"Anything You Know Regarding the Natives." Dr. James Taylor White's 1901 Reconnissance Report

About the Author: Gary C. Stein received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1975 with fields in Western American History and U.S. History to 1860, specializing in Native American History. He has worked as a research historian for the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in Anchorage, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C. His personal research interests gravitated toward the history of the Revenue Cutter Service in Alaska. He has retired to Florissant, Missouri and is hard at work writing up all the research material he gathered in Alaska more than 40 years ago. Gary presented a version of this article at the Western History Association's 2020 annual meeting. You can write to him at drgarystein@gmail.com

Luck is often an essential factor in historical research, but researchers must be lucky enough. In my case I was lucky enough in 1980 when I found the John W. White and James T. White Papers in the archives of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. That collection of diaries, correspondence, photographs, and ethnographic material has resulted in forty years of writing Alaska’s history, especially as it pertains to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Revenue-Cutter Service (a predecessor of the U.S. Coast Guard) in Alaska’s waters. This is one more story.

On April 6, 1900, California physician James T. White was assigned as surgeon for the Alaska cruise of the Revenue Cutter Hugh McCulloch. Although White’s original orders stated that his appointment would last only until the McCulloch returned from a brief northern cruise, he was obviously also informed that once he reached the Alaska port of St. Michael he would be reassigned to the Revenue Steamer Nunivak. The stern-wheeled Nunivak, commanded by Lt. John C. Cantwell, had already spent one year patrolling the Yukon River in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush and, after reprovisioning at St. Michael, would start up the Yukon again in the summer of 1900 (see map below).

The Yukon Station of the U.S. Revenue Steamer Nunivak, 1900-1901

White had many interests aside from his medical profession. He was particularly fascinated by Native ethnology. He had collected over 500 Alaskan and Siberian Native “curios” that became the core of the University of Washington Museum’s ethnographic collection. He was also a naturalist, a photographer, a diarist, and a bit of an artist. With an opportunity to study Athabascan Natives living along the Yukon, he wrote to John Wesley Powell, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, requesting Smithsonian Institution publications that might help him in collecting ethnological data. Powell wrote back, wishing White success in his research but explaining that many instructional manuals that might be useful were out of print. Powell did send White a copy of the Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages (written by Powell himself) and recommended that White use it in his studies, as familiarity with linguistics was key to ethnographic research and rapport with Native groups.

White would not receive Powell’s reply until the Nunivak returned to St. Michael in the summer of 1901, but even without that assistance he compiled Native vocabulary and place-name lists while the Nunivak was iced-in on the Dall River, a thousand miles upriver from the Yukon’s mouth, where the cutter spent the winter of 1900-1901. On March 18, 1901, as preparations were underway to cut the Nunivak out from the ice of the Dall, White came up with another method to obtain useful information about Natives living along the Yukon. He wrote to six missions along a 500-mile stretch of the river: the Russian Orthodox mission of Russian Mission at the village of Ikogmiut; the Jesuit missions of Holy Cross at Koserefsky and St. Peter Claver at Nulato; and the Episcopal missions of Christ Church at Anvik, St. James at Tanana, and St. Andrews at Rampart. All of these were Athabascan Indian missions with the exception of Russian Mission, which was Central Yup’ik Eskimo. Only White’s letter to Holy Cross survives, but it probably represents the letters he sent to each mission:

Fort Shoemaker Dall River, Alaska

Sir:

I would be pleased if you will answer the following questions as fully as possible, and too, to add anything you know regarding the natives that will be of interest.

Said information will be used in the annual report of this vessel to the Department.

The “Nunivak” will be coming down the river early in June next, when we will stop at your mission, and you may give me the answers then instead of mailing them now. Very Respectfully James T. White Surgeon, R.C.S.

White enclosed with his letter a questionnaire he had developed—thirty-one questions on a wide range of topics. White’s questions, and responses he received from the missionaries, provide a unique opportunity for analyzing ethnographic data-collecting at the very beginning of the twentieth century and how that information can be used in studying the history of Yukon River Natives during this significant period in their history. White’s questions were:

1. What is the tribal name of the natives living in your neighborhood, and the extent of the territory they occupy?

2. Give the names of the neighboring tribes.

3. What is the number of natives living in your neighborhood?

4. Do the children attend school willingly and regularly, and what are their ages?

5. Is there any opposition to their attending from the parents or older people, or do these take an interest in the school?

6. Are the children intelligent, and do they learn readily?

7. At what age do the women marry?

8. Does the man have to pay the brides [sic] parents for her?

9. Is it necessary for the girl to obtain her parents [sic] consent before marrying?

10. Do the couples now come to you to be married?

11. Did they have any marriage ceremony of their own, and if so, what was it like?

12. Did polygamy formerly exist?

13. What is the standing of the married women, and how are they treated?

14. What is the average number in a family, and the ratio of male and female children?

15. What is the number of children a woman usually bears?

16. Between what ages do women bear children?

The Nunivak at Nulato

National Archives

17. Is infantile mortality very great, and if so, to what is it due?

18. About what is the average longevity?

19. What diseases are common among them?

20. What diseases appear to be peculiar to them, and what are due to the influence of civilization?

21. Have they medicines, or any methods of treating diseases of their own, or do they depend on the white man when sick?

22. Do they still have their shamans or medicine-men, and do they possess much authority?

23. What has been the number of deaths since June 1900, and the causes? (give number of adults and children separately)

24. The number of births for the same period?

25. Have they any observances at the birth or death of a person?

26. Do they tattoo or otherwise mutilate themselves?

27. Do they manufacture pottery and baskets, (other than birch-bark), and if so, out of what materials?

28. Have they any games, (gambling or otherwise) peculiar to themselves?

29. What are their moral characteristics?

30. Are they addicted to drinking, gambling, or other vices, and to what extent?

31. What effect is civilization exerting on them?

And of course there is White’s rather casual throw-away remark asking missionaries “to add anything you know regarding the natives that will be of interest.”

Although White told the missionaries that the information he wanted from them would be used in the Nunivak’s final report, that did not happen. After the cutter returned to St. Michael in July 1901, Lt. Cantwell was ordered to haul it out on the beach and sell it. A buyer could not be found immediately, and Cantwell left it in the hands of White and a small caretaking crew. Cantwell returned to San Francisco to write his final report of the Nunivak’s two-year cruise on the Yukon. Writing to Cantwell on October 9, 1901, White noted that he was about ready to start on his “Indians of Dall River” report.

Six months later, on April 22, 1902, Cantwell wrote to White that he had not heard from him about his ethnographic report. White did not receive Cantwell’s April letter until July; it had been delayed because the steamship Portland, bringing passengers, freight, and mail to Alaska had been encircled by ice in the Bering Sea for two months. Once White received Cantwell’s letter, he informed his former commanding officer that he was not finished polishing his report and would bring it to San Francisco after the Nunivak was sold.

There is no indication that White finished a separate report on the Natives of Dall River or sent a more polished version to Cantwell. By July 1902, when White responded to Cantwell, his ethnologic report would have been of no use; Cantwell finished his final Nunivak report and submitted it to the Treasury Department in May. Furthermore, Cantwell had years of experience studying and reporting on Alaska’s Natives and was capable of writing about them on his own. Looking at White’s unfinished manuscripts on “The Dall River Indians,” however, it becomes clear that some of what he wrote was taken from missionary responses to his questionnaire.

White’s Categories

On one hand, White’s questions can be analyzed in terms of the kinds of information he was hoping to elicit, as determined by his own interests and background. On another level, missionaries’ responses can be analyzed in terms of their own particular interests in, and biases toward, Natives of their specific mission districts. Thirdly, missionaries’ replies can be analyzed as descriptions of variations in aspects of Alaska Native life over an area extending more than 500 miles.

St. James Mission, Tanana

Library of Congress

There is some overlap, but the thirty-one questions White asked can be grouped into four broad categories. The greatest number of questions (ten) are directly concerned with Native health. He asked about the birth of children, infant mortality, Native longevity, prevalent diseases, aboriginal methods of medical treatment, and the number of deaths and births in the vicinity of the missions after June 1900. Even if White had not had a medical background, the combined measles and influenza epidemics that decimated Native villages in the summer of 1900 would have been too important not to investigate these aspects of life and death on the Yukon.

The next largest category (eight questions) concerns more general information about Natives—tribal names and extent of their territory, population statistics, Native manufactures, and persistence of aboriginal ceremonies. Such questions are expected from someone gathering ethnographic data on inhabitants of any area. Other inquiries of this type may have been afterthoughts. For instance, White had shown some interest in Native baskets, writing in his diary on November 13, 1900, that Natives along the Yukon made birch-bark baskets, trays, and buckets. His Question 27, however, concerning pottery and baskets may have been prompted by a more immediate experience. Five days before White sent his questionnaire to the missionaries, Judge James Wickersham, on his way upriver to Eagle after presiding over a seven-day court term at the mining community of Rampart, stopped to rest on the Nunivak. Wickersham, himself known as a foremost ethnologist, noted in his diary that he was surprised to find on board Dr. White, with whom he had corresponded about Northwest Coast Native ethnology.

White was equally delighted to encounter Wickersham, calling the judge “an ‘Indian Crank,’” in his own diary, and they often talked while Wickersham stayed on the Nunivak. One of their discussions was about baskets, White insisting that local Natives only made them of birch-bark. Wickersham, on the other hand, argued that all Indians made woven baskets and only stopped when metal pots were easily obtained from white traders. Wickersham went to the Athabascan village near where the Nunivak wintered and found someone he thought would make a proper basket for him. When the Native basket-maker brought it to him the next morning, however, it turned out to be a small basket made of birch-bark. This event may have prompted White’s question regarding baskets. In fact, it would not be surprising if White’s conversations with Wickersham inspired the entire questionnaire.

White’s next category (seven questions) is another that can be expected, considering his own attitudes and those of the men whose comments he sought. They deal with the Yukon River Natives’ “morality” and the influence “civilization” had on them. White’s sojourn on the river came during a period which, for a number of reasons, was a critical one for the Natives of that region, and of course he was interested in learning about the journey the Natives influenced by the missions had made toward American “civilization.”

Moreover, by 1901 other influences were being exerted on these Natives. The discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896 and at Nome in 1899 ushered in an era of rapid and extensive changes in Native life, some of which are still being felt. Many of these changes in material items and their effects were apparent to White. Other effects that White noted, such as gambling, drunkenness, and promiscuity, were considered vices of civilization. Through his questions White hoped to elicit the missionaries’ attitudes toward changes—both good and bad from their perspectives—affecting their Native charges.

White’s last category, six questions about women and marriage, is something of a departure from his other inquiries. He asked about the age at which women marry, whether a bride price was paid, whether women needed their parents’ permission to marry, the nature of aboriginal wedding ceremonies, whether polygamy existed, and how married women were treated by their husbands. There are only a few instances of his personal observations of these subjects noted in his diary entries during the winter spent at the Dall River, and in his manuscripts he covers these aspects of Native life in very few words. It may be impossible to pinpoint exactly what aroused his interest in this topic.

The Missionaries

Five missionaries responded to White’s questionnaire. He did not receive a reply from the priest at Russian Mission, perhaps because Father Jacob Korchinsky, who had served as priest of the mission since 1897, left Russian Mission in September 1900 and was replaced by Hieromonk Amfilokhii in 1901. The new priest was probably not familiar enough with local Natives to respond to White’s questions, and he may not have seen the questionnaire at all. Some of those who responded were then, or were to become, well-known names not only in their religious communities but in the wider spheres of Alaska history and anthropology. Going upstream from the Yukon River’s mouth they were:

Fr. Joseph Raphael Crimont Holy Cross Mission, Koserefsky

Joseph Raphael Crimont—Holy Cross (Koserefsky). Born near Amiens, France, Crimont came to the United States in 1884 and was ordained a priest two years later. He was a missionary to the Crow Indians in Montana before arriving at Holy Cross in 1894 and was the mission’s superior from 1896 to 1901. After serving as acting president of Gonzaga College in Spokane, Washington, Father Crimont came back north as Prefect Apostolic of Alaska in 1904. In 1917, he became Alaska’s first bishop and remained in that post until his death in 1945. Crimont’s thirteen-page response was dated June 20, 1901, two days after the Nunivak stopped at the mission on its way downriver. It probably reached White at St. Michael after the Nunivak reached that port.

Rev. John Wight Chapman Christ Church Mission, Anvik

John Wight Chapman—Christ Church (Anvik). Episcopal missionary Chapman of Vermont began his forty-three years of work at Anvik in 1887. Next to Father Jetté of Nulato he was the most knowledgeable missionary on the Yukon River. Intent on conducting religious services in the Natives’ own language, Chapman translated most of the Episcopal morning service into Ingalik. He contributed to the collections of the American Museum of Natural History and published “Notes on the Tinneh Tribe of Anvik, Alaska,” a study of Native traditions and descriptions of ceremonies, in 1906. Chapman’s Ten’a Texts and Tales from Anvik, Alaska, thirty-three Native legends in both English and Ten’a orthography, which he compiled in 1911, was published in 1914. His response to White’s questions consisted of thirteen pages, dated April 27, 1901, but he had written an earlier four-page letter dated March 13, 1901 (five days before White sent his questionnaire), containing information White previously requested about local Natives’ religious beliefs.

Fr. Joseph Jules Jetté St. Peter Claver Mission, Nulato

Joseph Jules Jetté—St. Peter Claver (Nulato). Jetté, a Canadian-born Jesuit priest, was assigned to Alaska in 1898, two years after his ordination. He was twenty-seven years old. While waiting at St. Michael for transportation up the Yukon, Jetté wrote that he was making progress in learning the “Nulato language” from a young boy from Holy Cross. He would eventually master the language and was interested in linguistics, ethnology, and geography. His massive, 2,344-page manuscript dictionary of the Koyukon language is considered an encyclopedia of all of Koyukon culture. Even by 1901, after only three years at Nulato, Jetté was the most knowledgeable—and least ethnocentric—missionary to respond to White’s questions, and his references to other scholarship shows his wide-ranging curiosity. His 34-page response covers only 25 of the questions White asked. It can be assumed that the rest of that document has been lost. It is unfortunate that so much of the document is missing, because Jetté was the only missionary who took White at his word—he added much of what White asked for in terms of “anything you know regarding the natives that will be of interest.”

Alfred A. Selden—St. James (Tanana). A lay teacher, Selden accompanied missionary Rev. Jules Prevost to Alaska in 1898 to assist Prevost and complete the mission buildings at Tanana. Selden’s wife joined him, and they both taught school and conducted mission work. The Seldens left Alaska in 1902. Selden’s two-page response to White’s questions is in White’s handwriting and written on Treasury Department Stationary; it was probably the result of a face-to-face interview between them when the Nunivak stopped at Tanana on its way downriver on June 10, 1901.

Edward J. Knapp—St. Andrews (Rampart). Knapp, a lawyer from New York, was a member of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew and volunteered for service in Alaska. In 1889, working under Rev. Prevost, Knapp was appointed lay reader at Rampart. He left Rampart in 1903 but was back in Alaska the following year in temporary charge of St. Thomas’s Mission at Point Hope. Like Selden’s response, this two-page document is in White’s handwriting and written on Treasury Department Stationary. Again, it is probably the result of an interview with Knapp when the Nunivak stopped at Rampart, June 5-8, 1901.

A Sample Analysis

A thorough, detailed analysis of White’s questionnaire and the missionaries’ responses will require a monograph-length study. For now, one example should suffice to indicate how that analysis can add to our understanding of Native history along the Yukon during this period in Alaska’s history. Two questions stand out among the ten White asked regarding Native health, particularly because of their relationship to the combined measles and influenza epidemics that struck western Alaska in the summer of 1900. These epidemics have been rightly called “Alaska’s Great Sickness.”

Measles came from Siberia. Siberian Natives contracted it from Russian traders and brought it across Bering Strait on trading visits to Alaska Natives at Cape Prince of Wales. It quickly spread to St. Lawrence Island, the Pribilofs, the Aleutians, and along Alaska’s coast, south to Bristol Bay, north almost to Point Hope, and up the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. At the same time, influenza came north from Seattle or San Francisco, brought by whalers and prospectors to Nome. It then spread to the same areas.

The diseases ravaged Native villages and camps, causing not only great mortality but social disruption as well. It has been estimated that 25% of the Native population of western Alaska died. In some villages and camps along the Yukon the estimate nears 75%. Coming during the fishing season when Natives were in smaller camps, reduced subsistence resources threatened starvation for the ensuing winter.

Anthropologist Robert Wolfe wrote the most complete study of Alaska’s Great Sickness, published in 1982. He based much of his study on missionary writings and White’s official medical report, published as part of Lt. Cantwell’s extensive report on the Nunivak’s patrol of the river. Unfortunately, Wolfe did not have access to White’s questionnaire or the missionary responses. They could have provided the anthropologist with additional detail.

White’s Questions 23 and 24 are important in understanding the effects and aftermath of Alaska’s Great Sickness. Question 23 asked how many Natives had died within each mission’s population between June 1900, when the epidemics began their movement upriver, and March 1901. The statistics provided in the missionaries’ answers to White’s questions go beyond what Wolfe discussed in his article. Wolfe himself complained that his study was incomplete because mortality statistics he was forced to use were limited as were data regarding deaths enumerated by age and sex. The following table is extrapolated from the missionaries’ responses to White’s questionnaire:

Holy Cross Mission, ca. 1900

Library of Congress

Crimont wrote that the measles and influenza epidemics accounted for most of the 150 Natives who died at Holy Cross. The majority were adults, the children’s deaths from the diseases being few. According to the sources Wolfe cited, almost half of the Native population around Holy Cross died from the measles and influenza epidemics. This might not be quite accurate. Crimont told White that the Native population around the mission numbered 400 in 1901. If Wolfe was accurate that half the population had died, that would mean the pre-epidemic population must have been 800. Nothing I have seen makes that a reasonable assumption. If, however, 150 died as Crimont wrote, a population of 550 near the mission would not be unreasonable. Some of the dead at Holy Cross were from outlying villages in the mission district who resorted to the mission when the population of their winter village was reduced to an unsustainable number.

The other problem with Wolfe’s analysis compared to the statements White received from the missionaries is that Wolfe only looked at statistics relating to Holy Cross and a few surrounding villages and camps within a fifty-two mile stretch of the Yukon between the mission itself and the village at Dog Fish. Forty miles farther up the Yukon, at Anvik, Chapman provided more details about his mission. Thirty-two deaths had occurred at Anvik. Seventeen of the dead were females (six of them were children) and fifteen were males (three children). Rather than simply give White a head count of the dead, Chapman listed the causes of death: four from consumption (probably tuberculosis), twenty from influenza compounded by bronchitis, four from influenza combined with measles, two from whooping cough, one from Pott’s Disease (tuberculosis of the spinal bones), and one from paralysis. Twenty-four of the deaths at Anvik, therefore, were caused directly by the 1900 epidemics.

Jetté’s answer was the longest and most detailed. He included statistics from what he considered the wide field of his mission’s influence—stretching from 80 miles below to 200 miles above Nulato. According to the mission’s records, sixty-eight of the ninety-three Natives who died were adults and twenty were children. Other Natives associated with the mission died on Yukon River tributaries such as the Koyukuk and Innoko rivers, but Jetté could not provide their numbers as he had not visited those areas during the winter of 1900-1901.

Rampart

Library of Congress]

Jetté attributed all but two of the ninety-three deaths at Nulato to the epidemics in 1900. Some had died in the fall of 1900 and during the winter from after-effects of the diseases. Jetté’s response made a significant point. His statement that there were several deaths in the late fall and early winter of 1900 requires further inquiry into the Great Sickness. When the Nunivak stopped at Nulato on its way upriver on August 28, 1900, White wrote in his diary that twenty-seven had died at the mission by that date. Jetté himself reported a larger number of dead after the Nunivak left the mission, listing in Nulato’s official records thirty-six who died between July 28 and September 15, 1900. This means that to reach the ninety-three dead that Jetté reported to White in 1901, almost sixty had died from the epidemics in the fall and winter. It would not be far-fetched to assume that a similar situation existed at the other missions.

As for the two missions closest to where the Nunivak wintered, Knapp at Rampart told White that there had been thirteen Native deaths (two adults and eleven children, five of the latter infants) and Selden reported that there had been twenty-six deaths (14 adults and 12 children) at Tanana.

White’s Question 24 adds valuable information on the ability of the Native population to renew itself after the epidemics. Wolfe, of course, had no data on—or perhaps no concern—about the number of children who were born after the epidemics. Crimont was vague about the births during the nine months period White asked about, merely writing that there were “exceedingly few.” At Anvik, Chapman reported that there were only two births during the nine-month period in White’s question. Selden reported six births at Tanana, while Knapp said there were four Native births at Rampart. Jetté reported a rather astounding figure of twenty-five or twenty-six births between June 1900 and March 1901 based on his mission’s baptism records, but his was a broader region of mission influence.

There is some difficulty in reconciling names of villages in the 1900 federal census with actual Native communities, so a detailed comparison cannot be made between the 1900 census data for the Yukon River Native villages with the missionary responses. This is unfortunate, because enumerators for that census had traveled through those villages and missions just before the epidemics struck, so once that difficulty is overcome—and I have no doubt it will be—we have the potential for a relatively complete picture of the pre-epidemic population.

This is a short version of a broader analysis of White’s questionnaire and the missionary responses that is currently underway. It is presented here as an example of how a unique documentary source can be used to provide a window into the work of an amateur ethnographer, the people he was soliciting for information, and the Natives he was studying. White was fond of quoting a line that Rudyard Kipling often used to end some of his writings. The further analysis fits that quote as well: “But that’s another story.”

Officers of the Revenue Steamer Nunivak. Dr. James T. White seated at left.

Scammell-Tinling Collection