Nov-Dec, 2020
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Alaskan History Nov-Dec, 2020 VOLUME 2, NO. 6 ISBN 9798551694007
Published bimonthly by Northern Light Media
MEMORABLE PHOTOGRAPHS IN ALASKAN HISTORY CAPTURING ALASKA’S HISTORY ON GLASS PLATES AND FILM - 6
ALASKAN HISTORY
The First American Dog Musher in Alaska by Thom “Swanny” Swan Much of Robert’s enthusiasm was directed toward dog driving, and he described many aspects of his endeavors with a degree of detail and emotion rarely seen in 19th century correspondence. “My four dogs are to me treasures beyond price. They form one of the strongest and best teams in this region, and their fortunate possessor is held in much higher estimation in consequence that he would be without them. ... I have derived more pleasure from my dogs this winter than from any thing else.” Article begins on page 40
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Nov-Dec, 2020 MOTTROM DULANY BALL
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A FOUNDING FATHER OF ALASKA As Collector of Customs from March 27, 1878 to June 13, 1879, he was an agent of the U. S. Treasury Deptartment and the highest-ranking federal official in the Department of Alaska, making him de facto governor of the territory.
ALEXANDER HUNTER MURRAY
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AND THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AT FORT YUKON, 1847-48 ‘“I must say, as I sat smoking my pipe and my face besmeared with tobacco juice to keep at bay the d——d mosquitos still hovering in clouds around me, that my first impressions of the Youcon were anything but favourable.” THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN IDITAROD & FLAT CITY
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BY HUDSON STUCK, D.D., F.R.G.S. The Iditarod was the last major gold rush in Alaska, covering a vast area spreading from Ruby on the Yukon River, south along the Kuskokwim Mountain into the drainages of the Innoko and Upper Kuskokwim Rivers. THE SILENT CITY
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FROM T. A. RICKARD’S 1909 BOOK In 1885 Dick Willoughby brought news that he had discovered a wonderful mirage above the Muir glacier; a modern city, with church-towers, large buildings, vessels in the docks, and people moving in the streets. NELLIE CASHMAN
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THE MINER’S ANGEL FROM ARIZONA TO THE KOYUKUK After more than 30 years prospecting and mining throughout the West, Nellie Cashman found fulfillment in the Koyukuk Country, near what would later become Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. THE ALASKA DOG TEAM
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1922 RAND MCNALLY GUIDE TO ALASKA AND THE YUKON In winter as soon as a person leaves the railroad, or the automobile roads, he is in need of the dog team as much as before the coming railroads, automobiles, or the horse.
Special Feature: The First American Dog Musher in Alaska . . . . . . . page 40 Cover Notes, In this Issue . . . . . . . 1
Memorable Photographs . . . . . 6 - 7
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . 2 - 3
Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 to 39
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Special Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Magazine Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Resources used in this issue . . . . 48
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Alaskan History
Alaskan History
Publisher’s Note
M•A•G•A•Z•I•N•E
Writing History
Nov-Dec, 2020
Getting the Details Right
Volume 2, Number 6
Published by Northern Light Media Post Office Box 870515 Wasilla, Alaska 99687 (907) 521-5245 www.Alaskan-History.com Email AlaskanHistory@gmail.com Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/ alaskanhistory/ Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/ AlaskanHistory/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelenHegener Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ akhistorymagazine/
While I have been fortunate to publish the writing of many excellent Alaskan authors and historians in these pages, including Dr. Gary Stein, Dr. Thomas Eley, Tim Jones, Patricia De Nardo Schmidt, and in this issue, Thom Swan, the fact is I still write most of the articles which appear in this magazine, drawing on my own research and my books on Alaskan history. Those books include Alaskan Roadhouses, The Alaska Railroad 1902-1923, The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, Alaska and the Klondike, Alaskan Sled Dog Tales, and many more. While researching and writing those books I discovered that history can lead one down endlessly fascinating trails, each with another story, branching into still more stories, and the trail is not always clear nor easy to follow. For example, the photograph at the bottom of page 7 was found in the Library of Congress files with the simple notation, “Irigating (sic) wheel at U.S. Tel. Sta.” No other details, no date, no location. Intrigued, I noted the photographer’s signature, P. S. Hunt. Phinney Hunt lived in Valdez and photographed the surrounding areas, including the Copper Valley, and he died in 1917. A quick search of telegraph stations brought up a similar photo from the Copper Center WAMCATS station, built in 1901. But telegraph stations didn’t need irrigation, so the photo was probably related to the Copper Center Agricultural Experiment Station, built in 1907, providing a probable ten year window for the photo. This is how the jigsaw puzzle of history is pieced together, and the process is nicely illustrated by a quote from the American historical fiction novelist E. L. Doctorow, who once described writing as “like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Every issue of Alaskan History Magazine is a trip into the past, and I’m delighted you’ve joined me for this issue’s journey!
Helen
Helen Hegener, Publisher • Northern Light Media ~ http://www.northernlightmedia.com • Alaskan History Magazine ~ http://www.alaskan-history.com • Digital magazine ~ https://issuu.com/alaskanhistorymagazine
ISBN 9798551694007
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Nov-Dec, 2020 • Cover of this issue: Alaskan artist Theodore Roosevelt Lambert (1905-1960), arrived in Alaska around 1925. He worked as a musher hauling mail and freight, and found jobs as a miner, logger, and trapper. Lambert studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago in 1931, spent a winter in Seattle studying art with Eustace Ziegler, and eventually moved to a cabin on the coast of Alaska. He mysteriously disappeared in 1960, leaving a stack of unfinished paintings.
Inspiring Alaskans
• Online The Alaskan History Magazine website features excerpts of articles which appear in the pages of this magazine, with additional information, photos, maps, and links to resources. Check it out at www.alaskan-history.com • Digital Editions Alaskan History Magazine is available to read online at issuu.com, the premier digitial publication website. The first eighteeen months, ten issues, are available to read free; subscriptions to the digitial edition will begin with the Jan-Feb, 2021 issue. • The Resources used in researching the articles for each issue are shared on page 48, with links to the websites, PDFs and video and digital media. • Price Hike Rising postage and shipping costs have necessitated the increase of the postpaid cost of Alaskan History Magazine to $12.00 per issue. • Alaskan History Books Many of the historic books featured in every issue are available on the website for this magazine, www.alaskan-history.com. Purchases help support the continued publication of this magazine. • Social Media Alaskan History Magazine is active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For information visit our website. • Back Issues Print back issues of Alaskan History Magazine are always available, see the website for information about ordering issues you may be missing. Every issue is 48 pages, full color, and contains no advertising. Independently published in Alaska by Northern Light Media.
Nellie Cashman This issue’s Inspiring Alaskan is the intrepid miner and businesswoman Nellie Cashman, whose life story appears on page 30 of this issue. In her long life Nellie traveled extensively, even as far as Africa, and she became known as ‘the Miner’s Angel’ for her brave rescue efforts, and her kind grubstaking of others less fortunate. Nellie never had children of her own, but when her sister’s husband died, Nellie took on a lifelong commitment to the family. Through her mining and philanthropic work Nellie gained a sterling reputation from the deserts of Arizona to the remote Alaskan gold camp in the Koyukuk which became her final home. The spirit of Nellie Cashman inspires every issue of Alaskan History Magazine! For information visit:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlaskanHistory/ https://twitter.com/HelenHegener https://www.instagram.com/akhistorymagazine/
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www.alaskan-history.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Alaskan History
Memorable Photographs Capturing Alaska’s History on Glass Plates and Film
Right: Alaskan Indian guide known as Chief Schwatka, Alaska, ca. 1897. [Eric A. Hegg] Below: Ben Atwater and his dogteam arriving at Bennett Lake, B.C. with U.S. mail, ca 1898. Atwater’s mail contract was from Skagway to Dawson, then across the Alaska Territory to Nome, 2,300 miles away. [Eric A. Hegg] Page 7: Top: Charles Ott and John Scheele's general merchandise store in Eagle. In 1908 John Scheele, tinsmith by trade, purchased John Paulson’s share of the Paulson & Ott store, changing the name to Ott & Scheele. [F. Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress] Bottom: Irrigation wheel at U.S. Telegraph Station at Copper Center, by P. H. Hunt. The WAMCATS telegraph station was built in 1901; photo was most likely taken between the establishment of the Agricultual Experiment Station and Hunt’s death in 1917. [Frank Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress]
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More historic photos can be found at www.northernlightmedia.com
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Alaskan History
~ Mottrom ~ Dulaney Ball A lawyer, newspaper publisher, Confederate Army officer and collector of customs for the United States Department of the Treasury. From March 27, 1878 to June 13, 1879, he was the highest-ranking federal official in the Department of Alaska, making him de facto governor of the territory. “Mottrom Dulany Ball was one of the earliest and strongest advocates for the establishment of civil government in Alaska. He was the first person elected to public office from Alaska, and his legacy includes his many years of work as a founding father of the forty-ninth state.� One of the most unusual statesmen in Alaska’s history is the little-known Mottrom Delany Ball, who was raised in a genteel southern family, fought as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, and was among the earliest and strongest advocates for the establishment of civil government in the territory, becoming the first person elected to public office in Alaska. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867; before that time it was known as Russian America, and controlled by the governors and general managers of the Russian-American Company. After the purchase the unorganized territory of Alaska, vast regions of which were still unexplored, was originally under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of War, administered by Army officers for the first 10 years. In 1877 the Army was withdrawn from Alaska, leaving the customs collector the only federal official in the land for two years. During this time three men served as the de facto governor of the territory, with Montgomery Pike Berry serving from June to August, 1877; Henry C. de Ahna serving from August 1877 to March, 1878; and lawyer and newspaper publisher Mottrom Dulaney Ball serving from April 1878 to June, 1879.
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Above: The U.S. Customs House, formerly the U.S. Army Headquarters, was Mottrom Ball and his family’s residence in Sitka. [Photo credit: Eadweard Muybridge, circa 1868. Alaska State Library, Historical Collections, Juneau, AK.] Right: Confederate Army Colonel Mottrom Dulany Ball, age 29, circa 1864.
He was an unlikely candidate for such a position, being from a genteel southern family in the wake of the Civil War, but Mottrom Ball possessed many sterling qualities with which he would serve Alaska well. In Volume 20 of The Shield, the official publication of Theta Delta Chi, one of the oldest of the college fraternities, founded in 1847 at Union College in Schenectady, New York, the following entry is found on page 375: Mottrom Dulaney Ball, recorded as class of 1853, was born at “Oak Mount,” Falls Church, Virginia, on the 23rd day of June, 1835. His father, Spencer Mottrom Ball, and his mother, Mary Dulany, were both of old Virginia families and their son was reared amid the usual surroundings of comfort and ease in ante-bellum Virginia. At an early age Mottrom was sent to the Episcopal High School near Alexandria, Va., where he was prepared for college. In the fall of 1852 he was matriculated at the College of William and Mary where he remained for two years, graduating A. B. on the 4th of July, 1854. Meanwhile he had become a member of Theta Delta Chi, being one of those named in the charter issued on May 13th, 1853. Returning to Fairfax County, he remained there for several years, marrying on the 17th of October, 1860, Miss Sallie Lewis Wright. Needless to say the defense of his native state claimed his service, and the end of the War found him Colonel of the Eleventh Virginia Cavalry. Upon the return of peace he decided to take a law course, and as a result was graduated as an L.L.B. from the College of William and Mary on the 4th of July, 1867. Shortly after this he was appointed Collector of Customs for the District of Alaska and later the United States District Attorney for the same district. The rest of his life was spent in Alaska, with intervals in Virginia and Baltimore, where he practiced his profession. He entered the Great Omega on the 13th of September, 1887, at Sitka, Alaska. He is survived by his wife and nine children, the former now living at East Falls Church, Va.
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Alaskan History
The U.S. Customs House at Sitka, with the parade grounds in front. Baranof’s Castle sits on Castle Hill above the roofline. The building on the right is the former U.S. Army Barracks. [Line sketch is from a photo circa 1880]
Mottrom Dulany Ball was born in Fairfax County, Virginia, and was educated at the College of William and Mary. At the outbreak of the Civil War he formed a cavalry company and rose to the rank of Colonel in the Confederate Army. After the war, he returned to find his family home and estate destroyed; he was found there by his younger brother, “sprawled out on the lawn... dazed and unable to realize that actually all was lost.” Mott Ball moved to Alexandria and practiced law and with his uncle, William Heath Dulany, and their practice flourished. Ball was a gifted orator, frequently called on to speak at public events, but the post-war era was a volatile time in Virginia, and when Mott Ball, who understood the critical need for change, switched political parties and began to support the Republican Reconstruction efforts via his newspaper, he became embroiled in several contentious affairs and was even labeled “The Prince of Scalawags” by a rival editor. In January 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in appreciation of Ball’s steadfast support of Hayes’ campaign, called on Mottrom Ball to be the Collector of Customs at Sitka, Alaska, which was a prized presidential appointment. In addition to a $2,500 salary, the Collector of Customs received a percentage of the customs duties he collected, and because his position as an agent of the U.S. Treasury made him the chief representative of the United States government in Alaska, Mottrom Dulany Ball became the de facto Governor of the territory. It was a contentious time in Alaska as well. The U. S. Army had withdrawn from Alaska entirely and Sitka had descended into a state of near anarchy, with unrest from the indigenous Tlingit causing havoc. Ball and his deputies were declared the only semblance of law in the territory, but with no territorial charter, laws, or even presence of the army for protection, civil administration was nearly impossible. Mott Ball, familiar with hardship, accepted the challenge, and his efforts won the support of the people of Sitka.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 After a tense situation with the Tlingit which became known as the “Osprey Incident,” administrative authority was turned over to the United States Navy, and in June 1879, Commander Lester A. Beardslee, Captain of the U.S.S. Jamestown, assumed legal authority over the territory of Alaska. Mott Ball continued to serve as Collector of Customs, but he no longer had administrative authority of the territory. In July 1881, President James A. Garfield failed to reappoint Mottrom Ball as Collector of Customs in spite of a petition of support signed by nearly all of the citizens of Sitka. On September 5, 1881 Alaska held its first election where 236 out of 294 votes cast approved Mottram Dulany Ball of Sitka as Alaska's first unofficial delegate to Congress. The election was not recognized by the congressional committee on elections, however, so Ball was not seated in the House. Ball served as U. S. District Attorney for Alaska from 1885 until his death in 1887, and he worked with Senator Benjamin Harrison (who later became president) to convert the "Department of Alaska" into the "District of Alaska" in 1884. In November, 1885 Mott founded the Alaskan, a Sitka newspaper, and served as its first editor. Although he was the U.S. District Attorney for Alaska, Mott continued his own private law practice, and in August, 1887, he became a founding member of the Alaska Bar Association. In the summer of 1887 Mottrom fell ill and his breathing became difficult. In early September he told a district court judge, “Be as patient as you can, for with me the sands of life are nearly run through the dial and I shall soon be gathered to the land of my fathers.” A few days later Mott and his family left for California on the S.S. Ancon, and the venerable statesman died at sea on September 13, 1887, at the age of 52. His wife accompanied his remains back to Virginia, and he was buried in his hometown of Falls Church, Virginia, in the cemetery where his parents—and later his wife—were also interred. Mottrom Dulany Ball was one of the earliest and strongest advocates for the establishment of civil government in Alaska. He was the first person elected to public office from Alaska, and his legacy includes his many years of work as a founding father of the forty-ninth state. ~•~
Mottrom D. Ball founded The Alaskan newspaper in Sitka in 1885.
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Alaskan History
Fort Yukon, Alaska, June, 1867. From Alaska, and Its Resources, circa 1870. Etching from an original sketch by author William Healey Dall, redrawn by or with the assistance of Henry Elliott.
Alexander Hunter Murray and The Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Yukon • 1847-48 Near the Confluence of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers North America, with its vast forests and wildlife, led to the continent becoming a major supplier of fur pelts for the garment trades of Europe, where fur was relied on to make warm clothing, a critical consideration prior to the organization of coal distribution for heating. The Hudson’s Bay Company was a British trading firm, incorporated in England in 1670, and the oldest commercial corporation in North America. In 1821 the company merged with its main competitor, the North West Company, established in 1779, combining 97 trading posts of the North West Company with 76 from the Hudson's Bay Company. Maintaining the Hudson’s Bay name, the company dominated early trading in the United States and Canada, especially the fur trade. On the 25th of June, 1847, Chief Trader and artist Alexander Hunter Murray of the Hudson's Bay Company established a fur trading post and stockaded fort in northeastern Russian America, just upstream from where the Porcupine River empties into the mighty Yukon, at a point slightly north of the Arctic Circle. Named Fort Yukon, Murray’s trading post would become one of the most valued by the Company, reaping the rich harvest of furbearing animals indigenous to the Alaskan interior, and the town which formed around the logistically well-placed post would play an important role in the history of Alaska.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Alexander Hunter Murray was born at Kilmun, Argyllshire, Scotland in 1818, the son of Commodore Murray, R.N., of a famous firm of publishers in Glasgow which produced the Murray Railroad Guide. Alexander was described as “a clever man, of no ordinary talent and ability, an artist, engineer and surveyor, and in fact was an adept at almost anything he turned his attention to, and was withal a most genial companion, well-informed on any subject and had such a pleasing conversational power that it was no ordinary treat to spend a night at home with him.” Murray emigrated to the United States as a young man and found work with the American Fur Company, founded in 1808 by John Jacob Astor, one of the largest enterprises in the young nation, with a near-monopoly of the fur trade. Through his profits from the company Astor made lucrative land investments, becoming the first multi-millionaire in the United States and the richest man in the world. According to his biographical sketch at the online Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “No fur-trader ranged farther over North America than Alexander Hunter Murray. According to his Journal of 1847–48 he had early been in the swamps of Lake Pontchartrain (near New Orleans, La.) and along the Red River in Texas. It is difficult to determine exactly how or when he got there and nothing much is known about his life until he became an employee of the American Fur Company working out of St Louis, Mo. In 1844–45 he was on the upper Missouri River and there he sketched the fur posts of that region: forts Union, Pierre, Mortimer, and George.”
Fort Yukon; Hudson's Bay Company's Post, 1868 Illus. in: Frederick Whymper, Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska, London, 1868
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Alaskan History An article in the June, 1929 issue of The Beaver, the magazine of the Hudson’s Bay Company, notes “About 1845 he came up from Missouri to Fort Garry and entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company.” He was appointed senior clerk due to his extensive experience and transferred to the Mackenzie River District under the Chief Factor Murdoch McPherson. En route to his new post Murray met and married the daughter of Chief Trader Colin Campbell of the Athabasca District. They were married at Fort Simpson by McPherson, the marriage was registered at the Red River Settlement, in the future Manitoba, on August 24, 1846, and the couple traveled to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, to spend the winter. The first Hudson's Bay Company trading post north of the Arctic Circle, Fort McPherson was the principal post in the Mackenzie Delta region. In the spring of 1847, Murray traveled over the Richardson Mountains with his wife Anne, and while she remained at the newly-established Lapierre House on the Bell River, he, with a small company of men, launched their small boat, Pioneer, and descended the Bell (Rat) River to the Porcupine, and continued down the Porcupine to the Yukon. A detailed narrative of the post’s construction and first year was kept for Murdoch McPherson, Chief Factor at Fort Simpson; it was printed as Journal of the Yukon in 1910. In his journal Murray wrote very meticulous records of every bend and bank in the rivers with sometimes lengthy compass readings, and included local sights of interest, weather reports, and details of their interactions with the native people they met along the way. Finally arriving at the mouth of the Porcupine, they “….entered the turbid waters of the Youcon,” and with the help of the local Indians found a suitable place to make camp.
Alexander Hunter Murray
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Chief Saveeah, or ‘Rays of the Sun’
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Murray’s first impression was not favorable. “I must say, as I sat smoking my pipe and my face besmeared with tobacco juice to keep at bay the d——d mosquitos still hovering in clouds around me, that my first impressions of the Youcon were anything but favourable. As far as we had come (2 1/4 miles) I never saw an uglier river, every where low banks, apparently lately overflowed, with lakes and swamps behind, the trees too small for building, the water abominably dirty and the current furious; but I was consoled with the hopes held out by our Indian informant, that a short distance further on was higher land.” The next morning Murray set out with his Indian guides, “who seemed to take great interest and pride in showing us the best places, and in describing the banks of the river above and below.” Finally settling on a dry ridge about 300 yards long and 90 wide, Murray and his men set about constructing a post, which would have three large log buildings for the traders, surrounded by a one hundred foot square log stockade, with a fortified blockhouse at each corner of the stockade, comprising a classic western-style fort which would be, according to Murray’s journal, “the best and strongest between Red River and the Polar Sea.” Murray wanted the fort strong because he knew he was within Russian territory, as explained in an article by Martha Munger Black, F.R.G.S., wife of the Hon. George Black, K.C., Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, in an article for the Hudson’s Bay magazine, The Beaver, June, 1934. Quoting from Murray’s 1847 journal, she wrote of his journey to the future site of the fort, and noted, “It was now that he began to glean specific news of his dreaded rivals, the Russians. A party of Indians came in who had had some dealings with the Russians, and they described how these were all well armed with pistols and were abundantly supplied with ‘beads, kettles, guns, powder, knives and pipes and traded all the furs from the bands, principally for beads and knives, after which they traded dogs, but the Indians were unwilling to part with their dogs, and the Russians rather than go without gave a gun for each, as they required many to bring their goods across the portage to the river.’” Murray wrote in his Journal: “This was not agreeable news to me, knowing that we were on their land, but I kept my thoughts to myself, and determined to keep a sharp lookout in case of surprise. I found that the population of this country was much larger than I expected, and more furs to be traded than I had goods to pay for.” Having taken the measure of the land, Alexander Murray “determined to build a fort worthy of it.” Martha Black continues, “It was also to be worthy of the possible foes, both white and red, who surrounded him. So the stores and dwellings were made of solid timbers, the pickets walling them in were not mere ‘pointed poles or slabs, but good-sized trees dispossessed of their bark and squared on two sides to fit closely and fourteen and a half feet in height above ground, three feet underground. The bastions will be made as strong as possible, roomy and convenient. When all of this is done the Russians may advance when they damn please,’ he declares.” In another issue of The Beaver, Winter 1959, Canadian writer Ethel Stewart described a remarkable scene: “On 28 June 1847, three days after his arrival at the junction of the Porcupine with the Yukon River, a site on which he proposed to build Fort Yukon, Alexander Hunter Murray heard a salute of gunfire from the river. Lest silence be mistaken for hostility, he quickly ordered his men to return the salute. The party, consisting of eighteen persons, landed, and forming a chain, with the chief and his men in front and the women and children
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Alaskan History
"Dance of the Kutcha-Kutchin,” from a drawing by Alexander Hunter Murray, 1848. Designed by Georges Beaupré for the Canadian Postal Service, 1975. Murray’s original sketch from his Journal is above. The unsual stance of the central dancer shows influence of the Cossack-style dance lnown as Hopak, a Ukranian folk dance likely learned from the Russian traders.
to the rear, danced forward by degrees until they were in front of the white man’s camp. A party of Kutchin, already present, joined them to form a large circle with the chiefs in the centre and danced before the visitors for half an hour without ceasing. Thus the young chief introduced himself to the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company.” The ‘young chief’ mentioned by Stewart was called Saveeah, or Rays of the Sun, “a fine looking young man, easily distingished from his companions by the three eagle feathers he wore at the back of his head, and by the profusion of beads and shells on his tunic and trousers. Though these were the first white men the Yukon Indians had seen, they had already received guns and beads through indirect trade with the Russians.” Alexander Hunter Murray commented on Saveeah’s hunting skills in his journal, noting that the chief brought in more furs and meat than anyone, indicating the leadership which secured the chief’s influence and reputation. Known later in life as Sah-neu-ti, he would be sketched by F. J. Whymper and described by William H. Dall in his book, Alaska and its Resources, in 1870. As late as 1888 the chief was described by the McConnell survey party as the most powerful chief in the Yukon country. He died in 1900 and was buried in the churchyard at Fort Yukon, “the last Kutchin chief to exercise real power over his people.” An 1871 report to the U. S. Senate includes Captain Chas. W. Raymond’s Reconnaissance of the Yukon River in Alaska Territory, July to September, 1869, the main object of which was the determination of the latitude and longitude of Fort Yukon. Capt. Raymond was very favorably impressed by the native people of the Fort Yukon area, writing in his report: “A few trading parties came to the station during our visit, and among them were the finest Indians that I have ever seen. The women are virtuous; the men are brave, manly, intelligent, and enterprising. They are said to be essentially a commercial people, trading for furs with other tribes and disposing of them again to the white traders. Some of them were very much
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Engraving of two Gwich'in hunters based on a sketch in Alexander Hunter Murray’s journal, written in 1848, published in 1851. The nose ornaments were highly prized dentalium shells, obtained in trading—directly or indirectly—with coastal tribes. Original sketch from Murray’s Journal, labeled ‘Kootchin hunters,’ above, with front, side, and rear views of the hunters and their garb.
interested in my operations, and I found no difficulty in making them comprehend, through an interpreter, the general method and purpose of my astronomical observations. Indeed, they are accustomed to note time roughly by the relative positions of stars. Their clothing is of mooseskin, with the exception of a few articles which they obtain by trade. They fish little, and are almost exclusively engaged in trading furs and hunting the moose which abounds in these parts.” Some excerpts from Alexander Hunter Murray’s Journal of the Yukon 1847-48, which was published in 1910 by the Canadian Government Printing Office in Ottawa, and is available to read or download online (see Resources, page 48): June 29th. Little work was done by the men yesterday except grinding and handling their axes. Today we erected a temporary store for the goods and provisions and a scaffold for drying meat. One of the men was employed preparing a small piece of ground for an experimental garden. The day was showery and warm, and our fresh meat, now more than we could use, beginning to spoil, several of the Indian women were employed in cutting it up, for which they each received an awl, and considered it great payment. I had some more talk with the Indians, a few of them left to kill a moose for us, the others remaining and although inquisitive and often in our way, were becoming in their manners, and offering to assist in whatever had to be done. ….Our encampment was a pleasant place, quite a little village entertaining no less than six dwelling houses, all built upon the Sabbath day, for which I am not to be held accountable. They were made of willow poles covered with pine bark, and fashioned according to the fancy of their owners, some open at the end, some half open, and some with only a small door. Besides these six houses, there
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Alaskan History was a log store, also another cabin for containing dried fish, two more scaffolds, and a garden measuring 12 feet by 8—said garden was prepared and fenced out, and on the 1st of July a few potatoes were planted, and it was my peculiar care and pleasure to attend to it and have it duly watered in droughty weather, never expecting, that at that advanced season the crop could be brought to maturity, but to try by every means in my power to preserve seed for the ensuing summer. Except a few sticks, all the building wood had to be brought in the boat from the islands opposite about 3/4 of a mile distant, but owing to the numerous battures and the strong current in the river, they had to go about two miles to reach the islands, and more time was occupied in going and coming than in cutting and squaring the wood. We were seldom without visitors, and they did not often come empty-handed, we always had plenty to eat and plenty to do so that none were allowed to weary. Geese and duck were always passing, and now and then a Beaver would clap his tail ‘en passant’ before our levee. The woods behind abounded in rabbits and partridges, and go which way one would, if a good shot, he need not return without something for the kettle. We lived on good terms with the natives and feared nothing, except to see two boat loads of Russians heave round the point…. Alexander Hunter Murray left Fort Yukon with the returns of the first season in June, 1848, rejoining his wife who had remained at Lapierre House, on the Yukon side of the border. His journal ends there, and in his final entry directed at Murdoch McPherson, Chief Factor at Fort Simpson, he advises providing more trade goods in future seasons: I know myself of upwards of twenty men who have furs for a gun each on my return. I could dispose of any quantity of guns this summer, and I do hope you will send as many as possible, the Indians all prefer our guns to those of the Russians. Guns and beads, beads and guns is all the cry in our country. Please to excuse me for repeating this so often, but I cannot be too importunate, the rise or fall of our establishment on the Youcon depends principally on the supply of these articles.
Chief Trader A. H. Murray and his wife, Anne.
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Illustrations from Murray’s Journal.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Murray also comments on the potentially problematic Russians: I had some more conversation with the Indians that arrived before we left, respecting the Russians, from what they all say it is my firm belief that we shall see the Russians this summer, they have been making every preparation on the portage to descend the river. The more I think on this subject I am at the greater loss how I shall act, but hope to receive full instructions from you. They may order us to leave the coumtry, perhaps try to force us from it should we persist in remaining, and I should be very sorry to involve the Company in any difficulty with our Russian neighbours. But I only received orders to establish a post in the Youcon, which is done, nothing was said concerning the Russians trade or territory, and it is my private determination to keep good our footing until decisive instructions are received. Alexander Murray and his wife returned to Fort Yukon later in 1848, where they remained until 1851. An excerpt from the Introduction relates: In 1850 he accompanied Robert Campbell to Lapierre House; and the following year finally left Fort Yukon, returning to Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie, where he spent the winter. In the autumn of 1852 he reached Fort Garry with his wife, and several children, who had been born to them in the north country. Murray spent the succeeding winter at Fort Pembina (now Emerson), of which he had charge for the Hudson's Bay Company, for several years, after which he was appointed to the management of the district of Lac la Pluie, or Rainy Lake, and Swan River. Returning to Pembina, he was promoted to a Chief Tradership in 1856. In 1857, in poor health, Murray traveled to Scotland, where he visited his old home. His travels restored his health, and he was put in charge of Fort Alexander for a time, and then in 1862 he was given charge of Lower Fort Garry, where he spent several seasons. He retired from the service of the company in 1867, spending his remaining years at his home on the banks of the Red River. He died at the age of 56 in 1874, survived by his wife Anne, three sons, and five daughters. In a life filled with travel and adventure, Alexander Hunter Murray considered the construction of Fort Yukon his greatest achievement. An acquaintance was quoted in the Introduction to his Journal, saying of Murray: “His own experience in Rupert's Land had been great and long continued—but the adventure on which he most prided himself, evidently, was his having founded the most remote post of the company, Fort Youcon, in Russian America, situated within one or two degrees of the Arctic circle.” When Alaska was purchased from Russia by the United States in 1867, the precise location of Fort Yukon was still unknown. An American reconnaissance expedition established the latitude and longitude in 1869, and the fort was dual occupied during the winter of 1869-1870 by the Hudson’s Bay Company and the American company which would take over the post. In November, 1869 the Hudson’s Bay Company sent five men to construct the first Rampart House as a replacement, just over the border on the ramparts of the Porcupine River, and the post was relocated in the spring of 1870. Rampart House was later moved twelve miles farther upstream to ensure its being well within British territory, and according to a 1969 article in The Beaver, “was kept up mainly as a protection against the encroachments of American traders from Alaska.” A report by R. G. McConnell of the Geological Survey of Canada noted that by 1887-88 Fort Yukon had been entirely abandoned, and its timbers cut up to supply wood for the steamboats plying the Yukon River. ~•~
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Alaskan History
The Episcopal Church in Iditarod & Flat City 1909 ~ 1911
~ Hudson Stuck D.D. F.R.G.S.~
Left: First Avenue in Iditarod, circa 1911. Right: Author Hudson Stuck, from his book.
Hudson Stuck, born in England in 1863, came to the United States at the age of 22. In 1889 he began formal theological studies in Texas and was ordained deacon on Aug. 7, 1892, and an Espicopal priest on Nov. 30, 1892. He served the church in Texas until 1904, when he moved to Alaska to become Archdeacon of the Yukon in the Missionary District of Alaska. He explored the territory extensively and published many articles and several books describing his journeys, including The Alaskan Missions of the Episcopal Church in 1920. This article is an excerpt from Chapter IV: By Dog Sled or Launch. The Iditarod was the last major gold rush in Alaska, covering a vast area spreading from Ruby on the Yukon River, south along the Kuskokwim Mountain into the drainages of the Innoko and Upper Kuskokwim Rivers, centering in the towns of Flat and Iditarod. Prospectors had visited the area since the 1880’s, and minor stampedes had kept interest in the area alive. And then on Christmas Day, 1908, three miners found what they’d been searching for on a tributary of the Innoko River and over the next decade $30 million worth of gold was dug from the ground. From The Alaskan Missions of the Episcopal Church (1920), by Hudson Stuck: In the roughly chronological order which has been observed in this narrative, this is the place to speak of the Iditarod, and since the history of the Church in that camp is in all probability a closed chapter, the complete incident may illustrate the difficulties in the way of undertaking religious work in a placer mining camp.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 It is true of every such camp that, besides yielding up its own gold, it acts as a base of supplies for prospecting further afield; since the limit of the prospector’s wanderings is the distance to which he can transport supplies by his dogteam. The region between the Yukon and the Kuskokwim rivers was late in being examined for minerals because there was no base of supplies—save on the Yukon itself, too far away to be practicable. It was the discovery of gold on the Innoko, one of the southern tributaries of the Yukon, the establishment of the small town of Ophir near its headwaters, and the navigation of that river by steamboats, that led to the gold discovery on the Iditarod River, one of the tributaries of the Innoko, and the great stampede that took place in the summer of 1910. It was the last of the great stampedes. Word had been coming out all the winter of the richness of Flat Creek. Before the Yukon was open to through traffic from the United States, there was a constant stream of voyagers from all the upper river camps, and so soon as the through steamboats ran, the gold seekers from the outside crowded them from stem to stern. We took the Pelican up to Iditarod City in August with the Bishop aboard, and at that time I suppose Iditarod City had more population than any other town in Alaska. Great drafts had been made on all the towns of the interior. Many of the tradesmen of Dawson and Fairbanks had removed bodily with all their stocks of merchandise; some of the lesser camps had been quite depopulated; several thousands of people had come from the coast towns and from the States. Tents were already largely replaced by frame structures which rose from the glacial muck upon which the town was built with magical rapidity. A tramway was already constructing from Iditarod City to the creek ten miles away where the gold had been found. The writer visited the place again in the winter, going in by the Kuskokwim, and spent a week there, and left, having doubts about the wisdom of undertaking any building. But that
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Alaskan History winter a consignment of gold was sent overland by dogteam to Seward on the coast, in rather a spectacular way, and was shipped to Seattle with much trumpeting by the newspapers. One always suspects the transportation companies of doing all they can to increase any excitement that promises to be profitable to them. The sensational New York magazines were printing articles about "The Incalculable Riches of Alaska" all that winter, and much adventurous cupidity was stirred up. At the opening of navigation in 1911 the archdeacon received a telegram from the Bishop, directing him to go into the Iditarod immediately, raise the necessary funds and build a hospital—nurses and equipment for which would come in on the first boat—which task was forthwith undertaken and that summer executed. The need of an hospital was certainly great, as is always the case in such large gatherings of men, but the task of securing the $3,000 that was raised locally was no small one. However, the money was obtained, a building that had been erected for an hotel was purchased and partly paid for, the nurses and equipment arrived and the hospital was opened. Flat Creek was not only rich, it was shallow; and that is unfavourable nowadays to the fortune of a placer mining camp, because it is such deposits that are most suitable for dredging. The Guggenheims sent an agent that summer who bought "options" on all the claims on Flat Creek and spent considerable sums in prospecting them with drills and pretty accurately estimating their value. At the conclusion of his operations all the options were thrown up, as being held at prices which their gold-content did not justify. But early in the next season the owners proved willing to sell at what the Guggenheims considered a fair valuation—and the whole of Flat Creek passed into their hands. Now it may seem at first sight that it does not matter by what means the gold is extracted from the ground, so that it is extracted in sufficient quantity, but it makes a great deal of difference to the community. If fifty separate claims are working, each with a crew of men, there is much employment and much business catering to the miners. But two or three dredges will do the work that kept that whole population busy and dredges do not eat, or wear clothes, or drink whiskey or get sick and go to the hospital. Very little gold had been discovered save on Flat Creek itself; prospecting of the numerous neighbouring creeks had been unsuccessful. The dreams of a wide auriferous region, of which Flat Creek was only a beginning, proved a delusion. The dredges killed Iditarod City. Presently there was almost as great an exodus of people as there had been influx. The little town on Flat Creek itself was town enough for the reduced population; one by one the large buildings of Iditarod City were vacated, and the place began to assume the familiar melancholy aspect of so many decayed settlements in the interior. The hospital at Iditarod City had to be closed. For awhile one nurse and part of the equipment were moved over to Flat City and sufficed for the reduced needs of the camp. Then some largely fictitious claim for services was made by an attendant, suit was brought in the local court, and before it was possible to enter plea in answer, judgment was given and the equipment was sold at auction. There was legal redress had it been worthwhile resorting to it, but the people were gone and with them the need for the hospital, while to have removed the equipment at the freight rates prevailing in the Iditarod would have cost more than it was worth.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 So Iditarod City stands, with our empty hospital, an empty Roman Catholic Church, an empty Presbyterian reading and club room; one more example (though perhaps the most striking, since Iditarod City lasted such a short while) of the unsubstantial and precarious nature of a placer gold mining town. At Fairbanks Bishop Rowe took the chance—and it proved abundantly worth while. And it must be remembered that hundreds of others— merchants and tradesmen of every kind—long used to the country, also thought the Iditarod chance worth taking. It was, I think, the upshot of the Iditarod venture that decided the Bishop not to embark the Church’s money on any more hospitals in placer mining camps. For the medical needs of the natives had been pressing a long time upon the hearts of those concerned with the Yukon country. White men, where they congregate in sufficient numbers to require hospital service, are commonly able to pay for it, and, therefore, able to procure it. It is true that it is often the last thing thought of. It is true that the intense and universal preoccupation with getting, the feverish excitement of the early days of a new gold camp, leave no leisure for the contemplation of inevitable sickness and injury and the proper provision therefor ; that what is everyone’s business in general is likely to be no one’s business in particular, and that the Church has served community after community in this matter very valuably and beneficially because she was the only present agency sufficiently detached and disinterested to foresee the need and take the necessary steps to meet it. I do not feel any need to defend or excuse the undertakings of this kind to which we have set our hands from time to time in Alaska. But our white population is an exceedingly fluid quantity, as those who have read these pages will understand. A new "strike" anywhere draws the men away from all the older camps. The white men come and go ; they rush in to new diggings, overwhelming the town, stripping its stores of everything, and then subsisting on half rations eked out with rabbits and ptarmigan until the reopening of navigation allows supply to catch up once more with demand. Sooner or later they depart, not usually with the rush that depopulated the Iditarod in 1912-13, but in driblets, until the population will no longer support the stores and the institutions and they close their doors and cease; while another town grows up, perhaps a thousand miles away, with the same pressing immediate needs and temporary prospects. ~•~
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Alaskan History
The Silent City Excerpted from the 1909 book,Through the Yukon and Alaska, by T. A. Rickard This is the story of a scientific fake. It was skilfully done, so that many were fooled for a long time. The perpetrator was Richard G. Willoughby, known to his friends as Dick and to the public as the Professor. He came to Alaska from South Carolina, where he had been a Methodist preacher. This was an avocation for which he was well fitted by the possession of a long white beard and a resonant voice. The Professor was a good talker and, among other accomplishments, he was a ventriloquist. When he left the South he went northwestward to the Cariboo and the Cassiar mining districts, and finally reached Juneau in 1881. In 1885 Dick Willoughby brought news to the people of Juneau that he had discovered a wonderful mirage; it was to be seen above the Muir glacier. He described the vision as that of a modern city, with church-towers, large buildings, vessels in the docks, and people moving in the streets. The wonderful mirage had been seen by him on several occasions, but especially on June 21, the longest day of the year, when the sunlight was particularly strong. This story was repeated by him at intervals on his return from various prospecting expeditions, until 1889, when a sensation was caused by the statement that he had actually succeeded in getting a photograph of the "silent city." Great was the excitement at Juneau and throughout southeastern Alaska. An association of local men was formed at Juneau for the purpose of exploiting the discovery and of selling the prints struck off Willoughby's wonderful negative. It was
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Nov-Dec, 2020 decided to investigate the phenomenon and to get more photographs of it. In June 1889 an expedition was organized. At the head of it were the Professor himself and a man named Minor W. Bruce. Bruce represented the Omaha Bee and other newspapers. He was an enterprising journalist of the irresponsible kind and made an excellent second to Willoughby. Bruce had come to Alaska to 'write up' the country and some of the business men of Juneau thought that he was well qualified to advertise both the Silent City and, incidentally, the mineral resources of the region. Even those residents of Juneau who were skeptical as to the mirage were alive to the fact that the story served as a good drawing card to attract the people from 'below,' that is, the dwellers in the States. Under these auspices an expedition was equipped to observe and photograph the mirage, which, so said the Professor, was due on or about the longest day of the year, known to astronomers as the summer solstice. The expedition set sail, proceeding down Gastineau Channel, around the southern end of Douglas island, up Chatham strait, and thence to the inlet leading to the Muir glacier. A few weeks later an excursion steamer, the George W. Elder, returning from a visit to the glacier, brought news that a member of the Willoughby expedition had come aboard in Glacier bay and had stated that on the day previous Bruce had gone forth over the glacier with his camera to take a shot at the Silent City, which, so Willoughby said, was about to appear. A fog had settled over the ice, and although Bruce's camera was found, he was missing. Not far away from the spot where his camera lay, there was a wide crevasse, and it was feared that Bruce while wandering in the fog had fallen into this crevasse. The young man who brought this news to the captain of the excursion steamer asked for ropes and grapnels wherewith to explore the crevasse. He also requested some provisions. These requests were met, with assurances of sympathy and interest on the part of the excursionists; and when the George W. Elder arrived at Juneau the news of the mishap created much excitement, not only in Alaska but also in the States, the fellow journalists of Bruce doing their duty nobly. This stimulated the demand for photographs of the Silent City; "they went like hot cakes." Nearly a month later the expedition returned to Juneau and as it disembarked it was seen that Bruce had been found; his head was heavily bandaged and a boy was needed to lead him to his cabin. Evidently he had suffered. All the town was agog to hear the news. He was interviewed. His story was that when the fog enveloped him while crossing the glacier, he had tried to reach the camp, but wandered in the wrong direction, so that when the sun finally broke through the fog he found himself isolated from his party. While trying to find his way back, he became snow-blinded. To be blinded by the glare from sunlit snow is painful, as those who have suffered can testify. Bruce had to stop ; he sat down on the ice under the shadow of a large hummock, where he was found next day. His companions had searched for him and had heard his call. This was a fine yarn. The expedition brought Bruce to Juneau in order that he might get medical attendance. Willoughby explained that it was then too late in the season to get a new photograph of the mirage. But the sale of prints from his first negative proceeded in a lively manner and the tourists came to Juneau to hear all about the wonderful phenomenon seen by the Professor.
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Alaskan History As a matter of fact Bruce really was snow-blinded, but he soon recovered. About this time, in July 1889, another steamer, the Ancon, went to Glacier Bay and many of the passengers saw the mirage of a single spruce tree above the Muir glacier. The 150 excursionists returned to testify to this fact and the news stimulated interest in the Willoughby legend. More prints of the Silent City were purchased. In the following winter Willoughby sold the original negative for $500 to a photographer at San Francisco. A print from the original negative of the Silent City was given to me by a friend at Sitka, and is reproduced here, together with the portrait of the perpetrator of this colossal fake. The Professor is shown in the act of shooting at Nature in one of her wonderful moods. The Silent City looks like a large English town; the negative has been over-exposed and the outlines are dimmed. The trees in the foreground are leafless; evidently it is not midsummer, and yet the Professor claimed that he had obtained the photograph on June 21, for only on the longest day of the year was the mirage perfect. This little discrepancy escaped general notice. The negative was on glass, 8 by 10 inches; it had been poorly developed and it did not fit Willoughby’s plate-holder, nor could it have been taken by his lens, which was a portrait lens. These facts were ascertained by my informant early in the game, and if he did not hasten to expose the fraud, it was because he liked the old Professor, he saw that the myth helped to bring tourists to Alaska, and he could not see what harm was being done to anyone, the credulity of the public being scarcely worthy of any particular protection. At Juneau people used to stand in a row waiting their turn to buy one of the photographs of the Silent City, and the demand occasionally exceeded the supply. The truth is that in 1887 Willoughby happened to be at Victoria, on Vancouver island, and while strolling on the dock he saw a young tourist from Bristol, England, who was in the act of selling a photographic outfit, including a box of plates all of which had been exposed. The negatives, together with the outfit, were bought by Willoughby for $10. Among them was an over-exposed and badly developed picture of the city of Bristol. It probably reminded him of a mirage and of the optical effects seen above the glacier. His imaginative mind came to the aid of his loose morality and from the union of the two arose the idea of the photograph of a Silent City vibrating in the tenuous air of Glacier Bay. During the excitement that followed the events in 1889, the American consul stationed at Bristol, while on a visit to San Francisco, happened to see one of the photographs of the Silent City on exhibition in a store-window and recognized it as Bristol. This fact was not generally known. Upon sending a print to my cousin, J. C. Hurle, at Bristol, he was kind enough to make enquiries concerning the date of the building operations at the cathedral, the towers of which are readily seen to be undergoing construction in the photograph of the Silent City, otherwise the City of Bristol. The Clerk of the Chapter testified that "the western towers of the cathedral were completed in 1888, when the capstone of the pinnacles was laid by Mrs. Norris." It was in 1887 that Willoughby got hold of the photograph, which evidently was taken before the work on the cathedral towers had been finished, probably in the winter of 1886. Willoughby used to say that as he saw the mirage in successive years the church-towers appeared taller, but he never explained why the trees were without leaves in June.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 On the back of the photograph of the Silent City is the following inscription, which is well calculated to stir the somnolent intelligence of a tourist: The Glacial Wonder or 'The Silent City.' "For the past fifteen years Prof. Richard Willoughby has been a character in Alaska as well known among the whites as he has been familiar to the natives. As one of the early settlers of old Fort Wrangel, in which his individuality was stamped among the sturdy miners who frequented the then important trading post of Alaska, he has grown with the Territory, and is today as much a part of its history as the totem poles arc identified with the deeds of valor, or commemorative of the past triumphs of prominent members of the tribes, which their hideous and mysterious characters represent. "To him belongs the honor of being the first American who discovered gold within Alaska's icebound peaks, but his greatest achievement, from a scientific standpoint, is his tearing from the glacier's chilly bosom the 'Mirages' of cities from distant climes. After four years of labor, amid dangers, privation and sufferings, he accomplished for the civilized world a feat in photography heretofore considered problematic. "It was on the longest day in June, 1888 that the camera took within its grasp the reproduction of a city, remote, if indeed, not altogether within the recesses of another world. The 'Silent City' is here presented for the consideration of the public as the wonder and pride of Alaska's bleak hills, and the ever-changing glaciers may never again afford a like opportunity for the accomplishment of this sublime phenomena." This queer rigmarole was the work of Bruce. Of course, Willoughby was not the first discoverer of gold in Alaska, although he was the perpetrator of a "sublime phenomena." Among his other discoveries was that of "coal-oil in chunks," namely, asphaltum. He was able to scare the Indians by his tricks as a ventriloquist and he passed among them in safety by utilizing this accomplishment. On one occasion he had a companion who wore false teeth and a glass eye ; between the two of them they buffaloed the natives much in the manner of the Major in Rider Haggard's story of 'King Solomon's Mines.' Willoughby died two or three years ago. He made a living by selling mining claims, clearing $1,500 to $3,000 each year by quick deals, for he had a plausible manner and was an entertaining talker, with a great fund of anecdote. Among the miners he was particularly popular, for they were impressed by his smattering of learning. Willoughby was for 25 years one of the living landmarks of Alaskan development, and his memory should be preserved as a warning to the credulous. It will be interesting to separate the grain of truth from the chaff of charlatanism apparent in the story of the Silent City. What is a mirage? A mirage is an optical effect by virtue of which distant objects are seen out of their real position. Light, in traveling from an object to the eye of the observer, passes through the air; this air is not always of uniform density; in a hot country the layer nearest the earth will be so heated as to be rarified; in a cold country the lowermost layer over the ground is condensed by contact with the ice or snow. Above this lowermost layer will come others in succession and these may be successively rarer or denser. Such layers of air serve as mediums for bending the rays of light out of their straight course, so that they proceed apparently from a new position. The result is to give a magnified or a distorted image or even to bring into view an object not otherwise visible. For example,
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Alaskan History the men on the whaling ships that cruise in the Arctic are reported to have seen Nome while still north of the Bering Strait. Nome is a small town on the shore of the Bering Sea, and to the explorers in that remote corner of the world it is the outpost of civilization, a place for comforts not obtainable in the wilderness of ice and snow; in other words, Nome is as the sight of home. Sailors and fishermen that are steering for the roadstead off Nome will be astonished to see Nome pictures in the sky, real as life, while still so distant from it as to be normally out of sight. When this happens the air is still, the layer near the surface is chilled so as to be more dense than the average. Light normally travels in a straight line. If it passes from one layer to another of different density, it will be subject to deviation; it is possible for the variation in density in going upward to be of such magnitude that the light will follow the curvature of the earth, so that an object actually below the horizon will be clearly seen at a great distance, but in an elevated position corresponding to the direction in which the light is traveling when it enters the eye. If the distribution of density is such that the rays from the upper portion of the object cross those coming from the lower portion, the object will be inverted. Most of these effects can be observed by viewing objects through a bad pane of window-glass, that is, glass of unequal thickness, producing a result like that due to layers of air of unequal density. In hot and arid regions, where sandy plains stretch forth to a low horizon, the lowermost layer of air becomes rarified by the hot ground, provided that no breeze stirs the atmosphere so as to mix the layers of unequal density. A condition of atmospheric calm is necessary for the formation of a mirage. Under such circumstances the prospector in Western Australia or Arizona will see a lake with trees reflected along its shore, and many a man half-crazed with thirst has seen limpid water where only an alkaline waste existed. Imagination comes to the aid of refraction and the brain persuades the eye that it sees things that do not exist. The mirage is due to an inverted image of the sky appearing beyond the portion of the plain visible to the observer. This inverted sky simulates a body of water, and if any object, such as a tree, happens to break the horizon, there is the appearance of a reflection in a lake. In cold regions the distribution of a layer of cold air high above the ground will cause the lower homogeneous layer of air to transmit an image in its true position, while the reflection from the upper layer yields another—but inverted—image of the same object. Many strange effects are produced and the strangeness of them is heightened by the imagination of the observer. A mirage can be photographed, but a hallucination will make no impression on a sensitized plate; a mirage is a true image of a real object; a hallucination is a condition of thought in a distempered brain; one is objective, the other is subjective. What Willoughby really saw above the Muir Glacier we can judge from what you or I can see there today. Mirages are not infrequent; the air above the mass of ice is rendered dense and the dense layer serves as a medium for the phenomenon of refraction. On sundry occasions he probably saw the hummocks and pinnacles of ice, refracted and reflected by the overlying air until they seemed like the minarets and towers of a city not made with hands, or, by aid of his imagination, he even saw a resemblance to the church-towers and belfries of towns many thousand miles away from the Muir Glacier.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Unloose the imagination of a man so fundamentally ignorant and so constitutionally visionary as the Professor, and something was bound to happen. The mirage looked somewhat like a city. When he bought the photographic equipment at Victoria and found a foggy picture of a city, that looked to him like the mirage. He looked at it again, and yet again, and the more he looked at the over-exposed plate the more the image upon it looked like his city of the mirage, until finally, by aid of a stimulant not unknown in Alaska, he came to the irrevocable conclusion that he had at last obtained the photograph of the silent city above the glacier. Having persuaded himself, it was easy to deceive others. The fake prospered amazingly. Two men knew the truth. One of them, whom we may call the Judge, measured Willoughby's plate-holder and satisfied himself that the photograph could not have been taken by the Professor. The other was Colonel Richard Dixon, a kindly old Southern gentleman who suspected a fraud; he went to the Judge on the quiet and asked him to "put him onto the game," so that he might enjoy the fun. The Judge trusted the Colonel and told him what he believed to be the truth. Thereafter these two old jokers used to meet, compare notes, and enjoy the humor of the performance, which kept Juneau in the forefront of tourist interest and newspaper notoriety for many years. ~•~ The Yukon Sun newspaper ran an article on May 18, 1902. Excerpts:
Claimed to Have Been a Hermit of Alaska and to Have Never Seen a Railroad Train Till 1895—Great Spinner of Yarns Died Last Week in Seattle. One of the best story-tellers who could ever claim the distinction of having been a pioneer of the Pacific coast. It has often been remarked that with education and training with the art of the pen he would have been one of the great humorists of the age. He had a fame extending over thousands of miles, and added to that his Silent City has made him known the length and breadth of the earth. Left: The Professor at Work, Willoughby and his camera, photo from T. A. Rickard’s book, Through the Yukon and Alaska.
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Alaskan History A 1994 commemorative U. S. postage stamp, based on the only known photograph of a young Nellie Cashman taken in San Francisco in 1874, just before she left for the gold fields.
Nellie Cashman s
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Mining Camp Angel of the Frontier West From Tombstone, Arizona to the Koyukuk In the Preface to his 1995 book titled Nellie Cashman and the North American Mining Frontier (Westernlore Press, Tucson, Arizona), author Don Chaput, western historian and curator emeritus of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, encapsulates Nellie Cashman’s life in these few words: Most authors who have considered Nellie’s career have emphasized the women’s angles, such as her help in establishing hospitals and churches and her caring for miners in trouble. The image of Nellie with a cup of soup for a sick miner” may be accurate but woefully incomplete. Nellie was a person of the frontier, hardened by five decades of toil, speculation, troubles and triumphs in the toughest mining camps of North America. The fact that she was decent and caring should not obscure Nellie’s lifelong goals: she was in the hills, mountains, deserts, and frozen ground in order to find precious metals, which she could then give away to those in need. Ellen Cashman was born in Midleton, County Cork, in the southwest corner of Ireland, in 1845. When her father died a few years later she and her younger sister, Frances, were brought to the United States by their mother to escape the poverty of the Great Potato Famine. The small family lived in Boston, Massachusetts, for the first 15 years in America, migrating to San Francisco, California, by ship, in 1865. In 1870 her sister Frances—called Fanny—married another young Irish immigrant, Thomas J. Cunningham, who was employed in the bootmaking industry. In the summer of 1872 Ellen—called Nellie—and her mother, Frances, opened a boarding house in the silver mining boomtown of Pioche, Nevada, named for the San Francisco financier F. L. A. Pioche. A year later an ad for their business in the Pioche Daily Record named Miss N. Cashman as proprietess and offered “good board at low rates” and noted “The Table will be supplied with the best to be had in the
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Left: The United States Stamp plate issued 1994 honoring 'Legends of the West.' Nellie Cashman in lower left. Right: One of Nellie’s first establishments, in the town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, founded in 1879.
Market.” By fall however, with the mining camp showing signs of dissipation, Nellie and her mother sold the Cashman Boarding House and returned to San Francisco, where her sister Fanny lived. At some point in the winter or spring of 1874 Nellie had a studio photograph taken by Edouart & Cobb, photographers. It remains the only known photo of Nellie in her youth, age twenty-nine at the time. That spring Nellie joined a small party of miners boarding a ship for newfound goldfields in the Cassiar region of British Columbia. They took a steamer up the Inside Passage to the military post of Fort Wrangell, Alaska, and from there Nellie explains: From Fort Wrangell up the Stickeen River to Buck’s Bar, it is called 160 miles; from Buck’s Bar across the country to the mines it is 80, and some say 100 miles. There are no provisions nor supplies at the mines yet, nor will there be till after the river opens…. As near as I can find out, there are 500 or 600 men already in there, and on the way. The only supplies they can get are what they take with them on handsleds. Nellie reached the remote Dease Lake mining camp, comprised mostly of a tents housing a few stores and saloons, in the early summer of 1874. A few log structures were soon raised, including a boarding house and saloon on Dease Creek run by Nellie Cashman. She spent the summer maintaining her business, grubstaking miners, and trying her own hand at mining the placer gold, and she left the diggings that fall with “a comfortable pile.” Nellie had reached Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria, where she intended to winter in the milder climate of the coast, when news arrived of hundreds of miners back in the Cassiar Mountains who were trapped by heavy snowfalls, with no provisions and rampant scurvy setting in. Nellie hired several men, purchased 1,500 pounds of supplies, and booked a steamer back to Fort Wrangell. For more than two months they trudged through deep snow, surviving storms, avalanches, and extreme temperatures, and her effort was reported in the Daily British Colonist, February 5, 1875: Her extraordinary freak of attempting to reach the diggings in midwinter and in the face of dangers and obstacles which appalled even the stout-hearted Fannin and thrice drove him back to Wrangell for shelter is attributed by her friends to insanity. So impressed with this idea was the Commander at Fort Wrangell that he sent out a guard of soldiers to bring her back. The guard found her encamped on the ice of Stickeen cooking her evening meal by the heat of a wood fire and humming a lively air. So happy, contented and comfortable did she appear that the ‘boys in blue’ sat down and took tea at her invitation, and returned with her. Nellie had earned her first nickname, ‘Angel of the Cassiar,’ and she spent the next two years at the Dease Lake diggings, running her boarding house and adding up the profits, which accumulated to
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Alaskan History such that at one point she sent her aged mother $500 in gold. But the Cassiar goldfield soon played out and Nellie returned to San Francisco in the summer of 1876. Two years later, in October, 1878, Nellie was among the ‘recent arrivals’ listed in the Arizona Weekly Star in Tucson, Arizona. She had come to Tucson to open a restaurant, Delmonico’s, advertising ‘The Best Meals in the City,’ and the first business in town to be owned by a woman. Although she often gave food to the hungry at no charge, her restaurant was soon a success. Two years later, in 1880, she sold Delmonico’s and moved to the new silver boomtown of Tombstone, 75 miles southeast of Tucson. Her arrival was announced in the Tombstone Nugget, April 1, 1880: Miss Nellie Cashman, of the famous Delmonico restaurant, in Tucson, has opened a gent’s furnishings good store in Tombstone, on Allen Street, adjoining Ward’s market. She will keep a large supply of furnishing goods, both for the ladies and gentlemen, including boots and shoes, and as Nellie was never outdone in any business she has undertaken, her success in our midst is double sure. Nellie opened or financed several businesses in Tombstone, and she was instrumental in planning and funding a hospital and a church to the new town. She opened a hotel in the nearby copper town of Bisbee, Arizona, and when her brother-in-law Tom Cunningham died in 1881, Nellie’s sister Fanny moved her five young children to Tombstone. Leasing a building, they opened the Delmonico Lodging House in October, 1881, with Mrs. T. J. Cunningham as proprietor, and not long after they added the American Hotel to their holdings. By 1883 Fanny was wracked with tuberculosis, her health was failing, and she died in July, 1884. Nellie, now responsible for her young nieces and nephews, placed the five Cunningham children in Catholic boarding schools; she would maintain close communications with them over the years and visit whenever she could. Nellie would spend her time seeking out new eldorados from Baja California to New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Mexico, and reportedly, but not substantiated, a side trip to inspect the diamond mines of South Africa. Whatever her travels, her successful business ventures were myriad, and her Cunningham nieces and nephews were becoming valued business partners. In 1897, while proprietor of the Cashman Hotel in Yuma (Ariz.), Nellie heard of the great Klondike gold discoveries in Canada’s Yukon territory. By November of that year Nellie was making plans to join the stampede north, as evidenced by a Tucson news item which ran in several Arizona newspapers in November, 1897: Miss Nellie Cashman, one of the most favorably known women in Arizona, arrived from Yuma yesterday. Miss Nellie is preparing to organize a company for gold mining in Alaska, where she has visited three times. Her many friends in Arizona will wish her success, for during her twenty years residence in the Territory she has made several fortunes, all of which have gone for charity. Planning and organizing that winter, Nellie left Seattle on March 13, 1898, bound for for Wrangell, Alaska. She had originally planned to go via the familiar Cassiar district, but conditions along the trail were reported to be bad, and Nellie chose to take the notorious Chilkoot Trail route out of Dyea, just north of Skagway. Nellie was about fifty-four years of age by then, arriving alone in Skagway on the 20th of March. By mid-April, 1898, Nellie arrived in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Unlike many of the stampeders who were new to Dawson, Nellie knew her way around a boom town, and she quickly established another 'Delmonicos' restaurant in Dawson City, assisted by her nephew Tom, and kept her eyes open for available mining claims. Ultimately she acquired No. 19 below Discovery, a good claim on Bonanza Creek, and she mined it successfully. She also found time to pursue charitable work, as explained in Don Chaput’s book: Nellie’s time in Dawson had been not only profitable, but also very satisfying because of the success she had in working with St. Mary’s Church and Hospital. The hospital boasted of being ‘the best equipped north of Seattle.’ In the Archives of the Sisters of St. Anne in Victoria is a comprehensive account of the founding and building of the Dawson church and hospital. Among the beinfaiteurs de la Maison [benefactors of the order] are priests, judges, physicians, members of parliament, and one female stampeder: N. Cashman.
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Left: From the files of the Arizona Republic. [No date, no photo credit.] Right: Sunset Magazine, May, 1921.
Nellie had been the only woman in most of the western mining camps up to that point, but in Dawson City there were hundreds of women, and a few were just as tough and driven as she was. Nellie showed a litigious streak when she took a couple of these women to court. As an Irish woman of her time, Nellie was not overly fond of the English and their manner of administering the Klondike gold camp. When others proudly displayed the Union Jack, Nellie quietly showed the Stars and Stripes, and waited for an excuse to cross the border into United States territory. Nellie’s opportunity came in 1902 when Italian prospector Felix Pedro found gold in the hills northeast of Fairbanks. The ground was rich and by 1904 serious mining was underway, so Nellie left Dawson City. On her arrival at Fairbanks, she immediately opened a grocery store and a miner’s supply house and began looking for promising ground to stake. She undertook fundraising for the new Episcopalian St. Matthews Hospital, and again Don Chaput’s book clarifies: In Nellie’s correspondence, documents, and interviews, Fairbanks does not loom very large, even though some accounts place her there from 1904 through 1907. The only noteworthy activities were the great financial success of her first year there as a merchant, and the pleasure she had from heading the fund drives for St. Matthews Hospital. The reason for her lack of interest in Fairbanks was because her thoughts and plans were already elsewhere. She had heard rumors and received some first-hand reports of placer gold far to the north, hundreds of miles above Fairbanks, above the Arctic Circle. The new goldfields were in the remote Koyukuk country. The Alaska Mining Hall of Fame biography of Nellie Cashman describes her journey: It was time for Nellie to move on to one more mining camp. In 1907, Nellie Cashman, then sixty years old, packed her sled and embarked to the Koyukuk in the southern foothills of what is now known as the Brooks Mountain Range. The heart of the Koyukuk district is about 600 miles upriver from the mouth of the Koyukuk River, a south-flowing tributary of the mighty Yukon River. It is still remote, although now dissected by the Dalton Highway. During Cashman's time, the district was
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Left: Tombstone on Vancouver Island, B.C.. Right: A portrait of Nellie taken in 1924.
reached by shallow draft steamboats for 450 miles to Allakaket, smaller boats to Bettles Trading Post, and up the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk for about eighty more miles to Wiseman and Nolan Creek. The Alaska Mining Hall of Fame authoritively describes the Koyukuk as: Then and now, a miner's district, and Nellie by this time in her life was an experienced miner. The miners in the district were by and large old and conservative. They seemed to thrive on whiskey, which appeared not to interfere with their mining. These were the kind of men that Cashman had lived with for forty years and she fit. In his biography of Nellie, Don Chaput quotes from an interview with her which appeared in the Fairbanks Daily Times, July 22, 1908, in which she said: I have mushed with men, slept out in the open, siwashed it with them and been with them constantly, and I have never once been offered an insult. You won’t find that class of men among the sourdoughs of Alaska. A woman is as safe among them at any and all times as at her own fireside. I can truthfully say that there was never a biggerhearted or more broad-minded class of men than the genuine sourdoughs of Alaska. The National Park Service profiles Nellie Cashman on both their Gates Of The Arctic National Park & Preserve and Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park websites, noting about her: “Settling near Wiseman, she acquired at least 11 different claims on Nolan Creek, paying others to work the gold-laden gravel. After over 30 years prospecting and mining throughout the West, Nellie Cashman found fulfillment in the Koyukuk Country, near what would later become Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.” From the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame: Nellie did well in those years and made a habit of leaving the district in the winter to visit family and friends, including her favorite nephew Mike Cunningham, who was a successful banker in Bisbee, Arizona. Nellie was still capable of mushing her dogs hundreds of miles on her trips in and out of the district. The Associated Press documented one dog mushing trip that she made from Nolan to Anchorage in 1922. When she completed a 17-day 350 mile trip from Nolan Creek to Nenana in December, 1923, newspapers all over Alaska again carried the travels of the seventy-eight year old intrepid miner by the name of Nellie Cashman.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 The Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve website gives more insight on Nellie: Always up for some self-promotion, Nellie relished talking to newspaper reporters and telling them stories of her life in the gold fields of the west. As a “respectable lady” who lived and thrived in “rough and tumble” boomtowns, her life was unusual to many other Americans. She bucked conventions of the day, preferring pants to skirts while mining and prospecting. She told a reporter in Seattle once, referring to the skirts she wore in “civilization,” “These things will go pretty quick when I get back up there. Fine time I’d have with skirts on the trail.” In the summer of 1924, Nellie realized that her health was slipping rapidly. She stopped briefly at the St. Ann's Mission in the village of Nulato, on the Yukon, then went upriver to Fairbanks, where she was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital, from which she was sent to Providence Hospital in Seattle. Recognizing that her time was almost up, Nellie went to St. Ann's Hospital in Victoria, for which she had raised funds in the Cassiar district several decades before. She had conscientiously chosen St. Ann’s as her final stop in life, and Nellie died of ‘unresolved pneumonia’ on January 4, 1925 in the company of the Alaska Sisters of the Order. Nellie Cashman, known as the “Angel of the Mining Camps” from Arizona to Alaska, was widely eulogized by publications such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and countless others. The Engineering and Mining Journal-Press noted her passing as that of a colleague, “held in high regard by a very wide circle of acquaintances.” In 2006 Nellie Cashman was inducted to the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame. Countless articles and several books have been written about Nellie’s colorful life, and in 1994 she was selected as one of twenty notable westerners for the United States Postal Service’s Legends of the West series of postage stamps, honoring people associated with the exploration, settlement and development of the American West. She joined Sacajawea and Annie Oakley as the only three women represented. ~•~
Nellie Cashman's cabin on the left limit of Nolan Creek, circa 1909. [Photo Credit: Harry Leonard collection, Alaska State Library.]
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Alaskan History
The Alaska Dog Team from the 1922 Rand McNally Guide to Alaska and the Yukon The dog team will always be a part, in fact, the greatest factor in transportation in the northern country. In winter as soon as a person leaves the railroad, or the automobile roads, he is in need of the dog team as much as before the coming railroads, automobiles, or the horse. Many times when the country is struck with storms all other means of transportation are tied up. Traveling in the interior after October 15th is by dog team, which can be hired for about $25 per day, this amount covering charge for driver and his board, and food for the dogs en route. The equipment includes dogs, harness, sled kettles, and pans for feeding; snowshoes for driver, robe for sled, tarpaulin and charcoal foot-warmer, in fact, all the traveler needs for his comfort except his personal clothing. Such a team should, when trails are well broken, make from 25 to 35 miles a day and haul 600 or 700 pounds. A team may consist of from 5 to 25 dogs, 7 being a sufficient number for the average purpose. When undertaking a journey the traveler should see for himself that the following emergency articles are in the sled bag: Dog moccasins for use should sore feet develop; a bottle of turpentine; a can of vaseline, a large bottle of castor oil, and some powdered areca nut; also a can containing woolen cloths well soaked in kerosene, these for use should the traveler get wet feet.
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Nov-Dec, 2020 In such an event, get to timber quick and build a fire, using the rags for starting the fire. Put in the sled-bag a piece of gunnysack to dry off the dogs’ feet instantly when they get wet. This is to prevent freezing, the possible loss of nails and skin from ball of foot; maiming them for the season at least, and causing tender feet permanently. Rivers running in the direction of the trail are used as part of the route, and it is by driving into an unexpected “overflow” that there is danger to both men and dogs from getting wet. An “overflow” is water flowing on top of the ice, and easily seen in time to be avoided, except when absorbed by falling snow and then presenting the appearance of snow only. A warning to those who may travel in the North: A white man’s team will not bother or bite a person, neither will an Indian’s team bother Indians; but a white person should always keep clear of the natives’ dogs and vice versa, especially where the teams are not used to towns, and where the Indian teams do not see much of the white man. This holds good when approaching an Indian camp where dogs are liable to be loose. If attacked, never show fear; put on a bold front. Do not turn your back and run, for such dogs are cowards like their wild ancestor, the wolf. A driver must learn the traits of his dogs, each one of which has his peculiarities. Some will shirk until properly looked after by the driver; others are high strung and easily excited, and at times will try to pull the whole load. Try to match teams of dogs as to weight, gait, and speed. As little punishment as possible should be administered while driving a team. Cheer them along and if any of them cannot or will not keep up and work without beating and nagging, thereby demoralizing the whole team, get rid of them. Purchasing dog teams. Good work dogs can be bought in the interior at from $20 to $40. The same care in buying should be observed as in purchasing horses in the States and some one who knows the dog as a work animal is indispensable to the transaction. All dogs should be tried out before purchase; as it is not always the fine looking dog that is the worker. The lead dog is half the team, and securing a good leader is a most important proposition. The leader guides the team at the driver’s command of “gee,” “haw,” “whoa,” or “mush.” One that has had proper training will respond to these commands as fast as spoken (regardless of any excitement on the part of the others of the team “who know nothing but to
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Alaskan History pull and work�) and will always obey. A properly trained leader will not pull on the load but be in readiness to use his strength to guide the team. Dogs from two to six years old, weighing 80 to 100 pounds, are best for general work. They will not break through a new snowshoe trail which heavy dogs will do. When fifteen lightweight dogs are hitched to a sleigh (sleighs range from the racer of 8 feet to those of 16 or more feet) they are faster and better for speed with a light load. Buy only dogs whose tails have not been cut. The large, bushy tail is necessary to the dog while resting, to keep warm the parts that are not covered by the wooly growth beneath the hair. If dogs are properly cared for, they carry their tails high over their backs and do not interfere with the dogs hitched behind them. Where better accomodations can not be had, the native dog will curl up on a bit of brush and with his nose buried in his bushy tail put in a good night’s rest. In winter, care must be taken that the dogs’ nails do not protrude too long and they should be looked after regularly. Some dogs have large quantities of hair between the toes, causing the feet to ball up in soft weather and often causing freezing of the feet. The driver should remove this surplus hair by singeing. Care of dogs. The native dog knows what work is, and when well treated likes it. He is given one meal a day, consisting of either dried salmon, or rice or corn meal cooked with tallow or bacon and dried salmon, cooked feed being considered the best in the long run. When feeding dried salmon they should be watered within an hour after feeding, and should always be well watered in the morning before a start is made, first taking the chill out of the water. When having used dried feed, do not shift to cooked rations. A team that is not watered before starting will be stopping all along the route snatching snow; will refuse to drink water at the proper time, and with the snow habit the entire team will not all be pulling at any one time. Good dogs kept tied up and properly cared for become almost unmanageable when they see the sled and harness being put in readiness for a trip. It is then necessary to have a stout rope (long enough to connect with the main tow-line) tied to some object that will hold the team until all are in harness and everything is ready to go. This rope must be fastened that it
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can be easily released. There is need for a very strong brake for the ride will be fast until the team settles down to steady work for the day. In summer when the snow is gone dogs are place in fish camps where salmon is being caught and dried for dog feed for the coming winter for which the charge is $4 to $5 per month for each dog, the feed being the offal from the salmon. This is cooked and keeps them in good condition. Dogs should be kept where there is shelter from the rains and the hot sun. They have a heavy wool under their hair, and this becoming wet either from rain or sweat causes them to steam and become sick. Combing the dogs in June, July, and August, at which period the dogs generally shed their old wool, is the proper thing to do. Dogs should always be left so they can reach water during the summer. A high bank of a river where the wind can strike them is the best place for dogs. Here they have some rest from the mosquitoes who punish them severely. Dogs are often used as pack animals in summer by prospectors and by those living in the hills. The average pack dog will pack from 20 to 40 pounds. A prospector who has his dogs with him and has to care for them himself can make use of them to good advantage. Five dogs will pack enough at one time to keep a prospector going for a month along with the wild meat he kills. Another service the dog will render in the summer is to assist his master to “lineâ€? his boat up rivers which have long gravel bars. In this they are of great assistance and will line a boat all day. Their strength is not to be overlooked. On a sled in winter he pulls more than a man can. ~•~ Excerpted from a chapter in the 1922 Rand McNally Guide to Alaska and the Yukon, for tourists, investors, homeseekers and sportsmen; with maps and illustrations, published by Rand, Mcnally & Co. in New York and Chicago. Online at https://archive.org/details/randmcnallyguide00newyrich
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Alaskan History
Robert Kennicott in mushing garb, 1862
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Dog driving near the Vesolia Sopka, translated as "Cheerful Mountain," a few miles from Kaltag, from Dall's 'Alaska and Its Resources,' 1870
The First American Dog Musher in Alaska by Thom “Swanny” Swan “My four dogs are to me treasures beyond price. They form one of the strongest and best teams of the region, and their fortunate possessor is held in much higher esteem in consequence than he would be without them.” —Robert Kennicott Born on Friday the 13th of November in 1835, Robert Kennicott was one of the most unlikely people to ever drive a team of dogs, let alone do so in the most remote and isolated region of 19th century North America. First, Robert was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, which wasn’t exactly known for the presence of snow. Although his family moved to Cook County, Illinois while he was still an infant dog mushing was not nearly so common as in the rest of the Great Lakes region. It’s likely that Bob never saw a dog sled prior to adulthood. Robert was also a sickly child. Although history records few details of his medical issues, his family feared he would not survive to adulthood. Were his father, John, not a welleducated and skillful physician it is likely he would have died within the first few years of life. As it was, his ailments were so severe that he could not attend public school regularly. While he inherited some of the bad luck associated with his Friday the 13th birthday, Robert also inherited a major stroke of good fortune. His father, John, was an unusually well educated man with a keen scientific mind. Prior to establishing his Illinois homestead, John had taught school in Buffalo, New York, completed his medical training at Fairfield Medical College, and practiced medicine for several years in New Orleans. In Illinois he was not just a practicing physician, but also gaining fame in the scientific community as a botanist and horticulturalist. He not only tended his sickly son’s medical needs, but his educational needs as well. Robert received the best home school instruction that could be provided in the family’s log cabin home and was encouraged to spend as much time as possible outdoors. Under his
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Alaskan History father’s tutelage every outing was a lesson in the natural sciences. By 17, Robert could be accurately described as a ‘nature nerd,’ and was ready for his advanced training, which he received as understudy to Jared Potter Kirtland. Kirtland encouraged Kennicott to contact other naturalists which resulted in a life-long association with Spencer Fullteron Baird, the assistant secretary of the recently founded Smithsonian Institution. Robert was well on his way to building an impressive academic resume. In 1855, only 20 years old, he was hired by the Illinois Central Railroad to conduct a survey of the state’s natural resources. An encounter during that expedition cemented Robert’s reputation for bravery and resourcefulness. Wishing to provide proof of the existence of the poisonous water moccasin in Illinois he offered a reward of five dollars for the first living specimen delivered to him. Soon after receiving a snake and paying the reward a strapping, rough and tumble frontiersman brought in another and demanded the reward. When Kennicott explained the reward had already been claimed the aggrieved frontiersman threatened the young scientist with a good, old-fashioned down-home ass whooping. Kennicott calmly grasped the snake behind the head and held it aloft and dared the vengeful frontiersman to bring on the fight. Staring at fangs dripping venom, forked tongue flicking and body writhing in the air, the frontiersman wisely backed off and the story quickly spread of the scientist willing to fight a duel with deadly serpents. As one result of the railroad survey’s fieldwork, Kennicott published a three-part paper from 1856 to 1858 entitled “The Quadrupeds of Illinois, Injurious and Beneficial to the Farmer.” Meanwhile, he co-founded the Chicago Academy of Sciences and spent two winters in Washington D.C., helping Baird organize the Smithsonian Institution’s amphibian and reptile collection. On April Fools Day, 1859, Kennicott departed Washington for his grandest adventure yet. Under the auspices of the Smithsonian in cooperation with the Hudson’s Bay Company, Kennicott was bound for the most remote region of North America, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Mackenzie River District. During a brief, three-day stopover in Toronto, Robert met Dr. John Rae, the so called ‘Old Company’s’ most active and infamous explorer. Dr. Rae provided Robert much information about the Hudson’s Bay Territory and the route he intended to follow. It is likely he also warned Kennicott of the rigors he was to face. The HBC was willing to provide transportation and assistance, but could tolerate no delays. If he were to achieve his goals, Robert would have to carry his own weight and keep pace with the HBC’s famed voyageurs, arguably the most athletic and efficient wilderness travelers of history. The voyaguers were the laborers of the fur trade and were transportation specialists. During summer they worked as canoe motors, propelling their canoes upstream or down at a rate of 40 strokes per minute, 12 to 14 hours per day. On the portage trail, each carried a minimum of two 90-pound packs suspended from their foreheads by a tumpline. During
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Nov-Dec, 2020 winter they ran with their dog teams covering 40 to 50 miles or more during each equally long day. Robert not only managed to keep up, he also collected specimens and conducted his investigations along the way. Kennicott’s introduction to dog mushing was a January trip from Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River to Fort Liard, and was a near disaster. Robert was running a team of three dogs, but he wrote, “they proved to be poor ones, so that I could not ride more than four or five miles a day.” His snowshoes were no better than his dogs and by the second day he was suffering from mal de requette (snowshoe lameness), a painful inflammation of the tendon that flexes the large toe. Coupled with temperatures of -30 to -40 degrees (F) below zero, Kennicott reported, “As I could not ride, however, there was nothing to be done but to bear the pain, which became so severe that cold and fatigue were forgotten.” In spite of his difficulties he kept pace with his companions and completed the journey, averaging 37 agonizing miles each day. Robert spent most of the next summer collecting specimens in the vicinity of Fort Resolution, at the mouth of Great Slave Lake. In August he paddled down the Mackenzie to Peel’s River, crossed westward over the mountains to La Pierre’s House and descended the Rat River (Porcupine River) to Fort Yukon. He spent the next two winters collecting specimens between Fort Yukon, La Pierre’s House and Peel’s River. Doing so, he became the first American citizen known to have mushed sled dogs on Alaskan trails. Collecting specimens meant embracing the quintessential Alaskan lifestyle, hunting, fishing, trapping and of course, dog mushing. Having learned the painful consequences of poor equipment and dogs during his Fort Liard trip, Kennicott acquired the best of each he could find. In April 1861 he boasted, “A good canoe in summer, and good dogs in winter, are among the greatest comforts in the north, and I have both.” His enthusiasm for scientific collecting was
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Alaskan History contagious and soon Hudson’s Bay Company traders, voyageurs, and even Native hunters were all helping collect. Some continued to contribute to the Institution decades after Kennicott’s death. Much of Robert’s enthusiasm was directed toward dog driving, and he described many aspects of his endeavors with a degree of detail and emotion rarely seen in 19th century correspondence. “My four dogs are to me treasures beyond price. They form one of the strongest and best teams in this region, and their fortunate possessor is held in much higher estimation in consequence that he would be without them. ... I have derived more pleasure from my dogs this winter than from any thing else.” “We call it ‘riding and running’ when going fast on a voyage, with a light sled. We then do very little walking, but after riding on the sled till we get cold, jump off and run as hard as we can make the dogs go until warm enough, and then ride a mile or two, and so alternately ride and run all day...If I am small and weak, so that I can’t help my dogs much, I have the consolation, at least, that I can ride over their load without its making much difference to them.” Kennicott described the routine of traveling by dog team in a letter to family and friends. “On a voyage, where several sleds go together, all go on without stopping or unnecessary delay for from five to seven miles, when they stop to smoke and give the dogs a spell, and the distance thus made is called a pipe or a spell....At the end of each pipe the foremost sled goes behind the whole, and the second sled goes ahead, and thus all in their turn make a ‘spell ahead,’ the front being the hardest place.” “When a sled can not keep up and take its proper place in the brigade at each spell, it is sad to be ‘planted,’ which is considered something very disgraceful; and a good voyageur will push (help his dogs by pushing with a long pole always attached to the top of a loaded sled) till he is nearly knocked-up, rather than be planted....Not to ‘give track’ is another disgrace, When the dogs of one sled keep so close to the one in advance that the foregoer’s traces slacken, the sled ahead is said not to give track; consequently, in soft snow, the driver, whose spell it is ahead, nearly always uses the pushing stick, and often so effectually as to “plant” a stronger sled, whose driver is too lazy to push hard. My pushing stick is my fourth dog, for in ordinary trains there are but three. By the rules of voyaging etiquette four dogs are not obliged to do more than three, so I manage to get on without much ‘forcing’ (hard work) when on a voyage, only using the pushing stick on bad banks.” Kennicott noted the effect of temperature on trail and mushing conditions, writing, “it is easier for dogs to haul five hundred pounds at a temperature about 10 degrees above zero, or 10 degrees below, than to haul four hundred when it is 30 degrees or 40 degrees below, as in extreme cold there is much greater friction.” Robert compared his own preference for temperatures between -10 to -20 degrees but an old voyaguer named Fleet (possibly Flett) preferred 40-below. Robert even wrote of singing to his dogs on the trail, “...for dogs and horses, seem to like singing, and what the sounds I produced wanted in melody they made up in volume.” He even mastered the art of the dog-deal, writing, “Mr. Gaudet has added to the load of personal obligations I am under to him, by giving me his dog Dimah. He would not sell him for any
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Robert Kennicott in Western Union uniform, circa 1867. The The Russian–American Telegraph, also known as the Western Union Telegraph Expedition and the Collins Overland Telegraph, was a $3,000,000 (equivalent to $50.1 million in present-day terms) undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865–1867, to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco to Moscow, Russia. The route was abandoned in 1867, and considered an economic failure, but history now deems it a "successful failure" because of the many benefits the exploration brought to the regions traversed.
price, but at last gave him to me. I have given him my poorest dog, Moo-toos, to put in his train. Dimah is the best dog in the district, and is very good-looking too. Flett had a young dog, of great hardiness, size, and strength, and active withal. I got him in exchange for my dog Tingeuk, who though very good, kept too low in flesh for my long trip. It was hard to part with him, but he would not have been a safe dog for my proposed long trip, and he will be better off with Flett, where he will always feed well.” Having received word of some family emergency, Kennicott left Alaska and the northwest in the spring of 1862, arriving in Chicago in October. During his expedition, he collected 282 specimens of birds, 230 of mammals and 151 lots of fish. He also collected Alaskan Native clothing and weapons and compiled some of the first dictionaries of Dene (Athabascan) Native languages. Kennicott’s expedition made his name in scientific circles and his exploits appealed to a wide general readership. He could have easily spent the remainder of his life in the comfortable halls of academia. He was hired as curator of the newly founded Chicago Academy of Sciences museum and, as J. W. Foster wrote, “Everything seemed to concur to make the future of his life agreeable. He had made collections in natural history which would have required a lifetime to describe. He was in correspondence with scientific men in every quarter of the land, and at home he enjoyed the friendship of a large circle of intelligent and liberal-handed men, who were ready to second all his efforts in behalf of natural history; and in Professors Henry and Bair of the Smithsonian, he had two tried and trusty friends, to whom he could freely resort for advice and instruction.” A restless spirit can not be long confined, and occasional collecting excursions taken in between his administrative duties wasn’t sufficient to calm Robert’s wanderlust. In 1867, as the only American expert on the Interior region of Alaska, Kennicott was approached by the
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Alaskan History Western Union Telegraph Company with a job offer. Western Union intended to build a telegraph from San Francisco to Moscow via Alaska, under Bering Strait and across Siberia. They wanted Kennicott to command the party to survey the route in Alaska and the Yukon River. Seeing an opportunity to expand on his earlier work, Robert entered into negotiations. When the telegraph company offered to provide concessions that would allow him select a corps of young naturalists as assistants and cooperate with the Chicago Academy of Sciences to provide a complete scientific outfit, Kennicott agreed to take the job. Arriving in San Francisco, Kennicott found the project was largely being organized on the fly. His priorities were not necessarily aligned with those of other, more powerful managers. For example, based on his own experiences he strongly felt that a route through the Canadian fur-country following trails pioneered by the great Canadian fur-companies would be faster and less expensive than the route through British Columbia that was ultimately attempted. The stress of arguing with disagreeable business associates and coping with the inevitable delays that confound any major engineering project took a toll on Robert’s health. Evidence of Kennicott’s deteriorating health was documented by an associate, probably Charles Pease, who wrote “... he went immediately to his room, and while sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to one of his companions, the color suddenly left his cheek, and he fell back pulseless for several minutes on the bed. The immediate production and use of the strongest brandy by his friend brought him through this attack, which, if he had been alone, might have proved fatal; and he was confined to his room for several days.” Recovering from his near-death experience, Kennicott seemed to regain his former vigor. Kennicott’s party arrived at St. Michaels on Norton Sound in September and almost immediately began moving their equipment and supplies to Unalakleet by boat. From Unalakleet they began relaying their equipment and supplies to the Russian American Company trading post at Nulato by dog sled, hoping to start for Fort Yukon in March. Unable to secure enough dogs or dog food, they struggled to accomplish their work with small teams and short rations. By March Kennicott’s dogs were exhausted from hard work on short feed, He decided there was nothing to do but wait for break-up and continue the work by boat or canoe. Robert spent that unexpected delay exploring the mountains west of Nulato, seeking a pass to the coast and gathering information for a map of the vicinity. His natural history work was almost entirely neglected as he performed his duties to the telegraph company. It was apparent to his companions that Robert was physically and mentally exhausted and emotionally depressed. As break up neared he seemed to shake off some of his dejection. Pease wrote “The lifepulses of spring beating in the vegetable and animal world, cheered and enlivened him, no doubt. He began to enjoy the gradual approach of leaves, birds and salmon, and thought less of the cares and annoyances of the dreary winter season.”
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Nov-Dec, 2020 Pease wrote that the sun was shining brightly on the morning of May 13th, 1866. Robert Kennicott left his quarters between four and five o’clock for a morning walk along the Yukon River bank. When he failed to appear for breakfast a search party was organized. He was found only a few hundred yards from the fort. He lay on his back, his arms across his chest, eyes half closed and his face calm and peaceful. At only 30 years of age the first American known to have run sled dogs in Alaska was dead. Less than a year after Kennicott’s death, the United States Senate was asked to ratify the purchase of Alaska from Russia. The Senate, along with most of the American population, was very skeptical about the wisdom of Seward’s purchase. Among those skeptics was Senator Charles Sumner, then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Sumner maneuvered the agreement into his committee for investigation and immersed himself in an intense study of the territory, calling on the resources of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, including the records from Robert Kennicott’s expedition to Fort Yukon. Based on his reading, Sumner was transformed from skeptic into a powerful persuader. On April 8th, 1867 Sumner addressed with Senate, speaking for three hours in support of the treaty. On April 9th the previously skeptical Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2. Thus the first American Citizen to drive his own team of sled dogs in Alaska ensured that her trails would become a part of America’s history and remain a part of America’s future. ~•~
Author Bio: Thom “Swanny” Swan is a historical reenactor and recreational dog musher living in Two Rivers, Alaska.
References: • Foster, J.W. (ed): Transactions of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Volume I:
Church, Goodman & Connelley; Chicago; 1869.
• Foster, J. W.; Robert Kennicott; Western Monthly Magazine, Vol III, No. 15; pp 1665-
172; March 1870. https://tinyurl.com/y2nxt5zr
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “Robert Kennicott (1835-1866): Early Smithsonian Scientific Explorer and Collector”; http://naturalhistory.si.edu/
onehundredyears/profiles/Robert_Kennicott.html. Accessed May 6, 2016.
• U. S. Senate; http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Sumners_
Alaskan_Project.htm. Accessed June 10, 2016.
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Sources & Resources The links and references below reflect the specific sources used in researching the articles which appear in this issue, and include reference books, videos, websites and other media. Lengthy URLs have been shortened. MOTTROM DULANY BALL • Biography, Fairfax, VA history newsletter https://tinyurl.com/MD-Ball-Bio • Theta Delta Chi entry https://tinyurl.com/ThetaDeltaChi • Strangest Names https://tinyurl.com/yyv3p5gn • M. D. Ball at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._D._Ball HUDSON BAY CO. AT FORT YUKON • Journal of the Yukon 1847-48 https://tinyurl.com/y6nfeft2 • HBC’s The Beaver archives https://tinyurl.com/y3h8bekv • Bio: Alexander Hunter Murray http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=5181 • Reconnaissance of the Yukon River https://tinyurl.com/yyecoqqy IDITAROD AND FLAT CITY • Stuck’s ‘Alaskan Missions’ https://tinyurl.com/yyduc268 • Iditarod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iditarod,_Alaska • Flat City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat,_Alaska • BLM Historic Building Report, Flat, Alaska https://tinyurl.com/yx94njop THE SILENT CITY • T. A. Rickard’s Book https://tinyurl.com/RickardBook • Yukon Sun 1902 https://tinyurl.com/1902YukonSun • 1897 Popular Science Article https://tinyurl.com/1897-Popular-Science • Silent City http://www.sitnews.us/Kiffer/SilentCity/030317_silent_city.html NELLIE CASHMAN • Nat. Park Service https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/nellie-cashman.htm • AK Mining Hall of Fame https://tinyurl.com/MiningHall-Cashman • Canadian Biographies http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cashman_ellen_15E.html • Legends of America https://tinyurl.com/Legends-Cashman THE DOG TEAM IN ALASKA • 1922 Rand McNalley Guide https://tinyurl.com/RandMcNally1922 • Sled Dog History https://tinyurl.com/SledDogHistory • Iditarod Trail History https://iditarod.com/booms-and-busts-iditarod-trail-history/ • Iditarod Historic Trail Alliance https://www.iditarod100.org/historic-overview.html ROBERT KENNICOTT • Smithsonian Collection https://www.si.edu/spotlight/robert-kennicott • Smithsonian magazine article https://tinyurl.com/y2f48tpl • Biographical Sketch https://www.loc.gov/item/14022397/ • Bones of Robert Kennicott https://tinyurl.com/hy4rmwc GENERAL RESOURCES • Alaska & Polar Regions Collections & Archives http://library.uaf.edu/apr • Alaska’s Digital Archives https://vilda.alaska.edu • Statewide Library Electronic Doorway [SLED]: https://lam.alaska.gov/sled/history • Google Books https://books.google.com • Gutenberg.org https://books.gutenberg.org • Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov • Chronicling America https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
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