Well, hello again, men and women of the Arctic Brotherhood tribute band. It seems that it's been a really long time (once again) since I've updated this. At times i've had big plans to post weekly entries, and then life gets in the way sometimes.
But, as always, the men of the Arctic Brotherhood rarely leave my mind for more than a few hours. They walked these streets, they climbed these mountains, they made these buildings, and they designed the logo on my arm. It's hard to not be immersed in them, really, in a place where history is so alive.
The question everyone always seems to ask me, besides "What is the Arctic brotherhood?" is "What happened to the Arctic Brotherhood?" Whenever someone asks me that, if any of my friends who know me very well are around, they smile, shake their heads, and hopefully LEAVE as soon as they can to avoid hearing that long, long story all over again.
That question is, really, what drove me to the AB in the first place. That question, and a man named Henry Bowman (sadly, no relation). I ended up finding a lot of answers by November of last year on that, but in a lot of ways it's still something that never really got resolved in my mind.
Why did the Arctic Brotherhood fail? OK. There are several factors involved. First, easy ones.
Number 1. When the AB first started in 1899, the white population of Alaska, the Yukon, and northern British Columbia was mainly made up of men (like that alliteration?) who were miners and merchants (BAM, take that Dr. Seuss). As everything became a little more settled over the years and decades, women joined the ranks. And, in this last frontier, traditional gender roles simply did not apply on either side. When the Alaska Native Brotherhood formed in 1912, the Alaska Native Sisterhood followed shortly. All kinds of other fraternal organizations began allowing women to join, even in the form of women's auxiliaries.
But did the Arctic Brotherhood? Never!
This is important to think about considering that when Alaska became a territory in 1912 (thank you AB Past Arctic Chief James Wickersham of Nome and Fairbanks), women were never denied the right to vote as they had been in other states, districts and territories. Women were, under the law, equal to men. An organization specific to the north that did not allow them to be equal to men would maybe have naturally faded out.
Number 2. The population of Alaska dwindled post-Klondike. The gold rushes to Nome and Fairbanks, among others, kept bringing people in for a few years, but a good deal of men and women came to the north looking for gold and never found it. Sure, lots of them stayed. But lots of them didn't. Where did they all go when they left? Vancouver or Seattle.
When they all found themselves in those western ports of call and realized they were among fellow Arctic Brethren, they wanted to meet with each other the way they had done up here. But could they? Of course not!
Why? Because one of the tenets of the fabric holding the Arctic Brotherhood together was its geographic exclusivity. Its innate northern-ness is what made it so unique. In order to be a member, on top of being male, over 18, and probably white, a man had to live north of the 54'40" line. (Not 54 feet and 40 inches. 54 degrees and 40 minutes. In case you were confused.) "BUT!" you might say, if you knew that honorary members like Senators and Presidents were initiated into the AB (which i'm sure you don't), "how come visiting dignitaries got to be members then?"
Well, they were just special. That's all. Even Governor General Earl Grey (not the tea guy) was given ceremonial honors by the AB when he visited Dawson, Camp #4. But these men were honorary members, not full members with all the privileges.
This became an interesting conflict within the AB. Just think about it, even in terms of the people who inhabit the great white north today. So... you come up north and live that incredibly difficult lifestyle inherent to the area, powering through it all because you love living here, and you're a part of an organization that celebrates that lifestyle... then your buddy gets tired of the 60-degrees-below-zero winters and the isolation, moves away, and still wants to be a part of that organization? I can tell you with absolute certainty that it would piss people off.
There's this thing about Alaska that you may not realize if you've never visited or lived here. People are really proud to be Alaskan. Not in the same way people are proud to be New Yorkers or Bostonians. The length of time you've lived in Alaska, the number of winters you've put in, is absolutely a status symbol. Not everyone's vocal about it but there is a certain hauteur and condescension put on by people who have been here a while. And i don't think it's a new phenomenon.
Robert Service observed it best in one of his poems:
"I'm one of the Arctic Brotherhood, i'm an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first, oh GOD! how i've cursed this Yukon-- but i'm still here."
Number 3. This is a little more abstract, so if you've been drinking while reading this you may want to come back another time.
When the AB started in 1899, like i said, Alaska was the last frontier. It was undeveloped, rugged, unimproved, remote. A good deal of towns, cities and villages were completely inaccessible in the winter time except by dog sled, if you were lucky. (Remember this last winter how Nome had to get fuel from a Russian tanker? It was even worse back then.) Even during the summer months, the main connections between points on the map were waterways. The mighty Yukon connected a good deal of former AB camps to each other, along with water routes in the Inside Passage and the Gulf of Alaska.
There weren't a lot of roads. Apart from the 100-mile stretch from Skagway to Whitehorse at the turn of the century, there weren't railroads in those early years of the AB. And a good deal of communities were hundreds of miles away from the next town over. Things were isolated.
So it's only natural that fraternal orders were such a big deal in those days. The Masons, Elks, Eagles, Knights of Pythias, Moose, Sons of the North, Maccabbees, to name a few, all flourished in this corner of the world in the early days of white people invading.
It makes sense. These communities were isolated, remote, and quite often, entirely miserable to live in. Groups like the AB did things to make people feel more at home -- had social gatherings - to help people support each other - medical care and rescue missions - and to give people something to do in the long winter months - built libraries and pool halls. People relied on these organizations to take care of each other.
Then industrialization happened. (Yeah, we have running water now. it's cool.) Planes started coming in to bring the mail. The Alaska Railroad was completed in the early 20s (the reason for President Harding's visit to Alaska, during which he chilled with the AB men here at Camp #1). The Richardson Highway was in progress (thank you AB member Captain Richardson). Technology made new Alaskans and Yukoners a lot more mobile. And suddenly, or gradually, they realized they didn't need the clubs so much.
When you can get from one town to another pretty quickly, it's not that important to have such a close-knit support network in your neighborhood, I guess.
At the same time, although the AB died out, maybe due in part to each of those three reasons, other similar organizations are still alive and well. The Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood are still going strong, as are the Pioneers of Alaska and Yukon Order of Pioneers (YOOP - love that acronym). As any Skagwegian will tell you, the Elks and Eagles survived long past the gold rush in our little town and still are very important to the community in ways beyond the fact that they're the only 2 bars open through the entire winter.
So... if other organizations didn't fall to the same wayside, why did the AB? That, my children, is another story for another day, even though that's the story I set out to tell in this post. Evereything I've put out here has just been theories. There was a very concrete event in 1909 which spurred the upset within the AB that doomed them forever. That story and its resulting story arcs are outside the realm of hypothesis -- it was very well-documented by Dr. Moore and our faithful anonymous journalists of the era.
But more on that later. Brace yourselves, AB fan club, for the next chapter in this epic tale.
Showing posts with label Yukon territory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yukon territory. Show all posts
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Monday, November 28, 2011
Spotlight on Camp #4, Dawson
It's ironic to think that I've been living in Skagway, the gateway to the Klondike, for four and a half years and i've never been to Dawson City. For the last two and a half of those years I've been completely immersed in the history of the Klondike Gold Rush and Dawson is the city that was built up around the gold fields of the Klondike itself. As plans begin to fall into place and I may be working on my first trip to the place that brought hundreds of thousands of people northward, many of them through Skagway, I thought it would be pertinent to post an entry spotlighting Dawson's camp of the Arctic Brotherhood.
Over the years, the four major consistent camps of the AB became Skagway #1, Dawson #4, Nome #9, and Fairbanks #16. That's mainly due to the fact that many of the cities that the AB made its home were transient, temporary mining camps that rose and fell fairly quickly. In 1899, when the Arctic Brotherhood was founded, Dawson's population had fallen from 40,000 to 4,000. It's a significant drop, but the city was still surviving. Being on the Yukon River made it an important stop for those headed westward into Alaska's interior.
The Klondike Nugget was one of Dawson's main sources of news. Its publisher was a man by the name of Arnold F. George. While in Skagway, George was initiated into Skagway's Arctic Brotherhood, which at that time only had two other subordinate camps in Atlin and Bennett. George was initiated during the first meeting of Skagway's club in their new hall. During the meeting, George and another new initiate, E. J. Fitzpatrick, discussed the fact that Dawson could use its own chapter of the AB.
After the meeting, George boldly asked the officers of Camp #1 if he could be granted authority to be a deputy organizer. That would give him the power to organize camps without receiving prior permission each time. In the days when, if possible, mail moved slower than it does today, it was important to be able to get these things done without having to rely on the postal service.
Arnold George was a brand-new member to the club so it might seem like he was overstepping his bounds in making such a request so early. The rest of the men already present knew him to be a reputable man, and his business was well-respected in Skagway and elsewhere. And so Arnold George was given the authority to organize camps.
On November 24th, 1899 (just nine months after the AB was initially created), Dawson became home to Camp #4 of the AB. The first few meetings only had a few men present, but the camp grew fairly quickly. The first officers of the camp were George himself, Fitzpatrick, Stroller White, Rudy Kalenborn (whose descendent I was lucky enough to meet in summer 2010), Max Kollm (who allegedly discovered AB Mountain), Dr. Everett, Fred Atwood, Henry Fulda, and L. Orville Wilcoxen.
In October of 1901, Dawson's club began working on having its own building. In four days, the group collected enough money to begin construction. It cost over $16,000 in total but was known as the first building of its kind in the north, the finest hall north of Victoria. (Today, that building is Diamond Tooth Gertie's, one of very few AB halls to still stand.)
In December, the club had a formal dedication of the building. It entailed a ceremonial dedication, dinner and dancing. The club had put together an orchestra. One journalist claimed that initially dancing was hardly possible due to the fact that the building was so crowded; it ended up lasting from 10 PM to 4 in the morning. When the orchestra stopped playing, it was only because they were so exhausted that they physicaly could no longer play.
The dedication ceremony was the first of many events to be put on at Dawson's AB Hall. Over the years Dawson's club would prove to be the most creative of all 32 camps. They had their own orchestra and often housed theatrical productions. The club wrote, produced, and starred in an opera entitled "The Island of Kokomolo." In the ragtime era, Dawson #4 even put on minstrel shows in blackface.
One of the most prominent events to happen to the Dawson Arctic Brotherhood occurred when they met with Canada's Governor General, Earl Grey. (Incidentally, this Earl Grey is not the same Earl Grey after whom the tea was named, which made research a little confusing.) It seems as though the Eagles club of Dawson had received Grey at their building. As he left the Eagles to head to the dock, the AB had their own reception for him. That meant they whisked him away and led him in a parade down to the wharf. Later, when Grey sent a letter to the city of Dawson thanking them for their hospitality, he said that the AB's parade was one of the highlights.
Another event that Camp Dawson put on was a masquerade ball for New Year's of 1901. The writer covering the event for the newspaper said that the occasion was well attended by Dawson's high society. He also noted that often, in these types of events, after masks were removed women might find that they had less dancing partners when their faces were revealed. Apparently sometimes it happens that a mask is prettier than a face. The writer made sure to point out that that was not the case at this event, as everyone there had plenty of dancing partners both before and after their true appearances wer revealed.
I can't be sure when Dawson's camp went under, but it was one of the longest-lasting chapters of the club. They contributed a lot of creativity and enthusiasm to the club, and their events were covered in a lot of detail by Dawson's newspapers. If you find yourself in Dawson, visit Diamond Tooth Gertie's and take a moment, look around, and imagine the building packed to the max with people attempting to dance at the first event ever to be held there.
Over the years, the four major consistent camps of the AB became Skagway #1, Dawson #4, Nome #9, and Fairbanks #16. That's mainly due to the fact that many of the cities that the AB made its home were transient, temporary mining camps that rose and fell fairly quickly. In 1899, when the Arctic Brotherhood was founded, Dawson's population had fallen from 40,000 to 4,000. It's a significant drop, but the city was still surviving. Being on the Yukon River made it an important stop for those headed westward into Alaska's interior.
The Klondike Nugget was one of Dawson's main sources of news. Its publisher was a man by the name of Arnold F. George. While in Skagway, George was initiated into Skagway's Arctic Brotherhood, which at that time only had two other subordinate camps in Atlin and Bennett. George was initiated during the first meeting of Skagway's club in their new hall. During the meeting, George and another new initiate, E. J. Fitzpatrick, discussed the fact that Dawson could use its own chapter of the AB.
After the meeting, George boldly asked the officers of Camp #1 if he could be granted authority to be a deputy organizer. That would give him the power to organize camps without receiving prior permission each time. In the days when, if possible, mail moved slower than it does today, it was important to be able to get these things done without having to rely on the postal service.
Arnold George was a brand-new member to the club so it might seem like he was overstepping his bounds in making such a request so early. The rest of the men already present knew him to be a reputable man, and his business was well-respected in Skagway and elsewhere. And so Arnold George was given the authority to organize camps.
On November 24th, 1899 (just nine months after the AB was initially created), Dawson became home to Camp #4 of the AB. The first few meetings only had a few men present, but the camp grew fairly quickly. The first officers of the camp were George himself, Fitzpatrick, Stroller White, Rudy Kalenborn (whose descendent I was lucky enough to meet in summer 2010), Max Kollm (who allegedly discovered AB Mountain), Dr. Everett, Fred Atwood, Henry Fulda, and L. Orville Wilcoxen.
In October of 1901, Dawson's club began working on having its own building. In four days, the group collected enough money to begin construction. It cost over $16,000 in total but was known as the first building of its kind in the north, the finest hall north of Victoria. (Today, that building is Diamond Tooth Gertie's, one of very few AB halls to still stand.)
In December, the club had a formal dedication of the building. It entailed a ceremonial dedication, dinner and dancing. The club had put together an orchestra. One journalist claimed that initially dancing was hardly possible due to the fact that the building was so crowded; it ended up lasting from 10 PM to 4 in the morning. When the orchestra stopped playing, it was only because they were so exhausted that they physicaly could no longer play.
The dedication ceremony was the first of many events to be put on at Dawson's AB Hall. Over the years Dawson's club would prove to be the most creative of all 32 camps. They had their own orchestra and often housed theatrical productions. The club wrote, produced, and starred in an opera entitled "The Island of Kokomolo." In the ragtime era, Dawson #4 even put on minstrel shows in blackface.
One of the most prominent events to happen to the Dawson Arctic Brotherhood occurred when they met with Canada's Governor General, Earl Grey. (Incidentally, this Earl Grey is not the same Earl Grey after whom the tea was named, which made research a little confusing.) It seems as though the Eagles club of Dawson had received Grey at their building. As he left the Eagles to head to the dock, the AB had their own reception for him. That meant they whisked him away and led him in a parade down to the wharf. Later, when Grey sent a letter to the city of Dawson thanking them for their hospitality, he said that the AB's parade was one of the highlights.
Another event that Camp Dawson put on was a masquerade ball for New Year's of 1901. The writer covering the event for the newspaper said that the occasion was well attended by Dawson's high society. He also noted that often, in these types of events, after masks were removed women might find that they had less dancing partners when their faces were revealed. Apparently sometimes it happens that a mask is prettier than a face. The writer made sure to point out that that was not the case at this event, as everyone there had plenty of dancing partners both before and after their true appearances wer revealed.
I can't be sure when Dawson's camp went under, but it was one of the longest-lasting chapters of the club. They contributed a lot of creativity and enthusiasm to the club, and their events were covered in a lot of detail by Dawson's newspapers. If you find yourself in Dawson, visit Diamond Tooth Gertie's and take a moment, look around, and imagine the building packed to the max with people attempting to dance at the first event ever to be held there.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
October 25 and beyond
Of all the tragedies to hit the Skagway area, as far as I can tell, the most sensational is the wreck of the Princess Sophia. She was southbound from Skagway carrying 300 passengers and 65 crew members, 92 years ago today. That’s more than the Palm Sunday avalanche, and it’s a story more shrouded in mystery than the Christmas Day murders. The main reason that so little was known for so long – and in many ways, so little is still known today—is that the company who owned the vessel destroyed all records related to the incident. Bad press, you know?
At the time of the wreck, in 1918, Sophia was one of many regularly-scheduled ships to cruise up and down the coast much like today’s Alaska marine highway ferry system. This was before regular air service, and before well-developed roads, so the water was the main form of transit for many. Each fall, just like today, a mass exodus left Skagway. In 1918 it wasn’t just Skagway's summer workers heading home; back then Skagway was one of the main access ports to getting in and out of the Yukon, northern BC, and interior Alaska. The exit from Skagway was made up of people from all over; most notably Dawson.
Members of Dawson’s Arctic Brotherhood who were on board included entrepreneurs William C. Sharron and Albert Pinska; Sam Henry; carpenter Thomas Collins; James A. Clarke; and customs officer Edmund Ironside. The wife and daughter of C. J. Vifquain were also on board, as well as Council City member John Haynes. Ironside is the most notable character of the AB group on the ship. The book written by Betty O’Keefe and Ian MacDonald on the subject give light to the well-loved officer of the law. According to a tale by Ironside, another passenger, Lulu Mae Eads, was the same “Lady Lou” of the Robert Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Ironside himself had no misgivings in admitting that his own poetry was modeled after Robert Service’s—at the time, many amateur Northern poets styled their poems after their favorite poet (who, by the way, mentions the AB in two poems but was not himself a member).
Ironside was traveling with his mother for a winter holiday. Nostalgia raged among the passengers, crew, and the farewell parties in Skagway as Sophia’s final voyage of the season lay ahead. This year, according to O’Keefe and MacDonald, there were more people leaving than usual. Unlike past years, many of them planned to never return. Ironside, wrought in emotion as well as everyone around him, captured the moment in a short poem called “Leaving Dawson.” The final few lines:
It isn’t “goodbye” forever
That is the message you vain would send,
To the magic city of Dawson as the
Ship sails around the bend.
Unfortunately, Ironside’s words held an ominous foreboding, as for at least 365 oceangoers, it would be goodbye forever.
The wreck happened in the midst of a blizzard. Many rescue attempts were thwarted by the weather. It was another Arctic Brother, Governor Thomas Christmas Riggs, who orchestrated the recovery efforts and coordinated the search for bodies from Juneau. Charles Garfield, a member of Nome’s AB camp, was the sailor who confirmed that none of the passengers or crew of Sophia survived. If Dawson had the most passengers on board, Juneau was equally captivated by the disaster by heading up relief efforts. No one in Juneau was unaffected by the search.
After the Titanic sinking in 1912, ship safety had been heightened; but the Princess Sophia had added extra berths last minute to over-extend their passenger capacity. The final report ended in much controversy by stating that the ship's pilot had indeed been going too fast as well. In spite of the hope that many ships gave the passengers and crew in the hours following the initial cause of the wreck-- collision with a reef, about halfway between Skagway and Juneau-- no rescue would occur. Many passengers wrote out their final wills and letters to loved ones in the moments before water filled the boat and the lives of 365 were lost.
Shortly after the disaster, Governor Riggs quarantined Juneau, banning all maritime traffic due to an influenza outbreak. It was this same Spanish flu that had tragically ended the young life of Skagway officer Vincent Dortero in October of 1918, around the same time. Dortero was in Iowa serving with the military. Not only was he an AB, he also was a member of the Eagles, Pioneers, and Knights of Pythias. His death was reported in the Skagway papers, and was a rude awakening to many.
On a more positive note to close out October in AB history, the 1909 Arctic Brotherhood book documents two clubs being founded in this month.
October 22nd of 1900 marked the founding of Camp #11, Council City. The camp was established with fifteen charter members by Walter H. Ferguson, the US Commissioner for that district. Council City was located in the vicinity of Nome on the Seward Peninsula. At the time of the camp’s founding, Council City was on the decline. It was debatable as to whether the camp would survive at all… more on that next month!!
Also in October of 1907 the Arctic Brotherhood camp in Fairbanks, #16, was re-organized. It had originally been founded in 1903, but poor management had caused its breakdown and its members decided that a re-establishment was in order. Next month Fairbanks is in the spotlight again, with a night to remember for many.
At the time of the wreck, in 1918, Sophia was one of many regularly-scheduled ships to cruise up and down the coast much like today’s Alaska marine highway ferry system. This was before regular air service, and before well-developed roads, so the water was the main form of transit for many. Each fall, just like today, a mass exodus left Skagway. In 1918 it wasn’t just Skagway's summer workers heading home; back then Skagway was one of the main access ports to getting in and out of the Yukon, northern BC, and interior Alaska. The exit from Skagway was made up of people from all over; most notably Dawson.
Members of Dawson’s Arctic Brotherhood who were on board included entrepreneurs William C. Sharron and Albert Pinska; Sam Henry; carpenter Thomas Collins; James A. Clarke; and customs officer Edmund Ironside. The wife and daughter of C. J. Vifquain were also on board, as well as Council City member John Haynes. Ironside is the most notable character of the AB group on the ship. The book written by Betty O’Keefe and Ian MacDonald on the subject give light to the well-loved officer of the law. According to a tale by Ironside, another passenger, Lulu Mae Eads, was the same “Lady Lou” of the Robert Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Ironside himself had no misgivings in admitting that his own poetry was modeled after Robert Service’s—at the time, many amateur Northern poets styled their poems after their favorite poet (who, by the way, mentions the AB in two poems but was not himself a member).
Ironside was traveling with his mother for a winter holiday. Nostalgia raged among the passengers, crew, and the farewell parties in Skagway as Sophia’s final voyage of the season lay ahead. This year, according to O’Keefe and MacDonald, there were more people leaving than usual. Unlike past years, many of them planned to never return. Ironside, wrought in emotion as well as everyone around him, captured the moment in a short poem called “Leaving Dawson.” The final few lines:
It isn’t “goodbye” forever
That is the message you vain would send,
To the magic city of Dawson as the
Ship sails around the bend.
Unfortunately, Ironside’s words held an ominous foreboding, as for at least 365 oceangoers, it would be goodbye forever.
The wreck happened in the midst of a blizzard. Many rescue attempts were thwarted by the weather. It was another Arctic Brother, Governor Thomas Christmas Riggs, who orchestrated the recovery efforts and coordinated the search for bodies from Juneau. Charles Garfield, a member of Nome’s AB camp, was the sailor who confirmed that none of the passengers or crew of Sophia survived. If Dawson had the most passengers on board, Juneau was equally captivated by the disaster by heading up relief efforts. No one in Juneau was unaffected by the search.
After the Titanic sinking in 1912, ship safety had been heightened; but the Princess Sophia had added extra berths last minute to over-extend their passenger capacity. The final report ended in much controversy by stating that the ship's pilot had indeed been going too fast as well. In spite of the hope that many ships gave the passengers and crew in the hours following the initial cause of the wreck-- collision with a reef, about halfway between Skagway and Juneau-- no rescue would occur. Many passengers wrote out their final wills and letters to loved ones in the moments before water filled the boat and the lives of 365 were lost.
Shortly after the disaster, Governor Riggs quarantined Juneau, banning all maritime traffic due to an influenza outbreak. It was this same Spanish flu that had tragically ended the young life of Skagway officer Vincent Dortero in October of 1918, around the same time. Dortero was in Iowa serving with the military. Not only was he an AB, he also was a member of the Eagles, Pioneers, and Knights of Pythias. His death was reported in the Skagway papers, and was a rude awakening to many.
On a more positive note to close out October in AB history, the 1909 Arctic Brotherhood book documents two clubs being founded in this month.
October 22nd of 1900 marked the founding of Camp #11, Council City. The camp was established with fifteen charter members by Walter H. Ferguson, the US Commissioner for that district. Council City was located in the vicinity of Nome on the Seward Peninsula. At the time of the camp’s founding, Council City was on the decline. It was debatable as to whether the camp would survive at all… more on that next month!!
Also in October of 1907 the Arctic Brotherhood camp in Fairbanks, #16, was re-organized. It had originally been founded in 1903, but poor management had caused its breakdown and its members decided that a re-establishment was in order. Next month Fairbanks is in the spotlight again, with a night to remember for many.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)