Fortune's Distant Shores
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National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES A History of the Kotzebue Sound Gold Stampede in Alaska’s Arctic CHRIS ALLAN As the nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural and cultural resources. This includes fostering the wisest use of our land and water resources, protecting our fish and wildlife, preserving the environmental and cultural values of our national parks and historical places, and providing for enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. The Cultural Resource Programs of the National Park Service have responsibilities that include stewardship of historic buildings, museum collections, archeological sites, cultural landscapes, oral and written histories, and ethnographic resources. Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve the cultural resources of the park areas and to bring an understanding of these resources to the public. Congress has mandated that we preserve these resources because they are important components of our national and personal identity. Published by the United States Department of the Interior through the Government Printing Office with the assistance of Debra A. Mingeaud. Fortune’s Distant Shores A History of the Kotzebue Sound Gold Stampede in Alaska’s Arctic Chris Allan ISBN-978-0-578-47663-6 2019 Front Cover: Carl von Knobelsdorff, known as “The Flying Dutchman,” traveled hundreds of miles on ice skates along the Kobuk River delivering news and personal letters for one dollar each, ca. 1898. Bancroft Library, Samuel W. Fansher Collection (2015.79). Title Page: Frank Nichols of Fall River, Massachusetts and colleagues with their steam launch on the Kobuk River, ca. 1898. Alaska State Library, Frank C. Nichols Photograph Collection (p256-33). Back Cover: The George M. Stoney towing a raft of stampeders and supplies toward Hotham Inlet and the Kobuk River, ca. 1899. The propeller-driven steamer was built for a mining company led by William A. Hayne, Jr. of Santa Barbara, California. Alaska State Library, Frank C. Nichols Photograph Collection (p256-44). All color photographs were taken by Dr. Andrew Hope during a 2014 research trip on the Kobuk River. Collection held by the National Park Service, Central Alaska Network, Small Mammal Vital Signs, Fairbanks, Alaska. FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES A History of the Kotzebue Sound Gold Stampede in alaska’S arctic historic conteXT study for: Gates of the Arctic National Park & PreserVE Noatak National PreserVE Kobuk Valley National Park Cape Krusenstern National Monument Bering Land Bridge National PreserVE Chris Allan National Park SerVice Fairbanks AdministratiVE Center 2019 FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES: A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC IV FOREWORD V TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix A Note on Naming xi Foreword xiii Chapter 1: Change Comes to Kotzebue Sound 1 Chapter 2: On That Desolate Shore 22 Chapter 3: Up the Kobuk River 50 Chapter 4: Time and Plenty of It 80 Chapter 5: Duped and Deceived 120 Chapter 6: Barney Cogan’s Legacy 146 Bibliography 163 Appendix A: List of Kobuk River Gold Camps 167 Appendix B: List of Stampeders Dead and Missing 168 FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES: A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC VIII FOREWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS owe a debt of gratitude to the librarians and archivists who helped me to obtain gold rush letters, journals, and historic photographs, including Sandra Johnston of the Alaska State Library, Rose I Speranza of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives, and Sharon Prien of the Alaska Resources Library & Information Services. I also want to thank Karlene Leeper, who researched the Kotzebue Sound stampede in the 1990s and left her material with the National Park Service’s Alaska Regional Curatorial Center; Tom Patterson, formerly of the National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry Center, who created the multi-park map; and my colleague Adam Freeburg who was generous with his knowledge of GIS and northwestern Alaska. There are two people without whom this project would have been impossible: designer Francis Broderick of Archgraphics and Lynn Horvath whose wise counsel and careful editing makes everything I write better. Finally I would like to thank the National Park Service for supporting important projects like this one. IX FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES: A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC X A NOTE ON NAMING A NOTE ON NAMING ne of the most problematic placenames in the story of the Kotzebue Sound gold stampede is the 350-mile-long Kobuk River. The Inupiaq name means “big river.” O However, the spelling has changed over time. The name was first recorded by the surgeon John Simpson who arrived in the area in 1850 as part of the search for the British explorer Sir John Franklin. Simpson wrote it as Kowuk, and over the years it took many other forms, including Ku-buck, Kooak, Kopak, and Kowak. In the 1890s, when tales of Kotzebue Sound gold first emerged, the river usually took this last spelling—Kowak—but within a short time the stampeders and newspaper writers shifted their preference toKobuk , which remains the preferred spelling today. In nearly every case in the Kotzebue Sound region, geographic locations have both local indigenous names and Euro-american names, and during the 1890s these were often used interchangeably. When quoting the letters or journals of stampeders, I add spelling corrections or alternative names in brackets only if there is a risk of confusion. Another naming convention that deserves explanation is the use of Inupiaq/Inupiat. The indigenous peoples of Arctic North America and Greenland have long been referred to as Eskimos or, more recently, Inuit. However, in Alaska the people of the Arctic coast and northern interior are known as the Inupiat, or Inupiaq Eskimos. Other, more specific names are based on village groups or river systems. For example, the Nunamiut are an inland Eskimo group who now live primarily in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass and the indigenous people of the Kobuk River are identified as Kuuvanmiit. All are more broadly Inupiaq people. The plural form of the word is Inupiat. The adjectival form is Inupiaq. XI FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES: A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC The schoonerChasseur from Aberdeen, Washington at a point sixty-five miles up the Kobuk River, ca. 1898. XII Alaska State Library, Frank C. Nichols Photograph Collection (p256-32). FOREWORD FOREWORD ruth be told, Joseph Grinnell was Arctic Circle and was much closer to Siberia more interested in birds than gold than to Sitka. Grinnell promised his mother T when the opportunity arose to join he would keep a journal of his adventures twenty fellow Californians searching for “for the folks back home,” and he began treasure in a distant, northerly corner of this account with a comment on his mining North America. At twenty-one he was the company’s choice of destination: “Why we youngest member of their newly formed have selected Kotzebue Sound as the field of mining syndicate—the Long Beach and our maneuvers it would be difficult to give Alaska Mining & Trading Company—and a rational reason. It may be nothing more the only ornithologist. As a teenager in nor less than the universal rush to the gold Pasadena, Grinnell prepared zoological fields of Alaska, which rush, being infectious, specimens of birds and small mammals he attacks all grades and conditions of men.”2 caught near his home and this passion for The roughly two thousand stampeders going biology would later evolve into a lauded to Kotzebue Sound were thrusting themselves career. Unlike his fellow gold-seekers, he into a world of extremes where they would had been to Alaska before—he had recently live side by side with indigenous people and returned from fifteen months in Sitka, in struggle with rugged terrain, profound cold, southeast Alaska, where he collected bird accidents, and disease. The experience would skins and eggs, chatted with the naturalist- test their bodies and their minds—and many philosopher John Muir, and had an all-round would not return. fabulous time. When Grinnell returned Stampeding to high latitudes in search from Sitka, the lust for Klondike gold was of gold was rarely a decision made in sober reaching a fevered pitch and people from contemplation, and the affliction known as all walks of life were setting their sights on Klondike fever (or Klondicitis) hijacked the northern gold fields. On May 19, 1898, imagination, jettisoned reason, and thrived he and his comrades boarded their 72-foot on rumors and unsound advice. As the rush yacht Penelope and sailed from San Francisco to Alaska and the Klondike accelerated, harbor for unknown shores.1 dependable news-reporting was in short They were not alone. Thousands of supply and newspapers often relied on men fortune hunters were headed in the same disembarking from ships for testimonials. general direction, though the vast majority Newspapers also printed letters sent by wanted to reach Dawson City and the stampeders or paraphrased correspondence Klondike gold fields in Canada where rich intended for family and friends. In the deposits of nuggets and dust had been process, the truth was often exaggerated in discovered. Grinnell’s group had different the telling or distorted as stories passed from ideas. They decided to focus instead on an one newspaper to another across the United unlikely section of northwestern Alaska States. In addition, many people had reasons called Kotzebue Sound, which straddled the to boost the idea that Far North gold was XIII FORTUNE’S DISTANT SHORES: A HISTORY OF THE KOTZEBUE SOUND GOLD STAMPEDE IN ALASKA’S ARCTIC plentiful and easy to recover.