THE KOYUKUK TO THE YUKON AND TO TANANA--CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS AT SAINT
JOHN'S-IN-THE-WILDERNESS
LEAVING Fort Yukon on the 26th of November, 1909, and going again over
almost the same route we followed during the first journey described in
this volume, we reached the new mission at the Allakaket on the Koyukuk
River on the 14th of December, after a period of almost continual cold.
The climate of the interior of Alaska varies as much as any climate. The
previous year, continuing the journey described in "The First Ice," I
had passed over this same route in the opposite direction, between the
same dates, with the thermometer well above zero the whole time. This
trip the _mean_ of the minimum reading at night, the noon reading, and
the reading at start and finish of each day's journey was -38 1/4 deg.. Many
days in that three weeks we travelled all day at 45 deg. and 50 deg. below zero,
and we spent one night in camp at 49 deg. below.
It was the beginning of a severe winter, with much snow north of the
Yukon and long periods of great cold.
[Sidenote: BIRTH, BURIAL, AND DANCING]
The two weeks or so spent at the mission of Saint
John's-in-the-Wilderness was enjoyed as only a rest is enjoyed after
making such a journey; as only Christmas is enjoyed at such a native
mission. It is the time of the whole year for the people; they come in
from near and far intent upon the festival in both of its aspects,
religious and social, and they enter so heartily into all that is
provided for them that one does not know which to admire most, their
simple, earnest piety or the whole-hearted enthusiasm of their sports
and pastimes. Right out of church they go to the frozen river, old men
and maidens, young men and matrons, mothers with babies on their backs
and their skirts tucked up, and they quickly line up and are kicking the
football stuffed with moose hair and covered with moose hide in the
native game that their forefathers played ages before "Rugby" was
invented.[B] When the church-bell rings, back they all troop again, to
take their places and listen patiently and reverently to the long,
double-interpreted service, the babies still on their mothers' backs,
sometimes asleep, sometimes waking up and crying, comforted by slinging
them round and applying their lips to the fountain of nourishment and
solace.
On the nights when there is no church service there is feasting and
dancing. The native dance is a very simple affair, entirely without any
objectionable feature, and one cannot see any reason in the world for
attempting to suppress it. A man and a woman get out in the middle of
the floor and dance opposite one another without touching at all. The
moccasined toes of an expert man in this dance move with surprising
rapidity, the woman, with eyes downcast, the picture of demureness,
sways slightly from side to side and moves on her toes in rhythm to the
man's movement. Presently another man jumps up and the first man yields
his place; then another woman comes forward and the first woman yields
her place, and so the dance goes on.
For a variety, of late years there is an occasional "white-man's dance,"
of the quadrille or the waltz kind, but the natives much prefer their
own dancing. Here at the Allakaket the presence of the Esquimaux adds
picturesqueness and strangeness, and the Esquimau dance, which consists
of a series of jerky attitudinisings, with every muscle tense, to a
curious monotonous chant and the beating of a drum, is a never-failing
source of amusement to the Indians.
An old man's funeral in the morning away up on the high bluff
overlooking the mission, a birth in the evening, a dance the same
night--so goes the drama of life in this little, isolated native world.
So soon as these people make up their minds that one of their number is
sick unto death they make the coffin, for when trees must be felled and
lumber whipsawed from them, it is well to be forehanded.
[Sidenote: "BEFORE" AND "AFTER"]
There is one old woman living up there yet whose coffin had been made
three times. When it becomes evident that the unfavourable prognosis was
mistaken the coffin is torn apart and made into shelves or some other
article of household utility. It seems very cold-blooded, but it is easy
to misjudge these people. The emotion of grief is real with them, I
believe, but transient. They are matter-of-fact and entirely devoid of
pretence, and when once a funeral has taken place and the service is
all over they dismiss the gloomy event from their minds as soon as
possible. The night of old Mesuk's death, however, there were fires
lighted on all the trails and before most of the Esquimau cabins, the
object of which was probably to frighten the spirit away from the
dwellings of the living. We shall get the better of these superstitions
by and by, but superstitions die hard, not only amongst Esquimaux.
Moreover, practices like this linger as traditional practices long after
their superstitious content is dissipated, and men of feeling do not
wantonly lay hands on ancient traditional custom. I think that if I were
an Esquimau and knew that from immemorial antiquity fires had been
lighted on the trails and outside the doors upon the death of my
ancestors, I should be tempted to kindle them myself upon an occasion,
however firmly I held the Communion of Saints and the Safe Repose of the
Blessed. And I am quite sure that if I were a Thlinket I should set up a
totem-pole despite all the missionaries in the world. When one comes to
think about it dispassionately, there is really nothing in Christianity
averse to the kindling of corpse fires or the blazoning of native
heraldry. When all the little superstitions and peculiar picturesque
customs are abolished out of the world it will be a much less
interesting world than it is to-day. If there were any evidence or
reason to believe that morality and religion will be furthered by the
brow-beating or cajoling of the little peoples into a close similitude
of the white race in dress and manners and customs, all other
considerations would, of course, be swallowed up in a glad welcome of
such advance. But almost the exact opposite is true. The young Indian or
Esquimau, who by much mixing with white men has been "wised up," as the
expressive phrase goes here, is commonly one of the least useful, the
least attractive, the least moral of his kind. We have many such on the
Yukon--young men who work on the steamboats in the summer and do odd
jobs and hang around the stores in winter, and will not condescend to
fish any more or to hunt or trap unless driven by the pinch of hunger.
Show me an Indian who affects the white man in garb, in speech, in
general habits, and external characteristics, and it will be easy to
show an Indian whose death would be little loss to his community or his
race; while the native woman who aspires to dress herself like a white
woman has very commonly the purpose of attracting the attention of the
white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed,
most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness
upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's
paramour, and was impudently careless of the general knowledge.
Of all the photographs that illustrate missionary publications--and I
have contributed enough villainous half-tones to warrant me in a
criticism--the ones I dislike most are of the "Before and After" type.
Here is a group of savages clad in skins, or furs, or feathers, or palm
fibre, or some patient, skilful weave of native wool or grass; in each
case clad congruously with their environment and out of the products it
affords. Set against it is the same or a similar group clad out of the
slop-shop, clad in hickory shirts and blue-jean trousers, clad so that,
if faces could be changed as easily as clothing, they would pass for any
commonplace group of whites anywhere. And, as if such change were in
itself the symbol and guarantee of a change from all that is brutal and
idolatrous to all that is gentle and Christian, there follows the
triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all
the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all
the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of
superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead.
Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a
shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth,
usually suppressed, which a London bookseller once pulled out of a
portfolio in the back room of his shop and showed me. They bore the same
title.
I profess myself a friend of the native tongue because it is the native
tongue--the easy, familiar, natural vehicle of expression; of the native
dress because it is almost always comfortable and comely; of the native
customs, whenever they are not unhealthy or demoralising, because they
are the distinctive heritage of a people; and again, of tongue, dress,
and customs alike, if you will, simply because they are dissimilar.
[Sidenote: A BARREN UNIFORMITY]
For it has always seemed a trumpery notion that uniformity in these
things has any connection with the upbuilding of a people, has any
ethical relation at all, and I have always wondered that so trumpery a
notion should have so wide an influence. Moreover, is it not a little
curious that, whereas the trend of biological evolution on its upward
course, as Spencer assures us, is towards differentiation and
dissimilarity, the trend of sociological evolution should be so marked
towards this bald and barren uniformity? But these be deep matters.
I have never been able to join in the reproach of superciliousness so
often applied to the lines of that noblest of missionary hymns in which
Bishop Heber asks, "Can we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on
high, Can we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?" If that be
superciliousness, it is an essential superciliousness of Christianity
itself, for the question lies at the very core of our religion and will
not cease to be asked so long as the world contains those who believe
with all their hearts, and those who do not believe because they have
not heard. I never listen to that hymn without emotion, it can still
"shake me like a cry Of trumpets going by." But the question that seems
to stir the souls of some missionaries and most school-teachers, "Can we
deny to these unfortunate heathen our millinery, our 'Old Oaken Bucket,'
our Mr. and our Mrs.," leaves me quite cold.
Here was the weekly afternoon routine at this mission, only the mornings
being devoted to books and classes: On Monday the children brought their
soiled clothes of the week to the schoolroom and washed them; on Tuesday
they were dried and ironed; on Wednesday they were mended; on Thursday a
juvenile "society" did some sort of work for another mission; on Friday
every child in the village had a hot bath. Now, let a routine of that
sort be kept up, week after week, month after month, year after year,
during the whole school life of a child, and it is bound to leave its
mark; and there is no other way in which the same mark may be made.
At the Allakaket is fine example of what, I think, is the best rule in
the world for the inferior races--the absolute rule of a devoted,
intelligent, capable gentlewoman. We are but now writing the indentures
of their apprenticeship to self-government in the elective village
councils we have set up; it is good for them to serve it under this
loving and unquestioned despotism.
[Sidenote: MATTERS METEOROLOGICAL]
During all that Christmas season the temperature was subject to such
violent fluctuations that a chart of them would look like the picture
showing the comparative heights of mountains, that used to be presented
under "The World in Hemispheres" in the school geographies. A minimum of
52 deg. below zero and a maximum of 10 deg. below, was followed by a minimum of
53 deg. below and a maximum of 18 deg. below, and that by a minimum of 56 deg. below
and a maximum of 14 deg. below, while on Christmas Day itself we registered
a minimum of 58 deg. below zero and a maximum of 1 deg. above, a range of 59 deg. in
less than twelve hours. At a time of the year when the sun has scarcely
any effect upon the temperature such tremendous changes point to
corresponding atmospheric disturbances, and each rise was caused by the
irruption of clouds upon a clear sky and was followed by a fall of snow.
It is a beautifully simple process. Driven into these regions by some
compelling current of the upper atmosphere comes a mass of warm air
laden with moisture--a cloud. As it comes in contact with the cold air
of the region it parts with its heat, and the temperature of the lower
air rises. Having parted with its heat, it can no longer contain its
moisture; and, having parted with its moisture, it ceases to exist. The
cold of the earth and of its immediate air envelope has seized upon that
cloud and devoured it, and the cold resumes its sway. So have I opened
the door of a crowded cabin, when an Indian dance or other gathering was
in progress, at 50 deg. or 60 deg. below zero, and the cold, dry air meeting the
hot, moist air has caused an immediate fall of snow on the threshold.
After the abrupt rise in temperature on Christmas Day, the snow began to
fall heavily, with a barometer continually falling until it reached
27.98 inches, the lowest point recorded here (at an elevation of about
500 feet above the sea) in two years and a half--and before the snow
ceased three feet had fallen.
Our winter itinerary called us to leave the Allakaket immediately after
New Year's Day, and our route lay overland through a totally uninhabited
country for nearly one hundred and fifty miles, to Tanana on the Yukon.
We knew that it would not greatly interfere with our plans to lie
another week at the Allakaket, and that would bring our departure after
the monthly journey of the mail-carrier and would thus compel him to
break trail for us through all that snow. That is the way the
mail-carriers in Alaska are usually treated, but Arthur and I took some
pride in keeping as closely as possible to the announced dates of
visitation and in doing such share of trail breaking as fell to us.
[Sidenote: TRAIL BREAKING]
So on Monday, the 3d of January, 1910, we bade farewell to Deaconess
Carter and her colleague and to the native charges they rule and care
for so admirably, and set out on our journey with an additional boy from
the mission to help us through the heavy snow of the Koyukuk valley. For
ten or twelve miles the way lay down the river, and the going was slow
and toilsome from the first, although there had been some passage from
Moses' Village to the mission, and there was, therefore, some trail. Our
start had been late--it is next to impossible to get an early start from
a mission; there is always some native who must have audience at the
last moment--and after the long repose we were so soft that the heavy
trail had wearied us, and we decided to "call it a day" when in five and
a half hours we came to the road-house, the last occupied habitation
between the Allakaket and Tanana. Soon after we reached the village
there came trooping down from the mission a number of the inhabitants
gone up for Christmas, who, after weeping upon our necks, so to speak,
at our departure, had left us to break out that drifted trail for their
convenient return. So will Indians treat a white man almost always, but
I had thought myself an exception and was vexed to find that so they had
treated me.
The next morning we entered the uninhabited wilderness with three feet
of new snow on the trail and no passage over it since it had fallen. Our
first trouble was finding the trail at all. The previous fall the Alaska
Road Commission had appropriated a sum of money to stake this trail from
Tanana to the Koyukuk River, for it passes over wind-swept, treeless
wastes, where many men had lost their way. Starting out from Tanana, the
men employed had done their work well until within ten miles of the
Koyukuk River. There it was found that the labour and cost already
expended had exhausted the appropriation, whereupon the proceedings were
immediately stopped; not another stake was driven, and the whole party
returned to Tanana and mushed two hundred and fifty miles up the Yukon
to spend another little appropriation upon another trail. That is the
unbusinesslike system in which the money available for such work in
Alaska has been handled.
The first trail breaker goes ahead with a long stick, which he thrusts
continually down through the snow. The slightly harder surface over
which sleds and dogs have passed reveals itself by offering more
resistance to the penetration of the stick, and that is the only way the
trail can be found. Even with three feet of new snow upon it, it is well
worth while finding, or otherwise there is no bottom at all and way must
be made through all the snow of the winter. But all Alaskan trails are
serpentine, and it is very difficult to put the new trail right on top
of the old one. Back and forth the second trail breaker goes between his
leader and the sled, and at intervals the first man comes back and forth
also. And with it all is no path packed solid enough for the dogs to
draw the heavy sled without great difficulty. We should have had a
toboggan, but toboggans are little used on the Koyukuk, and we had only
our sled. In five hours we made five miles and were worn out. We decided
to pitch our tent and go ahead and break trail for the morrow's
journey. On the lakes interspersed amongst the brush we had to break an
entirely new trail, for we could find no trace of the old one.
If five miles in five hours be poor going, what is four miles in seven
and a half hours? That is all we made the next day despite the
snow-shoeing of the previous evening. The heavy sled was continually
getting off the trail, however wide we show-shoed it. The two of us
ahead went over every step of the distance four or five times, and
sometimes all of us had to go back and forth again and again before the
sled could be brought along at all. It was from 5 deg. to 10 deg. above zero all
day, and at intervals snow fell heavily. We got at last to the middle of
a little lake and were confronted by open water, the result of some warm
spring, one supposes. Here we must stop until a laborious journey was
made to the bank, trees were cut and carried, and the open place bridged
so that the sled might be passed over it. Then again our painful
progress was resumed until, as it grew dark, we reached the bank of the
Kornutna, or Old Man Creek, and here we pitched tent again, and I went
forward upon the bed of the stream to break out a part of to-morrow's
path. That night two more inches of snow fell.
[Sidenote: DOG DRIVING]
For four miles the trail lies along the surface of this creek, and then
takes up a steep gully and over a divide. That four miles was all we
made the next day, back and forth, back and forth, wearily tramping it
to and fro, dogs and men alike exhausted with the toil. The hatefulness
of dog mushing usually appears under such circumstances; the whip is
constantly plied, the senseless objurgations rise shriller and fuller.
Once the sled is started, it must by any means be kept going, that as
great a distance as possible may be covered before it stops again. The
poor brutes, sinking almost to their bellies despite the snow-shoeing,
have no purchase for the exercise of their strength and continually
flounder and wallow. Our whip was lost and I was glad of it, for even as
considerate a boy as Arthur is apt to lose patience and temper when,
having started the sled with much labour by gee pole and rope about his
chest, it goes but a few feet and comes to a halt again, or slips from
the track and turns over in the deep snow. But it is at such times, too,
that one appreciates at his full value such a noble puller as our wheel
dog Nanook. He spares himself not at all; the one absorbing occupation
of every nerve and muscle of his body is pulling. His trace is always
taut, or, if he lose footing for a moment and the trace slacken, he is
up and at it again that the sled lose not its momentum if he can help
it. When the lead line is pulled back that the sled may be started by
the jerk of the dogs' sudden traction, Nanook lunges forward at the
command, "Mush!" and strains at the collar, mouth open and panting,
tongue dropping moisture, as keen and eager to keep that sled moving as
is the driver himself. All day he labours and struggles, snatching a
mouthful of snow now and then to cool his overheated body, and he drops
in his tracks when the final halt is made, utterly weary, yet always
with the brave heart in him to give his bark, his five-note
characteristic bark of gladness, that the day's work is done at last.
It is senseless brutality to whip such a dog, and most of our dogs were
of that mettle, though Nanook was the strongest and most faithful of the
bunch. One's heart goes out to them with gratitude and love--old
"Lingo," "Nig," "Snowball," "Wolf," and "Doc"--as one realises what
loyal, cheerful service they give.
[Sidenote: VIOLENT FLUCTUATIONS]
Arthur was so unwell with a violent cold and cough, that had been
growing worse for a couple of days, that I decided on two things: to
leave him in the tent while I snow-shoed ahead the next day, and to send
back the boy I had brought from the mission to secure a fresh supply of
food; for the back trail was, of course, comparatively easy. Arthur's
condition threatened pneumonia, to my notion, and I believe he was saved
from an attack of that disease which is so often fatal in this country
by long rubbing all over the neck and the chest with a remedy that was
new then--a menthol balm. I have used it again and again since and I am
now never without it. A second application made in the morning, I
started out, show-shoeing up the long hill and then down into the flat,
and so to the mail-carrier's little hut that is reached under good
conditions of trail the first day from Moses' Village, and then back
again to the tent. That day a tendon in my right leg behind the knee
became increasingly troublesome, and in climbing the hill on the return
was acutely painful. I recognised it as "mal-de-raquet," well known in
the Northwest, where the snow is commonly much deeper than in Alaska,
and I found relief in the application of the same analgesic menthol balm
that I was rejoiced to find had wrought a great improvement in Arthur's
condition.
Meanwhile the warm weather of the past three or four days was over and
another period of violent fluctuations of temperature similar to that
around Christmastide was upon us. We went to bed with the thermometer at
10 deg. below zero and were wakened by the cold at two in the morning to
find it at 40 deg. below, so we had to keep a fire going the rest of the
night; for as soon as the fire in the stove goes out a tent becomes just
as cold as outdoors.
We moved forward the next morning, but the trail we had broken was too
narrow and had to be widened, which meant one snow-shoe in the deep snow
all the time, a very fatiguing process that brought into painful play
again the tendon strained with five days' heavy snow-shoeing.
The temperature was around 40 deg. below all day, and our progress was so
slow that it was not easy to keep warm, and the dogs whined at the
innumerable stops. Yesterday it had been 10 deg. below, the day before 10 deg.
above, and now, to-day, 40 deg. below. It is hard to dress for such
changeable weather, especially hard to dress the feet. My own wear, all
the winter through, is a pair of smoke-tanned, moose-hide breeches,
tanned on the Yukon but tailored outside. They are a perfect windbreak,
yet allow ventilation, and they are very warm; but those who perspire
much on exertion cannot wear them. The amount of covering upon the feet
must be varied, in some measure at least, as the temperature changes.
The Esquimau fur boot, with fur on the inside of the sole and on the
outside of the upper, is my favourite footwear, with more or less of
sock inside it as the weather requires; but such sudden changes as we
were experiencing always find one or leave one with too much or too
little footwear. By one-thirty we had struggled to the top of the hill,
and it was very evident that the cabin was out of the question that day;
so, since to pass down into the flat was to pass out of eligible camping
timber, we pitched tent on the brow of the hill.
The cold business of making camp was done, all dispositions for the
night complete, supper for men and dogs was cooked and ours eating, when
we heard a noise in the distance that set our dogs barking and presently
came the boy I had sent back, accompanied by an Indian and a fresh team
loaded with such a bountiful supply of food, much of it cooked, that one
felt it was worth while to get into distress to receive such generous
and prompt succour. The ladies at the mission had sat up and cooked all
night and had despatched the fastest team in the village the next
morning to bring their provisions to us and to help us along. They had
thought us at Tanana when we were not yet at the end of the first day's
stage from Moses' Village. It would have been impossible for us to reach
Tanana on the dog food and man food we started with.
[Sidenote: SIXTY-FIVE BELOW ZERO]
It was so cold and we were so crowded that I arose at three and made a
fire and sat over it the rest of the night, and after breakfast,
although it was Sunday, morning prayer being said, I started ahead again
to break out the trail deeper and wider, leaving the teams with the
distributed loads to follow. The thermometer stood at 38 deg. below zero
when I left camp, but as I began the descent it was evident that it grew
colder, and at the bottom of the hill I was sure it was 20 deg. colder at
least. Reaching the cabin, I kindled a fire and started back to meet the
teams. About a mile from the cabin I saw them, for, since the load was
distributed in the two sleds progress was much better; but by this time
it had grown so cold that the dogs were almost entirely obscured from
view by the clouds of steam that encompassed them. We hurried as best we
might and reached the cabin about eleven, and as soon as we were arrived
I took out the thermometer and let it lie long enough to get the
temperature of the air, and it read 65 deg. below zero. There had been no
atmospheric change at all; it was simply the most marked instance I ever
knew of the influence of altitude upon temperature. We had descended
perhaps three hundred feet, and in that distance had found a difference
of 27 deg. in temperature.
The cabin was a wretched shack without door or window and full of holes,
and in no part of it could one stand upright. We set ourselves to make
things as comfortable as possible, however, rigging up the canvas sled
cover for an outer door and a blanket for an inner door, and stopping up
the worst of the holes with sacking. Then we went out and cut fresh
spruce boughs to lie upon, and prospected around quite a while before we
found dry wood nearly a quarter of a mile away. It was quite a business
cutting that wood and packing the heavy sticks on one's shoulders,
through the brush and up and down the banks of the little creek where
it grew, on snow-shoes, at 65 deg. below zero.
Our Sabbath day's journey done, the hut safely reached and furnished
with fuel, we did not linger long after supper, but, evening prayer
said, went to bed as the most comfortable place in the still cold cabin,
thankful not to be in a tent in such severe weather.
The next day gave us fresh temperature fluctuations. At nine A. M. it
clouded and rose to 35 deg. below, by noon it had cleared again and the
thermometer fell to 55 deg. below, and at nine P. M. it stood once more at
65 deg. below. The milder weather of the morning sent all hands out breaking
trail, save myself, for with all our stuff in a cabin without a door it
was not wise to leave it altogether--a dog might break a chain and work
havoc--so I stayed behind in the little dark hovel, a candle burning all
day, and read some fifty pages of Boswell's _Life of Samuel Johnson_
over again. Some such little India-paper classic it is my habit to carry
each winter. Last year I reread Pepys's _Diary_ and the year before much
of the _Decline and Fall_. Certain places are for ever associated in my
mind with the rereading of certain old books. The Chandalar River is to
me as much the scene of _Lorna Doone_, which I read for the sixth or
seventh time on my first journey along it, as Exmoor itself; and _The
Cloister and the Hearth_, that noble historical romance, belongs in my
literary geography to the Alatna-Kobuk portage. So will Boswell always
bring back to me this trip across country from the Koyukuk to the Yukon
through the deep snow.
The boys came back after dark, having broken some nine miles of trail
and having suffered a good deal from the cold. I had supper cooked, and
when that was done and the dogs fed we fell to reading the Gospels and
Epistles for the Epiphany season, the boys reading aloud by turns. The
all-day fire had warmed the little hut thoroughly, and despite the cold
outside we were snug and comfortable within.
[Sidenote: SEVENTY BELOW ZERO]
That night the thermometer touched 70 deg. below zero, within 2 deg. of the
greatest cold I have recorded in seven years' winter travel; a greater
cold, I believe, than any arctic expedition has ever recorded, for it is
in a continental climate like Siberia or interior Alaska, and not in the
marine climate around the North Pole, that the thermometer falls lowest.
Save for an hour or two getting wood, we all lay close next day, for the
temperature at noon was no higher than 64 deg. below. It is impossible to
break trail at such temperature, or to travel as slowly as we were
travelling. In the strong cold one must travel fast if one travel at
all. Indeed, it is distinctly dangerous to be outdoors. As soon as one
leaves the hut the cold smites one in the face like a mailed fist. The
expiration of the breath makes a crackling sound, due, one judges, to
the sudden congealing of the moisture that is expelled. From every
cranny of the cabin a stream of smoke-like vapour pours into the air,
giving the appearance that the house is on fire within. However warmly
hands and feet may be clad, one cannot stand still for a minute without
feeling the heat steadily oozing out and the cold creeping in.
Notwithstanding the weather, that evening the mail came along, the
white man who is the carrier, two tall, strong natives, and nine dogs.
Only since descending to the flat had they suffered from the cold, for
they found as great a difference as we did in the temperature; and they
were grateful to us for the trail we had broken. The hut was
uncomfortably crowded that night with seven people in it, but the
thermometer stood at -56 deg. and was rising, and gave us hope that we might
move along to-morrow. Augmented as our party was into seven men, three
sleds, and nineteen or twenty dogs, trail breaking would not be so
arduous and progress would be much accelerated. There was good hope,
moreover, that the heavy snow was confined to the Koyukuk valley and
that when we passed out of it we should find better going.
The morning found a temperature of 45 deg. below, and we sallied forth,
quite an expedition. Four, including myself, went ahead beating down the
trail; one was at each gee pole, our team last, getting advantage of
everything preceding. So far as the trail had been broken we made good
time, covering the nine miles in about four hours. Another hour of
somewhat slower progress took us to the top of a hill, and here the
mail-carrier's two Indians had run ahead and built a great, roaring fire
and arranged a wide, commodious couch of spruce boughs, and we cooked
our lunch and took our ease for half an hour. The sky had clouded again
and the temperature had risen to 28 deg. below.
[Sidenote: CLOSE QUARTERS]
It is strange how some scenes of the trail linger in the memory, while
others are completely forgotten. This noon halt I always remember as
one of the pleasantest of all my journeyings. There was not a breath of
wind, and the smoke rose straight into the air instead of volleying and
eddying into one's face as camp-fires so often do on whichever side of
them one sits. We were all weary with our five hours' trudge, and the
rest was grateful; hungry, and the boiled ham they had sent from the
mission was delicious. The warmth of the great fire and the cosiness of
the thick, deep spruce boughs gave solid comfort, and the pipe after the
meal was a luxurious enjoyment.
From that on the going was heavier and our progress slower, but we kept
at it till dark, and still far into the night, fortunate in having two
Indians who knew every step of the way, until at last we reached the hut
that marks the end of the second stage from the Koyukuk River, on the
top of a birch hill. We had made nineteen and a half miles that day and
had taken eleven hours to do it.
If the noon rest be remembered as one of the pleasantest episodes of the
trail, that night in the cabin on the hill I recall as one of the most
miserable in my life. The hut was still smaller than the previous one,
like it without door and window, and so low that one was bent double all
the time. Walls and roof alike were covered with a thick coating of
frost. The only wood discoverable in the dark was half-dry birch which
would not burn in the stove but sent out volumes of smoke that blinded
us. When the hut did begin to get a little warm, moisture from the roof
dropped on everything. There we seven men huddled together, chilly and
damp, choked and weary--a wretched band. There was no room for the
necessary cooking operations; we had to cook and eat in relays; and how
we slept, in what way seven men managed to pack themselves and stretch
themselves in those narrow quarters, I cannot tell. However, we said our
prayers and went to bed, snow falling heavily. The Indians were soon
snoring, but sleep would not come to me, tired as I was, and I had not
slept at all the previous night. So presently I took trional, X grs.,
and dozed off till morning.
Then we resolved to divide forces rather than subject ourselves to the
miserable inconvenience of overcrowding these tiny huts, and at this
stage of the journey it was possible to do so without losing a whole
day, for there was a cabin for the noon rest. It was arranged that the
mail-man should start first and make the full day's run if possible,
while we should "call it a day" at the half-way hut.
So Bob and his Indians sallied forth while yet my boys were reading
their lessons to me, and when they were done we hitched up and followed.
And as soon as we were down the hill and started along the bald flat, it
was evident that we were out of the deep snowfall, for the present at
any rate, and we plucked up spirit, for we were now to cross the wide,
open, wind-swept uplands of the headwaters of the Melozitna and Tozitna,
tributaries of the Yukon--the "Tozi" and "Melozi," as the white men call
them--where snow never lies deep or long. We were out of the Koyukuk
watershed now and in country drained by direct tributaries of the
Yukon. The going was now incomparably the best we had had since we left
the mission, the snow was light and we had the mail-carrier's trail;
but, although the temperature had risen to 21 deg. below, a keen wind put
our parkee hoods up and our scarfs around our faces and made our 60 deg.
below clothing none too warm. In three hours we had reached the Melozi
cabin, although that had included the climbing of a long, steep hill,
and here we stayed for the rest of the day and night and shot some
ptarmigan for supper, though we could easily have gone on and made the
rest of the run.
The next day I sent the auxiliary sled and team and driver back to the
Allakaket, keeping the mission boy with me, however, to return with the
mail-carrier, who was already late and must go back as soon as he
reached Tanana. I parted with the Indian regretfully, for he had been
most helpful and always good-natured and cheerful, and had really begun
to learn a little at our travelling night-school.
[Sidenote: THE STAKED TRAIL]
[Sidenote: THE ARCTIC SKIES]
A high wind was blowing, with the thermometer at 12 deg. below, and the
mail-man's trail was already drifted over and quite indistinguishable in
the dark, and we began to appreciate the recent staking of this trail by
the Road Commission. But for these stakes, set double, a hundred yards
apart, so that they formed a lane, it would have been difficult if not
impossible for us to travel on a day like this, for here was a stretch
of sixteen or seventeen miles with never a tree and hardly the smallest
bush. The wind blew stronger and stronger directly in our faces as we
rose out of the Melozitna basin on the hill that is its watershed, and
when the summit was reached and we turned and looked back there was
nothing visible but a white, wind-swept waste. But ahead all the snow
was most beautifully and delicately tinted from the reflection of the
dawn on ragged shredded clouds that streamed across the southeastern
sky. Where the sky was free of cloud it gave a wonderful clear green
that was almost but not quite the colour of malachite. It was exactly
the colour of the water the propeller of a steamship churns up where the
Atlantic Ocean shallows to the rocky shore of the north coast of
Ireland. The clouds themselves caught a deep dull red from the sunrise,
which the snow gave back in blush pink. Such an exquisite colour harmony
did the scene compose that the wind, lulling for a moment on the crest
of the hill, seemed charmed into peace by it.
The feast of colour brought a train of colour memories, one hard upon
the heels of another, as we went down the hill; the Catbells, this
golden with bracken, that purple with heather, and each doubled in the
depths of Derwentwater; an October morning in the hardwood forests of
the mountains of Tennessee, when for half an hour every gorgeous tint of
red and yellow was lavishly flaunted--and then the whole pride and
splendour of it wiped out at once by a wind that sprang up; the
encircling and towering reds and pinks of a gigantic amphitheatre of
rock in the Dolomites; a patch of flowers right against the snow in the
high Rockies, so intensely blue that it seemed the whole vault of heaven
could be tinctured with the pigment that one petal would distil. And,
more inspiring than them all, there came the recollection of that
wonderful sunrise and those blazing mountains of the Alatna-Kobuk
portage. Every land has its glories, and the sky is everywhere a blank
canvas for the display of splendid colour, but the tints of the arctic
sky are of an infinite purity of individual tone that no other sky can
show.
As we descended the hill into the Tozitna basin the wind rose again, now
charged with heavy, driving snow, while in the valley the underfoot snow
grew deep, so that it was drawing to dusk when we reached the cabin on a
fork of the Tozitna where Bob the mail-man had spent the previous night,
and there we stayed.
The next day is worthy of record for the sharp contrast it affords. All
the night it had snowed heavily, and it snowed all the morning and into
the afternoon. Some sixteen or seventeen inches of snow had fallen since
Bob and his party passed, and again we had no trail at all.
Moreover--strange plaint in January in Alaska!--the weather grew so warm
that the snow continually balled up under the snow-shoes and clung to
the sled and the dogs. At noon the thermometer stood at 17 deg. above
zero--and it was but four days ago that we recorded 70 deg. below! It will
be readily understood how such wide and sudden ranges of temperature add
to the inconvenience and discomfort of mushing. Parkees, sweaters,
shirts are shed one after the other, the fur cap becomes a nuisance, the
mittens a burden, and still ploughing through the snow he is bathed in
sweat who had forgotten what sweating felt like. The poor dogs suffer
the most, for they have nothing they can shed and they can perspire only
through the mouth. Their tongues drop water almost in a stream, they
labour for their breath, and their eyes have a look that comes only with
soft weather and a heavy trail. So constantly do they grab mouthfuls of
snow that the operation becomes quite a check on our progress.
By two o'clock it was growing dusk, and we had but reached the bank of
the other fork of the Tozitna, not more than eight or nine miles from
the cabin where we spent the night and yet thirteen or fourteen miles
from the cabin we had hoped to reach. Beyond the banks of the stream was
no more timber for a long distance; was such another stretch of open
country as we had passed the previous day. So here was another
disappointment, for camp must be made now lest there be no chance to
make camp at all. But it was a good and comfortable camp, amidst the
large spruce of the watercourse. Such disappointments are part of life
on the trail; and supper done there was the more time for the boys.
The open country was again wind-swept, and being wind-swept the snow was
somewhat hardened, and we fought our way against a gale, covering the
twelve and three quarter miles in ten hours, Sunday though it was. At
that last stage on the road to Tanana came out a young man from the
mission with a dog team and an Indian, anxious at our long delay, and
Harry Strangman's name is written here with grateful recognition of this
kindness and many others. We went joyfully into town on the morrow, the
17th of January, having taken fifteen days to make a journey that is
normally made in five.
[Sidenote: THE MAIL-CARRIER]
Half-way on that last day's mush we met the mail-man returning to the
Koyukuk. So much had he been delayed that there was danger of a fine and
all sorts of trouble, and the mail had been sent out to meet him at the
noon cabin, together with a supply of grub for the return trip. But the
caterer, whoever he was, forgot candles, and the mail-man would have had
to make his way back to the Koyukuk without any means of artificial
light, in the shortest days of the year, had we not been able to supply
him with half a dozen candles that remained to us. It was a
disappointment to George, the boy I had brought from the mission, that
he must turn round and go back also. He had never "seen Tanana," which
is quite a metropolis to him, and had looked forward to it keenly all
the journey, but the boy braced up and took his disappointment manfully.
A pitiful procession it was that passed us by and took our boy away; the
poor, wearied dogs that had certainly earned the few days' rest they
were so badly in need of left a trail of blood behind them that was
sickening to see. Almost every one of them had sore, frozen feet; many
of them were lame; and when we came to descend the long hill they had
just climbed, right at its brow, where the stiffest pull had been, was a
claw from a dog's foot frozen into bloody snow.
So far as there is anything heroic about the Alaskan trail, the
mail-carriers are the real heroes. They must start out in all weathers,
at all temperatures; they have a certain specified time in which to make
their trips and they must keep within that time or there is trouble. The
bordering country of the Canadian Yukon has a more humane government
than ours. There neither mail-carrier nor any one else, save in some
life-or-death emergency, with licence from the Northwest Mounted Police,
may take out horse or dogs to start a journey when the temperature is
lower than 45 deg. below zero; but I have seen a reluctant mail-carrier
chased out at 60 deg. below zero, on pain of losing his job, on the American
side. Moreover, between the seasons, when travel on the rivers is
positively dangerous to life, the mail must still be despatched and
received, although so great is the known risk to the mail, as well as to
the carrier, that no one will send any letter that he cares at all about
reaching its destination until the trails are established or the
steamboats run. But the virtually empty pouches must be transported from
office to office through the running, or over the rotting ice, just the
same, on pain of the high displeasure and penalty of a department
without brains and without bowels. I have often wished since I came to
Alaska that I could be postmaster-general for one week, and so I suppose
has almost every other resident of the country.
The week following my arrival at Tanana was a solid week of cold
weather, the thermometer ranging around 50 deg. and 60 deg. below zero, and that
means keeping pretty close to the house. Even the sentries at the army
post are withdrawn and the protection of the garrison is confided to a
man who watches the grounds from a glass-walled cupola above the
headquarters building. Yet a week of confinement and inaction grows
tiresome after life in the open.
Sunday is always a busy day here. The mission and native village are
three miles away from the town, and service must be held at both. The
mission at Tanana is not a happy place to visit for one who has the
welfare of the natives at heart. Despite faithful and devoted effort to
check it, the demoralisation goes on apace and the outlook is dark.
[Sidenote: SINGLE MEN IN BARRACKS]
"Single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints," we are told;
sometimes they seem to grow into drunken, lustful devils without
compassion for childhood, not to mention any feeling of magnanimity
towards a feebler race. And when a girl who has been rough-handled, or
who has been given drink until she is unable to resist the multiple
outrage practised upon her, is told to pick out the malefactors from a
company of soldiers, all clean-shaven, all dressed alike, all around the
same age, she generally fails to identify altogether. So the offence
goes unwhipped, and the officer is likely as not to address a reprimand
to the complaining missionary for "preferring charges you are unable to
substantiate." Yet an officer who had himself written such a letter told
me once that all Indians looked alike to him. Even should the girl
identify one or more men, they have usually half a dozen comrades ready
to swear an alibi.
Add to the trouble given by the soldiers the constant operation of the
slinking bootleggers of the town, a score or more of whom are known to
make money by this liquor peddling, and some of whom do nothing else for
a living, yet whom it is next to impossible to convict, owing to the
cumbrous machinery of the law and the attitude of juries, and it will be
seen that the hands of those who are fighting for the native race are
tied.
What has been said about the military does not by any means apply to
all, either officers or men. Some of the officers have been decent,
God-fearing men, conscious of the evil and zealous to suppress it; some
of the men, indeed in all probability most of the men, quite free from
such offence; some commanding officers have kept such a well-disciplined
post that offences of all kinds have been greatly reduced. But the
commanding officer is changed every year, and the whole force is changed
every two years, so that there is no continuity of policy at the post,
and an administration that has grown familiar with conditions and that
stands so far as it can for clean living and sobriety and decency and
the protection of the native people, may be followed by one that is
loftily ignorant of the situation, careless about offences against
morality, and impatient of any complaint.
Off by himself, separate from the demoralising influence of the low-down
white, there is every hope and encouragement in the effort to elevate
and educate the Indian; set down cheek by jowl with the riffraff of
towns and barracks, his fate seems sealed.
[Sidenote: DEATH-RATE AND BIRTH-RATE]
Let these two mission stations, the Allakaket and Tanana, one hundred
and fifty miles or so apart by the winter trail, represent the two
conditions. In six years' time there has been manifest advance at the
one and decay at the other. The birth-rate is greatly in excess of the
death-rate at the Allakaket, the death-rate greatly in excess of the
birth-rate at Tanana. In the year in which this journey was made there
were thirty-four deaths and fourteen births at Tanana, and while the
difference was an unusually large one, yet in the six years referred to
there has not been one year in which the number of births exceeded the
number of deaths. One does not have to be a prophet to foresee the
inevitable result, if the process be not stopped.
A tribute should be paid to the zeal, now of one, now of another army
surgeon at Fort Gibbon in tending the native sick, three miles away,
when we have been unable to procure a physician of our own for the
place. The missionary nurse, for five years last past Miss Florence
Langdon, has been greatly helped in her almost desperate efforts here by
the willing co-operation of these medical officers of the army.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] See illustration, p. 374.