THE ARRIVAL : NATIVE AND MISSIONARY RELATIONS ON THE UPPER TANANA RIVER , 1914 William E. Simeone Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence, 333 Raspberry Road, Anchorage, AK 99518; [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper develops a context for a series of historical photographs that document the arrival of mis- sionaries at the Episcopal mission at Tanana Crossing in 1914. The photographs were taken 15 years after the Klondike stampede of 1898, which set in motion a series of developments that, by 1914, were already having a profound effect on the Native people of interior Alaska. The author argues that while the Episcopal Church saw Native people as nonactors in the drama of development and feared unregulated change, Native people embraced change, and this is evident from the photographs. The people facing the camera saw themselves as sophisticated, “civilized” people still in control of their world. This confidence produced a certain anxiety because Whites were then faced with an image that neither White nor recognizably Native. Such unregulated transformations placed the church in a double bind, because they not only led to unrecognizable forms but might also lead to desires for self-governance. Key WORDS : Episcopal Church, Upper Tanana, Athabascan, photographs, missionaries In 1914, the upper Tanana region of east central Alaska wet snow covered the ground. Accompanying Pick were was on the periphery of the American frontier. Gold seek- the Reverend Charles Betticher, priest in charge of the ers had briefly wandered through the area on their way to Episcopal missions along the Tanana River, and Celia the Klondike in 1899, but by 1914 the region was remote Wright, a lay missionary who was returning to the mission from the major transportation corridor connecting the after a furlough in Fairbanks. The 200-mile trip had taken population centers of Fairbanks and Valdez, and it was eight weeks by river steamer (Betticher 1914). As soon as not until the construction of the Alaska Highway during he arrived Betticher began taking photographs. From the World War II that the region became accessible to settlers. steamer he took two photos of the mission, which was a This period could be characterized as a “middle ground” converted telegraph station purchased by the church from because EuroAmerican hegemony had not yet become the U.S. military. The telegraph station had been built at dominant (White 1991). a ford or crossing on the Tanana River and was part of the Deaconess Mabel Pick (Fig. 1) of the Protestant telegraph line connecting Valdez with Eagle City on the Episcopal Church arrived at the mission station at Tanana Yukon. By 1914, the line and all the stations had been aban- Crossing late in the summer of 1914. A thin layer of doned. Those Native people who lived nearest the mission Alaska Journal of Anthropology vol. 5, no. 1 (2007) 83 in 1914 were from the Mansfield/Ketchumstuk band, who a somber black and white outfit. Some of the people are had semipermanent villages at Mansfield Lake, located 11 holding cabbages harvested from the garden started by the km north of Tanana Crossing, and Ketchumstuk, 97 km missionaries. further north (McKennan 1981:565). To greet the new missionary, some people, especial- Pick, Wright, and Betticher were greeted by retiring ly the younger ones, wore their best clothes: the men in missionary Margaret Graves and a contingent of Native suits, white shirts, ties, and Stetson hats, and the women people. At some point Betticher photographed the entire in dresses they had either purchased in Dawson, Eagle, group standing against one wall of the mission house. or Fortymile or had made themselves using a sewing ma- There are approximately 50 people in the photograph, but chine brought by the missionaries. Many of the young this is certainly not the entire Mansfield/Ketchumstuk women also wore hairstyles influenced by the missionaries. band since the 1910 census lists 57 people at Lake Because the mission was so remote, Pick brought enough Mansfield and 44 Native people residing at Ketchumstuk. supplies to see her through an entire year, and these were The missionaries stand to the right, with Pick dressed in unloaded with the help of Native men. The missionaries decided to celebrate and use some of the new supplies to make bread, and they enlisted the help of several Native women. When I found Betticher’s photographs in the late 1970s they appeared to have little ethnographic value, since everyone was dressed in western-style clothing. But the images were fascinating. They have a captivating vi- tality and immediacy. The people seem almost bemused, exuding a relaxed self-assurance that is reminiscent of the stately high society portraits painted by the American art- ist John Singer Sargent. I showed the photos to Tanacross elders Martha Isaac and Gaither Paul. They were able to identify most of the people and related stories about where people came from, whom they were related to, and some of the personal idiosyncrasies they were noted for. But the question was: what did the photographs represent as his- torical documents? Using various sources of information, I constructed a context around the pictures and thought about the relationship between the missionaries who took the photographs and the people in the pictures. The photographs were taken 15 years after the Klondike stampede of 1898 and only a few years after Felix Pedro found gold on a tributary of the lower Tanana River (Simeone 1998). The discovery of gold set in mo- tion a series of developments that, by 1914, were already having a profound effect on the Native people of interior Alaska. Their territories were inundated by swarms of prospectors who must have seemed like a group of warring aliens, rushing from one creek to another, building and then evacuating towns, and shooting and fishing where convenience demanded. In the context of this drama the Figure 1. Deaconess Mabel Pick surrounded by supplies Protestant Episcopal Church saw Native people as passive that were supposed to see her through winter. (Photo by actors who had to be protected from the ravages of unscru- C. Betticher, courtesy of the Episcopal Church Archives, pulous Whites and unchecked progress. As the Episcopal Austin, Texas.) priest Frederick Drane put it, the church not only had the 84 the arrival: native and missionary relations on the upper tanana river, 1914 Figure 2. The mission station at Tanana Crossing, 1914. (Photo by C. Betticher, courtesy of the Episcopal Church Ar- chives, Austin, Texas.) Figure 3. The two story mission house and covered well. The mission house was originally built as a telegraph station on the line linking Valdez with Eagle (Photo by C. Betticher, courtesy of the Episcopal Church Archives, Austin, Texas.) Alaska Journal of Anthropology vol. 5, no. 1 (2007) 85 Figure 4. Mansfield and Ketchumstuk people with the missionaries Graves, Pick, and Wright, 1914. (Photo by C. Bet- ticher, courtesy of the Episcopal Church Archives, Austin, Texas.) responsibility to pass on the gospel but a duty to “human- can receive such medical help as will save their lives ity as well as to God to show the Native that there were and where education will be to some purpose and those who would work for his uplift as well as those who cost less then the present unsatisfactory methods. would prey on his weakness” (Drane n.d.:14). But the On the other hand, the Archdeacon of the Episcopal situation created a dilemma for the church. How do you Church, Hudson Stuck (1988 [1914]:288–289) thought protect Native people not only from unscrupulous Whites that to remove Native people from the land would destroy but from their own desire to embrace change and mimic them and that to educate simply for the sake of education or emulate what they saw around them? One solution, ad- was wrong. Stuck wrote: vocated by Episcopal Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe, was to For no one who has the welfare of the natives at consolidate the scattered bands of Indians into centralized heart can tolerate the notion of making them pau- locations controlled by the church. In his annual report pers; these who have always fended abundantly for for 1910, Rowe (1910–11:68) wrote that themselves, can entirely do so yet. With free rations there would be no more hunting, no more trapping, In places they [Native people] are made victims of no more fishing; and a hardy self-supporting race lust and debauchery. While subjects of laws they would sink at once to sloth and beggary and forget have no voice in, yet no laws seem to protect them. all that made men of them. If it were designed to This is why they are so scattered that it is next to destroy the Indian at a blow, here is an easy way to impossible to help them. The Government expends do it. Yet there are some, obsessed with the craze much in trying to educate the children, but aver- about what is called education, regarding it as age attendance is frightfully small. … It is like an end in itself and not a means to any end, who caring for the top of the tree while the roots are recommended this pauperizing because it would rotting. Something entirely different is demanded, permit the execution of a compulsory school-atten- and these original possessors of the country thrust dance law. Or is it a personal delusion of mine that to one side, their food-giving preserves encroached esteems an honest, industrious, self-supporting upon by the not-to-be-prevented advance of the su- Indian who cannot read and write English above perior race, are justly entitled to some protection one who can read and write English—and can do and aid from our Government.