Last Letters from Attu. Mary Breu

Tanana Chiefs, circa 1920.

      ALASKA’S DIGITAL ARCHIVES, ASA-P277-044-022.

       2

      Tanana

       1922–1923

      It was early in the afternoon on August 20, 1922, when Etta and Marie first glimpsed their future home. The village of Tanana was situated on flats at the junction of the mighty Yukon and Tanana Rivers. Small covered fishing boats and a sternwheeler were tied to the dirt riverbank. Front Street ran along this riverbank and Second Street was parallel, one block back. These two treeless unpaved streets were dusty in dry weather and muddy when it rained.

       Tanana waterfront, on Yukon River, 1922.

      IT WAS NOT A VERY IMPRESSIVE sight but one that even then radiated charm. Most of the houses were of log, looking small and dingy from the outside, but how cozy and warm and hospitable on the inside, we later found out. Standing stark in the sunshine, without the benefit of shade trees, the cabins were revealed by the clear sky, which was a deep blue usually associated with a summer day.

      On Front Street were the stores or trading outfits, two hotels, a pool hall, and a small church. At the extreme end of these buildings was Fort Gibbon. The fort had been abandoned, but there were still a few clearing-up personnel. As soon as they were finished with their assignment, they, too, would move away and the buildings would be left with a caretaker.

      When our boat was tied to the bank, all passengers went their own way, and we realized that if we wanted our baggage moved, it was up to us to do it ourselves. It was apparent that we must find a house to live in because we could not afford hotel rates. The hotelkeeper’s wife was friendly and helpful. “You’re the new teacher? Well, I’m on the school board. We have been expecting you, and I can help you with a place to live.” Her husband had a choice log cabin that he would rent us for $15 a month. We were enchanted with our new home, known as the Scotty Kay House, one of the few in town that had a second story. It had three rooms downstairs and two above.

      Marie and unidentified child in front of Etta and Marie’s home, Tanana, 1922.

      To me, that first night in our new home was enchantment itself. I hung out the bedroom window, listening to the silence, which was so great it beat insistently on the ears. It was a living stillness. The soft velvety darkness spoke a friendly welcome, and in the distance a hoot owl added his voice. He must have been some distance away, but the clear, vibrant air brought him very near. To me, he was a friendly fellow, but not to Marie. She covered up her head, saying, “Shut the window. The silence hurts my ears.” She never got used to that silence, which increased when the snow came. As poet Robert Service says, “Full of hush to the brim.” There was a brooding, tangible something in that silence that sometimes seemed friendly, sometimes frightening.

      The front windows of Etta and Marie’s house faced another two-story cabin across the dirt road, the home of a recently married former Episcopalian missionary.

      WITH FAULTLESS MANNERS, this friendly neighbor soon called on us, inviting us to dinner. The other guest at the dinner was an old friend of her husband’s, one Charles Foster Jones.

      Foster was born on May 1, 1879, in St. Paris, Ohio, to Caleb and Sarah Jones. Foster had two siblings, Mamie, 7, and Xerxes, 4. When Foster was four months old, his mother died of typhoid fever. In 1880, Dr. Jones married Julia Goodin, and they had six children: Cecil, Oasis, Caleb, Tracy, Anita, and Lowell. Foster’s father was a physician and founder of Willowbark, a residential facility in St. Paris for recovering alcoholics. He owned a drug store, was involved in numerous activities in the United Methodist Church, and traveled around the state giving speeches encouraging his listeners to improve their health and lifestyles. With all of his commitments, Dr. Jones had little time for day-to-day interaction with his nine children, but he had exceptionally high standards and there was no doubt in their minds what he expected of them.

      In 1897, before Foster finished high school, he had had enough of his stern father and small-town life, so he struck out for Washington state. When he arrived, word was spreading that gold had been discovered in Alaska, and Foster contracted a serious case of “gold fever.” He asked his father to loan him $600 so he could out-fit himself to become part of the gold rush, and Dr. Jones complied. This loan was deducted from Foster’s share of the estate when his father died in 1924.

       Charles Foster Jones, Tanana, circa 1920s.

      Beginning in 1898, Foster’s occupations were mining and prospecting in various sections of Alaska. He never struck it rich, nor did he go broke. Images of big, strapping, bearded, gruff men are conjured up when one thinks of mining prospectors. Foster was none of these. He stood five feet seven inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and was complacent and easygoing. Through the years, Foster corresponded with his family, but he never returned to his birthplace.

      Foster met Michigan native Frank Lundin in 1911 and they became friends and were mining partners for the next several years. At one point, they were buying supplies to take to their cabin. Frank purchased the necessary staples, but Foster bought a book of poems by Robert Service. Frank commented that if they ran out of food, they couldn’t eat the book, but Foster said, “When we get back to our shack on Birch Creek, look at the pleasure we will get from reading those poems.”

      By 1922, they had established residency in Tanana and were involved in civic and social activities in the community. Frank wrote, “In 1922, I was elected to the [Tanana] School Board. We had no teacher, so I had to arrange for one. I wrote to the Commissioner at Juneau, and he wrote back saying that he had already arranged to have a teacher sent to Tanana. The teacher who applied for the job was Marie Schureman, and when she came to Tanana, she had her sister, Etta, with her.”

      BESIDES GOOD FOOD, we greedily ate up all the fascinating details of Foster Jones and Frank Lundin’s early experiences in Alaska. Both had joined the Klondike stampede going over the Chilkoot Pass in 1898 and had also been in the Nome, Fairbanks, and Ruby gold rushes. They related exciting times and many thrilling experiences as though they were commonplace occurrences. This same Foster Jones became very helpful in preparing us for the coming winter, the intensity of which we could not imagine. Many times that winter, when locked in by ice, snow, and cold, we blessed his thoughtful kindness.

      There were offers of help from everyone in town. One brought us a gasoline stove, another cut our wood for the heater, and others fixed storm windows and doors. We were given advice, good advice, that we did not always follow, much to our sorrow later. It was necessary to get the work done quickly because freezing nights and snow flurries began sometime in September. Old-timers assured us that sixty below for a month at a stretch was not uncommon. Watch the bottle of painkiller, they cautioned, because it froze at seventy-two below. Marie gasped when she found in the school register a notation by a former teacher that school had been closed that day because the thermometer registered seventy-two below. It couldn’t get that cold. Or, could it?

      Marie taught at the government school for white children who lived in and around Tanana. The schoolhouse was about two blocks from their home, and as she walked along Front Street she could hear the river as it cascaded over the rocks and she felt droplets of moisture on her face as the wind blew. She passed one-story log houses that were built close to the road and close to each other. Green