Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  Despite the sogginess we found some half-dry wood and coaxed a fire into burning, to heat some food and coffee and to drive the damp chill from our bones. The river was still choked with ice, so we had to wait for it to clear. Along the banks, ridges of debris indicated that the water had been eight feet or more above normal high-water mark. Tired, we dozed off, sprawled atop our gear in the boat because the ground was too wet to sit on or lie on. We walked down the bank of the Koyukuk, hoping to see our cabin downriver, but piles of ice blocked our view.

  Early next morning we maneuvered out of the creek and into the Koyukuk, which was now clear of big ice chunks. Drifting downstream, we avoided the smaller pieces of ice that still floated about. Charlie figured the ice that pushed onto the banks was now sliding back into the river.

  Where our cabin had been, we found only a huge pile of ice. And the cache tree had disappeared. Everything we owned, except what we had in the boats, was gone—furs, food, traps, guns, tools, winter clothing—everything. Gone. A clean wipeout: even the gasoline for the Vixen was gone.

  We were in shock. To Jimmy and me it was almost as if the world had come to an end. We had accomplished so much in our winter on the trapline, and now everything we needed to survive as trappers was gone. Fortunately, we were carrying the money received from selling furs at Tanana.

  We drifted downstream to where we had stored the Vixen and she too was gone. We found the frayed end of her bow line attached to a freshly splintered spruce stump. Gone too was the barge that we had pushed upriver.

  The scene along that desolate stretch of river remains etched in my mind. Broken branches, splintered stumps, downed trees, mud, freshly gouged cutbanks, melting dirty ice chunks—all gave the impression that the world was now a broken-up, filthy, miserable swamp. We were all silent.

  We drifted thirty miles downriver to our old cabin at Hog River, where Mom’s grave was. No ice jams had formed along that part of the river and water hadn’t even gone over the banks. Old Mike Laboski and Ben Keilly had lived in our cabin there while trapping along Hog River that winter, and were getting ready to pull out when we arrived.

  “Well, we’ve at least got a cabin now,” Dad said to us, with a sad smile. “That’s a start.”

  Mike and Ben had extra food which they agreed to leave. Charlie examined the supplies, looked the cabin over, and made up his mind.

  “I’m going to stay and prospect here this summer. You and the boys go on out and get us reoutfitted,” he suggested to Dad.

  They talked briefly and decided that the three of us would take the small boats downriver to Nulato where we would try to acquire another power boat for our return. Somehow, we had to catch enough salmon to feed the dogs for another winter. Charlie was unenthusiastic about fishing on the Koyukuk. Fishing on the Yukon was far easier and much more productive.

  “Let’s see what happens,” Charlie said. “I’m sure everything will come together before fall. You have lots of good friends. I’m not going to worry.” We decided that in the fall we would fix up our old store and cabin at Hog River where we would live during the next few years while trapping. We left our lead dog with Charlie for companionship and took the others with us.

  “I think it’s awful to leave Charlie behind like this,” I said to Dad.

  “Charlie has the gold bug,” Dad explained. “He’s wanted to find gold ever since he hit the Dawson country thirty-five years ago. He wants to prospect Sun Mountain.” Sun Mountain was a nearby ridge that Charlie had often talked about.

  We left old Charlie on the riverbank as we drifted downstream. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a canvas jacket, worn pants, and rubber-bottomed leather shoepacks. His gray hair showed below his hat, and his weathered face showed calm determination. I hated to leave him, and wondered if we would ever see him again. He waved once, then stood watching until we rounded the first bend. I thought he looked lonesome.

  Drifting downstream we stopped at likely lakes and back sloughs to hunt muskrats with the .22 rifle. At Koyukuk Station we learned that Nulato and Koyukuk Station residents had also experienced a bad flood at breakup. We weren’t surprised, for breakup floods aren’t unusual along the Yukon River.

  Trader John Evans told us that Joe Stickman had pulled a boat off the ice that might be the Vixen. Encouraged, we went on to Nulato to see Joe. He owned a large powerboat with a twelve-horsepower four-cylinder Universal engine—a big engine for those days. He had used it to pull the runaway boat ashore below Nulato. Sure enough, he had salvaged our Vixen. She had been found perched atop a drifting block of ice. One side was caved in, the propeller and rudder were sheared off, and the pilot house was gone, but the engine seemed undamaged.

  “How much do I owe you, Joe?” Dad asked.

  “Is $10 too much?” Joe asked. Joe had paid two men $5 each to help him, and he had used some gasoline in towing the Vixen ashore.

  Ed Allard was about to take the mail boat up the Koyukuk on its first trip of the year, so Dad sent along some grub and a note for Charlie. We pitched a tent on the beach beside the Vixen two miles below Nulato and set up a saw pit so we could whipsaw the lumber we needed. John Tilley and Bill Dalquist loaned us tools and we worked long hours to rebuild the ice-battered boat.

  Joe Stickman liked the twenty-foot boat I had built so well he asked Dad if he could buy it. “It’s Sidney’s boat. You’ll have to talk to him about it,” he told Joe.

  I was playing baseball with the Nulato team one day when Joe came to see me. “I’d like to buy your boat, Sidney,” he said.

  “How much will you give for it?” I asked.

  “Old Ambrose makes big gas boats for $150. Your boat’s a lot smaller. How about $100?” he offered. One hundred dollars was a fortune to me.

  “My wife wants that little boat pretty bad. She wants to use it for fishing.”

  I thought about it. His wife, Lucy, was always good to us. Just that day she had treated us to a big feed of fried king salmon. And Joe had helped us by saving the Vixen. Nevertheless, I hated to sell my boat.

  My turn came to bat. After my base hit, a line drive into left field brought me around second and third bases. Joe caught up with me again after I crossed home plate.

  “How about it?” he asked.

  “All right,” I said. “I don’t really want to sell it, but you helped us. Now it’s my turn to help you.”

  I was learning that life wasn’t all dollars and cents—that business can be tinged with feelings for the other guy. After all, I could build another boat.

  In about five days we launched the Vixen. Her engine ran fine, and she didn’t leak. She had no cabin, but that could wait.

  A trader at Nulato, Pop Russell, knew we had been wiped out and that we were low on cash. He had heard we were going to fish for salmon, so he offered to buy dried dog (chum) salmon from us for six cents a pound. He had a mail contract, and he needed enough dried fish to feed his mail team.

  Russell’s offer was an opportunity for us to earn money, but we would have to work hard. We knew nothing about making a fish wheel, which is how we planned to catch our fish. Johnny Sommers and Charlie Evans offered to help us. Local fishermen agreed that Devil’s Island would be a good site for a fish camp, and no one claimed the island, about four miles below Nulato, as a fishing location.

  In two days we collected raft logs for the fish wheel, as well as some green poles. With plenty of help and advice from experts, we built the fish wheel the next day.

  The fish wheel is a simple device. Two wire baskets and two paddles, like four spokes on a wheel, radiate from a large wooden axle. River current turns the device, and as it rotates, the baskets scoop fish from the river and deposit them in a collecting box. The fish wheel is effective because salmon follow the riverbank as they swim upstream toward spawning grounds. When placed directly over a place where salmon pass, each revolution of a basket has a chance of picking up fish.

  We used the Vixen and our canoe to move the fish wheel to Devil’s Island, where
we cut brush to clear space for a camp and a smokehouse. The story of our being wiped out at Batza Creek had spread up and down the river. Travelers on the Yukon stopped to see us and have coffee; many pitched in to help for a while. In a few days we were ready to fish.

  We set the fish wheel to turning and almost immediately started catching chum salmon. Charlie Evans taught us how to cut the fish for dog food and Jimmy and I quickly learned the technique. We cut and split the fish and kept Dad more than busy hanging them on the drying racks we had built. With practice we were able to process 800 six- to eight-pound salmon a day. One dried male chum salmon from the Yukon weighs from a pound to a pound and a half; females weigh from six to eight ounces. A salmon’s weight varies with the distance the fish is from salt water. By the Fourth of July, we had 5,000 salmon dried or hanging on the drying racks. We smoked some of the choicer fish to eat ourselves.

  Jimmy and I wanted to participate in the festivities of the Fourth of July at Nulato. That morning we began working very early and cut and split 500 salmon. Then we paddled our canoe upstream to Nulato, where we competed in races, baseball, jumping contests, and other games.

  A dance that night capped the celebration. “It’s time you started dancing, Sidney,” said Lily Stickman, Joe’s younger sister, as she grabbed me by the collar and dragged me onto the dance floor. And dance I did! After that they couldn’t keep me off the dance floor.

  Jimmy and I paddled back to camp late that night. It was light, so we immediately set about cutting and splitting the afternoon catch of 350 salmon. The days of July fled, and soon we had prepared 10,000 chum salmon. We needed at least 2,500 to feed our own dogs during the coming winter. The remainder were promised to Pop Russell.

  A friend gave me two fine young sled dogs. Toby Patsy gave Jimmy another. (Patsy wrote “Eagle Island Blues,” a song popular along the Yukon, and eventually a popular recording all over the United States.) With the addition of these three our team numbered eight, which Dad thought was too many, so Jimmy and I split and dried another 500 salmon to make sure we would have enough food.

  We bundled up Pop Russell’s 6,000 pounds of dried fish and hauled them to his warehouse. Our income from the fish was about $360. We were still short of the $3,000 needed to pay for a year’s outfit (roughly the equivalent of $25,000 today). We had about $2,000 combined from sale of furs at Tanana the previous winter and from the salmon sold to Pop Russell. Dad didn’t want to ask for credit, and decided we should try to manage on what we could pay for. We could go to Hughes for supplies by dogsled if need be.

  When Dad gave Pop his list, Pop snorted, “Hell, I thought you said you lost everything last spring. This won’t take you through half the winter.”

  “I don’t want to put anything on the books, Pop,” Dad said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you what you need. Pay what you can. I’ll catch up with you next spring. Keep some money so you can buy winter gear if you need to,” he advised. We left Nulato owing him $1,400, a huge debt in 1928. Pop Russell was a prince.

  Another bit of sweetening came when my uncle Hog River Johnny found our barge in a back slough at Cutoff. He arranged for Ed Allard to tow it to us with the mail boat on his downstream run. My uncle had heard we were fishing to make a stake; he knew we would need the barge on our return to Hog River.

  We left Nulato on the first day of August, our barge loaded with a good winter outfit, plenty of good dogs, good grub—everything. As usual, everyone in Nulato was on the beach to see us off. We traveled day and night, moving northeast up the beautiful Koyukuk. Dad, Jimmy, and I took turns steering. Memories of the sodden, ice-smashed desolation we had left the previous spring grew dim. The riverbanks now appeared normal, with high green grass, leafed-out trees, clear tributaries, and clean-washed sand and gravel beaches.

  We arrived at Hog River in four and a half days. Charlie recognized the Model T engine’s steady roar long before we came into sight. Wearing a mile-wide smile on his weathered face, he stood on the bank waiting in the exact spot we had left him the previous spring. He was thin, and his long uncut gray hair almost flowed over his collar, but he cheerfully said, “I never doubted that you’d come back with a good outfit.”

  I often think back to that challenging year filled with learning experiences for two boys, and realize how from those events I learned that hard work and determination pay off. Eventually, I began to view that period as a wonderful time.

  12

  SNARING A GRIZZLY

  After arriving at Hog River, we prepared for the winter ahead. We built or rebuilt four cabins, and cut enough firewood at all of them to last through the winter. We girdled nearby trees so that dead, dry trees would be available for firewood in the future.

  When the fall waterfowl migration was on, we killed many fat geese and ducks and dried the meat for winter use. Of the dozen or so varieties of wild berries found in the Koyukuk, we commonly used about eight—blueberry, lowbush cranberry (lingonberry), highbush cranberry, bog cranberry, bearberry, crowberry (also called blackberry), cloudberry, and rosehips.

  That fall we picked forty gallons of blueberries and preserved them with layers of sugar in wooden kegs. We picked another ten gallons of lowbush cranberries for preserves, plus an assortment of other varieties. We picked and dried a large supply of mushrooms. In late fall we were still catching a few pike, whitefish, and worn-out salmon in gillnets set in back eddies along the Koyukuk River. We split and hung these fish to dry, since besides being excellent dog food, they made good bait for marten and mink sets.

  One night a large animal raided our fish supply, knocking down fish racks, scattering fish, and carrying some off. Our chained sled dogs raised a big ruckus. At daylight I followed the animal’s tracks and found where it had prowled back and forth within view of the fish racks, probably deciding on a safe route to the tempting food.

  “A black bear, Dad?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, thoughtfully, peering at the indistinct tracks. “Black bears are eating berries now, getting ready for den-up. I think it’s a grizzly.”

  A grizzly! The strongest, most dangerous animal in the region, grizzlies were uncommon in the broad valley of the Koyukuk. They are larger, stronger, and generally more aggressive than black bears, and the Koyukon people treat them with great respect. I had caught a brief glimpse of a grizzly a few miles from our cabin a few weeks earlier. Perhaps this was the same one.

  “I’m going to catch it, Dad,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” he encouraged.

  I searched my mind for a plan, and recalled the steel cable that warden-pilot Sam White had given me. One day the previous summer while we were at Nulato, a Swallow biplane had roared down the river, circled the village, and then, because there was no airport, landed at the ball field. White, one of Alaska’s pioneer aviators and the world’s first flying game warden, was liked and respected by almost everyone—a rare game warden indeed. Unfortunately for Sam, the Nulato ball field was too small for his Swallow; in landing, he ran into the ballpark fence, bending his propeller.

  I helped him straighten the prop and find items he needed for the repairs, and I ran errands for him when he needed it. When his prop was repaired, he unloaded his plane to lighten it for takeoff. Included in his castoffs was some 3/16-inch steel airplane control cable, which he gave me. I watched, fascinated, as Sam took off from the ballpark and flew on upriver. Airplanes were a rare and exciting novelty in 1928.

  To attempt to catch the grizzly, I fashioned a snare out of some of the cable Sam had given me and set it between two birch trees where the raider had walked. That night we listened tensely, waiting for the fish-stealer to return. The night remained silent, and we finally went to bed.

  At dawn we were suddenly awakened by the roars of a bear, yelps of the dogs, and snapping of brush and trees. I hotfooted it out of the cabin, grabbing Dad’s .30-40 Winchester lever-action rifle that had been propped next to the door. The snared bear was mowing down b
irch trees like grass. I had securely fastened the end of the steel cable to a stump.

  As I rushed to the spot, all I could see was a mass of brown hair flying back and forth. The bawling of the furious bear raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Trees and branches snapped and whipped about. The dogs screamed and lunged at the ends of their chains. It was bedlam. I fired the big rifle into the lunging bear. For a thirteen-year-old the .30-40 kicked like a mule, but I didn’t even notice. The charging slowed. I worked another cartridge into the barrel, aimed, and fired again.

  “Shoot again, before he charges!” Dad yelled.

  I stood staring at the bear in awe, wondering why it was still on its feet, and then fired several more shots into it. Finally the bear fell, and I started to run toward it.

  “Stop! Sidney, stop! Keep back!” Dad shouted.

  I then received a forceful lecture on why one should not approach a dangerous animal immediately after shooting it. To emphasize the point, Dad wouldn’t let Jimmy or me go near the bear until we had eaten breakfast. I didn’t eat much, and what I ate went down fast.

  The bear appeared huge to me, but Dad said it was a small grizzly. The animal was old, with worn teeth and a deeply scarred face. We skinned him and tried to eat some of the meat, but the flavor was so strong that we couldn’t handle it. Even our sled dogs didn’t want it. We finally tossed the unused meat into the river.

  Just before freezeup, Little Sammy and my aunt Big Sophy Sam came by and spent a night with us. Little Sammy spotted the skin of the grizzly. “Where you get?” he asked Dad.

  “Sidney got him,” Dad explained, relating how I had set the snare and then shot the bear.