Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  We pitched a large wall tent on the Nulato beach to live in while the four of us built a cabin on the Vixen. Although the boat was only six feet wide, it then became our Nulato home where we slept and sometimes ate our meals.

  One day I watched Charlie Mountain, father of Cosmos, come down the Yukon River, paddling his canoe beside a big log. One leg was in the canoe, the other gripped the log. In this unusual fashion the old Indian pushed that log onto the beach where he tied it. Then he paddled off and returned shortly with another log.

  There was a demand for logs, and I began imitating Charlie. Using Dad’s fourteen-foot canvas muskrat hunting canoe, I spent long hours bringing in logs that I found either drifting down the river or hung up along the shore. Soon I had logs scattered all along the beach. Joe Stickman, later famous as one of Alaska’s great racing dog mushers, asked me who I was getting the logs for.

  “No one,” I answered.

  Joe handed me six big, shiny silver dollars for six logs he had selected for his fish wheel raft. That sale was a big event for me, for I had seldom had as much as a dollar at a time in my pocket.

  I gathered more logs, and sold a few more at a dollar each. No one wanted to buy the others, although they looked fine to me. I asked Bill Dalquist why. “They’re green, Sidney. No good for fish wheels. You have to use dry logs to make a fish wheel.”

  Eventually I gave all the logs I couldn’t sell to Charlie Mountain.

  On one warm, peaceful spring day, as the brown Yukon flowed endlessly past Nulato, the residents were out enjoying the sunshine and readying boats and fish wheels for the coming fishing season. I sat on the beach, a wide-eyed twelve-year-old, taking it all in. Suddenly from upriver came a loud volley of rifle shots.

  “People coming down,” someone yelled.

  With that, Indians ran in all directions. Excited men rushed to the beach, stuffing cartridges into rifles as they ran. They stood in a loose line, watching upriver, rifles ready.

  I grew frightened and ran to Bill Dalquist’s nearby cabin. “What’s happening?” I asked, fearfully.

  “They’re getting ready to greet the Koyukukers,” Bill laughed.

  Relieved, I returned to the water’s edge to watch. Soon another volley of shots sounded from upriver. Then the Nulato people opened up with a barrage; every man with a rifle fired into the river. An answering volley came from upstream, resulting in more shooting from the Nulato people. The ceremony was a carryover from an earlier time when the emptying of a muzzle-loader demonstrated peaceful intentions when two groups of Indians met.

  A raft of ten boats lashed together drifted around a bend of the Yukon. The Indians in the boats fired their last shots as they came in sight. They were from Koyukuk Station, Galena, Ruby, Kokrines, and other upriver villages.

  Most of the Nulato people sat on the board sidewalk along the riverbank to watch the approaching visitors and I sat with them. When the visitors came ashore, each walked the full length of the sidewalk and shook hands with every person. Not one word was spoken. There was no greeting of any kind, not even between long-separated brother and sister. No one hugged. They simply shook hands in a formal ritual that must have had its origin decades earlier when showing emotion was regarded as weakness. When the hand-shaking ceremony ended, people loosened up. Hugging and back-slapping began, as old friends and relatives came together.

  The visitors had come to attend the funeral potlatch for old man Demoski, who had died a few days earlier. In 1922, when Dad and I had been in Nulato, Demoski had taken us to the Nulato River where the famous massacre of February 1851 had taken place. While he and Dad had talked, I picked up a few blue Russian trade beads nearby where the riverbank had caved in. Demoski told Dad the story of the massacre, and I have since heard versions told by other descendants of the Koyukuk and Nulato Indian participants.

  A Koyukon chief and medicine man was the instigator. Koyukon people who know the oral history of their people have told me he was called “Lolee-ann,” or something pronounced close to that.* He was their most famous chief.

  The first Russians to arrive on the Lower Yukon wooed Lolee-ann’s people, the Koyukon Indians, wanting to trade for fine furs. Relations had been peaceful for several years, but two incidents sparked the animosity that led to the massacre.

  The first involved Lolee-ann’s daughters. One lived with Derzhavin, commandant of the Russian fort at Nulato. Then a second daughter attracted Derzhavin, and she too moved in with him.

  Lolee-ann demanded the surrender of at least one daughter. Derzhavin refused, saying that she was serving as a concubine for a visitor at the fort. After the visitor left, perhaps one of the chief’s daughters would be returned.

  The second incident occurred when Lieutenant Barnard of H.M.S Enterprise arrived in Nulato in search of information on the fate of the 1845 arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin. Franklin and his men had disappeared, and for years the English sent many expeditions to the North American Arctic in attempts to learn their fate. Barnard, blunt-spoken and unaware of the Koyukon Indian character, remarked that he intended to send for Lolee-ann, who was about twenty-five miles away at an annual festival.

  Barnard’s remark was overheard by a Koyukon at the fort, who passed it on to Lolee-ann. Lolee-ann, a man of great power, was not one to be “sent for.” The Russians, aware of this, always respectfully “requested the honor of his presence” when they wished to see him.

  Lolee-ann’s pride was hurt by Derzhavin’s refusal to return one of the daughters. Barnard’s intention to “send for him” was an insult that could not be endured. He called a council meeting, and swore that blood of the foreigners would flow. At that moment a dogsled driven by a Russian named Ivan Bulegin, accompanied by a Koyukon worker from the fort, appeared on the nearby Yukon River.

  Lolee-ann’s warriors killed the Russian, cut strips off the body, then roasted and ate the flesh. The warriors, on snow-shoes, then set out for Nulato.

  In darkness, half a mile from the Russian fort, they came to three large winter houses in which slept about a hundred Nulato men, women, and children. The Nulato people were then traditional enemies of the Koyukons. Lolee-ann’s warriers found forty or fifty birchbark canoes nearby. Working stealthily, they broke up the canoes and thrust the pieces into doors, chimneys, and windows. Then they set the three buildings afire.

  The inhabitants frantically tried to push through the flames. Some of the men hacked through the walls with axes, but arrows of the attackers felled them. Many Nulato people suffocated. A few women were captured as slaves, and one or two children survived by fleeing into the woods.

  A young Nulato man named Wolasatux escaped. Koyukon oral tradition has it that he was permitted to escape: Nulato oral tradition says he was fleet of foot and escaped because he was faster than his pursuers. Russians inside the half-mile-distant fort slept through the fire and the attack.

  After burning the three buildings, Lolee-ann’s warriors went to the fort. It was morning, and Commander Derzhavin had just arisen and was sitting behind a house. The attackers forced a Koyukon employee at the fort to kill the Russian with a knife. A Russian interpreter witnessed the murder and chastised the Indian for it. Moments later he fell dead, pierced by seven arrows.

  The attackers rushed inside and found Lieutenant Barnard on his bed, reading. The Englishman reached for his gun, but as he fired, the weapon was struck upward and the charge hit the ceiling. Again he fired, and for the second time the gun was struck upward. Lolee-ann killed Barnard with a knife. In that house, a mother and three children were also killed.

  The attackers then tried to get into a room where workers, including two Russians, lived, but the occupants barred the door and fired through the window, killing one of Lolee-ann’s warriors.

  William Dall, a naturalist and explorer, wrote that the Russian American Company “never took any measures of retaliation for this massacre,” and “presents were sent to the Koyukon chiefs, and there the matter ended.” He concluded his acc
ount, “…a stockaded fort was soon built on the present site, and the graves of Barnard and Derzhavin lie a stone’s throw behind it.”

  Now, shortly after his burial, upriver Indians had arrived for the memorial potlatch for old man Demoski (I believe his name was Joe), and for the annual spring gathering of the Lower Yukon and Koyukuk Indians. The potlatch, set for nine o’clock that night, was to be an old-style, formal ceremony, with feasting and a dance.

  The potlatch is a traditional celebration among Alaska’s Atha-paskans. It may include feasting, gift-giving, music, and dancing. This traditional gathering, which varies from area to area, can be a thanksgiving ceremony with a communal meal in a public place or in a home. Or it can be a demonstration of respect for the dead at a funeral or memorial gathering, where the participants eat foods harvested from the land—fish and game, berries, salmon.

  I wanted to attend the Demoski potlatch, but one of the younger boys of the village told me, “They don’t allow halfbreeds from the Koyukuk in the hall.” I thought he was serious, but he was just needling. All were welcome to the potlatch. I was beginning to realize that I was neither all Indian nor all white. I was a Siwash, or a “breed,” as many people contemptuously called people of mixed blood.

  I asked Cosmos Mountain and his wife, Vivian, if I could attend. “You go to the store and buy some hardtack. Then go with me. I’ll take care of anyone who bothers you,” Cosmos promised.

  We arrived at the hall carrying our contributions; I had hardtack and a bundle of dried muskrat meat which Cosmos had given me. Vivian carried two bundles of dried ducks. Cosmos had a bucket of duck soup. We added our food to the pile on a clean canvas tarpaulin spread on the floor. Others had brought dried beaver meat, dried salmon, fresh meat, canned fruits, crackers, cigars, and a variety of other items. By the time everyone had arrived, the food pile had become a mountain.

  Soon the 300 or 400 people in the hall became so quiet I could have heard a button drop. An elder went to the center of the hall, and sat on his feet.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered.

  “They call him Peter Chief,” Cosmos answered. He was once a chief of Nulato.

  In a few minutes, Olin, one of the older Koyukon Indians from the town of Cutoff, stepped forward and sat on his feet, facing Peter Chief. The two took turns speaking. They often waved their arms, and they stared at one another. Each seemed to challenge the other. I thought their performance looked and sounded like a contest.

  “What are they talking about?” I asked Cosmos.

  He said he couldn’t understand them either—that they were using “high words” not generally understood by the average Koyukon Indian. Once in a while one elder would confound the other with an unfamiliar high word. At that, their speech contest would stall until the other came up with an acceptable high word or statement. The “high words” were known to only a few of the Koyukon people; some words represented the meaning of an entire sentence. The debate was long and heavy. I don’t know who won, if anyone did.

  We turned to the food, and it was a great feast. Later, dancing began, and everyone in the village attended. Violins and guitars provided music for waltzes, fox trots, and square dances. My dad, skilled at calling square dances, called until he was almost hoarse. Everyone had fun.

  Before the arrival of whites, Koyukon potlatches were primarily a ceremony to honor the deceased, with meat being eaten for spiritual communion with the dead. When whites arrived with their special holidays like Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, and their version of Thanksgiving, celebratory potlatches evolved in some places.

  Occasionally, preparations for an elaborate and costly potlatch may take several years. At Hughes, in the winter of 1934, I attended a potlatch in honor of my uncle Little William, a much-loved person (he had given me the snowshoes when I was a child). More than twenty Koyukon Athapaskan songs were composed especially to honor him. These songs, and stories of his accomplishments told at the potlatch, were farewell gifts to Little William.

  The amount of food served at Little William’s potlatch was staggering. It included sledloads of moose and caribou from the Melozie River, as well as dried Dall sheep from the upper Alatna River. There were dozens of dried ducks and geese. The dried meat came from animals killed the previous fall and prepared specifically for that potlatch.

  It required a full week to cook all the food for the big feast that took place on the final night of that potlatch. Included in the foods were straps of fat from about ten black bear which had been cut into pieces two inches wide and more than a foot long—a prime delicacy. I received four strips of that fine fat myself.

  Composition of songs to be sung at a potlatch, which are generally based on the accomplishments of the departed, may begin months ahead of time. To arrange just the right words for a song may take weeks, even months. The composer commonly takes advantage of the peace and silence of the trapline to do his work. Without distractions he can devote much time and thought to the new song and concentrate on making it exactly right. Many of the old favorites have real meaning to Athapaskans. Some of the words in songs of long ago are “high words” from a language that only the better educated Indians knew. Few people today understand many of these old words.

  The famed Nulato stick dance, a sacred Koyukon memorial to the recent dead, is known throughout Alaska. I have seen and participated in the stick dance several times. The “stick,” a long spruce pole wrapped with ribbons and crepe paper, is placed upright in the hall. Celebrants dance around the decorated pole. The originator of the first stick dance composed thirteen songs, honoring the family he had lost. Even today, those songs are the opening songs of any stick dance, although very few people know all of them. Nowadays a tape recorder is used to lead singers through the full repertoire as the stick dance begins.

  At the stick dances I attended in the 1930s, some of the singers could almost raise the roof of that old Nulato village hall with their voices. It is an emotional experience for a Koyukon to attend the Nulato stick dance.

  In prewhite times, all clothing of the Indians was made from skins of wild animals. Occasionally at a potlatch, even today, the old way of dressing is memorialized when, during the ceremony, individuals who have been of great service to the deceased are dressed in new fur clothing from head to foot by the family of the deceased. More commonly today, clothing given may come from Sears or Penney’s, except maybe for fur caps and mittens, and moccasins from the leg skin of moose or caribou.

  Early missionaries opposed potlatches because they thought the ritual was based on superstition. They also objected when, during a potlatch, a new widow was stripped of all her possessions. This practice has ceased, and now overtones of Christianity are often intertwined in the ceremonies.

  I believe the American Thanksgiving evolved directly from the potlatch, or a similar East Coast Indian ceremony. According to the standard version of how Thanksgiving began, the Pilgrims feasted to give thanks for the bounty of their new land. But I have a theory.

  Many Pilgrims died during their first winter in the New World. During the following spring, summer, and fall, I presume, the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and harvest wild game to prepare themselves for winter. My guess is that the Indians became concerned because the Pilgrims had not honored those who had died the previous winter, and without a ceremonial feast, the dead had not been shown proper respect. I think the Indians convinced the Pilgrims to make a potlatch, as we say. The Pilgrims probably considered this superstitious nonsense, so instead of calling it a potlatch, they covered their tracks by calling it Thanksgiving.

  _____________

  * He is called Larion by both Peter Freuchen in his fictional account, The Law of Larion (1952), and Hubert Howe Bancroft in his History of Alaska 1730– 1885 (1886). William H. Dall, Alaska and Its Resources (1886), called him Larriown.

  8

  THE BATZA RIVER TRAPLINE

  It was midsummer when the four of us left Nulato i
n the Vixen to travel upriver on the Koyukuk to Batza River where we planned to spend the winter trapping. The sturdy riverboat would be pushing a barge holding a year’s supplies.

  As we readied to cast off into the swift and muddy Yukon, a crowd gathered on the Nulato beach to wish us well and wave farewell. We cranked the Model T Ford engine, and the Vixen chugged into the stream, pushing the heavy barge. A few tears were shed, both on the boat and on shore, for we didn’t expect to see these friends again for almost a year. Then, there were few people living in the Koyukuk and Lower Yukon, and we knew almost everyone, so friendships were close.

  Our outfit included gasoline for the boat engine, which burned one gallon an hour. We covered about five miles an hour, so traveling the 250 miles to Batza required fifty gallons of gas. We needed an extra fifty gallons for short trips, and enough for the return trip downriver the following spring. Dad had bought six sled dogs in Nulato, paying as much as $15 each, which was top price for a good dog at the time. They, too, rode on the barge.

  We had 700 pounds of flour, 300 pounds of sugar, 150 pounds of several varieties of dried beans, 50 pounds of dried vegetables (potatoes, onions, and other varieties), 150 pounds of rice, 100 pounds of dried fruit (apples, peaches, apricots, and raisins), 60 pounds of coffee, 25 pounds of black tea, 70 pounds of shortening and lard, 100 pounds of oatmeal, 100 pounds of cornmeal, 2 cases of corned beef, a case of wiener sausage, a case of minced clams (for chowder), a case of salt, and 30 pounds of hard cheese.

  For the dogs we had bundles of dried salmon, harness, collars, and chains. There were axes, hammers, saws, wrenches, nails, bolts, putty, rivets, sheet metal, sheets of glass for cabin windows, and colorful oilcloth for the kitchen table.

  Each of us had three changes of clothing, enough socks and gloves for a year, and a good windproof parka. Wool was the warmest fabric available (and is warm even when wet), so we had woolen jackets and heavy Sheffield wool underwear and pants. Each of us had raingear and Indian-made winter boots or mukluks. Fur mukluks, worn with heavy wool socks, vary in length up to knee-high, and are supple and warm. In them we used dried grass as a discardable, absorbent, and warm innersole. There was ammunition for Dad’s .30-40 rifle, shotgun shells, and .22 rifle cartridges. Included with the hardware were many traps and animal snares.