Jennifer Niven - Ada BlackJack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic

ADA
BLACKJACK

A TRUE STORY OF SURVIVAL IN THE ARCTIC

Jennifer Niven

Dedication

FOR JACK FAIN MCJUNKIN JR.,

my father
this one and all the ones to follow

AND FOR BILLY BLACKJACK JOHNSON,

who did so much to make sure his mother was not forgotten

Epigraph

As she looked back, the trail behind her faded away and she was way up in the air, with no man behind her and only the smooth trail leading into the sky.

ADA BLACKJACK

The Lady in the Moon

Contents

IN SEPTEMBER 1923, a diminutive twenty-five-year-old Eskimo woman named Ada Blackjack emerged as the heroic survivor of an ambitious polar expedition. In the annals of Arctic exploration, many men have been hailed as heroes, but a hero like Ada was unheard of at the time. She was a young and unskilled woman who headed into the Arctic in search of money and a husband. What she found instead was a nightmare rivaling even the most horrific folktales she had grown up hearing from the storytellers in her village.

After Adas triumphant return to civilization, the international press called her the female Robinson Crusoe. But all reports came from the imaginations of reporters. Ada Blackjack refused to talk to anyone about her two years in the Arctic. Only on one occasion did she speak up for herself.

Ada Blackjack never considered herself a hero. As far as she was concerned, she did what she had to do when she found herself in a life and death situation. Faced with responsibilities and challenges she had never known existed, she survived.

In later years, when people called her brave, she would tilt her head to one side and gaze at them, unblinking, with dark brown eyes. After some time, she would answer simply: Brave? I dont know about that. But I would never give up hope while Im still alive.

I first heard of Ada when I was researching my first book, The Ice Master. I discovered that one of the men I was writing about, Fred Maurer, had miraculously survived the ill-fated Canadian Arctic Expedition of 19131914 only to return to Wrangel Island years later with three other men and one womanAda Blackjack. I was mystified as to why Maurer would go back to the island, after all he had suffered there. But even more than that, I was intrigued by the womans story. Who was Ada Blackjack?

Searching for answers, I discovered numerous materials housed in archives in Canada, Alaska, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. First and foremost, there was Adas own diary, one of the most important resources of all. The rest of the story is filled in by her collection of papers; other records and firsthand accounts, including the detailed, two-volume diary of her comrade Lorne Knight, in which Ada figures prominently; and the memories and knowledge of Billy Blackjack Johnson, Adas surviving son, who was enthusiastic about my telling the story of his mothers experience in the Arctic and who gave me full access to his own materials and information. Tragically, Billy died on June 22, 2003, at age seventy-eightand thus did not live to see this book published.

In addition, I received from the nephew of Milton Gallethe youngest member of the expeditiona treasure box filled with papers, letters, telegrams, photographs, and a partial journal. Until Milton Galles nephew, Bill Lawless, generously entrusted them to my care, these papers had never been read or seen by anyone outside of the Galle familyeven though expedition organizer Vilhjalmur Stefansson had been anxious to obtain them.

As Mrs. Rudolph Martin Anderson once wrote to the mother of Allan Crawford, the young Canadian placed in charge of the party, Real history is made up from the documents that were not meant to be published. Perhaps my most valuable resources have been the letters written between the families of the four young men on the expeditionto each other and also to Vilhjalmur Stefansson. All impressions expressed by the characters herein come from these letters, journals, and other firsthand materials, as does any quoted dialogue. Also in keeping with the language of the time, I use the term Eskimo instead of the present-day preferred Inuit. Because the four men called each other by their last names, I refer to them as Crawford, Knight, Maurer, and Galle. The only exceptions come in regard to their families and loved ones, who knew them as Allan, Lorne, Fred, and Milton. Ada Blackjack, however, was only known to the men and to Stefansson as Ada, and that is what she is called herein.

Loss and survival quickly emerged as the two main themes in this book, made all the more resonant and ironic by my own unexpected journey of loss and survival throughout the writing of it. Four days after I finished the first draft of the manuscript, my father passed away after a gallant battle with cancer. As I wrote about Lorne Knights own deterioration from scurvy and Adas struggle to live in spite of all that she endured, the parallels to my fathers last days became all too real.

This book is the story of Ada Blackjackduring her ordeal and after. It is also the story of four young menLorne Knight, Fred Maurer, Allan Crawford, and Milton Galleand their families.

Finally, it is very much the story of an enormous spirit that could outlast anything. As one of Adas great-nephews remembers, I recall her as a small, sweet woman whose faith was as big as the sky.

Allan Crawfordcommander; Toronto, Canada (age 20)

Lorne Knightsecond in command; McMinnville, Oregon (age 28)

Fred Maurerthird in command; New Philadelphia, Ohio (age 28)

Milton Galleassistant; New Braunfels, Texas (age 19)

Ada Blackjackseamstress; Nome, Alaska (age 23)

Victoria (Vic)expedition cat

PART I
THE FIVE

There, with only a dead man as companion, surrounded by seas of ice, Ada Blackjack wrote the real epic of the North.

THE WORLD MAGAZINE

October 30, 1927

HER FATHER WAS DYING . He had eaten meat that was too old and afterward he had eaten fresh meat, which turned his stomach, and now he was sick from poison. Eight-year-old Ada Delutuk and one of her younger sisters dressed him in pants and skin boots and his parkie, as Ada called it, and then they wrapped him up in skins to keep him warm.

Together, they somehow managed to tie their father to a sled, hitch the dogs up, and set out to drive to Nome. The town was thirty miles east of their remote village of Spruce Creek, Alaska, but the little girls had no choice. They needed to get help and, with their mother away, Ada was the oldest and the one left in charge.

It was difficult to say how many miles they had traveled before Ada and her sister realized that their father was dead. And so, defeated and brokenhearted, they simply turned back and took him home.

Their home was the Eskimo settlement of Spruce Creek, Alaska, eight miles east of the tiny, rustic village of Solomon. Ada Delutuk was born in 1898, the year of the Alaskan Gold Rush. In 1899 and 1900, thousands of people converged upon Solomon in search of gold. By 1904, the Gold Rush had brought seven saloons and a post office to the town, and soon after there was phone and mail service and a daily boat to Nome. But in 1913, tidal storms with 60-mile-per-hour winds and 40-foot breakers washed away the railroad tracks and most of the town, and the once thriving village of one thousand people became a quiet Eskimo community of three hundred. In 1918 the flu epidemic swept through the area, extinguishing almost the entire population of Spruce Creek.