¬ dade, compasses (Jack’s Brunton and my U.S. Army compass), and some ten-foot tape measures. The geologists also had a soil auger (like a giant corkscrew to pull up samples of soil), and many small cloth bags for soil and rock samples. Of great importance, of course, were maps of the areas where we expected to work. I took those of the U.S. Geological Survey reconnaissance teams of 1916 and 1929 because they seemed to be the best all-round maps, but for details of the rivers and settlements on them I had photographic copies of the first sur¬ veys made by U.S. Army Lieutenants Schwatka in 1883 and Allen in 1885, of maps in the Eleventh (1890) U.S. Census, and those in Holmberg (1855) based upon Zagoskin’s surveys of 1842-44, and the sketch maps in Hrdlicka’s account (1930) of his trip from Nenana and down the Yukon to Holy Cross, June 17 to July 3, 1926. Because of the constantly shifting channels of the rivers, none of these maps could be completely accurate in 1935 for either the navigable waters or the loca¬ tions of villages. (The latest modern maps, made from satellite photographs, a*e likewise inaccurate for 1935.) 1 also brought a large notebook containing my type¬ written passages from the above-mentioned sources and from other publications

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7

dealing with the Yukon valley and its inhabitants. There was no photocopier in 1935 to lessen this work. In addition, we each had to provide our own bedroll or sleeping bag, clothing, notebooks, camera, him, and personal necessities. In pursuit of held clothing, I went to one ot the larger Sears Roebuck stores in Philadelphia. I picked out a suitable array of bluejeans (“Levi’s” in Alaska), heavy shirts, boy’s “barnyard proof” work boots, socks, and so on, assisted by an eager clerk. When it came time to pay for this pile, I said I would pay by check. Con¬ sternation! President Roosevelt had closed the banks, and Sears would accept no check. Finally I was able to convince the clerk and his supervisor that the store would lose nothing if they waited until the banks opened again (which I was sure would be soon) and my check had cleared before shipping my purchases. My faith was justified. But, as will be seen, more problems lay ahead.

Meeting in Seattle My own trip began with a visit to Ottawa, and to Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, places where I consulted professional friends about the under¬ taking. Then to the Hotel St. Regis in Seattle, a favorite of Alaskans, where on Tuesday, May 28, I awaited the arrival of Eardley and Gorton. They did check in that night at about ten-thirty, but since I had gone out for the evening with friends, I didn’t see them until the next morning. Eardley left me a note saying that he was getting up at six-thirty and would like to have breakfast with me. “Jack Eardley is a large man,” I wrote home, “with red hair and a rather slow, humorous drawl. Eardley’s father was with him. They drove out together from Salt Lake City, their home. The father is very upright, with bushy white hair, and is somewhat deaf. His greatest pleasure has been to look up all the local Eardleys in the telephone book and go to see them. Ken Gorton is rather stout and short. In fact they both (Eardley and Gorton) have too much weight. I don’t have a very clear impression of either of them, to tell the truth. I was so dizzy all day yester¬ day from lack of sleep and we were so busy that we hardly had time to get ac¬ quainted. All I can say is that neither of them is good looking but they seem very nice, and they have impressed everyone here favorably.”

Freight Problems Since we intended to purchase in Seattle the lumber that we would need for making our two skiffs, we were upset by the news of a local mill strike. The first lumberyard that we visited, however, said they could fill our order and promised to work on it that same day, even though it was Memorial Day. The cost of the lumber came to $85, which was more than Jack’s naval engineer had figured, be-

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cause he’d made no allowance for the enormous jump in price since he had built Yukon boats, especially during the last two years. Eardley got his father to help him choose the lumber, and after lunch his father spent two hours marking out the pieces that had to be cut here. After seeing the work started at the lumberyard, Jack and I went down to Sears Roebuck and worked hard all morning, buying stuff for the boats and other items. Eardley was very careful to save us money. We had the head salesman of the hardware department on the go for us all day long. We got about half done by lunchtime, and after checking the work at the lumberyard, went back to Sears where we stayed until closing time. We finally had bought everything we needed, including the tools for building our boats, and ordered the purchases to be sent to Nenana. Then we shot over to a marine hardware store just before it closed and bought some special equipment. I purchased our steamer tickets to Seward, Alaska, and also paid for the return. The day had been very hectic. Eardley was enthusiastic about the boats—kept exclaiming how good they would be and how much fun it would be to make them. I told him I had flags for the boats but didn’t tell him what the emblematic device was. That was to be a surprise. Our day did not end until after midnight, for Seattle friends came for us at seven and took us out to dinner and more partying at their apartment. Next morning Ken Gorton and I breakfasted together at ten and watched the Memo¬ rial Day parade. The Eardleys had gone to Tacoma to look up some more rela¬ tives. This genealogical interest is probably part of being Mormons. On Sunday, June 2, I again wrote home, this time on stationery of the Alaska Steamship Company: “We are safely on board the ship with all our belongings, but what a horrible time we had to achieve this state of perfection.” Late Friday, the day before sailing, we had gone down to the dock to see about our freight. Not a thing was there! While we waited, however, the lumber ar¬ rived and we billed that. A truck with our purchases from Sunde and d’Evers, the Seattle marine outfitter, was waiting in the line at the dock. But there was no trace of the outboard motor, of the two boxes sent by the University Museum, or of the Sears Roebuck purchases. We gave a list to the senior freight clerk, who said he would look out for our things, but when we got down to the dock the next morning at seven-thirty, only the outboard motor had arrived and been billed. We finally discovered (by phon¬ ing) that the Railway Express had billed the two boxes from the museum, al¬ though the Alaska Steamship Company freight office had no record. So at eightthirty, with the ship sailing at nine, Gorton chased over to the Railway Express office and got a copy of the bill of lading from them. The steamship company was outraged that the express office had walked off with every single copy of tlfe bill of lading, for without this document no one would know that the freight ex-

TO ALASKA

9

isted. In order to make sure the boxes would not be lost, they had to copy the bill all over again. Meantime, we phoned Sears Roebuck. Oh yes, they had our stuff in the store, but it had not been billed and could not be sent until the store opened at nine. So we pleaded and cursed, and the clerk said he would do what he could. Finally, when we phoned again, Sears said they were sending our order. It arrived in a taxi, just five (5) minutes before sailing time! By then it was too late to send it as freight or to check it as baggage, so we had to take it on board ourselves and pile it in our cabins. I personally carried the last shovel up the gangplank just as they were shouting “All aboard!” It was such a relief that I actually wept a little on my way down to the cabins.

THE VOYAGE

The U.S. Geological Survey The ship was very crowded, jack and Ken had a young fellow in with them, and I shared my cabin with a young woman and her two small children. They were adorable but full of beans and something of a responsibility for their mother. She was taking them to friends or relatives in Seward. To our delighted surprise we discovered that almost all the Alaska Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey was on board, including Stephen R. Capps, Fred H. Mofht, John B. Mertie, Jr., Gerald FitzGerald (or Fitzgerald, per the immutable spelling rules of the Library of Congress, not his wishes), and R. H. Sargent, some of whom I had met on previous Alaskan trips. The geologists would be working in several different parts of Alaska, and the group on the ship represented several parties. We had some good long discussions. Capps told me that he had written to Dr. Conklin of the American Philosophical Society on my behalf. The latter had made inquiries of Capps about the feasibility of our proposed trip, reporting that Hrdlicka had said it was a “crazy idea.” Capps had replied to the effect that Hrdlicka’s opinion was not much respected around the Survey. Then he was afraid that he might have put his foot in it, but Conklin wrote back that his own opinion of “Hardlicker” was about the same. When I thanked Capps for what he had done, he said, “Well, I don’t know what I did for you, but I know it didn’t do you any harm.” It was good to know that the U.S.G.S. (as represented by Capps) had backed our application for a grant from the American Philosophical Society to carry out this exploration. “Our recent adventures,” I wrote home, “have cemented the morale of the ex¬ pedition. Eardley is certainly a nice fellow, even though he has a rather slangy type

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10

1.1. On shipboard, Prince William Sound. Left to right: F. de Laguna, F. H. Moffit, S. R. Capps, G. FitzGerald, and A. J. Eardley (Stephen Capps Collection, 83-49-3328 N, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives, Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks)

of drawl. Gorton is terribly hard to know. Eardley says he is very shy and that, I imagine, is why he has so little to say. He seems to rally around pretty well and does cheerfully whatever is suggested. All things considered, this is going to be a pleasant trip.” We had a lot of sleep to make up, since we’d had to get up early every morning we were in Seattle and had been invited to parties every night. I had a long talk with FitzGerald, now on his way to Kodiak Island, and another long talk with Sargent. Both were topographers on the Survey. The latter had worked on the lower part of the Yukon and was able to give valuable advice about boating and camping. As a result, we abandoned the idea of taking gasoline drums in the skiffs, as the naval engineer had planned, and would take only aviation gas (the best for outboard motors) in ten-gallon cases (two five-gallon cans in a stcfut wooden box). The big drums (fifty gallons) would have been so heavy that, once in the boats and filled, we could never move them.

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11

We also learned about the epic traverses that Sargent had made one terrible summer when he was between Lake Iliamna and the Kuskokwim, making the first topographic exploration. He’d had chronic appendicitis the whole way. He really was a grand guy and could tell a story well. His men seem to have been devoted to him, which was not surprising. Philip Smith, who was Chief Alaska Geologist in 1935) had been the second in command on that particular trip of Sargent’s and had the reputation of being a past master in the art of cursing.

Stories About the Chandalar Kutchin Gerald FitzGerald told an exciting story about his visit to Arctic Village on the Chandalar (not the “Arctic Village” on the Koyukuk that Robert Marshall wrote about and which is really Wiseman). FitzGerald’s Arctic Village was, he said, founded by Indians (Kutchin) from Fort Yukon, who had moved to the Chandalar to escape from the whites. They had a council and a chief, the offices being filled by yearly elections. They also had rigid game laws, with a limit on each kind of animal, assigned to each family according to need. Once or twice a year they went to Fort Yukon to trade. Four white men came into their country and started to kill fur-bearing animals with poison, and the Natives killed the intrud¬ ers. When FitzGerald and J. B. Mertie went there in 1927, the whites at Fort Yukon predicted that they would be killed, too. When the pair of geologists arrived, they found Arctic Village deserted because the people were all away hunting. They moved into a cabin, and one day when they came back from work they found the cabin all cleaned up and a fire laid in the stove and everything made nice for them. The Natives were quite friendly, especially when they found out what the white men were doing. It seems that the Indians were all Christians and had an Indian deacon who was also an authority on Native folklore. The anthropologist, Robert McKennan (1965:22,86-88), who had studied the Chandalar Kutchin in 1933 and was the first white man to visit them since FitzGerald and Mertie, identified the deacon as Albert Tritt, born about 1880. Tritt was a truly remarkable man. He had been at first a shaman, but about 1910 he became the leader of a revitalization movement. According to FitzGerald, he had many volumes of stories hand written in his own language. The Kutchin “alphabet” Tritt used had been invented by an Anglican missionary, Robert McDonald, who came to Fort Yukon in 1862, translated the Bible, and taught the Indians to read and write (McClellan 1981:396-97, fig. 15). McKennan referred to the system as a Kutchin “syllabary” which was being taught to the children in the mission school at Fort Yukon. Tritt’s conversion came about, McKennan ex¬ plained, because Tritt believed that the whites’ ascendancy was due to their abil¬ ity to read and write, and to their Christian religion. He therefore stayed at Fort

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Yukon long enough to learn the syllabary. He then returned to Arctic Village with Bibles, prayer books, and hymnals in Kutchin, preaching the gospel and urging his people to return to their old hunting life. Next, Tritt had his people build the chapel, of which he became deacon, but he could never get them to finish a twostorey schoolhouse, although he was teaching the Arctic Village children to read and write in Kutchin. At first Tritt pretended to McKennan that he could not understand English, but when the latter had won his trust, he explained how he had learned to read, write, and speak it, all by himself, by comparing a Kutchin Bible with the King James version! His speech, strictly phonetic, was that of the King James Bible. He was busy compiling a Kutchin-English dictionary, and had written out the story of his life in several large ledgers. After his death, these volumes went to the Uni¬ versity of Alaska, where McKennan read them in 1962. According to FitzGerald—McKennon’s version of the events varies some¬ what—the Indians set remarkable tasks for themselves. One year they decided that they ought to catch a caribou herd and tame it; at least that is what FitzGerald understood. So they started to build a corral around a mountain to shut the cari¬ bou in. (I believe it was a traditional caribou hunting fence with snares; I doubt that the Kutchin planned to become herders!) But the animals moved on before they could finish it. Since Tritt had read in the Bible that the Lord told them to make a straight path for their feet, they thought that referred to the trail to Fort Yukon, which was one of the most twisty trails in the North. And what did they do but make a straight trail all the one hundred and fifty miles! And so on. But their most ambitious undertaking was to build a church of logs. Since Arctic Village was above the treeline, the construction was a Herculean project that required the timbers to be hauled in from twenty miles away. The building process took so long that they missed the annual caribou hunt, and the people be¬ gan to starve. But their deacon (Tritt) told them that the Lord would provide. On the day the church was finished they looked out and saw four red mountain sheep on a sandbar and were able to kill them all. FitzGerald had seen the pelts, colored red by the dust and dirt from a red sandstone formation. FitzGerald and Mertie were to be at Arctic Village over the Fourth of July and they told the Natives about the celebrations that are usually held then. The Indi¬ ans had no knowledge of the Fourth, perhaps because their closest ties were with the Canadian Kutchin bands, but when they heard about it, they wanted to do it right. So two boys hiked down to Fort Yukon and got four American flags. FitzGerald and Mertie organized the celebration. They appointed a committee on games, a committee on food, a committee on prizes, and a committee on music. The idea of committees struck the Indians as a great invention. Then FitzGerald began to teach them games, and one of the games was, of course, baseball. They

TO ALASKA

13

laid out a diamond and made a ball out of caribou hide stuffed with moose hair, and from the moment that the diamond was completed, there was never a mo¬ ment that summer, day or night, that it was not being used. Old men and women down to little children were playing. Finally the Fourth arrived. The Natives had been so eager to begin that they had stayed up all the night before. They had games all morning: three-legged races, potato races, sack races, Indian races, pole vaulting, and so on, with prizes for each event. Then they had a big feed. Then baseball. More races. Another big feed. And after dinner they had a dance in the community hall. Their favorite dance was a Red River jig. In this, a man and a woman dance opposite each other, and at some signal one drops out and another takes his or her place until every one has danced in turn. Mertie was called FitzGerald’s “wife,” because he took care of their dog team. Fie dressed in a skirt and danced opposite FitzGerald in the jig. In their cabin they had found an Eskimo drum, left by a party of Eskimo from the coast (on a trading trip?). So they got out the drum and did an Es¬ kimo “muscle dance” for the Indians, who were “so tickled that you could have heard them yelling five miles away!”

TO ALASKA

14

The chief of this tribe opposed the missionaries, so they got him Outside on a trumped-up charge, FitzGerald said, and now he was languishing “somewhere in an insane asylum.” I sent his name and address to Melville Jacobs, linguist at the University of Washington, who was in touch with almost every Native who came through Seattle or lived in Washington state, in the hope that he might be able to do something for the unfortunate chief. McKennan reported that, prior to his trip in 1933 when he spent nine weeks with the three bands into which the original Arctic Village people had divided, he consulted FitzGerald and Mertie, and also visited “Esaias Simon, a Chandalar native who had been committed to Morningside Mental Flospital” in Portland, Oregon. That must have been the elected chief whom FitzGerald had mentioned. I later learned that Simon had been “moved to a farm.” According to McKennan (r965:66), between r909 and 1933 Esaias Simon was the third chief of Arctic Vil¬ lage, Isaac Tritt, the deacon’s son, being the sixth.

Prince William Sound The voyage to Prince William Sound was one of the best that I had so far expe¬ rienced. It was beautifully calm all the way across the Gulf of Alaska, and we spent much of the time on deck enjoying the sunshine, although it was too cloudy to see the panorama of snowy mountains visible only on clear days. We docked at Cordova, Prince William Sound, at two in the morning. The Alaska Steamship Company’s vessels carried a lot of essential freight, the loading and unloading of which took precedence over travelers’ slumbers. Nevertheless, I was asleep when roused at three-thirty by Earl Jacobsen, skipper of the U.S. For¬ est Service launch Chugach, aboard which I’d enjoyed a wonderful trip on Prince William Sound in r933. With Jacobsen’s help I was able to bill the loose items of our Seattle purchases through to Nenana. Then we went back to his house, woke up his wife, and talked until five, when we all became sleepy and went to bed—I taking the couch. At eight we had breakfast, and I hurried back to the ship. From the Jacobsens I learned to my pleasure that Galushia Nelson, the Eyak Indian with whom Kaj Birket-Smith and I had worked in 1933, had had a sufficient remission of tuberculosis to enable him to go hunting and fishing again. (This may well have been for the last time, since he died not long afterwards.) It was a long, glorious day crossing Prince William Sound. There was not a single cloud in the sky. Our ship went within a few feet of the front of Columbia Glacier. All the old-timers aboard said they had never been so close. We watched while several icebergs fell from the glacier, making tremendous splashes. The trip up Valdez Arm and back out again was also “pretty swell,” as I noted in ftry journal.

TO ALASKA

15

EXCURSION TO FAIRBANKS

A Stop at Anchorage The voyage ended on June 7, when we docked at Seward, terminus of the Alaska Railway which was to take us and our outfit to Nenana. Since our freight would travel by a later train, we decided to go on to Fairbanks and return to Nenana. I had picked up a bad cold on the ship and was very miserable, with sniffles and aches. Friends on board had prescribed a hot shower followed by a hot toddy of rum to “break it up,” and then bed. This I tried the night before we reached Seward, but probably negated the beneficial effects of the shower and toddy by throwing off the sheet and blanket when I began to perspire. At any rate, the cold seemed as flourishing as ever when we debarked at Seward. The train from Seward to Anchorage was an hour late in starting, and because we had been up since the small hours of the morning, the wait seemed eternal. So many people wanted to go on the train that they had to attach three coaches in¬ stead of two, and it took an hour to find the third. It was again a fine day, like the one we had in Prince William Sound, and the view of the mountains was breath¬ taking. We discovered after we started that the train was going only as far as An¬ chorage, where we would have to spend the night before proceeding to Fairbanks. Because of my cold, I was not sorry to stop. The first part of the train trip as far as Anchorage was not new, since I had taken it in 1930 with my brother Wallace, when we explored Cook Inlet for ar¬ chaeological sites. But I had never seen the country in June, and I was struck by the vast amounts of snow still on the ground. Though the train did not climb much, we came almost to the snowline, and it was so dazzling that I wished I had my dark glasses. The trees were full of new green leaves, and they also dazzled. The sky was very blue—not a cloud. It was quite hot in the train, and we were on the sunny side, but it was so crowded that there was no chance of changing our seats, which we’d occupied since eight in the morning in order to hold them. The train did not leave Seward until ten o’clock. The last part of the morning’s ride down Turnagain Arm was especially beau¬ tiful. The sloughs at the head of the arm were stained bright red, due to some kind of algae that deposits iron rust, according to Eardley. We could see Mount Spur, a large volcano, and other snowy mountains to the west across Cook Inlet, and when we came out of Turnagain Arm into Knik Inlet, we could see Mount Mc¬ Kinley (“Denali” is preferred in Alaska) and Mount Foraker of the Alaska Range ahead to the north. (See front endpapers for map of Alaska in 1935.) We reached Anchorage at two-thirty, and then had lunch. Jack Fields (my good friend ever since I chartered his boat for archaeological adventures on Cook Inlet

i6

TO ALASKA

in 1930) was at the station to meet me. He’d arrived in town the day before, after guiding a long hunting trip for two wealthy men from Oklahoma. He was just the same as ever, and it was good to see his smiling, weatherbeaten face. By this time we had gradually shed all of the Survey geologists except for Mertie and the three young fellows who were going with him. They stayed at Anchor¬ age and took a plane to the country northwest of Lake Clark, west of Cook Inlet. Eardley and Gorton wanted some exercise, so that afternoon they walked out to the Anchorage airport, which was about two miles out of town. But I had a nap and then had dinner with Mertie. I don’t know what our boys did that eve¬ ning. After dinner Mertie took me to see the radio station that called itself “The Voice of the Golden North, Serving Alaska, the Antipodes, and Ships at Sea.” It was a one-man show. The owner-operator had assembled the station himself, us¬ ing only standard pieces of equipment. He had been running the station six nights a week, every week, for six years. Of course, he used a lot of “canned stuff,” and there was also some local talent. His most popular hour was at eleven at night, when he gave out all the news from the Associated Press dispatches plus a lot of local news and personal messages. The miners and trappers and people who were completely out of touch with the world never failed to listen in, and of course the messages meant a lot to them. That night none of us slept much. The light was so bright, and the sun shone almost all night long. Next day we walked out to the end of town overlooking the river, where Eardley took some samples of the silt that forms the bluff.

Matanuska Farmers Our train left at one-thirty, after an early lunch. We went up to the head of Knik Arm, across the Knik and Matanuska rivers, and headed toward the Alaska Range. Again the day was perfect, with snow-capped mountains on all sides. The mud flats at the head of Knik Arm and around the Indian village of Eklutna, where my brother Wallace and I had explored by skiff in 1930, were crimson with flowers. I was very sorry that the train did not stop so that I could take colored pictures. (Color film for transparencies had recently become available; I had only a few Agfa color plates in Prince William Sound in 1933.) We crossed the rivers draining into Knik Arm and went along the flats and benches where the federal government was going to relocate destitute farmers from the continental United States. This was an experiment of the New Deal, as one small way of combatting the Depression. We saw several farms, but did not go close enough to the new camp to see the farmers. There was considerablelocal interest in them. The fertile Matanuska valley was pretty swampy, the mos¬ quitoes were terrible, and it was predicted that the farmers would never be able to

TO ALASKA

17

dry their hay or grain. In fact, people in Anchorage did not think much of the idea of trying to farm that country, citing too short a season, too much rain, and too high freight charges to reach markets where the retailers might just as well have the vegetables brought in from Outside wholesalers who could fill all the items on their orders, so that they would not have to rely on uncertain local supplies. Capps had called it folly for the government to try to settle farmers here and ad¬ vance them loans, in the expectation that they could become self-supporting. There was also said to have been a lot of graft in the selection of the Matanuska farmers. Many of them were not farmers at all, I was told. Even on the train com¬ ing west they were dissatisfied with the grub and went on strike. Their food had been supplied by someone under contract, and that contracting party was trying to make a lot of money. For example, the immigrants were served “buttered” bread, with very little butter, and the farmers wanted to butter their own—and so on. When they arrived, there were a number of tractors at Matanuska that were supposed to clear the land, and the government had sent up several men who were supposed to be mechanics, but they were unable to start a single tractor. Fi¬ nally one of the farmers showed them what was the matter: the “experts” had the batteries hooked up backward. This farmer fixed the connection and started sev¬ eral of the machines. But instead of putting him in charge, the government sent down to Seward for another “expert.” It was all a matter of graft, people said. It was also alleged that twenty-five years previously a number of people had tried to farm in that same place and had such a terrible time they finally had to give it up. So the stories went. (Those naysayers should see the prosperous and fertile Mata¬ nuska farms today! World War II and the Alaska Highway created their market.)

The Alaska Range All that afternoon, after leaving salt water, we went directly toward Denali, crossing swamps and low benches. The country was hideous with burned-over timber or trees that seemed to be dying of blight. Most of the trees were either horrid little jack pines or black spruce—tall, spindly, and mostly dead black skele¬ tons. They were huddled in groups like witches conspiring. We went for some time along the Susitna River, a rather small, swift stream, its winding course filled with sandbars. Then we crossed it and followed the Chulitna, a similar stream. For most of the afternoon the Alaska Range was in sight—in fact, there seemed to be nothing between us and the distant snowy peaks, so I couldn’t judge how high the mountains were. (On rereading my journal, I see that my vocabulary for mountains relied especially on “magnificent” and “glorious.” Four seasons in the Swiss Alps as a child had definitely made climbing in the mountains, or looking at them when not climbing, the perfect way to enjoy life.) Fate in the afternoon we entered a valley and the mountains were blotted out.

i8

TO ALASKA

We passed several stations, but these were nothing more than the stations them¬ selves, usually with a family living in them—I supposed, to take care of the rail¬ road in some way. Curry, our destination for the night, was just “Mile 196” on the railway, although the hotel was really nice. It was right beside the tracks with the river behind it. We arrived at six and had supper right away—a table d’hote meal, quite elaborate. My cold was so bad that I couldn’t taste anything, but to judge by the toughness of the chicken, I wasn’t missing much. After supper the men went out to climb the range across the stream from the hotel. It was a five-mile hike and three-thousand-foot climb, and from the top they had an unparalleled view of the mountain. I had bet that it would take them three hours, but they made the trip in two and were back for bed at shortly after midnight. I nursed my cold with the help of some medicine from the hotel man¬ ager, but worried that it might turn into flu. We were called at six-fifteen the next morning and were off at seven-thirty, and I felt much better. Our bill for dinner, bed, and breakfast was $16.00—a lot for those days, but not for Alaska. The next day we reached Fairbanks. During the first part of the journey, we climbed up the gorge and came around the end of the same ridge that the men had climbed. We saw “the” mountain again. It was disappointing, because here we were so close that the foothills had begun to hide it. We went up a valley with high, snowy peaks on every side, the timber still blighted and burned over in patches but gradually thinning out. Finally, Denali was eclipsed by the foothills and dropped behind us to our left. We got up into the high pass, about two thousand feet above sea level. To my surprise, this was all a swamp (as are many passes in Alaska, I later learned). The bushes were littered with white ptarmigan feathers, and the train scared up any number of the birds, most of them in their brown summer plumage, but a few still splashed with patches of winter white. I suppose the white feathers on the bushes were largely from their molting, although in some places it was evident that a ptarmigan had been attacked and killed during the winter—by a hawk? At last the timber became so stunted and sparse that the telegraph line, which had been strung on trees beside the tracks, now had to be hung from low tripods made of three poles tied together at the top. Some of the railway stops in this high country were important for reaching gold mines, and at one of these forsaken stops there was an airstrip with a plane on it. Then we began to go gradually down the north side of the pass, alarming two groups of caribou loping along, their horns in velvet. I was surprised at their rather small size. A pair were actually on the tracks but moved off at our ap¬ proach. Farther down the pass, as we began to enter a gorge, we saw hundreds of mountain sheep, some on the high grassy slopes of the mountains, and others fairly close. We stopped at McKinley Park Station to drop off and take on a few tourists. This station was just a station; the tourist lodge stood some miles back,

TO ALASKA

19

to be reached by bus. One day in the park cost $25. The park (as much as we could see of it) seemed much less beautiful than the broad valley and the pass approaching it. (It was to be many years before I was able to camp in the park and drive all the way to the end of the park road, delighting in the migrating caribou, playful fox cubs, majestic and awesome grizzlies, Dali sheep like spots of snow on the high ridges, and beavers and moose in the lakes that mirrored the great snowy sides and crest of Denali.) We had lunch at Healy, a half-dead little place where the river had cut a deep gorge exposing Cretaceous (late dinosaur age) coal beds. Some coal mining was being done here. Jack and Ken had interesting discussions on the probable geo¬ logical history of the country, for the river showed evidence of several cycles of erosion, both in the shape of the valley and in the huge layers of gravel and silt on top of the Cretaceous coal beds, the so-called Nenana gravels, on the north slope of the Alaska Range. The train wound down out of the mountains onto an enor¬ mous plain—again the stunted, burned, and “diseased” timber. But the air here was much drier. The plain was apparently made of glacial detritus brought down by the streams from the mountains. The railroad tracks ran straight across it, down along the Nenana River to the town of Nenana on the south side of the Tanana. I was surprised to discover that the original town of Nenana, as marked on my old maps, didn’t exist any more. I later learned that it had been on the north bank of the Tanana River but was moved to the south bank when the rail¬ road was built in 1917. The train stopped here for about fifteen minutes, so we all got out and looked around. Some huskies chained in the back yard of a house near the station were very much excited by the passengers who came to take their pictures. Then we went on. A big railway bridge spanned the Tanana here and, on proceeding, the train wound up the steep, rocky bluff opposite the town, then again went straight across the almost flat country to Fairbanks, higher up the Tanana valley.

Fairbanks: The Campus Site and Ester Creek Placer Mine We spent a day and a half in Fairbanks before returning to Nenana. While we were in Fairbanks we visited the college (now University of Alaska) and saw the site on the campus where microblades (small, thin bladelets of flint) and some larger stone scrapers and crude flaked knives had been found. It was just a spot on the slope where the cropped grass was sparse and pebbly sand showed through. On a cut bank along the road near the college we saw a place where rabbits (Arc¬ tic hares) had been licking the exposed silt for the salt in it. Dr. Otto Geist showed us his collections of archaeological, paleontological, and miscellaneous specimens—nothing systematic, but interesting. ITe was very

20

TO ALASKA

1.3. Alaska College (now University of Alaska Fairbanks), from the air, altitude 900 feet, 4:07 p.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-326)

proud of his cold-storage room: a basement room built right into the permafrost, for most of the ground below a certain number of inches (depending on the location) is frozen. Here he kept some walrus ivory artifacts from St. Lawrence Island. They had been found in frozen soil and would be liable to crack if allowed to warm up. What struck me the most in his collections were the skulls of caribou and moose with antlers tangled up in yards and yards of telegraph wire; the ani¬ mals had died in that condition, unable to break free. The wire had been strung by the U.S. Army Signal Corps at various stretches along the Tanana and Yukon rivers in the early 1900s. It was often hung so low, especially from three-pole tripods where trees were lacking, that any large animal with horns was likely to become caught by it and die a horrible death. We also visited the Fairbanks Exploration Company placer mine on Ester Creek, about eleven miles west of Fairbanks. The young fellow who showed us around was John B. Dorsh, whom I’d met previously at the American Museum of Nat¬ ural History in New York. His doctoral thesis was being published by the museum on “Some Phases of Pleistocene and Recent Geology at Fairbanks,” and he cer-

TO ALASKA

21

tainly seemed to know his stuff. As usual, Eardley collected soil samples and fos¬ sil animal bones. The mining itself was very interesting. The gold, in small particles, was found in the stream gravels under a heavy overburden of frozen muck (soil and organic material). To extract the gold, a heavy ram (a hose like a water cannon) would blast away at the muck, washing it out. Then a huge rig, wallowing in the muddy water like a hippopotamus, sucked in the water and gravel, spinning the latter to extract the heavier gold and eventually regurgitating the gravel. It was while sluicing with the ram that artifacts were found in the frozen soil. Since a few of these were of obviously recent Indian manufacture, one couldn’t be sure of the antiquity of others that might be ancient. There were also bones of Pleistocene animals. But none of these was found in situ (or undisturbed, in place), which was necessary to establish their age. Even before being dislodged by the ram, these bones and objects had probably been flotsam on some river bar, so they were not necessarily found where they had been originally dropped. The exposure in the placer mine at Ester Creek, where the ram had washed away the overburden down to bedrock, showed two to four feet of tundra on top, the greater depth being on the north (south-facing) side of the valley. Below this was very fine frozen silt, interspersed with lenses and dikes of ice, twelve to four¬ teen feet wide. This silt was sixty feet deep in most areas; but only fifteen feet thick in the stream bottom, where it was mixed with tree debris and roots; in the cen¬ ter, Ester Creek had cut through practically to the underlying gravel. On the sides, near the bottom of the frozen silt, were occasional thin layers of sand and fine gravel, due to ancient rock and earth slides. Laid out on the grass was a five-footlong mammoth femur (hind leg bone) that had come from such a layer. The very bottom layer, one foot thick, was unfrozen and contained a lot of water. This wa¬ ter, where sucked up into cracks in the frozen silt, formed ice lenses and “plugs.” Below all this was a twenty-foot-thick layer of yellow gravel, also unfrozen, and it was in this gravel that the gold occurred. Under the gravel and on top of the bedrock were about eight inches of sticky, grayish-white clay. Dorsh discussed the complexity of the situation. Pleistocene animal bones usu¬ ally occurred on the bottom gravel layer, except for those found in the sand and fine gravel of an old slide. Bones might also be found throughout the deposit right up to the tundra, where ice in a vein or dike had worked them upward by alter¬ nate freezing and thawing. Remains of old beaver dams, that is, logs chewed by beavers and laid out in the same direction, might also occur from the yellow gravel up to within three feet of the surface, with bones concentrated behind them. Yet only one beaver ramus (part of the lower jaw) had been found; and there were no signs of rabbits (Arctic hare) or squirrels. There were many horse and bison bones, more than Dorsh had expected to find in an Ice Age deposit. Dorsh was convinced that some of the bones found in the placers showed

TO ALASKA

22

traces of human activity. Thus, there was a curious preponderance of certain types of animal bones which suggested discriminating slaughter and butchering. For example, about three hundred horse and bison atlases (the atlas is the upper¬ most neck vertebra, supporting the skull) were found in one place, and vertebrae of that type are not particularly apt to be preserved. It looked as if the heads of these animals had been cut off, and later the atlas bones removed from the skulls and deposited in one place, while the skulls were taken away for ritual disposal— perhaps hung on trees, as many northern people are still doing. Also, Dorsh said that a lot of the marrow bones were broken—not at the normal lines of fracture, but across the middle, as if they had been cracked to get at the marrow. But these suggested interpretations were just guesses, inpossible to prove. Dorsh had found old rodent nests, each with its granary, in the silt on the lower slopes of the hills just above the valley bottom. These occurred from within three feet of the underlying gravel up to the surface. Some of these nests were enclosed in ice. There were from one to three skeletons to a nest, in one case two mummi¬ fied little bodies, but no bones of babies or young, which proved that the animals had died in the winter; and not from hunger, since the granaries were full of seeds. These little tragedies could explain the origin of the frozen ground: During the late Ice Age, there had been a long accumulation of silt in which successive generations of rodents made their burrows. At intervals, a severe winter would freeze the ground deeply enough not only to kill the hibernating animals but also to resist thawing out in the following summer. And in this way, the permafrost was formed as the silt accumulated. It now remained to explain the origin of the silt itself, a problem that had oc¬ cupied many geologists. For fifty years they argued that it had been laid down by streams, but then why was it found on top of the 800- to 2,000-foot ridges? Capps had suggested to Eardley that this might be loess, or rock dust ground fine by gla¬ ciers and blown by wind to the uplands, but reworked by streams in the valley bot¬ toms. And Jack was cautiously receptive to this staggering but correct suggestion (see Epilogue). Across the wide Tanana valley to the north slope of the Alaska Range, there are eight hundred to twelve hundred feet of the so-called Nenana gravels. They overlie the Cretaceous coal beds above Flealy, which proves they are younger than the period when the first flowering plants flourished, when the dinosaurs were near¬ ing their end, and when the coal was forming. But how did they fit into the story? Although we had a very pleasant time in Fairbanks, my letter home contains the scribbled pronouncement: “Fairbanks is to my mind a most unattractive place. The visit to the placer mine and the Alaska Range have been the high points of the trip, so far.”

*

In later years, with so many friends living in Fairbanks, its attractiveness has in-

TO ALASKA

23

creased, although I still deplore the lack of city planning that has permitted urban sprawl to spread unchecked across the muddy valley bottom of the Tanana River.

Hindsight In 1936, the year after we were at Fairbanks, Froelich G. Rainey (1939:381-89) excavated at the campus site for the American Museum of Natural Flistory. Although he described the site and the specimens he recovered, the definitive monograph, by Charles M. Mobley, was not published until 1991. Rainey also studied the finds from the Ester Creek mine and from similar placer mines in the vicinity, but could draw no firm conclusions. He did not discuss the observations made by Dorsh, probably because he did not take them seriously. We should note that similar puzzles and uncertainties with regard to cracked or possibly cut ani¬ mal bones are associated with finds made in the Old Crow area on the Porcupine, far up the Yukon valley, finds that have been cited, but not necessarily accepted, as proof of very ancient human activities. In Raineys report (1939:390-401) I was surprised to learn that J. Louis Giddings, fr., who later became one of the most distinguished Arctic archaeologists, was also at the placer mines in 1937, just beginning his tree-ring studies. I knew nothing about Giddings then and although we did not meet in Alaska, he was later to become my good friend. Since 1935 many discoveries purporting to prove man’s presence in the New World during the last (Wisconsin) glacial period, or even earlier, have been re¬ viewed and rejected. Yet there has been even more evidence strongly suggesting pre-Clovis occupation which deserves to be given serious consideration. The New World was the last continent to be occupied by human beings, probably because entrance to it, via Siberia and Alaska, was long denied to those who lacked the skills of Arctic survival (skills not developed before the Upper Paleolithic) or the way was blocked by continental glaciers. With the waning of the ice barrier about 14,000 years ago, while the Bering Land Bridge was still intact, we can easily imag¬ ine the migration into Alaska of the ancestors of those tribes like the Athabaskan and Algonkian Indians, who still inhabit the cold and treeless tundra, for the great interior valley of Alaska was unglaciated and rich in game. The Eskimo themselves are believed to have come somewhat later, for their reliance upon marine mam¬ mals rests upon the development of northern epi-Paleolithic technology: canoes and effective harpoons. Despite the doubts of ultraconservative archaeologists, evidence for still earlier human occupation of North and even South America continues to accumulate. Many authorities now believe that the earliest migrants may have come at a warmer time, perhaps even during an interglacial interval, although we have no proofs of their passage. At any rate there must have been, over the millennia,

TO ALASKA

24

many separate migrations, probably of relatively small groups, whose descen¬ dants prospered and multiplied rapidly. The earliest known Alaskan finds, described in Prehistoric Alaska, edited by Penny Rennick (1994), and in Interior Alaska: A Journey Through Time, edited by Robert M. Thorson and others (1986), are from 12,000 or 11,500 years old, ac¬ cording to dated charcoal from the campfires. The earliest sites have been found on the north slope of the Brooks Range in the Arctic, and on the valley sides of the Upper Tanana and the Nenana rivers. These were the temporary camps of big-game hunters, on high terraces and hills from which they could spot the mov¬ ing herds of mammoth, elk, bison, and caribou. While waiting, they skillfully fashioned flint and bone points for weapons (used with spear-throwers), knife blades for flensing their prizes, scrapers of bone and stone for preparing the hides, and eyed bone needles for making the tailored fur clothing needed in the late Ice Age and early post-Pleistocene climate. These “Paleo-Alaskans” also took a great deal of smaller game: otter, beaver, muskrat, hare, squirrel, birds and fish, accord¬ ing to season and location. Sites from 10,000 to 8,000 years old have been found on the Seward Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands, and in the southeastern Alaskan panhandle. To reach and to live on the islands of the Aleutians or the Alexander Archipelago, seaworthy craft (and luck) were needed. As far as I know, most of the ancient sites were discovered by accident, not as a result of systematic archaeological search. Points, some fluted, others basally thinned, have been found at scattered localities in northern Alaska. They cannot all be assumed to belong to the same tool kit, however. Some are of uncertain provenience and/or age, others were apparently shaped by accident or carelessly, and even the best fluted examples lack clear affinities to Clovis or Folsom forms. They must be taken seriously, however, even though we do not know their places in the prehistory of Alaska, or their relationships to fluted points in other areas. The majority of these Alaska specimens are of obsidian, and have been found in shallow workshop sites at the Batza Tena obsidian outcrops south of Hughes, on the upper Koyukuk. Artifacts of different traditions and periods are also found at these workshops, and Batza Tena obsidian has been traded or carried to other sites in northern Alaska (D. Clark 1972; D. Clark and A. McFadyen Clark 1975). I suspect that these obsidian fluted points are not as old as the finely flaked blades found at Alaska’s oldest dated site (the Mesa site in the Brooks Range). Blades from this site resemble blades found in the Southwest and Plains believed to be pre-Clovis. At any rate, the flint-knapping skills of the ancient Alaskan hunters were superb.

2

GETTING STARTED

NENANA ON THE TANANA RIVER

Our First Camp We arrived back in Nenana on the morning of June n. As I wrote home, “I don’t know what I expected Nenana to be, but I was sur¬ prised to see how prosaic it looked... not at all fitted to be the romantic jumpingoff place of our adventure. There is a warehouse and dock along the riverbank, and the railway station across the tracks, but the town itself is just about falling into ruins. You see, when they were first building the railroad this was a booming place, because of all the work being done on the tracks, and also for a while later when they were building the bridge. At that time, anything brought up by rail from the port at Seward had to be shipped across the river by boat and picked up again at North Nenana, from where it was taken by a short railway line to Fair¬ banks. Of course, this being the head of navigation also made it important_But when the bridge was completed, the ‘town collapsed like a pricked bubble,’ as one resident put it, and everyone went to Fairbanks. There is a lot of mining there, but nothing here except the river, now that the trains go through. The river does not seem very wide. It is just a small, dirty river, with a rocky bluff and a bend on the north side, and dull, flat country and a half-dead town on the other.” Nenana then had a total population of about 290 to 300 people, white and Indian. On our arrival, we walked along the sandy beach, going upstream toward the railway bridge. About half a mile from the station, and halfway between it and the bridge, we found an abandoned sawmill. There was a gang of men working on a mammoth barge a little way beyond it. The town clerk was among them and told us that we were free to build our boats under the sawmill and to camp there if we liked. It was a favorite place for building boats. So that afternoon when the train arrived with our freight, we got Billy Heinz, the transfer man, to move all our gear out to the old sawmill. We set up our tents in a pleasant spot about a hundred feet from the mill, in the edge of a grove of young cottonwoods. 25

GETTING STARTED

26

The first night, we three had to bunk in one tent, because the tipi I’d planned to use as my own proved too small to hold an army cot, and the poles of my Greenland tent (used in Upernavik, 1929, and in Alaska, 1930-33) had been lost; we made new ones for it the next day. But our big cook tent seemed to be just right. The netted skylight over the place for the stove admitted plenty of air, and the flap to close it seemed to be tight enough to keep out the rain. Neither tent had a sewn-in floor, which I have always felt was only a trap for dirt, and a fire hazard when cooking, but had instead a wide skirting of mildew-proof canvas around the bottom, to tuck under the tarpaulin that served as flooring. We did not try to do any cooking because our nearest neighbor, “Kobuk Dick” Herron, was taking care of two dogs and two puppies while their owner was carrying the mail down¬ river to Tanana. The dogs were tied up, but the pups ran loose and we were afraid they would get into things. In addition, Dick’s own young dog, Snow Ball, was much in evidence, playing with the puppies, and the three were everywhere. We were getting excellent meals at Mrs. Hick’s, whose huskies had been so lavishly photographed during our trainstop on the way to Fairbanks. She was Scottish, with a sharp, lively tongue and a good heart; her husband was from Yorkshire. Jack and Ken were getting up at the crack of dawn, heating water for a shave, and sometimes starting work on the boats before breakfast when I was slow in ris¬ ing. We had breakfast by seven-thirty or eight, lunch at twelve-thirty, and supper at six. Most nights I was too tired to do anything after supper, but during the day I tried enlarging the tipi by adding three feet of canvas to the bottom—a failure, so the tipi was abandoned. I also did some packing up of gear and paint¬ ing the oars. Although I offered to help with making the boats, my unskilled as¬ sistance was declined. The devotion of Jack and Ken to this work seemed almost religious. I also visited the Indian settlement, upstream from us, just beyond the bridge. The people were very friendly and ready to tell stories, though I had not as much time for that as I should have liked. My cold lingered on and then flared up when I got chilled one evening. So I rested the next day, dozing on my cot. The nurse from the Mission gave me some medicine, and by suppertime I felt fine. Traveling up and down on the train and getting our outfit fixed up was more tiring than one would have supposed, but as soon as everything seemed all right, I felt rested. I complained in my journal that my arms felt rather weak and tired easily, but I had not experienced any real lameness in my hips (signs of the undiagnosed arthritis that plagued me inter¬ mittently from college days until I had both hips replaced when I was seventyeight). But I believed that with three men to do the heavy work, I could have an “easy time.” Ha! It was clear and hot during the day—so hot that a cotton shirt was too much clothing. But I had to wear my blue denim jacket most of the time because the mosquitoes could bite through a shirt. When painting the oars or a skiff I did not

GETTING STARTED

27

need to wear it, because the mosquitoes appeared to avoid the hot sun and the bright glare of the white paint. Anyway, they did not seem to bother me much, for I had acquired some immunity to bites during four previous seasons in Alaska. They just made small bumps that hardly itched at all after the actual bit¬ ing was over. It got cool very fast in the evening as soon as the sun got behind the hill across the river. One night there was fog from the water. I would go to bed with lots of blankets, and gradually work out of them as the early morning warmed. By sixthirty or seven it was too hot to sleep in the tents. I used the Greenland tent after some poles had been made for it, and I felt that I had not slept as well for some time as I did then. The air was so dry that we did not mind the heat much, even though we perspired a lot. There were always clouds in the sky, light and fluffy and beautiful, riding high. A number of thunderstorms had been blowing past, but only a few hit us. People said the season was unusually dry and that the gar¬ dens needed rain. The road and paths were deep in dust. The gasoline stove gave us a lot of trouble at first. We had it out and tested it, and it finally seemed to work. Of course, we used only unleaded airplane gasoline, but still something may have gotten into it while we were filling the stove. We also used our new Yukon stove (a folding sheet-iron stove, burning wood) to heat wa¬ ter for baths Saturday night, and it proved a success. The old baking pan used in Prince William Sound fitted the oven as if they had been made for each other. There were enough joints of stove pipe to clear the top of the cook tent when the stove was set up in it, a special metal plate spreading the tent roof to protect it from the heat where the pipe passed through. Sandy (Norman Reynolds) arrived safely on the Sunday (June 16) train, as planned, and was immediately put to work painting one of the boats. The paint we were using dried so fast that we were able to finish painting the last boat on the nineteenth, even though it had been finished and given a first coat of paint the night before. The boats got a second coat only on the outside.

Building the Skiffs The two skiffs were sixteen feet long and about five feet wide, with flat bottoms except for an upturn about the middle. This enabled them to “climb the step” and “plane” when they carried no load, as we discovered later. Most of the time they were slow in the water, especially when fighting the current. Jack had brought oak pieces from home for the sterns, ribs, and bows. The spruce lumber from Seattle was used for the sides, bottom, false keel, and the reinforcing pieces for the gun. wales and insides of the ribs. No nails were used, only brass screws throughout, except for iron clamps and bolts in strategic places. Cotton caulking (oakum) was inserted in each seam as the work progressed. The trickiest part came when the

2.i. Bending the sides of a skiff, Nenana, June 15 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-35)

side planks had been attached to the bow piece and had to be bent around so they could be screwed to the stern piece, and the thwarts inserted. The origi¬ nal plan called for painting the sides with alcohol to make the wood flexible, but the men making the huge barge generously used their steam box to bend the sides of our boats. This saved us a great deal and did so without the danger of splitting the planks. Forms were set up across the skiff-to-be to define the shape of the sides. The side planks were long enough to have holes bored through their stern ends, through which ropes were passed to pull them slowly together until they met the stern piece, to which they were then screwed. When the thwarts were in place and secured, the forms could be removed, the skiff turned over, and the bottom planks fastened to the sides. We put on the first coat of paint while the skiff was still upside-down. Jack was so proud of his skiffs—and rightly so—that he reluctantly relinquished the paint brushes to Sandy and myself. “The skiffs were beautifully made,” I wrote home. “Jack has done a really pro¬ fessional job on the boats. He is amazingly handy with tools and showed great in¬ genuity in making our few tools do the work of more. All the local people—and there were plenty who stopped by to look at the skiffs—have admired the way

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29

2.2. Kenneth Gorton (left) and Jack Eardley putting bottom planks on a skiff, Nenana, June 17 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-20)

that they were built and the lumber, but the shortness and great width of the boats have bothered them. The usual river boat is a very long, narrow craft, and a great deal more tippy than ours.” In eight days our two skiffs were finished, loaded, and in the water, and we were ready to go. And by this time, I had come to think of the Tanana as “a very pretty river.” The canvas covers that I had ordered to fit the skiffs turned out better than an¬ ticipated, for we found two wooden hoops—or rather half-hoops—which were inserted in the gunwales partway down each side to make a covered-wagon rig when the canvas was stretched over them. The canvas was fastened down only on the forward part of the skiffs. This protected the loads from spray or rain, and at night the canvas could be stretched back to cover even the outboard motors. Jack was pleased with our red mammoth pennants. Sandy and I agreed that we had certainly had two good men in Jack and Ken. “Ken is so shy that I hardly know him, yet he seems very good-natured and willingly does whatever you ask. Jack is much more talkative, likes to be a good fellow with the men who come around, makes friendly jokes with the Native children, and is

30

GETTING STARTED

a fine worker. He seems to know his geology and must be a good teacher, for he explains everything so clearly. And he is cautious in making judgments. We had decided that Sandy and I would go in one skiff, Jack and Ken in the other, and named our boats accordingly the “DellySand” and the “Kenjack. Nat¬ urally we took our own bedrolls and personal effects with us. In dividing the load between the two skiffs, we were careful to provide each with essential equipment. Thus, one carried the Yukon stove, and the other, the Coleman; one the ax, and the other, the hatchet. And we were all careful to provide ourselves with matches in waterproof cases. The cook tent and most of the cook outfit went in one boat; while the Greenland tent and the rest of the utensils went in the other boat. Each carried food and gasoline, and each had three oars and the necessary rowlocks se¬ cured by stout cords. If we should be so unfortunate as to lose one boat and its load, we would not be completely destitute. Before describing our leavetaking of Nenana, I should report on my visits with the Indians, since it was here that we first met the Athabaskans. THE DENA AND THEIR NEIGHBORS

The Early Explorers and Other Sources Before visiting the Indians at Nenana, I reviewed the passages I had copied from early accounts that described the various Indian groups we expected to meet on the Tanana and Yukon. The earliest reports were those of Tieutenant Lavren¬ tiy Alekseyevich Zagoskin, Imperial Russian Navy, who traveled in the YukonKuskokwim country in 1842-44 for the Russian-American Company when this company “owned” Alaska, then called “Russian America.” At that time, travel up the Yukon was from the Russian trading post of St. Michael in Norton Sound near the mouth of the river, and Zagoskin was not able to ascend above the mouth of the “Noggoyya” (Froggy), now known as the Nowitna River. Russian trading parties later went upstream as far as the Yukon Flats. The next accounts were by William H. Dali and Frederick Whymper, members of the Scientific Corps of the Western Union Telegraph Expedition in 1866-67, who explored the Yukon valley from its mouth to Fort Yukon, and trails from Norton Sound to Nulato. Dali remained in Alaska for another year after the rest of the party left. (Although George Adams was an officer of the same expedition in 1865-67, his diary and memoirs were not published until 1982.) Explorations by the U.S. Army followed the purchase of Alaska in 1867. The first was by (then) Lieutenant Charles P. Raymond of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who determined in 1869 that Fort Yukon was on the Alaskan side of the border with Yukon Territory, Canada. A later survey was that of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U.S Army Cavalry Corps, who followed the first prospectors into the country via the headwaters of the Yukon. After crossing the Chilkoot Pass

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31

in 1883, his party built a raft on Lake Lindeman and came down the river on it to Nuklukayet, a trading post on the Yukon below the mouth of the Tanana. From here they continued by boat the rest of the way down the great river and out to St. Michael. His mission was to map the river and to survey the military capabilities oi the Natives. On a similar undertaking in 1885, U.S. Cavalry Lieutenant Henry T. Allen, with a few men, ascended the Copper River, crossed the Alaska Range to the upper Tanana River, descended that by raff to the Yukon, and, after a detour to explore the Koyukuk River, also ended his journey at St. Michael. His was the most important exploration of the interior, after those of the Russians. Of course, there had been traders and prospectors in the country even before the 1880s, but they left us little in the way of written accounts. The Alaska Census reports of 1880 and 1890 summarized available ethno¬ graphic information as well as demographic data. The first of these was written by Ivan Petroff, although much of his information was from others, since he seems to have gone no farther up the Yukon than the Nowitna River (near the present town of Ruby). He liked to present himself as a scientist like Dali, of whose material he made “wholesale use,” to the latter’s disgust (Sherwood 1965:61-62). Petroff had gathered most of the information for the Census of 1890 before he was discharged from government service, because several Russian “documents” he had “discovered” and translated for the State Department, and for the histo¬ rian, Hubert Howe Bancroft, were found to be forgeries (Sherwood 1965:67-68). Despite their obvious drawbacks, these census reports cannot be ignored. The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (edited by Frederick Webb Hodge for the Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 30, 2 vols.), 1907,1910, had short articles (with synonymies) on virtually every tribe, band, or village that we were likely to encounter, although the entries were so brief or confused as to be of little practical use. One of the important missionaries of this period was the Reverend Dr. John W. Chapman, who was a founder of the Episcopal Christ Church Mission at Anvik in 1887 and served there until 1930. His son, Henry, then took his place and was carrying on his work when we visited Anvik in 1935. Dr. John Chapman’s pub¬ lications dealt almost exclusively with Ingalik mythology, until his account of his life in Alaska appeared in 1948. The second missionary was Father Jules Jette, J.S., stationed at Kokrines and Nulato from 1898 till 1924, who, as the Natives told me, “spoke their language better than they did themselves.” He not only collected folklore but published also on Dena shamanism and magico-religious beliefs. I was not acquainted with his work until I saw his unpublished “Ethnographic Dic¬ tionary,” an encyclopedia of Dena culture, at the St. Claver Mission in Nulato, where I was given permission to copy and cite from it. His notes, especially those on geography and former village sites, were invaluable to us during the last stages of our explorations. An edited version of this work, under the title of Koyu-

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kon Athabaskan Dictionary, and with the orthography adopted by the Alaska Native Language Center (anlc) substituted for Jettes, is currently in press (see Jette n.d.). Our most recent source was the travel report (1930) by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution. He had practically hitchhiked his way down the Tanana and the Yukon in 1926, collecting Native skeletons and archaeological specimens. He returned in 1929, and in 1930 crossed from the Yukon to the lower Kuskokwim, but the report of these last two trips (1943) was not available to me. While he described some of the archaeological sites that we visited in 1935, he was primarily a physical anthropologist, not an archaeologist, and he did not offer much ethnographic detail about the living Natives. References will be made in this narrative to what earlier writers had to say, and some of my errors are corrected by citing several whose work was done (or pub¬ lished) too late to help me in the field, although they are now the accepted au¬ thorities. Chief among the latter are Cornelius Osgood of Yale, who published his classification of northern Athabaskan tribes in 1936. He made field trips to Anvik in 1934,1937, and again in 1956, but the results of these studies of Ingalik culture did not appear until 1940,1958, and 1959, and so were not available to me in 1935. The late Robert McKennan of Dartmouth was an authority on the Upper Tanana and the Chandalar Kutchin tribes. Annette McFadyen Clark, of the Canadian National Museum of Civilization, and Richard K. Nelson are the authorities on Koyukuk River culture. I also consulted Amanda Wright of Nulato, who is now executive director of the Doyon Foundation, 201 First Avenue, Suite 300, Fairbanks, Alaska 99701, and Eliza Jones, who has since retired from the Alaska Native Language Center to her home in Koyukuk. In this book I follow the classification of the various tribes and smaller Native groups adopted by the Smithsonian’s Handbook of North American Indians, vol¬ ume 6, Subarctic (1981), although I do not agree entirely with the tribal bound¬ aries that are given. (See back endpaper map of this book.)

Athabaskans of the Middle and Lower Yukon Valley The Native peoples on the Yukon and its tributaries are all Athabaskans (that is, speakers of one or another of the Athabaskan languages), except for the Es¬ kimo on the very lowest part of the river. The first Athabaskans we met were the Lower Tanana Indians of Nenana. Although I have included the Lower Tanana Indians here (and in an earlier publication, 1947) among the “Tena,” or Dena, this has been more for conve¬ nience than accuracy. The name Dena is derived from the Athabaskan word for “human being” or “people,” variously rendered by different authors as “Dene” or

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33

Tinneh,” and so on. The form “Ten’a” was originally used by Father Jette and Dr. Chapman only for the Indians of the Yukon River, from Stevens Village above Rampart down to Holy Cross, plus those on the Yukon tributaries: the Koyukuk, Khotol, and Innoko rivers. These “Ten’a” were recognized by Osgood (1936a) as comprising two major groups: the Koyukon and the Ingalik. (They have since then been subdivided, as we shall see.) Although the Tanana Indians visited the trad¬ ing posts on the Yukon, their language and culture was sufficiently different from that of the Yukon River Koyukon to justify recognizing them as a separate major group, the Tanana. There were many subgroups of the Tanana, of which the Lower Tanana of Nenana are our principal concern, although there were also the Middle and Upper Tanana. The major groups or “tribes” were defined mainly on the basis of language differences; subgroups were distinguished by their di¬ alects. There were actually no sharp breaks in customs between any of these: rather, one noticed a progressive change as one traveled from one settlement to the next. In the 1870s and later, there were some Koyukon living on the lowest part of the Tanana River, below Baker and Manley Hot Springs. They may have been Indi¬ ans from the Yukon who had moved up the Tanana River about forty or fifty miles as the crow flies, perhaps in fairly recent times. Not only were Athabaskans in general apt to move according to the seasons from one locality to another within their group’s territory, but several bands of Indians seem to have shifted the boundaries of their traditional ranges during the nineteenth century. The new trading posts became centers of attraction for the Indians, as did the first missions established at or near them. The growing importance of the fur trade during the last century also affected the seasonal moves of the Natives, who now regularly visited certain hunting areas for trapping the furs needed to secure the goods brought by the trader. Infectious diseases introduced by the whites wiped out a number of small Indian bands, or so reduced their numbers that others moved unchallenged into their territories as new settlers. Individuals failing to find suit¬ able spouses in their own band might marry into another, to be followed by their relatives, or men might bring home wives from other groups. In such ways, cer¬ tain clans have been established among bands or tribes that originally lacked them, while, perhaps, these clans declined or died out in their original homes. Some of these groups encountered in the last century are now extinct; others have merged at the larger settlements and towns. All these movements, large and small, make it very difficult to establish tribal or band boundaries at any given period. Ar¬ chaeologists, of course, have an even more difficult problem in attempting to dis¬ cover the tribal affiliations of those whose relics they find, for the prehistoric Natives also moved. In 1935 an understanding of tribal distributions and movements was still to come. The published sources were not of great help in distinguishing tribal

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34

groups or reporting their designations. While later rejecting many of the specific names given by Zagoskin, I came to feel that he had correctly recognized the dis¬ tinctiveness of the many groups. His reports were published (in Russian) in 1847 and 1848, and I had only an unsigned English translation in typescript until Dr. Henry N. Michael published his definitive translation in 1967. I still hold to my admiration for the data collected by this Russian naval officer and explorer, despite the accusations of William H. Dali that many of the rivers and tribes reported by Zagoskin were “emanations from his own imagination” (1870:432), and that “many of [his] fables were exposed by the parties of the International Telegraph Expedition [of which Dali was a member] when exploring in this re¬ gion. Hence, his undue multiplication of tribes, intended to enhance the discov¬ eries which he made principally, not by traveling, but by questioning the natives” (1877:26). Although Dali was then the recognized authority on all things Alaskan, he nevertheless not only made some mistakes himself, but clung obstinately to his own opinions. The classification and nomenclature of the Yukon-drainage Athabaskans remained very confused until Osgood provided the first rational classi¬ fication in 1936, although the neat boundaries on his maps exaggerate the differ¬ ences between contiguous small groups, and his whole scheme has since undergone some modifications. The name Koyukon, chosen by Osgood (19363:14), echoes the name “Coyukon” used by Whymper in a more restricted sense, and is formed by combin¬ ing the names for the two major rivers, the Koyukuk and the Yukon, on which these Natives live. There are three main Koyukon groups: (A) the Upper Koyukon, on the Yukon from Stevens Village above the Rampart Rapids down nearly to the mouth of the Koyukuk; (B) the Koyukuk River Koyukon, or Koyukuks, on the trib¬ utary of that name; and (C) the Lower Koyukon, on the Yukon from Nulato down to Blackburn Creek. In 1935 the Ingalik and Holikachuk below Blackburn were not recognized as two distinct tribal groups, but were simply known as “Ingalik.” The Holikachuk, be¬ lieved to have been originally from the Upper Innoko, have been moving down that river and out onto the Yukon. Below them, on both the lower Yukon and the lower Innoko rivers, and also living on the lower Kuskokwim, are the Ingalik (or

Deg Hit'an), as now defined. These people will be introduced in due course.

Neighboring Tribes and Distant Relatives North of the Tanana River people live the Kutchin (Gwichin) of the upper Yukon River. To the northeast (farther up the Yukon) are the Han, and still far¬ ther to the east and southeast, the Tutchone of Canada. On the south are the Atna

(Ahtna) of the Copper River, the Tanaina (Denaina) of Cook Inlet and the lake country between the inlet and the Kuskokwim, and the Kolchan of the upper

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35

Kuskokwim. These are all Athabaskan-speakers, although their related languages are so different that the Natives have to use English in conversing with members of another “tribe.” Some of these tribes had contacts with the Tanana, the Koyukon, and/or with the Ingalik groups on the lower Yukon, as is proved by the dis¬ semination of traditional tales among them and of the same or similar clans, except for the Ingalik (and Holikachuk?) who lacked clans. There is clear evidence that trading (alternating with raids for profit) brought Siberian goods, especially the bright-colored skins of tame reindeer or clothing made from them, and iron implements, across Bering Strait, up the Yukon, and out over the passes. A widespread hand-to-hand network of exchanges linked together the most distant Natives of Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon Terri¬ tory with the Eskimo and with the Chukchee and other tribes of Siberia. This trade was well established when the first Russians reached the lower Yukon, so we must conclude it had been going on for a considerable time. Intertribal networks also connected the interior Athabaskans with coastal peoples: the Eskimo (see be¬ low), the Cook Inlet Tanaina, and the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. The Chilkat and Chilkoot Tlingit traded rarities of the sea (such as dentalium shells) and shipborne trade goods for furs of the interior, and in former days for native copper. The Russian-American Company, and later the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Yukon (founded in 1847), found it expedient to take the place of the aboriginal traders by importing dentalium shells from British Columbia to sell to the Yukon Indians, since necklaces, bandoleers, and nose pins of dentalia were practically de rigeur for the properly dressed Athabaskan “chief” or leading man of a band. Below the Ingalik on the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim, and along the coast of Bristol Bay and the southern half of Norton Sound, (including St. Michael and Unalakleet), lived the various groups of Yupik Eskimo, with whom the lower Yukon valley Indians had close relations of trading, of potlatching, and sometimes of raiding. On the northern half of Norton Sound, on Kotzebue Sound, and all along the Arctic shores of Alaska, Canada, and even Greenland, were the Inupiaq Eskimo, speaking many different local dialects. The nearest groups in Alaska traded with the Koyukon and with the Kutchin of the upper Yukon. The Pacific Eskimo (Alutiiq of Prince William Sound and lower Cook Inlet) were neighbors of the Tanaina, Upper Tanana, and Atna (Ahtna), through whom southern Es¬ kimo influences could reach the Ingalik, Koyukon, and Lower Tanana Indians. In addition to the Athabaskan Indians of Alaska, there are a number of im¬ portant Athabaskan-speaking groups in the Yukon and Northwest territories of Canada; the Chipewyan being probably the largest. We do not know how long the ancestors of the Athabaskans have lived in the . New World, but they have been reckoned one of the last groups to have crossed t

the Bering Strait to northern North America, in the late Pleistocene or early postPleistocene, perhaps long after the Algonquian-speakers who settled in the east-

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36

ern woodlands, or treading fast upon their heels, but presumably followed by the Eskimo. From somewhere in the northland, about five or six thousand years ago, the speakers of Na-Dene, the original stock to which the proto-Athabaskan lan¬ guage belonged, began to split up, one branch moving to southeastern Alaska as ancestors to the Tlingit. Two thousand years later, another split gave rise to the small band that became the Eyak on the Gulf Coast of Alaska. Isolation from the Athabaskan-speakers in the interior have made the Eyak language a relative of Athabaskan, but it is not itself an Athabaskan language. Two millennia or so af¬ ter the separation of the Eyak, several northern Athabaskan groups began to mi¬ grate south. The first settled in British Columbia and in various places along the Pacific coast as far south as northern California (for example, the Yurok). Later migrants east of the mountains became the Navajo and Apache of the American Southwest.

The Tanana Indians in Early Reports Little was known about the Indians on the Tanana River until the 1880s, when the first traders and explorers entered their country, although the Russians and Hudsons Bay Company men had encountered them at the mouth of the Tanana, some thirty-odd years previously. They were considered to be wild, untamed, and warlike. The Tanana Indians were called Gens des Buttes or “Mountain Men” by the Hudson’s Bay Company men of Fort Yukon. The name originally used by the Kutchin Indians, in whose territory Fort Yukon had been founded in 1847, was Tenan-Kutchin, said to mean “Mountain People,” and this name, variously spelled, was also employed by some early writers (Dali 1870:108,431). The Tanana Indians were not, however, a Kutchin (Gwich’in) tribe. The earliest descriptions of the Tanana Indians are those of Whymper and Dali, who met some in June 1867 at Nuclukayette or NukuluRoyit, the inter¬ tribal trading grounds at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon. A few of these Tanana accompanied their party up to Fort Yukon, and more arrived at the Hud¬ son’s Bay Company post after them. Although many of the Kutchin and the Koyukon on the Yukon were already wearing the Hudson’s Bay Company “hunting shirts” with fringes and epaulets that imitated uniforms, the Tanana still wore the ancient Athabaskan dress: one-piece trouser-moccasins for both sexes, and “pointed coats” (tunics with pointed tails in front and behind for the men, and with more rounded hems for the women), and dressed their hair with gobs of red clay and feathers. Whymper (1869:239) wrote: “I believe them to be the most un¬ sophisticated Indians to be met with at the present day.” Dali (1870:108) was even more struck by their savage condition: “They are without doubt the tribe of all others which has had the least to do with the whites. No white man has yet ex-

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2.3. “Tanana Indian” in old-style costume, 1867 (Whymper 1869, facing p. 239)

plored the river on which they live.... The Tenan Kutchin are regarded with fear by the adjacent tribes, and are doubtless a wild and untameable people.” Later (1877:29) he wrote that, in 1866, “this tribe was almost in a state of nature. . . . Their reserve, fierce demeanor, and the mystery which surrounded their manner of life had its effect on the imagination of the adjacent tribes, who seemed to fear the strangers, and had many tales, smacking of the marvelous, to tell of them. This is now changed, and the account [1870] which I have elsewhere given of them will have a kind of historical interest.” Nevertheless, later reports tended to perpetuate the white man’s traditional picture of the Tanana Indians as bloodthirsty, treacherous savages, in much the same way that the Indians’ own stories of foreign tribes commonly describe such “strangers” (xolchan) as bloodthirsty cannibals. The murder of a trader’s wife on the lower Tanana River (see chap. 3) did nothing to change the unfavorable opin¬ ion of these Natives. Ivan Petroff (1884:161) characterized the Tanana as “a treach¬ erous and warlike tribe.” Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka (1885:93), reported that the Tanana tribe “has generally had the reputation of being very warlike and in every way averse to civilizing influences.” Their hunting mode of life, as opposed

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38

2.4. Sam John and his family in front of their tent, Nenana, June 15 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-22)

to a sedentary one, was supposed to make them “more inclined to war.” But Lieu¬ tenant Henry Allen and his party in 1885, the first white men to traverse the entire Tanana River from its headwaters to its mouth, failed to encounter any hostility. Allen noted, however, that the nature of their country rendered them practically immune to military attack. “Gifted by nature with the skill and cunning of their southern relations [Geronimo’s Apaches?], and inhabiting a much more inacces¬ sible and foodless country, depredations and other crimes could be committed with correspondingly greater impunity” (Allen 1887:140). Even Hodge’s Hand¬ book of American Indians North of Mexico (1907,1910) did little but repeat Dali’s statements of 1870, with a few additions from Allen. It was clear from all these reports, especially from Lieutenant Allen’s, that the bulk of the scanty Tanana Indian population lived on the upper Tanana River, well above the present location of Fairbanks, and that there were few Indians on the river below that point. Those who wrote about them chiefly repeated the statements of the first whites to have observed them, and the Natives’ character still remained in doubt.

*

Armed with the information quoted above, and still more that I had tran¬ scribed verbatim and at length into my big notebook, and with the latest maps of the area, I ventured forth to visit the Natives at Nenana.

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39

2.5. Native summer camp near railway bridge, Nenana (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-26)

THE NENANA INDIANS OF 1935

Friendly Visits It was warm weather. The Indians had quit their small, stuffy houses for tents, where they sat about a good part of the day, probably because the first of the salmon had not yet appeared in the river. Although the men may have been get¬ ting ready their fishing gear (of which I took no note), this was not a time of great activity. It seemed more like a pleasant interlude, a pause in the annual cycle be¬ fore the hard work of putting up the fish catch; and, because the Natives were out of doors, it was not difficult to meet them, start up a conversation, and soon be introduced to respected elders such as Titus Bedes. These friendly, courteous people were willing not only to tell their myths but to let us write them down. It was especially easy to discuss with the women the problem of protecting their babies from the voracious mosquitoes. While their wall tents lacked mosquito¬ netting doors (like ours), they were all furnished with a curtained-off space inside to which the members of the family could retreat at night to sleep in peace, and where the babies could nap during the day. Most of these boxlike rooms were made with muslin roof and walls. They must have been quite hot during daylight, which in June at this latitude lasts twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. Be-

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40

2.6. Native family and friends inside and in front of their tent, Nenana, June 15. Note outdoor fireplace in foreground, and mosquito-proof area inside (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-27)

fore there was netting (and before the introduction of Buhac, a powder that, when set alight to smolder, dissuades even the most aggressive mosquito from attack¬ ing), these insects tormenters must not only have made the Alaskan Indians mis¬ erable every summer but also jeopardized the lives of their helpless babies. I was told that the mothers used to make a little skin cap with fringes that fell over the baby’s face, so that when he moved his head in discomfort at the stings, the fringe would momentarily brush away the mosquitoes. For the most part, there was little or nothing in the dress of these people to dis¬ tinguish them as Indians. They were not as romance would have pictured them, and certainly nothing suggested the “character of a treacherous and warlike tribe,” as reported by Petroff, shortly before Allen exploded that myth. The men wore shirts, bluejeans, boots, and occasionally moccasins, just like the whites in the area. The women wore cotton dresses, sweaters, and head scarves. I did not see them in their magnificent furs for cold weather. Summer was the shabby time for old work clothes; in the past these were dehaired skin garments.

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41

2.7. Julia Silas and her daughter Margaret in front of their tent, Nenana, June 15 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-24)

I imagine that at Nenana the men and boys may have had occasional jobs while the railway and bridge were being built, but 1935 was still during the Depres¬ sion. The women earned a little money by making and selling birchbark bas¬ kets. These were cylindrical in shape, with a circular bottom to which was sewn a single wide strip for the sides. The baskets served to cover the tin cans in which plants were grown that brightened the windowsills of homes in Nenana. The price per basket was 50 cents (“four bits”). I was not interested in these but pur¬ chased a shallow oval basket, the rim and ends strengthened with willow, finely stitched on. The seller said it had been her mother’s sewing basket, but when I paid her a price worthy of the basket’s origin, I was criticized by the white people for paying so much for a “second-hand” basket. I neglected to discover how much the women received for a well-tanned pair of moccasins, fur-trimmed and beaded. Nor were these people the reserved and inscrutable Athabaskans, as some whites had characterized them, and they certainly did not object to my photo¬ graphing them when I requested that privilege.

42

GETTING STARTED

2.8. Sophy Sang (left), who married a Korean, with her grandchild (Matthew Titus’s child) and Sarah Jones with her baby, Nenana, June 15. Note cabin, dog boxes, and tripod cache in background (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-21)

Recording Myths and Other Lore Sandy went with me several times to the Indian village and went alone one day when I was sick. In addition to myths and tales, we recorded the names of places and tribal groups, hoping for leads on old sites. “The Indians told traditional legends,” I wrote home, “the chief story-teller be¬ ing Titus Bedes, who is said to have been born the year that the white people hrst came to Fort Yukon (1847). He seems to have been stimulated to tell us stories when I asked him if he knew the story of Crow and Magpie, or of how Crow in¬ duced the little birds To make a war’ as a ruse to distract attention from his tricks. The war, Titus said, was not made by little birds, as in my version, but by ‘men’ Crow made from pine cones. Between us, I think Sandy and I got about eleven stories. A number of them are about ‘Crow,’ or Raven, but he is different in char¬ acter from the Raven on the coast. The stories seem to be highly localized. The place where Crow made the first women is said to be just 18 miles above Fair¬ banks, where there are red pictures on the rocks.” (See Tales, pp. 303-4.) We also picked up bits of lore and wise sayings, such as: “Titus Bedes said t#at lots of mosquitoes mean lots of fish. So the mosquitoes say to those who com¬ plain of their bites, ‘You fellows will cry if I don’t come back!’ ”

GETTING STARTED

43

In addition to telling myths, Titus Bedes informed us that there were at Nenana three families (clans), or what had been called in the nineteenth century a “sys¬ tem of totems. These clans were the Fish Tail People, the Caribou People, and the Middle People (with a name like that of the Red Paint People on the Copper River). The Natives still married “out of the family,” that is, these clans were exogamous. The clans were also matrilineal, since children belonged to the mother’s clan, not the father s. (See also Tales, pp. 22—26.) John Silas, another good narra¬ tor of myths, complained, however, that the young people no longer observed the rules about marriage. We were given information about places along the Yukon and the people whom we would encounter: “Nulato people put their dead in a house on top of a hill—don’t bury them. The smell is terrible!” Whereas, the Nenana, like all the Tanana River bands and the Atna of the Copper River, used to cremate their dead.

A Wedding Feast and Dance On Friday, June 14, at eight-thirty or nine in the evening, a Native wedding feast was held in a hall belonging to the Episcopal Mission of St. Mark in the Indian village. I did not see the wedding ceremony in the church but entered the hall where the people had gathered for the festivities that followed. The food consisted of dried moose meat, Native bannock or biscuit, and soup made in a great rect¬ angular tub of galvanized iron, five feet long. Bishop Rowe (of the Protestant Episcopal church), who had evidently officiated at the wedding, donated cases of canned fruit. The plentiful food left over from the feast was taken home by the guests in gunny sacks. There were quite a few mosquitoes in the hall, but their feast was spoiled by many piles of Buhac powder smoldering on the lids of the empty fruit cans. Even in this large hall, the Buhac was effective. Only a whiff or two of this incense makes the mosquitoes lose their appetites. Despite the importance of this occasion, I did not see any article of dress suggesting aboriginal costume, except for a man’s pair of moccasins, beautifully beaded on the instep, with a high top reaching above the ankle. The Natives were in ordinary store-bought clothes, although obviously their best. To quote from my notes: “After the meal, the people swept out the hall, and al¬ though most left, they seem to have returned when the singing began. The adults sat or stood along the walls; some children looked in through a window at the back. The singers were at first the men who were sitting together at the rear of the hall. Later the women joined in. One man seemed to call out the words before each verse, shouting, not singing, and the singers followed his words. Near the men were two women who made motions with their empty hands as if they were shaking rattles (?),...

GETTING STARTED

44

2.9. The dance after the wedding, Nenana. (Sketches by F. de Laguna)

“The singing gradually becomes more violent and all join in, the men now standing. More women and children come crowding in. The women are swing¬ ing their hands at about the level of their waists, up and down through an arc of six to twelve inches, one shoulder apparently leading the other. If they were us¬ ing two rattles, these could not sound at the same time. The rhythm of the songs is 2/4 time, strongly marked, with some measures for skipping. The songs end always on the first accented beat with a bang and stamp. “Now most of the men are at the back and the women at the side, facing the guests (the latter include white people from the church and a blind Indian). The women are each holding a kerchief in their hands and ‘saw’ up and down with it, or make ‘washing’ motions with it, bending forward with excitement. “Most singers seem to sing in unison on the same notes, but I notice one (or more?) men singing a little lower. The songs seem to consist of very few words. Each syllable is said once, then the following two to four accented notes repeat the vowel so that one word is dragged out. This is not true of every syllable, but seems to occur at the end of a group of words. Some of the women call out the measure. The women and girls near the doors are not singing; the children are playing and scuffling in the middle of the floor. “The song now has become almost twice as fast and the people beat out the rhythm with their feet. One old woman leads the dance. They go around in a clus¬ ter, then thin out to a line, stepping hard but not stamping. The woman in front jumps with both feet at once, her knees slightly bent. Another woman dances alone, ‘sawing’ with her handkerchief. In the next dance, a man dances facing her. It is ‘Henly’ (Henry) John, his left arm raised, his right hand held behind his back. [Could this pose have originally been copied from a sailor’s hornpipe?] They sing: Hi ye hei. Hi ye ha! “Then other women join in, some still carrying kerchiefs and ‘sawing,’ others copying the man. Another woman, with arms akimbo, shuffles or slides forward. There is great individual variation in the steps. Now almost all are jumping and stamping, though some performers do more elaborate steps. Even the children

GETTING STARTED

45

jump. There seem to be no set figures. A boy beats two sticks together, and a young man pounds on the stove pipe. “Little girls in a line gradually approach the men singers. The dance songs now seem to be much shorter than the songs with which they started, because the tempo is so swift, although the songs are of the same character. One song is started by a group of women, the men joining in the next stanza. Someone has wooden clappers for beating time. Ye! he! he-he hi!-ya. Women stamp with the right heel, or shuffle the right foot forward and back. ‘Oh, happy Christmas to you!' they sing, repeated ad infinitum, until the dance is halted for a moral talk by the bishop.” (This was evidently a favorite song, and the inappropriate reference to Christmas was ignored by the singers.) To sum up: As the evening progressed and more and more people joined in, the dancing became more organized and vigorous. The most striking features were: the song leader, who called out the words just before they were to be sung; the structure of the songs in stanzas with refrains; and the dance gestures of the women who moved their arms as if washing or shaking rattles. Although the tempo of the music speeded up as the evening advanced, the character of the songs re¬ mained the same. I could perceive no set steps or figures for the dance, a character¬ istic of interior Alaskan Athabaskan performances. Instead, each person seemed to act as the music swayed him or her, the men seemingly freer to prance and gestic¬ ulate, but in general the group moved around in a circle or advanced in a line. This style of dancing was still exhibited in 1989 by the Copper River dancers who came to the summer festival at Fairbanks. I suspect that, like the Copper River Atna, the Lower Tanana people composed songs to mourn their dead which eventually became dance songs when grief had been put aside by the memorial potlatch. That this had also happened at Nenana was shown by the “washing mo¬ tions” made by the women to accompany these songs. According to Eliza Jones, these gestures symbolize catching the tears that fall from the mourners’ eyes. And these gestures seem to be such an integral part of the songs that they are retained, even when the songs are sung in a livelier, happier tempo and people have changed from mourning to vigorous dancing. At the Nenana dance in 1935,1 sat beside the Mission nurse. According to her: A potlatch is given one week to several months after a death by the deceased’s rel¬ atives on the mother’s side. They sing “sorry songs” and weep. Then follows a distribution of store-bought articles. The guests are dancing around in a circle when these are tossed in among them, and they scramble for the gifts. They [the hosts?] then unwind yards of calico and everyone takes hold and dances with the long ribbon of cloth, which is then it is cut up and the pieces are distributed. The nurse did not know whether these gifts were payments for burial services (with the deceased receiving the incorporeal “spirit” of the gifts), as would be the case among the Tlingit Indians of the coast.

GETTING STARTED

46

2.10. Bertha Silas (left) and Rose David in front of their tent, June 15, Nenana. (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-25)

The nurse also reported that: The “Stick Man” is a spirit in the woods who steals boys—not girls. He can assume the shape of animals, but he cannot be harmed by weapons. When the dogs bark and no one is near, they are barking at the Stick Man. This was the first time I heard about these creatures, usually called Woods¬ men, or transformed persons (see Tales, pp. 57, 300).

3

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

AMATEUR BOATMEN

Last Jobs and Loading the Skiffs On June 19 we began to break camp right after breakfast but didn’t get very far with the task. I had to wait at the Northern Commercial Company store to pay Mr. Par¬ sons, the chief clerk, a pleasant young fellow. The bill came to something like $223, and that was after the cash discount was subtracted. In addition, Parsons gave me a bottle of port, a bottle of sherry, and a bottle of brandy and then said he wished I’d bring an expedition up here every year. This gives an idea of the state of business in Nenana. Even by lunchtime we were not yet loaded, so to pro¬ tect our grub from hungry pups, I stayed at the camp while the boys had lunch. Then I went for my own. It was hot by the river, and I just panted with the dogs. A bad thunderstorm broke while I was at lunch, so I waited a while before going out. I spoke to Billy Heinz, the transfer man, about taking our extra stuff to the Northern Commercial Company warehouse, where they would keep it over the summer. Then I came back to the sawmill in the rain, finding the boys all asleep. We had to wait until two-thirty when the rain had stopped before we could begin to load the boats. It was awfully hard work, as the ground was wet and the river banks were like gumbo in which one both stuck and slithered. By five o’clock, however, the skiffs were loaded and we were away!

Swift Waters The next few days, June 20-22, saw our initiation into river travel. Sandy and I went in the first boat, with our duffle bags and bedrolls, half the canned goods and half the gasoline, and the cooking things and dishes. These were china dishes that I had purchased in Cordova for use in Prince William 47

48

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

Sound, and had now packed in a wooden box so well equipped with slots and racks that they survived the trip down the Yukon without chipping or breaking. (Purchased cheaply, they were what is now called “Depression Ware” and said to be collectors’ items, but we abandoned them in Holy Cross, I think.) Sandy and I had the new motor. It sprang to life with the first tug of the starter, but the old motor gave Jack and Ken a lot of trouble. Sandy and I had drifted well below town before they got their motor going. We had gone on ahead, as planned, and they followed, although I was rather worried because they were so far behind and we went so fast. In a flash we had passed the town, the mouth of the little Nenana River, and the scattered Indian camps of North Nenana, and when a bend shut the Nenana dock from view, we were suddenly in a new world.

*

We had not seen much spruce at Nenana, but now clumps of it appeared. Many trees had their green boughs trailing in the water where the river was un-

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

49

dercutting the banks. It appeared to us as a desolate scene, wilder than the land¬ scape on the coast. 1 he trees along the bank seemed like a screen concealing Something—but we knew it was only hundreds of miles of taiga and tundra, the forest and barren lands of the north. The river banks were of gray silt, but in places the sphagnous growth on top was a foot thick. It was hard to believe that two to four feet under this forest litter and moss was the permafrost, relic of the Pleistocene. Then the sky grew brighter and the sun came out, making the alders and willows shine golden against the black sky behind them. Suddenly we were all struck by the great beauty of this wild scenery, as each bend in the winding river brought new sights into view. The other skiff was stopped after about an hour’s run while Jack and Ken re¬ filled their gas tank, so we stopped also and landed on a bar for supper. It was a long bar of mud and sand, with patches of pebbles and driftwood. The men in the other boat had a hard time to land, because they had drifted too far below the bar and almost struck a snag before they got the motor started again. When Jack and Ken arrived, they seemed all in. They had nearly swamped the boat in the “boiling water” where the current crosses from bank to bank at the bends. Their skiff was too heavily loaded, but the tarpaulin cover over the bow had kept the water out. We ourselves had only three inches freeboard while run¬ ning. It was clear that our skiffs, especially when loaded, could hardly fight up¬ stream against the current. Jack told us that even with their motor on full speed to give good steerage going downstream, they had not been able to catch up with us. They had shipped a big wave, and Jack said Ken had his boots off, ready to swim. This may have been partly a joke, but they both looked rather scared. We got out the Yukon stove and I cooked them a mixed batch of pork and beans and corn, and we also ate a can of tongue. We had to have cocoa, because the sugar that the boys felt was a necessity with tea or coffee was packed under the load. Our water for the cocoa we dipped up from a puddle on the bar in which the floating silt had settled. They were very hungry, and so was I. We ate from the four aluminum trays I planned to use for drying archaeological specimens after they had been washed. A cake given us by Mrs. Hicks was much appreciated. We went on again about eight-thirty, Jack and Ken leading this time, and both skiffs going more slowly. By ten-thirty we were all tired out from the long day of packing and the strain of running the skiffs in the swift current. So Jack and Ken looked for a good place to land. They found a mud bar where it would have been easy to get ashore, but it was just across from an Indian settlement and there was no privacy and no nearby wood. So we went on to a point just below the bar and landed at about eleven. The night was fair, so we didn’t bother to put up tents.

,

. We just set our cots in a row on the beach, hanging our bednets from a rope between oars stuck upright in the sand, and turned in. I’d taken off my boots and socks for getting ashore, and my feet, in consequence, were filthy and gray with

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

50

silt, but I simply climbed into the bag, rather grimy. We were almost asleep when we saw an Indian paddling upstream in the slack water close to the boats, but he didn’t stop. We were enjoying ourselves thoroughly. It was all a wonderful new experience, for none of us had ever done anything like this before. We saw a brilliant red sun¬ set in the north, just before we dropped off.

Further Adventures: An Unplanned Bath We woke at seven in the morning with the hot sun in our eyes and Sandy slap¬ ping at mosquitoes. It was a clear, glorious day. I’d been told that one could pre¬ cipitate the suspended silt in a bucket of river water by adding some mustard to it. This was either a joke on us or I had failed to use the correct proportion of mustard the night before, for in the morning the bucket of water was just as silty as ever, so we abandoned the experiment. Lieutenant J. C. Cantwell, who com¬ manded the U.S. Revenue Steamer Nunivak on the Yukon in 1899-1901, is re¬ ported to have pronounced the Yukon water (which we were to find perhaps a shade clearer than the Tanana) “too full of sediment to drink,” but it did not take us long to tolerate what we could not change, although we always preferred to get the clear water from a small tributary, when possible. It took us until eleven o’clock to have breakfast and pack up again. It was dis¬ couraging to take so long for everything we did, but daily practice soon shortened the time. The Tanana River is very swift (averaging six or more miles an hour), and since our skiffs were dangerously overloaded, a few things, like an extra can of paint, were jettisoned here, piled up on the sandbar where the Indians might find them, and other items of our equipment were later left at Hot Springs, the first steamer stop we came to on the lower Tanana, from which they were sent back to be stored at Nenana. The old motor gave a lot of trouble when it was started, so I had Sandy and Jack change boats, since Sandy was familiar with the old motor from our work in Prince William Sound in 1933. The boats were shipping a little water under the front edge of the tarps. We ran like this until two o’clock, or lunchtime, when we landed a little below and across from Minto, a large Indian village with an abandoned mission. (This is now called Old Minto, the new Minto being some distance from the river.) We lunched on a wide silt bar where there were no mos¬ quitoes. Here we saw geese and terns, and several kittiwakes tried to drive us away, presumably from nearby nests. We were not underway till three-thirty, although all I’d prepared was a salad. Below Nenana, the Tanana River at first winds in a northerly direction, but at Minto it turns westward toward the Yukon. We didn’t stop at Minto, or at Tolovana, a Native village, or at the settlement called Rock Crossing, where there was

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

51

3.1. Sandy Reynolds enjoying a morning smoke at our first camp on the Tanana River, June 20 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-45)

a small cemetery of neat white picket fences and crosses. Rather, we were in a hurry to get farther downstream, to the Yukon, where we believed there were bet¬ ter prospects for archaeological and geological explorations than on the Tanana River. All went well until five-thirty or so. We had just passed the mouth of the Kantishna River when we ran into difficulties. Ken was steering the boat ahead, and I was steering ours behind, but we both missed the channel. I could see that the boat ahead was in trouble on a sandbar when Ken got out the oars to row. Instead of heading out into the middle of the stream, I kept too close to the right bank, hoping to avoid Ken’s problem, but I ran us fast onto a bar in a little side slough. The other skiff managed to get out into deep water and was soon out of sight. We got out and waded. At first, we were able to pull our skiff a little way downstream, where we thought the water would be deeper, but we only succeeded in getting it more firmly fixed in the sand. We then began taking some of the load out of the boat, hoping to drag it down the narrow slough to the end of the sandbar, where it would probably float. It was rather frightening at first to wade in the swift, muddy water, for we couldn’t see the bottom and we kept stepping into patches of very soft mud. In this way, we took out one duffle bag, our bedrolls, the other duffle bag, the box of china,

52

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

3.2. The Kenjack on the Tanana River below Rock Crossing, Jack Eardley steering, June 20. Note mammoth device on pennant (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-51)

and carried them a hundred feet to the end of the sandbar. Then we heard the other boat coming back. Our boat floated for a few minutes and we dragged it far¬ ther down. We tried to signal the others not to come down to us, for we were afraid that they would get stuck too, but they crossed the head of our little slough well above the bar, Ken sounding with an oar all the way, and tied up to the bank above us. Then they waded down to where we were stuck for the third time in fifteen feet! Sandy rather went to pieces under the strain and began to slam things around. With all of us on the bow rope, we managed to haul the skiff the other way, up against the current to the other boat, and in the process became drenched to the waist. The water was not very cold and the sun was hot, so the wetting wasn’t serious. Jack was the only sensible person, having taken off his trousers be¬ fore going into the water. We then fetched up the gear we had unloaded and put it back in the skiff. Since we had some cheese and hardtack with us, we ate that, and the boys insisted on drinking up our bottle of port, although I had hoped to save it for celebrating something worthwhile, not a mistake.

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

53

3.3. Enjoying the gift of the N.C.C. after a wetting, June 21. Left to right: Freddy de Laguna bending over, Jack Eardley with the bottle, Sandy Reynolds seated, and Ken Gorton drying his pants on an oar. In the sand are tracks of a moose cow and calf, followed by a wolf (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-52)

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

54

On the sandbar where we dried ourselves there were the tracks of a moose cow and calf, and of a wolf following them, which I was told is not uncommon at this time of year. We got started again about eight-thirty in the evening, having lost three hours. Ken had to hold our boat until we got the motor started, and we did the same for the other boat, this giving us enough power to cross the river safely, above the shallows. We went on until ten, when we landed for the night, having run down a long, deep, winding channel. Up the next morning at seven-thirty, breakfasted, and off by ten-thirty, a slightly better record than the previous day. It drizzled while we were loading the skiffs. The river had risen during the night by about twelve inches, flood¬ ing the place where the boats were tied. We packed a lunch to eat on board, so that we would not have to stop. The mosquitoes were very bad, but I was able to go about with bare hands, face, and legs, and my bites did not swell up on me. Poor Sandy collected many more bites and his itched terribly. We all were becoming brown in the sun. It began getting cold at nine o’clock, we noted. Again a lovely sunset, and to bed at eleven. This was Midsummer’s Eve, June 21.

Titus Alexander of Baker Creek We had planned that day (June 22) to visit Baker Creek on the Tanana River. Titus Alexander lived there and was said to have found stone axes. We reached it sooner than expected because we had not read the map correctly. We had stopped to ask the way from a young fellow building a fish wheel in anticipation of the expected salmon run, but even with his directions, we ran past Baker Creek and landed at a sawmill. Ken and Sandy stayed there to look over the ground, while Jack ran me back up to Baker Creek. This was the first settlement on the Tanana within the territory of the Koyukon that we had reached, although only one man seemed to be at home. Titus Alexander had moved out of his cabin into a camp of about three tents. The creek was clear brown water, quite cold, and refreshing to drink after the muddy Tanana. Titus’s wife was sick and he had sent her downriver to the hospi¬ tal at Tanana Station. Titus had a good deal of white blood and was said to be half Russian, half Koyukon. Although we looked, we could not see a trace of midden anywhere near his camp. Titus had a bear spear but wanted $10 for it, a high price in those days, so I did not buy it. I took pictures of it and of a wooden dish and spoon that he had. Titus laughed at this performance. The spear consisted of a large copper dagger, the handle of which ended in a pair of spirals, lashed onto a long pole. The spiral “ears” of the dagger blade would prevent the spear from going deeply into the

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

55

3.4. Titus Alexander with a bear spear, Baker Creek, Tanana River, June 22 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-56)

bear, thereby holding the animal too far away to claw the hunter. Normally a knife would be worn in a beaded skin sheath, hung from the hunter’s neck. Titus also named for us the major tribal divisions. These were the Ten’xot’ana or “Tanana Natives,” at Minto and Nenana. Although the people like himself on the lower Tanana could understand them, “they talk different.” Next came the Yukon xot’ana on the Yukon as far downriver as the Koyukuk (actually beyond that), and as far upstream as Stevens Village. These “Yukon people” talked like him, and they couldn’t understand the Kutchin (Gwich’in) of Fort Yukon at all. The Koyukuk River people were the KoitFots’ena, a name meaning “People of the River of Willows.” He also named the clans: Caribou People, Fish Tail People,

56

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

3.5. Copper dagger, 1867 (Whymper 1869:247)

and the Noltsena, which last he said meant “Maggot People” (but which the Atna, who have all three clans, would translate as “People from Above”). The local Tanana clans did not marry out any more (were no longer exogamous), Titus said, and the Indians hardly remembered to what clan they belonged.

Telegraph and Telephone in the Wilderness Titus had a telephone in his tent, hooked up to part of the U.S. Signal Corps telegraph line from Nenana to Tanana Station. It was not, as I had supposed at the time, part of the ill-fated telegraph line that was to have linked Alaska and Siberia. That ambitious project, formed in 1863, would have brought together in direct communication the major capitals of the world. The Western Union Telegraph Company chose the scientist Robert Kennicott to head the division that was to survey and build the line from St. Michael up the Yukon valley, but the company knew little about conditions in Alaska and failed to send the necessary supplies. The party had too few sled dogs to travel effectively and insufficient dog food for

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

57

the animals they had. The men themselves suffered cruelly at times from hunger and from lack of proper winter clothing. Major Kennicott had come to St. Michael in 1865, and wintered at the Russian post at Nulato on the Yukon, where he ap¬ parently committed suicide the following April, worn out with the futile endeavor of continuing the work or even of feeding and clothing his men (see chap. 8). William H. Dali and Frederick Whymper, members of the scientific party at¬ tached to the Telegraph Expedition, had come to Nulato late in 1866 and wintered there. In the early spring of 1867, Frank Ketchum and Mike Lebarge, members of the Telegraph Expedition, traveled by dog team to Fort Yukon, and from there by boat to Fort Selkirk, where the Yukon is born from the junction of the Lewis and Pelly rivers. This exploratory trip, the longest at that time from Nulato, estab¬ lished without a doubt that the “Kvikpak” of the Russians, who called that great river by its Eskimo name, was indeed the same river as the “Youkon” of the Hud¬ son’s Bay Company (a fact which the Russians had known for some time, but, with their characteristic love of secrecy, had not made public). When the river was open (free of ice) in 1867, Dali and Whymper went upriver in a skin boat, accompanying the Russian trading boat as far as NukuloRoyet at the mouth of the Tanana, but they continued in Indian canoes to Fort Yukon. There Ketchum and Lebarge joined them in July for the return to Nulato, where they learned that the project for the international telegraph line had been aban¬ doned in March, because the trans-Atlantic cable had been successfully laid, against which an overland telegraph line could not compete. They also learned that in June the Senate had ratified the treaty by which the United States pur¬ chased Alaska. Although information about Alaska’s resources, supplied by the Western Union Telegraph Expedition, may have helped to influence reluctant senators to ratify the treaty, the expedition actually strung relatively little wire: on the American side, only twenty miles on Norton Bay and in the vicinity of Nulato (see Neering 1989). While all the other members of the Western Union Telegraph teams in Alaska and Siberia returned home in the fall of 1867, Dali remained alone, headquartered at Nulato until the next year, in order to finish the scientific work he had begun. Gold strikes in Yukon Territory and in interior Alaska, especially the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98, made communications and the policing of the miners’ camps and towns a necessity. Since the United States was slow to take up the lat¬ ter duty, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police temporarily filled the gap. By 1899 the Canadians had also built a telegraph line, largely along the route through Brit¬ ish Columbia and Yukon Territory that had been partially cleared for the aban¬ doned Western Union line, but this ended at Dawson City near the Klondike, some one hundred miles from the Alaska-Canada border. Finally, in 1901- 03, when U.S. Army troops had been sent to a number of camps in Alaska to keep the peace and to assist unfortunate prospectors who had be-

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

58

come destitute, the Signal Corps brought a working telegraph system to Alaska. Considerable wire was unrolled, much of it on the route planned for the interna¬ tional telegraph. It ran from St. Michael on the coast over the hills to Nulato and thence up the north bank of the Yukon to Tanana, where it was joined by a line from Valdez (Fort Liscum) on Prince William Sound. The latter followed the route of the present Richardson Highway to Fairbanks and Nenana, and came down the Tanana River to its mouth, where it crossed the Yukon by underwater cable to Tanana Station (Fort Gibbon), to connect with the line from St. Michael. A branch ran north from the upper Tanana to the gold mines at Fortymile and Fort Egbert (now Eagle) on the upper Yukon, and another from Baker Creek on the lower Tanana to nearby gold workings, and later to Rampart City on the Yu¬ kon. Submarine cables, also laid by the U.S. Signal Corps, linked Sitka-JuneauSkagway with Seattle, and Sitka with Fort Liscum at Valdez (see Mitchell 1982). Stretches of the Signal Corps line along the Yukon still survived in 1935, al¬ though down a good deal of the time. Here and there, local traders had tapped into it or added extra wire. Thus, the line from Titus’s tent to Hot Springs, on the Hot Springs Slough, served to alert the Northern Commercial Company (N.C.C.) store when the steamer approached, so that the store up the slough could send a car over to the dock on the Yukon, a distance of two miles, to meet the steamer.

Hot Springs Slough and Hot Baths We camped for a few days (June 22-25) at Hot Springs Slough. The N.C.C. clerk and his wife lived at the springs, and their little boy, Billy, was the only white boy for a hundred miles. He took at once to Jack, who had a very good way with small boys. Billy’s parents were teaching him themselves, but planned to send him to Vancouver for school in the fall. The local postmaster had collected a number of fossil bones from a placer mine at Tofty, some twelve miles back in the hills. We had wanted to visit the site, but when the postmaster telephoned Tofty, he learned that there was no place there where we could be accommodated, and since I knew that I could never hike the twenty-four miles across country there and back in one day, the geologists decided to go by themselves to see what the dredge had uncovered. We had planned on camping out in some cabins at the mouth of the slough, but it was now too late in the day, so Billy’s parents took us to a grassy knoll above a cold stream where we camped, putting up just the big tent. We discarded a lot of our stuff at the N.C.C. store, including my typewriter and, alas, all the books— all to be sent back to Nenana for us. After supper we went up to the mouth of the warm stream flowing from the hot springs that gives this place its name, where we swam and bathed. It was delightful, except that it rained on us, and some mos¬ quitoes got in a few good stings while we undressed and dressed.

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

59

The next morning we woke to rain. It took a long time to get breakfast, for we had first to take down our cots, since they were just sandwiched in the tent. We spent a leisurely day. Billy came around and stayed for lunch. He brought us some birchbark, and Jack and I made baskets. Ken washed all the dirty clothes, while I boiled the dish towel and the other towels—all gray with river silt. After another trip to the N.C.C. store to return Billy and buy some mosquito dope, we ran back to the mouth of the slough, where we set up our Yukon stove and cots in great comfort in an empty cabin, which the owner, Mr. MacLeod, let us occupy. He had a horse here, and he kept a smudge fire burning continuously in a shed where the horse could take refuge whenever the mosquito and deer-fly bites became intolerable. Jack and Ken planned to go to Tofty the next day. We woke at eight, instead of at six as we had planned, and the geologists were off about nine o’clock. It took Sandy and myself a long time to get everything cleaned up. Then we went down to the boats, prepared to take one downstream a couple of miles to see a fox farmer named Stultz who was said to have found some arrowheads on his place. But just as we were starting, MacLeod told us that Stultz had gone up to Hot Springs and would not be back until afternoon. Since we did not want to go to his homestead until he returned there, we went down¬ stream but landed at a little creek above his place. We thought we saw charcoal in the bank, but it proved to be nothing, and we found nothing. It was very hot— 90 degrees in the shade, we learned later. We ate in the boat to escape the mosquitoes, and just let it drift. We drifted quite a ways, passing an Indian camp where a woman was stretching a white moosehide to soften it. We wanted to run back to her, but when we started up the motor full speed, we found that we were not making any headway at all. We were just holding our own in the swift current. So we had to run across the river to the other bank, and gradually sneak up in the slack water. We were later in¬ formed that this part of the river is very bad and is known locally as “the Eddy.” We seemed to go upstream only at a crawl, but when we got up as far as Stultz’s cabin we timed our progress and found it took us twenty-five minutes to run the two miles from his place to Hot Springs Slough. He usually made it in twenty minutes, so we were not too discouraged. For a while, though, I felt very bad about our skiffs. All the local people used very long and narrow boats and criti¬ cized ours for their wide beam. We had not yet been able to give ours a fair chance because they were so heavily loaded. We were so anxious to get back to the slough that we did not try to stop at the Indians camp, an omission that we afterwards regretted. We got into the slough, tied up, and then just sat around in the sun, waiting for Stultz to come by. When the sun was very hot, there seemed to be fewer mosquitoes. It was mostly on overcast days and at night that they really came out. Stultz finally passed by at about four o’clock, and we followed him to his home-

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

6o

IAN CHIEFS, TANANA RIVER, ALASKA, July 6th., 1915.

fbu/M/f/ams, //?/erpmfer; offonam; Cfy/ef Cfyari/e ofAfunfo. efAfenana; CA/ef /van of Casc/rakef Cfy/ef/Uexcwder tVMam of Tanana.

3.6. Tanana chiefs, 1915 (Bureau of American Ethnology, neg. 53,549, Smithsonian Institution)

stead. It was quite large: several cabins and caches, a garden with dogs chained around the edge to scare off rabbits, three sheds, and a number of fox pens. He seemed an unusually intelligent man, and we discussed politics for a while. He had found obsidian arrowheads where the dogs were chained. We dug and dug, but found no sign of habitation, or any clue as to why those arrowheads should have been there. Then we came back to the cabin at the slough and cooked dinner. We went to bed about ten o’clock, but were awakened at eleven-thirty by Jack and Ken. They had had a terribly hard hike over hills and through mosquito-infested swamps, but were full of interesting information about the mine, the people there, and 4ie deposits. They had seen a remarkably fine, complete mammoth skeleton, recently

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

6l

washed out and now just rattling around. I wrote at once to Mr. Jayne (director of the University Museum) to see if it could be saved. (He was not interested, and we had no funds for getting it crated and shipped to Philadelphia.) There did not seem to be any signs of Paleolndian activities in the placer deposits—not even as much as the slight indications at Ester Creek. Our geologists, however, got some soil samples and Jack seemed to find the trip profitable.

HARPER BEND: THE MURDER OF

1878

Harper Bend June 25, we broke camp and got away just before lunch, to go the eighty miles from Hot Springs Slough to Tanana Mission. We had lunch packed to eat in the boats, but a rain storm overtook us. We did not have our full rain outfits handy and so were soaked to the skin. The rain lasted about an hour, during which time we were rather miserable. Then the sun came out for a little while and we ate while traveling. I was in the boat with Jack. We were bothered with deer flies. They didn’t simply sting; they cut a piece out of our hides when they bit. And they were too quick to be swatted. Finally we discovered that if we used a wet towel, the water drops would halt them long enough for us to finish them off with a sec¬ ond swat. After lunch we went around three enormous bends on the river—“Harper’s Bend.” Here, or in the vicinity, in 1878, the first white woman in this region was murdered, and we could imagine that a sinister influence still lingered in the dark forest and thick underbrush along the river banks.

Early Traders Arthur C. Harper, the pioneer prospector and trader for whom the river bend is named, is believed to have entered Alaska Territory from Canada in 1871, via the Liard, Mackenzie, and Peace rivers. In 1875, with supplies from the Alaska Commercial Company’s store at St. Michael, he came up the Yukon with two companions, and prospected near the mouth of the Tanana River. In 1881 he is reported to have built a cabin above the Tanana River bend now named for him, and used it as a trading post. This was before Lieutenant Allen’s famous survey of the Tanana in 1885. Most of Harper s prospecting and trading, however, was done on the upper Yukon, although he later returned several times to the Tanana, apparently crossing the hills to the Tanana River from the Yukon at “Belle Isle” . (now Eagle), the same route the Tanana Indians were to take when visiting the .

trading posts on the upper Yukon. Harper was associated with several other no-

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

62

table prospectors and traders: Francois Xavier Mercier, Leroy Napoleon (Jack) McQuesten (“McQuestion”), and Alfred Mayo. The last two became his part¬ ners in several ventures, and all worked on occasion for the Alaska Commercial Company.

Schwatka s Version of the Murder At the Nuklukayet [#3] trading post on the Yukon, where Schwatka traded his raft for a boat, he learned of the murder on the lower Tanana, although his ac¬ count of it was published, and perhaps written, later (1885:96): About two years ago [actually in 1878] a Mr. Bean ascended the [Tanana] river a short distance and settled there for the purpose of trading. He was accompanied by his wife; and one morning while they were sitting at break¬ fast, a shot was fired through the crack of the door, killing the woman almost instantly. The motive for the deed was never exactly understood, as no difficulty of any sort had occurred, and the Indians were all very fond of both parties. The Indians said that the shaman, through some influence or other, had conceived the idea that for the good of all a white man must be killed, and so instigated the murder. The man who did the actual shoot¬ ing was turned over to the only trader in the neighborhood, after he was captured, but the trader being afraid of a reaction afterwards, if the man were punished, did not care to take the law into his own hands, and, in consequence, gave him his liberty. Schwatka (1885:95) also seemed to imply that the local chief, “Ee-van” (Ivan), or even “the black shaman” farther up the river, might have been involved in the murder. The latter individual not only exercises authority over his own band, “but also performs the office of medicine man among these Indians, and his in¬ fluence, as such, is very strong indeed. . . . [S]hamans are very jealous of their power, and are very prone to kill the object of their jealousy themselves, or, as is often done, frighten some members of the tribe into committing the deed.” It is very doubtful, however, that any shaman or leader was involved in the killing. Schwatka (1885:96) suggested that a body of troops on a punitive expedition with authority to treat the Indians as they pleased would have “a very wholesome effect” on all the tribes, by rounding up unpunished murderers among them. (If carried out, this would have been another example of the army’s knee-jerk reaction policy of administering “justice” on the Frontier.) *

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63

3.7. “Ivan, a Nuklukayet Tyone,” Lower Tanana, 1885 (Allen 1887, fig. 22)

Mercier’s Version of the Murder What is believed to be the most reliable report of the murder is that of Francois Mercier, a French Canadian pioneer trader in the area from 1868 till 1885, who wrote about it in his Recollections, translated and edited by Yarborough (1986). In the spring of 1878, according to Mercier, old Mr. James Bean, together with his wife, their little son, and the twelve-year-old half-Russian daughter of Tarentoff (not otherwise identified), came up the Yukon from Nulato, where Bean had been the trader for the Alaska Commercial Company. They traveled in a large baidara (open boat), manned by five Indians and carrying provisions and trade goods for opening a trading post on the Tanana River. They stopped at “Mercier’s Station” on the Yukon, where Monseigneur Seghers and Father Mandart, pioneer Roman Catholic missionaries, were also staying, as were the experienced prospectors, #

Harper, McQuesten, and Mayo.

64

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

Mercier wrote afterwards (1986:21-22): Now having premonitions of danger, we made an effort to dissuade the old and imprudent man from exposing the lives of his wife and child among the savages, who at this date were thought the most dangerous in the country. However that headstrong old man would not change his mind, and went to make his establishment on the left bank of the Tanana, about 30 miles from its mouth at the Youkon, and where, several months later (around the end of September) this brave and devoted wife was assassinated by a rifle shot, fired by two young Indians of the upper Tanana, while she was having breakfast with her husband. Then, crazy with fear and thinking of nothing but saving his life, and that of his little boy, the old man Bean hurled himself with his son and the little daughter of Tarentoff towards the water’s edge, where the canoe of the two murderers was, the two after having committed this evil deed having fled into the woods. Being of a mind to take this little bark canoe to my station (a distance of about 40 miles), this clumsy old man— who had never maneuvered one of these canoes—tipped it over as soon as he pushed it into the current. By chance, in this place the water was not too deep, and he could pull it up on the shore. Also by chance at this criti¬ cal moment there arrived, without suspecting anything that was going on, an old Indian woman in a large bark canoe who had come to sell “youkele” (dried salmon) to old Bean. Profiting from this stroke of luck, the old Bean took over the large canoe of the woman and forced her to bring them to my station, where they arrived the same day during the afternoon. Learning this sad news from the old man Bean, who seemed at that moment beside himself, I wrote right away to Harper, and Maya [Mayo], employees of the Alaska Commercial Company at the Noukelekayet station [#3, seven miles below Mercier’s], asking them to come right away to my station to decide together the best way to take care of this unlucky affair. Several hours later Harper and Maya arrived at my place. And without delay, after a short deliberation, Harper, with three of our Indian servants, departed in a large canoe to get the body of Mrs. Bean, which they found, on arriving there, on the floor in a pool of blood. The shot had pierced her chest. After having placed the body, and the belongings of this unlucky family in the same baidara that had brought them from Nulato, then Harper left that place of crime, and the day after that, in other words two days after the murder, he was back at my station. The body of Mrs. Bean was placed in a large tent that I had made for this sad circumstance, and the next day, after the corpse was washed and dressed with much care „? by two goodhearted old Indian women, it was enclosed in a good, tight coffin that I made myself, and was then put in the baidara cited above.

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

65

Mr. Bean, the imprudent old man, not to say more, who till then involved himself with nothing, as if all that had just happened did not concern him in the least, and also without thanking us for what we had just done for him, Mr. Bean, I say with his little son and little daughter of Tarentoff, as well as three young Indians that we had procured for him to maneuver the baidara, left my station with the intention of going as far as Fort Saint Michel to inter his wife. Meanwhile fearful of being stopped by ice before arriving there [this was the end of September]; once having reached Nulato he decided to bury her there. For a time the traders suspected Mr. Bean of the murder, because his curious “doings” seemed to indicate guilt. But the two Upper Tanana youths, when cap¬ tured, said they had shot his wife because Mr. Bean had refused to let them sleep in his house. Mercier further stated that the little station founded by Bean was the first establishment of the kind on the Tanana. Yarborough (in Mercier 1986:24, note 6) placed Bean’s station on the Tanana five miles north of the Chitanana River, in other words, on the uppermost curve of Harper Bend. According to Melody Webb ([1985] 1993:65), who based her account on all available sources, Bean’s “brusque manner and greedy trading style alienated the Indians.”

McQuestens Version of the Murder Leroy N. McQuesten also wrote a short account of the tragedy ([1952] 1977:6) which helps to explain the motivation for the murder. He was at Mercier’s Station when “Mr. Bear” [Bean] and his family came up the river: We advised him to leave his family as the Tanana Indians were not very friendly and you could not depend on them, although that winter [187778] I was up the [Tanana] river 350 miles with three Indians. I was among them for thirty days and traded a large amount of furs and I never was treated better by any Indians. Still I thought they were a kind of wild set and not to be depended upon but I was the first white man that had been in their country and it was to their interest to treat me well as they found it much more convenient to have goods brought to their camp than to go after them. [Mr. Bean rejected this advice, but built a cabin some 75 miles up the Tanana. He was a “close trader” and his high prices displeased the Natives, especially as he informed them he did not intend to maintain his store once he had sold all his goods.] Some time in September when he and his wife were alone, two Indians came in to trade some fish; they had done their trading and Mr. Bean and

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

66

wife sat down to dinner. [It was common practice, Webb (1993:65) explained, to entertain customers at a trading post, so when Mr. Bean rudely refused the request for a meal and a nights shelter, the humiliated and outraged Natives sought revenge.] Mrs. Bean was sitting with her back to the door, Mr. Bean was sitting opposite to her. The door was open— one Indian stood in the doorway talking to Mr. Bean, the other Indian placed his gun under the man’s arm and shot Mrs. Bean in the back. She fell over dead. The Indian supposed the ball would pass through her and kill Bean at the same time, that is what they said afterwards. The Indian tried to shoot Bean but his gun would not go off and Bean ran into his bedroom and got his rifle and the Indians ran off in the woods. Bean took their canoe and took his child and a small girl that was living with him and started down river. They had not gone but a short distance when the canoe capsized, Bean swam ashore, the little girl held on to the canoe with the child. There happened to come along about that time an old Indian woman to trade fish. She had a long canoe, she picked up the girl and child and took Bean down to Tanana station. [When Harper returned the next day to fetch Mrs. Bean’s body, he found that very little had been taken from the store, and that was after¬ wards returned.] The murderers were never punished for the crime and they used to come down to the station [Mercier’s] every spring, but there would only be two or three traders and they didn’t think it was safe to attempt to arrest them as the Indians always threatened to rob the station most every spring.

A Sequel to the Murder According to the unknown author of “A Sequel to Mrs. Bean’s Murder” (Heller 1967:123-24), Mrs. Bean was killed by “Bushie Head’s” tribe, who had planned to murder both husband and wife and rob the store, but Mr. Bean escaped because the Indian chosen to shoot him had wet powder. The writer was running the “Nuklukyet Trading Post” (#3) in 1889-90, when about eighty Indians, from the bands of Bushie Head and Chief Evan, threatened to hold up the post if he didn’t make a potlatch for them. Undaunted, he held them off, promising that he could shoot twelve of them with his two six-shooters before they could kill him, but that they could come the next day, two at a time, to trade. They retreated, and next morning the two chiefs sent him as gifts furs worth three hundred dollars, trade was resumed, and then he presented all the Indians with goods equivalent in value to the furs.

*

Later that winter, Bushie Head’s tribesmen brought the Indian who had killed Mrs. Bean and wanted the author to hang him. He solved that dilemma by telling

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

67

the Natives that he would have to wait until other white men came, because he was alone, but that he would make strong medicine against the murderer so that he would not live long. The latter died the following summer. So ends this curious tale.

THE MOUTH OF THE TANANA The river at Harper Bend was very wide and shallow, so we followed the chan¬ nel as best we could, steering through the boils and the line of driftwood and heading for the steamer markers whenever there were any. These were white bar¬ rels set on posts on the riverbanks, toward which the steamers were to steer to keep in the channel. In one place we saw a high cut bank of silt, and we landed to explore. Although we did not find anything, the mosquitoes found us! The air roared with their buzzing. The trees on top of the bank were burned off and this made walking difficult. Jack collected some soil samples and I took a photograph of the muck, at the peril of my ungloved hands, before we abandoned this unproductive spot. It rained again, but not hard. We were now in a very wide part of the river, but it was so shallow that we had to sound with the oars. The current of the Tanana was swifter than that of the Yukon, and as it neared the greater river, the Tanana slack¬ ened its pace and dumped much of its silty load, which made innumerable islands and bars. It was said to bring down many more uprooted trees, and ones of larger size, than those carried by the Yukon. Its mouth was like the delta of a river, as Lieutenant Schwatka had aptly noted (1893:302-5). Suddenly we could see a radio mast far ahead and knew that this was Tanana Station on the other side of the Yukon. The Tanana River at its mouth was as wide as the Yukon, and there were so many islands and broad channels between them that we hardly knew when we slipped from the waters of the tributary into those of the greater river. In this, our experience was similar to Lieutenant Allens, who did not realize his raft was on the Yukon until he was halted two miles below the mouth of the Tanana by an Indian woman who fired a gun as a signal (Allen 1887:86).

Nuklukayet or NukuloRoyet We were also uncertain as to the location of the traditional site of the intertribal trading grounds, reported to have been at or near the junction of the Yukon and Tanana Rivers. Popularly called “Nuklukayet,” the Native name was NukuloRO. yet: Noochuloghoyet (Alaska Native Language Center), or NukluRoyit, (Jette),“at the point of the big island,” i.e., the mainland between the Tanana and the Yukon. The site seems to have been somewhere on the northeast point between the two

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

68

rivers, which is, in fact, the only area to which the term “point of the big island or mainland” would fit the topography. (See “Noochuloghoyet Point” in Turck and Turck 1992:53, fig. 2.) Yarborough (in Mercier 1986:81-83) wrote of it: “Noukelakayet Point is the flat ground on the right bank of the mouth of the Tanana River where it joins the Yukon from the south. This location was used as a spring trading location for In¬ dians from the Tanana, the upper Yukon, and the middle Yukon ... by Hudson Bay Company employees from... 1861 until the... company’s ouster from Alaska in 1869. . . . Although several trading posts were built in the vicinity of Nouke¬ lakayet Point after 1868, none were ever built at the point itself.” These sources were not, however, available to us at 1935, and we had little spe¬ cific information about the site.

The Trading Grounds in 1867 Dali and Whymper visited the trading grounds in 1867, more or less in com¬ pany with the Russian trading boat under the leadership of the Creole head of the Nulato post, Ivan Pavloff. Dali (1870:92, 93) described the place, as he saw it from the mouth of the Tozi, “some fifteen miles [downstream] from Nuklukahyet”: To the east the broad mouth of the Tananah River was seen, where it joins the Yukon. The latter curves abruptly to the left, and between them lies the low land, forming a point or island. This is Nuklukahyet, the neutral ground where all the tribes meet in spring to trade. Behind it rose the mountains. Two summits rose above the others, known by the Indian names of Mo-klan-o-klikh, and Mont-klag-at-lin . The latter is really on the right bank of the Yukon, and the former on the left, but from our point of view this was not perceptible. At the junction the Tananah is much broader than the Yukon, yet into this noble river no white man has dipped his paddle. Dalis plate (1870: opp. p. 93) shows these two peaks, and while titled “from the Melozikakat Mouth,” it is more probably the scene from the Tozi as described above, for the bar in the picture is piled high with driftwood, which both Dali and Whymper had especially noted on the bar at the Tozi. Furthermore, the Melozi River is so far downstream that no one could have seen the trading grounds from it. The point of land was opposite a bluff on the north side of the Yukon, accord¬ ing to Dali. Whymper (1869:236-39) wrote of the site: * *4

In the evening we made the junction of the Tanana River and the Yu¬ kon, between which, on a tongue of land, Nuclukayette, an Indian trading-

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

69

3.8. '“Young Nuklukayet Tyone’' in English red flannel “hunting-shirt” with pearl buttons and mooseskin fringes on the shoulders, 1867 (Dali 1870:24)

ground of importance, is situated.... [Para] This place is the furthest point ever reached by the Russian traders, and is about 240 miles above Nulato. [The Russians parties had actually gone much farther upriver, to the edge of the Yukon Flats; and in 1862 had secretly sent the Creole, Ivan Lukin (Lukeen), as a spy to Fort Yukon.] Within the last two or three years some of the Ffudson Bay Company’s men have also come down with tradinggoods to this village. Flither come Indians from all quarters. [And Whymper listed them: the Kutcha-Kutchins from Fort Yukon, the Tananas, and the Koyukons from the middle Yukon between the Tanana and the Koyukuk and from the Koyukuk River. I give their more traditional names to avoid confusion.] On some occasions their gatherings have numbered 600 persons.... Apparently a “chief” or leader of the area, who I assume was a Koyukon man, had visited Nulato during the previous winter and had been helpful to Ketchum and Lebarge of the Telegraph Expedition on their trip upriver. Although Whymper wrote of a “village” at Nuklukayet, I now believe it was a camp of temporary bark or brush huts, erected and used only in the summer, and

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

70

admit that I was quite in error when I mentioned a Russian trading post at this place (de Laguna 1947:39). There was no such establishment. Dali noted (1877:950) “several graves in which the dead were enclosed, in a standing posture, in a circle of sticks squared on four sides and secured by hoops of green wood, thus looking much like a cask. From the sticks hung strips of cloth and fur.” These must have been Koyukon graves, since the Tanana Indians cre¬ mated their dead.

The End of the Trading Grounds In the spring of 1869, Captain (then Lieutenant) Charles P. Raymond of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was sent with a party to Fort Yukon to determine by astronomical measurements the exact location of the Hudsons Bay Company’s Fort Yukon, correctly suspected of being in the territory recently purchased by the United States. Although both the British and the Russians had been pretty cer¬ tain that Fort Yukon was on the Russian side of the border, the Russians had made no protest, even when they were sending trading parties all the way to the Yukon Flats in direct competition with Fort Yukon for Kutchin furs (Arndt 1996). Nevertheless [according to Raymond (1900:20)], this post [Fort Yukon] was the occasion of great loss to the Russian company; for upon the opening of the Yukon in the spring, the enterprising and energetic Scotchmen of the station were accustomed to descend the river for some 300 miles to a station [sic] called Nuclucayette, where they met the assembled Indian tribes and purchased their stores of winter skins before the tardy Russians, delayed by current and ice, could arrive at the trading ground. The retirement of the Russian-American Company, consequent upon the transfer of the ter¬ ritory to the United States, inaugurated a new order of things. Immediately [in 1868] several American companies located small establishments upon the river and near the coast, and one company [the short-lived Pioneer Company, to which Mercier and Bean had belonged] sent up the river a small party, which succeeded after great efforts in reaching a point near Nuclucayette, and wintered opposite the mouth of the great Tanana. In the following spring, when the traders of the Hudson Bay Company paid their annual visit to Nuclucayette, their right to trade in the “Indian country” of the United States was fiercely contested, and they were informed by the Americans that any future attempt to purchase skins within our territory would be resisted, if necessary, by force. A «*

Raymond refers to the trading post (Nuklukayet #1), on the north bank of the Yukon, at the mouth of the Tozi River and about seventeen miles below the

ADVENTURES ON THE LOWER TANANA

71

mouth of the Tanana. Mercier, who built it, named it “Noukelekayet,” and Ray¬ mond called it “Fort Adams.” This, and other posts soon established in the same area and on the upper Yukon, robbed the Native fairgrounds of NukuloRoyet of their importance for trade. They seem to have served, for a time, as an early sum¬ mer intertribal meeting place for Native dancing, feasting, and socializing, until they were abandoned some time before the present century. By 1883, when Lieutenant Schwatka made his raft trip down the river, Fort Yu¬ kon had not only been surrendered by the Ffudson’s Bay Company to the Alaska Commercial Company, but the post had been closed by the latter as unprofitable, because of competition with the new trading stations, and also because the scarce fish and game in the region could not support a permanent Indian village near Fort Yukon. Even though in 1935 I knew in general that the trading grounds were on the northeast point between the Tanana and the Yukon, this was hardly specific enough information on which to base a hunt for the place. The whole area of the point was low and swampy, according to our maps and from what we could see from the water, and because we knew of no landmarks that might guide us to the actual site, I believed a search would be just a waste of time. At Tanana Mission, we learned that there was a lake somewhere on this point, up against a hill, and that on or near the lake, there had been a Native camp (of uncertain age). Stone adzes had been found on “Willow Creek,” near the lake, and also on the point, “Willow Point.” These finds may have been made at the original NukuloRoyet trading grounds, or may have had no connection with it, although the Native name seems to apply both to “Willow Point” and to “Willow Creek.” I was told that on the point were the remains of a cabin, where the win¬ ter mail carrier could find shelter for himself and his dog team. For us, however, even this meager bit of information came too late. So we did not stop. This was a wise choice: we would have needed a guide to avoid becoming lost in the complex of islands, sloughs, and lakes that are shown on modern maps based on aerial surveys of this area.

4

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

TANANA MISSION AND TOWN

Tatiana Mission The new Mission and the Native town, for which we steered, were three or four miles above the town of Tanana with the radio mast. In landing, we bumped onto the first rocks encountered so far. The silts here rest on gravel and boulders, and it was one of the latter that we hit, but with no harm to either motor or skiff. The Indian village seems to have grown up at the St. James Episcopal Mission. We found it abandoned except for one young man, Files (from Maryland), and the Deaconess (from Illinois), who still held church services. But there was no more boarding school for the children. We went up to the big Mission building and were admitted by Files, who was living in one of the rooms while putting up a cabin for himself. Fie let us camp in the east wing, a big room, formerly a workshop, with windows on three sides. Here we enjoyed three tables, a big iron heating-stove, and innumerable shelves. We lined the four cots up in a row with the bed nets draped from a clothesline, and stayed there for three days, June 25 to 28. Since it rained a bit, it was pleasant to be under a roof. “It is hard to say how many houses are here,” I wrote home. “There are the church, the Mission building, the Deaconess’s cabin, and the workshop and saw¬ mill connected with the Mission. There is the government schoolhouse and cabin for the teacher, also abandoned, and the large, square log cabin used by the Natives as a dance hall. The floor is quite fair [for dancing]. The Natives’ houses are in two rows, facing the river. The people are not living in tents, as they were at Nenana. They seem to be cooking out of doors on open fires or on Yukon stoves. They have many caches—that is, small storehouses set on four posts, with a projecting porch. Under these are piled sleds, several for each family, and such incongruous items as baby carriages, washtubs, and so forth. The Natives here certainly know 72

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

73

4-i. Native houses at Tanana Mission, June 26. Left to right: log cabin with porch, sleds, three houses, schoolhouse with flagpole, house in trees, and St. James Episcopal Mission church (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-68)

the value of the dollar, and we had to pay rather high prices for the few specimens we bought. We have gotten a few very good stories and in return have given canned goods, as our ready change has run short. . . . The Natives are inclined to be a little less friendly than those at Nenana, but good ethnographic work could be done here if one settled down and did not try to rush things.” We had left the boats tied up at our landing place just below the Mission, and also a pile of stuff under a tarpaulin on the beach. In the night someone or something got into it and was starting to carry away the bottle of sherry. Files came down to the beach in the morning and found a box of hardtack opened and the untouched bottle lying on the beach. A Native saw him pick up the bottle, so Files felt obliged to set a good example by pouring out the wine, and he now came to tell us. FJe felt badly that we should have left a bottle lying about while we were staying at the Mission, and I felt sorry about the whole thing, including the loss of the wine.

A Little Ethnography That first day we did not try to do much because we were all quite tired. We no¬ ticed Indian children playing with a plain bow, not the usual Athabaskan bow with projecting string guard like those the men at Nenana had shown me. The

74

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

4.2. Storytellers Blind Joe and his wife enjoying the sunshine, Tanana Mission, June 26 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-70)

arrowheads were blunt, an empty brass rifle shell slipped over the end of the slen¬ der shaft. Some of the women who had come out of doors to cook were crochet¬ ing. They wore rubbers over their moccasins to protect them from the wet grass. We visited some of the older Natives. Old Chief Luke, who was in bed suffer¬ ing from tuberculosis, a “spit can” at his bedside, told me a number of stories. He interrupted the tale of Crow and Hawk to inform me, with malicious glee: “Dirty work coming! You like dirty work?” I think he was testing me to see if I would be shocked. If he’d hoped so, he was disappointed, for I asked him to go on with the story. And at its close he explained: “If you tell stories, it makes the winter short. ‘Water dripping from the door already,’ you say when you finish the story. ‘QWa —that’s enough.’” (See Tales, Tale 20.) We also recorded stories told by “Old Blind Joe,” also known as “Kobuk Joe” or “Rampart Joe.” He was said to be over eighty years old and the oldest inhabi¬ tant at the Mission. Although he had lived many years at Tanana and Rampart on the Yukon, as well as on the Kobuk River, he was born and raised on the Koyukuk. Mrs. Joe, who also told stories, was his second wife and nearly as old as her hus¬ band. She had lived all her life in the vicinity of Tanana. These old people used canes with nicely carved knobs when they walked. Their stories were translated by Old Joe’s nephew, Joe John, who added one of his own. The latter said “there are only two rivers in Alaska,” implying that all the streams except the Yukon and Tanana are simply “creeks” (xana’). From the pictures I took that day, it wo.ftld seem that the Joes told their stories while we were enjoying a pleasant afternoon, sitting in the sun.

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

75

Old Joe and his wife were both said to be Caribou People, which would indi¬ cate that they had not paid much attention to clan membership when marrying. In former times members of the same clan were not supposed to marry; their spouses had to come from a different clan, and clan membership was traced through the mother. “Clans were exogamous, matrilineal kin groups,” as the an¬ thropologist would put it. The clans at Tanana Mission were “People Among the Caribou” (Bitsish ta Xot’ana), “Maggot (?) People” (Noltsena) and “Fish Tail People (Toni dziRalts’itlna, literally “[People] Formed Continually in the Middle of the Stream”). We were also told that the Lower Tanana Natives are the Ten’ Xot’ana. The people on the Yukon were the Yuqan’Xot’ana, and they spoke the same language from Stevens Village down to the Koyukuk (and beyond). They could understand the Nenana people, though the latter spoke differently, but they couldn’t under¬ stand the Fort Yukon Kutchin at all. The name for “river” is -na; or -itna; so you have Yuqana for the Yukon, and Tenena, for the Tanana. The mouth of a stream is -kagat or -kaket or -chaget or -chakat. So the Tozi River (that we were to visit) would be the Tozitna, and its mouth or a settlement at its mouth would be Tozikaket. This last was the Native name for the Old Station, a former trading post near the mouth of the Tozi. These distinctions were not usually observed by the whites, for, as Schwatka wrote (1893:316): “‘Cargut’ is the native name for river, and Sooncargut, Melozecargut, and Tosecargut, have been changed to Sundaycargut, Monday-cargut, and Tuesday-cargut by the English speaking traders of the district.” The river universally called the “Nowitna” should really be the “Nowi.” Chief Luke sold us his collection of skin-working tools, and explained their use (see p. 328). He told us about making clay “buckets,” a word aptly descriptive of the shape. Up the Yukon River, about forty miles above Tanana Mission but this side of the Rapids, they find clay. “Dig up the clay. Cut off bear hair and stir it in the clay. Then mix it up [knead it] with the hands. Mix some sand in it. [The pot wasn’t decorated.] Let it dry in the sun, then alongside the fire. When you’re cooking, put the bucket beside the fire, not on top because it’s got no handle. Boil food in it. The clay bucket is better than a birchbark one.” This clay deposit was at Arlan Jordan’s homestead, about six miles below Ram¬ part Rapids. Joseph Nicolai, whose fish camp was nearby, told us that the sand and clay were already mixed in the natural deposit, and that to this were added the feathers of “salt water ducks.” In 1936 and 1937, Rainey (1939:376, 380) visited Jordan’s, where he found pits dug into the clay and evidence across the river of pottery-making. He also learned from the Indians that pots made here were once traded all the way up the Tanana to Delta, a distance of some 425 miles. Nicolai sold us some stone adzes which he had found at his fish camp. Accord¬ ing to Chief Luke, the stone-headed adzes were used to chop or split wood in the old days and were also carried by hunters as weapons in case of attacks by bears.

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

76

From Arlan Jordan’s homestead, a trail is said to run all the way to the Kobuk River, far to the northwest. Mrs. Coulombe, a Native woman whom we met later at Kallands, about thirty miles down the Yukon from Tanana Station, spoke of a terrible fight that had taken place between the Kobuk (Eskimo) and Yukon Natives (Koyukon) on a little peak “above Madelaine Camp and below Jordan’s. This was before the whites came. (This statement may refer to pressure by the Es¬ kimo, who were displacing some Kutchin [Dihai and Chandelar Kutchin] bands and even some of the upper Koyukon from their northernmost ranges [Slobodin 1981:515].)

A Little Archaeology Although, by good luck, we had safely survived the rapid descent of the Tanana, we knew that we had neither the resources nor the time to battle upstream against the Yukon current but were limited to what we might find in the vicinity of Ta¬ nana Mission and below. Despite reports that stone tools had been found at quite a few places, we were able to visit only one site—at Mr. and Mrs. Adams’s home¬ stead, about a mile and a half below the Mission, on the road to Tanana Sta¬ tion. Mr. Adams had found a stone adze head while gardening and had given it to Dr. Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian. In Adams’s two garden plots and on the riverbank below them we saw charcoal and yellow ash, and fire-cracked rocks that had been used for stone boiling (that is, bringing water to boil in a skin bag, bark ves¬ sel, or basket by means of hot rocks). The river was too high for us to explore the beach below, and we could hardly excavate the planted garden. But we were able to dig a little at the edge of the cultivated plot and found an unfinished adze, a hammerstone, an obsidian scraper, and several pieces of pottery—for us quite a find, especially since we believed this to be the first Native pottery from so far up the Yukon. None had then been reported “officially,” so to speak, above Anvik. The puzzle to us was that we could see practically no difference in the soil between the place where we found the potsherds and any other spot on the riverbank, where there was nothing to find. This meant that locating sites was going to be difficult. “I have been rather discouraged,” I wrote. “Most of our specimens—two large adzes, one small adze, one hunting adze (carried by a hunter as an emergency weapon), one regular stone hammer head, and two skin scrapers—have been ac¬ quired by purchase or as gifts, and all but two came from places we can’t possibly visit. The winter houses of the Natives are at the hunting grounds upstream. Even now they are a most migratory people, and in the old days they must have been almost constantly on the move. In the summer they catch salmon with fish wheels at their fish camps. In the fall they get ducks and hunt caribou, and so on. In the winter they trap, and in the spring they go up to the Yukon Flats (above the Arc-

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

77

tic Circle) after muskrats. So until we get farther downstream to where the Indi¬ ans had more permanent villages, I doubt if we will locate much of a site.”

The Yukon Above Tanana Mission It we had been able to ascend the river, we would have investigated not only the leported site at Jordans but also the former settlement known as Senati’s, named for a notorious Native leader of the 1860s (see pp. 86-88). A short distance above were the famous Rampart Rapids, described by Schwatka (1893:298-99) as “an insignificant reef ot low white bowlders that jutted out a short distance from the right bank..., certainly the mildest rapids I had ever seen.” Years later, Eliza Jones informed me that this line ot boulders is supposed to be all that is left of Wolver¬ ine’s weir or trap fence that was wrecked by the mythical Traveler (see Tales, Tales 5 and 9). It is right above Garnet Creek, and about eighteen miles below Rampart City. The “trap itself, a pair of cliffs that were said to snap together, is certainly suggested by the high bluffs along the Rampart Gorge or “Lower Ramparts,” which stretch some twenty miles downstream from Garnet Creek. Somewhere below Rampart City is a hole in the rock, where the legendary Traveler is believed to have anchored his canoe while he investigated a noise in the woods (Tales, p. 130); and his tracks are there, too. Stevens Village, above Dali River and just within the lower margin of the Yu¬ kon Flats, was the last village of the Koyukons going upstream. Above them lived the small group known as the Birch Creek Kutchin, and beyond them again the Kutcha Kutchin (Lowlanders) of the Yukon Flats.

THE KUTCHIN

The Fort Yukon Indians, 1847-50 Although we ourselves had no contact with the Kutchin of Fort Yukon and vicinity, the Natives of Tanana Mission knew a good deal about the upper river country and its inhabitants, the Kutchin (Gwich’in), as they call themselves, or “Loucheux” of the Hudson’s Bay men. Fort Yukon, while maintained by the Hudsons Bay Company (1847-69), was a center for trade, not only for local bands and other Kutchin groups (from the Chandalar, Porcupine, and Peel rivers) but also for Indians from more distant tribes: the Han from the upper Yukon, the Koyukon from downriver, and Indi¬ ans from the Tanana. The Company’s posts at Fort Yukon and Fort Selkirk, like their rivals, the Russian-American Company posts at St. Michael and Nulato, transformed Native life in the mid-nineteenth century. Their disruption of the aboriginal trade network exacerbated latent intertribal rivalries and led to overt

78

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

4.3. “Kootcha-Kootchin,” a Fort Yukon Kutchin man, 1847-48 (Murray 1910:90)

violence that eventually climaxed in the looting and destruction of Fort Selkirk by the Chilkat Tlingit, on the one hand, and the attack on the Russian post at Nulato by the Koyukuk River Natives, on the other (see the Nulato massacre in chap. 8). What makes the Kutchin so interesting to us is that we have from British sources far better descriptions of their culture and its transformation than we have of the Koyukon (from the Russian-American Company sources), although the patterns of change were similar, not only for these tribes but for many other Athabaskans of Alaska and Yukon Territory. (See Arndt 1996; McClellan 1981; McClellan and Denniston 1981; McFadyen Clark 1981; Flosley 1981; and Slobobin 1981.) The Kutchin, when first described and illustrated by Robert Murray in 184749 (1910) and by Sir John Richardson (1851, 1852), who reproduced the former’s sketches as engravings, give us a glimpse back into the past. Though a tribe with their own distinctive culture, and by then already provided with some European

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

79

4.4. “Winter lodges of the Kootchin,” 1847-48 (Murray 1910:85)

goods, they were still following in the mid-nineteenth century what must have been a common and ancient Athabaskan pattern of life, probably similar to that of their ancestors who made and used stone tools. By 1867 Dali and Whymper found the Kutchin well advanced in the transition to a new life style. They were still hunting, but not simply to supply themselves; they needed a surplus of furs to trade for the white man’s goods on which they were now dependent. Angli¬ can missionaries in 1862 had brought them baptism, church services with hymn¬ singing, and even literacy in the form of the Kutchin syllabary. Although these influences were as yet superficial, they were ultimately to have a profound effect. One of Murray’s sketches shows the Kutchins’ (Kootchin) winter dome-shaped hut of undressed caribou hides over a willow framework, banked with snow out¬ side and spruce boughs inside for insulation. This dwelling, ideally suited for a nomadic life, was owned by the women, who were responsible for transporting it, setting it up, and taking it down. We also see their incomparable snowshoes, and the small double-ended sled on which the women drew the family possessions when traveling in winter (aided by a few dogs, after dog-traction had been intro¬ duced by the whites). Their menfolk were thus free to range, weapons at the ready for game or possible enemies. The women also supplied all the firewood and snow to be melted for drinking water (later for tea)—no mean chores. Mothers carried their little children on their backs, strapped into birchbark carriers (shaped much like modem car-seats for infants). Although there is no comparable sketch of the summer camp and activities, we

8o

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

4.5. Kutchin women and children, Fort Yukon, 1847-48 (Murray 1910:82)

are told that a tent was rarely used, and that when traveling by canoe, the men alone paddled. Male observers reported that in summer the women had little to do. This ignores the women’s labor and skill in cutting and drying for winter use the huge numbers of salmon and whitefish that the men caught with dip nets or in large basket traps set in weirs. Although the women were responsible for pre¬ serving the stores of dried meat and fish, the men are said to have been the cooks. They dined first, their wives and children waiting until the men were finished. Men were, of course, the primary hunters, using bow and arrows, spears, and daggers. The wealthy had Hudson’s Bay Company muskets, but even those who could not afford a gun carried powder and shot to offer to the others for a share in the kill. The main supply of meat was obtained on the fall caribou hunt. Then the whole band—men, women, and children—drove the caribou between miles of converging lines of stakes or fence into a corral, where the animals were shot, stabbed, or snared. Any caribou trying to escape impaled themselves on the stakes. Moose in the woods were snared or run down with snowshoes in the drifts. The Kutchin, like other northern tribes, actually depended for survival on fish and on small game and birds (usually snared by the women), yet the men carried them¬ selves proudly as hunters of big game, especially of the caribou, to which they felt spiritually related.

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

8l

4.6. Kutchin hunters, Fort Yukon, 1847-48 (Murray 1910:94)

Perhaps because of this tribal affinity, they lacked a Caribou clan. Their three matrilineal clans were instead (1) the Naat saii (cf. Naltsin), associated with the Raven or Crow; (2) the Ch’itshyaa (cf. Red Paint/Fish Tail), associated with the Wolf, Herring Gull, and Fish; and (3) Teenjiraatsya (“Friends on Both Sides,” or Middle People), associated with the Glaucus Gull and Tern. These clans were equated with those of their Athabaskan neighbors for intertribal trade, joint cer¬ emonials, and intermarriage, even though their respective designations were only vaguely similar. The easternmost Kutchin bands lacked clans. Murray sketched the Kutchin men and “Savee-ah,” the young leader of the Fort Yukon band, in their best summer clothing of caribou skins, liberally deco¬ rated with fringes, glass beads, and porcupine quill work—testimony both to the mens wealth and their women’s skill in tanning and sewing. Men wore a shirt with sharply pointed “tails” in front and behind, and combination moccasin-trousers. The women’s clothing was similar, but plainer, with a broader “tail” behind and none in front. Men were the dandies, in beaded headbands, belts, and necklaces. Even their quivers, gun cases, and the sheaths for their highly prized copper dag¬ gers were ornamented with imported beads and dentalia. They wore feathers in # their long hair, which was tied in a cue behind and so heavily dressed with grease, dirt, and red paint that its weight forced the neck forward. (Murray persuaded

82

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

a Fort Yukon chief to do away with this unsanitary load, and others soon followed his example.) When traveling, they wore plainer clothing, but put on their best when they camped at night (in case of visitors?), and before they approached an¬ other’s camp or the trading post. Men always had a small bag of red and black face paint, ready for use. The women had black lines tattooed on their chins. Both sexes wore nosepins and ear ornaments of dentalium shells. In winter, their shirts were of woven rabbit-fur cord, their frocks and pants of caribou skin with the warm fur inside; they also donned fur caps, extra hightop moccasins, and orna¬ mented mittens. “None of the neighboring nations pay so much attention to per¬ sonal cleanliness and appearance” (Richardson 1852:226). Beads were their wealth. Most articles of trade were valued in strings of beads, which at the Hudson’s Bay posts could be reckoned in terms of beaver skins. To be a “chief” or leader, a Kutchin had to own 200 “beavers” worth of beads. Mur¬ ray found that the Kutchin had little interest in blankets or cloth, and would not trade their furs for anything but beads and dentalia, items supplied through intertribal trade from Russian sources. The Hudson’s Bay Company was soon obliged to import these. Unlike the Russians, however, they sold guns, and traded ammunition for food. A rich man might have several wives; a poor hunter, with¬ out beads, remained single. The Kutchin have been described as handsome, with pleasing, expressive faces, and sparkling eyes. “They are a lively, cheerful people,” fond of dancing, singing, athletic sports like wrestling, and “are inveterate talkers,” purveyers of news, storytellers, and orators (Richardson 1852:227). Men, women, and children joined in the vigorous round dances, which were a regular feature of every friendly meet¬ ing or ceremony. The Kutchin shamans could foretell the future, ward off ill fortune, and bring good luck. Since a death was apt to be attributed to the sorcery of someone in an¬ other group with which the victim or a family member may have quarreled, feuds were frequent. The Kutchin could be, and were on occasion, fierce and treacher¬ ous as warriors, astute and deceitful as traders, insistent on their rights, but also generous as hosts and concerned for the common good of their band.

The Fort Yukon Indians in 1867 In the spring of 1867, many tribes were gathering at Fort Yukon to await the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company supply boats and the annual trade. As described by Whymper (1869: 253-54): After a few days the Indians mustered very strongly; canoe after canoe arrived, and there was a constant blazing of musketry, as though the fort * was in a state of siege. Over 500 natives were at one time congregated outside the station. They erected tents, open booths, and “lodges”; the

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

latter being constructed of poles and moose-hides, and usually placed two together, the doorways facing each other, with a small fire burning between them. Each male, on arrival at the fort, received a present of a small cake of tobacco and a clay pipe; and those who were out of provisions drew a daily ration of moose-meat from the commander, which rather taxed the resources of the establishment. Indian hunters are attached to the fort, and some of the canoes brought in large loads of fresh and dried meat. There was a decided difference between the Upper and Lower Yukon forms of clothing. At this place we saw quantities of buckskin dresses, and moccasins were commonly worn. The leading men of the tribes as¬ sembled wore mock uniforms, presented to them by the company; old “Red Leggings” in particular, one of the Kotch-a-kutchin [Lort Yukon] chiefs, was gorgeous in one with immense gilt epaulets, brass buttons, and trimmings, and had as many colored ribbons hanging from his cap as would stock ten recruiting-sergeants for life. Many had ‘capotes,’ shirts, and coats of civilized appearance, purchased in the store. In winter these people wear moose-skin shirts or robes, with the hair turned inward.

83

4-8. “Dance of the Kootcha-Kootchin,” Fort Yukon, 1847-48 (Murray 1910:87)

4.9. Fort Yukon in 1867 (Whymper 1869, facing p. 251)

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

Dali (1870:101) was also much impressed by the Kutchin: All were much finer-looking than the Unakhatana [Koyukon] we had left behind us at Nuklukahyet. All wore many articles of English make; one of the women had a calico dress on. They had many dogs, all of the black, short-haired, long-legged English breed. [Para] The men wore the Hudsons Bay moccasins, leggings, and fringed hunting-shirts of buckskin, originally introduced by the English traders, who obtained them from the tribes to the southeast. They had abundance of the fine bead-work in which the French Canadians delight, and which those women who frequent the forts learn to excel in.

85

86

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

Dali (1870:109) found the various Indians assembled at Fort Yukon were fun¬ damentally much alike, except that: “Those who live in mountainous districts, hunting the active deer from summit to summit, are notably the most savage and unruly. Those who live by hunting the more phlegmatic moose, which inhabits the lowlands, are much more docile.” According to Whymper (1869:256): The women of all these upper tribes [the Tanana and Natives of Fort Yukon and above] dress more simply than the men, and wear few orna¬ ments. They do more drudgery than the females of the Lower Yukon and coast of Russian America. They adopt a loose sack garment very plainly cut, with large loose sleeves. In the fort some of the Indian women wore European clothing. [Para] It is said that some of the chiefs and ‘big Injiens’ of these tribes have large piles of beads—of which they make no use— secreted, miser-like, in the woods. They had bought them, not knowing how better to invest their capital, after acquiring all the guns, blankets, knives, and pots they needed. Whymper (1869:247) also noted: [These] Upper Indians, a branch of the Kotch-a-kutchins ... were ap¬ parently better provided with guns, clothing, and tents than the ‘Russian’ Indians. They were cleaner, and better mannered. In the course of the morning their chief—‘Sakneota’ (known as ‘Senitee’ at the fort)—arrived, and immediately made us a present of moosemeat, and we returned the compliment in some trifles. Dali (1870:102) referred to this individual as the “old chief from Fort Yukon,” who was in 1867 about sixty or seventy years old. “The old fellow’s name was Sakh-ni’-ti, which the traders have corrupted into Senatee.” Kennicott knew him as “Si-neu-teh,” nicknamed “Old Thunder,” and reported that he had five wives (Yarborough in Mercier 1986:57 note 1). Mercier (1986:54-58), who claimed to have known him well, described him as “a man of extraordinary stature and strength, of braveness or more than that, ferocity, and duplicity ..., the terror of [his own] . . . but above all of the other neighboring tribes,” the epitome of the best and especially of the worst of Kutchin character. The chief had treacherously arranged several brutal massacres of Chandalar Kutchin, his special enemies, but in his favor, Mercier had to admitted that he had never harmed a white man. He died about 1890. Mercier (1986:57) also avowed that he hated the Kutchin as “sharp, shrewd men who would kill their women with work, and of a revolting

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

87

4.11. A Lower Tanana family (left) and a Fort Yukon Kutchin couple and their dog, 1867. Note contrast between old-style clothing worn by the Lower Tanana (the man’s pointed coat, and the moccasin-trousers for both sexes) and the Hudson’s Bay Company-style clothing of the Kutchin (Dali 1870, facing p. 431)

cruelty towards their poor dogs.” He further accused them of hypocrisy, false¬ ness, pretentions, insolence, and ingratitude, while allowing that they were “famous hunters, and many among them were handsome men.” Dali (1870:111) attended the outdoor evening services conducted by the Rever¬ end McDonald during the several days of the trade, at which the Natives “sang several hymns with excellent effect.... [There was] Old Sakhniti, who has at least eighteen wives [!], whose hands are bloody with repeated and most atrocious murders, [and so forth] ... —this old heathen was singing as sweetly as his voice would allow, and with quite as much comprehension of the hymn as one of the dogs in the yard. [Para] Indians are fond of singing: they are also fond of tobacco; and for a pipeful apiece you may baptize a whole tribe.” And Dali went on to ex¬ pose the futility of the traditional missionary efforts and alleged misdeeds of the Hudson’s Bay Company in pursuit of profit.

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

88

4.12. Sakhniti [Senati], a Kutchin chief, Fort Yukon, 1867 (Dali 1870:107)

As Schwatka (1893:280-81) observed in 1883: The Indian who assumed the role of chief, Senati, as he is called by the white people, [is] a savage of more than ordinary authority and determination.... Since the abandonment of the post by the Alaska [Commercial] Company, his force of character has done much to hold together the handful of natives that still cling to the old spot; but with his death and the desertion of the place by white traders this part of the river will soon return to its former wildness. Because Senati s own fish camp in 1883 was just below the Rapids (see “Senatis Mountain” on modern maps), Schwatka (1893:299-300) mistakenly believed that he was Koyukon. The camp, he wrote, “was made up of two well-worn tents and four birch-bark houses, the whole containing from forty to fifty souls. Over half a dozen canoes put off from the village and were soon paddling around us, whereupon a lively competition ensued for supplying us with dried and smoked salmon.” TANANA STATION

Tanana Station (also known as Fort Gibbons or Weare) was about four miles below Tanana Mission. Fort Gibbons was the name of the army telegraph station and the extensive military reservation lands around it. Weare was just the name

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

89

4.13. Tanana Station, June 29 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-75)

for the Northern Commercial Company’s land at Tanana, according to Chief Luke. (The town was later incorporated as a city.) When we left the Mission on June 29, we were very slow in getting away. It was a good quarter mile from the Mission to where our skiffs were tied, and we had carried up a great deal of our gear, all of which now had to be carried back and stowed aboard. We each had to make several trips before we could cast off. We stopped at Tanana Station to pack the stone adzes and pottery sherds that we had acquired so they could be shipped back to Nenana. Then I saw the U.S. Commissioner, William Thompson, who was reported to know about sites— unfortunately these were back up the Yukon, where we were not going. We had also been told of quite a few stone adze heads and other artifacts that had been picked up in scattered places along the banks of the Yukon from Tanana Mission down to Ruby and beyond, and we hoped to visit as many of these places as pos¬ sible, but we were without great expectations. Schwatka (1893:306) in 1883 had noted a number of fish camps on the Yukon between the Tanana and the Tozi. They were on the upper ends of low-lying is¬ lands where the people had built “oblique weirs or wicker-work wing-dams con¬ verging to a certain point, at which a large wicker-work net is placed, and into the latter the salmon are directed and there caught. . . [Some of these “nets” or fish

90

TANANA MISSION AND THE YUKON ABOVE

traps] are so large that a man might walk into their open mouths, while they are probably a score of feet in length.” The Natives were also using dip nets for fish¬ ing, and were catching enough to supply not only themselves for a year but also to feed their numerous dogs the usual ration of one fish each a day. They were without fish wheels at that time, for these ingenious water-powered scoops for catching salmon were not used by the Natives until about 1910. Knowing our plans for the next stage of our journey, Commissioner Thomp¬ son asked us to stop at Birches (a former telegraph station between Kalland and Kokrines), where a lone white man, Tony Grisco, lived. Tony’s life had been threatened by a Native, and the commissioner wanted us to check up on him. The Indian in question had come to Tanana Station, and when Mr. Thompson asked him about Tony, he had said, “Don’t blame me if he isn’t home!” in what was in¬ terpreted as a sinister manner. Tony was last seen by the passing steamer ten days before. If we didn’t find him at his place, or at Ruby, the next town, we were to wire the commissioner at Tanana. If we found him dead, we were to leave every¬ thing as it was, untouched, and hurry on to Ruby and the telegraph. We prom¬ ised to do this, wondering uneasily to what we might have committed ourselves.

5

THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

THE TOZI

A Vain Hunt In 1935 I was ignorant of most of the historical information now available about the former trading posts and village sites between Tanana Station and the vicin¬ ity of the Tozi River (see below). Armed only with the maps of Schwatka and Allen, and the usually confusing oral directions of our Native friends, we set out from Tanana, hoping to locate the site of a “Nuklukayet” at the mouth of the Tozi. There, a copper spear point, eighteen inches long with two pairs of barbs, had re¬ portedly been found. Stone axes had been picked up on one of its tributaries, and the whole area was reputed to be full of “old things.” There was also the Old Sta¬ tion below the river’s mouth to be visited. Another old place (evidently Mercier’s Station) was reported to be one and a half miles above the mouth of the Tozi. About a half mile above this, “where the bluff starts,” was the site of the Old Mission, as well as the site of a still older Na¬ tive village. The original St. James Episcopal Mission at this place had been de¬ stroyed by fire, but was replaced in “the late 1890s” by the Mission of our Saviour at its present site above Tanana Station (Gudgel-Holmes 1991:41). We did not get far that night, June 29. “We had quite a time to locate the Tozi,” I wrote, “since it looked just like a slough, except for the clearness of the water. ‘Clear water’ in this country means water the color of weak coffee. The Yukon and Tanana are gray with suspended silt, so full of it that you can’t see three inches into it. The pockets of our bluejeans, which we tried hanging over the side of the skiffs for a preliminary washing, had to be taken aboard since they were soon heavy with gray mud. “Although we searched, we couldn’t find the site of the Old Mission. It rained, and we camped in the rain and had our ‘lunch.’ It turned out to be six o’clock in 9i

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the evening!! Jack and I tramped all over the swamps and up a hill and got soak¬ ing wet, looking for the Old Mission. This was the third wetting for Jack that day, since he’d fallen off the boat into water up to his waist while we were leaving Tanana. We missed the Old Mission site, and tried to console ourselves that it was probably not any good.”

*

We also explored a clearing on a knoll between two creeks, which may have been the site of the Native settlement near the Old Mission. The houses had all

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fallen down, with the exception of a few posts. The soil was frozen to within twelve inches of the surface, except along the cut bank of one of the streams where there was an exposed section of midden, some eighteen inches deep. In this we found only a glass bead. In a number of pits, possibly for houses, there were many animal bones and scraps of china and rusty iron, but nothing to indicate an older occupation. On the birch-covered knoll east of the site were a number of modern graves. We failed completely to find any old site above the Tozi or even that of the Old Station below it. So, damp and dispirited, to bed.

TRADING POSTS IN THE TANANA-TOZI AREA I now have a better idea of the location of most of the old trading posts that pre¬ dated the present Tanana Station or town. To have found them in 1935, however, we should have had a guide, since the geography of the area around the mouth of the Tozi River is confusing. This was not the first or the last time that we wished for just one good map! Research, undertaken long after our expedition had become history, has re¬ vealed that, between 1868 and 1878, there were built at least four early stations or trading posts, of which three were known as Nuklukayet, or Noukelakayet, all on the north side of the Yukon between the mouth of the Tanana and a few miles below the mouth of the Tozi. Our best sources: Jette, Yarborough (in Mercier i986:xi-xv, and notes to pages 15-18), and Turck and Turck (1992), are not, un¬ fortunately, in agreement about the names, numbers, and locations of these posts, and Petroff (1884), who himself never ascended the Yukon above Ruby or the Nowitna (Sherwood 1965:62-63), has further muddied the waters. As far as I can determine, the trading posts below the Tanana are as follows: 1. Noukelakayet (Nuklukayet #1) at the mouth of the Tozi, 1868-78, founded by Francois Mercier-Called “Fort Adams” by Raymond in 1869. 2. Tanana Station near the site of the present Tanana town, 1869-70, founded by Mercier, but occupied for only one year. Jette mistakenly identified this as the first NukluRoyit (Turck and Turck 1992:55) 3. Mercier's Station or Noukelekayet (Nuklukayet #2), one and a half miles above the mouth of the Tozi, 1877-83, founded by Mercier for the Western Fur and Trading Company. When acquired in 1883 by its main rival, the Alaska Commer¬ cial Company, Mercier (1986:5) lamented, “This station, the best constructed on the Youkon, was abandoned, and the buildings were transported to the Noukele¬ kayet Station” below the Tozi (Nuklukayet #3). It was to Mercier’s Station, above the Tozi, that Mr. Bean came in his panic flight from the Tanana River in 1878, and , Mercier had to send a message to fetch Harper and Mayo, who were presumably at the third Noukelakayet post a few miles below the Tozi.

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4. Nuklukayet (#3), about three miles below the mouth of the Tozi, 1877-96, thus incorporated materials from both the original Noukelekayette (#1) and Mercier’s Station (Turck and Turck 1992:55-56, 59-60). Jette described some of the confusion of place names and locations in his “Eth¬ nographic Dictionary.” Thus, this last trading post was at a place called Teketsenedakaihten, and when the post was transferred to Tanana (in 1896), its former location became known as the Old Station. But the Natives from the old site also took this name to the new camps where they settled, resulting in three places called Old Station: the first on the mainland, the second on an island opposite, and the third on the mainland two miles below the first. (This last was probably the New Old Station where, we were told, Elias Sport was living.) And these three places also retained their original Native designations. As Jette wrote: “The con¬ fusion between the three Old Stations is second only to that between the various Nukluroyits.” A similar situation obtained at other places on the Yukon, as we were to discover. During the 1870s and early 1880s, new trading companies were rapidly being formed and dissolved. The Pioneer Company of Mercier and Bean was bought out by Parrott and Company. The latter merged with Hutchinson, Kohl and Com¬ pany, which had already absorbed the assets of the old Russian-American Com¬ pany and was now competing with the Western Fur and Trading Company. The famous pioneer prospector-traders—Mercier, McQuesten, Mayo, and Harper— were, at one time or another, associated with all of these firms. There was an al¬ most constant turnover in the personnel of the various companies, as new posts to service transient gold-seekers, as well as the Native fur trade, were founded and abandoned. Individuals who were in charge of a post one season might become restless and go off to trade for furs on commission (and prospect for gold on the side), and might then return to more steady employment with one company or another. By 1901 the Alaska Commercial Company had been taken over by its successful rival, the Northern Commercial Company (Turck and Turck 1992:570), and Tanana Station was well established.

Nuklukayet #3: The Old Station in the 1880s Schwatka’s map 0H883 shows Nuclacayette (Nuklukayet #3) at his Camp 49, well below the mouth of the Tozi, and a cluster of houses, graves, and caches (Mercier’s Station) just above the mouth, two Native villages on the north bank of the Yukon between the Tanana and the Tozi, and a “village” (summer fish camp) on an island just below the mouth of the Tozi. In his popular account, Schwatka, (1893:305-6) wrote that:

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95

[As his raft passed the first] Indian village of four tents and two birchbark houses, containing from twenty to twenty-five souls, [a man came out in a canoe. He was,] a half-breed Indian, very neatly and jauntily dressed, who spoke English quite well, and whom we hired to pilot us to the trading station at Nuklakayet, the channel to which was very blind, and difficult to follow, as we had been told at old Fort Yukon. An hour later a large native village [the second] was passed on the north bank, apparently deserted; and another hour brought us to the “opposition” store of the old Northern Trading Company [“Mercier’s Station”], around which was grouped quite an extensive collection of Indian cabins, graves, caches, and other vestiges of habitation. The old store was nearly demolished, while the once thriving Indian village had hardly a sign of life in it. [Two hours or so later, the travelers] sighted the Nuklakayet [#3] trading station, and after much hard labor succeeded in making a landing there, for the channel was most tortuous, and without our Indian pilot we should probably have missed the place altogether, so much dodging through wind¬ ing ways and around obscure islands was necessary. [Harper was in charge, while “McQuestion” and Mayo were away downriver.] It is the furthest inland trading post at present maintained by the Alaska Commercial Company—or any other corporation on the river—although there were formerly others of which mention has been made, but an occasional visit of the river steamer has taken their place.

A picture (ibid., opp. p. 306) shows the buildings and the garden in which Harper raised the turnips that Schwatka’s party found so delicious. In 1885, when Allen and his party had descended the Tanana to the Yukon on a raft, they were almost starving and were naturally anxious to reach this post. He wrote (1887:86-87): We had supposed there was a place called Nuklukyet (Nuklukahyet, Nuclucayette), as shown on the most recent map, at the junction of the Yukon and Tanana... [It] is merely the ground where the natives formerly assembled for trading purposes. Where we halted were two women and three children, who informed us that Nukilerai was below, Nukluhyet above. Nukilerai is the name by which the natives know the trading station. Having obtained a canoe, Pete and myself, with one of the women as guide, went back to the junction to find not even a fishing station. Furthermore, the woman, in her Russo-Yukon dialect, informed us, much to our chagrin, that “Nukilerai, Kooshat natoo, chai natoo,” which meant that there was no food or tea at the trading station below. It was too true. We immediately set out for this

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5.1. “A Summer Picture.” This is Nuklukayet #3, also called Old Station, south of the Tozi. (Allen 1887, pi. 24)

place, which will in the future be called Nuklukyet, in accordance with the name now applied to it by the traders of the river. Allen’s map placed this “Nukilerai” (Nuklukayet #3) between the mouth of the Tozi and a smaller stream a short distance below it. His published pictures of the post (pis. 23 and 24 of his report, 1887) were engraved from photographs taken at different seasons. The first is a general view of the log buildings of the trading post in winter, with the sternwheeler New Racket (brought into the country in 1882 by a wealthy prospector named Schiefflin, but in 1885 “owned by Messrs. Harper, MacQuisten and Mayo”) and the stern of another boat (probably the Alaska Commercial Company’s Yukon), both drawn up close to the snow-covered bank and frozen fast in the ice. The second picture (fig. 5.1) shows the corner of the main log building in summer, with a mixed group of prospectors, the trader (fondling his favorite sled dog), and Indian men, women and children in what were probably their best clothes, standing or sitting on the porch. The Native men wear ordinary cloth caps with visors, and jackets with embroidery or beadwork around the neck and down the front. A girl wears a similar jacket, and a Native

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woman, in a flounced cotton dress, has her long wavy hair brushed out and hang¬ ing to her waist, evidently the coiffure for a special occasion. Fortunately this site of the Old Station (Nuklukayet #3) was discovered and excavated in 1990 (Turck and Turck 1992:57-58).

FROM THE TOZI TO THE NOWITNA

New Old Station: Mosquito Troubles The next day after our disappointment near the Tozi, June 30, we spent going downriver. We stopped at various places but found nothing of archaeological in¬ terest. One of these places was the abandoned modern village known as the New Old Station, said to be “about three miles below the Old Station.” It was marked by a graveyard with wooden crosses among the birches on the hillside. Elia Sport was apparently the only person living here. At one time he ran a frontier-type hotel, here or nearby, known as the Eighteen-Mile Road House, so called, I be¬ lieve, for its distance below the mouth of the Tanana. When I went ashore the mosquitoes were so thick on me that I could hardly see my jacket. I was well covered up and did not get bitten, but the sight of so many squirming yellow-blackish insects was almost nauseating. Since the weather had cleared, and it was now very hot—90 degrees Fahrenheit by our thermometer— the denim jacket, hat, headnet, and work gloves that we had to wear for protection made it hard even to walk around. To keep the insects from getting at us through the gap between headnet and jacket, we had each cut a bandana handkerchief in two and had sewn the pieces to the front and back of the headnet, tucking these flaps under the collars of our jackets. To cover the gap at the wrists, where the gloves and jacket met, and the opening in the sleeves above the buttoned cuff, I had provided for each of us a pair of children’s cotton stockings, and these, minus the feet, we wore over our jacket and gloves. Since we had to lift our headnets to eat if we were outdoors, we preferred picnicking when running in the skiffs, where the mosquitoes could not reach us. We could not agree, however, on the best way to smoke a cigarette: through the netting, despite its horrid taste and tex¬ ture in our mouths? or raising the headnet, in vain hopes the smoke would keep the pests away? Sandy thought the little hole he had burned in his net right at the mouth, was ideal for smoking. We were not the first (nor the last) to be bitten by mosquitoes in this part of the Yukon. Zagoskin (1967:162), writing in June of 1843, well expressed our feelings: “To say nothing about the midges and mosquitoes would be to remain silent about the most acute suffering we had to bear on this trip, a suffering to which one becomes accustomed, as to an inevitable evil from which there is no escape.”

5.2. Freddy de Laguna, mosquito-proofed and taking notes at “New Old Station,” Eliah Sport s place, June 30 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-81)

The mosquitoes that attacked us near the mouth of the Tozi were probably the descendants of those that had stung Whymper and Dali at about the same spot. Dali (1870:100-1) claimed he could distinguish four types, his scientific observa¬ tions tinged by emotion: “All were distinguished from the civilized species by the reckless daring of their attack. Thousands might be killed before their eyes, yet the survivors sounded their trumpets and carried on the war. A blanket offers them no impediment; buckskin alone defied their art.” Although I could not testify to four types of mosquitoes, I did notice that when many mosquitoes were present, they all attacked at once, either in a frenzy of competition with one another or as if they felt supported by their numbers. When only a few were in the tent, they buzzed about for some time before inflicting the first but inevitable bite. Modern science now recognizes some twenty-seven different species of mos¬ quitoes in Alaska, from the early-hatching, large, sluggish members of the genus Culiseta, to the later, smaller, but more aggressive ones of genus Aedes. The miles are abstemious, but the females of most species need a draught of warm blood to produce viable eggs! (Guthrie and Guthrie 1986:88-89). Dali (1870:101) could

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5.3. “Moose-Hunting in the Yukon River,” 1867 (Whymper 1869, facing p. 245)

proclaim that “all nature rejoices when the end of July comes, and their reign is at an end,” yet for me, at least, these mosquito pests of early summer were to be as nothing compared with the tiny gnats of August. Schwatka (1893:263), whose “mosquito-bar” apparently had a rather coarse mesh, wrote that:. if the insects are so thick that they constantly touch each other ... they seem to become furious, [and there is no keeping them out]. The doctor [Dr. George F. Wilson, Surgeon, U. S. Army], in a fit of exasperation, said he believed that two of them would hold the legs and wings of another flat against its body, while a third shoved it through; but I doubt the existence of co-operation among them. I think they are too mean to help one another. How did the Indians manage to endure the torment? Zagoskin (1967:162) re¬ ported that, when traveling on foot, they carried a torch of punk wood and walked f

in its smoke. When canoeing, according to Dali (1870:92), they “always placed a dish of wet moss with a few coals in it on the bows of their canoes; this produced

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a smoke which kept the insects away from the canoe when in motion.” At night, they had either to sleep in the smoke, or in a mosquito-proof (and virtually air¬ tight) shelter of birchbark or skin (in Dalis time, of cotton drill). Whymper (1869:245-46), however, explained one benefit that the Indians ob¬ tained from these insects. At this season [mid-June] the musquitoes in the woods are a terrible scourge, and even the moose can not stand it. He plunges into the water, and wades or swims, as the case may be, often making for the islands.... In the water he is a very clumsy animal... . The natives do not always waste powder and shot over them, but get near the moose, manoeuvering round in their birch-bark canoes till the animal is fatigued, and then stealthily approach and stab it in the heart or loins.

Kalland Next day, July 1, while the geologists dried out soil samples, Sandy and I went back upstream about a mile, to the little village we had passed the evening before. This was Kalland, or Kallands, a settlement of four scattered houses. The Native residents, Mrs. Coulombe and Mrs. Paul, described for us the old-time winter houses: These were rectangular pits dug into the earth about two feet deep, with low walls above ground that were banked with earth. The roof was of birchbark. The doorway was low, so that one had to stoop to enter. There seemed to be such a house pit, about fourteen feet square, on the flat below Mrs. Coulombe’s house, but when we dug there we found nothing. We were able, however, to purchase a few specimens found at Kalland and at nearby localities.

The Palisades: Boneyard of the Ghosts That night we went down to what is called the “boneyard” or Palisades, where we spent two full days (July 2 and 3). The Palisades form an impressive cliff of frozen Pleistocene silts and muck, about two hundred feet high, extending for over a quarter-mile along the south bank of the Yukon. Here, as the cliff face thaws, mud and silt fall off in blocks or slither down, carrying trees, mammoth bones, and everything else, into the river. According to Jette, the Indians call the place “the cut bank of the ghosts.” They say the bones are those of animals hunted by the ghosts. Since the Land of the Dead is so different from that of the living, the animals hunted by the dead are quite different from those we see today. We had been looking forward so very hopefully to this site, where we imagined we might find mammoth bones with stone weapon points still in them, but we were to be disappointed. Although we picked up many animal bones, not one

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5.4. Steamer Nenana passing Kalland, Sandy Reynolds watching, July 1 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-82)

had been cut by humans as far as we could tell. Many were split, but if people had done this to get at the marrow inside, we were not skilled enough to detect it. Yet the Palisades excited me in a special way. The place looked like a confection of ice cream with a chocolate topping (the muck) that was melting and running down. The rich odor of rotting organic matter, given off as the silts and muck yielded to the sun, reminded me of happy days in Greenland in 1929, when I was excavating in the slowly thawing midden (garbage pile) of a mediaeval Eskimo village with Mathiassen, and he, not I, had all the worries of the chief of party. We did, of course, save a number of mammoth bones, and I was happy some years later to be able to give a piece of tusk to Loren Eiseley, then teaching in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. I also brought home a section of wood chewed by a Pleistocene beaver that had incorporated it in a dam, part of which was still visible near the top of the cliff, although the rest was sliding down.

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5.5. Approaching the Palisades, July 2 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-93)

To be close to the Palisades, we had to camp on a sandbar among the willows and mosquito swarms. Here we experienced a new problem, which I am sure must have bothered our predecessors, although they were too polite to mention it. This was avoiding the mosquitoes when we had to relieve ourselves, since ex¬ posing the skin for the necessary moments was to invite torture. We all suffered from constipation until I remembered that I had packed an old bednet, “just in case.” Then, safely inside this with a smudge bucket, one could let the mosquitoes outside buzz all they wanted. The shelf-fungus from birch trees made an excel¬ lent smudge, and we found an empty lard can with a handle that made a nice little smudge pot. We had to spray each other with Flit every time we entered a tent, and burn Buhak to catch the mosquitoes that managed to get in anyway. “I just can’t imagine what life was like for the Natives before they had nets and fly dope.” Still, in time, like Zagoskin and the Indians, even we developed enough immu¬ nity to their venom that we could lay aside our headnets on occasion. After exploring the boneyard for two days, we packed up and came on down the river, in one day making a run of seventy-five miles.

The Birches: A Possible Homicide? As noted earlier, the U.S. Commissioner at Tanana Station had asked us to stop at the Birches, a former telegraph station between Kalland and Kokrines, to check on its lone white inhabitant, Tony Grisco, for he was afraid that we might find

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5.6. Landing at the Palisades, July 2 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-87)

him murdered. So we did stop at the Birches and climbed cautiously up the bank. Tony’s place was shut up with no one at home. The dogs chained outside seemed well fed, and we certainly didn’t want to get involved with them. When we un¬ hooked the open padlock that held shut the cabin door, we found the cat in¬ side apparently quite happy. She refused water when I offered it to her. The place was in the usual mess of a prospector’s cabin, where the only cleaning is “to scuff out the middle of the room,” as one of them had described it. In the corner, the only place we could not see from the door, was the bed behind grimy netting. Sandy and I felt spooky when we lifted the net, dreading for a moment what we might find inside. Nothing but dirty, tumbled blankets! Since Tony’s boat was gone, and there was no sign of foul play, we figured that the owner was away somewhere celebrating the Fourth of July. He was not at Ruby, as we discovered when we arrived late that evening, so I telegraphed the commissioner—no bad news, at least.

Mouse Point After stopping at Big Albert’s fish camp at a place (called “White Bluff” in Koyukon) opposite the mouth of the Nowitna River, we went on to photograph the Native cabins at Mouse Point. Captain Johan Adrian Jacobsen, a Norwegian

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5.7. Fallen piece of frozen cliff, the Palisades, July 4 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-107)

collector for the Berlin Museum of Ethnology (Museum fur Volkerkiinde), had stopped here in 1882 on his way upriver in the steamer Yukon, and had noted: [an] amazing Indian we saw running around like mad and jumping with threatening poses. He danced furiously like a crazy person, swung his cap around and threw it on the ground as long as he was in sight. The Indian pilot and steersman we had with us told us that the Indian was trying to bewitch the steamer to make it sink into the ground.... [The reason for his anger was not given, although at a nearby village (Makkatmekettan), the] population here was very hostile and overbearing, and I believe that the Ingalik we had on board stirred up his tribesmen against us. On the way [upriver] I had stopped at a burial site and rescued a skull for scientific purposes, and it seems he told the people this in a lan¬ guage we could not understand. [Jacobsen 1977:100,104]

Although Erna Gunther’s definitive translation was not to be available for many years, I had translated the essential passages for my field notebook.

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THE NOWIKAKAT TRADING GROUNDS The site of a village or camp reportedly lay hidden behind islands at the mouth of the Nowitna River, but we did not try to hunt for it because our gasoline was running low and we wanted to reach Ruby that night, where we hoped to get a real Fourth of July dinner. I do not think, however, that I then appreciated the importance of this locality. For Whymper (1869:229), who had visited the Nowikakat camp, with Dali and a Russian trading party from Nulato, some sev¬ enty years and one month before us (June 4,1867), called it “one of the most im¬ portant halting-places on the river.” It was then, like the NukuloRoyet Trading Grounds at the mouth of the Tanana, the site of an annual trade fair. We were told that pottery had been found a hundred miles by canoe-travel up the Nowitna, and also red pictographs (not described) on a tributary, Beaver Creek, in the hills south of Ruby. If it could be located, Nowikakat might be a valuable site to explore. The Nowitna Indians are reported to have moved later to Mouse Point, where their settlement was known to Allen as Nowikakat.

Zagoskin at Nowikakat, 1843 The Indians who lived on the Nowitna were great traders, as Lieutenant Za¬ goskin discovered on his exploratory trip in 1843 up the Yukon as far as “Nokkhakat village” at the mouth of the Nowitna. Here he was shown an old woolen blanket that had been traded originally from Fort Kolmakov, a Russian post on the lower Kuskokwim, evidently passing through several hands on its way north. He also learned that the Ingalik of the lower Innoko River carried on a very profitable trade with goods from the Russian fort, which they resold at a handsome profit to the Indians (Holikachuk), then living on the upper In¬ noko (or Tlegon River). Even goods from the distant Hudson’s Bay Company posts at Fort Selkirk on the Pelly, and from Fort Yukon, found their way to Nowikakat. Here Zagoskin met a large group of Koyukuk Natives returning from the upper Yukon with many beaver, sable, and wolverine pelts, which they were probably planning to trade to the Eskimo of Norton and Kotzebue Sounds. They seemed very troubled to discover the Russian traders so far up the river, and thus a threat to their own business as middlemen. Although they acted suspiciously and greatly outnumbered Zagoskin’s party, the latter was not afraid of them, for if it came to a fight, his party had guns, but he was worried about two Natives in his employ who were out hunting. Any attack by the Indians would, he knew, force his men to use their guns in self-defense, and this would certainly jeopardize the chance of good relations (Zagoskin 1967:171-72). Some of the Native traders persuaded Zagoskin’s young Koyukon interpreter,

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

Tatlek, to desert him, according to Vtornik, the interpreter who remained. For¬ tunately, Tatlek fell in with his brother-in-law, a friend of the manager at Nulato, and was prevailed upon to return to duty. Zagoskin did not scold him, but remarked that if Tatlek turned up at Nulato without Zagoskin, he would be un¬ der deep suspicion, and if Zagoskin should meet with some accident and never return, Tatlek would probably be imprisoned. The secret watch that Zagoskin or¬ dered kept on his interpreters was not really necessary, he knew. For “simpleminded Vtornik, well fed, dressed in a red shirt, daubed with vermilion, dusted with eagle down, and beautified with beads and shells, had no thought of leav¬ ing us, while Tatlek tried to atone for his rashness by being especially obliging” (Zagoskin 1967:172). We will hear more of the youth known to Zagoskin as Tatlek or Volosaty in chapter 8. Relations with the Natives of the Nowitna seemed to have been pleasant after this, and when Zagoskin’s party rescued a stray dog and pulled the porcupine quills out of its muzzle, the owner was extremely grateful.

Dali and Whymper at Nowikakat, 1867 In late May 1867, the then-manager of the Nulato post, Ivan Pavlov, went on a trading trip up the Yukon, accompanied by Dali and Whymper. The latter were in an Eskimo skin boat, along with three Natives: their coxswain and interpreter, Kurilla (or Unookuk), a Koyukuk man with an unpronounceable name whom they called Tom, and a youth nicknamed Beetle because he was so small. The trader, with a larger crew and trade goods, had a bigger skin boat with a rudder, but both craft had sails. As they progressed upstream, they were joined by a small flotilla of Koyukuk River Indians in birchbark canoes, all bound for the trading grounds of Nowikakat. Later, some of the Koyukuks went with the party up the Yukon to the NukuloRoyet grounds. Instead of proceeding directly to Nowikakat, the visitors camped on the right bank of the Yukon, a few miles below the mouth of the Nowitna, and Pavlov sent word of their arrival to the local chief, who came over to meet them. Dali (1870: 85-86) described their reception: We struck our tent, broke camp, and started for Nowikakat, in company with the Russians and Indians. We hoisted the American flag over the blue cross and scallop-shell of the Scientific Corps, and came into Nowikakat Harbor with colors flying. We received and returned a salute of musketry, and, finding with difficulty a place among the myriads of birch canoes where we could moor our boat, we pitched our tent in the middle of the * village. We informed the tyone, or chief, that we were exceedingly tired, and must sleep before any trading could be done. This was quite true, as I,

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107

5.8. “Indian Summer Encampment, Newicargut [Nowitna], Yukon River.” Note Whymper (?) in tent at right, 1867 (Whymper 1869, facing p. 226)

for one, had slept but about two hours out of the last forty-eight. We tied the flaps of the tent closely, but even this did not prevent the Indians from raising the edge of the canvas and peering in upon us with as much curios¬ ity and pertinacity as country boys at a circus. After a few hours’ rest we rose and dressed. We could not keep out the Indians, until we admitted the tyone, whose repeated orders kept them outside for a time. He watched the process of washing with great interest, from which I inferred that he did not indulge in that luxury. He was very anxious that we should present him with our brushes, combs, soap, and other articles for the toilet, which we were obliged to refuse him; but we made up to him for the disappointment by presents of tobacco, powder, and ball. Whymper (1869:231), however, was more sympathetic to the chief’s request: At this place the Newicargut chief asked me for my towel and soap; and as he had been useful in whipping up supplies for us, I let him have them,

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knowing that Dali was pretty well provided in this matter. But here it did not rest, he saw me with a tooth-brush, and wanted that also. I need not say he did not get it; but the future traveller should either cut down his own kit to the lowest standard, or take all the little luxuries of life by the dozen. Since their small party was not well provided with trade goods, Dali and Whymper were hard pressed to find items that could be traded for food or given as presents to chiefs, sacrificing their own spare shirts, socks, pocket knives, and so on. What Dali (1870:86 - 87) dignified as “Nowikakat Village,” “on a beautiful little enclosed bay” was actually “a mere collection of huts, temporary lodges, and tents; one or two winter houses seemed as if long deserted and rapidly going to decay.” The English single-barreled flintlocks carried by most of the men, as well as some fringed hunting shirts with fine beadwork, indicated contacts with the Hudson’s Bay Company, while some of the Koyukuk River Indians had a few double-percussion guns, procured, via the Eskimo, from the whalers in Kotzebue Sound. Whymper (1869:230, 232) wrote: Here we met about 150 Indians of a highly decorated and painted kind, wearing almost universally the double-tailed coat, much ornamented with bead trimmings, and elaborately-worked fire-bags, knife-sheaths, and belts. They were almost all of them living in either cotton-drill tents made by themselves, or in open booths, constructed of poles set up and tied together roof fashion, a few green boughs, pieces of birch-bark and skins covering them. Little fires were burning everywhere, to keep off the musquitoes... . The Indians on the river had, in the summer-time, a peculiarly haggard appearance, caused apparently from incessant dissipation! They were constantly dancing, singing, or eating, and slept but little. The perpetual daylight of the short summer has a wakening tendency except when one is thoroughly fatigued, and the natives seemed to feel it.

Nowikakat Canoes Although Dali seem to have preferred skin-covered canoes to those made of birchbark, at least for arduous trips, he wrote (1870:90-91): “Nowikakat is noted for the beauty and good workmanship of the birch canoes made there.” These were of two sizes: The smaller “were about twelve feet long and just wide enough to sit down in.” They were very frail, though easily carried in one hand. The frame was of birch wood, steamed, bent, and dried, and was covered with birchbark, sewn with spruce roots and caulked with spruce gum, the forward end decked

THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

109

5.9. Native canvas canoe, made like old birchbark canoes, opposite Kalland, July 1 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-83)

over for three or four feet to keep out the water. “The bark is put on inside out, shaped, and sewed over a clay model just the shape and size of the proposed ca¬ noe.” (I am unable to verify the use of a clay form.) Such a canoe “will carry a man and a bag of flour” (or rather a single hunter), and its usual price was “a shirt, or five marten skins.” Dali continues: “The large canoes are of the same shape, but will carry three men and their baggage, in all about six or eight hundred pounds [usually a woman, her small children, and the family camp equipment]. They are sometimes sixteen feet long, and do not turn up at the end,... but are straight,... with a Y-shaped prow above the cut-water. Each carries a dish of spruce gum, some extra pieces of bark, and a bundle of spruce roots, to repair damages, which frequently occur; and a small framework of slats for the occupants to sit on.” The paddles, four or five feet long, had a cross-piece at the end of the crutch-shaped handle and a slen¬ der, lance-shaped blade, strengthened by a ridge running down the middle of each side, and were gaily painted “with red ochre, blue carbonate of copper, or a green fungus which is found in decayed willow wood.” Canoes were paddled, and, in shallow water, poled from a sitting position by means of two sticks. In going upstream, advantage was taken of slack water on the inside of bends, but against rapids too swift and shallow for paddling, the larger canoes were tracked upstream on a line pulled by one or more men, while an¬ other steered from the stem. On regularly traveled stretches of the river, there were tow paths worn in the grass along the bank.

THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

• ,

,

".ri

110

5.10. “Yukon Natives in Birch Bark Canoe. Photo by W. Chase 64 N” (73-66-AN, VF. Ind. & Grp. Transp.: Canoes. Alaska and Polar Regions Archives, Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks)

As Whymper (1869:236) wrote: “Our Indians were sometimes barefooted, but more commonly wore the water (or summer) boots of the country, i.e., boots made entirely from seal-skin well greased, and water-proof, and varying only in length. The work was no joke; now they were floundering in slimy mud, now climbing over logs or round small rocky bluffs, with the line fixed to their shoul¬ ders, and the current making the canoe drag on them. The steersman had enough to do to keep the boat off shore or out of too shallow water.”

THE END OF A LONG DAY Later on the Fourth, we stopped at Kokrines, a former telegraph station, now a little Native village with two stores. According to Jette, this name is a corrup¬ tion of “Hakara,” the name of the trader who established the first post here, while

THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

111

5.11. “Nowikakat in Winter” [probably Kokrines], 1885 (?) Note light basket sled, modified from Russian type, with dogs hitched tandem to single long line (Allen 1887, fig. 25)

the earlier site of the Native village (“Red Ochre” in Koyukon) is above the pres¬ ent graveyard. Loyens (1966:131) identified “Kokrine” as a Russian trader from Nulato, married to a Koyukon woman. Allen (1887:89-90), however, reported that in 1885 a Russian (?) named “Cochrein” ran a trading station two and a half miles above the Nowitna. From this place on down the Yukon, Allen frequently passed Native settlements of from twelve to twenty persons. We had hoped to buy gasoline at Kokrines, but everything was closed and the two storekeepers were away, one at Tanana, the other at Ruby, celebrating the Fourth of July. There were two Natives to guard the stores, but they had no keys. So we mixed up the last of our gas and oil, diluting the oil pretty thin because we had less oil than gasoline, and started on at half speed to do the last forty miles to Ruby. For an hour we stopped the engines and just drifted. It was beautiful on the river—a clear, hot day, with a few forest fires smoking off somewhere beyond the river banks. The water was opalescent, reflecting the blue sky, and covered with tufts of cotton from willows and aspens like floating snow. Two inches be-

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: TANANA MISSION TO RUBY

low the surface, of course, the river still carried its ugly burden of thick, gray silt. We rested, then had a boat race, rowing. Then lack and I shifted boats, and he cut Sandy’s hair while Ken cut mine. I also remember the forget-me-nots (now Alaska’s state flower) and the wild roses blooming along the riverbanks and scenting the air wherever we went ashore. I tried to photograph them with the new color film (Dufay), hoping it would be a good substitute for the more fragile color plates I had used in Alaska in 1933. It was a lovely, lazy day, a good rest from our previous futile labors.

A

6

THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

RUBY We arrived at Ruby about nine o’clock that night (July 4), and treated ourselves to a “turkey dinner.” The dinner had been kept so long that it was a bit “tired,” but we were hungry and gulped it down, anyway. There was a movie in town which we missed: The Fight of the Century—not the most recent prizefight, but the Dempsey-Tunney fight of 1929 or ’30. The movie show was itinerant, travel¬ ing on a gas boat, and the owner would take his projector ashore to any conve¬ nient building, using the motor of his boat to generate electricity. As I wrote home: “Ruby is just the terminus for a gold-mining district, thirty to forty miles back up in the hills, where there was a gold rush in 1907-1910. It is about the only place on this river [below the Ramparts] where there are rocky hills on both sides. On the north is the mouth of the Melozi, a ‘clear’ river, the color of tea, and on the south, where the city is built, a series of high hills plunges in bluffs into the water. Ruby has a sawmill, a store, post office, hotel, and so on. It is a dirty, tough joint but looks very impressive after the series of one-man ‘towns’ and one-family fish camps we’ve seen on the way down.” The goldfields were in the rocky hills south of Ruby. The same geological for¬ mation extends north or northeast across the river, forming the Kokrine Hills. The Melozi River rises beyond the northern slopes of these hills. Melozi means “Its Headwaters Are Backward,” referring to its tributary, the Little Melozi. This stream, formerly independent, once flowed directly into the Yukon, but its head¬ waters were “captured” by those of the Melozi River, reversing their original di¬ rection of flow—hence the aptness of the Native name. The headwaters of the Melozi and the eastern tributaries of the Koyukuk lie close together, forming a route between them, just as there is also a route from the Tozi’s headwaters to the upper Koyukuk.

113

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

We tried to camp at the Melozi, but were driven off by the mosquitoes, so we picked a place on the south side of the river. We had to build a dock across the mud before we could unload and cut steps up the bank. “We are in the midst of a mosquito pasture and the tents are at a queer angle. We did not get camp set up last night until one in the morning. Then we had our Fourth of July bottle of sherry and sat around and sang until three o’clock. We were drunk with fatigue, to begin with. Such a long boatride makes me dizzy.” We didn’t wake until ten the next morning, when the heat of the sun drove us from our beds.

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115

6.1. Ruby, an aerial view from the N, alt. 1,300 ft., 12:59 p.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-299)

Our camp was just above “the Dago Kid s dog ranch,” I wrote home. “He has fifty dogs tied up in rows along the riverbank. These are dogs, mostly belonging to miners, that he feeds for $30 a month, each. I don’t know if he is raising any dogs for the National Park Service at McKinley Park, although at one time they bought many dogs from him. The dogs here, as everywhere, get half a dried salmon a day in summer and the freedom of a six-foot chain. There is no shelter for them against rain, sun, or mosquitoes, and you can imagine how happy the poor brutes must be when winter comes. Most of the dogs never know what it is like to run free without a chain or sled. The way in which sled dogs are treated in Alaska is disgaceful and cruel.” The dispositions of the Dago Kid s dogs were certainly not improved by con¬ finement, and I confess to being rather nervous when we had to walk through their rows in order to get from our camp to the town. Even though their chains seemed secure and were too short to allow them to reach us as we threaded our way, their growls, snaps, and howls were unnerving. On this trip I was often distressed by the miserable life that the shackled sled dogs of the Yukon had to endure in summer, plagued by heat and mosquitoes, and tied up by chains so short that they could never avoid their own filth. Al-

ll6

THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

6.2. Dago Kid Brown’s fish camp and dog ranch, showing the covered dock for cutting fish, a tent, a building for smoking and storing fish, and some of the dogs staked on higher ground at right, July 6 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-122)

though they were obviously not pets but were intended for work, such neglect must have made them less fit for their winter’s duties. How were they treated when called upon to perform? (In 1935, there seemed to be nothing to protect dogs from arbitrary abuse by their owners. Sled dogs in Alaska are now usually bred for speed and stamina in racing, and, unlike common work dogs, they enjoy not only much better care but often friendlier companionship with their owners, who recognize the importance of cultivating the morale of the team as well as its physical well¬ being. Nevertheless, abuse of dogs in the Iditerod race is still alleged.) “The Dago Kid puts up the best smoked salmon in Alaska, according to my friends in the U.S. Geological Survey, and I have ordered 20 lbs. of it for us to eat next winter,” I wrote my mother. (But when the smoked salmon came, it was as hard and dry as old chair legs, and we did not know how to soften it up. We man¬ aged to eat only a very small amount, served as cocktail snacks to our more ad¬ venturous guests. We hung it, in its original gunny sack, in our covered back porch, but it eventually went bad and my mother threw it out.) The Dago Kid’s wife, Altona Brown, was a most remarkable woman (se£her autobiography, 1983). She could shoot and trap, train and drive dogs, in fact do most of the things that Native men did, in addition to her stamina and skills at

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117

6.3. Native boys at Brown’s dog ranch, Ruby, July 2 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-123)

women’s work, delivering babies, cutting 120 salmon an hour, tanning and sew¬ ing mooseskin garments—all despite the effects of polio contracted as a child. She was born in 1904, and had been taken as wife by a lazy, brutal old man when she was only twelve years old. She bore his son at the age of fourteen. Her sec¬ ond husband, whom she really loved, was Alexander (Dago Kid) Brown. She told us several stories, and if I had known more about her then, or if we had had more time, I am sure she would have given us valuable ethnographic informa¬ tion. She did tell us that from Kokrines to the Koyukuk, the three clans (“fami¬ lies”) were the Noltsina, the Caribou People, and the Middle of the River People ('Tonitsit-Roltsitina, from tonitsit [middle of the river]), “as you’d say if you dropped something overboard.” Remarkable as she was, Altona Brown was simply one of the best among many Native women who surprised us whites by being the equal of their menfolks—and appreciated as such by their men.

Rabbits From the top of the 400- or 500-foot cliff that fronted the river between the Dago Kid’s place and Ruby, we could see up and down the Yukon, and across to the Melozi and lots of other streams. The path up to the top was through willows that had been bitten and chewed by “rabbits” (i.e., snowshoe hares). “Here, as in eastern Canada,” I wrote home, “the rabbits go in cycles, and next year will be the peak. Opinion differs as to what kills them off. Some people say it is sickness. At certain times—I think it is just after the peak—they say the rabbits are full of worms. So some people here do not like to eat rabbit at any time. Then other people say that the rabbits bite off all the tops of the willows above the snow, and

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

finally they become so numerous that they starve to death. [Actually, according to R. D. and M. L. Guthrie (1986:84-87), when overgrazed, the willows periodi¬ cally develop a protective poison that kills the hares, and this accounts for a tenyear willow-hare-predator cycle.] “Last night a rabbit came in between the tents and investigated us. It was a young one. The rabbits or hares do not have cotton tails; their ears are rather short and stubby, rounded like a teddybear’s, and their hind legs are rather short.” Ac¬ cording to an Indian legend, Rabbit was a man-eating monster who dispatched his sleeping guests with his long, sharp tail, until “The Man Who Traveled Among All the Animals and People” broke off the tail and turned him into his present harmless form (see Tales, pages 98,127, 329, 331). While I was writing about the mosquitoes, and our struggles to keep them out of the tents, the rabbit got into the cook tent (it’s supposed to be mosquito proof!) and rattled around, eating dried apples and cake. It panicked and hid behind boxes when I tried to put it out. Finally I left the netting door open and went to bed. The rabbit was gone in the morning.

The Melozi River There were supposed to be old sites at or near the mouth of the Melozi River, so we spent the better part of one day trying to get up the river, and testing with the soil auger all along the top of one of its terraces. In crossing a swamp, I fell in, but the weather was so hot that wet feet felt good. We also had to clamber across, with difficulty, a patch of burned and fallen timber. “The moss was soft and soggy and the mosquitoes were with us all the time, and we were wet all over with sweat. It ran into our eyes and fell in drops into the folds of the headnets. . . . And of course we found nothing.” The next day, Jack and Ken took one skiff way up the Melozi, while Sandy and I followed them after we had done camp chores. About a mile and a half up the river we came to a cabin where an old prospector lived. He told us that a mixture of tallow and creoline (a disinfectant that smells of creosote) would keep the mos¬ quitoes off, and we were determined to try it. We did not get far upriver because the current became increasingly swiff, and we nicked our propeller blade so badly that it later had to be hammered back into shape. So we returned early and made all snug at camp, for a storm was threatening. After a bad crossing in the storm, Jack and Ken returned safely. “Though our boats may not be designed for ascending swift water, they are safe in a swell and the men were OK. All of the Dago Kid’s outfit were on the beach, expecting them to tip over.” Jack and Ken had been quite far up the river, having walked afterfhey could no longer use the skiff. Their trip was more profitable geologically than archaeologically.

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119

To my great disappointment, the shutter of my camera jammed while we were still in Ruby, and no manipulation that we dared attempt would free it. So Jack would have to take pictures for me in the future; unfortunately he did not have a lot of film, and my film packs could not be used in his camera.

Old Melozi We left Ruby on July 10, after spending the morning in town, mailing letters, boxing specimens, and buying gas. Our first stop was on a low point of land across from Ruby, now called Old Melozi, where old Bill Alfred had lived for twenty years or so. This place is the Melozi, a former telegraph station, mentioned by Schwatka and the 1880 census. It was once on an island when the now-dried-up slough behind it had water. The shore at the point used to be one hundred yards farther out, Alfred told us, but has been rapidly cut back by the river. The Native graves in the fifteen-foot bank are always washing out. Bill Alfred said he pulled one coffin onto the beach. A Na¬ tive came by and he told the fellow that if he did not take care of the coffin he would throw it in the water. “Don’t do that! Hirn’s my brother!” Three weeks later the Native and a companion came back and took the coffin up into the woods, placing it above ground between two trees. This showed how the old idea of dis¬ posal above ground still persisted. But there seemed to be no trace of anything older at this site, for most of it was probably in the river. An Indian had picked up a club head here. It was of stone, worked smooth, and the man had told Alfred that it would have been sewn up in buckskin (for attachment to a handle) and used “for killing people.”

Charley Knox’s Mother-in-Law from Nulato We stopped at Charley Knox’s camp and fox farm on the higher ground below the point of Old Melozi, and talked to his mother-in-law, an elderly Native woman from Nulato, her daughter serving as interpreter. (Unfortunately, I can find no record of her name in any of my surviving notes.) She gave her version of how pottery was made: They would chop out chunks of a slimy blue clay from a place called Swiff Water There, just above a point nine miles below Nulato. They mixed “hell-diver’s” (grebe’s) feathers and fish grease with the clay, kneading it like bread. Then the pot was shaped with the hands from a large lump. The vessel was set near the fire and slowly dried, being greased and turned as it dried. For cook¬ ing, it was set close by the fire and a little place under it was dug out, into which some of the burning coals could be pushed. After each cooking the pot had to be emptied and regreased on the inside. This would account for the charred black incrustation on the inner surface of the pieces we found. Clay pots were used only

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

for cooking, not storage, but birchbark baskets were used for both storage and, when hung two feet above the fire, for cooking. That cooks quicker than a clay pot, the old lady said. The Koyukuk people had their own place to get clay for pots, which they used to sell for $20 apiece. Some of the pots held five gallons or more. In winter the Nulato people made a vertical lampstand by splitting a willow stick four ways, and then setting a pottery lamp in the forks. The lamp burned fish grease or seal grease for light, the seal oil being traded from the Eskimo of the coast. Moss was used for the wick. The lamp might be as big as two hands held together. The old lady’s father and mother had been saved from the 1851 Nulato mas¬ sacre perpetrated by Indians from the Koyukuk River (of which more later, see chap. 8). Her parents probably escaped because their winter camp was across the Yukon and four miles below Nulato. She herself had not yet been born, but her parents already had three children by the time of the massacre. Since a stone lamp with a carved human figure in the bowl (now in a private collection) was reputedly found near Kaltag, or in the Kaiyuh region east of her parents’ winter camp, I asked about this. The Indians here never had stone lamps, I was told, and the old lady had never heard of one with a figure carved in the bowl. She also described a bib of dentalium shells and beads that was attached to the neckband of a garment she used to wear. There were four strands, each with four dentalia separated by beads, that reached to the middle of the breast and ended with a tassel of wolverine fur. She also had earrings of dentalium. The old lady told us that she was a Caribou person, and so were her mother, and her father] “Some people used to marry outside (the clan), but they could marry inside,” she explained in extenuation. This shows the system breaking down. The other “families” or matrilineal clans were the Nultsina or Black Bear People, and the Middle of the River People or Brown Bear People. There were just these three “families” at Nulato and also among the Koyukuks. Membership was inherited from the mother. When someone died, all the family got together to give a potlatch. They gave presents to those who buried the dead or supplied the clothes. The potlatch hosts were not all of the same clan, but were members of the deceased’s family (in our sense), including sons, daughters, brothers, husband or wife, and so on. They would put aside the dead person’s things until the potlatch, and then give them all away, each guest taking what he or she wanted. The guests would give back the equivalent of what they had received when it was their turn to potlatch. The old lady was still going strong, but we finally tore ourselves away, leaving about four forty-five in the afternoon. *

THE MIDDLE YUKON! RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

121

OLD LOUDEN TO BISHOP ROCK

Fish Camps '‘Since then we have come down the river,” I wrote from our skiff, July 10. “There is a light breeze, occasionally throwing a little spray over the hoods of the boats, but not enough to bother us. This dies away to a dead calm, only to start up again. We are running parallel to the north bank. This is made up of rocky hills, in some places plunging in crumbling cliffs into the water, in others rolling down in rounded knolls. Across the river are the same old flats and low silt banks, covered with tundra, or with spruce, cottonwood, and willow—all full of mos¬ quitoes. The north bank is rather bare in spots due to forest fires, some evidently as recent as this year for the birch leaves are red and brown but still hanging on the trees. [Below the north bank] there is a rocky beach, with loads of good places to camp. At the mouth of almost every ravine there is a fish camp (white or Native) with a fish wheel or two on the nearby points. “At the fish camps you can see a dock of sorts, usually a raff tied close to shore, with a canvas awning. Under this is a table where the salmon are cut, and nearby a rack on which the cut fish are hung. Then on the beach just in back is a big kettle made of a fifty-gallon gas drum in which the fish heads are cooking for dog feed. The dogs are tied along the beach, each to a stout post three feet high, by four to six feet of chain. The grass is all worn off around the posts and the ground is pit¬ ted where the dogs have dug holes to escape the mosquitoes. Near the dock are more rocks on which salmon are drying in the sun. In back is a big high build¬ ing—seemingly two stories high, but open inside, really just a roof and walls of flimsy canvas or birchbark—in which the fish are smoked. Salmon for dogs are chopped in two down the middle; the backbone is removed and cooked with the heads for their present feed. The two halves of the fish are scored on the inner side by cuts about an inch or two apart to hasten drying. They are not dipped in brine [as are the salmon intended for human consumption], but are just hung in the sun and later in the smokehouse. The result is that millions of big horse- or deer-flies (blowflies) have a chance at them. The salmon for people is cut into thin boneless strips, soaked in brine for twenty minutes, then hung out¬ doors for a short time, and then mildly smoked inside. No flies get on it. (I sus¬ pect that this method of cutting the fish into thin strips and soaking it in brine is the white man’s way, even though Indians have adopted it.) The dried fish are baled in bundles of forty and kept in the cache. “At the fish camps there will be several tents, probably a log cabin, and a cache or two. These last are little log cabins set on posts about six feet high, and reached by a ladder. The posts are covered near the top for a distance of about a foot by tin

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

6.4. Native fish camp near Kalland, July 1. Note skiff, dock with cutting table for fish, dry¬ ing racks for fish behind dock, smokehouse, large log cache, log cabin, and tent (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-84)

(usually the flattened sides of old cans nailed on) so that rodents can’t climb up.” The essential feature of the Yukon fish camp was, of course, the fish wheel, a device like a water-powered, automatic dip net, which was introduced about 1905 or 1906, “as an incident of the stampede [for gold] to Fairbanks,” according to Bishop Stuck (1917:113), because so many dried fish were needed for dog feed. From here, it was adapted by the Indians wherever it could be used advanta¬ geously, that is, in muddy or silty rivers with a strong current. In clear water, how¬ ever, the fish can see it and avoid it. The fish wheel is a raft, or rather the frame of a raft, supporting at water level the axle of a four-armed wheel which rotates in the open space within the frame. Two opposing arms, or spokes of the wheel, are great scoops of chicken-wire stretched between poles; near the bottom of each dipping arm a slanting gutter shunts the catch into a deep wooden holding box. The other pair of arms have a

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123

6.5. A fish wheel on the Yukon, above Nulato, July 27 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-155)

plank or two across their ends, converting them to paddles against which the river current pushes to rotate the wheel. A narrow walkway, often no more than a log or two, leads from the shore to the raft. Stout ropes fastened to trees or stakes hold raft and wheel in place. Once set at a good location, the fish wheel can be left to turn endlessly, day and night scooping up the salmon which are pushing their way upstream close inshore against the current. From time to time as the river level changes, the raft may need to be moved, or the arms must be freed from entan¬ gling driftwood. A pole thrust across the raft stops the wheel when necessary. Only twelve years after the fish wheel appeared at Fairbanks, Stuck (1917:113) noted: “Occasionally an Indian in a birch-bark canoe may be seen in midstream, fishing in the old way, scooping up with a dip-net the salmon who betrays his presence beneath by a ripple on the surface, but the fish-wheel has almost entirely superseded the more primitive method.” The dip net was still being used in 1935 for fishing in the quiet sloughs or clear tributaries, as was the set gill net. The latter, made with mesh gauge and netting needle, though antedating the fish wheel, may also have been adopted by the Koyukon from the whites, as it was by the Kutchin.

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

6.6. An Indian cache on the lower Yukon, 1883 (Schwatka 1893:289)

Old Louden We camped, July 10, on a gravel beach at a point below Old Louden, now deserted except for one white man, Edgar Nollmer. He told us that the former telegraph station, or “New Louden,” had been above the point. We were camped only a half mile from an “old” village site, but did not discover that until the next day. On the high bench behind us were a number of Indian graves. As we were to learn later, there had been several sites called “Louden” or “Lowden,” the name a corruption from the Native designation for a location on the south bank of the river, Tsaxadalodin (Jette: TsaRadal’oten, “Where the River Bends Toward”). In addition to New Louden above the point, there were three former Native settlements, all called Old Louden, and all apparently inhabited at about the same time. Going downstream these Old Loudens were: (a) at the end of the point, called Nose Paint Place (Xamenchishdin), apparently the most important of the three; (b) on the south bank of the Yukon at Tsaxadalodin, al¬ though the names for these two places are often interchanged; and (c) the bestknown Old Louden, about a half-mile below the point at Naxadotitldin (Jette: NaRaRoditilten, or The Bluff Comes Down to Nothing), rendered in English as “Know How to Tilt ’Em.” This was where we were camped.

*

“This was by far the pleasantest place we have had for a camp. The river came around the point and we could not see up or down it. There was an island across

THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

125

from us, so that the river seemed quite narrow and gave the effect of a private lake. There were very few mosquitoes. We got camp up by ten-thirty that night and did a very neat job. Ken got supper for all of us. It was so lovely that we had a fire on the beach and sat by it for a little while after supper and the mosquitoes did not bother us. It was rather chilly, which itself was very pleasant. “We slept quite late the next morning, July 11. Sandy got breakfast, while I had a swim in the river, there being slack water just off our point. The Yukon is not cold, at least not close to shore. It is warmer than lakes in Maine, and much warmer than the ocean off Maine.” After breakfast Sandy and Ken broke camp, while Jack and I walked up the beach below the graveyard. At one place the bank had sloughed off and carried two graves with it onto the beach. The bones looked quite fresh. In the fallen dirt near them I found several glass beads (white, red, and dark blue), three dentalium shells (from someone’s necklace or bandoleer), a flint blade, and an iron knife with carved wooden handle, much decayed. Farther along the beach I saw traces of midden in the bank, that is, reddish brown soil that had been baked by fire or colored by garbage. There were also some animal bones in it, but I was unable to discover how old it was. Jack took some photographs for me of the graves on top of the bank. They were marked by little houses painted white or yellow, with a cross at one end, and were in two styles: One had a pyramidal roof that sloped up from all sides, with a flat circular wooden plate at the apex, but lacked a window. The other style of house had a gable roof and a glass window that opened, but there was nothing inside. I had put our new mosquito mixture on my hands and face, and this kept the bugs off for an hour, so I was able to work in comfort at the graves, taking notes. Perhaps this was the site of Old Louden “Nose Paint Place.” The discolored soil in the bank was too close to the graves to permit us to excavate.

Captain Jacobsen at Old Louden, 1882 In contrast to our pleasant experience, Captain Jacobsen, in 1882, had a most unpleasant adventure at Xamenchishdin, or Nose Paint Place. He had reached what he called “Kommensita” in the evening of a sunny day on his way down river, but did not find any ethnological specimens to buy (Jacobsen 1977:104): Here the Indians attacked us and threw away the wood we had just col¬ lected for cooking a meal on the shore. Our interpreter became very much alarmed and was sure we would be robbed of our possessions, which were very important to me. It was possible that their overbearing character might drive them to the extreme of murdering us and taking our goods, since they did not live in fear of revenge from the gunboats like those on Vancouver

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126

6.7. Cemetery at Old Louden, July 11. Note old-style grave houses with pyramidal roofs; cross on left with painted spots; cross on right with cross-arms ending in five-fingered hands, top with crown(?). No inscription on plank on the roof (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 35035031)

Island. They evidently wanted to commit this deed under the cover of dark¬ ness, so they followed us in half a dozen canoes. Petka [or Peetka, son of Ivan, the former Koyukuk interpreter who is alleged to have murdered the manager of the Nulato post in 1851] steered us into a side stream where we camped in protective darkness and in rainstorms. We left the next morn¬ ing without being followed, passed an Indian village about noon, and several hours later came to the mouth of the Kujikuk [Koyukuk] River. Near Old Louden, Jacobsen (1977:106) blundered into a house, looking for ethnological specimens he might buy, only to find instead a funeral in progress. [There was] a motionless, stiff man seated in the middle of the room surrounded with food carried in and out by women. The sight was so realistic that I approached it very closely before I saw that the entire back * of the head was a great bloody wound. The poor man had been killed by a grizzly bear which he came upon quite unexpectedly while he was in a

THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

127

canoe. He tried to shoot him with buckshot, and when he missed[,] the bear upset the canoe with one stroke of his paw and killed the man with another. Another Indian then came along, killed the bear, and picked up his friend, who died in his arms. It was told me as a great curiosity that the head of the bear was almost white.

Whereas we did not see any pre-Christian graves, only interments under a grave house or within a fenced area, Jacobsen (1977:104) reported: “On the up¬ per Yukon between Nuklukayet and Nulato I saw some grave boxes at burial sites that were partially set into the ground and the lids covered with piles of wood. At the burial sites one sees weapons and fishing gear on the mens graves and on the women’s household utensils and clothing.”

Big Williams’s Camp We came down river a few miles to a Native camp across from a high sandbank (two hundred or more feet high). Our geologists went over there while Sandy and I talked to the Indians. They were unusually pleasant and friendly, especially “Big Williams,” and gave us quite a bit of information, including the news that we had just passed the old site. (That was the place where we had noted the discol¬ ored soil, but that I had judged too close to the graves for digging.) Here, how¬ ever, we did see a grave marked by a little house of birchbark, shaped like a tent with the roof reaching the ground on both sides, the ends closed with bark except for a small “door.” We were told that small personal articles, like knives, used to be put inside for the dead, but that these were now replaced by tobacco and food. Other belongings of the deceased were given away, “potlatched” at the feast for the dead. Big Williams explained that here the “families” or clans were the Caribou People, who were, “high up” (wealthy, high class), and associated with the north side; the Noltsina or Black Bear People, who were “people of the other, or poor man’s side”; and the Middle People, who were Fish People, their name derived from nulaRa, or “dog salmon.” The “middle” clan was so called because they could marry either of the others, Big Williams explained. (I suspect they were people who had come from another area—or their descendants—and who were not yet assimilated into the local dual division.) Johnny Antoski, whom he pointed out as an example, was a Fish man married to a Caribou woman. Down the Yukon (below Blackburn) the Ingalik Indians didn’t have exogamous clans, Wil¬ liams said. From way up the Yukon, from the head of the Porcupine River, he told us, came the wild people, wild men who lived alone in the woods and came down the river to eat bad children. I believe these were the bogey men, usually called “Bush

128

THE MIDDLE YUKON! RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

Indians,” although Williams may have confused them with the Kutchin, for it was always the unknown, distant tribes who were said to be cannibals. We were also told the story of the wild woman of Kateel (see chap. 7; and Jette’s version, 1908—09:315-20, “The Bugbear”). She went into the woods during star¬ vation time. “This was a hundred years ago. Such wild people are hairy, with long nails, but not long teeth. They don’t eat people. They have slant eyes.” Clay, like white sand, was found near Old Louden, and pots were made from it, in “the same way as the Eskimo make theirs.” Blood was put on the pot while it was drying. Old Louden was abandoned early in this century, when the people moved two miles upstream to New Louden, the former telegraph station above the point. New Louden, in turn, was abandoned in 1920 when the inhabitants moved to Galena. It would seem that the English name of a settlement would be taken along when people moved from one locality to another, or would be given to several adjacent villages or camps occupied seasonally by the same people.

The Cave-Off Cliffs Meanwhile, across the river we could see Jack and Ken climbing along the face of the cliff. It looked terribly dangerous. “Gee, those fellows climb just like cari¬ bou!” said one of the Indians. The place was called the Cave-Off Cliffs because of a disaster that occurred when the face of the cliff fell off into the water, and the re¬ sulting waves washed out a Native camp one-half mile away, across the river. The inhabitants had to seek refuge in the woods. We joined the boys at the cliff after an hour and found them enthusiastic over the geology. The south bank here was made up of Pleistocene deposits, black frozen muck at the top and bottom, and frozen, sandy silt in between. The river was undercutting the bank, and the face of the cliff was thawing, which is why it had been caving off. I later discovered that we had passed by some possible sites on the south bank of the river, if indeed they had not already been washed away. Opposite the point of Old Louden, and upstream from it, the village of Tlyalilkakat was, in 1843, the last permanent settlement of the Koyukon one would pass in going up the Yukon, according to Zagoskin (1967:166). Above this point, the Natives were said to be scattered through the interior and to come to the Yukon only to fish— or to trade. On the Yukon, a little above this place (near the mouth of the Yuko River), the Russian explorer and his Native guides came upon a group of Natives, Holikachuk from the upper Innoko, fast asleep under deerskin blankets. They were terrified when awakened by shouts, but began to laugh when reassured^iy the interpreter that “the Russian chief had come to give presents to those who would sell beavers to his countrymen” (Zagoskin 1967:168).

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6.8. Cave-Off Cliffs, opposite Louden, Yukon River, July 11 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-125)

Galena We went on past the Cave-Off Cliffs to Galena, a low point of land with a num¬ ber of Native houses, a church, and a school. Although it became the largest settlement on the middle Yukon after World War II, in 1935 we found it deserted for the summer, all the families being in fish camps, except for one Indian, a for¬ mer steamboat pilot, who had preceded us to town. He had come down from his camp while we were at the silt cliffs, and he gave me a mammoth tooth which he had found on a sandbar below Galena. He said: “Priest told me them old big animals got drowned. Was time of high water. One fellow, he built big boat to hold all the animals—brown bear, black bear, caribou, moose. But them big animals [mammoth] wouldn’t go in. The boat was big enough for them, but they thought they swim. But they got drowned. If they go in the boat, priest say we be hunting them now!” He recognized the mam¬ moth device on our pennants as a picture of one of them. He also said that the Natives don’t use “north” and “south,” but give directions as “up” or “down” the river, and count the number of bends. We found this a very *

good way to specify a place on the river bank. Thus Galena was one full bend be¬ low Old Louden. He spoke also of hunting, remarking that a fellow had to kill

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THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

four or five brown bears before he could get married. (This was an obvious exag¬ geration.) They used to throw the bones of beaver and muskrat back into the river, “to make new animals” (i.e., to be reincarnated). They never gave bear bones to dogs. If they did, they would never get any more bears. Young girls couldn’t eat bear meat till they married. When a girl was adolescent she couldn’t eat any fresh meat or fish—only dry meat and fish. Girls were shut up in the big house for a year. Young boys had to get up early and cut wood for the fire. The same language (Koyukon) is spoken from somewhere above Anvik on the lower Yukon to Kokrines, we were told. The designations, “Upriver People” (Yuna

xot’a na) and “Downriver People” (Yudo xot’a na), were common.

Bishop Rock We went on down to Bishop Rock (or Bishop Mountain), a big hill on the north side of the Yukon, eighteen miles from the mouth of the Koyukuk River. It was so named (Stuck 1917:164; Orth 1967:138) because the Roman Catholic Arch¬ bishop Seagher was murdered here in 1885 by one of his lay helpers, a part-Indian who was probably insane. The Jesuit Fathers from Nulato raised a memorial cross on the hill, but we did not see it. There were reported to be some “old places” at the foot of the rock, and between it and the mouth of the Koyukuk River. We were now within the country of the Koyukuk River Koyukon, although I cannot fix the fluid upstream boundary. The Natives say that Bishop Rock was once a giant’s knapsack, and the corre¬ sponding mountain on the south side of the river is the giant himself. (The moun¬ tain was identified by Michael [in Zagoskin 1967:164 note] as Pilot Mountain.) Jette recorded the myth concerning this rock in his “Ethnographic Dictionary”:

YelkoR—a legendary giant, who came from the south, where he was starving, according to tradition, followed by his wife. Before reaching the Yukon, however, they fell down, exhausted, and their remains are still to be seen in the shape of mountains. The wife is Rone’uye, of the Kayar Range; the giant himself is NodaROS, a little further to the east. In his fall, the pack which he carried on his shoulders tumbled over to the north bank of the Yukon, where it constituted the small hill called Yesetla. The bluff point, also on the north bank, at 5 miles above Nulato, called YelkoR-tlala, or “Yelkor’s flint,” must also be a relic of that memorable event, but no distinct tradition concerning it could be obtained. *

Big Williams at Louden had said the bluff point was the woman’s bone awl that fell out of her sack, but he did not mention her husband.

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131

6.9. The Yukon flowing around Bishop Rock (the bluff point at end of the ridge in center back), looking upstream from the air. Yukon Island at mouth of Koyukuk on left; Yukon entering from right. In foreground, former channels of the Yukon, September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-294)

Sites Near the Rock Bishop Rock is five hundred feet high, and the current rushes up to it and past it with a terrible force. We had been warned to keep to the southern shore of the river but were unable to do so. The motor on our skiff would not start, so the geol¬ ogists were towing the DellySand. They did not have enough power, and we were swept into the eddy, but our boats were so steady that we were not in danger. We landed on a low island just across from the rock, only a few hundred feet above a fish camp where three young men were putting up fish. They went over to their wheel and brought us back a king salmon, half of which I fried for sup¬ per. The rest I boiled for lunch the next day, not realizing that boiled fish would not be appreciated by the geologists from Utah. I again had a swim in the river before breakfast, July 12. After breaking camp t we went across to the little flat below Bishop Rock, looking for the reported sites. There was once an old place there, “Under the Mountain,” we had been told, but

132

THE MIDDLE YUKON: RUBY TO BISHOP ROCK

the bank had sloughed off so much that nothing was left. I tramped all over the area, walking almost a mile down the shore through the timber, and found only the remains of a modem semi-subterranean house, built of timbers that showed the cuts of a steel axe. Nearby were a number of dog holes on each side of a wooden rack or frame. The latter certainly looked like a bedstead and could have been quite comfortable with a mattress of spruce tips. I don’t know its function. Still farther along was a house pit, associated with tin cans. The roof had fallen in. The pit seemed to be about six by four feet, and two and a half feet deep. It was probably much larger and deeper originally. The entrance passage was three feet long, steeply inclined, and only two feet wide. The roof was of bark, spread out on beams and held down by poles. The Indians told us that it had probably been an underground cache in which fish eggs were stored and allowed to ferment. Nearby were the remains of what I took to be another underground cache, and two “dog barns,” crude shelters made of logs forming individual cubicles in which the sled dogs could be stabled in the bitter cold, an arrangement introduced by the whites, since the Natives in pre-Contact times did not have dog sleds and let their dogs run free to make their own shelters. (At Koyukuk Station this site was identified as a mail halt, with a cabin for the mail carrier and dog barns for his team.) We also found an old fish trap, made of thin wooden slats fastened by a twining technique of willow withes, and shaped like a big wickerwork funnel, four feet long. We took a piece of it to show the workmanship; the rest had rotted. At Tokchakat (“End of the Slough,” referring to a slough that ran from about one half mile above the mouth of the Koyukuk to the Yukon) we saw two very neatly made elevated platform caches which would have held edibles well above the reach of dogs. Each consisted of a triangular shelf at the top of three upright posts, about five feet high and set six feet apart. Below one was a collection of stretchers for furs, and the remains of a sled, the parts tied together by thongs. A ramshackle cabin was about two hundred feet to the east. “lack went back in the woods and met a bear. The bear stood up and looked at him. Jack did not wait to see which way the bear went!”

* *4

7

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE KOYUKUK At Bishop Rock, we were well within the territory of the Koyukuk River Koyukons, or Yunnaka-khotana, as Zagoskin termed them (1967:243), for they had settlements on the Yukon near the mouth of the Koyukuk, as well as on that tribu¬ tary. Almost before we knew it, we had passed the mouth of the river, which is ob¬ scured by a large island, Yukon Island. The Koyukuk is called K’oytf’otsena, from k’oytl’ox (willow), the Natives told us, and the Koyukuks are the K’oytf’otsen Xot’ana (People of the Willow River Country). The Koyukuk is a somewhat clearer stream than the Yukon, but still rather coffee-colored. On the west bank of it and of the Yukon are high bluffs of lava, like the Palisades along the Hudson River, but here the lava is tilted on its side.

Koyukuk Station We ran down to Koyukuk Station, a village of 143 people, eight miles below the mouth of the Koyukuk River, arriving at about five in the afternoon. All the vil¬ lage seemed to be on the bank to see us come, and we were given a warm welome by both Natives and whites. I met the schoolteachers husband, George Betties, the man who established the town of Betties on the Koyukuk River. (For a simi¬ lar settlement, see Marshall 1933.) He also founded Koyukuk Station, to which the Natives moved from the lower Koyukuk. He introduced me to Ella Vernetti, the wife of one of the two traders here. She was the granddaughter of a shaman from Dulbi River, an eastern tributary of the Koyukuk. Her uncle, Andrew Pilot, was a shaman, too, the son of a prominent “chief” or leader, who had been a Native trader at the mouth of the Dulbi. Andrew Pilot was about sixty years old in 1935, and was married to his third wife, a young woman from Cutoff on the upper Koyukuk. Ella Vernetti proved to be most helpful—charming, intelligent, sym¬ pathetic, and well-educated in English, yet able to speak her own Native language, M3

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THE KOYUKUK RIVER

7.1. Ella Vernetti and her daughters in winter furs (Eskimo style), Koyukuk Station, July 24 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-141)

and interested in her own culture. She introduced us to the chief, Peter Claver (named for the patron saint of the Catholic mission at Nulato), and to Johnny Dayton, a man about thirty-five years old. The latter’s mother came from Kateel and his father from twenty miles farther up the Koyukuk River. The Natives seemed to understand the purpose of our mission and to be very willing to help. The people in town wanted us to camp there, but instead we chose to run back up the river for about four miles. We set up a dandy camp on a narrow shelf just below the cliffy bank— an ideal spot, practically no mosquitoes! There we planned to stay a week and put in some concentrated work. Andrew Pilot, the shaman, was staying at the fish camp about a half mile above us.

Ethnographic Information Our first day Sandy and I went to town and talked all morning with the Indi¬ ans, getting the names of places and villages. They seemed to have a sense of his¬ torical tradition, of how old an “old place” had to be to excite me. A whole butich got together and went into a huddle over each place name, so I felt we were get-

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

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ting the correct version. With their help, I was able to identify most of the villages above Nulato that Captain Jacobsen had visited in 1882. After the morning in town, we took Ella Vernetti back to our camp for lunch, and then went with her up to her uncle’s camp. Andrew Pilot told us about the construction of the old-time houses and made me a fire-drill. I became very tired from writing down so many Native words. Sandy and I argue that either Koyukuk Athabaskan is easier than Eyak (a language we had encountered at Cordova in 1933)> or we are getting pretty good, for we seemed to be able to get the words all

right.” Vain thoughts! We had noticed that the initial sounds M and B seemed to replace each other in the speech of the various groups we had encountered. Thus the common word for “lake” was pronounced men at Nenana; a man at Kokrines said ben when his wife said men; and we heard both Melozi and Belozi for the river. Andrew Pilot said baby for “maybe,” because there was no M in his dialect. Johnny Dalton said that Andrew Pilot spoke in the “upriver language” of Dulbi, which was different from the dialect of the people at Koyukuk Station. Andrew Pilot, as interpreted by Ella Vernetti, had this to say about Native pot¬ tery, a variant on what we’d heard in Charley Knox’s camp: “Natives came here to the mouth of the Koyukuk to get clay. They came from the Tanana River, the upper Yukon, the lower Yukon, and the Koyukuk. They camped on the flats at Tokchakat [a slough at the mouth of the Koyukuk], hundreds of them, thick as mosquitoes. They would get a gob of clay and mix it with hell-diver feathers and a little whale or seal oil. The oil came from the coast over the Unalakleet portage, or over the trail from Kotzebue Sound to the head of the Kateel River. They made a mold of birchbark and laid it upside down, then spread the clay mixture over it, and patted it down. Then they left it in the sun for five days and it turned as hard as stone. The pots were easily broken and were always carried in skin cases. When used for cooking they were placed on the ground in the middle of the fire, and coals were heaped around them. They were always greased on the inside after be¬ ing used.” We found no evidence on any potsherd that a bark form had been used to shape a pot, and no other Native mentioned one, or that a skin bag was used for carry¬ ing pots, though the latter was probable. (Did Ella misunderstand the old man’s mention of birchbark?) Rather, pots were formed in a way I have called “patchmodeling”: building up the sides from the flat, circular bottom with patches of clay, shaped with the fingers, and smoothed into place by beating with a paddle. Osgood, who made intensive studies among the Ingalik Indians at Anvik, wrote a detailed account of pottery making (1940:146-49; see also de Laguna 1947:140-49).

136

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

Strong Headwinds and the Young Girl’s Cave The strong south wind that blew up the Yukon prevented us for two days from going down around the rocky bluff to get to town. During that time, George Storres, an Irishman who had been trapping for some years on the Huslia River (a tributary of the Koyukuk), and his summer fishing partner, an Indian named Larson Charley, arrived at Andrew Pilot’s camp with a fish wheel. They came up at night when the wind had dropped, but could not get the wheel in position for a couple of days. Larson Charley told us a Raven story (Tales, Tale 25). Charley was about forty years old and had been born at Old Louden. He had previously been married to a woman from Cutoff Village on the Koyukuk and had lived there with her for several years. To quote from a letter home: “On the cliff upstream from Andrew Pilot’s camp is a cave close to the water, in which there is a rock that looks like a shrouded fig¬ ure kneeling and looking up toward the back of the cave. This was said to be an adolescent girl who had turned to stone for some breach of taboo during her puberty seclusion. The stones around her are the sacks (of clothes?) she had with her. The cave is called ‘Young Girl’s House.’ The rules for puberty seclusion are pretty strict. For example, a man is not supposed to talk to a young girl, and she mustn’t look at a man when he leaves to hunt or when he returns, we were told.” Of course we had to visit the cave, and I had great expectations of what we might find there, so we emptied one skiff of its load and fairly flew upriver. Alas, we investigated the floor of the cave and found only fish scales to a depth of three feet, but nothing more. In the far end of the cave we heard animals moving about, which suggested that foxes might have been responsible for the fish remains. We made a fire in the cave to give us light, but we were smoked out, since there was a strong draft coming from the upper end of the cave. We found nothing to indi¬ cate that it had ever been used by people. While we were exploring the cave, the southeast wind had risen, and we were afraid to head into the waves it was throwing up. The only way to get back to camp, Eardley said, was to leave the skiff behind and walk back through the woods on the top of the plateau above the bluffs. I would have preferred to wait until the wind dropped, because I did not see how we could find our way back. It was quite a climb to the top of the plateau, and we were attended by plenty of mosquitoes in the woods. After we had hiked for some little time, Jack announced that we were above our camp and should turn down the hill, even though we could not see the tents below the bulge of the steep hillside. I knew that if we came down in the wrong place we should have to climb up again—if we could, ffwas absolutely amazed, but Jack had hit exactly the right place! When asked how he had done it, he said he had counted his paces (even when scrambling over fallen

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

137

trees!), which he was trained to do automatically as a geologist, and had matched that distance against his estimate based on the chart. To us, this seemed like magic. This same strong south wind, usually accompanying rain and cold weather, was to blow often on the rest of our journey down the Yukon. Before we left Koyukuk Station, however, we made a trip of ninety miles up the Koyukuk River.

A TRIP UP THE KOYUKUK

To Kateel Johnny Dayton, whom we met in town, told us about a fort he had found that spring some ninety miles up the Koyukuk, opposite the mouth of the Kateel. This fort was an above-ground log building, connected by a tunnel to a semi¬ subterranean structure, not a house, but a kashim, or meeting house. Johnny’s fa¬ ther had told him about it, and, from various clues, we judged the fort to be about ninety years old, that is, established after Zagoskin’s journey to Kateel in 1843. But the village and kashim were older, since the Russian explorer reported a kashim, three winter houses, and sixty-five inhabitants at the time of his visit. There he learned that the Eskimo used to come to Kateel every year to trade, and that the kashim was built especially for them, since the Indians were “not accustomed to taking steam baths” (Zagoskin 1967:152). We thought the chance to study the structure of such a building was too good to miss, so we decided to go, hiring Johnny as our guide. He said he knew of several other places where we might “find something.” The trip up the Koyukuk River to the mouth of the Kateel took two days, July 18 and 19, during which time it rained or drizzled a good deal. “The river is a charm¬ ing stream—all bends—and smaller than the Schuylkill.” Among the places that we passed and which Johnny Dayton named for us were KetlRoteyit (Jette), or “Central Place for Ducks that Can’t Fly in Summer” (“Molting Ducks” for short), “Rotten Wood Place,” “A Long Patch of Willows Comes Out There,” “Animal River” (Zagoskin: Kalyalyakhtna) or Gisasa River on the map, and “Place Where Fish Run Out All the Time.” Most of these were said to be sites of former villages or camps. Johnny Dayton was in our skiff, and Sandy and I took turns asking him questions. He gave us information on the annual cycle and on the clothing of the old days (see Tales, pp. 28 - 45), but I’m afraid we wore him out with our questions. The first night, we camped on a gravel beach where we found a mammoth tooth that may have washed out of a high silt bluff upstream. This was at “A Long Patch of Willows,” a site said to have been used both in summer and winter, ac¬ cording to Johnny Dayton. We failed, however, to discover any signs of early occupation, but the bank was sloughing off so rapidly that anything old would have been washed away.

138

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

On the beach I found stones with holes in them which I thought at first might be beads, but they proved to be concretions with natural holes. There was also a lump of red paint, made by baking silt to bring out the color of the iron oxide. Johnny said that snowshoes were colored reddish: they were first painted with oil, and, when that was dry, a lump of red ochre dampened in water was rubbed over them. I also found a flat oval stone, notched at the sides and at the ends, which probably had been used as a net weight. Johnny also said that the people used to make nets (seines) of willow-bark rope, weighted at intervals with notched or grooved stones. Such stones were as long as his hand and about two fingers in di¬ ameter, with a groove around each end, cut with a sharp hard stone, used as a saw. He also reported that they formerly used naturally hollow stones as lamps, in ad¬ dition to the round clay saucer lamps, and that such stone lamps might be worked to improve the shape. That evening, Johnny Dayton talked about hunting: When a brown bear (griz¬ zly) had been killed in its den, the hunters never let young children come close “because they were too young” (to be exposed to the dangerous emanations from the animal?). The hunters would be telling bear stories all night—“fairy tales”— for the benefit of the dead bear. They used to throw something nice into his hole —food—while they told him to “take it easy” and not to “come out all at once.” After the killing, when they returned home, “they don’t say anything about it in front of young girls. Bears don’t like young girls, so they mustn’t talk about killing bears where young girls can hear.” After passing several pleasant places where there had formerly been both win¬ ter and summer houses, we came to Kateel late in the evening of the following day. We heard the name as Kateelkagat (Jette: Kodilkakat, anlc: Kodeelkakkat) and the river as Kateelna (Jette: Kodilno). This village at the mouth of the Kateel River is “a place of foremost importance in the traditions of the Koyukuk Indi¬ ans, and generally referred to as a sort of happy land, the place of great hunts and of warlike people” (Jette 1908-9:319). Johnny Dayton called the Kateel “the lucki¬ est river” because it was such a good place for hunting. Johnny had his winter trapping cabin on the west side of the Koyukuk at the mouth of the Kateel, and we stopped there while he picked up his tent. He had quite a nice place, with five sleds and dog barns for twenty-eight dogs. He showed us some winter fur clothes that his wife had made—they were pretty fine. I ar¬ ranged to trade enough cloth for a dress in exchange for an old parka of his wife’s, since my friend, Dr. Kaj Birket-Smith, wanted a Koyukon woman’s winter frock for the Danish National Museum. As I noted: “Since these Indian men and women now [1935] wear parkas made by or copied from the Eskimo, Birket-Smith may be disappointed, but I doubt if a garment of the aboriginal Indian cut can now be obtained.” There was formerly a trading post on the west side of the Koyukuk, just below

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

139

the mouth of the Kateel River, said to be Russian. But, at Dulbi, where Andrew Pilot’s father once ran what was called a trading post, I think the trader at Kateel was also a Native, handling goods (on commission?), probably from his own house. The place was abandoned long ago, although the ruined buildings could still be seen as late as about 1895,1 was told.

The Site at Kateel Our village site was on the east (left) bank of the Koyukuk River, opposite a former mouth of the Kateel, but one and a half miles above the mouth (in 1935), on a twenty-foot-high ridge about a quarter-mile inland from the riverbank. The fort and five house pits were on the same narrow ridge, as was the supposed “meeting house,” the entrance tunnel to which led from the fort. The latter was a log building, entirely above ground. Both it and the meeting house had been made of wood shaped by a steel ax. These buildings illustrate the ambivalent feelings of the Koyukuks toward the Inupiaq Eskimo, who used to ascend the rivers at the heads of Kotzebue and Nor¬ ton Sounds, cross the low passes to the headwaters of the Kateel, and descend that stream to the Koyukuk. The meeting house was copied after the Eskimo kashim, which served multiple uses as a dance hall where ceremonies were held, as a work¬ shop for adult men where the latter took sweat baths and might sleep, and also as a guest house for visitors who came to join in the local festivities or to trade. I do not know if the Kateel meeting house fulfilled all these functions. Since the Es¬ kimo did not always come as friendly visitors, however, the fort provided protec¬ tion against an Eskimo raid. In the woods near the site, I sketched a tree that had been reduced to a stump by the successive splitting out of chunks of wood, as someone would hack at, or “beaver,” a tree if he were unable to cut it down properly. This reminded me of Zagoskin’s (1967:153) observation at Kateel that “the natives have as yet no skill with our 6-pound axes, and for this reason seldom make use of heavy timber.” The house pits all seemed to be about the same size, excavated to depths of two to three feet below the surface of the ground, with the earth from the pit piled around the walls to a height of three or even five feet. Birch trees up to six inches in diameter were growing in the house pits or in the entrance passages. As far as we could tell, at least one of the houses had had a pyramidal roof with the sup¬ porting beams running from the smokehole frame in the center down to the side walls. The “meeting house” was of similar design, except that the logs were much larger (ten to twelve inches in diameter instead of six or eight inches). As in the houses, the entrance tunnel was set in one of the longer walls, and was just wide enough to squeeze through. The fort was built of horizontally laid logs, probably dovetailed, and the ends

Smoke Hole

House 4 Kateel, Reconstruction and Plan

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

141

of the logs were roughly shaped. The doorway (?) was a rectangular hole, one or two feet above the ground level, eighteen inches high and twenty inches wide, cut through the wall, which still stood some four feet high. There were no traces of wood for either floor or roof, so it is likely that the floor was of earth and that the fort was an unroofed palisade. The structure, in fact, may have been simply a fortified entryway to the kashim. The “meeting house” was certainly large enough to shelter all the inhabitants of the village, and if the walls of the palisade were slotted for shooting, like the fort built on the upper Khotol River (see chap. 9, p. 210), this would have protected the entrance passage, a vulnerable area. There were also a number of pits scattered through the site which may have been used as caches. We spent a day and a halt digging and obtained a number of interesting speci¬ mens, illustrating the Native culture at the time of early contact with the whites. These included several fragments of birchbark baskets and canoes, the wooden trigger for an automatic bow (introduced from Siberia), a bone arrowhead, bone wedge, bone awl, bone comb, pieces of Native pottery, and some glass beads. So far we had been lucky in that our finds represented little duplication of types; but it was disappointing not to get anything older. While we were breaking camp and loading the skiffs, Johnny Dayton was put¬ ting our empty tin cans on the ends of some willows. This was not done to clean up the site, but, as he explained, the cans would attract the curious foxes, and he proposed to set some traps nearby in the fall. We left the Kateel site at twelve-thirty in the afternoon of July 21 and did not reach our own camp until midnight. The geologists’ skiff usually ran a bit slower than ours, but they passed us while Sandy was changing spark plugs. Not seeing us, they assumed we were ahead. We hurried, but did not arrive in camp until fifteen minutes after them. By then, they had become alarmed for our safety and nearly fell on our necks with relief when we landed. Then George Storres and Lar¬ son Charley showed up, and we all ate a dinner made by emptying all of our spare cans into one pot, after which they took Johnny back to Koyukuk Station while we collapsed into bed.

EARLY EXPLORATIONS AND STORIES OF THE KOYUKUK Zagoskins Trip to Kateel, 1843 In February and March of 1843, Zagoskin explored the Koyukuk River as far as Kateel, beyond which he was unable to go because of deteriorating snow condi¬ tions and an injury to his eye. Five small Native sleds, each pulled by one man and two dogs, carried various small items to trade and the supplies for the party of six. Zagoskin himself does not seem to have pulled, but he broke trail and helped

142

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

when necessary. Their interpreter was the Lower Koyukon boy known as Tatlek. Near the mouth of the Koyukuk they met a young man who persuaded the party to go by way of his settlement, Tokkhakat (Tokchakat), where one winter house sheltered three men, two women, and three children. There Zagoskin stayed that night and all the next day, resting his blistered feet. At the next village, Nokkhakat (Mouth of a Little Slough), there were fifty people living in three winter houses. Some of the men had been to Nulato and were fairly well acquainted with the Russians. Zagoskin wrote (1967:150): As they were good traders, they easily understood the aims of our expedi¬ tion, and as they did not wish to let us pass through to the tribes on the up¬ per river, they decided to turn Tatlek, our interpreter, against the idea, and to frighten us off. Later on we were to hear from all the natives living along this river about the unfriendliness of the Maleygmyut [Malemiut, Inupiaq Eskimo] and their antagonism towards us. But hearing this for the first time was strange. The guide began to waver [but was induced to continue]. The people at this town and at the mouth of the river showed the marks of the smallpox epidemic of 1838-39 that had killed so many of their relatives, and they were afraid of catching something similar from this party. At the suggestion of a Kaiyuh shaman, Otezokot (Lone Walker), who had attached himself to Zagoskin’s party because he was making a “house call” on a Koyukuk River patient, the vil¬ lagers “decided to purify us by setting fire along the trail,” so that Zagoskin and his men would have to approach the village through the smoke. Zagoskin found the next settlements practically deserted, for the men were all away hunting caribou by running them between fences. At the Gisasa River, how¬ ever, he was able to buy some venison from a woman—a welcome treat since they had not tasted any since the previous autumn. The next day, they reached Kateel village (sixty-five inhabitants in three winter houses).

[This was] the limit of the distance our guide could accompany us, as he was just a boy. Thus far we had been greeted nowhere with such enthusi¬ asm as they showed in this village. An unused kazhim was put entirely at our disposal, the delighted natives brought wood, lit a fire, helped us unpack the sleds, and when we had recovered a bit they all, big and small, arrived with gifts. In the evening when I was talking with the old people I asked why we had been told at Nokkhakat that the people on the upper river would treat us as enemies. They agreed to a man that the Naleygmyut [Maleygmyut, or Malemiut] had been meant. (Zagoskin 1967:152)

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

143

In Zagoskin’s account, the name Malemiut begins with the sound N, probably because the local Koyukuk River people lacked the sound M. Instead of sub¬ stituting B for it, like Andrew Pilot, these people used the other nasal sonant, N. The Russians applied this name, beginning with either an M or an N, to all Es¬ kimo, even though the Malemiut were a specific northern or Inupiaq-speaking tribe. By ascending the Kateel River for four to six days of winter travel, Zagoskin was told, one would reach the height of land, and in another four to six days would come to the settlement of Akshadak on the Buckland River, which empties into Kotzebue Sound. The Eskimo did not live permanently at this place, but reached it from the coast in four days’ travel, when they came for “general tribal meetings” about the end of January or February. A few of them might also come on to Kateel. In trade, the Kateel people gave wolverine, otter, beaver, and fox pelts, receiving in exchange “walrus and whale fat, walrus leather and boot soles, decorated Chukchi parkas, tobacco, and a few high-priced Yakut spears with cop¬ per inlay and other iron objects” (Zagoskin 1967:152). Although Zagoskin appealed to the villagers, not a single one would undertake to guide him to the Akshadak village, offering various excuses: “Come next win¬ ter and we shall all be your guides and protectors. There are few of you, and the Naleygmyut will kill you because you killed one of their most important chiefs. [This incident was not identified.] They ask us to burn your settlement at Nulato, but we refuse, because you give us beads, shells, and pots” (Zagoskin 1967:153). The Koyukuk above the Kateel had a long stretch with no inhabitants, Zagos¬ kin learned, but farther up, where the river was fed by many tributaries, there were a good many Natives. Parties of them would come down each spring from the upper river to Kateel and to the mouth of the Koyukuk to trade their furs for tobacco, beads, and ironware. Still farther north (on the Selawik), the Indians were in easy communication with the Malemiut (Zagoskin 1967:153). After everyone had left Kateel to hunt caribou, Zagoskin went far enough up the Kateel River to convince himself that the Koyukuk Natives did indeed have di¬ rect contacts with the Eskimo. On his way down the river, Zagoskin’s party spent the night at Kalyalyakhtna, (i.e., Gisasa River), where one of the men was already known to them from his visits to Nulato. These people warned the Russians that the Malemiut might treacherously attack a party as small as theirs, and confirmed the report that the Eskimo were inciting the Koyukuks to destroy the post at Nulato. How sad that in a few short years (1851) these same, apparently friendly Natives were themselves to attack Nulato and murder the trader and local Indians! Were they persuaded by the Eskimo? Were they already in 1843 hiding their own grow¬ ing enmity of the Russians, and citing the alleged danger from the Eskimo in the

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

144

hope of frightening away the white traders? Shamans of Kateel were alleged to have been the original initiators and the main leaders of the attack, as we shall see (chap. 8).

Allen on the Koyukuk River, 1885 In the summer of 1885, Lieutenant Allen and Private Fickett, with a small party of Upper Koyukons, undertook a journey to the Koyukuk River to complete the surveys they had made of the Tanana and Yukon. On July 28 they took an over¬ land trail that started from the Yukon River a short distance below the mouth of the Tozi, and on August 3 reached the Native village on the Konootena (Kanuti River, a tributary of the Koyukuk), about ten miles south of the Arctic Circle and well above Kateel. Here they obtained two large birchbark canoes and continued upstream. They ended their survey at latitude 67° 16' N (at the future site of the town of Betties), where the Fickett or Ascheeshna River enters the Koyukuk from the north. They judged that the Koyukuk would be navigable for some distance beyond their halt. Allen and Fickett returned to the Yukon by canoe down the innumerable bends of the Koyukuk. Practically all of the Natives they met were Upper Koyukuks, since most of the Indians lived at Huslia or above. There were also a few Eskimo transients on the upper river. What Allen called “the metropolis of the Koyukuk River,” a settlement of fortyfive, three miles below the mouth of the Dulbi, was “the home of a famous medi¬ cine man, Red Shirt, who was implicated in the massacre at Nulato in 1851” (Allen 1887:105, pi. 28; see our chap. 8). Unfortunately Allen did not indicate just how this man was implicated, for a shaman of Kateel, Larion (Larriown), is usually held to be the principal instigator or leader. We might note that in the spring of 1867, Dali had met a large number of Natives from the Koyukuk River, on their way to the Nowikakat trading grounds. They included “Ivan the tyone, Larriown, and a handsome fellow in a red shirt,” called ‘Cousin (Dali 1870:77, my italics). This suggests that the red-shirted man may indeed have been the Dulbi shaman, a friend of his Kateel colleague, but perhaps only guilty by association. Allen noted that, although the Upper Koyukuks traded and traveled widely and had old-fashioned Winchester rifles obtained from the whalers, they had little ammunition. They were very poor, for large game was scarce, so scarce in fact that he saw no moose or caribou and only one small black bear on his long trip from the Yukon to well above the Arctic Circle on the Koyukuk, and from there all the way down to St. Michael. Allen (1887:105-6) wrote of Kateel as he saw it in 1885 as follows: A •4

At the confluence of the Koteelkakat and Koyukuk Rivers is a small island, on which a summer camp was situated; just across, on the right

7.2. “Red Shirt, a Koyukun [Koyukuk] medicine man and tyone, seated on a Russian howitzer at St. Michael’s,” ca. 1885 (Allen 1887, fig. 28)

146

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

bank of the Koyukuk River, below the junction, is the site of the station established shortly after the transfer of the Territory [from Russia to the United States]. It has been abandoned for a number of years.... [It] is 56 miles from [the] junction of the Koyukuk and Yukon. This is the highest point reached on the Koyukuk by Lieutenant Zagoskin, of the Russian Navy, in the winter of i842[-43], though he ascended the Koteelkakat to latitude 65° 35'. Around the abandoned trading station is an assemblage of three or four winter houses and a number of caches, which resemble the villages on the Yukon near the stations. Since this Kateel was on the right (or west) bank of the Koyukuk, and the site we explored was on the left (or east) bank, Allen’s village was not the same as Zagoskin’s and our site; it was probably more recent.

The Wild Woman of Kateel The hardships endured by the Upper Koyukuk River people remind us of Jette’s tale of the “wild woman” of Kateel, even though hard times probably did not occur as often at this settlement at the mouth of the “luckiest river” as they did farther up the Koyukuk. According to the folktale, recorded and published by Jette (1908-9:315-20), there was a woman of Kateel who became a “goblin” (transformed woman) dur¬ ing a time of starvation when twenty of the villagers died. She disappeared while her husband was out hunting, and, as goblins do, managed to live by stealing food. Finally she made her way down the Yukon to Koserefsky, a now-abandoned Ingalik village across the river from the present Holy Cross. There she was caught and tamed and was then married to a local man. Their children and descendants, she, said, would be called “Kodilkakat people,” and they should love the people of the Koyukuk village because they were like brothers. This attitude was expressed in a letter that Jette (1908 -9:320) wrote for Thomas Da’ton [Dayton] of Koyukuk Station to his son in school at Holy Cross, in which the father urged: “Be kind to the people of Koserefsky; even though their manners and language would appear ridiculous to you, remember they are brothers to you through the Kodilkakat woman who migrated there in the old times.” Of the goblins or “bugbears” (Nenele’in or Nedoron), Jette wrote (1908 -9:319; see also 1911:105-6):

[They are] described as having the human form; with a hairy skin and long claw-like nails. They are supposed to abide in the neighbourhood of carrtps, and to come at nights to steal food, especially the salmon which is put up on the racks to dry. They generally chose the best morsels. The belief in the

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

147

“Nenele’in” enables the Ten’a to account for many petty thefts committed at night, mostly by reckless young men or hungry old women: the Nenele’in has done the deed and the reputation of all the tribesmen is safe. These be¬ ings are not so bold when the men are in the camp, but when these are away hunting and only the women remain at home they are said to have no fear. Many a time I was begged to stop for a few nights at the summer camp of Nikulirkakat, some eight miles below Nulato, whilst the men were hunt¬ ing, that my presence might scare away the “Nedoron” which is known to haunt the place. The actual belief is that the one who sees a “Nedoron” or “Nenele’in” must die, unless he has nerve enough to kill it, tear open its belly and devour its liver. It is well known in Ten’a circles that Ketok’ona, an inhabitant of Kaltag, who died some 10 or 15 years ago, thus treated two of these goblins, and managed in this way to save his life. The man is also known to have killed a few other Indians, and it is to be presumed that a lie would not burden his conscience more than a murder, but this a Ten’a does not see. The Nenele'in are supposed to be transformed men or women, who, as in this tale, after running away from their homes, became goblins. Jette’s explanation of how to save one’s life after killing such a creature is, as we shall see, the same magical precaution that the assailant must take after a homi¬ cide. (See chap. 8, pp. 171,176.)

THE KOYUKUK GRAVEYARD

The Cemetery When we finally broke camp, July 24, after our return from the Koyukuk River trip, we stopped for an hour to visit the town cemetery on the river about a mile above Koyukuk Station. On the sheer face of the bluff, facing downstream and overlooking the graveyard, there is an indentation like a giant door. A white spot in the middle is supposed to be a padlock. According to Andrew Pilot, who pointed this out to us, once some warriors were surprised by their enemies. To escape, they climbed to the top of the cliff and lowered themselves by thongs into a cave. They went inside, closing the stone door behind them, and that was the last that was seen of them. According to Ella Vernetti, his niece, the stone door marks the exit used by the dead who are buried in the Koyukuk cemetery. Sometimes they come out at night to have a good time, but they have to return before day¬ light. People camping on “Yukon Island” opposite the cemetery were kept awake night after night by the revels of the ghosts. When they sent men to watch the graveyard at night to see where the dead were coming from, the ghosts did not ap¬ pear, but as soon as the guard was removed, they emerged and became more

148

THE KOYUKUK RIVER

7.3. “The Koyukuk Sopka [Bluff] from Above” (Dali 1870, facing p. 77)

noisy than ever. Finally the shamans were called in and they made a huge stone fly up and seal the mouth of the cave, so the dead were safely locked inside. The shape of the rock and the markings on it do suggest a giant door with a lock. (Eliza fones told me in 1989 that when the people from Koyukuk Station were going to their spring camps, they used to fire a shot at the “padlock,” in order to release the ghosts. Was this so the latter could enjoy the fine weather?) The hill with the cliff was known to the Russians as “Koyukuk Sopka,” according to Dali (1870, pi. opp. p. 77), who sketched it from almost the same place from which Eardley photographed the graveyard. The cemetery was highly visible from the water because of the tall flagpoles and the painted grave houses set with their long sides facing the river. The cemetery itself commanded a magnificent panoramic view of the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers. The oldest type of grave in the area was reported by Whymper (1869:224): “Hard by [the Koyukuk village] was an Indian four-post grave-box enclosed with rails, and a flag waving over it.” The oldest graves that we saw, however, at the foot of the steep hillside, were marked by houses with pyramidal roofs (like graves at Old Louden and some of the pit houses at Kateel), the apex surmounted by an elaborate arrangement of horizontal wooden disks or squares, small poles J&ith crescentic figures, or a fretwork comb. There was always a cross at one end; in one case it was the Russian cross. The most recent graves, higher up the slope, had

a^WT/JolUt

cJra^iu^-

r& fcu ^ 1& cfcff&fo U-C:

~%V- _ ^u£ y cuet t

1


f >> >f ‘j*1 \ 1 ■Yr 6

9.5(A). Designs incised on bone, especially bird bone tubes, at Old Fish Camp, from Houses 12 and 33 (sketched by F. de Laguna)

9.5(B). Designs incised on caribou scapula scrapers, from houses at Old Fish Camp. 1. A man and several birds, from House 8; 2. Ducks or geese from House 12 (sketched by F. de Laguna)

older material than we had encountered in our brief survey, especially if Muller’s lamp with a human figure in the bowl had been washed out from this village. Now I could write home in a much happier mood: “First, let me say that if all we were expected to do was to find a good Indian site for another season’s work, we have done it. This would be a grand place to get specimens—also to collect mosquito bites!” That was a serious drawback. Before we left (on the afternoon of July 31), I counted the bites on the back of my left hand—I couldn’t wear gloves for fine digging or note-taking, a situation of which the mosquitoes took full advantage—and there were one hundred on the left hand. But the right hand was so swollen with superimposed bites that a count was impossible.

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

205

Hrdlicka and Dixon at the Old Fish Camp Many years later, 1 discovered that Hrdlicka had learned of this site in 1926 (Hrdlicka 1930:54-55), and had visited it the following year under the guidance of “Chief Maska,” whose fish camp was near the mouth of the Khotol. Hrdlicka (1944:201-02) reported the site as twenty bends (“curves”) above the mouth of the river, and described it as a “large place overgrown with rank grass [in places “over five feet high”] and a few trees,” with many “depressions of semi-subterranean houses.... One of the best archaeological prospects on the Yukon.” In 1973, E. George Dixon conducted archaeological investigations at Old Fish Camp. He generously gave me copies of his maps and enabled me to examine his collections, now in the University Museum, Fairbanks. Through the kindness of William and Karen Workman I was able to study the report by Bruce A. Ream (1986), based on Dixon’s specimens and field notes. Dixon’s program was to obtain “information necessary for the adaptation of earth satellite imagery techniques to archaeological remote sensing.” This required only the clearing and mapping of alternate twenty-meter squares of the site. While he mapped over forty house pits, plus innumerable depressions (caches, and earlier houses?), these were not tied in to any landmarks (such as the riverbank) that we had mapped, so it proved impossible to correlate his map with ours. He excavated several house pits, and recovered over 1,500 artifacts, in general not unlike those in our much smaller collection. Some of the prehistoric bone and antler objects (combs, spoons, handles, etc.) were decorated with neat straight lines, more delicately incised than the spurred lines on some of our specimens from the site. But I saw none with representative designs.

Paul Esmailka’s Place After leaving the site of the Old Fish Camp on August 1, we pushed on in the rain for two days, the river becoming narrower and the bends more tightly curved as we ascended. Jack shot six young ducks, which furnished an excellent dinner that night and soup for lunch the next day. Finally on August 3 the sun came out again, for the first time since we had left Kaltag on July 27. We camped that night in the yard of Paul Esmailka’s winter camp on the Kho¬ tol, because house pits had been reported there. These proved to be modern, but Esmailka’s place itself was of interest as representing a modern, well-to-do Native establishment. There were two cabins built of logs, rough hewn on the inside, and chinked with moss. (The four men slept in one, while I stayed outside in the cook tent.) The roofs were of bark and sod. In the corner of the roof, the stovepipe ran up through a hole lined by an empty gasoline can. The doorway was very small, and

9

9.6. Koyukon winter house with pyramidal roof (after Jette 1908:308). Numbers on the

diagram represent: 1, door by which one descends into the porch; 2, porch or antechamber; 3, tunnel; 4, entryway into the main room; 5, children’s sleeping platforms; 6, sleeping plat¬ forms along each side wall; 7, central fire on raised hearth; 8, sleeping platforms for people of little importance, the aged, the unmarried, or the widowed; 9, smokehole

9.7. Paul Esmailka s cabin, lobbed tree, and moose horns on tree, August 3 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-180)

208

kaltag and the khotol-kaiyuh to shageluk slough

9.8. Paul Esmailka’s place, August 3. Left front: saw horse for long logs; rear, two dog barns (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-178)

so low that the top was only about three and a half feet high. Furnishings included a built-in bunk in the corner farthest from the door, shelves along the walls, and several racks of poles near the roof on which things could be hung to dry. Over one pole was draped a fish net with home-made wooden floats and sinkers (un¬ worked stones sewed into rags for fastening to the net). In the middle of the floor was a sled about fifteen feet long. A pair of home-made eyeglasses on a shelf con¬ sisted of a wooden frame into which were set two round pieces of window glass, held in place by tiny nails made of slivers from tin cans. I suppose these were snow glasses, and the lenses would be blackened with soot to protect the eyes from the snow glare in early spring. Aboriginal snow glasses were simply of wood with horizontal slits through which the wearer peered. Outside was a big area covered with chips and logs, a six-foot-long sawbjbrse, and another sled. To the right stood a cache, like a small log cabin with a roof of bark laid between two layers of poles, and a little door that was reached by a de-

KALTAG AND THE KHOTOL-KAIYUH TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

209

9.9. Paul Esmailka s fish trap, on top of a dog barn, August 3 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35177)

tachable ladder. In back was the other cabin, and another cache with walls and roof of canvas. There were also three sets of dog barns. These were long sheds, about as high as my shoulders, open along the front, with the roof sloping to the ground in back. (Johnny Dayton’s was much snugger, where each dog had its own stall; here the dogs shared the long, unpartitioned shed.) On top of one dog barn were several fish traps: conical wicker baskets, with a wicker funnel leading inside. Some were strengthened with fine chicken wire over the outer basket. There was a canvas canoe (made to the pattern of the bark canoe with decked-over prow), some birchbark baskets, a spoon-shaped snow shovel of wood, bone wedges for splitting wood, and a bundle of fur stretchers. A pair of moose horns were nailed to a pole, and a tree nearby was lobbed (the branches trimmed off except for a tuft at the top), but I don’t know why.

Above the Forks After exploring the house pits in the morning, we left after lunch and went to a place above the “Forks,” the confluence where the muddy Kaiyuh Slough from the Yukon enters the Khotol. The latter here is a small, winding, dark-brown, coffee-colored creek. Near the Forks, Francis pointed out to us the very spot where Raven met and destroyed the monster, “Foggy Man” or Toheegee,” the killer of so

210

KALTAG AND THE K H O T 0 L - K A IY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

many hunters who had rashly ventured into his domain. Raven had lived in a vil¬ lage halfway between Nulato and the entrance to the Kaiyuh Slough. That eve¬ ning Francis told us the story {Tales, Tale 34). About a mile above the Forks (where the slough entered the river) was the site of the fort built by the Kaiyuh Takaiaksa after the Nulato massacre as protection from the Koyukuk Indians. They were so afraid of the latter that they abandoned their camps on the Yukon and fled back to their old settlements on the Kaiyuh Slough and the Khotol. At the fort there were three house pits and one large box, lying above ground, probably a coffin, but we didn’t investigate. Francis McGinty said this place was called “Forced into the Water” because a giant loon that lived on the nearby lake used to rip canoes apart and drown the occupants. We camped nearby for two nights (August 3 and 4), at the portage to a little lake, on the shore of which were four or five recent house pits. From here we took one skiff up the river about three miles to the mouth of Yukon Willow Creek, where Francis had seen house pits. In one we found only an isolated human skull without even the lower jaw, its significance a puzzle. In the larger pit (the kashim) was nothing at all, and in another were a few nice modern things to add to our “ethnological collection” acquired by archaeological means. At the upper end of the site, the Khotol River “heads at junction of Camp Creek and Gorton Creek, flows SW 85 mi. to Yukon River,” as Orth wrote (1967:513), showing that the names Eardley gave those two little streams have become official. That day was very windy, with a gale from the south that whipped around and

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

211

eventually blew from the north. It was quite cold, but there was very little rain. When we returned to camp we saw that something was queer. Three big cotton¬ wood trees had blown down, right between our two tents, luckily missing them! It was a miracle that the big tree in front of the cook tent had not fallen on it. All four trees had been partly cut through by people who had split out wood for their fires when camping at the portage.

The Kaiyuh Country in 1863 and 1867 In November 1865, George Adams of the Western Union Telegraph party, with a small group of Natives, visited the Kaiyuh area. After two days’ travel through the brush, they came to a settlement of forty inhabitants and two houses which he called “Tekitesky” (i.e., Takaiaksa) (G. Adams 1982:134). The Natives were sur¬ prised to see the small party, and, as Adams (1982:61-62) wrote later: [At first they] appeared to be quite hostile, rushing out of the houses with guns and spears at the alarmed cries of some women and children who first saw us as we came towards the village, and the men stood silent and aloof until the guide [Kurilka, or Kurilla, a survivor of the Nulato mas¬ sacre] explained the object of our visit—that we wanted to stay there over night, and would pay them well for their care of us and our dogs. [Para] Thereupon the men became friendly and while some took our things

212

KALTAG AND THE KHOTOL-KAIYUH TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

9.10. Freddy de Laguna in the kashim pit at Yukon Willow Creek on the Khotol River above the junction with Kaiyuh Slough, August 4 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-185)

down into the larger house [already occupied by “fifteen families ... besides eight little dogs” (p. 134)], others brought our dogs baskets of fish.... The women and the children had been standing about, at a safe distance, look¬ ing at me, I being the first white man, the chief said, that had ever been to the village, and the first that most of them had ever seen. Only a few of the men had been to the Russian Fort at Nulato. As befitted his rank as a “Lieutenant” of the Western Union Telegraph Expedi¬ tion and leader of the party, Adams was taking his ease in the house while one of his men cooked flapjacks for their dinner. Suddenly the frying pan caught fire and blazed up. The terrified women and children who had been watching began to scream (as Kurilka later said) that they were being murdered by the strangers^The “chief” and some of the men came rushing in with their hatchets, spears, and clubs. Adams quietly told the cook to put out the fire, but he held his cocked re-

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

213

9.11. “Jearney’s barrabora,” December 1867. Possibly the fort built on the upper Khotol River after the Nulato massacre of i85r (Dali 1870:176)

volver behind his back, ready for trouble. When the Natives saw him smoking his pipe, apparently unconcerned, and when the interpreter explained what had been the matter, the blaze now having been smothered, the Natives’ anger subsided, and amicable relations were restored (G. Adams 1982:61-62; 134-35). I could not identify the site of this adventure, although the settlement was on the “Tekitesky [Khotol?] River.” In December 1867, Dali went to a settlement on the “Kaiyuh river” where a wealthy trader named Tekunka was “giving a festival.” His place was crowded with Indians who danced and sang all night. The following day, Dali walked on snowshoes some fifteen miles to the ridge of the “Kaiyuh Mountains.” He de¬ scribed the country as rolling, sparsely wooded, “and full of small lakes and rivers, which contain many fish, especially in summer,” and the “mountains” as low hills, “trending in a northeast and southwest direction.” After a day of trading when the potlatch was over, Dali went on up the river to “learny’s barrabora,” “jearny” meaning “fat.” This stout Indian had a fish trap made of bundles of wil¬ low brush tied together, the trap fence reaching clear across the river. There was only a single house at this place, but “the building over the entrance to the house was large, square, strongly built of heavy logs, and pierced for musketry” (Dali 1870:174-76). It is possible that this was the fort built after the Nulato massacre, but I could not identify Tekunka’s house.

214

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

Return to the Yukon The morning after our examination of the site at Yukon Willow Creek, we boated all the way back to Kaltag. This time we went up the other branch of the Forks, and followed the Kaiyuh Slough up to its entrance from the Yukon, and then ran down the latter to Kaltag. The slough was even more winding than the Khotol River. At his request, we left Francis at Joe Stillman’s place on the Yukon, opposite and above the beginning of the slough. Joe would take him back to Nulato. I wrote a letter to Father McElmeel at the Mission, asking him to pay Francis the money I had left for that purpose and telling him what a fine guide and companion Fran¬ cis had been. As I wrote home: “The young man was just tickled to death [by my recommendation] but almost wept at leaving us, and we hated to part from him. He is certainly a friendly, happy-go-lucky chap, and a marvelous storyteller of In¬ dian legends. He is very anxious to have us return next summer to excavate, when he would love to work for us. The Sisters at Nulato say that he is the best Native there—never drunk or hard up, and that his wife is the best woman in town. They have eight children.” (For his “Autobiography,” see Tales, pp. 249-53.) It rained but did not blow; yet we were thoroughly chilled. We stopped part¬ way down the Yukon and built a fire for lunch, and there I added an extra shirt and pair of overalls to my costume, becoming so covered up I could hardly move. Our motor was acting badly, and Sandy took it all apart to find it full of carbon— perhaps not surprising, since the motor had already run over 1,000 miles.

THE YUKON TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

Kaltag Again We arrived at Kaltag about eight at night, and it was as cold as Greenland. We managed to get places in the “guest cabin” next to the store. There were two other people here: the first, an old Finnish prospector named Lakso, who was about to start for his own cabin on the Khotol, and the other, a man named MacDuffy, who had just hiked across the portage from Unalakleet on Norton Sound, and who left for the lower Yukon on the steamer. His place was taken by a young fel¬ low who had been slaving for Muller and who was now delighted to be fired. He planned to join up with the old Finn. He had sent his few earnings home, so he had only $75 left for the winter. Our party slept in the attic and used the kitchen as a study and work room, and in consequence we did all the cooking. MacDuffy had tried to pay us a dollar for breakfast (the usual rate in Alaska at that timejfWe refused it, and that was the last effort he made, either in supplying food or sharing

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

215

the work. Old John Lakso contributed a few groceries, and so did the young ex¬ employee. Poor fellow, we really felt sorry for him—condemned to exile in the Kaiyuh with the old man. We learned that Lakso had come to town because he needed a respite from the mosquitoes. When the steamer came in, we discovered how much immunity to mosquito bites we had built up. The grass in town had been trampled down, and the insects could not navigate well against the breeze. In consequence, we thought them negligible and furled our headnets, but the people who stepped ashore from the steamer were slapping away. When the steamer came, a number of Natives gathered from their fish camps to sell dry fish, although that was the salmon they would need in the winter for their dogs. Muller told us that he would buy the fish, and they would use the money to pay off their debts at the store, with a little extra for liquor. In the win¬ ter, when they needed the feed, Muller would sell them back their fish for more than he had paid for it, and he was careful to see that those who had sold badly smoked, wormy fish would get back again the same batch. Because of this policy, almost everyone in town was drunk, even Muller.

The Yukon below Kaltag It seemed to take a very long time to get away from Kaltag. It was raining mildly, half sun and half rain. Muller was a little drunk, his Indian wife was drunk, and his new assistant was drunk but able to navigate. Most of our canned goods had already been packed for us, but other items had to be added, mail sent off, and five boxes of specimens labeled for shipment to Nenana. We were underway by eleven-thirty. Our first stop was at the “old-timers’ village” (Lower Kaltag?), about three or four miles below Kaltag, where a few Natives were living. As they said of the house pits nearby: “Him old-timer, but not very old. Him live Galena now.” Francis McGinty had told us that an old woman at this place had a stone axe. That turned out to be only a naturally shaped stone, but we did buy some Native-made ar¬ ticles: birchbark baskets, a net mesh gauge, a netting needle, and a bone scraper. The last three specimens (of bone) were interesting because of their typically Es¬ kimo decoration. All of the Indians, from the Koyukuk all the way down the Yukon, were obviously influenced by the Eskimo. Below Kaltag the Eskimo influ¬ ence would become increasingly stronger. We had lunch just below the “old-timers’ Kaltag,” at a site that was quite mod¬ ern, but of interest because it had an underground cache, built like an old-style house. It was about six by nine feet, and four feet high, without any other open¬ ing than the door at one end. It was banked over with turf laid on sheets of birch-

216

kaltag and the khotol-kaiyuh to shageluk slough

bark. It smelled like a latrine, and there was only a rotted basket inside. We passed the mouth of the Khotol some time that afternoon. Ahead lay a long stretch of now-uninhabited river, all the way to Blackburn, although former Na¬ tive settlements have been reported at various localities.

Stink Creek A site that Muller had suggested, about three or four miles below the mouth of the Khotol River, proved to be modern. It was on the bank of a small river, “Stink Creek” or “Twenty-five Mile Creek,” which wound for some forty miles out from the hills to the west. (According to Orth [1967:919], it is 57 miles SW of Nulato and an equal distance NE of Unalakleet, and was also known as “Aleek River.”) At Stink Creek we saw some log cabins and house pits with axe-cut timbers, and also an old-style grave. The latter was a double coffin, above ground. The spaces be¬ tween the inner and the outer wooden boxes were filled with earth, and the whole was protected by a gable roof. This was the first grave of this type that we had en¬ countered so far, although it was common on the lower part of the river (figs. 9.12, 9.13.). Since it was already seven o’clock when we reached this site, we ran downriver about a mile to a gravel beach, where we camped. On the way, Jack shot four small ducks that we cleaned and cooked for dinner—we did not eat until nine. It was raining and cold. Our gasoline lantern, which we had been using since our return to Kaltag from the Khotol trip, would now burn only if tilted on its side. Jack had to keep pumping and pumping to keep it alight while we were washing the sup¬ per dishes. Although it still rained the next day, Jack and I went back up the beach to sketch and photograph the grave while the other two packed up and broke camp. Then we took the skiffs about three miles up Stink Creek, disturbing at least four or five families of ducks. We climbed the hill and took soil samples with the auger which revealed nothing but typical upland tundra. Some piles of rocks embedded in the soil excited my hopes until Jack declared them to be only the result of frost action that broke up the underlying bedrock and forced the fragments to the sur¬ face, an opinion confirmed by removal of the rocks. Jack had not worn his headnet and so was badly bitten, and we all accumulated more bites on our hands when we began to pick the ripe blueberries on the hillside as we descended, eat¬ ing some on the spot and putting others into little birchbark containers that we improvised. We therefore named the place “Bloody Blueberry Hill.” We got back to camp early in the afternoon. The sun appeared for a few minutes, and then the rain began again. Neverthe¬ less, we went on in the skiffs until late, passing by a limestone cliff with a disap-

KALTAG AND THE K H O T O L - K AIY U H TO SHAGELUK SLOUGH

217

9.12. Above-ground, double-coffin grave at Stink Creek, on the Yukon River about 25 miles below Kaltag, August 9 (Photo by A. J. Eardley, 350-35-189)

pointing cave, and then some peat banks, where I found more beaver-chewed logs. Our geologists were uncertain about the age of this peat. We finally camped on the gravel beach in the rain. Some six miles below Stink Creek, Zagoskin (1967:188) had reported the site of a once-populous settlement destroyed by smallpox in 1839. It was on the right bank of the Yukon, at the mouth of the Kakhokgotna River, where “the so-called middle crossing from the coast, which begins at the Tstsytseka Mountain, comes to the Yukon.” This was the route taken by Malakov in 1838. The mountain is the “Old Woman” (meaning “Brown Bear Sow”) of the Indians, or “Vesolia Sopka” of the Russians (Wright 1995: 77, note 24). About eight miles below this river was Bear Creek (Orth 1967:114), entering the Yukon from the northwest about a mile above the north end of Eagle Island. This was Allen’s “Autokakat River,” which he ascended to reach Unalakleet from the Yukon. Seventeen miles below the Kakhokgotna River, according to Zagoskin (1967: 189, 243, 307), about eight miles below Bear Creek, and about a mile above the mouth of the Tutago River, was Ttutago, the “southernmost settlement” of the Takaiaksa Indians, a village of two houses and thirty-two inhabitants on the left bank of the Yukon, and additional houses on the right bank. A route to the coast went up the Tutago River to the Touklat, an eastern branch of the Unalakleet. The

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c-fatAy-.; *‘*~ A ^,‘-f3"^ with his wife, a handyman, a doctor (for one year only), and a schoolteacher, a small boarding school was established. The church was also built at that time. Dr. Chapman was determined to learn the Native language, and he exchanged English lessons with his pupils for those in Ingalik. By 1895 he could conduct most of the Morning Service in Ingalik, but schoolwork was en¬ tirely in English. Because the low land at Anvik Point was subject to flooding, the Indians began to move onto Mission land, and their old village became a summer fish camp. Two traders were eventually established at the new village, and because they were on Mission land, the church was able to prevent the sale of liquor and other unfair practices. In 1927, during a bad influenza epidemic, many families moved still farther downstream to Lower Anvik to escape the disease, but they soon returned to the Mission. The great days at the Mission were in 1930, just be¬ fore Dr. Chapman’s retirement, when the Mission staff numbered eight, includ¬ ing a second minister (Elenry, Dr. Chapman’s son), another teacher, and a nurse. But almost at once, the Depression wiped this all away.

Reception at Anvik When we landed at the Mission, Mr. Henry Chapman and his wife came down to the shore to welcome us. They had a charming house with lots of windows, and were as kind to us as they could be. They explained about the succession of settle¬ ments at Anvik, and also reported that the Mission had been forced to close for lack of funds, although Mr. Chapman stayed on as minister and held Sunday ser¬ vices, and of course morning and evening prayers at home, and grace before meals.

270

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

On the point of land at the mouth of the Anvik River, opposite the Mission, there had evidently been a prehistoric Anvik, followed by another established about fifty years before our visit. A modern Indian settlement was still farther out on the point, but was occupied only in the summer as a fish camp. Just behind these houses, we could see the graves and house pits of the earlier inhabitants. The currently used graveyard was on the hill above the Mission. Our first day was devoted to baths and getting our clothes sent out to be washed in the village. All my clothes, except for a dubiously dingy change, were filthy. We appreciated being under a roof, now that the weather had turned bad again. The next day we packed specimens, and Jackson Wood, a Native from Anvik Point, identified the masks from Holikachaket. He also told us about a site eleven rtfiles up Anvik River, a slow-moving, winding stream. He was a talkative, jolly fellow, with high cheekbones like an Eskimo. He would always say, “Yes, Ma’am,” very

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

271

politely, and laugh till his grin seemed to spread over his whole face. He smoked as much as I did at that time, which was a great deal.

Questions of Religion On Sunday we all went to church, even our Mormons, Jack and Ken. There was something pathetic yet noble about these little frontier churches that made such an effort to uphold the traditions of a distant civilization. But I also found dis¬ quieting the high church effect. Mr. Chapman was certainly impressive in his lace apron, and with the green ribbon around his neck, just the same color as the al¬ tar cover and the doily on the lectern. He was sitting at the small organ as we en¬ tered, playing a hymn with more courage than skill. The schoolteacher had been the organist before the Mission was closed; Mr. Chapman now had to take her place at the instrument. We sang two hymns and did an awful lot of kneeling and getting up, and my rheumatic knees felt very stiff. I also felt like a hypocrite going through all the motions, which had no personal meaning for me. I liked watch¬ ing the Natives, and singing the hymns, and listening to the Bible, but the prayers and Creed seemed unreal. I was aware that I would have hurt the feelings of these kind people if I had not acted as if I were joining in wholeheartedly—and they were really such nice people and so good to us that I could not let that happen. On Sundays they had early Communion and regular church in the morning, and Sunday school in the afternoon. Jackson Wood’s comments on religion were amusing and tolerant. The present church had been built in the fall. It was cold, and the men worked fast to keep warm. The result was that the building was finished in record time. Dr. Chapman preached the first service on the theme that God had helped them to build it so quickly. “I wanted to laugh,” said Jackson Wood. “He said it was God helping us. But we was just working hard so we wouldn’t get cold. But I didn’t tell him. Let him believe that. He can’t help it.” He made a similar remark apropos of the Holy Cross Mission. He had asked one of the Sisters, “How do you get enough money to feed all the kids?” “God gives it to us,” she said. A friend with Wood pulled him away, thinking he was going to say something tactless. “I wanted to tell her, ‘God doesn’t give you things to eat. You got to rustle and work like a beaver to live. It don’t come that easy.’ But I see she believe what she say, so I don’t say nothing. No use to tell her the truth. She couldn’t help what she believe. I believe in letting people think what they want to. All right for them to believe what they want.” In the evening Mr. Chapman read from the Bible, his big volume spread open on his knees, and his little daughter squatting in front. She was not much over three years old, a delightful and precocious child. Her father said that one or two months earlier she had told him that she could read. Since she had never had any

272

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

11.3. Jackson Wood’s father making a fish trap, Anvik, 1900 (?) (Photo by Dr. John W. Chap¬ man; gift of the Reverend Henry Chapman)

lessons, he believed it impossible. He had reprimanded her gently for telling an apparent falsehood, even in good faith, and explained to her the difference be¬ tween learning verses by heart and actually reading them. But she insisted she could read. Put to the test, she read from the Bible on his knees, having learned to do so at his nightly readings, the text upside down! She had also begged every visitor to read to her such things as the labels on cans. I felt that this child deserved a prize, so when we moved on I gave her my Mickey Mouse Ingersol wristwatch. When Hrdlicka visited Anvik in 1926, he was entertained by the Chapmans. In his printed report (1930:56) he described a lunch at the Mission school, at which he sat on “an outlandish chair the seat of which was made of strips of hide with spaces between; and from the beginning of the lunch to its end . . . the mosqui¬ toes ... kept on biting me through the spaces in the seat.” This kind of chair, he told them, “should be outlawed in Alaska.” Mrs. Chapman had been both-pro¬ voked and amused by this passage, and by the implication in the report that he had not been given enough to eat, for she told us that he had refused a second

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

273

helping. She regretted her inability to point out the particular chair of Hrdlicka’s ordeal, but referred us to two of the same kind in the hall outside her husband’s office. We certainly didn’t suffer from lack of food, and Mrs. Chapman was a firstrate cook. Coming from Utah, Jack and Ken were not used to eating fish other than sardines. They didn’t like my boiled salmon, but when baked king salmon was served at Anvik, they were completely won over.

TheAnvik River On Monday, August 24, we went up the Anvik River with Jackson Wood as our guide. We did not get as early a start as we had planned because we waited for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries boat, Coot, to arrive on her way upriver. She was our last chance to make contact by wireless with the outside world until the regular steamer returned. We wanted to charter a plane to take us back to Nenana, and I had written to several bush airlines for prices but had received no answer by the last boat. The reason, we learned, was that a big plane had been lost between Daw¬ son and Fairbanks; among her passengers were a Fairbanks bride and groom, the latter being the son of Nordale, owner of the big hotel in Fairbanks. The plane had been missing for over a week by then, and every plane in the Territory was look¬ ing for it. If it had crashed and burned in the forest, the wreck might never be found. Some, according to the news broadcast from Anchorage, held out hope that the people might still be alive. At any rate, the search was continuing, pilots contributing their time and planes, and the big oil companies donating the fuel. We waited to hear from the airlines. The Coot took the text of our wire to be sent from Nulato (the nearest wireless station), and we expected to get answers when the river steamer Nenana came downriver again. The Nenana also had a radio, so we could send a message back to the Alaska Steamship Company to reserve our passage out. After we had writ¬ ten our message for the Coot to take to Nulato, we were on our way. The Anvik River is 140 miles long (Orth 1967:82). It was on a route used by Na¬ tives in ancient times when going to the coast. It was that taken by Glazunov in 1834, the first Russian to reach the Yukon from Norton Sound, and was followed later by other explorers and prospectors. Travel was best in winter, I was told, when all the bogs and lakes would be frozen solid, and one could make good time on snowshoes or with a dog team. One summer, the Natives brought to the Mission a poor white man whom they had found on the river. He had been traveling by canoe but had the misfortune to overturn, losing his axe and matches. This was no ordinary misfortune but a disaster, since he was now unable to protect him¬ self from the mosquitoes. When the Natives found him, he was on a sandbar, halfnaked, raving, his body swollen with insect venom. He had torn off his clothing in attempts to drive away the mosquitoes and scratch his bites. In another day, or

274

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

less, he would have died, the Chapmans said. They took care of him, of course, but it was a month before he recovered. Lieutenant Schwatka, who made a study of mosquitoes, reported (1885:99) that some prospectors in 1882 were “said to have been actually driven out of the country by the myriads of mosquitoes ... [and] it is stated as a fact. .. that ani¬ mals are often killed by them.” We, too, heard of bears that had been blinded by mosquitoes and had died of suffocation when bites in their noses and throats choked off their breath, and of the same horrible end suffered by a lone Eskimo kayaker who became lost in the swamps of the lower Kuskokwim.

Anvik River Site We had a dandy picnic lunch, half of which was furnished by Mrs. Chapman, and half from our own stock. It took us three hours to go the eleven miles upriver to the site, called “Red Stone Village” by the Indians, or “Red Mountain” (VanStone 1979b: 42). The lower part of the Anvik River is an old Yukon channel—all broad and slow and full of bends, with old sloughs and ox-bow lakes, so that there is more water than land. Without a guide you might go round in circles! Then above this, the current is very swift and the river is much narrower, and there are fewer sloughs. In two places we had to pole the boat for a considerable distance because the water was too shallow to run the outboard motor. Red Stone Village had been on a former main channel of the river. There was an abandoned beaver dam at one end of the site and another across a dry slough at the other end. The village seemed to have been inhabited over a long period of time, occupied in both summer and winter. In addition to the twenty-odd house pits, apparently of various ages, there was a kashim (relatively recent), and the re¬ mains of a modern cache and cabin. The village had been abandoned in 1898, we were told. Among the house pits, and probably built after the abandonment of the settlement, were a number of graves. These were coffins set up on four posts with roofs of birchbark over them. Some had collapsed and rotted, and the bones were spilling from one coffin that had been put together with handwrought iron nails. I asked Jackson Wood what the Natives thought about Hrdlicka’s taking of bones from old graveyards, and he said they felt it was all right as long as you didn’t break the bones or throw them away. If you got through with them, they ought to be buried again. The skeleton from the broken coffin must have been that of a woman, to judge by the things with it. These were a bone ulu handle with corroded iron blade, several large beads, three iron bracelets, a bone bootsole creaser (for making neat tucks in the bootsole when sewing it to the upper), and a number of very small teeth that I could not at first identify. They were incisors from the upper jaws (palates) of caribou. Such palates, with the teeth in place, were traditionally sewn, overlapping, on a woman’s belt, a testimonial to her hus-

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

275

11.4. Ingaiik manufactures, Anvik, 1866-67: Birchbark canoe; kantags and wooden ladle; Indian pottery (a lamp, two mugs in imitation of trade pottery, a small and large cooking pot) (Dali 1870:216, 218, 219)

band’s hunting prowess, since a belt might represent seventy-five to a hundred caribou. We found a great many pieces of decorated pottery at the site. We had lunch on a gravel bar, trying to escape the biting gnats. We then made a map of the place, Jack and Ken surveying, while Sandy and I measured house pits and other features. It was easy to walk over the site because the grass was rather short and the fireweed had already wilted down a little. The few nights of frosts at Anvik had certainly given the country the look of fall. But the gnats at this place were terrible. Even with my headnet and gloves, I was in such torment that Jackson Wood had to make a smudge for me to sit in while I worked. Gnats yield to a smudge more easily than do mosquitoes, I think. My ears, neck, and face were a mass of welts, and even my legs were bitten up. These small gnats could get through even the fine mesh of our headnets, and once inside, would feast upon any part of the body where the blood vessels were close to the skin. Beginning with the head, especially the brow and ears, they would work down, pausing to bite

276

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

11.5. Anvik Point summer village, August 25 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-215)

where the belt was tightened around the body, and again at the ankles where I had run drawstrings through the hems of my jeans in a futile effort to keep them out. Although Jackson Wood knew of another village farther up the river that had been inhabited in his father’s grandfather’s time, we were unable to visit it, and, furthermore, we were late for supper. The Chapmans had already eaten, but Mrs. Chapman warmed up our meal when they heard our motor.

Anvik Point Village The day after our excursion up the Anvik River, we packed specimens. The Na¬ tives had been appearing with a few things to sell, some of them very nice. I bought some wooden plates, a few wooden spoons, net-making tools (needle and mesh gauge), an eelskin bag, several baskets (of birchbark or of coiled willow), a woman’s fish-skin work bag, and a bag of twined grass. I also bought a few things made for the rare tourist, a large basket with handle and lid made of coiled willow, a large circular tray of the same, and a mat made of coiled grass braid, stitched to¬ gether. I read later in Dr. Chapman’s memoirs (1948) that his wife had started the Indians on making such braided grass mats. These specimens are now in the Uni¬ versity (of Pennsylvania) Museum, Philadelphia. In the afternoon we went across the river to Anvik Point and collected a lot of pottery fragments from the beach. Jackson Wood’s children helped us, and we paid them for their trouble. Wood invited us into his cabin and entertained us-with polite and amusing conversation. He also took us out and showed us the house pits in back of the present houses. When Dr. Chapman began his work at the “An-

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

277

vik Old Station,” this was the main Anvik village. Later, it was known to Jette by the Native names “On the Point” and the “Old Village,” the latter almost the same name as that given to the “Old Fish Camp” on the Khotol River. The village site contained not only the summer houses of the living residents, but the pit houses of earlier generations, and even the graves of the ancient dead. There were two terraces here: a low swampy flat, only four to six feet above the river level when we were there; and an upper terrace that rose from about ten to twelve feet in height at the end, where it was abruptly cut off by the Yukon River. Both the present houses and the abandoned house pits were scattered in lines along the upper terrace, facing the Anvik River. The occupied cabins were all grouped close to the Yukon; the pits of the older houses ran back some six hun¬ dred feet or more from the Yukon. Those in the front row, nearest the modern cabins, were said to be only fifty years old, and the large kashim in this group had actually been in use during the memory of one of the older men. Many of these house pits were very nasty, since the Natives were now using them as latrines and garbage dumps. Behind them was a row of caches, and still farther back was an¬ other line of house pits that ran out to the Yukon. These houses were probably still older, since the finds made along the Yukon beach indicated a prehistoric

278

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

11.6. Jackson Wood and his family at Anvik Point village, August 25. Left to right: Ralph Wood, Mrs. Wood and the children, Jackson Wood (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-217)

settlement, the remains of which were exposed in the garden of a Native named Evans. We mapped at least thirty-five house pits in all, and three kashims. A burial was seen in the cut bank of Evans’s garden. Bits of grass matting and birchbark wrappings, like those at the Old Fish Camp on the Khotol, still adhered to the bones. Beside the skull was a small pottery lamp, a birchbark box, and some glass beads, and in the earth near it, fragments of Native pottery. A dog was tied up quite close, but neither that nor the protruding skull, which would wash out of the bank in the not too distant future, seemed to bother Evans or any of the other Natives. I assume that the burial was that of a pre-Christian individual whom no one knew. We did not attempt to touch it or any of the grave goods. In all, we accumulated quite a few archaeological specimens, all from the beach either found by us, or from the same source but purchased from the children, or given to us by the storekeeper, Mr. Chase. Despite the difficulties posed by neckhigh grass, nettles, and the filth in the house pits, Jack Eardley distinguished him¬ self by making a sketch map of the site in forty-five minutes! Many of the house pits we found by our usual method of stumbling into them. The older ones were in patches of alders and willows, and hanging on these trees were bundles of old

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279

11.7. Jackson Wood, Ralph Wood (making a basket), and the older Wood children, Anvik Point Village, August 26 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-218)

clothes. In the old days, such bundles might contain the stained garments of a menstruant or new mother, even afterbirths, or the hair and nail parings of resi¬ dents of the village. When the shaman made a ceremonial tour of the village, he would include all stuff like this within his circuit—that is, he walked around the village from a half-mile above to a half-mile below it on the river. His powers were believed to protect from evil (sorcery?) the persons associated with these bundles.

Anthropologists and Informants We also met Ralph Wood, Jacksons older half-brother. When he was a child, the medicine man had “turned him into a woman, told him he would always have to live like a woman and do womens work.” Jackson also told us that his brother once became very sick and almost died from pneumonia. Since that time, Ralph had been weak and unable to walk far. I didn’t know whether this illness was men¬ tioned as a cause of Ralph’s behavior; the remark was made when we were asking Jackson how his brother made a living. Ralph’s whole bearing was that of an In-

280

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11.8. Anvik women and girls, August 25 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-216)

galik woman—the downcast head, the silent, unobtrusive, shy behavior, the voice pitched somewhat higher than Jackson’s and with a woman’s intonations. He had a rather sweet and pleasant expression. He no longer wore a strictly female cos¬ tume, but rather an old-fashioned one, consisting of a summer parka of cloth over his trousers. His hair was cut in a short bob with bangs, not a woman’s cut but an old-fashioned man’s style. He certainly was doing women’s work. He made beau¬ tiful baskets, moccasins, and parkas, much better than most of the women’s that I had seen. He fished with a net (like a woman), not with a fish wheel (which the men made and regulated), snared rabbits and birds (like a woman), but did not trap (as men did). I found him very likable. He was not as shy as he first appeared to be, and he really warmed up at our appreciation of his baskets and let us take his picture. He had never married, but was living alone in a house next door to Jackson’s. His brother said he had to give him a little grub occasionally. It seemed incredible to me that Osgood had not made any use of Ralph as an informant, not only to get his unique point of view, but because he seemed to know a lot about the old days. Jackson, for example, kept asking Ralph for infor¬ mation to answer our questions. Osgood’s informant, Billy Williams, was cer¬ tainly an extraordinary man, an incredibly lucky find for an anthropologist, but as Osgood wrote (1940:55): “When all is said, it must be remembered that no-one person, nor several, can express the infinite variations of even a simple culture in its change through time and space.” Billy had cut himself off from his own

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

28l

11.9. Old Woman mask (Shageluk) and hand ornament used by women dancers (Anvik) (Gifts to the University Museum from the Reverend and Mrs. Henry Chapman)

people to a certain extent: he did not potlatch or join in Native dances, so it is possible that his information about his culture may have been distorted by per¬ sonal bias, even though such detachment often makes a keener observer. (Of course, I knew nothing about Billy Williams when I was in Anvik, since Osgood’s first book on the Ingalik, based on information acquired in 1934, was not pub¬ lished until 1940.)

Good-bye to Anvik I bought so many things from the Natives that I exhausted all the cash in the vil¬ lage. I had to pay Mr. Chase, the temporary storekeeper, a lump sum in traveler’s checks, and then issue “paper on the store.” The latter was a very primitive type of check, used by the Chapmans and others at Anvik. You simply wrote on a slip of paper: “Due Annie So-and-So (or Billy Such-and-Such, as the case might be) $2.00,” signed your name, and gave the paper to Annie (or Billy), who would then take it to the store. When a stack of such slips had accumulated there, the store would redeem them. Even when the Natives couldn’t read, they would trustingly accept the paper. Anvik seemed the most pleasant of all the villages we had visited. The Native houses and the store were on Mission property that had been purchased from the Natives and secured from the United States by homesteading. Each household,

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like the store, paid $1.00 a year ground rent, giving the Mission some control over troublemakers. The storekeepers had been decent enough not to sell liquor, or stuff that could be drunk as such. I saw only one Indian who had been drinking during the five days that we were at Anvik, and it was said that he had made some home brew out of potatoes. Zagoskin (1967:192) also particularly liked the people of Anvik, of whom he wrote: Just as the Vazhichagat [Holikachuk-Shageluk Slough] divides the Ttynay ... people who differ in dialects, so the Anvig divides those who take snuff from those who smoke.... Old and young, women and children, hold out their hands forproshka [Chukchee for “tobacco”]; those who receive it smoke it or sniff it until they reach a state of unconsciousness or stupor. It would be a crime to refuse anyone. The Anvig people were the first of the mainland natives who gave a friendly reception to our party sent out in 1835 to explore the Yukon country. The peace-loving people have not changed. [Except that we witnessed no such tragic scenes of tobacco addiction!] When it came time to leave Anvik, it was hard to tear ourselves away from the generous hospitality, stimulating conversations, and warm material comforts. Since the store had been more or less abandoned and the stock allowed to run down, we could not buy enough food for the next stage of our journey. But the Chapmans generously loaned us the missing items, which we promised to replace when we reached Holy Cross. The Chapmans were letting us tap their winters supply of food, and this had to be returned in kind. Mrs. Chapman, in addition, “potlatched” us six cans of parsnips, because her family did not care for them, and these she did not want replaced. I had felt no particular love for parsnips up to that time, but the taste of these was such a welcome change from the all-too-familiar flavors of the other canned goods that I immediately formed a liking for the lowly parsnip which has endured to this day. We left after lunch on August 29, although a Native who had just arrived in his canoe reported that the Yukon was rough. Mrs. Chapman was really worried about us, but we had learned that what the Natives called “rough water” was no hindrance to our wide, steady skiffs, so we set out anyway, heading for Old Bonasila, a site that Hrdlicka had tested and published as the best in the region. It was twenty-two miles below Anvik.

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283

BONASILA Except for some breakers on a bar in the middle, we did not find the river at all bad. We came down as far as a slough below the mouth of the Bonasila River, and went through the slough to look at some rocky bluffs. It wasn’t really a Yukon channel but was instead an old bend of the Bonasila River into which the Yukon had bitten. (I figured this out myself, and Jack said I was correct!) According to Orth (1967:152), the Bonasila River is an important stream, flowing southeast for 125 miles to enter the Bonasila Slough. We had just come out of the slough when a terrific thunderstorm hit us. It re¬ ally rained! We couldn’t see a quarter mile ahead of us. It felt as if it were raining all over the world. The wind was blowing hard and I was afraid it would make such big waves that we would be unable to get around the bluffs north of Old Bonasila. These were bluffs or hills made of a volcanic mudflow, with stones ranging from big boulders down to small pebbles, stuck into a brown cement, like monstrous plums and raisins in an indigestible pudding. The beach around the bluffs was covered with these boulders. However, the rain held the waves down, and just as we reached the bluffs, both wind and rain let up.

Old Bonasila The site of Old Bonasila was on both sides of a little stream called Cold Creek, which came down across a flat between two rocky hills about two miles apart. Cold Creek was about a quarter mile below the first of these rocky hills or “indi¬ gestible bluffs,” appropriately named Cement Hill. Most of the village site was on a terrace north of the mouth of Cold Creek. (“Cold Creek” is not mentioned by Orth.) Cabins were still standing on the corresponding terrace south of the creek; these represented all that was left of Maximilians trading post, according to the Anvik Natives. Old Bonasila was abandoned in 1898 after an epidemic of measles. Hrdlicka has left a more accurate and recognizable description of this site than of any other that he visited on the Yukon in 1926 and 1929 (1930:60-61, 142-45). Jette called the site Tsenanron (Launching Canoes); the Russians called it Mur¬ derer’s Village or Makki (Dali 1870:220). Jacobsen (1977:108) knew it as Makkiem or Barnassella. The inhabitants were feared by Natives upstream as sorcerers. We tried to land at the mouth of the creek but came aground on the mud flat, so we turned back upstream to just below the cliffs, where a stretch of sand and gravel between the boulders and the mud made a good landing place. As we stepped ashore we found animal bones and pottery on the beach (as Hrdlicka had t

done). We pitched camp right on the beach and soon collected quite a few bones and potsherds, which an eddy seemed to have washed back.

284

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Next day (August 30) began with another rainy spell, but we dug in a house pit on the edge of the bank and also started a map, which could not be finished un¬ til the following morning because of the rain. The house turned out to be a kashim, about twenty feet square, built right at the edge of a terrace (II), ten feet above the river level. A younger terrace (I), just above the mud flat, was four feet above water level. It had evidently been formed after repeated flooding, when the Yukon washed the edge of Terrace II. The material in Terrace I had evidently been washed out of the upper Terrace II, and the terrace itself was being formed while at least some of the houses on Terrace II were still occupied. Puzzling out these sequences was work for jack, who was particularly anxious to know how recently the Yukon had stood four feet higher and had washed along the face of Terrace II. In the beach sand at the bottom of Terrace I we found a blue glass bead; in an upper layer of that terrace, an iron finger ring; and in the entrance tunnel to the kashim, a white glass bead. Except for these objects, and the marks of sharp steel tools on pieces of bone and on the timbers roofing the kashim, our haul in¬ cluded only such purely aboriginal specimens as bone scrapers and skinning tools, barbed bone and antler arrowheads (for beaver), antler side-prongs for fish spears, bone awls, antler comb, antler wedge, antler spoon handle, and a bird-bone tube. Among the stone objects were red stones used for paint, naturally hollow stone vessels or flat slabs on which such paint had been rubbed and mixed, single-edged knife blades and semi-lunar ulu blades of ground slate, a stone saw for cutting slate, finished and unfinished adze blades, a greenstone chisel, a jasper engraving tool, an oval stone inset for the rim of a wooden dish, a triangular slate arrow blade, hammerstones, whetstones, and scrapers of chipped green chert and jasper. And from every part of the site that we sampled came many, many pieces of decorated Na¬ tive pottery. The crude flaked stone tools (ulu-shaped scrapers), which Hrdlicka believed were evidence of an ancient, pre-ceramic period, were found indiscriminately scattered at every level we explored. The stone (andesite) was derived from the large boulders at Cement Hill which seemed to break naturally into sharp-edged pieces, and could be gathered on the beach and used without further shaping. Similar crude stone flakes are still used by the Indian women for tanning skins and are said to be better than a sharp knife for giving the finishing touches. All the house pits seemed to be post-contact (modern), and all of the graves on the upstream hillside were modern above-ground box burials, dating from 186798. We were unable to determine any part of the site as pre-contact. The older house pits and kashims may have been destroyed by the river. The stone artifacts of this earlier period—blades for small adzes, knives, and weapons—found in association with more recent houses and pits, had probably been brought imwith the dirt and turf used for roofing.

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285

We did, however, make one amusing discovery. Digging into what we thought was an old house pit, we found that it was not a dwelling at all, but a pit cache in which salmon eggs and heads had been buried in birchbark baskets. In one of the containers of rotten eggs, I found a good stone adze head. Instead of finding the wonderfully ancient site from which we had expected great things, we had unearthed a puzzle.

The Last Camp We had planned to leave Bonasila on September 2 for Holy Cross, only twenty miles downstream, where we hoped to catch the steamer. The weather, however, had been so bad with wind and rough water that we thought we might have to seize an earlier day. On September 2, however, we were not ready to start packing un¬ til three in the afternoon, and that would have made our arrival too late in the day. The sun came out for a little while at noon, so we took pictures, but it soon went under again. We spent that afternoon just loafing. I darned socks by patching the holes in the heels with other worn-out socks. Jack, Ken, and Sandy took naps, and read my notebook with its typed passages from the early explorers and govern¬ ment reports, and untangled two huge balls of string we had saved for packing. Our gasoline lantern had reached the end of its day. We had broken all our spare mantles for it, the needle to clean the valve was broken, and the gasoline would feed only when the lamp was tipped on its side. And that day, the valve be¬ came completely blocked and there was no fixing it. But Jack worked on it and by a miracle got it to light our last evening in camp. When we went to bed it was pitch black outside (and had been that way ever since we left Holikachaket), but at ten o’clock the stars came out. Next day, September 3, the sky was overcast and threatening. I was sorry to break camp for the last time, but heartily sick of the hardships. During the middle of the summer it had seemed impossible to go on in the face of the mosquitoes, gnats, rain, hard work, poor results, and my increasing rheumatism. But now things seemed better, and we had had a lot of fun together. I was sorry to see the comradeship end, for I knew, of course, that when the sun shone again, I’d wish we were back in the tents.

New Bonasila We had trouble again with the new motor. In fact, we changed spark plugs sev¬ eral times and finally had to be towed into Holy Cross by the other boat. On the way there we stopped at New Bonasila, an occupied settlement below the bluffs at ,

the lower end of the Old Bonasila bay, just as the “old” site is below the bluffs of

286

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11.10. Woman on doorstep of log cabin, New Bonasila, September 2 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-230)

Cement Hill. The settlement is marked as “Paradise” on some maps, a real mis¬ nomer, in my opinion. Orth (1967:738) reported that both names were used by riverboat pilots from 1898 to 1910. There were quite a number of families at New Bonasila, just ending their fishing season. All the men and boys came up to our tents on our second night at Old Bonasila. They arrived in two big boats with out¬ board motors, all of them cold and wet, without even jackets or sweaters. They sold us two whitefish for “two bits” (the Alaskan way of referring to twenty-five

SHAGELUK SLOUGH TO ANVIK AND BONASILA

287

cents). Sandy thought it was wrong of them to charge us anything, because an In¬ dian up the river had told us that in summer the Natives never sold fish, they just gave them away, but I could not agree. After we had finished our supper dishes, we invited the fellows into our cook tent, and when we all got inside there were fifteen of us! We now saw these people again at their own village, and what a smelly place it was!—racks and racks of dried fish, hundreds of salmon heads strung up, and sacks full of salmon eggs rotting and oozing out. They buried these eggs in pits to keep for dog feed in the winter, they told us, but I believe this was to ferment them for human consumption, just as we process and enjoy certain strong cheeses. Since the Indians were sensitive to possible ridicule from white people, these people probably wanted us to think that this smelly treat was only for the dogs. The last year’s pits were open and full of putrid water and maggots. Behind the houses were the usual deposits of human dung. There were obviously too many people staying for too long a time for the sanitary facilities to handle. But the snows and cold of winter and the floodwaters of spring would hide, purify, and wash away the debris of summer, making everything clean and ready for the new season. The layout of New Bonasila was similar to that at the “old” village site, but at the “new” village there were three terraces, not two. The presently occupied houses and the old houses just upriver from the latter were all on the third high¬ est terrace, eight to ten feet above the river level. About twelve house pits and a kashim pit with several trees growing in it were between the occupied houses and the graveyard on the slope of the hill. While the house pits did not look old, sev¬ eral Natives reported finding stone adze heads on the beach, so this site presented a puzzle like that of Old Bonasila. We arrived at Holy Cross about three o’clock in the afternoon of September 3. After ignominiously going aground on the west side of the river when we left New Bonasila, we had, perforce, to follow the main channel along the east bank, so now we had to cut across the Yukon, dodging sand bars, to get to town. Our ar¬ rival was something of an anticlimax, I felt.

12

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

HOLY CROSS

The Mission Holy Cross was quite a place. The Mission owned all the low flatland just below a big bluff on the west (right) side of the Yukon, and across from the mouth of the Innoko River. The local trader, Mr. Gerhart, rented his land from the Mis¬ sion. There were two other trading posts in the area. Jim Walker’s store was at a settlement called Ghost (or Gost) Creek, about a mile upstream from the Mission and above the bluffs on the same side of the river, and the other outfit, Turner and Wood—the Wood of Holikachaket—had their store somewhere across the river, perhaps near the site of Koserefsky. This was an Ingalik village at the mouth of the Innoko established long before 1887, when the Mission came to Anilukhtakpak, (or Nele’ihken, Goblins’ Town, named for the Wild Woman from Kateel), as Holy Cross was then called. According to VanStone (1979a: 137,140 - 43), Father Robault and Brother Gior¬ dano, S.J., had originally come to Anvik Old Station, where Dr. Chapman was be¬ ginning his work, but the Koserefsky Ingalik invited them, even sending a dog team to fetch them. After their first winter spent in the kashim at Koserefsky, the two Jesuits moved to a cabin at Ghost Creek and began to build at the present site of Holy Cross. They were soon joined by Father Tossi and nuns from the Sisters of St. Ann (of Quebec), and the Natives also began to move there. The Mission of the Holy Cross and the large boarding school flourished, especially since the latter used to send an annual boat up the Yukon to recruit boarders, even from among Protestant Anvik. From a commercial point of view, the mouth of the Innoko in the vicinity of Koserefsky became more important. There, Railroad City (overoptimistically misnamed) became a transshipment point for freight, since it could be reached by heavily loaded barges, while access to Holy Cross was ham288

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

289

12.1. Holy Cross Mission, from the hill to the east, September 6 (?) (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-233)

pered even in 1935 by shallow water. The rapidly growing bar and the erosion of the land on which the Mission stood were factors that eventually forced aban¬ donment of Holy Cross in 1957 (VanStone 1979b: 62-68). When we landed at Holy Cross, we were impressed by the fields of oats and hay (the hay hung over wooden racks to dry), the big garden of vegetables and flow¬ ers, the old Buick (used as a tractor), the two horses, and several cows. The Mis¬ sion also owned a herd of reindeer. They supplied other Catholic Missions with meat, as well as with potatoes and other garden stuff, but the Sisters at Nulato had said they preferred the deer meat from Allakaket on Norton Sound. We had hoped to be invited to stay at the Mission, but they were evidently overcrowded. We walked up to the main building and met Father Duncan, who was all dressed up in his robe. He spoke with an Irish accent, which intrigued me so much that I didn’t notice at first that the poor mans shoes were split, with one little toe stick¬ ing out. He introduced us to the Sister Superior, who showed us all over the works. She also had an interesting accent, but one which I could not place. Like Nulato, Holy Cross is run by the Jesuit Fathers and Sisters of Saint Ann. There were any number of buildings here: stable, tool sheds, sawmill, green¬ house, machine shop, church, Father’s house, Sisters’ house, girls’ dormitory, boys’ dormitory, school building, and a house for the little children. All the build-

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HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

ings were old, almost ramshackle, and gave the impression of largeness, bareness, and congestion. The children slept in large dormitories with acres of little wooden bedsteads. Rows of wash basins were set on improvised dressers and tables. Every¬ thing had been made out of something else, and nothing had been wasted. We tramped up and down stairs. At every turn were cheap religious pictures and mot¬ tos. In the chapel we saw three Sisters praying; they were on retreat for the week. We also visited the classrooms and were amazed at the childrens’ artistic and mechanical skills as displayed in the things they had made. For a spelling game, the boys had made a number of model planes, each one representing a real plane with which they were familiar. The Sister told us that the boys not only knew the makes and models of all the planes, as our small boys know cars, but they also could recognize the particular pilot by his way of flying, and loved to demonstrate this. About five of these small planes hung from the ceiling, representing five competing teams. The wires along which they could travel had markers corre¬ sponding to the various Alaska towns, with the mileage between them indicated. Therefore, to go from Flat to Holy Cross, for example, a distance of fifty miles, the team would have to spell fifty words correctly. There were also elaborate chalk dec¬ orations around the blackboards—flowers, birds, and animals—maps drawn by the children, illustrated themes, and, in the sixth to eighth grades, really fine pic¬ tures in pastels, watercolors, and ink, of all kinds of subjects. We saw a volume commemorating the bishop’s Diamond Jubilee, and all the drawings were done by an eighth-grade girl. The themes and poems in the book were by a group of children, and twelve illuminated copies were mimeographed. The Sister Superior ushered us into a little room to hear all the older and intermediate girls sing to us: “Our School,” and “Holy Cross, My Holy Cross” to the tune of “O Tannenbaum.” Some of the girls looked rather pasty-faced, emphasized by the rouge and powder they wore. (I was told, many years later, that some Natives believed their children had been overworked and exploited at the Mission.) There was a great deal of Eskimo-Russian mixture here, and a combination of Yukon Eskimo with Yukon Ingalik, and of Kuskokwim Eskimo with Kuskokwim Ingalik. Paul Keating at Holikachaket had told us that many of the Natives at Holy Cross were called “Demetrief,” the descendants of a Russian priest who was on the lower Kuskokwim in the early days. He had married in succession four or five Eskimo women and had several children by each. After his death the Russian church didn’t replace him, and when the Jesuits came into the Kuskokwim coun¬ try in the 1880s and converted the people, they moved a number of them to Holy Cross to be near the Mission. Paimiute, the first Eskimo village encountered going down the Yukon, is only twenty-five miles below Holy Cross, and just below there the Yukon and*the Kuskokwim rivers are very close together. A string of lakes and streams runs be¬ tween, so the portage distance is negligible, but the tundra is terrible to hike over,

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as tough Dr. Hrdlicka (1943:273) discovered in late May-early June 1930. It was said that, at high water, a canoe or kayak could go straight across without portag¬ ing. Some of the river steamers with very shallow draff could “run even on the dew,” and it was claimed that one did cross from the Yukon to the Kuskokwim at a time of high water. As at Nulato, the Mission here had a Brother, an Irishman, who was a me¬ chanical genius. Some benefactor gave the Mission an airplane, and this Brother was to fly it. Another man, however, took it up on its maiden flight and crashed. The pilot escaped but the plane was a total wreck; not even the Irishman could re¬ pair it. The people around here relied on him to mend everything—from radios, outboard motors, and so on, up to big boats. The money he earned went to the Mission.

The Gerharts We arranged to store our boats, motors, tents, and camping gear with the Mis¬ sion. Since the Mission could not take us in, they sent us to the local storekeeper, Mr. Gerhart. He and his wife used to take in travelers, and at first they told us they had nothing to offer, either in the way of meals or beds. She had arthritis in her hands and was unable to do heavy work. But they finally did take pity on us and let us into their guest rooms, which really constituted a separate cabin tacked onto the big store. We had four beds and a wood stove and were pretty comfortable, al¬ though we were disappointed at having to cook our own meals, because this meant that we couldn’t pack up our cooking outfit. The Gerharts were very generous in letting us use their wood and water for cooking and washing, and their boxes and sacks for packing. The cabin was quite clean, and we tried to keep it so. We did very little at first, except to pack up what we could and to keep out of the rain, for it stormed hard until the sun came back for a brief spell between showers on September 6. Father Pangy said that this had been the worst summer he had known for mosquitoes, gnats, and rain. There had been terrible rains here ever since July 14, and it had been about the same for us, though, of course, the farther downriver one went, the more rain could be expected. People here were now looking for the rain to end and the first frost to begin any day.

Plans for Going Outside We expected the steamer either on the night of September 4 or the morning of September 5. We made up a pool, each contributing a quarter and betting on the hour of arrival. Ken picked two p.m., and I, eleven-thirty p.m. on the fourth; Sandy chose six a.m., and Jack, nine a.m. on the fifth. That day was very stormy,

292

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

and some of the people told us that the steamer could not possibly travel but would have to tie up, while others said that she was pushing two scows and would be slow because of having so much freight to deliver. Still others said that the water on the Tanana was now so low that she might have trouble at the mouth of that river. Jack was in a double sweat: first, because we had not heard anything about possible charter flights and would not hear until the steamer came; and sec¬ ond, because he was afraid of missing the steamer to Seattle and being late for the start of classes. His boss at the University of Michigan had told him not to be late with the usual “expedition excuse.” Then, on September sixth we heard that Jim Walker, the trader at Ghost Creek, had learned via the radio that the river steamer Nenana had not left Nenana un¬ til the night of the fifth, already a delay of five days. But no one else had heard that message, and while people did not question Jim’s honesty, they wondered if he had really heard what he thought he had. And so we began to calculate. With lots of freight, she could easily be a week behind schedule, giving us no chance at all of catching the Seattle boat unless an airplane happened to turn up to take us. The Nenana was carrying all the winter supplies for these people, so traders from the Innoko and Iditerod rivers were pouring into town, some of them expecting sev¬ eral hundred tons of freight. They were in a great hurry to get safely back up their respective tributaries before the water got too low. The classiest boat of the bunch was the Danicio No. 7. It was the fastest on the Yukon, being powered with an en¬ gine taken from a rum runner, but, as Mr. Gerhart said, “You just pour gasoline through her.” Finally the Nenana came, after days of waiting. The steamer had been late in starting, as reported by Walker, and then had slammed into a sandbank near the mouth of the Tanana. The scow, being pushed by the Nenana, hit first and stuck, and the steamer stove in her bows against the scow. That scow was the enormous new one we had watched being built at Nenana. The Nenana could neither shove it off, nor pull it back off the sand bar, but had to wait until the Yukon came along on her run between Nenana and Dawson, Yukon Territory. Then the Yukon man¬ aged to get the Nenana’s bows on her own snoot, and somehow pushed her and the scow down to the mouth of the Tanana River, where the channel was wide enough for the scow to come alongside the Nenana. Meanwhile, they had been getting water out of the steamer with a steam syphon, and had put in some kind of a bulkhead which was sufficient to enable her to continue the trip. There was also a smaller steamer, the Alice, that appeared while the Nenana was still stuck, though I didn’t know where she came from. The Nenana s purser took the Alice down to Ruby with all the freight for Ruby from the Nenana, and then boarded the Nenana again at Ruby. We learned all this, of course, only when the steamer fi¬ nally arrived at Holy Cross on her way downriver. That was September tenth, and she had been scheduled to start upstream from Holy Cross on September sixth.

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

293

All this time we did not dare do much of anything, for fear of being away from town when the steamer came.

Frank Fox's Site Ken and I did make one trip while waiting for the steamer. We had been pack¬ ing in a desultory sort of way, still keeping our bedding and cook outfit because we needed them, but working a bit on other things. We heard that about fourteen miles below Holy Cross Mission there was a site at the home of a man named Frank Fox, a Turk. He had beaten up his Native wife, so she had run away from him and was staying with her brother at Holy Cross. She told us that Fox had been saving stuff found in his garden and had a little box full of specimens. Her brother was going down to Fox’s and was willing to take us, so Ken and I went with him. The Yukon here turned due east, and it seemed like a new stretch of the river. The water appeared to have widened out enormously, an impression heightened by the fact that the banks were very low, so that all one saw was a lot of water, a few willows, distant hills, and miles of sky. It was very beautiful, especially so be¬ cause the day was still and overcast, and everything seemed to be waiting mourn¬ fully for the snow. The river was certainly bigger here, having received the waters of the Innoko, and it seemed almost as wide as all outdoors. All the fish camps we passed were deserted. Frank Fox was very polite and cordial to us. He gave us lunch and some vege¬ tables to take back with us, and he had his boys look for specimens on the beach. There was a small creek at his place which had gone partly dry, leaving pools of stagnant, nasty water. On both sides of the creek were house pits, most of which Fox had leveled off in making his garden. His specimens came both from his gar¬ den and from the beach where they had been washed out. His house and other buildings were between the creek and the hillside that jutted out into the river just above the flat. This hill showed the first bedrock on the river below Holy Cross. The collection that Fox had made was quite good, similar to what we had found upriver, but with more of an Eskimo appearance to it, some specimens reminding me of a cross between northern Alaskan and Pacific Eskimo. Hrdlicka had visited this site while Fox was away, but Fox had heard about him and had been saving what he found ever since. I gave him ten dollars for the lot. He might have taken less, but I had no way of knowing what it was really worth. What I didn’t like about Frank Fox was the fact that his children—as nice a bunch of kids as you could ask for—were terrified of him. When we were out of the house we could hear him shouting at them, but in our presence he was more polite and gentler. I hope he didn’t abuse them. Their mother must have been very worried about them. Children in an isolated situation like this are so helpless if abused.

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12.2. Frank Fox’s place, Yukon River, 14 miles below Holy Cross, September 9 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-242)

We started back about three o’clock, but had trouble with a spark plug, so we did not get to Holy Cross until after seven. On the way, we passed a young porcu¬ pine that had apparently swum across the Yukon and was just nearing the north¬ western bank. Our Native boatman thought about killing it, but when he saw it up close, decided that it was too small. I was glad he had spared it, but was surprised that he had even contemplated killing it, for I had learned that in Alaska porcu¬ pines should be saved for emergency rations, because they are so easy to kill. This porcupine got quite wet from the wake of our boat but seemed to be swimming successfully to shore. Its performance in the water made me wonder about the Porcupine in the Native tale who cried on the riverbank, wailing that she couldn’t swim, until the obliging Beaver gave her a lift across on his tail. In the end, when he dumped her, the Porcupine walked safely to shore on the bottom of the river. She must have been making a fuss over nothing (see Tales, Tales 28 and 33). We also looked at the riverbank for signs of flood deposits. The cottonwood

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

295

trees here had their roots spreading out about twelve to eighteen inches below the surface. We could see marks of two or three separate floods: the old surfaces with driftwood and moss, and below them old tree roots, all buried under the silt. When cottonwood trees are buried, they put out another set of roots just under the surface of the new ground level, so you may see a trunk with two sets of roots sprouting incongruously out of the bank, the upper set about two feet above the lower. We calculated that there was evidence of two to three feet of flood deposit. Down at Holy Cross there was no frozen soil, no permafrost. The lower level of the ground frost rises as one approaches the coast, so that at Holy Cross, the warmth of summer penetrates to the bottom of the winter’s frost and thaws it all. At Bonasila, just a short distance up the river, we found frost in the house pits and did not know whether it would thaw out entirely before winter. At Anvik, still farther up the river, there is always some permanent frost, we were told.

Waiting The steamer brought us a message from Northern Air Transport (N.A.T.) at Fairbanks that they would send us a plane and bring us out for $300. This was now the only way that we could get back to our steamer for Seattle on September 24. The weather had cleared up and was perfect for flying, so we sent a wireless back from the Nenana to send the plane that day or the next. The wireless was sent at eleven-thirty in the morning, and we hoped the plane might come that night. But it didn’t. We packed hard all that day and had our outfit taken to the Mission. We also got our skiffs out of the water and set them down near a shed where the Mis¬ sion would store them. We sent off all our specimens by parcel post, which was cheaper than freight. That night Sandy and I walked up the beach to Jim Walker’s, and I got some more specimens from him which had been found at his place and at Fox’s. Next morning early an airplane did come, and we tumbled out of bed. The Ne¬ nana had started upriver at midnight, and already all of the smaller boats had taken on their freight and were gone, too. But this plane was not for us. It was a three-seater, based at Anchorage, that was bringing some trader up from Flat on a hurried trip. The pilot was a young fellow named Moore, and he tried to get us to send word for a plane from his company. The Gerharts at the store told us about some sick man who had waited for a week for a plane to take him to a hospital, and they did not think that N.A.T. would send a plane for us. So we were rather tempted to do business with this other company. This pilot’s plane was, of course, too small for us, but he could come back with a larger plane. We turned down his offer, however, and after he left I wondered if we had done the right thing. That morning, we just sat around and were bored to death. Jack and Ken and I had walked up to Jim Walker’s to look at a site there. It was a pointless trip, be-

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cause I was so thoroughly tired out and it was so hot that I didn’t do much. In contrast, the gnats were out attacking in force. The Ghost Creek site was called “Old Town,” the Indian name being very similar to that given the Old Fish Camp on the Khotol. There had been house pits and a kashim, most of which had been obliterated when the store was built. In times of high water, however, pottery and stone tools still were washing out of the bank. The new settlement at the place was called “At the End of the Eddy.” Walker said that the oldest graves contained bod¬ ies wrapped in bark and buried sitting up, and that he had reburied the skeletons in a big pit behind his cold storage plant. A recent grave, which he had left undis¬ turbed, was a coffin, painted red and deposited on the ground. It contained the naturally mummified body of a woman in a cloth dress. We purchased a few spec¬ imens from him which were indistinguishable from those of Frank Fox’s place. But on the whole, this had been a futile walk. We got back in time for a late lunch of sandwiches. Since we had packed all of our equipment, Mrs. Gerhart was cooking for us. And then we just sat around. “I can’t tell you how still and dead the place was that afternoon,” I wrote home. “It was a calm, hot day—not a cloud, not a breath of air, everybody away or in their house, and nothing stirring anywhere. We felt utterly and completely marooned. The gnats bit you in the sun, and it was chilly in the shade.”

NORTHERN AIR TRANSPORT

Noel Wien Finally at five o’clock in the afternoon, a beautiful big red airplane came zoom¬ ing over the ridge and landed at the field. We knew it was for us! Jack was asleep, but Ken and Sandy and I ran the mile to the airport. It was a six-passenger-cabin Bellanca from Fairbanks. The pilot was refilling her with gas and doing a little cleaning up. He asked us if we wanted to go back that same day, but we thought it was too late. We decided to chance the weather and fly the following day. The pilot was Noel Wien, one of the very few veteran bush flyers to survive the pioneer days of the late 1920s. For a short time in 1929, the year that claimed the lives of Russel Merrill and Carl Ben Eielson, he had been the sole pilot flying in Alaska. He pioneered many air routes: Anchorage to Fairbanks, Fairbanks to Nome and remote mining camps in the north; he made the first round-trip flight across the Bering Sea with supplies for an ice-bound ship off Siberia. Wien had started his career as a barnstormer in Lindbergh’s country, but that was before Lindbergh had even learned to fly. Being a stunt pilot, I guess, had helped to work the love of risk out of Wien’s system, for he was reputed to be one of the most Con¬ servative flyers in Alaska, despite the many firsts in his record. But no one in 1935 could guess that his three-plane Northern Air Transport (a.k.a. “Wien Airways”)

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297

12.3. Noel Wien and his Bellanca Pacemaker. Holy Cross, September 11 (Photo by F. de La¬ guna, 350-35-245)

was destined to become one of Alaska’s major airlines until its liquidation in 1984. We did not learn all this at the time, of course. Wien was anything but boastful. He was rather a silent man and it took a lot of talking to him that night to find out much about him. And I guess he was also sizing us up and had decided that we were all right, for he was very generous to us the next day. He had just returned to Alaska from a trip Outside when he brought in a big tri-motor Ford. He had some dandy photographs taken in flight, some of them being pictures of the Ford, some of the Bellanca. He had flown the Bellanca down and flew the Ford back to

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

298

Alaska, while another pilot flew the Bellanca and photographed the Ford in the air. He also had a few pictures of snow-capped mountains seen on the trip. Like Lindbergh, Noel Wien was interested in the possibilities of aerial photography, at that time little developed. (Some sixty-odd years later, in February 1999, my eye was caught by the follow¬ ing note in “Frontier Flight” [Rennick 1998:38]: August 16,1935 Noel Wien flying a Bellanca Pacemaker enters the air race to get photos of the Rogers/Post crash to Seattle newspapers and the wire services. Pitted against pilots and aircraft of Pacific Alaska Airways, Wien flies his Bellanca Pacemaker from Fairbanks over the Canadian Rockies directly to Seattle, a route never before attempted. Wien wins the race by five hours and uses the reward money to purchase a Ford Trimotor. It was probably typical of Wien that he did not even hint at this triumph when he talked to us about his flight. See also Webb 1993:263-65, 267.) We discovered that our letter to N.A.T. had come while he was Outside, but Mrs. Wien simply kept it and had brought it to the office only a day or two before our wireless was received. The letter had been sent from Nulato through the cour¬ tesy of the Coot, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries boat. It angered me at the time to think that our urgent message should have been so treated, but on more afterthought I realized that they really could not have done anything while Wien was Outside. Wien was as considerate as could be. He had founded his own airway, we dis¬ covered later, and used to have three planes, but one of the pilots had cracked one up. So now he had the Bellanca, a smaller Stinson, and the Ford. He said he never flew in bad weather (which others verified) because he had a wife and three chil¬ dren in Fairbanks.

Flight to Fairbanks Next morning was clear but a bit breezy. I had been a little tense ever since we decided to go by plane (my only previous experience had been in 1929, flying from Helsinki to Stockholm). I knew that some of the airlines and some of the pi¬ lots in Alaska were no good, but no one told us which were the dangerous ones. With Wien at the controls, however, I wasn’t a bit anxious as we set out for the airfield at nine in the morning. Ken was nervous, however; he couldn’t help it, and it ruined the trip for him. It took three quarters of an hour to get all our stuff stowed away, the mlbtor fixed up and started, and everything ready for us to climb aboard. The pilot made us strap on safety belts that held us in our seats. But even with mine pulled as tight

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299

12.4. The crew ready to fly: Sandy Reynolds, Freddy de Laguna, Ken Gorton, and Jack Eardley. FFoly Cross, September 11 (Photo by Noel Wien, 350-35-247)

as it could go, I was as loose in it as a mouse in a dog harness—and I rather felt the size of a mouse! Only the two front seats had windows that would open, so I sat in the seat on the right side in front, next to Wien. Sandy sat beside me to take down the record of my pictures, and Ken and Jack sat behind. I had six him packs left because I had been unable to take pictures for so long a time, but I shot them all that day. Jack had only two left. That was the reason for our seating. We could record the direction of the shot from the compass in the plane, but the altimeter did not work, so Wien told us his estimates. We taxied to the far end of the field, turned around and headed back toward the end where the plane had been parked. The man who had brought our bags down was still standing there with his wheelbarrow, and I remember thinking that if we failed to take off it would be too bad for him. Then we were racing across the short stubble grass. I watched the big rubber wheel under me, and then it was sud¬ denly off the ground and we were over the trees and then over the river and I was so thrilled and happy that I could have slapped the pilot on the back for joy. We

300

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

12.5. Former channels of Yukon River, parallel to present east bank. Below Anvik, looking N, alt. 1,400 ft., 10:14 a.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-253)

had a great view of Holy Cross and of the mouth of the Innoko from the air, and then we were winging up the river. Noel Wien had let us pick our route, and we really got a wonderful bargain for our $300, for the plane was ordinarily chartered at $45 an hour. We did not go back to Fairbanks in a straight line but wandered up the Yukon, retracing our voyage down the river and wheeling around for picture-taking. When we circled over Bonasila, my heart was in my mouth, for we turned so sharply that the plane was pivoting on one wing, and I was looking straight down into the camp and the river, without even the window glass between me and the ground. Of course, be¬ ing all of a piece with the plane, centrifugal force held us tight in our seats, though we were fully aware of being tilted over the ground. The air was a bit bumpy, and I looked back to see Ken turn green. Then the poor fellow had to leave his seat and lie down in the back with the dufflebags. From there he couldn’t look out of the window. He was airsick all the way. Some people think it funny when someone else is airsick or seasick, but they have little conception of what it is like, and no compassion. There was nothing we could do for Ken, not having any rem^y available. Wien not only showed me how to take pictures from the plane but he even

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301

12.6. Mouth of Anvik River, taken from above large island in Yukon River. The Mission is hidden behind hill on south bank of Anvik River; Anvik Point is opposite. Looking W by N, alt. 1,500 ft., 10:16 a.m., September 11 (Photo by Noel Wien, 350-35-254)

took some for me when the subject was on his side. I had passed my camera to him to take pictures of Anvik for me, and he was so absorbed in the task that I was afraid he hadn’t noticed we were heading down, so I touched him on the shoul¬ der. He just laughed. Jack made notes on his map, and took his last few movie shots. We flew up the Khotol River and Kaiyuh Slough, although we succeeded in losing it for a time among the millions of lakes and former channels. From the air, the valley of the Yukon showed its clear division into two kinds of topography: the high terraces of silt near the bedrock hills, and the present flood plain. The high silt was cut into by the river to produce the various boneyards. The lower part of the valley floor, however, was nothing but a network of former river channels, some occupied by sloughs, some cut off and left as ser¬ pentine lakes, some others half dry and full of swamp grass and algae, and still others quite dry. Between these old channels were ridges of higher ground—old river sandbars—covered with timber of various ages, the oldest being stands of spruce, birch, and large cottonwoods; the younger, of birch and slim aspens and willows, down to the newest fringe of willows. Just to look at so many lakes made one dizzy. They lay in long arcs, concentric to the present bends in the river for a certain distance, and then, abruptly, a strip in the scrollwork would veer off in

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HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

12.7. Anvik Mission and settlement; Anvik Point in lower right foreground. Alt. 1,000 ft., 10:23 a.m., September 11 (Photo by Noel Wien, 350-35-256)

some other direction because, for some reason, the direction of the river had radi¬ cally changed. Jack calculated that, on the average, the Yukon scoured out its flood plain once every millennium. (See figs. 6.9 and 12.6.) The high silt lacked these old river patterns. It was mostly a shapeless, level tundra. Across the plain ran pigmy streams, meandering a hundred times the dis¬ tance out of their direct courses to the Yukon. Along their banks were trees, but the rest of the ground was just yellow with grass, swamp weeds, and low bushes. There were also round lakes of various sizes, in all stages of drying up, from fresh¬ looking ponds to ones that had been reduced to nothing more than patches of bright green grass. The little streams avoided these lakes, winding intricately be¬ tween them. Such patterning of the surface water seems to be common when the permafrost is only a few inches below the top of the ground. (See fig. 12.13.) All of the bedrock hills, except for their tops, were covered with birch and spruce. During our stay at Holy Cross the frost had come, and the birch and*willows were all yellow, making a Halloween pattern of orange-gold-yellow leaves

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

303

12.8. Simon Creek, on right (W) bank of Yukon River, 17 miles above Anvik Rapids. Look¬ ing ENE, alt. 2,100 ft., 10:51 a.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-263)

against the blue-black spruce. The streams were brown-black, too, but the Yu¬ kon was the familiar filthy yellow-gray from the silt, except where it reflected the blue sky. Just before we neared Nulato, Sandy had to go to the toilet, and then it was my turn. I managed after a fashion with the tin can that poor Ken had been using. We could get the back door open to empty the can, but it was still a bit embarrassing, even though our needs could not be denied. From Nulato, we cut straight across to the middle stretch of the Yukon, meeting it again near Bishop Mountain, but

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HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

12.9. Typical tundra east of Yukon River, 16 miles below mouth of Khotol River. Alt. 1,700 ft., 11:22 a.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-268)

leaving Koyukuk town far to the northwest and cutting off quite a few bends. It was extraordinary to have the whole summer roll back for us in the space of a few hours. Just a few minutes of flying had meant a whole day of travel by skiff. We had to land at Ruby for gas. This was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and we ate a couple of crackers and some cheese, although no one felt very hun¬ gry. Ken just vomited some more as he got out of the plane and could take noth¬ ing. The landing field was on the top of a hill back of Ruby, which seemed to me would make landing easier than on the level. But it was actually more difficult, Wien said, because there are often downdrafts near the edge of a hill, and you must therefore keep the throttle well advanced when about to land. If you are almost level with the top of the hill, you may be forced below it by the wind, and then have to climb. So you have to keep coming in fast and then drop suddenly when you are on top. But we landed without a bump. Taking off is harder, too, because there is no “good air pack” on the top of a hill. There was no one at the field, just a shed with cans of gasoline. Wien unlocked the door, took out some gas, and wrote his name, with the date and hour, on a Gfipboard inside. There was also a telephone, but he couldn’t raise anyone in town. So we took off again in about twenty minutes. During the last part of the way up,

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305

12.10. Khotol River between Old Fish Camp and Paul Esmailka’s place. Alt. 1,400 ft., 11:47 a.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-282)

the sky had been filling with clouds. Now it was gray all over, and we had a flurry of rain. It was raining hard when we went over the Palisades (boneyard) at Kalland. I was afraid that my last pictures would be no good because of the lack of light. We left the Tanana at its mouth and cut overland for a while, across the high silt and the tops of the bedrock ridges. We flew very low over one—it looked to me as if the tree tops were only thirty feet below the plane’s belly, but Wien said they were one hundred feet down. Although the altimeter in the plane was broken, he judged that we had nowhere flown over 2,800 feet. I think we should have been higher when we went over the Khotol River-Kaiyuh Slough area, so as to get the best view of the topography, but we did not think of that in time. We had hoped to land at Nenana, where our better clothes and extra money had been left, not to mention all our freight, but our pilot said the field was con¬ demned: no one had cut the willows on it. He said he thought he could land, but doubted that he could take off again, and we surely did not urge him to try. So we went on to Fairbanks and landed in the rain. He circled over the town, quite low, and it made me nervous to look straight down onto the buildings. We were quite impressed to land in front of a big hangar:

“wien airways.”

The

office manager, Mr. Ross, was there to meet us and drove us into town in his car. We had made the trip in five and a half hours. I was tired and wanted a bath.

3°6

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

I2.li. Confluence of Tanana and Yukon rivers, from above a large island in the Yukon River, looking E. Tanana Station is at point on left. Yukon River enters from behind this point; Tanana River enters from center. Alt. 1,100 ft., 2:41 p.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de La¬ guna, 350-35-315)

FAIRBANKS AND NENANA One of the first things we learned on our arrival was that the Alaska Steamship Company vessel on which we had reservations was to leave Valdez a day earlier than expected. In order to save time, we decided to go the coast via the Richard¬ son Highway and board the ship at Valdez, rather than taking the train to meet it at Seward as previously planned. But even if we were to catch the ship at Valdez, we had to leave Fairbanks the next day, and our baggage—including clothing, specimens, and the typewriter I had sent back from Hot Springs—was all at Nenana. So it was obvious that I should have to charter a “puddle-jumper” on the railway and bring the stuff back from Nenana that night. Since I was the one with the money and responsibilities for the party, I had to go. It wasn’t necessary for the others because there would be help with the baggage at the Nenana station. So while they bathed and rested, I returned to the railway station and arranged for a trip I really didn’t want to take. Yet it turned out to be more interesting than I had anticipated.

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12.12. Tanana Town and U.S. Telegraph Station, just below the point on the left, from behind which the Yukon enters. Tanana River enters upper right. Looking E, alt. 1,000 ft., 2:42 p.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-316)

The puddle-jumper was a large car, with room for about seven passengers and the driver. It had a Ford motor, but was equipped with railway wheels to run on the tracks. To charter one, I understood that I could pay either seven round-trip fares of $6.60 each, or a lump sum of $24 plus a single round-trip ticket. The sec¬ ond was what I did. I was too tired and confused to understand what it was all about, and the station manager was in a hurry, so I simply did what I was told. Then Mr. Ross of N.A.T. took me on to the airways office, where I paid him $250 and told him I would bring the rest of the $300 the next day. This was Thursday. The regular stage to Valdez had left on Wednesday, and there was no bus going that way. Mr. Ross informed me that a private car would cost us $80 or $90 for the trip, and I did not have enough money for that. So he found a truck driver, Maxie Miller, who was driving to Valdez the next morning, starting at nine o’clock sharp, and who said he would take us for $10 a head. So that was that. At the airport I had run into a Mr. Scotto who said that his wife’s mother, Lot¬ tie Barnes, had been to school in Tacoma (Washington) with my mother. This was

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HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

12.13. High silt country, southeast of Fish Lake, lower Tanana valley. Alt. 2,200 ft., 2:57 p.m., September 11 (Photo by F. de Laguna, 350-35-322)

more than sufficient for an introduction. He was doing accounting work for N.A.T. He was also a grocery salesman and had flown all over Alaska. He had been hanging around the airport and now took me home for a wash-up before I boarded the puddle-jumper. The trip to Nenana took about two hours. The motorman sat in front, and I took a nearby seat. Since the motor protruded into the body of the car and seemed to be pretty greasy, I asked him if it would be safe for me to smoke. That was a happy remark, for not only could I smoke, but so could he! He said he was afraid I was going to be one of those “schoolmarms” who would be offended if he lit up. Although it got darker and colder, and I grew more tired and hungry, the motorman entertained me with tales of adventures on the railway. The puddle-jumper’s headlights cast only a short beam, not far enough ahead for the car to stop in case something was on the tracks. In winter the hares often came out on the line and, paralyzed by the light, did not hop out of the way in time. And then the great snowy owls would come to feed on the rabbitty remains, and they, in turn, might get killed on the return trip. Although the driver was very sorry for these aninfals, his greatest concern was that there might be a moose on the track. A collision would certainly be bad for the moose, but also would most likely wreck the train and

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finish off the driver. Although we kept watching the track ahead, the run passed without incident. I had telephoned ahead to Nenana, so I was expected, and it didn’t take long to collect our baggage, the freight we had sent up the Yukon, and our money. While the baggage was being loaded, the driver sent me off to Mrs. Hicks for supper. When I returned and we had started back up the track for Fairbanks, the driver of the puddle-jumper told me that I had saved three dollars by chartering the gas car in the way I had. He said that when the railway agent saw the amount of freight I was going to carry back, he began to object. He said I had a right to only 150 pounds on my ticket. The driver then lied for my benefit and told him that I had paid for seven tickets. The station agent was then ready to phone Fairbanks, but the driver said, “Why bother?” So all went well, but I felt awkward. When we got back to Fairbanks, we didn’t unload the stuff but let it stay in the car in the roundhouse. Mr. Scotto met me in Fairbanks on my return at ten-thirty and took me to his house for some food, and tea with brandy.

ON THE RICHARDSON HIGHWAY Next morning: up early, the long-delayed bath, and payment of my debts. We were all ready to start at nine o’clock, but no Maxie Miller and his red truck. Ken and Sandy went over to the roundhouse to attend to the freight, while Jack and I sat around. He was getting a cold and I had a swollen throat, and we were both very impatient. About the middle of the morning, Maxie came by casually, picked up our bag¬ gage, and went over to the roundhouse to get the rest, informing us that he would leave at twelve-thirty. After that, another young fellow came by and said he was driving a bus to Valdez and would charge only $10 a person. There were just two seats left in his bus. When Maxie came back, I tried to get him to release two of us from our commitment to him, offering to pay him $10 for our freight, but Maxie insisted on $25 for the freight alone. Curiously enough, he then said he would take our freight and two passengers for $20, which was less than my offer. Since Jack’s cold and mine were progressing, Ken and Sandy volunteered to go in the truck, leaving the two bus seats for Jack and myself. And off they went. Then, to our horror, the bus driver disappeared and we were sure we had been left behind! He had been going to start at one-thirty, but it wasn’t until half-past two that he turned up and we boarded the bus. But then we had to run all over town, visiting every saloon while the driver looked for a drunken Scotsman. This young fellow had come from the placer mines with $1,000, representing his sum¬ mer earnings, had bought his passage to Scotland, and had given $600 to another man to keep for him while he blew the rest. His friend, with commendable hon¬ esty, wouldn’t leave until Scotty had been found. At last the young fellow was lo-

3io

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

cated, and after another flask of whiskey had been bought for him, he reluctantly permitted himself to be taken on board. So we were off at three in the afternoon. Our route to Valdez on the Richardson Highway was a distance of about 370 miles. This road was originally planned in 1899 by (then) Captain Abercrombie, U.S. Army, to rescue the starving and scurvy-stricken prospectors in the Tanana valley. It avoided the usual route over the Valdez Glacier, where so many men had died in the Gold Rush of 1898-99. The Richardson Trail, as it was then called, was only a pack trail at first, but in 1907 it was improved for horse sleds that carried tons of supplies to miners and prospectors, and in 1910 it became passable for wagons. The first trip by automobile to Fairbanks was made in 1913. In 1935 the highway was still unpaved, and most of the bridges were temporary wooden struc¬ tures that had to be replaced every spring. But how very beautiful it was then, be¬ fore paving and straightening the bends destroyed its wilderness character. Our route was up the Tanana, crossing it to ascend its southern tributary, the Delta River; then up past Summit Lake and over the Alaska Range via Isabel Pass (altitude 3,310 feet). From here the road descended to the Copper River valley and went down that for a distance, only to break away sharply to the west to go over Thompson Pass (altitude 2,722 feet) through the Chugach Range, and at last to plunge down in zigzags to Valdez on the shore of Prince William Sound. As we rolled out of Fairbanks, I was horrified to hear the passengers in our bus saying that Maxie was a terrible driver—hardly knew one end of the truck from the other, and had tipped over seven times during the three months this year that the highway had been open. Our entire itinerary was punctuated by pointing out the exact spots where these accidents had occurred: “That’s where Maxie rolled off the road on August first,” and so on. At every curve, and there were many, I expected to see the wreckage of a red truck and the scattered bodies of Sandy, Ken, and Maxie. It was an overcast day, rather cold. If not picturing the bloody wreck, I worried about our two young fellows freezing in the open back of the truck. Sev¬ eral of the passengers in the bus had driven trucks over the highway, and they re¬ lieved our driver for spells. Jack and I were far from happy when we discovered that the plan was to drive all the way to Valdez without stopping for the night— some eighteen hours of driving.

The first part of the way led across the high silt plateau above the Tanana flood plain, then up and over ridges and down again almost to the level of the river. The road was pretty narrow in spots and some of the “curves” were V-shaped. Others on the road were driving as if they believed no other car could possibly be com¬ ing from the opposite direction. At Delta we took the ferry across the Tanana River, here a small, rushing torrent. The ferry was a raff, just about big enough to accommodate the bus. It was attached to an endless cable, and was propped by the power of the current, which, curiously enough, could push the raft in both directions.

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

311

Scotty was now quite drunk and very talkative, repeating: “If you’ve got a burrr on yourrr tongue, you’rrr all rricht.” And, “I’ve got to see Sandy McGrrregorrr at Latouche,” the last theme running like a leit-motif through all his remarks. (Latouche was a copper-mining town on Prince William Sound.) “I last saw Sandy McGrrregorrr at Fairrrbanks on August seventeen, nineteen-thirrrty. We had a fight, and he knocked me down. I said to him, ‘Sandy, arrre you hurrrt?’” The bus driver asked him when he was going to sober up, and he said, “Not un¬ til I see McGrrregorrr at Latouche.” Incidentally, the next day he was a most sober and shy young man who hardly said a word. He admitted that he was twenty-four years old, and that this was the first time he had ever been drunk. He was further embarrassed because the men teased him by pretending that he had said terrible, insulting things to me the night before, a misconception I could not dispell. At about nine-thirty we reached Rapids, a roadhouse (traveler’s inn) on the Delta River, where we learned that Maxie’s truck was only a half hour ahead of us. But we went inside and spent an hour over a delicious dinner of moose and mountain-sheep meat. Now it began to snow, and as we climbed toward Isabel Pass, there was a lot of snow on the ground, although it was melting off the road and making the mud very slippery. I was I pleasantly warm, but terribly cramped, and I couldn’t be comfortable for worrying about Sandy and Ken. We were now among the peaks of the Alaska Range but could not see anything. Finally, at about four in the morning, we reached Gulkana, another roadhouse, on the Copper River. Here a vote was taken on whether we should stop for what was left of the night. The vote was even, but since Scotty was by this time sound asleep, the driver said Scotty’s vote was to stop, as was his own, and that settled the matter. So we slept there until nine the next morning. One of the men who had most loudly protested against stopping was one of these know-it-alls who had insisted that we would have felt much better if we had gone all the way to Valdez. But we wakened to a glorious day, sunny and warm. The mountainside was regal in fall colors, below the bright snowcapped volcanoes of the Wrangell Mountains and above the gray, roiling waters of the Copper River on the east. Our road encoun¬ tered many little streams, undoubtedly raging freshets in the spring, and crossed them on little log bridges, before climbing over the high Thompson Pass with glaciers below us. The road was very narrow, plunging down and staggering up in a series of hair-raising turns. We had to go in second gear most of the way, when we were not in low. It would have been a very dangerous road for a vehicle with poor brakes and a weak clutch. Our driver was pretty careful, and I was glad that I’d not known in advance about the scary places. It was very beautiful, how¬ ever, and Jack took a lot of pictures. (When I came this way nineteen years later, in 1954,1 was glad I’d seen the Copper River valley before progress had spoiled its wild loveliness.)

312

HOLY CROSS AND HOMEWARD BOUND

We arrived at Valdez at three o’clock. My first act was to rush to the steamship office, where they knew nothing about our reservations. So I cabled to Seward about them, having written to the Seward office in the first place. It was lucky that I did cable, because they were expecting us to board at Seward and there was a ter¬ rible scramble for berths, several people in Valdez being out of luck. We thought we would find Sandy and Ken in bed, but bless their hearts, they had packed up all the stuff and labeled all the boxes of specimens. So we all sat down for our last meal together on Alaskan soil. Then to bed at nine, and up at six to finish with the bags. The voyage to Seattle was very pleasant, with good weather, especially on the Gulf, and a beautiful view of Columbia Glacier. Capps and his son were on board, but we did not see as much of them as we had hoped. The French reporter for a Paris weekly whom we had met in Kaltag had again booked passage, along with several other interesting people. Four prostitutes were rumored to be on board, and it was said that one poor old lady passenger died of a stroke. One night we hit something in the water, maybe a log, as the steward said, but the ship lifted up quite a bit and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a rock. Quite enough excitement. I still had my cold. It had come from the purser of the Nenana, relayed by lack. Not a bad cold, but annoying. It was now almost gone, but it lingered on as a memory of the summer after we landed in Seattle and said good-bye to one another. Although we corresponded for a few years, that was the last time that I saw Sandy, or lack, or Ken, for the Depression and then World War II meant no more trips to Alaska until 1949, and by then we had gone our separate ways.

13

EPILOGUE

On the voyage home, as I prepared to make my report to Horace Jayne, Director of the University Museum, I had plenty to think about. Though unsatisfied with our archaeological accomplishments and tantalized by the scraps of ethnological information gained, I could take full satisfaction in the contributions that I knew Jack Eardley would make to the recent geology of the Yukon basin. And I began to see that perhaps our archaeological work had amounted to more than I’d real¬ ized at the time. The relatively scanty remains at each site had nevertheless accu¬ mulated as we moved from place to place, giving an increasingly clearer picture of how the Dena had lived just prior to and just after the time of contact with white culture. Some of the sites we explored would be worth intensive investiga¬ tion, even though I had no particular desire to undertake that myself. I still did not know what I would do with the collection of Native myths we had gathered from groups between Nenana and Nulato. (We had none from the Holikachuk and the Ingalik.) Not until many years later would I publish them, as Tales from the Dena (1995), and then only when Dale DeArmond had so generously agreed to illustrate them and had urged me to write an explanatory text. In the months to come, as my callused hands softened and the marks of mos¬ quito bites faded, I could remember the summer with pleasure. The chances taken by Jack and Ken on the one side, and by Sandy and me on the other, in joining forces on this trip, when the two sides had never met, had really paid off. Of course, we had each done our best to make the venture a success. We were ready to re¬ spect one another’s expertise, anxious to please, and concerned to work together. And through trials and blunders, not an angry word had been exchanged. We be¬ came so used to working together that I could tell Jack where I wanted our next stop to be, and he, as leader of the flotilla, would find the way to it and select the camping place. We could all go ashore, put up the tents, fetch wood and water, and start getting the next meal, each knowing the job he or she was to do without fur¬ ther instruction or discussion, in fact, often working while talking of something else. A schedule of duties connected with getting meals and cleaning up after them helped to spread the work fairly, but someone who had suffered an unusually 313

314

EPILOGUE

13.1. Freddy de Laguna holding Salmon Woman mask, 1935. Against the wall (left to right): two Half-Men, Caribou Man, and Moose Man. On table (left to right): Russian Captain, Fox, Boss of Upriver Indians, Old Woman (Shageluk), and another Fox (Photo courtesy of Science Services, Inc.)

rough day was able to trade off the assigned kitchen chores with someone else. I was ready, of course, to include in our plans any suggestion from the geologists about places they wanted to investigate. If Sandy and I were perhaps better at ap¬ proaching the Natives, Jack and Ken surpassed us in mechanical skills, and Jack had a way with children. I could not have had a better team. What of them now? Armond J. (Jack) Eardley taught geology at the University of Michigan for seventeen years. In 1949 he was called to his beloved University of Utah, where he became Acting Chairman of the Department of Geology, and eventually Dean of the College of Mines and Mineral Industries from 1954 to 1965. He was also named Distinguished Research Professor. In the course of his career he published over seventy major articles and five books. He served as President of the National Association of Geology Teachers and also of the American Geologi¬ cal Institute, and was Editor of the Bulletin of the American Association of Petro-

EPILOGUE

315

leum Geologists, an organization for which he was a Distinguished Lecturer. He was also a National Lecturer for Sigma Xi. Among his many honors were the Dis¬ tinguished Service Award from the Utah Academy of Sciences, and an award for Distinguished Service in the Earth Sciences from the American Federation of Mineral Sciences. He died, too soon, in November 1972, at the age of seventy-one. The School of Mines at the University of Utah established a Distinguished Lec¬ turer Program in Geology and Geophysics in his name, and he is remembered with affection and respect by those who worked with him. (For this information I am indebted to Mrs. Dawn Ann Bailey, Assistant to the Dean of the College of Mines, who knew Eardley well.) In the first (1937) of two articles that he sent me, based on the summer’s work in Alaska, Eardley summarized the topography of the Yukon valley from Tanana Station to Holy Cross, and analyzed in detail the complex deposits of silts, loams, and gravels that fill the valley or cover the surrounding hills. The great cliffs at the Palisades revealed a sequence of such deposits that had once been over 1,200 feet thick, though it was now discontinuous due to faulting and erosion. Among the so-called Yukon silts, found here and at many other places, he distinguished and described six groups, one of which he termed “tan loams.” Such loams mantle the ridges and hills up to 900 feet above the river, where Eardley plotted them by drilling at least a thousand holes with his soil auger, and tan loams occur in other areas on hills over 1,200 feet high, according to what Dorsh and Mertie told him. These loams are also found in the cut banks and bluffs along the rivers. In fact, they cover almost everything in the entire lower Yukon valley, the lower Tanana valley, and wide areas of the upper Yukon and Koyukuk valleys. Whereas the lower silts, sands, and loams along the rivers have been deposited and reworked by river action, Eardley argued that the “most plausible explanation” for the upland tan loams of the hills was an airborne origin, “pending the assembly of further held data” (1937:336). Twenty years after our expedition, Pewe (1955) of the U.S.G.S. proved that the silt was indeed glacial loess, carried by the winds to the uplands, but mixed with river sediments in the flood plain. In his second study (1938), Eardley discussed the extreme rapidity with which the Yukon River shifts its channels and scours its flood plain, cleaning out the lat¬ ter about every one to two thousand years. Most of the old channels or sloughs are stagnant, but those like the Kaiyuh Slough or Shageluk-Holigachuck Slough have moving water that discharges into tributaries of clear water. Eardley argued that the scouring action of these tributaries is what has kept open the active sloughs and has enabled them to carry the silt they receive from the Yukon without becom¬ ing clogged. Although the two sloughs mentioned are obviously old, they must be younger than the last shift of the Yukon across its meander belt. In both essays, Eardley’s arguments were supported by his observations made at specific locali¬ ties, and by data published in the bulletins of the U.S.G.S.

316

EPILOGUE

As for Norman (Sandy) Reynolds, his great linguistic talents and his potential for scientific contributions were to go unrealized. Dr. Birket-Smith and I were anxious that he should study the language of the Eyak, a small tribe near Cordova among whom the three of us had conducted ethnographic work in 1933 (BirketSmith and de Laguna 1938). The linguistic sample that Reynolds and I had re¬ corded, and which I had sent in advance of publication (pages 535—71) to mY professor, Franz Boas, convinced Dr. Boas and especially Dr. Edward Sapir that Eyak “may be a new dialect of the Na-Dene group, coordinate with Athabaskan on the one hand and Tlingit on the other” (de Laguna 1937:64). The Eyak were not Chugach Eskimo, who had been practically transformed into Tlingit through contact, as per Dali’s theory adopted in the Smithsonian’s Handbook of American Indians (1910,11:862). The Russians had known they were a distinct people, but few Americans read Russian at that time (which was why Petroff was able to get away with his frauds). I must credit the U.S. Marshal at Cordova, however, for telling me in 1930 that the Eyak were not to be confused with the neighboring Athabaskan, Tlingit, or Chugach. Unfortunately for Reynolds, Boas and Sapir judged that the study of this potentially new language was too important to leave to a student. But then they debated so long over whom they might sponsor for the opportunity that no one was sent. The Depression, their deaths, and World War II intervened—and I despaired as the years passed and the numbers of Eyakspeakers dwindled. Finally in 1961, the true linguistic position of Eyak was estab¬ lished by Dr. Michael Krauss of the Alaska Native Language Center. But Norman Reynolds could not share in this. For a time he tried to continue with his graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Washington, sup¬ porting himself by washing cars at night and snatching what sleep he could in one of the cars when his work was done—an impossibly grueling schedule. There were domestic worries as well, and he had to abandon his studies in order to support his mother. I know almost nothing about his later life, except that he married. After his death some years ago, Michael Krauss tracked down his widow in the hope that Reynolds might have left some notes or transcriptions of the Eyak language, made in 1933. She showed him a box in which her late husband had kept his most valued possessions, but these were, unfortunately, only anthropological textbooks and monographs, mute witnesses to his love for the profession he had sacrificed. After our expedition I lost track of Kenneth Gorton, although I later learned that in 1941 he received a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Michigan, his dissertation being on the “Geology of the Cameron Pass Area, Grand, Jackson, and Larimore Counties, Colorado.” Of his subsequent career I know nothing. He married; his wife’s name was Marion, but there is no record of children, and he died about 1988. (I thank Paula L. Kunde, secretary of the Department of Geo¬ logical Sciences at the University of Michigan for this information.) His memo¬ rial is in Alaska, at the head of the Khotol, where that river originates from the

EPILOGUE

317

merged waters of Camp Creek (a translation of the Native name) and Gorton Creek, the name that Eardley gave its companion (see Orth 1967:513). My own career, though slow to be self-supporting, has led to professional rewards. I began teaching anthropology at Bryn Mawr College in 1938, and I re¬ tired in 1975, after serving successively as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and then of the Department of Anthropology when the disci¬ plines were separated. The positions and awards for which I am most grateful are: Membership on the Executive Board (1955-58), President-elect (1965-66), and President (1966-67) of the American Anthropological Association, and its Dis¬ tinguished Service Award (1986); Fellow and Honorary Life Membership of the Arctic Institute of North America; Honorary Life Membership in the Alaska An¬ thropological Association, and its Lifetime Service Award (1993); Honorary Life Membership in the Homer (Alaska) Society of Natural History, and its Silver Trowel Award (1993); Fiftieth Anniversary Award of the Society for American Ar¬ chaeology (1986); and, especially, election as Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1975). (In October 1999, Dr. Jeremy Sabloff, the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, presented me with the Lucy Wharton Drexel medal “for achievement in archaeological work,” the Museum’s highest honor, and one that had previously been awarded only twenty-five times since the medal was established in 1889. I am humbly grateful for this recognition.) In the fall of 1935,1 could not have imagined any of this. On my return to the University Museum I found that my job with them had been terminated due to the Depression, but I stayed on anyway to catalogue my finds, write my report, and benefit from Ruben Goldberg’s genius in developing and enlarging my pictures and in photographing the specimens. I also published a few articles on the trip (de Laguna 1935; 1936a; 1936b; 1936c). I had to depend on my mother for support at home (my father had died in 1930), for I received only a small supplement from the

wpa/pwa,

as a “cataloguer” at the museum. Like so

many others at that time, I remain eternally grateful to these New Deal programs for enabling us to pursue our professional work until better times offered us po¬ sitions in our chosen fields. I had been afraid that the museum would be critical of the accounts I had tried to keep, because a number of figures were missing and receipts had been lost, and there was that huge sum of $300 spent just to charter a plane. Instead, Mr. Jayne, the Director, complimented me on the fullness of my financial accounting, say¬ ing that it was a good deal better than those of most of their expedition accounts! He and Dr. Howard, of course, were sorry that we had not found remains of the First Americans in the Yukon valley, but were pleased with the masks from Holikachaket. A few of these were subsequently published in The Far North: 2,000 Years of American Eskimo and Indian Art (Collins et al. 1973)- Some of my photo-

318

EPILOGUE

graphs taken on the flight from Holy Cross to Fairbanks were used by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, as I assume was Eardley’s map of the Khotol-Kaiyuh river system. Quite a few of my photographs, including some taken for me by Eardley, illustrate articles in the Subarctic volume (1981) of the Smithsonian’s Handbook of North American Indians. My report on our expedition could not, of course, deal with Paleolndians in Alaska, but was limited to what we had learned from the Athabaskan archaeologi¬ cal material we had collected. In the end this turned into a large book, the research for which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Un¬ fortunately the writing took so long that publication had to be postponed because of World War II, but The Prehistory of Northern North America As Seen from the Yukon (1947) finally appeared as Memoir III of the Society for American Archae¬ ology, edited by Douglas E. Byers, thanks to a generous grant to the society from an anonymous donor. As the title suggests, this book reflected the methodology developed by Erland Nordenskjold in his studies of South American ethnology and applied by Kaj Birket-Smith to the Eskimo. This was to take the culture of some one people, in my case the Dena, and, by analyzing the distribution and evolution—one might say the “paleontology”—of its elements, attempt to show that same culture in its ge¬ netic relationships with surrounding cultures, and with the general development of culture within the wider area. Some of the elements are discovered to be local and recent, others to be of considerable age and wide distribution, while still oth¬ ers appear as comparatively local modifications of ancient, common types. Groups of elements, furthermore, seem to have had a common history. So I ar¬ gued that Dena culture was a complicated accretion of many groups of traits that had been received from or were shared with many different cultures, and that these trait groups, to varying degrees, also underlay the building up of other North American cultures: Northern Athabaskan, Eskimo, Northwest Coast, Northeast¬ ern Woodland. Thus from the perspective of the Yukon, we might gain a view of the prehistory of northern North America. Dena traits or trait complexes (houses, caches, domestic utensils and pottery, graves and burial customs, pottery, weapons, tools, art, etc.), known archaeologically or from ethnographic sources, I compared or contrasted with forms of the “same” traits known elsewhere in northern North America and, where pertinent, in Northeast Asia. In each case, I tried to discover the history of the trait, where it originated, how it developed and where it spread, and at what stage in its his¬ tory it is represented by the Dena form. My conception of “traits” as historical growths with variations, not simply as stable units, was, I believe, fairly original in its detailed application.

*

In conclusion, I tried to show the various trait complexes or streams of influ¬ ence that formed Dena culture, and the ways in which they had become inter-

EPILOGUE

319

woven in northern North America. I rashly proposed that there were two major streams of Asian influences entering North America via the Aleutian Islands, in addition to those known to have crossed at Bering Strait. The most ancient of these (the age of which I seriously underestimated), I called the North Pacific Cultural Continuum. It appeared to be a southern division or extension, not previously recognized, of Hatt’s and Birket-Smith’s Ice-Hunting Horizon, the latter the Arc¬ tic phase of this cultural continuum. The second stream of Asian influence, which was associated with a backwash from Alaska to Asia at about a.d. 1000,1 called the Circum-Pacific Culture Drift. The latter had been tentatively postulated in my earlier Archaeology of Cook Inlet, Alaska (1934) and was developed a little more fully by Birket-Smith and myself in our Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska (1938). I also offered the debatable suggestion that the basis of Eskimo cul¬ ture, which the Dena so strongly reflect or share, had multiple origins, i.e., that Eskimo culture grew out of several different cultures which became “Eskimoized,” but I went astray on the extent of Eskimo influences on the Laurentian archaeo¬ logical cultures of the Northeast. Today, these methods and the ways we defined these problems may seem to us, myself included, to be very old-fashioned. Although I had wanted to see how much a refined distribution study might yield if pushed to the limits, I had already be¬ gun to question the methods on theoretical grounds. Nevertheless, some of the re¬ sults obtained, whether by luck or insight, still hold. It must be remembered that at the time, before World War II, there were few areas in North America with re¬ liable archaeological sequences. These were the Southwest, where archaeologists had grossly overestimated the age of their finds; and the Arctic area, where Danish researchers, plus Diamond fenness of the Canadian National Museum and Henry Collins of the Smithsonian, were the leading field workers and theo¬ rists. In the south, and the east, and throughout the Mississippi drainage area, McKern’s Midwestern Taxonomic Method classified cultural assemblages accord¬ ing to similarities of content. But while these did suggest degrees of relationship, little correlation with chronology had as yet been attempted, except in local areas. We therefore worked with what we had, and guessed boldly. Because tree-ring dating had exposed the exaggeratedly ancient guess-dates as¬ signed to Basket-Maker remains in the Southwest, I erred equally in the opposite direction, as radio-carbon dating (first applied in 1950) was to reveal so soon af¬ ter the publication of my monograph (1947)- Yet even though it might be neces¬ sary to jettison some or much of my ancient “North Pacific Cultural Continuum” and the more recent “Circum-Pacific Culture Drift” because of new dating and data, there remain the solid facts upon which these theoretical concepts had been based. My theories attempted to explain (among other problems) the interconti¬ nental similarities which had so intrigued Boas and other members of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition in 1897-1903 and later. Now these similarities are again

320

EPILOGUE

puzzling contemporary speculators (see Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988), some of whom are “reinventing the wheels” on which Collins and I risked our necks sixty years ago. My ambitious work was, on the whole, well received by colleagues at the time. Perhaps even today it might be of some use, if cautiously consulted. It was for me, however, the last major archaeological study of that kind, although I still published some less ambitious archaeological books and papers. After the Depression and World War II, I was again able to return to field work in Alaska in 1949, the first years for combined archaeological and ethnological re¬ search among the northern Tlingit of Angoon and especially of Yakutat, and later with Catharine McClellan for concentration on the ethnology of the Copper River Athabaskans (Atna, Ahtna). Though still fascinated by the unexpected discover¬ ies that one could make in digging, and still convinced that anthropology should combine studies of the past with those of the living culture, I had come to appre¬ ciate the mature delights of ethnology. I found its challenges even more reward¬ ing than those of archaeology, although, to my surprise, the work could be as physically exhausting as excavating. It demanded every bit of my energy. It meant living a new, good life, one that led me across frontiers into other worlds where I found friendships with many whom I should otherwise never have known. In 1995 the Before Columbus Foundation gave me its Lifetime Achievement Award, as winner of their American Book Award (for my publications on the Tlingit), and the following year the Yakutat camp of the Alaska Native Brother¬ hood and Alaska Native Sisterhood invited me to a ceremony in Recognition of my Service to the Yakutat People. I value above all these expressions of affection and trust, and I treasure the honors my Native friends have given me as much as any academic distinction I have won. And now my life has unexpectedly turned full circle, refreshing the memories of travel among the Dena so many years ago. A new friendship is bringing me in con¬ tact with the present generation and giving me a better appreciation of the en¬ during ethos of their culture. In February 1999, a delegation of Holikachuk elders from the town of Grayling, Alaska, came to the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The elders were Henry Deacon and his wife, Dolly, Ellen Verrier, and Elizabeth Keating. They were joined by the Deacons’ daughter, Deborah, now studying at Temple University in Phila¬ delphia. Henry Deacon is the nephew of the same Johnny Deacon who had been my informant in 1935, and Wendy Arundale’s in 1982. With the party were Cath¬ erine Ipalook, representing Denakkanaga, Inc., of Fairbanks, an organization of Native elders that had sponsored the visit, and Caroline Brown. Their mission was to inspect the masks and other specimens I had brought back from Holikachaket. They had learned about the masks from my article in

EPILOGUE

321

the American Anthropologist (1936c), and had recently made a request to the museum for their return, so that their young people could learn how to make masks. The museum staff invited me to meet the delegation, and I took along with me photocopies of the pertinent pages in Osgood illustrating Anvik masks and describing the ceremonies in which they were used, as well as my 1935 photo¬ graphs of the masks I had seen. I hoped that these gifts might accommodate their interest in mask-making. We soon fell into friendly and amiable conversation, although I sensed a re¬ serve that I had not previously experienced among Athabaskans. While I was disappointed that I did not learn more from them about the masks and their meanings, I could appreciate the tact with which Henry Deacon politely turned aside each of my questions with: “This is something we had better keep to our¬ selves.” He was of course unwilling to explain matters that touched on religious beliefs, especially in a large gathering. In the field, however, it was my policy not to ask about sensitive issues until my informants and I were well acquainted, and until the people could see that my companions and I valued their knowledge and appreciated their culture as had no other white persons they had ever met. The same ease of interaction prevailed as late as 1954-68 on the Copper River, where Kitty McClellan, Marie-Fran fish

mented, 287

Eardley, Armond John (Jack): characterized, 6,

traps, 169, 209, 213,272; fish wheel, 90,122-23;

7, 9-10, 29-30; directional sense, 136-37; as

gill net, 123, 338; gutting, as women’s work,

expedition member, 5, xvii; and geology of

80; hooks, 338,339; mesh gauges and netting

Yukon Basin, 313; later career, 314-15; pic¬

shuttles, 338,339; nets, 123, 338; net weights,

tured, 10, 29,52,53,231,299

138) 338 smoking fish, 225; spears, 338; weirs,

Eielson, Carl Ben, 296

89-90

Eiseley, Loren, 101

Fish People. See under clans

Eklutna (Indian village), 16

FitzGerald, Gerald: at Arctic Village, 11-14; dis¬

epidemics. See diseases; smallpox epidemics

cussions with F. de Laguna, 10; as member of

Episcopal Mission of St. Mark, Nenana, 43

U.S. Geological Survey, 9; pictured, 10

Eskimo: crossing of Bering Strait, 23, 36; cultural development, theory of, 319; decorative pat¬ terns on bone, at Kaltag, 215; displacement of

Five Dollar Bill (Steinback), 266-67, 323 food: berry picking, 216, 225, 265; camp meals, 49; at Nenana wedding feast, 43

Kutchin Indians, 76; face decoration, 225-26;

footwear, Indian, 110

and Russian traders, 164; trading network, 35;

Fort Adams, 71, 93. See also Nuklukayet

trading visits to Kateel, 137

Fort Egbert, 58

Esmailka, Paul (Khotol River), 205-9

Fort Gibbons. See Tanana Station

Ester Creek Mine, 20-21

Fort Kolmakov, 105

expedition: equipment inventory, 6, 27; mail,

Fort Liscum, 58

155, 266; members, 5, 313-14, xvii; outfitting,

Fort Selkirk, 77, 78,105

5-7; purpose, xvii-xviii; return trip, 266, 273,

Fort St. Michael. See St. Michael

306-12; storage of goods in Nenana, 47; tents,

Fort Yukon: boundary dispute, 30, 70; as dis¬

26; transportation to Alaska, 7-9,14. See also

ruption of aboriginal trade network, 77; as

American Philosophical Society; clothing;

Hudson’s Bay Company outpost, 35, 36,105;

maps, historic; skiffs; Western Union Tele¬

sketch, 84

graph Expedition Eyak Indians: Galushia Nelson, 14; language, 36, 135.

316

eyeglasses, home-made, 208

Fortymile, 58 Fox, Frank, 2.93-95 foxes, trapping of, 141 Franklin Expedition, 172,173,187

*

INDEX

361

Fredericks/Fredericksen, S. A. (trader), 268

Herron, ‘Kobuck Dick’ (Nenana), 26

funeral rites: Louise Keating, 257; at Old Louden,

Holikachaket/Holikachuk Indians: clans, 163,

126-27. See also burial customs; grave sites fur trade, 33, 79; Alaskan Eskimo, 164-65; Rus¬

221; as distinct Athabaskan tribal group, 34; elders’ visit to University of Pennsylvania

sian, at Nulato outpost, 165-67. See also Nu-

Museum, 236, 320-22; ethnography, 219-20,

lato massacre; trading; trading posts

232-34; language, 232, xxi; mask dances, 23640, 248-53; new masks, 231, 231-32,246-47;

Galena, 129-30 games, Kutchin, 12-13 Geist, Otto, 19-20

at Nowikakat, 105; old masks, 229-30, 241-45, 248-52 Holikachaket (village): abandonment of, for

Gerhart, Mr. (traader), 288, 291

New Grayling, 263; archaeological sites, 229-

Ghost (Gost) Creek, 288

32, 234-36; geographical location, 227

Giddings, J. Louis, Jr., 23 Giordano, Brother (Anvik Old Station), 288 Glazunov, Andrei: on Anvik River, 273; at St.

Holikachuk, Simon: and old masks, 227, 229, 232, 261 Holikachuk Slough, 227

Michael trading post, 164; trip to Ttutago, 165,

Holy Cross Mission, 271, 288-91, 289

219

Holy Cross (village), 232; earlier names of, 288

gnats, 275

homicide, in Indian culture: ceremonial sanc¬

goblins, 146 - 47

tions, 171; magical precautions following, 147;

Golchan Indians, 232

revenge, as motive, 171-72; and ritual canni¬

Gold Rush of 1897-98, in Alaska, 57 Goldberg, Ruben, 317 Gorton, Kenneth: characterized, 7,10, 29; as ex¬ pedition member, 5, xvii; later career, 316-17; pictured, 29,53,197, 299 grave sites: Anvik River, 274-75, 278; Ghost

balism, 171,176 homicide victims: Barnard, Lt. John J., 172-73, 183; Bean, Mrs., 62-66; Bulygin, Ivan, 176; Deriabin, Vasilii, 183-84. See also Nulato massacre Hooton, E. A., 3

Creek, 296; Ingalik, 180; Khuligichagak, 236;

Hot Springs Slough, 58-61

Koyukuk, 152,154; Nuklukayet, 70; Nulato,

household goods: bags, 326,327; bowls, 326,327,

158; Old Fish Camp (Jokekayar), 201; Old Louden, 125,126,126,127; Old Melozi, 119; Stink Creek, 216 -17,217,218. See also burial customs; funeral rites

330,331; boxes, 326,327; ladles, 326,327. See also baskets; lamps; pottery housing: cabins, 42,73,103, 205,207, 208; sub¬ terranean, modern, 132; summer, 277

Grayling River (‘Amulet River’), 262-64

Howard, Edgar B., 4, 5,317

Grisco, Tony (Birches), 90,102-3

Hrdli;akcka, Ale;aks: at Anvik, 272-73; at Black¬

Guedon, Marie-Francoise, 321

burn Creek, 224; on crossing tundra, 291; on

Gunther, Erna, 104

date of Bering Strait crossings, 3; on expedi¬ tion purpose, 9; explorations in Alaska, 32; at

hair style: Kutchin, 81-82; of Ralph Wood, 278, 279, 280-81,280 Hall’s Rapids, 261 Han Indians, 34, 77

Kaltag, 195; maps, 6; on Old Bonasila, 283; at Old Fish Camp, 205; receipt of stone adze at Tanana Mission, 76 Hudson’s Bay Company: beads, importation, 82;

Hardaway (Holiday), Jim, 261-62, 322

Fort Selkirk post, 77, 78,105; Fort Yukon post,

Harper, Arthur C.: as part owner of sternwheeler

35, 70, 77, 82, 84,105; goods found at Nowi¬

New Racket, 96; retrieval of Mrs. Bean’s body,

kakat, 105,108; as gun sellers to Koyukuk, 186;

64, 66, 93; as trader, 61, 63, 94

Nuklukayet post, 68; purchase of supplies

Harper Bend, 61

from Indians, 173; surrender of Fort Yukon,

Healy (town), 19, 22

71; trade with Tanana Indians, 36

362

INDEX

hunting: bear, 138; caribou, 80,142; customs and

Jones, Eliza, 32, 45, 77

taboos, 129-30,138; tools, 24,75,76,340. See

Jones, Sarah, 42

also fishing

Jordan, Arlan: and clay deposit at homestead, 75,

Hutchinson, Kohl and Company, 94,158, 268

Ice-Hunting Horizon theory (Hatt and BirketSmith), 319 Ikogmiut (Russian outpost), 165,166, 268

76

Kachemak culture, 195 Kaiyuh Slough, 162,163,192 Kaiyuh (Takaiaksa) Indians: attempted murder

infants: protection from mosquitoes, 39-40

of Deriabin, 194; and Kelroteyet massacre,

Ingalik Indians: artifacts, 275; clans, 127,163; as

170-71; and premonitions of Nulato massacre,

distinct Athabaskan tribal group, 34; ethnog¬

168,169-71; raids on Holikachuk Indians, 220;

raphy, 220-21; festivals, copied from Eskimo,

and Shageluk massacre, 170; Ttutago settle¬

236; language, 232, xxi; mythology, publica¬

ment, 217; victims of Nulato massacre, 163;

tions on, 31; as part of trading network, 35;

and Western Union Telegraph Expedition,

protection of Anvik trader, 268; smallpox epi¬

211-13

demic among, 165; as subgroup of Dena, 33 Inupiaq Eskimo: and Koyukon Indians, 139; as part of trading network, 35,164; unfriendli¬ ness of, 142 Ipalook, Catherine, 320 Ivan (Nuklukayet tyone), 62, 63

Kakhokgotna River, 217 Kalland (settlement), 76,100 Kaltag portage, 167-68 Kaltag (settlement), 194-96 kashim (meeting houses), 139,141, 234-35, 262, 274, 277-78, 284. See also archeological sites Kateel (Kateelkagat, Kateelna): archaeological

Jacobs, Melville, 14

finds, 139-41; campsite, 137-41

Jacobsen, Earl, 14

Kayar Indians, 197-98

Jacobsen, Capt. Johan Adrian: Koyukon Indian

Keating, Clara, 254

encounter, 125-27; and spelling of

Keating, Elizabeth (Holikachuk elder): biogra¬

Athabaskan language, xx; on viewing shaman

phy, 322-24; on epidemics in Dishkaket, 234;

at Mouse Point, 103-4

with ‘Aunt Lizzie’, 226; on her mother’s death,

Jayne, Horace (museum director), 61, 313, 317

259; on hiding of masks, 231; on mask cere¬

Jearny’s barrabora, 213

monies, 238 -39; on secrecy of mask dances

Jenness, Diamond, 319

and songs, 248; visit to University of Pennsyl¬

Jesuit Fathers, at Holy Cross, 289

vania Museum, 320

Jesuit Oregon District Archives (Gonzaga Uni¬ versity, Spokane, WA), 160 Jette, Jules: on Dena Indian groupings, 33; ‘Ethnographic Dictionary’, 31,130; ethno¬

Keating, Louise: biography, 321-23; children, 226; death of, 226, 232, 253, 254-59; gift of messenger mask, 229, 230, 258; and handling of old masks, 259

graphic notes, 158; as Jesuit missionary, 159;

Keating, Maurice (‘Morris’), 229, 257

on Kaiyuh Slough and Khotol River, 197-98;

Keating, Paul (trader), 229; death of wife Louise,

maps, 192; papers, 160; on Dena folklore and

254 ~59> 260; and education of his children,

shamanism, 31; and spelling of Athabaskan

323-24; on Holikachuk history and customs,

language, xx

232-4; on Holy Cross descendants of Russian

jewelry, Kutchin, 82

priest, 290

Joe, Martha: on Nulato massacre, 180-83

Keating, Roy, 258

John, ‘Henly’ (Henry): in wedding dance at Ne-

Kedzaludla (‘Old Nicolai’)(medicine man): wit¬

nana, 44

ness to Nulato massacre, 174,175,178

*

John, Joe (nephew of‘Blind Joe’), 74

Kenjack. See skiffs

John, Sam, 38

Kennicott, Major Robert, 56-57; death of, 188-

Jokekayar (Old Fish Camp), 200-5

89

INDEX Ketchum, Frank (Telegraph Expedition mem¬ ber), 57, 69,189 KetlRoteyit (on Koyukuk), 137

363

Lacorte, Father Augustus, 170-71 de Laguna, Frederica: as ethnologist, 320; friendship with Elizabeth Keating, 321-22;

Ketsekaka (shaman), 178

later career, 317-20; research methodology,

Khotol River: aerial view, 305; banks, as habitat

318-19; pictured, 10,53,212,231,299, back

of Nulato Indians, 162; mapping with Brun-

cover (inside)

ton compass, 197,198-200,200; as route to

de Laguna, Wallace, 15,16

Kaltag, 192

Lalcso, John (Finnish prospector), 214, 215

Khuligichagak/Khuligichagat (settlement), 235 Khulikakat/Khulikata (settlement), 193 Klikitarik (trading center), 164 Knox, Charlie (Old Melozi): mother-in-law’s pottery method, 119 Kodilkakat people: and Koserefsky people, 146 Kokrines (village), 110-12,159

lamps: Eskimo, 195-96,196, 204; Khuligichagak, 236; at mask dances, 240; pottery, 120, 330,33B stone, 138 language groups, xx, xxi, 11, 34-36, 55, 75, H5, 232, 316 Larion/Larriown (Kateel shaman), 171; as in¬ stigator of Nulato massacre, 144; meaning

Kolchan Indians, 34-35

of name, 178; as murderer of John Barnard,

Kolmakov, Petr, 220

183; as son of shaman Ketsekaka, 178; as visi¬

Kolmakovskii Redoubt (Russian trading post),

tor at Fort Yukon, after Nulato massacre,

164,166 Konootena (village), 144

187; wounded in attack on Russian outpost, 184

Koserefsky (village), 146, 288

law enforcement (early), Alaska, 57-58

Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary, 31-2

Lebarge, Mike (Telegraph Expedition member),

Koyukon Indians: clans, 163, 232; at Fort Yukon, 77; language, 130, xx-xxi; and Nulato mas¬

57,

69

Little Sidorka, 183

sacre, 163,171-72; name origins, 34; and trad¬

Lizzie (Chief Alexie’s wife), 225, 260,322, 323

ing network, 35; as subgroup of Dena, 33; sub¬

loess, as origin of silt, 22, 315

groups of, 34,163; threats to Anvik trader, 268.

Lofka (messenger), 184

See also Lower Koyukon Indians

Lofka’s barrabora, 219,219

Koyukuk Indians: burial customs, 147-54, H9, 150,152-4; comments by Zagoskin, 105-6; feast, as prelude to Nulato massacre, 173-74; language, 135; name origins, 133; role in Nu¬ lato massacre, 163 Koyukuk River, 133

Loucheux. See Kutchin Indians Lower Koyukon Indians: and Nulato massacre, 163; winter house, 278 Lower Tanana Indians: ethnography, 32, 33, 75; language, 75; and trading network, 35 Lower Tanana River, 48-50

Koyukuk Sopka (Bluff), 148,148,149

Loyens, Father, 160

Koyukuk Station, 133-34

Luke, Chief (Tanana Mission), 74, 75, 89, 328

Krauss, Michael, 220, 316

Lukin, Ivan (Fort Yukon spy), 69,187

Kurilla (interpreter), 106,183 Kuskokwim Eskimo (at Holy Cross), 232

MacDuffy (Yukon passenger), 214

Kuskokwim Indians, 34

Maggot People. See under clans

Kutchin (Gwichin) Indians: characterized, 86;

Makaslag/Vazhichagat (settlement), 220-1

and Christian religion, 79; clans, 232; depen¬

Malakhov, Petr Vasilii: trip to Ttutago, 165, 219

dence on white man’s goods, 79; dwellings, 79;

Malasatek. See Tatlek/Volosaty

early illustrations of, 78,78-80; at Fort Yukon,

Malemiut/Maleygmyut EsJdmo: and aboriginal

77-82, 82-8; Fourth of July celebration, 12-

trading network, 167; and premonitions of

13; as hunters, 79, 80; language, 11, 34, 55; mas¬

Nulato massacre, 143,169; as traders with

sacres, 86; and trading network, 35; shamans,

Koyukon and Kateel Indians, 164; Zagoskin’s

82; syllabary, 11; on Tanana Indians, 36

account of, 142-43

364

INDEX

mammoth: bones, 5,100,101, 264; device on

McElmeel, Father, 158,160, 214

pennants, 8, 24,52,102; skeletons, 60-61;

McGinty, Francis (Indian guide), 192, 200, 214

teeth, 129,137

McKennan, Robert: and Chandalar Kutchin, 11,

Mandart, Father, 63 maps, historic: Hrdlicka, A., 6; Schwatka, F., 6; U.S. Geological Survey, 6; Zagoskin, L.A., 6 marriage: and clan membership, 43, 56, 75; Holikachuk customs, 233

12, 32 McKinley Park Station, 18 McQuesten, Leroy Napoleon (Jack): on murder of Mrs. Bean, 65-66; as part owner of stern¬ wheeler New Racket, 96; as trader, 62, 63, 94

Maska, Chief, 205

Melozi River, 113,118; meaning of name, 113

masks: burning taboo, 232; communal owner¬

Mercier, Francois Xavier: on Kuchin, 86-87; on

ship, Holikachaket, 231; finger masks, 237,

murder of Mrs. Bean, 63-65; as part owner of

240; individual ownership, Anvik, 231; mak¬

sternwheeler New Racket, 96; as trader, 62, 70,

ing of, 240; new, Holikachaket, 231; old, Ho¬ likachaket, 229. See also dances; festivals masks, accessories for: Caribou insignium, 246;

7b 94

Mercier’s Station, 91, 93, 94, 95. See also Nuklukayet

Duck (stuffed), 247; Fish cap, 247; Hare

Merrill, Russel, 296

(stuffed) in snare, 247; Loon (stuffed), 247

Mertie, John B., 9,12-14,16

masks, Anvik: Father of Salmon, 239; Frog,

Michael, Henry. N., 34

249; ‘Noise-Maker,’ 249; Otter, 238; Ruffled

microblades: at Fairbanks, 19

Grouse, 238; Sea Gull, 239; Silver Salmon

Middle People. See under clans

Messenger, 239

Midwestern Taxonomic Method (McKern), 319

masks, Holikachaket: Beluga, 245, 252; Berry Woman, 231, 241, 246, 249; Boss Man, 244;

Mikhailovskii Redoubt. See St. Michael (trading post)

Buffoon, 245, 252; Caribou Man, 243, 250,314;

Miller, Maxie (truck driver), 307, 309-10

Crane, 242, 246, 250; Dog Salmon Woman,

mines, placer: Fairbanks Exploration Company,

241,246, 249; Fox, 243, 251,314; Gull, 248; Half-

20 -22; gold extraction process, 21; Pleistocene

Man, 251,314; Loche (ling cod), 246,247, 249;

animal bones in, 3, 21-22; Pleistocene human

Man with Blue Nose, 244; Man with Green

activity in, 5, 22; Tofty, 58

Pointed Cap, 244; Moose Man, 231,241,247,

Minto (Indian village), 50

250,314; new masks, 231,246-7; Old Man, 246,

Mission of Our Saviour (Tanana Station), 91-93

251; old masks, 229, 241-5; Outside (Plains)

Mission of St. Peter Claver (Nulato), 158,159

Indian, 246; Outside (Siwash) Indian, 251;

Mobley, Charles M., 23

Owl, 231-2,242,247, 250, 252; Raven, 242,246,

Moffit, Fred H., 9,10

250, 252; Russian Men, 244,246, 251,314;

Monroe, Father, 181

Salmon Woman, 231,314; Sea Gull, 242,247;

Moore, Captain, 185

Silver Salmon, 248; Upriver Men, 244,246,

Moore, Johnny (trader): as supplier of whiskey,

247, 251,314; Upriver Women, 247, 251; visit/ inspection by delegation from Holikachuk, 1999, 320-21; Young Man, 251 masks, Shageluk, 281,314

233

moose: caught in telegraph lines, 20; hunting, in water, 99,100; masks, 241,247, 250,314 mosquitoes: attacks by, 54, 58, 59, 97-99,151, 204,

Matanuska farmers, 16-17

273-76; Buhac powder, 40, 43,102; explorers’

Mayo, Alfred: as part owner of sternwheeler New

comments on, 97-99; as fish attractant, 42;

Racket, 96; retrieval of Mrs. Bean’s body, 64,

immunity from, 215; Nenana, 26-27; protec¬

93; as trader, 62, 63, 94

tion from, in Indian tents, 39-40; repellents,

McClellan, Catharine (Kitty), 320, 321

40, 43> 99-too, 102,118; varieties of, 97

McDonald, Reverend, 87

mother-in-law ‘taboo’, 233

McDonald, Robert (Anglican missionary): and

Mount McKinley (‘Denali’), 15,17,18

Kutchin syllabary, 11

Mouse Point, 103-4

*

INDEX

Muller (Kaltag storekeeper), 195, 214-16, 262, 266

365

Western Union Telegraph Expedition, 57; lo¬ cation, 94-97; meeting of Dali and Whymper

Murderer’s Village (Old Bonasila), 283

with Tanana Indians, 36; residents, 63, 69;

Murray, Arthur: and Fort Yukon Hudsons Bay

successive trading stations, 93-97; in travels

Company, 173,187 Murray, Robert, 78

of Schwatka, 31 Nulato Indians: archaeological sites, 162; burial customs, 43

Na-Dene linguistic groups, 36

Nulato massacre (1851): attack on Nulato trading

Naltsin. See under clans

post, 78,179-81; attack on Russian trading

Nelson, E. W., 237

post, 183-84; death of Lt. John J. Barnard,

Nelson, Galushia, 14

172-73; escapees, 181-83,1935 historical facts,

Nelson, Neils, 4

162; incitement to, 143; Indian perpetrators,

Nelson, Richard K., 32

163; massacre aftermath, 187-88; messengers

Nenana gravels, 19, 21, 22

to Kateel, 175-76; prelude, 173-75; premoni¬

Nenana Indians: culture, 39-46; dances, 44-46;

tions of trouble, 167-71; reasons for attack,

singing, 43-45; wedding feast, 43 Nenana River, 48 Nenana (steamer), 101,196, 273, 292 Nenana (village): disappearance of, 19; history,

171-72,176-78; relief party, 184-87; shamans’ role in, 144,178 -79; trading post history, 163-67 Nulato (village), 158; campsite, 158; cemetery,

25; retrieval of expedition stored goods from,

158,161,188; overwintering of Western Union

306-9; telegraph lines to, 58

Telegraph Expedition, 57; as Russian trading

New Bonasila, 285-87 New Loudon, 128

post, 77,158; telegraph lines to, 58; vulnerabil¬ ity of, 167-68

New Old Station, 97

Nuloyit (village), 194

New Racket (sternwheeler), 96

Nunivak (ship), 50, 262-23

Nicolai, Joseph, 75 Nicolai, Mrs., 257

Old Anvik, 267

Nikitin, Grigorii, 185

Old Bonasila/Barnassella, 283-85

Nikuliqagat/Nikulerlcakat (settlement): and Nu-

Old Fish Camp (Jokekayar), 200-5

lato massacre, 193 Noklcaak’ideelno (Nulato massacre survivor), 182

Old Louden, 124-25; funeral at, 126 ‘Old Nicolai’ (Kedzaludla) (medicine man), 174, 175.178

Nokkhakat (settlement), 1

Old Station, 94, 96

Nordenskjold, Erland, 318

‘Old Thunder.’ See Sakhni’ti

Nordstrom (trader), 165

‘Old Woman’ mountain, 217

North Pacific Cultural Continuum theory (de

Osgood, Cornelius, 32-34

Laguna), 319

Otezokot (shaman), 142

Northern Air Transport (N.A.T.), 295, 296-309 Northern Commercial Company: in Nenana, 47; in Nulato, 158; steamer alert by telegraph, 58; successor to Alaska Commercial Com¬ pany, 94; at Tanana Station, 89 Northern Trading Company, Nuklukayet, 95 Nose Paint Place (Xamenchishdin), 124,125

Paimiute (village), 290 Painter, Johnny (from Shageluk): on languages, 232; on mother-in-law ‘taboo, 233 Paleolithic Indians: crossing of Bering Strait land bridge, 3, 4, 23; dates of, 3; evidence of, 3,4,5; expedition in search of, xvii; as hunters, 24

Nowikakat, 111

Palisades (cliff), 100-2,102,103,104,305

Nowitna Indians, 105

Pangy, Father, 291

Nuklukayet (settlement): as early trading

parasitic infestations, 190-91

ground, 67-71; illustrations, 96; landing of

Parker, Rev. Dr. Octavius (Anvik Mission), 269

366

INDEX

Pastolik Eskimo: and trading center, 164 Pavloff/Pavlov, Ivan (Nulato trader), 68,106,187 Petka (Peetka), 126,187 Petroff, Ivan: and Alaska Census reports, 31; al¬ leged interview with Nulato massacre partici¬

St. Ann, 158,159, 288, 289; St. James Episcopal Mission, Tanana, 72-73, 76. See also shamans Reynolds, Norman (Sandy): arrival at Nenana campsite, 27; as expedition member, 5, xvii; later career, 316; pictured, 51,53,231,299

pant, 177; on character of Tanana Indians, 37;

Richardson, Sir John, 78

on hunting dance, 252

Richardson Highway (Trail), 309-11

Pilot, Andrew (shaman), 133,134,135,147.151.3^3

Robault, Father, 288

Pilot Mountain: origin myth, 130

Robinson, Ed, 262

The Pioneer Company, 70, 94

Rock, Peter, 224

place names: shifting of, 194

Rock, Sophie, 224, 323

placer mines. See mines, placer

Rock Crossing (Indian village), 50

points, fluted and flaked, 24. See also tools;

Rogers, Will: death of, 254

weapons porcupine: as emergency rations, 294 Post, Wiley: death of, 254 potlatch: as memorial feast, 45,120; preceding Nulato massacre, 180 pottery: Anvik River, 276; blue clay, 194; deco¬

Rowe, Bishop, 43 Royal Canadian Mounted Police: and 1897 Gold Rush, 57 Ruby (settlement), 113-20,115, 304 Russian-American Company: absorbed by Hutchison, Kohl and Company, 94; competi¬

rated, 203, 264,275; Ingalik, 275; New Grayling,

tion between St. Michael and Nulato posts,

264; Old Fish Camp (Jokekayar), 203; produc¬

167-68; Nulato trading post, 77,163-67; rela¬

tion process, 75,119-20,128,135, 330; uses,

tions with Koyukuks, after Nulato massacre,

330

187; retirement of, 70; St. Michael trading

Prince William Sound, 14

post, 77; trade with Eskimo, 164; traders, as early Alaska explorers, 30; trading posts, 35

rabbits (Arctic, snowshoe hares), 19, 21,117-18, 308; fur cord, 328 radio stations, northern, 16, 72

Sakhniti (Senatee, Senati, Si-neu-the) (Kutchin chief), 77, 86-88, 88

railway ‘puddle-jumper’ car, 307-9

Sang, Sophie, 42

Rainey, Froelich G., 23

sanitary facilities, 102, 228, 287

Rampart City (town), 58, 77

Sanlaytor (fish camp), 194

Rampart Rapids, 77

Sapir, Edward, 316

Raymond, Lt. Charles P., 30, 70

Sargent, R. H., 9,10,11

Ream, Bruce A., 205

‘Savee-ah’ (Kutchin leader), 81, 83

‘Red Leggings’ (Kutchin chief), 83, 85

Schiefflin (prospector), 96

red ochre, 138, 261

schools: Christ Church Mission, Anvik, 269;

‘Red Shirt’ (shaman), 144,145 Red Stone Village (Red Mountain), 274 reindeer: herd at Holy Cross Mission, 289; trade in skins, 35. See also caribou religion, Christian: Arctic Village, 11-12; Christ Church Mission, 31, 269; Episcopal Mission

Holy Cross Mission, 289-90; Nulato, 159 Schwatka, Frederick: on character of Tanana In¬ dians, 37-38; explorations of Alaska, 30-31; on fish camps on Yukon River, 89-90; at Fort Yukon, 71; maps of, 6; on mosquitoes, 99, 274; on murder of Mrs. Bean, 62; on Nuklykayet,

of St. Mark, Nenana, 43; futility of effort, ac¬

94-95; on Old Melozi, 119; rescue of Anvik

cording to Dali, 87; Holy Cross Mission, 271,

trader, 268; on Sakhniti, 88; and spelling of

288-91, 289; Jesuits, 159; Mission of Our Sav¬

Athabaskan language, xx

iour (Tanana Station), 91-93; Mission of St. Peter Claver, Nulato, 158,159; Sisters of

a

Scientific Corps. See Western Union Telegraph Expedition

INDEX

367

Seagher, Archbishop, 130

Smithsonian Institution, 32

Seattle, 5-8,10,14, 27, 58, 312

snowshoes: Koyukon, 182; Kutchin, 79; painted,

Seghers, Monseigneur, 63

138

Serebrennikov expedition, 187

Sport, Elias, 94, 97

Shageluk (settlement): language, 232; masks and

St. James Episcopal Mission, Tanana, 72-73, 76

masked dances, 236; massacre of, 170 Shageluk Slough, 225, 227, 263 shamans: Alexis, Natalia, 151,253; Chief Alexie,

St. Joe, 225 St. Michael (trading post): attack by Aziiagmiut Eskimo, 165; establishment of, 164; overwin¬

323; in dances, 253; deyenenh (friendly), 171;

tering of Western Union Telegraph Expedi¬

female, 151; Holikachalcet, individual tradi¬

tion, 57; rivalry with other trading posts, 268;

tions of, 248; as inciters of Nulato massacre,

as Russian trading post, 77; telegraph lines

144,178-79; Ingalik, 104; as instigators of

to, 58

Shageluk massacre, 170; Kateel, 144,178 -79;

steam baths, 194

Kutchin, 82; Otezokot (Kaiyuh), 142; Pilot,

Steinback (Stanback/Stanbeck), Bill (‘Five Dol¬

Andrew, 323; Red Shirt, 144,245; ritual mutila¬

lar Bill’), 266-67, 323

tion after death of, 186; rivalry among, and

Stevens Village, 77

Nulato massacre, 178-79; Tanana, 104; use of

Stickman, Joe, 233

murder to preserve power, 62; view of illness

Stink Creek, 216 -19

as attack by enemy, 171-72

stories: cannibals, 164-65; Crow, 42, 74; Foggy

Silas, Bertha, 46

Man (‘Toheegee’), 209-10; goblins (Nenele’in,

Silas, John: on young people not observing mar¬

Nedoron), 146-47; Hawk, 74; NodaRos, 130;

riage rules, 43

Raven, 136,142, 209-10; Rone’uye, 130; Stick

Silas, Julia, 41

Man, 46; Traveler, 77, xix; wild people, 127-28,

Silas, Margaret, 41

225; wild woman of Kateel, 128,146-47, 288;

silt: origins as glacial loess, 22; and permafrost,

Wolverine, 77; YelkoR, 130

22; at placer mines, 5; as salt lick, 19; as seen

Storres, George, 136,141

from airplane, 301-2; Yukon (Eardley), 315

storytellers, xvii, 42, 74

Simon, Esaias (Arctic Village chief), 14

Sullivan, Father, 160

singing: at wedding feast, 44

Sunday (Holikachaket mask carver), 248

Sislatno River, 222-23 Sisters of St. Arm: at Holy Cross, 288, 289; at Nulato, 158,159 Sitka (town), 58 Skagway, 58 skiffs: building, 6, 27-30; equipment and pas¬ senger distribution, 30, 47- 48; fuel, 10; on

Tachik Eskimo, 164 Tachik (trading center), 164 Takaiaksa Indians. See Kaiyuh (Takaiaksa) Indians Tanaina Indians, 34, 232 Tanana Indians: chiefs, portrait of, 60; clans,

Lower Tanana River, 51-54; motors, 6, 48,

232; clothing, 96-97; early reports, 36-38; at

50,131,194,196, 214, 285; names, 30; overload,

Fort Yukon, 77; as migratory, 76-77; as part

lightening of, 58, 59; pennants (mammoth

of trading network, 35; subdivisions, 33; tribal

motif), 6, 8,52,102

subdivisions, 55

sleds: basket, 222; Ingalik, 277; Kutchin, 79; Rus¬ sian, 1/4 smallpox epidemics: sources of, 188, 323; at Dishkaket, 234; at Kateel, 142; at Nulato, 165; at St. Michael, 165

Tanana Mission, 72-73 Tanana River, 48-50, 50,306 Tanana Station, 58, 88-90, 93,307. See also Nuklukayet Tanana (town), 58,307

Smith, Fred, 189

tanning: caribou and moose hides, 328

Smith, Philip, 11

tapeworms, 190-91

368

INDEX

Tatlek/ Volosaty: as Deriabins interpreter, 166;

158; Russian Mission (Ikogmiut), 268; Shage-

house of, 193; marriage, 166; names, 166,181;

luk, 268; St. Michael, 268; suspension by Rus¬

premonitions of Nulato massaacre, 169; sur¬

sians, after Nulato massacre, 187

vivor of Nulato massacre, 181; survivor of Nu¬ lato smallpox epidemic, 165; as Zagoskin’s in¬ terpreter, 105-6,142 tattoo, Eskimo-style, 225-26,248

transvestites: masks, 251; Wood, Ralph, 251, 278, 279, 279-80 Tritt, Albert (Indian deacon and folklorist), 11-12

Tekunka (Kaiyuh shaman), 166,182

Tritt, Isaac, 14

Tekunka (trader), 213

Ttutago (settlement), 217, 219

telegraph lines: animals caught in, 20; through

Turner and Wood (store), 288

British Columbia and Yukon Territory, 57;

Tutago River, 217

laid by U.S. Army Signal Corps, 58; proposed,

Tutchone Indians, 34

from Alaska to Siberia, 56; transatlantic cable,

Twenty-Five Mile Creek. See Stink Creek

189; Western Union Telegraph Expedition (1866-67), 30

ulu (woman’s knife). See under tools

Tena Indians. See Dena Indians

Ulukuk River, 163

tents: expedition, 26; Kutchin Indian, 82-83;

Ulukuk/Ulukagmyut Indians: and Kaltag por¬

Nenana Indian summer camp, 39, 40,41,46;

tage, 167- 68; Lower Koyukon Indians mixed

Nowikakat Indian, 108; tipi, 26

with Eskimo, 163; and massacre at Ketroteyet,

Terentief (Creole trader), 154

170; premonitions of Nulato massacre, 167—

Terentief s Station, 154-55

69; as traders with Malemiut Eskimo, 167

Thompson, William, 89

Unalakleet (settlement), 164, 217, 219

Thurman (trader), 222-24

Unillu (father of Tatlek/Volosaty), 165

Tleek’etaaldlo (shaman), 178-79,185

United States: purchase of Alaska, 57; U.S. Army

Tlingit Indians: Angoon and Yakutat, study of,

Cavalry Corps, 30—31; U.S. Army Corps of

320; as part of trading network, 35; potlatches,

Engineers, 30; U.S. Army Signal Corps, 20, 58;

45; as subdivision of Na-Dene, 36

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Alaska census re¬

Tlyalilkakat (village), 128 Tokchakat/ Tokkhakat (settlement), 132,142 tools: adzes, 71, 75, 76, 89, 234, 235, 264, 287, 332,

ports, 31; U.S. Geological Survey, 6, 9,10 University of Alaska, Fairbanks: aerial view, 20; archeological excavation of, 23; as site of Pleis¬

333 > 334.335; chisels, 334,335; clubs, 332,333,

tocene human habitation, 4,19

334,335; engraving, 342,343; fire-drills, 135;

‘Upriver People’ (Yuna xot’a na), 130

obsidian artifacts, 24; picks, 332,333, 334,335; saws, 336,337; scrapers, 328,329, 336,337; sew¬

Valdez, 58

ing, 342,343; ulus, 226, 235, 274, 284, 336,337,

VanStone, James, 235, 288

342; whetstones, 336,337. See also fishing;

Vazhichagat/Makaslag (settlement), 220-21

weapons

Vernetti, Ella: on burial customs, 151-52,154; as

topography: aerial views, 299-309; bedrock hills, 301, 302-3; tundra, 304

guide/interpreter, 133-34, L34; on Koyukuk burial customs, 147; visit to Andrew Pilot, 135

Tossi, Father, 288

Verrier, Ellen (Holikachuk elder), 320

Totiletonten (fish camp), 194

Vesolia Sopka mountain, 217

Tozi River, 91-97

Volosaty. See Tatlek/Volosaty

trading: aboriginal trade networks, 35, 77-78,

Vtornik (interpreter), 106

164; ‘paper on the store’ payment, 281. See also fur trade

Walker, Jim: news of steamer Nenana, 292; pur¬

trading grounds, intertribal, 67-71

chase of specimens from, 295; store at Ghost

trading posts, 93-94; Anvik, 268; Kateel, 138-39;

Creek, 232, 288

Nowikakat, 105-8; Nuklukayet, 67-71; Nulato,

weapons: adzes as, 75, 76; arrowheads, 60, 340,

INDEX

341; bear spear, 54 -55.55; clubs, 340,342; guns, 80; harpoons, 340,341; hunting, 24, 80; knives, 56, 340,342; points, 3, 4, 24 Weare. See Tanana Station Webb, Melody, 65 wedding feast, Nenana, 43-45 Western Fur and Trading Company; at Anvik, 268; competition with other trading compa¬ nies, 94; Mercier s Station trading post, 93 Western Union Telegraph Expedition (1866-67):

369

Wood, Ira (trader), 227; in Elizabeth Keatings childhood, 226; and Louise Keating’s tragedy, 255, 258, 260 Wood, Jackson: with family, 278,279; as guide on Anvik River, 273; on mask carver, 248; views on religion, 271 Wood, Ralph: appearance and occupation, 278, 279> 279-80; as transvestite, 251 Woods, Jim, 221 Workman, William and Karen, 205

cancelled due to trans-Atlantic cable, 57; end

Wright, Amanda, 32

of, 189; exploration of Yukon Valley, 30; and

Wulf, Martha, 323

leader Robert Kennicott, 56-57,188-89; at Nuklukayet, 69 Whymper, Frederick; on Indian footwear, 110;

Xamenchishdin (Nose Paint Place), 124,125 Xogoltlinden (village), 194

at Kaltag (‘Coltog’), 194-95; on Kutchin In¬ dians, 79, 82-84, 86-87; as member ofWest-

Young, John, 323

ern Union Telegraph Expedition, 30, 57,189;

Young Girl’s House (Cave), 136-37

at Nowikakat, 207,107-8; in Nuklukayet, 36,

Yukon (steamer), 96,104, 292

68 -70; on parasite infestations, 191; and spell¬

Yukon Valley, 4

ing of Athabaskan language, xx; on Tanana

Yupik Eskimo: and aboriginal trading network,

Indians, 36; use of name ‘Koyukon Indians, 34

Wien, Noel, 296-300,297; and aerial photogra¬

35,164; Russian tradepost among, 165 Yuqan’ Xot’ana Indians, 75 Yurok Indians, 36

phy, 297-98 Williams, Billy, 237, 280-81

Zagoskin, Lavrentiy Alekseyevich: on Anvik In¬

Wilson, George F., 99

dians, 282; on Athabaskan tribal groups, 33-

Wolasatux. See Tatlek/Volosaty

34; exploration of Yukon-Kuskokwim area of

women: bear taboos, 130,138; dances, Nenana,

Alaska, 30; on Holikachuk Indians, 220-21; in

43 - 45; dancing in masks, restrictions on, 240;

Kateel, 141-44.146; on Malemiut (Inupiaq)

and finger masks, 237, 240; Kutchin, 79-81,

Eskimo, 142-44; maps of, 6; on mosquitoes,

80, 85, 86; puberty rites, 130,136; shamans, 151;

97-98; at Nowikakat, 105-6; on Nulato settle¬

widow rituals, 174,175; wild, 128,146-47, 225,

ment, 166-67; °n red ochre, 261; on smallpox

288; work of, 79-81,116-17,326. See also bags;

edpidemic near Stink Creek, 217; and spelling

baskets; bowls; clothing; household goods;

of Athabaskan language, xx; on Yukon and

pottery; tools

Kuskokwim Eskimo festivals, 252

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