Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  Since it was still light all night, we traveled twenty-four hours a day. Another reason we kept traveling were the clouds of biting gnats common in some places along the Koyukuk River in August. The movement of the boat created enough breeze to help us escape these pests. The river’s current was relatively slow, and we progressed at about four and a half miles an hour until we reached the Dulbi River, about a third of the way to Alatna.

  Beyond the Dulbi, the water became swifter and progress was slower. When we reached Hog River, about 300 miles from the Yukon, Dad and I went to Mom’s grave and said a prayer. A few miners were still at Hog River, and for them Dad unloaded potatoes, prospectors’ supplies, and hardware that they had ordered. Then we continued up the Koyukuk. Upstream from Hog River the water became ever swifter, and in some stretches Charlie had to use full throttle to make progress.

  I hadn’t seen my grandmother, Old Mama, in more than a year. She had moved to Hughes, the pleasant Koyukon Athapaskan village along the river where I was born. My half-brother Fred, then a young man, still lived with her. When we arrived, she couldn’t wait to wrap her arms around me, and she cried until she was exhausted.

  “Sidney, you will be like your grandfather. He was a fine, strong man,” she said, in the presence of all the friends and family who had gathered. Her words embarrassed me, but made me proud too. My mother had told me so many stories of my grandfather, the trader, that he seemed bigger than life to me.

  Many fast riffles made travel difficult along the seventy-five-mile river route from Hughes to Alatna. Before leaving Hughes, Charlie Evans took aboard eight more Koyukon men to help pull the boat over the riffles in swift places. In the Koyukuk region, when someone needed help, others always pitched in. Sometimes when they helped with the trade goods barge, they were paid in cash or in trade goods. Sometimes all they received was thanks, a meal, and a promise for help when they needed it.

  When we reached a riffle, every man got set on a heavy rope strung far upstream from the bow. When they were ready, Charlie goosed the Redwing engine with all the throttle she would take, pointing the nose of the boat into the deepest water. The men pulled, and slowly we struggled up and across the riffle and again reached deep water.

  Three or four miles below Alatna, we were stopped by a swift, shallow riffle, which even the Redwing and the men’s strength couldn’t conquer. Downriver a few miles at a place we call the Canyon, we had picked up Johnny Oldman, a respected Athapaskan elder. Johnny told one of the younger Indians to pole a birchbark canoe to Alatna to get more help.

  Native-built birchbark canoes were fairly common along the Koyukuk in 1921, although building them would later become a lost art. An expert could construct a birchbark canoe surprisingly quickly. A dry sandy spot on the river was selected. Posts were driven into the sand in the outline of the canoe frame. Birch ribs were shaped with knife and axe and tied to the posts with long, tough spruce roots. Then longitudinal strips of clear split spruce were tied to the ribs, making a framework for the birchbark covering.

  Sheets of birchbark were stripped from the living tree as the sap was rising in the spring, and they were cut to fit the frame, allowing overlaps for sewing. The bark sheets were then sewn together with spruce root threads, using a bone awl to open the way for insertion. Bow and stern posts were carved. A piece of bark was cut and fitted over the bow, and the upper parts of the skin were trimmed and supported by an inner and outer gunwale. The whole length of the gunwale was then corded with long, flexible spruce rootlets.

  Melted spruce pitch was then poured and rubbed into cracks and small holes. Many Koyukon builders painted the framework red, using the red powdery rocks found in the Koyukuk to make the “paint.” I’ve seen birchbark canoes designed for freighting that were nearly twenty feet long. But most were ten or twelve feet long, and suitable for two paddlers.

  The art of poling a canoe would also become lost, although it was a wonderful way to travel. Two poles were used, each about four feet long and less than three-fourths inch in diameter. While sitting on his legs, the canoeist traveled in the shallows close to the beach, one pole in each hand, by swinging the poles forward, and then pushing down and back. One could easily travel five miles an hour in this quiet manner. Hunters liked to use poles, for they made less noise than paddles. Whenever the canoe reached deep water, a paddle was used.

  In a few hours the young Indian returned with about twenty men who had come downstream in canoes. Wading up to their waists, with two ropes they manhandled the Evans boat over the stubborn riffle that had stopped us. They continued to help at other riffles as we progressed to Alatna. Because of the swift water and frequent riffles, it required six days for us to travel the seventy miles from Hughes to Alatna.

  Episcopal missionary Hudson Stuck had chosen Alatna as a mission site in 1906. On the upper Koyukuk, the settlement was on the route being used increasingly by Eskimos from the Kobuk River country who came to trade with the Indians. In addition to being a crossroad, Alatna was only twelve miles upstream from Moses Village (also briefly called Arctic City, after a trader arrived there), a Koyukon village. Stuck believed that a new start with a church and a planned village could produce a place that would attract residents. He foresaw two villages, one Indian, one Eskimo, on opposite sides of the river, “where these hereditary enemies might live side by side in peace and harmony under the firm yet gentle influence of the church.”

  Villages on both sides of the river were called Alatna in 1921. The Alatna post office would be established in 1925 on the south side of the river, and renamed Allakaket in 1938. Today north-bank residents (where Dad and I lived) live in Alatna, south-bank residents in Allakaket.

  The time I spent at Alatna with my dad helped me to understand and know him better. He didn’t party or drink. He was a good cook and we ate good food. We lived in a well-built log cabin that remained cozy and warm throughout the long Alaska winter. Dad read a lot, and, I was surprised to notice, he worried a lot about his health and his trading business. Trading was not very lucrative.

  I made many new friends at Alatna, and I attended school about 150 yards from our cabin at St. John’s-in-the-Wilderness Episcopal Mission, where at the age of six I received my first real schooling in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Before my year at Alatna, at Anvik mission I had been taught to say the Lord’s Prayer, and other religious teachings, and I had learned to put blocks together and to play color-coded games, but I hadn’t been taught how to read.

  At Alatna my teacher was Ireland-born Miss Amelia Hill, who served at the mission for thirty years as nurse, teacher, preacher, and administrator. The readers we used showed children living with their parents in elegant houses in the States, with a funny looking dog named Spot. Those houses didn’t resemble the log cabins I was accustomed to, and Spot sure didn’t look like a sled dog—I wondered what he was good for. People rode in cars. I had never seen a car and I wondered how fast they moved.

  Dad and John Evans were often gone from the Alatna trading post on short trips to take orders or to deliver supplies. When Dad was gone, Edwin Simon, a Koyukon Indian who was to have a great influence on my life, was Dad’s right-hand man. Edwin’s father, a famous medicine man, had unusual white skin and blue eyes and was bald from birth. Edwin’s sisters had blond hair when they were young. Edwin, a fine-looking man, had the usual Athapaskan light-brown skin and black hair. Having a sense of place and time and understanding how the Athapaskan world was changing, he proved to be a bridge for me and others between the old prewhite days and the modern ones. His wry humor and solid philosophy endeared him to many. He often acted as an interpreter when Athapaskans who spoke little or no English needed to communicate with whites.

  Edwin was a traditional Athapaskan in many ways. Among his stories was how his mother chose his first wife in an arranged marriage. “Her family is good from way back,” she told Edwin. “They treat their husbands good all the time.” He accepted the woman as his wife in the old way, and it proved to
be a good marriage.

  Although Edwin knew where gold was likely to be found in the Koyukuk, he refused to prospect for it or stake any claims. This resolve came from an experience of his older brother, Andrew, and another Athapaskan named Alfred Isaac who had staked claims on Indian Creek near Hughes. Later Alfred sold his claim for $1,000, and Andrew got nothing.

  “No, I won’t look for gold. White man just take it away from you. There’s no sense in looking for gold for someone else,” Edwin said, meaning that whites usually swindled Indians out of good claims.

  After I had been at Alatna for several months, Dad’s illness erupted, and friends took him to Tanana for medical help. My heart sank as I saw him leave, lying in a dogsled, wrapped in furs. He looked helpless and weak, and I feared I would never see him again. A doctor at Tanana referred him to the Mayo Clinic in far-off Minnesota for treatment, and he was away for two and a half months. While he was gone, I lived with Kitty Oldman, John Oldman’s wife, at Alatna. (We had picked up John Oldman in the Canyon on our trip upriver to Alatna.) The Oldmans’ son, Abraham, was my age, and we became good friends.

  Dad had recovered somewhat by the time he returned to Alatna, but because he was sick so often, he felt it best for me to return to the mission at Anvik where I could be with Jimmy and our sisters. Dad took me back to Anvik that June.

  The next several years at Anvik passed quickly. Dad visited us for a couple of weeks each year, and we slowly grew up, living the routine of the mission on a day-to-day basis, and not really thinking of the future.

  In 1925, losing money as a trader, and because of his failing health, Dad sold his share of the trading post to John Evans. At the same time he decided that Jimmy and I needed better schooling, so he arranged for us to go to the Eklutna Vocational School, operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), near Anchorage.

  6

  EKLUTNA

  The steamboat’s shrill whistle nearly deafened Jimmy and me as we stood on deck watching the Anvik mission recede. That long blast signaled a new life for us, that autumn of 1925, for we were aboard the government-owned Jacobs bound for the Eklutna Vocational School near Anchorage. I was ten and Jimmy was eight. Dad had been at Anvik a couple of months earlier for his annual visit with the four of us, and had returned to Alatna, a 920-mile round trip. We didn’t get to see him again before we left.

  Carrying mail, passengers, and freight, every two weeks the Jacobs steamed from Nenana 200 river miles down the Tanana River to the broad, silty Yukon River, and then 400 miles down the Yukon to Marshall, returning by the same route. Another government steamer, the General Jeff Davis, ran the same route on alternate weeks. In this way, residents along the Yukon River received mail and freight once a week in summer. Villages along the Koyukuk River received mail only once a month during summer, and then only when water was sufficiently high for steamer travel. The Koyukuk steamers were much smaller than those on the Yukon.

  The Yukon was the major summer route to the Interior for freight, mail, and passengers. By 1900 there were forty-one sizable steamers, fifteen smaller vessels, and thirty-nine barges competing for the Yukon River traffic. There was a shipyard at St. Michaels, near the mouth of the Yukon, where these shallow-draft river boats were built. As the gold rush subsided, privately owned Yukon River traffic decreased. To continue the service needed by residents, about 1915 the federal government started running Yukon River steamers.

  Winter was another matter. The Yukon was still a main highway, but travel was by dog team, and all mail, light freight, and passengers were hauled on the ice of the frozen river. Bulky and heavy freight awaited summer and the steamers. During the 1920s, airplanes gradually assumed the mail routes previously traveled by dog teams, and by the 1930s, there were only a few dog team mail routes in all of Alaska.

  For Jimmy and me, a couple of bush kids, the trip to Eklutna was high adventure. On the Jacobs we were assigned a stateroom with two bunks. Sleeping between cold, clammy white sheets was a strange experience, because we had never slept under anything but pure wool, and our skin was accustomed to sometimes scratchy but warm blankets. Food on the Jacobs was wonderful; never had we eaten so well. The several dozen passengers were friendly, and many knew our dad. We were seldom out of sight of anyone who wasn’t keeping a helpful eye on us.

  The boat stopped at Koyukuk Station. There I met Ella Vernetti, a beautiful half-Koyukon half-white woman who had just married Dominic Vernetti. I didn’t see Dominic then, but he was establishing a trading post there, where he was to remain the rest of his life.

  At Nenana we saw our first “iron horse” pulling what appeared to us to be about a mile of boxcars, and we first heard the thrilling whistle of a steam locomotive. The 470-mile Alaska Railroad was built and operated by the federal government. Completed only two years earlier, it connected the saltwater port of Seward to the interior town of Fairbanks. Railroads had penetrated the western states in advance of population growth, and people had followed. Optimists in Congress believed that a railroad would do the same for Alaska. While awaiting the miracle of population growth, the railroad was to provide access to the Interior for gold seekers and others. It didn’t happen that way; most of Alaska isn’t farming or livestock country to be settled like the western states.

  Steam engines pulled both passenger and freight trains for the railroad, and for the next two years while we lived at Eklutna, we were to hear the haunting sounds of their whistles daily as they rumbled by.

  We transferred to a passenger train at Nenana, and eager to see everything, I rode with my head out the window. I inhaled a lot of coal smoke, and cinders collected in my hair and spattered my face. Jimmy was half sick with undiagnosed tuberculosis and, to complicate matters, he caught a cold. To my frequent, “Look at this, Jimmy,” when I saw something new and interesting, he could only look and nod dully.

  From the train we could see the high rugged Alaska Range and Denali, which to us were like another world. Denali—The High One—is the Indian name and the state of Alaska’s official name for North America’s highest peak. Non-Alaskans call the 20,320-foot-high mountain “McKinley,” after a politician who never saw Alaska. It had been named by prospector A. W. Dickey in 1896, only twenty-nine years earlier.

  At Curry, the end of the train run for that day, we stayed at a hotel operated by the railroad. We felt like royalty. The wide double bed assigned to us was pure luxury. We spent most of our stay watching animals at a nearby fox farm.

  The train continued south the next morning, stopping occasionally for mail and passengers. The Alaska Railroad has always prided itself on stopping to pick up anyone, anywhere, along the tracks, and several times, far from normal waypoints, we ground to a halt so passengers standing beside the tracks could board.

  On the second day after boarding the train, we reached the Eklutna school. The shop and gymnasium were still under construction. Built mainly in 1922 and 1923, this Bureau of Indian Affairs school was originally at Tyonek, an Indian village on the west side of Cook Inlet. It was moved to Eklutna (which was more a place than a settlement) to take advantage of the railroad transportation for students, mail, and freight, and for the cheap coal hauled by the railroad from Alaskan mines which heated the half-dozen large buildings of the school. The student body consisted of twenty-five boys and thirty girls—Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos from all over the Territory.

  We had been at Eklutna about fifteen minutes when one of the boys gave Jimmy a rough shove. “He’s sick. Leave him alone,” I warned.

  “How about you, are you sick too?” the bully asked, mockingly.

  “Try me,” I taunted.

  He swung at me, and I leaped in with flying fists. He had all he wanted in about twenty seconds and we separated. About then one of the supervisors growled, “You boys there. Stop that fighting.”

  Next was our first shower. Jimmy and I washed away the ashes, cinders, and coal dust, having fun adjusting the running water. We lingered, enjoying for the first time the sensa
tion of hot water running over our bodies. Until then, we had known only baths, mostly in big galvanized washtubs. After we dressed, a bell rang, and all the kids started running. We followed.

  “What’s the bell for?” I asked, as we trotted along.

  “Chow time,” was the answer, which meant nothing to me. I had never heard the word “chow.”

  We joined the line of students waiting to be served. Within moments a big kid shoved Jim. Weak and frightened, Jimmy clutched me.

  “Leave him alone,” I warned the second bully we had encountered within an hour.

  “You want to try boxing?”

  I had never heard the term.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “This,” he said, and he punched me, hard.

  I wasn’t going to take that, so I pitched into him. He was being pretty professional—dancing about, guarding himself, and “boxing.” I simply waded in, hitting him wherever and whenever I could, and I was doing pretty well. Then, unexpectedly, I hit him on the throat. He gasped and fell to the floor.

  The matron in charge of the cookhouse yelled in alarm. Her husband shouted and grabbed me. I had been at school about an hour and already I had been in two fights. An Eskimo boy came to my rescue by explaining how the fights had started to the superintendent, Charles Briffitt, a part-Indian from the States, and he promised after-dinner paddlings for the bullies. I had never witnessed a paddling. Nothing like that had ever happened at Anvik Mission. But I wasn’t frightened or horrified by it: I was pleased to see those two kids get what they had coming.

  As soon as the school nurse realized Jimmy was sick, he was hospitalized for about six months because of the tuberculosis. Despite being isolated, he managed to make many friends, who visited him, and I was allowed to visit him frequently. He was fortunate to recover. Being half-white, he probably had more resistance to the disease than full-blooded Natives, who commonly succumbed to tuberculosis.