A Woman who went to Alaska

by May Kellogg Sullivan

Others besides myself are wearing muckluks by this time, though not all have come to them, the felt shoes being worn in the house some by the girls until severe cold forces them into the native boots of reindeer skin.

In her rooms at the hotel Mollie sits with Alice each day on the fur rugs, cutting, sewing and beading moccasins and moosehide gloves. A regular workshop it is. Boxes of thread, beads, scraps of fur, whole otter skins, paper patterns, shears, bits of hair and fur scattered upon the floor, and the walls covered with hanging fur garments; this is the sewing-room of the captain's wife as it is now each day when I go there. The room contains two large windows, one on the north side and one on the west, at which hang calico curtains tied back with blue ribbons in daytime. These women work very rapidly, with the thimble upon the first finger and by pushing the three-cornered skin needle deftly through skins they are sewing. The thread they use for this work is made by them from the sinews of reindeer, and takes hours of patient picking and rolling between fingers and palms to get spliced and properly twisted, but when finished is very strong and lasting. Their sewing and bead work is quite pretty and unique, and is done with exceeding neatness and care, though not much attention is bestowed upon colors.

Friday, December seventh, has been a busy day all round. L. and B. started off early after breakfast on a prospecting trip, and the girls kept at their sewing. Mr. H. came from the Home to get the sewing machine and some lumber, and was packing up nearly all day, so that we are still quite unsettled, but it is much pleasanter for him to come to a warm house and where he gets hot meals after his twelve miles over the ice with the deer or dogs.

He left here at four in the afternoon and had been gone only an hour when Mr. F. and another man came from Nome, on the way to the Koyuk. Getting well warmed and eating a hearty supper, which was much enjoyed after some days on the trail, they started with two reindeer and as many sleds for the Home, which is on the way to Koyuk. Another hour passed and two women and their guide from White Mountain came in, these belonging to the same party as the last men going to the Koyuk, and these three had to remain over night as it was too late to push on further. The men brought their fur robes and blankets from their sleds, threw them into the bunks in the west room, and called it a good lodging place compared to the cramped and disorderly roadhouses upon the trails.

December eighth: We had a fire fright this morning, which was not enjoyed by any one in the Mission. Mary had gotten up early, and two fires were already going, one in the kitchen range and one in the sitting room heater near my bed. It was still dark at half-past seven and I was awake, thinking seriously of dressing myself, though there was no hurry, for Mary was the only one yet up, when I saw a shower of large sparks of fire or burning cinders falling to the ground outside the window. I rushed into the kitchen telling Mary what I had seen, and she ran outside and looked up toward the chimney. Fire, smoke and cinders poured out in a stream, but she satisfied herself it was soot burning in the sitting-room chimney.

Coming in, she pulled most of the wood from the heater, scattered salt upon the coals, and by this time all in the house were down stairs, asking what had happened.

M. says he will also take my attorney paper and stake a claim for me, as he has decided to go to the Koyuk with the men who came last night from Nome. They have a horse, but as it is almost worn to the bone and nearly starved, they hardly think he can travel much farther. M. wants me to get him some location notices from the Commissioner when I see him. When coming home from Jennie's lesson this afternoon I was turning the corner of the hotel when the wind took me backward toward the bay for thirty feet or more, and deposited me against an old wheelbarrow turned bottom upwards in the snow. To this I clung desperately, keeping my presence of mind enough to realize my danger if blown out upon the ice fifty feet away and below me, where I would be unable to make myself either seen or heard in the blinding storm and would soon be buried in the snow drifts and frozen.

In my right hand I carried my small leather handbag containing a dozen or more deeds and other documents to be recorded for the Commissioner, and if the wind blew this from my hand for an instant I was surely undone, for it would never be recovered. I now clung to the barrow until I had regained my breath and then made a quick dash for the lee or south side of the hotel out of the gale, and into the living-room again. Here I sat down to rest, trembling and breathless, to consider the best way to get home. It was now dark, the snow blinding, and the gale from the northeast fearful. A stout young Eskimo sat near me, and I finally asked him to take me home, to which he consented.

The Mission was only a few hundred feet away, but to reach it we had to go directly into the teeth of the storm, which was coming from the northeast.

Not six feet ahead of us could we see, but I trusted to the sense of my Eskimo guide to lead me safely home, and he did it. Motioning me to follow him, he proceeded to pass through the building and out the east end entrance, notwithstanding that he led me directly through the bar-room of the hotel, where the idlers stared wonderingly at me. Once outside the door, he grasped my right arm firmly and we started, but he kept his body a little ahead of me, and with side turned from the blizzard instead of facing it.