Grandpa: A Mission in Alaska

A Mission in Grandpa A Mission in Alaska Alaska

By Jan-Olov Schroder [Original in Swedish]

By Jan-Olov Schroder Translated by [Original Sigurd F.inWestberg Swedish] Translated by Sigurd F. Westberg

Table of Contents Table of Contents Forward �����������������������������������������������������������������������1

Forward Emigrant ����������������������������������������������������������������������3 3 Emigrant Arrival �����������������������������������������������������������������������11 5 Arrival 17 Alaska - USA’s 49th State �����������������������������������������23 Alaska - USA's 49th State 31 Missionaries from Sweden ����������������������������������������29 MissionariesGolovin fromNext �������������������������������������������������������������41 Sweden 39 Golovin Next 53 The Land of the Eskimos ������������������������������������������55 Activities ������������������������������������������63 The Land ofEver-Changing the Eskimos 67 The Mission and the Reindeer ����������������������������������77 Ever-Changing Activities 77 The MissionHardships and the ������������������������������������������������������������������85 Reindeer 91 Hardships The Pioneer Hoijer ����������������������������������������������������97 99 The Eskimos Take Over ������������������������������������������113 The Pioneer Hoijer 113 Grandpa and Mother Ruth ��������������������������������������123 The Eskimos Take Over 131 A Much Too Rapid Revolution �������������������������������135 Grandpa and Mother Ruth 143 A Much Too Rapid Revolution 157

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Foreword Grandpa A Mission in Alaska by Jan-Olov Schroder

Remarkable chance events and coincidences lie behind the privilege I have of passing on the story of Grandpa and his Alaska. It was a winter day in 1972 when Grandpa and I became acquainted. For the first time since his emigration from Morberget in 1901, Ludvig Evald Ost had returned to his birthplace in Dalarna.

As a journalist it was natural that my curiosity should be awakened by this remarkable and fascinating life story. We separated by somewhat carelessly tossing off, “We’ll meet next time in Alaska.”

There have been many “next times” for Grandpa and me. In Alaska Ost and his large family took charge of me and showed me unlimited hospitality during the long summer sojourns I was to spend in the barren northland. Through this close contact with Ost and his family I received gratis a presentation of the whole Alaska mission and its history.

Ludvig Evald Ost - Grandpa - soon became for me the whole Alaska mission in a nutshell, personified in a towering old man who has been active since 1910 and continues so to this day. He has behind him a life of service in Alaska longer than anyone else.

This friendship resulted in the present compilation of the story of a missionary work that Swedes started in Alaska 90 years ago. When Grandpa himself was informed of the central role he was to play in the story, he wrote from his outpost at Fortuna Ledge along the Yukon River in Alaska the following letter to me in his glorious Old Swedish language: “I shall pray to the God of Heaven that he will overshadow you so that it will become a truthful story of the work in Alaska. But be very moderate concerning my little part.

“Painting with only light colors cannot produce a masterpiece. God knows this better than I do, so be honest before Him and mix in some dark colors in order that the result might be a true picture.”

These were the words of wisdom that Grandpa gave me before the book was put together.

Whether his wish was fulfilled is not for me to judge. In one sense it has been more difficult, this can be acknowledged. That is, in avoiding making the pioneers on the field some kind of heroes. But, as in all contexts, it is well known that it is easier to tell what has been accomplished than what has not been accomplished.

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The dark colors are to be found, in spite of everything, in the truth and in several sections of the book. And perhaps even more between the lines, with the thought that the reader him/ herself can judge the contributions made by the pioneers - or what ought to have been done for the people at the uttermost end of the earth.

Copyright 1979

Jan-Olov Schroder

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Chapter 1

Emigrant When He Returned from the Charcoal Kiln in the Woods a Letter Lay Waiting for Him The place was Lillmattsbyn in the little farming community of Morberget north of Ludvika in Dalarna. The year was 1900, the day before Christmas Eve. Olle’s Jan-Petter and Fall-Frans strode forward with determination and long steps. The crust held well. It was bitter cold. The fifteen-year-old half ran behind the woodsmen with their bent backs and tanned skins. They had done this many times before. The kiln was burned out and broken. Nearly four weeks of surveillance and hard work were over.

Tomorrow already it would be Christmas Eve. Now it was important to be back in time.

At last a few days respite from all the toil.

At home in Lillmattsbyn there was the warmth of the cottage and warm bath water.

Layers of soot and dirt from the charcoal burning at that miserable kiln would be gone.

The boy took three baths in the big copper tub in front of the stove. Then his skin regained its rightful color. The washing went faster than usual this time. The others in the cottage saw the eagerness. There was something absolutely special this evening. Not only because the charcoal burning was successfully completed and that it was Christmas.

For a letter had come!

The letter was to the fifteen-year-old. He could hardly rein in his curiosity and his feelings. The letter was from America. Maybe it was what he had hoped for for several years.

There was more spilled water than usual on the stones in front of the stove. Splashes of water with the normal mixture of soot and sweat and dirt saved up from the weeks in the woods. There was no mistaking the boy’s haste.

Aunt Sara Kristina, the house wife, broke the silence: “Evald, now you had better open the letter.”

Sara had long known that it would come sometime. Even before Evald ripped open the envelope with the elaborately printed address, she knew its contents. This was the end of Evald’s help at home, with board and room as pay. For the past year Evald had taken the place of the youngest daughter, Agda, while Sara gave herself to more important affairs -3-

in the woods and fields. For Sara as for most of the farm women in the poor villages, it hardly paid to stay at home and take care of the little children. But now, without Evald as baby sitter, she would jolly well have to stay at home.

Aunt Sara would rather, of course, that the letter had never come.

Thin and lean with his sinews showing, and tighter than usual after the violent scrubbing, Evald picked up the letter from America. Everybody in the cottage sat silently.

Of course! Everything fell in place.

It was the ticket with a few lines of directions as to how the trip would go, that is, by train from the Ramshyttan station to Gothenburg and then by ship from Gothenburg to Philadelphia in America.

The call and the ticket to America had come!

Sara tried awkwardly to say something to the effect that Evald was too crazy young to set out on such along journey, that it was too cold, that he was too poor, but they were words that simply disappeared in the empty void.

Only nine days later, on New Years Day 1901, the fifteen-year-old Ludvig Evald Ost bade farewell to his birthplace, Morberget. His father and brothers awaited him in America.

Olle’s Jan-Petter and Fall-Frans in Lillmattsbyn would have to look around for a new helper in the charcoal burning at the other kilns this winter. Aunt Sara Kristina would have to manage in the future without Evald as servant and baby sitter.

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The Whole Ost Family Emigrated Except Mother Who Died in Childbirth The letter with the ticket had come from the little town of Montreux in southern Minnesota.

The sender of the letter was the father, Johannes Ost. Johannes had left Morberget thirteen years earlier and emigrated to America.

Like so many other supporters of families in impoverished Sweden, Johannes had crossed the ocean to find a new and richer homeland for his wife and his sons. His object was to bring the rest of the family over from time to time as resources permitted. For the Osts in Morberget the upshot was that the family was splintered never to be completely reunited.

Johannes, the father, was born in 1848 in Vittena, into an old military family in Vastergotland. He went to the north country as a young railroad worker. In the little woodland village of Morberget in the northern part of Grangarde parish outside of Ludvika in Dalarna he met Johanna Fredrika Andersdotter, a poor crofter’s daughter. In 1875 they were married in Morberget.

Johannes built a little log house for himself and his wife with a few rooms and a kitchen.

Karl Henning, their first son was born there in 1878. There were subsequently four more sons, Fredrik, Albin, Evald and Axel in that order.

In the poorest imaginable circumstances the growing family struggled forward. Johannes worked as a logger and charcoal burner, sometimes as a railroad worker and blacksmith up north. When the revival movement swept through Sweden like a windstorm, Johannes was among those who were gripped by the message when the first meetings were held in Morberget. Since Johannes was a good singer and speaker, he joined a group of villagers who soon started regular meetings which later led to the organization of a Mission Church in Morberget.

Johannes Ost and his wife Johanna had for a long time harbored the thought of joining the great crowds who were at that time emigrating to America. The days and the years passed. The Ost family lived on the edge of starvation, not least because every cent they could spare went into the wooden box in the back corner of the bottom bureau drawer. For the goal had been established. All the money that could be laid aside was to go to the first ticket to America. The father Johannes was to emigrate and “over there� he would lay the ground work for a more tolerable life for himself and his family.

The plans were not merely a dream. In February 1888 Johannes had saved enough money and succeeded in obtaining a ticket on one of the ships to America. The family consisted of four sons, and Johanna was pregnant for the fifth time. But Johannes did not have the patience to wait for the addition. He left the responsibilities to Johanna, sure that she was fully capable of taking care of everything until the moment when the whole family would be reunited in America.

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It would later develop that this farewell on a cold day in February in Morberget, was the last time that Johannes would see his wife. Johanna Fredrika died in childbirth on July 18 of the same year, only twenty nine years old, six weeks after the fifth son, Axel, was born. Johanna would never share in the fulfillment of the America dream. She was the first one in the Ost family to be laid to rest along the way. The crofter family Ost from Morberget became one of many examples of how emigrant families were scattered. How enormously difficult it was to stick together when the emigrants were faced with unexpected difficulties and hastily changed their plans.

Johannes Ost worked during the first years in America as a brick mason and railroad worker in the state of Illinois. After that he landed in Minnesota where there were even at that time established Swedish settlements. After continued railroad work and various construction jobs, he eventually found work on a farm in the town of Trimont in southern Minnesota.

The youngest son, Axel whom the father had of course never seen, was, together with Fredrik, the first of the sons to be brought over. It was in December 1898 that Fredrik and the ten-year-old Axel left Sweden. At about the same time Albin and Karl were in Norway in construction work.

There those two separated. Albin set out alone on the journey to America, but Karl remained a while longer on a construction job in Oslo.

For some unknown reason Karl suddenly developed an interest in Australia. After having added considerably to his travel funds during an additional year in Norway, he set out, not to America, but on a month-long voyage to Australia. For several years Karl maintained contact with his brothers and father in America, a contact that surprisingly ceased about 1908. In his last letter Karl had talked about going to Africa. If he did so or remained in Australia was never known.

But since Karl was always considered to be a judicious and intelligent young man, they soon became convinced that something disastrous must have happened to him.

Before Johannes left for America he had arranged for his family in such a way that his sons would be placed under the protection of the parish constable in Morberget. Johan Jansson, or Skar-Johan as he was commonly called, was an authoritative person in a double sense. When the mother Johanna died after the birth of the youngest son, it was automatic that Skar-Johan entered as guardian of the sons. He placed them in foster homes in Morberget and the vicinity, chiefly in families that were related on the side of the deceased mother.

Evald, who had to wait the longest for his ticket, lived for a while with the merchant Dahlblom, a few years with Gjut-Gustaf where he was a helper in the blacksmith shop, then from the age of seven he lived with the tenant farmer Jakob Persson and his wife Sara Kristina. Sara was a half sister of the departed mother.

In this fashion, in foster homes that were hardly better off than the earlier poor Ost family, the sons spent their childhood years waiting to launch out into the world.

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The Moment of Farewell in Morberget So, as the last of the five Ost brothers, Evald also received his ticket to America on the day before Christmas Eve, 1900. These became several busy days. On short notice he had to break up in Morberget and set out on his long journey. On the other hand the travel fever and the hurry were really superficial, for Evald had been ready to travel for several years and besides he did not have many possessions to worry about. Hardly anything except the clothes he had on. The days before his departure he spent instead bidding farewell to Morberget, Lillmattsbyn, Stormattsbyn and the other villages.

The new year had just come when Ludvig Evald Ost, early on New Years morning left Jakob and Aunt Sara Person’s cottage in Lillmattsbyn for the last time. Alone he walked the kilometers down to Morberget. The last ones he had to say goodye to were the people in the house of the parish constable.

It was still dark when Evald knocked on the door at Skar-Johan’s house. He strode into the kitchen and true to his custom, sat down on the kitchen sofa inside the door. In the dusk of the morning he did not see that the youngest daughters of the household, the twins Hilda and Anna, were still asleep on the sofa. Consequently he sat down on them. Hilda and Anna woke up of course. The mother came in from the other room, and was quick to grasp the situation. She said, “Get up kids. It’s Evald who has come to say goodbye. He’s going to America now.”

Hilda and Anna hurried up. They had known of Evald’s trip and had thought a lot about what they should give him as a farewell present. Now they had to decide quickly. It would have to be the books the sisters had received barely a week earlier as Christmas presents.

They had liked the books and now they were the best they could think of to give Evald.

Hilda gave him “Bird Blue”, and Anna gave him “The Golden Castle”. Two children’s books with the gold edges that belonged to that period. In Skar-Johan’s house he received still more presents, more than all the others together had given him when he said farewell to them. The oldest son, Vilhelm, came out of his room dazed with sleep.

“You may take my heavy homespun coat. I have grown out of it anyway, and it might be cold on the ocean,” said Vilhelm and he handed over the coat to Evald who received it with sincere gratitude because he did not own a good outer garment. The only garment of that nature that he had was a thick woolen cap which he had bought with money he had earned in recent autumns by picking lingon berries and selling them for ten cents a quart.

The house wife whose name was Sara Kristina, the same name as his aunt in Lillmattsbyn, also made her contribution in the form of a bottle of raspberry syrup, and a paper bag with rolls and a big piece of smoked goat meat as provision for the imminent journey.

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It was in this fashion that young Evald took leave of his home town of Morberget. From now on he would have to take care of himself, being beyond all help from the people with whom he had grown up in the poor village in the Grangarde woodlands.

After the final farewell in the village Evald walked down to Ramshyttan, a mile and a half (Swedish) down to the station at the southern gulf of the mighty lake Ramen.

It was literally a difficult introduction to the journey. The wooden benches that the old Bargslagen railway offered were anything but comfortable, and they yielded hardly a moment’s calm on the whole day-long trip down to Gothenburg. Toward nightfall when Evald hurried off the train at Gothenburg, in his haste he forgot his bottle of raspberry syrup and the bag of rolls in the compartment. When he discovered his carelessness he ran swiftly back to the car, only to find that someone else was going to enjoy the syrup and rolls from the home of the parish constable. But the package of smoked goat meat he still had. This provided many snacks on the long trip to America.

After a night of refuge on board the America bound ship in Gothenburg’s harbor, Evald left his fatherland on January 21 1901, without really knowing himself what he had let himself in for or what awaited him. The only thing on his mind was that he had left behind an extraordinarily poor childhood and period of growth in the only neighborhood he had ever known, and now he had begun a journey that would lead to his father and maybe to better living conditions in America.

During the almost month-long voyage from Ramshyttan to America, Evald had many opportunities in his loneliness on board ship, to remember the Morberget of his childhood.

Every time he brought out the goat meat to slowly suck the juicy and delicious meat, he had occasion to think back to the neighborhood and the friends he would perhaps never see again.

The route of Evald’s journey was one of those itineraries planned in the interests of the thousands of Scandinavians who at that time emigrated to America in a seemingly never ending stream. The ship Evald sprang aboard in Gothenburg went to Hull, England. From there the journey went overland by train through Leeds to the port city of Liverpool.

From Liverpool it was the transatlantic voyage which took barely two weeks. It was a boatload of domestic animals, mostly cows that Evald traveled with. On the third deck he had been given a bunk in a large cabin where he had to squeeze in with about ten other passengers who had succeeded in coming along on this trip.

But Evald’s best company was with the two story books he had received from Hilda and Anna and the smoked goat meat from Skar-Johan’s wife.

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Morberget of His Childhood While the cattle boat rolled and pitched forward over the Atlantic, Evald’s thoughts went constantly back to the Morberget of his childhood that he had just left. He remembered the fragmented schooling, a direct result of the fact that he had been compelled to live in various foster homes.

Often he had been forced to request permission to be absent from school for long periods to be at home to help with all kinds of tasks during the hectic times of seasonal work in the fields or in the woods. Evald’s teacher was named Anna Hyman, a big authoritarian woman, but just. She was never obstinate about giving a leave of absence. She understood the circumstances in the poor homes where all possible help was needed at certain times of the year. She was never anxious concerning Evald, for he was a sharp boy who had no difficulty in keeping up with the instruction in spite of his absences.

His longest time as a foster child he spent at the home of Jakob and Sara Kristina Persson in Lillmattsbyn. As a tenant farmer, Jakob had to cut wood every winter for six charcoal kilns and then burn them. The charcoal from the kilns was his annual rent for the croft he lived on, to be paid to the owner and the operator of his smelter.

Potatoes made up the basic diet in Jakob’s home, seldom or never with anything special such as meat or cheese, often only salt. A few times during the year they were able to serve herring, and those were times of celebration comparable to Christmas Eve. The herring water was carefully saved, and diluted to make it last a long time for dipping potatoes in at mealtimes.

Evald remembered also the time when as a ten-year-old he had been bitten by a snake. He had been to Ramshyttan to grind grain for his uncle Jakob. After the long and heavy row across lake Ramen, he had climbed, half asleep, the steep hills to his home in Lillmattsbyn. He had not seen the adder that lay coiled up on the path before him. He stepped on it and it struck him in the leg.

He ran swiftly home to Lillmattsbyn. From there he was sent equally swiftly to the village’s acknowledged wise old woman, Skommar-Stina. When she was informed of what had happened, she hoisted Evald up on her back and half ran to the nearest brook and let Evald drink as much as he could of the clear water. “For if you manage to drink from the brook before the snake that bit you does, the poison will have no effect on you”, she had been careful to explain. That was her method of saving him.

For safety’s sake Uncle Jakob took Evald that evening to the wizard Bergstrom down in the village of Morberg. An adder’s bite was nothing to play with, and since every self respecting village had one or more persons with magical powers, it made sense that Bergstrom also be asked to look at Evald. Bergstrom’s method of treatment was to repeat without stopping for a half hour, incomprehensible formulas of sorcery concerning Evald and his accident.

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But the circus with Evald and his snake bite did not end here. Whatever the skills and arts of the others in caring for the sick, the leg became severely swollen a couple of days later. It looked nasty. Now it was Hinders-Johanna at one of the neighboring farms who looked at Evald.

Her specialty was medicines and ointments from herbs and animals. Her snake bite medicine consisted of a mixture of marrow and fat from the horn sawed off of a newly slaughtered cow.

This preparation Hinders-Johanna smeared on the sore and bandaged it with ribgrass.

Evald remembered the story of the snake bite with a smile on his lips, not so much because the event was a typical example of the old magic and witchcraft to be found in the villages of the woodland, but because in the end it was his oldest brother Karl who provided the best help and brought order to the ever more ugly and prurient sore from the snake bite. Karl resolutely took his sharp pocket knife, sterilized it properly over an alcohol flame, and made a good incision in the sore. The pus poured out, and similar treatment for the next few days caused the sore on Evald’s leg to heal completely.

In connection with the snake bite Evald remembered that in Morberget there was also a man who was an expert in bleeding. Albert Danielsson was his name. People came to him from near and far to be healed of a variety of complaints by bloodletting. Evald had witnessed such a bloodletting.

Albert was a complete master of the art, at least when it came to finding the biggest and fullest artery in a patient’s arm. Albert was very particular to have the blood spurt out in a broad stream, all the while he completed the procedure with cocky gestures and general mumbling from a broad mouth in a face adorned with a bushy beard. During the voyage across the Atlantic such memories continued to emerge as a kind of review in Evald’s soul. Among the most amusing features, in spite of everything, was when Morberget was included in the first historical film showing in the village. “The Dreadful Milk Drinker” was the name of the film which constituted the premiere of this kind of worldly entertainment in Morberget and it caused due sensation in the local population and widely round about. Evald was twelve years old at the time and earned ten cents for running to the farms and telling about when and where the film was to be shown.

Besides he was permitted to see the film for nothing as additional gratitude for his trouble.

The exhibiter of the film was a seaman from southern Sweden who called himself Captain Karlsson.

He cranked through the film with a hand operated projector before the village population, which was, to put it mildly, amazed. They were gathered in the school yard in front of the school. In five minutes the show was over. The theme was limited simply to a man who drank and drank so much milk that he burst. That was all. To fill out the program the “captain” had with him a mounted giant fish from the great wide ocean. The fish would seem to have been nothing more than a big cod in the forty pound class, but together with the film it was quite a sensation, because in Morberget no one had ever seen either the one or the other.

In this fashion the voyage across the Atlantic progressed. Except for the fact that Evald became better acquainted with a few of his fellow passengers, his days were spent alone on the sea without any major problem. His meditations about what destiny awaited him in the new land, and thoughts of what he had left behind, were interrupted only by the usual routines on board ship.

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Chapter 2

Arrival Is it You Who Are My Son? The voyage was ungrammatically completed to the harbor outside of Philadelphia. With the help of a few other emigrants who knew a little English, Evald went to the railway station and got on the train that would take him into the interior of the country, to the Swedish settlements in southern Minnesota.

At a little flag stop called Cherburn the train trip ended. According to the directions in the letter Evald had received from his father, he was to look up a Swedish tailor named Landin in Cherburn. It was later revealed that it was Landin who had arranged all the details not only of Evald’s journey but also of the other Ost brothers, on orders of the father. The tailor had, over a period of years, in like manner helped hundreds of Swedish emigrants come to America, as a business enterprise.

Evald stayed a few days with Landin and his wife in Cherburn. News of his arrival had gone to the father, Johannes Ost, on the farm in Montreux six Swedish miles away. While he waited to be picked up Evald made use of his time in getting acquainted with his new homeland.

As soon as his father Johannes got some free time from his farming duties he borrowed a two horse carriage and drove to pick up his next to youngest son. Johannes had not seen him since he left Sweden, and then Evald was barely three years old. Their memories of each other were, on both sides of course, very inaccurate.

The meeting of father and son was an exciting moment for both of them. But the tension was released in an amusing way in the very first verbal exchange between them when the father came to Cherburn. The first outburst from Johannes when he saw his grown son was, “Is it you who have come from Sweden and are my son?”

Evald very calmly answered the question, “One can never be absolutely sure, of course, but I believe it is true in any case!”

They both burst out in hearty laughter, embraced each other and were mutually agreed that the relationship between them was certainly as genuine as it could be. For sure they were of the same flesh and blood. They sat at the home of the tailor for a few hours talking about the most important things that had happened to them in recent years.

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The reunion took place in wintry and bitter cold Minnesota. This time of the year Minnesota and the surrounding area can display just as snowy and cold winter landscapes as ever Dalarna did at home in Sweden. Evald experienced that in the carriage on the trip with his father back to the farm. The homespun coat that Evald received from Vilhelm, the son of Skar-Johan warmed him well.

During the first few months with his father on the farm in Montreux, Evald did a few odd jobs but did not have to engage in any steady work. He received board and room for the help he was to his father in his regular work on the farm.

But when the first spring in the new land came for Evald, he had already found his first steady job. Naturally it was farm life for that suited him best given the experience he had had in his upbringing in Morberget.

Work on the farm was to be his employment for several years, until the time when destiny guided Evald into a totally different life’s work.

Farm life demanded his services from six in the morning to six in the evening. Evald’s chief occupation during his first years in America was to tend the livestock. That meant to take care of the cows and horses with all that that implied. Evald lived days on end within the walls of the stables. In various places round about in southern Minnesota he worked for longer or shorter periods according to the need for man power. All the time he was in close contact with his father, as well as with a couple of his brothers. With the exception of the oldest brother, Karl who had gone to Australia, all the other Ost sons had come to their father in America to become acclimatized and then to disappear each in his own direction.

The father Johannes Ost continued to work on the farm as long as his strength permitted.

Broken and worn out from many years of hard work, he died in December 1930 in the town of Trimont in southern Minnesota, at the age of 82.

Alongside of all the hard work, ever since he came to America, Johannes had devoted all his spare time to his religious interests. For many years and even up to his death he was, active in the churches of the Evangelical Mission Covenant. Through their father, Evald and his younger brother Axel were led into the destinies that awaited them.

Evald had by this time changed the name by which he was addressed. The English speaking people around him had difficulty pronouncing Evald. For that reason he took his other name Ludvig as his name of address, which was considerably easier to pronounce for an American.

During his years as a farmhand the most he earned in any year was 254 dollars. Evald was unbelievably thrifty. He permitted himself no clothing or pleasures beyond necessity. The money he could lay aside grew to a respectable sum considering the circumstances.

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Thrift was intimately connected with his intentions which grew out of his father’s activity in Christian work. Evald had himself become a Christian and together with his father had early on laid plans for his future. His father helped and encouraged him in every way to realize his plans.

What was it that the young Evald was so intensively caught up in? He was going to be an evangelist or a pastor. Or maybe he would out and out try to become a missionary. His goal should be attainable through North Park College in Chicago, the Covenant’s own school for the training of evangelists. Through his father’s influence Evald had eagerly committed himself to Christian youth work during his years in southern Minnesota. Contacts had already been established to get into school, and it was not going to be entirely impossible for the ambitious youngster from Sweden.

But to get into the school demanded a great deal of money for the term’s expenses. It was for this purpose that Evald had saved all the money he could lay aside. And the fall term in 1906 found him at last in the classroom at North Park.

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The Four Years at North Park and Friendship With Ruth With certain brief interruptions Evald was to spend the next four years at the school in Chicago. The school’s 200 students were to become the servants of the Covenant out on the field as pastors of their own congregations somewhere in America, or as traveling evangelists or missionaries. The tuition at that time was $200 per term. The whole amount could be paid in cash, or it could be divided into two equal parts, half in cash and the rest in work for the school during the school year.

For Evald the second alternative was taken for granted. His money would not suffice for more. During the first school year he therefore spent a large part of his free time washing dishes in the school kitchen. During the second year he was on a housekeeping detail which daily went through the students’ rooms with a scrub bucket and a dust cloth. The third year he chopped wood and did a few carpenter jobs around school.

Among many teachers during his study time at North Park his acquaintanceship with Axel E. Mellander became the most indelibly etched in his memory. Mellander, a tall man with bright red hair and a bushy beard of the same color, was as strict and precise in his teaching as he was forgetful and scatterbrained in general. The latter was cause for much mischief and many practical jokes on the part of the students.

Most often his preoccupation was noticed in connection with his lectures when the subject not only captivated the students but in at least the same measure Mellander himself. At such times Mellander forgot both time and space, coffee breaks and lunch time. Then the students would resort to every conceivable stratagem to awaken Mellander out of his oblivion. Often an alarm clock became an excellent weapon. The clock was set for the time of the break, and was hidden in the classroom, frequently in a drawer of Mellander’s desk.

Another time they had prepared a tray of food. When the bell for lunchtime had long since rung the tray of food came slowly but surely sliding down the aisle between the chairs, from time to time pushed along by the feet of the students. It was at last seen by Professor Mellander and he roared in his severest possible voice, “What is going on here?” The answer did not fail from the well prepared students, “This is only Professor Mellander’s lunch to be eaten immediately so that we can continue the lecture without delay.”

Such pranks on the part of the students with reference to his absent mindedness, Mellander accepted completely. When the lunch tray came “wandering” toward him on the floor, the otherwise always serious Mellander could not help but burst out in a roar of laughter. This time, as at countless other times, Mellander found himself in his unsatisfactory state of memory of time and space and attested, “You are right, of course, you rascals. Now we will take a break, and we will forget this spectacle as soon as possible.”

- 14 -

Many people thought Axel E. Mellander as a teacher was altogether too precise and finicky.

But the longer the time of study lasted the more clearly they perceived that Mellander’s method of teaching, in spite of everything, was what was needed for the budding pastors to be fully prepared to meet all the difficulties and problems which are associated with Christian church activity in all its various forms.

Evald Ost from Morberget became later one of Mellander’s most faithful friends. Not only because Evald was one of the most industrious and most hungry for learning of the students. Those two, on countless occasions, spent time in deep discussions about a great variety of subjects, sometimes far into the night.

In the summer of 1907 Mellander undertook a journey to Palestine together with a Covenant missionary to Alaska, Swedish born Axel E. Karlsson from the Eskimo village of Unalakleet. It was Karlsson who funded the trip with money he received from a gold deposit in Alaska. One of the motives for the trip was that Mellander would gather material for a book. He fulfilled his purpose by writing a book in Swedish with the title “Journey to Bible Lands”. It was finished and published in time for Christmas 1909.

Young Evald Ost and his roommate, Nathaniel Franklin, made an agreement to sell his book for him. The price of the book was one dollar, and they would reap fifty cents in profit on each book. It was Evald who acted as salesman in the days before Christmas Eve. In the southern sections of the great city of Chicago there were large settlements of Swedish immigrants, and there Evald pushed his sales. Business was very good. His roommate, Franklin, had to come out with a new supply of books from time to time. The profits became a good subsidy for the continuing school year at North Park.

Evald’s schooling was interrupted several times by in-training work in Covenant congregations here and there in America. In connection with that he often increased his meager funds by setting himself up as a teacher of the Swedish language. Everywhere he found groups of Swedish immigrants who were very eager to have their children, who were born in America, receive instruction in their parents’ mother tongue.

One whole summer Evald, among other things, was active as an intern in a congregation in the town of Swedeburg in central Nebraska. He was also language teacher for Swedish families there.

It was in connection with such an intern position in the summer of 1908, in the mining town of Negaunnee, Michigan where Evald first met his wife to be, Ruth Elin Hall from Ashland, Wisconsin. She was born in America of Swedish parents in the year 1886, therefore just a year younger than Evald. Back home in Ashland she worked for her father who was a shoe merchant. Ruth took care of the bookkeeping, ordering, inventory, and all other desk work.

In her spare time she was, with her whole family, active in Christian work.

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At fifteen years of age Ludvig Evald Ost immigrated from Morgerget in Dalarna At fifteen years of age Ludvig Evald Ost immigrated from Morgerget in Dalarna to the USA. Since 1910 he has been busy in the coastal villages of Alaska. to the USA. Since 1910 he has been busy in the coastal villages of Alaska.

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cottage in Morberget northofofLudvika Ludvika that that his The The cottage in Morberget north hisfather father Johannes built for himself and his family in 1880.

The cottage in Morberget north of Ludvika that Johannes built for himself and his family in 1880. his father Johannes built for himself and his family in 1880.

At the Annual Meeting of the of Swedish Covenant in 1977 where At the Annual Meeting the Swedish Covenant in in 1977 where At the Annual Meeting of the Swedish Covenant 1977 where GrandpaGrandpa Ost from Alaska was one ofone theofhonored guests.

Ost from Alaska was the honored guests.

Grandpa Ost from Alaska was one of the honored guests.

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- 24 - 17 -

On On JulyJuly 15, 15, 1910 Ludvig Evald Ost marriedinin 1910 Ludvig Evald Ostand andRuth RuthHall Hall were were married Ashland.

A week later they triptotoAlaska.

Alaska.

Ashland.

A week later theywere wereon ontheir theirwedding wedding trip

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- 18 -

In the town of Ironwood, just outside of Negaunee, a week long conference was arranged for the youth of Covenant churches all across America. Evald was a leader at the conference and Ruth Hall from Ashland was one of the visiting delegates. Evald stayed for the week in the home of a North Park schoolmate whose home was in Ironwood. Ruth Hall was housed under the same roof.

In this manner Evald and Ruth were brought together, which later led to their wedding and a marriage that lasted 43 happy years. During the time immediately after their meeting Evald and Ruth maintained contact with each other through an ardent correspondence, and occasionally they were able to meet. It was not long before they began to seriously discuss and plan for their future together. But first of all Evald had to finish his studies at North Park.

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Ordained For Life by Waldenstrom 1910 Wedding Trip to Alaska Evald completed his studies at the end of the spring term, 1910. At a ceremony at North Park he was ordained along with the rest of the students trained to be pastors and missionaries.

The one who conducted the ordination in Chicago was none other than the well known Paul P. Waldenstrom, president of the Covenant in Sweden who was on a visit to the sister Covenant in America. Since he was such an important person it was self evident that he would lead the ceremony.

Waldenstrom’s final word to the new pastors and missionaries was the following: “Remember this now and always, that this ordination is not for any special time period, but it is for the rest of your life.”

For Evald Ost the last period at North Park College brought several decisive events that came to lead him into a future which six months earlier he had not even thought of. Evald had not thought of any special field of work, but had expected that the Executive Board of the Covenant and developing circumstances would determine where he would go.

To be sure the circumstances played their part. From the Covenant’s work among the Eskimos along the coast of Alaska several cries of distress had come concerning the need for new missionaries. That very spring of 1910 the need was absolutely acute for the mission station in the little village of Golovin, which was farthest in on Norton Sound off the Bering Sea. There the mission managed a children’s home with board and room for about fifty children. The previous missionary in Golovin, the Swede 0. P. Andersson, had sent word south that he could not longer continue.

At about the same time in the spring term, Evald met one of the missionaries who had worked in Alaska, Adolf Lydell. He was one of the first missionaries in Alaska, but because of incipient ill health he had left the field a number of years earlier. Lydell devoted himself instead to traveling around to the churches in the States telling about the work up there in the northland, and of course to gather funds for the continuation of the work in the land of the Eskimos.

Evald Ost had heard such a speech by Adolf Lydell and afterwards had a conversation with him about the Alaska mission. Evald was totally fascinated by what he heard from Lydell.

Then when the message came from Alaska soon after that, about the need of a missionary to take over the station in Golovin immediately, everything happened very quickly.

The Executive Board of the Covenant met to discuss the problem in Alaska. One of those who took part in the organization of the Covenant, August Bjork, had previously spoken with Evald Ost and learned of his interest in Alaska. Bjork presented this to the Executive Board, and since Evald Ost was considered to be a natural for the mission field he received - 20 -

the call unanimously. The Executive Board informed Evald of its decision and he was not slow to accept with thanks. There was no need for any long discussion with Ruth for her to give her consent.

For Ruth and Evald now it was simply a matter of taking care of all the practical details in preparation for the departure to the north, and do it as quickly as possible in keeping with the wish of the Executive Board.

On July 14, 1910, just a week after the ordination in Chicago, Evald Ost from Morberget and Ruth Hall from Wisconsin were married in Ruth’s home town of Ashland.

Just a few days later the newlyweds started their wedding trip to Alaska. It was a honeymoon that was to last all their lives.

The journey by train went across the country to Seattle. In a letter to a friend he said that the train trip was uneventful. During the whole long trip across the continent they had “only run over a single cow”!

In Seattle one of the legendary Alaska ships was in harbor and ready to sail northward.

It was the gold prospector boat “Sanitor” on which Ruth and Evald were booked to their field of work. The other ship that negotiated the passages, chiefly with adventurers, to the gold fields in Alaska and the Yukon district, was the “Victoria”. Two ships that for the most part resembled each other, each with room for about a thousand passengers! The only real difference between the two vessels was their keels. “Sanitor” rolled violently from side to side in the high seas, while “Victoria” pitched with the waves from fore to aft.

The continued wedding trip to the north lasted another week for Evald and Ruth Ost.’ On August 1 they called at the gold city of Nome on the farthest end of Seward’s Peninsula toward Siberia. The “Sanitor” was docked in the harbor at Nome for a couple of days for reloading. Evald and Ruth took the opportunity to go ashore and become acquainted with the milieu in which the were to live. Nome was at this time a city buzzing with life, still a growing city as a result of the fantastic gold discoveries of 1898 and the next few years.

When Evald saw Alaska’s barren coast for the first time - at close range, he remembered his meeting with missionary Lydell in the States a few years earlier. Lydell had made an appeal for money to support the missionary work among the Eskimos. Evald had at that time only twenty five cents in his pocket, but of course he gave that to the Alaska mission.

Now he was on the point of going ashore to throw himself into the missionary work, with the scanty means at hand including Lydell’s collections. In this manner he had in a way followed his own quarter up to the northland.

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Chapter 3

Alaska - USA’s 49th State The land of Alaska to which Evald Ost from Sweden came, as well as many thousands of others from every corner of the earth over the course of the years, has undeniably a history that is as boisterous as it is full of adventure. It is a region that has attracted most often individualistic persons with a desire for different living conditions in a difficult environment, where determination to take the initiative and make the decisions is a must for any acceptable existence. Alaska is to this day without doubt a land created for adventurers with the ambition to test themselves and through that perhaps find some meaning in life. In matters of good and evil this desolate northland fulfills all imaginable requirements in this regard.

Aborigines Alaska means “great land”. This is the translation of the primitive Aleutian name Al-ayes-ka. Although research has not been able to attain full confirmation of when the land was first populated, the latest findings say that a Mongolian people came in great numbers about 4,000 years ago from Asia northward to, among other places, settle in Alaska. There they established themselves on the coast lands and along the rivers a short distance inland where they could subsist on the rich supply of fish and wildlife. This great migration was the origin of what later became several different tribes, of whom the Indians came to dominate inland and southern Alaska while the Eskimos remained on the coasts and the mouths of the rivers. Today the aborigines are reckoned to number about 56,500 [1978], of whom in round numbers 30,000 are Eskimos, 20,000 are Indians, and 6,500 are Aleuts. The latter are Russian Eskimos who in a later migration came from Siberia to settle on the Aleutian Islands.

The Indians in Alaska are divided into the two tribes of the Thlinkets farthest south and the Atabaskans farther inland.

This grouping of the tribes is still valid. It is known that the Eskimos and the Indians were earlier in a constant state of feud. Between the larger territories with permanent settlements, there has always been a clear boundary marked, and a no man’s land”. It is equally well known that the old and obvious enmity continues to this day as a quiet state of war. Eskimos and Indians do not associate readily. This durable attitude can be clearly seen in larger cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks where these two races cannot avoid each other. Often the distance between the groups is seen by groups of Eskimos on one side of the street and Indians on the opposite side, and in the eating places where the Indians sit by themselves and the Eskimos likewise.

Alaska’s total population is about 400,000 of whom about 220,000 are in Anchorage and the neighboring Gulf coast. In other words, in Alaska, which has an area three and a half times as big as Sweden, there is plenty of room for the rest of the people outside the tightly populated regions of Anchorage and Fairbanks.

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The Russians Come to Alaska The first white man to lay eyes on these latitudes was the Dane Vitus Bering. As a sea captain in the Russian navy he was sent out by the Czar Peter the Great in the year 1724 to determine if Asia in the far north was connected with the new continent of America. Bering sailed westward along the Siberian coast and at last through a sound of 90 kilometers width. When he had come that far Bering understood that there was no land connection between the two continents. The sea between Asia and northernmost North America was later called by the name of the Danish sea captain, the Bering Sea. Vitus Bering himself died of starvation and illness on a similar journey of exploration eighteen years later.

On this later journey to the polar regions enormous colonies of seals were discovered along the Alaska coast, and even the brooding places of this much sought after fur bearing animal. From Russia came armadas of sealing ships with their sights on the unbelievably costly and beautiful seal skins. The Russians were not interested in the country itself, but to establish that the country belonged to them because of its discovery by Bering, a form of colonizing took place in the villages along the coast. A man named Alexander Baranov was chosen as headman of the fur trade and the colony. In 1806 he established his headquarters in Sitka, almost the southernmost place in Alaska. In a few years a Russian principality in miniature was built up in Sitka, with luxurious houses for Baranov and all others in his retinue, schools and churches, business houses and commercial companies. As the foremost souvenir of that time, there is in Sitka the great, well preserved, cathedral which was the Russian Orthodox Church’s holiest place in the region.

But the picture was quickly changed after only a few decades. The Russians had to give up their plans for an expanded Pacific Ocean dominion. When they became involved in a war with Great Britain and other nations closer by, their interest in Alaska cooled at the same time as the seal population diminished disastrously, almost to extinction. The English together with Canada put some pressure on from the south with the thought of trying to take over Alaska. Then when a message came quite unexpectedly from America, the Russians started negotiations to sell the seemingly worthless land in the north.

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Alaska Becomes an American Territory The American Secretary of State, William H. Seward, and the Russian Consul in Washington, a Baron Stoeckl, played for high stakes. But only for a short while. On March 29, 1867 the Baron accepted a bid of 7.2 million dollars. Seward caught the Congress unprepared with the threat that the British were ready to seize the land in the north. All too hastily, according to popular opinion, the Congress decided to buy Alaska from the Russians for the stipulated price. For a short time thereafter Seward was criticized severely for his insane transaction.

People generally talked about Alaska as a worthless land, simply an iceberg, “Seward’s icebox” where about 40,000 natives shuffled around on snowshoes, and for whom America was now responsible.

This fantastic real estate deal was followed officially by a ceremony of transfer in Sitka on October 18 of the same year. The harbor was filled with Russian and American warships making an impressive display. The representatives of the two governments signed the business contract, the Russian flag was lowered and the star spangled banner was hoisted, all to the thunder of the saluting snips’ artillery. That this transaction involving a dizzying sum of millions of dollars, as seen at that time, would become not only history’s biggest but also the cheapest real estate deal ever, no one on either side could have dreamed. William Seward, for his part, was certainly convinced that America had made a good deal, but even in his wildest imagination he could not have predicted what Alaska would later give back.

The American Secretary of State would later give his name to the peninsula nearest the Russian coast, where only the Bering Strait separates the two continents. Seward Peninsula is also the northern most point of Norton Sound, the area where the Swedish Covenant would eventually establish its missionary work.

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The Land of Gold Before the turn of the century the “ice box” in the north began to yield profit, and very quickly the American attitude to Alaska changed. In 1896 the first gold strike was made in the Klondike in Canada, near the boundary with Alaska. This turned many eyes northward.

People made pilgrimages into the wilderness. Claim after claim was staked as gold was discovered along the Yukon River and its tributaries, all the way out to its mouth in the Bering Sea and along the coast. Most important were the Seward Peninsula and the district of Nome.

Ever since the turn of the century gold has been mined in Alaska and given employment to many thousands. The dredging operations in Nome have in recent times been modernized with new machines and during the summer months they are used full tilt to get gold out of the frozen ground. For there is still gold in this “worthless” land. It is known that near Nome there is a layer of gold about thirty meters down, which extends far out in the ocean.

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Black Gold The sea otter was the first object of violent exploitation in Alaska. Gold and many other valuable minerals became the first big payment for the earlier severely criticized transaction with Russia. The third wave of exploitation came when enormous oil deposits were found at Prudhoe Bay, in the farthest north.

The oil made Alaska a born again land of gold, with a new rush of adventurers bound for the north as a consequence. Between the years 1970 and 1977 the population of Alaska increased from 300,000 to 400,000. It was during this time that the 1,200 kilometer long pipeline was built from the oil wells in Prudhoe Bay to the harbor in Valdez. On July 18, 1977 oil was let into the pipeline for the first time. About 140,000 cubic meters of oil per day now rush through Alaska’s most desolate wilderness to the oil depot in Valdez, and from here it is shipped to the States in huge oil tankers. The cost of this, one of the biggest construction projects of modern times, amounted to an astonishing 80 billion dollars! But this is an outlay that both of the partners, the oil companies and the U.S.A., can easily manage. Through oil from Alaska, the United States has been able to diminish her dependence on the oil countries in the Arab world and their good will.

The oil discoveries in northern Alaska also revealed gas deposits in the interior of the earth.

Since the pipeline was completed work has been going forward to prepare for and build a gas line which will go overland all the way from Prudhoe Bay, through Canada and down to the States.

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Alaska Becomes the Forty Ninth State After the transaction with Russia in 1867, it would yet take not less than 91 years for Alaska to become a State among the other United States. During this long period Alaska has been a territory, with its own governor, to be sure, appointed by the president, but with very limited authority. It was in the States that the decisions were made regarding Alaska.

On June 30, 1958 the Congress approved the persistent demand that Alaska be made an independent state and give her a star among the others on the American flag. The rest was a formality. In January, 1959 Alaska was declared the forty ninth state, and on America’s Independence Day, July 4, of the same year, the forty nine star flag became official. Later Hawaii was made the fiftieth state.(Note: The original said Haiti. p. 36).

As a state from 60 degrees north latitude and northward on the globe, neatly screened off from the rest of America, Alaska’s independence has hardly ever been questioned by Alaskans themselves. These often unique people who for various reasons have ended up in Alaska’s wildernesses with their vast distances, have in everything functioned independently.

Alaskans typically call the contiguous states in the south, “the lower 48”, freely translated “the inferior 48 states.” And when a true Alaskan travels beyond the boundaries of the northland, it is always said that he goes “outside”.

That Alaska finally was made a state implied, of course, clear advantages in self government.

From the capital, Juneau, in southern Alaska the popularly elected officials could now make their decisions with greater authority and also with responsibility for the weal and woe of their own state.

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Chapter 4

Missionaries from Sweden Karlsson and Lydell Come to Alaska It was at the annual meeting of the summer of 1886 that the Swedish Covenant made the decision to send missionaries to Alaska. Behind the decision lay not only the general zeal to go out with the Gospel to the peoples of the world. The action was founded on several decisive events that took place at this time.

Some time before the decision was made the Covenant’s missionaries in the east had met with overwhelming opposition when they wanted to push farther up into northern Russia.

Their aim had been to try to reach the nomad people in Russian Siberia, but the difficulties were too great. The Russian authorities made it impossible to go farther north. It became necessary to rethink and to withdraw the missionaries who had been sent out from Sweden to these desolate areas.

But the Swedish mission board had no thought of giving up altogether. Not least, their interest was kept alive by the reports left by the explorer A.E. Nordenskiold. He had been one of the leaders of the famous “Vega Expedition” of 1878-1879 which went to the polar regions along the coast of Alaska, and then far along the Siberian coast. The first winter the expedition was literally frozen in just off the Siberian coast across from Alaska. There Nordenskiold had many opportunities to become acquainted with the conditions among the Russian Eskimo population in the nearest villages.

At home in Sweden Nordenskiold gave detailed reports of his observations to his friend and then president of the Swedish Covenant, E.J. Ekman. The reports of the misery in which the people of the northland lived was enough for Ekman and the others in the leadership of the Covenant to discuss various possibilities of going north.

The misfortunes in Russia and Nordenskiold’s reports were the decisive background for the conference decision of 1886. One aim in establishing a mission in Alaska was that with time they would be able to go to the people of Siberia more or less thorough “the back door”.

Earlier we mentioned the names of Axel E. Karlsson and Adolf Lydell. They had both been among those sent to Russia who had been compelled to break off their work in the east.

Karlsson had been stopped in Archangel, and Lydell in the Caucasus. The latter had been summarily sent home to Sweden. Karlsson had been arrested and sent to Moscow. Only the good relations with the royal family of Sweden made the Czar’s people let Karlsson go back to Sweden. Consequently Karlsson and Lydell were at home, unwillingly unemployed but well prepared to go out again.

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News about Alaska came to these two sun-tanned missionaries, accustomed to fatigue and difficulties. Karlsson and Lydell did not hesitate in accepting the invitation. They left Sweden together on August 6, just a little more than a month after the decision. In America they traveled around making valuable contacts with the sister denomination of the Swedish Covenant.

Karlsson and Lydell took part in the Covenant Annual meeting in Rockford, Illinois, visited briefly the Covenant headquarters in Chicago, before they traveled across the continent to San Francisco. Everywhere they had opportunities to tell of their commission to Alaska, and they made many contacts and acquired many followers who were to support them later in many ways. In San Francisco they received much help in their preparations from Pastor Carl Anderson, who was, not without reason, called “the apostle of California”.

By now it was too late in the year to travel north. Karlsson and Lydell spent the winter waiting for a chance to take a boat to Alaska. Boat traffic was not especially active at that time, and was completely shut down during the winter when most of the northern coastland was covered with polar ice. In May of the following year the two missionaries left California in an old, but completely seaworthy schooner. Already at this time Karlsson and Lydell had talked about one of them staying in southern Alaska while the other would go to the north. At Seattle the Swedish missionaries were joined by a third man who had the same desire to go north. His name was Henry Chapman. His goal, as he was commissioned, was to go to Alaska’s interior via the Yukon River.

One of the first stops on the west coast of North America was made at the little Indian village of Yakutat in southern Alaska. The village is on a peninsula that juts out in a fjord of the same name. Adolf Lydell had read about and become interested in the Indian tribes of Alaska. When he was able, right on the spot, to acquaint himself with the people in Yakutat, who belonged to the Thlinket Indian tripe, he made an immediate decision. “There is no need for me to travel any farther. There is plenty of work to be done right here”, ne explained to his fellow travelers. That was it. Lydell stayed in Yakutat. A snort time later he went down to the States again to buy equipment and building materials. He returned and in a snort time was able to build the first mission station in Yakutat.

After leaving Lydell in Yakutat, Axel E. Karlsson and Henry Chapman continued their journey. The goal of going as far north and west as possible loomed before Karlsson, thereby coming into the vicinity of Siberia. On June 25, 1887 Karlsson landed at St. Michael, an Eskimo village near the broad mouth of the Yukon River at the Bering Sea. Here Karlsson and Henry Chapman parted company. Chapman went upstream on the Yukon River to the junction of the Anvik tributary with the Yukon. At the Eskimo village of Anvik Chapman established the first Episcopalian station in Alaska, which is still active at this date.

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Karlsson, for his was by compelled bytosevere to at spend Karlsson, for his part, waspart, compelled severe weather spend theweather whole winter St. the whole During this the time able Michael.

Duringwinter this time at he St. was Michael. able to carefully determine best he placewas to start his to mission station.

In St. Michael Karlsson becameto acquainted with a few Eskimos fromIn theSt. carefully determine the best place start his mission station. neighboring of Unalakleet, a little farther north.

The name of the village at from that timethe Michael village Karlsson became acquainted with a few Eskimos was Unalaklik, an Eskimo name that means “Always west wind”. The name came from the neighboring village of over Unalakleet, a little farther north.

The later name prevailing west wind that blew the village from the icy sea. About ten years the of the village at that was Unalaklik, an Eskimo name that means spelling was changed to thetime present Unalakleet.

"Always west wind". The name came from the prevailing west wind that blew over the village from the icy sea. About ten years later the spelling was changed to the present Unalakleet.

Alaska’s Moose, the world’s biggest elk.

Alaska’s Moose, the world’s biggest elk.

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- 31 -

In the great migration of several thousand years ago the

Eskimos from Asia cameof across Siberia to the coast of Alaska.

In the great migration several thousand years ago the Eskimos from Asia came across Siberia to the coast of Alaska.

- -42 32--

The Eskimos settled chiefly along Alaska’s

The Eskimos settled chiefly alonginland.

Alaska’s coastland, while the Indians went farther coastland, while the Indians went farther inland.

- 33--43 -

Alaska, oror asas thethe name waswas written earlier Al-ay-es-ka, meansmeans “great land.”

Alaska, name written earlier Al-ay-es-ka, “great land.”

There There is plenty of room for the State’s 400,000 inhabitants on the great, wild great, is plenty of room for the State’s 400,000 inhabitants on theexpanses.

Alaska, or as the name was written earlier Al-ay-es-ka, means “great land.”

There is plenty of room for the State’s 400,000 inhabitants on the great,

Ocean fishing continues to be the main source of food for the coastal people.

Boats, now with modern motors, are the most important implements.

Ocean fishing continues to to bebethe foodfor forthe thecoastal coastalpeople. people.

Ocean fishing continues themain mainsource source of of food Boats, nownow withwith modern motors, importantimplements. implements.

Boats, modern motors,are arethe themost most important - 44 - 44 - 34 -

Several Attempts to murder Karlsson trio is Saved by Chief Nashalook On July 9, 1887 Karlsson left St. Michael to go to Unalakleet. The trip was made in a newly acquired skin boat, the Eskimos’ typical vessel for hunting and fishing at sea, which is made of the ribs and skin of walrus and seal. The trip up the coast and farther into Norton Sound became troublesome and took three days because of the violent storm which took Karlsson and his companions by surprise. When the storm raged at its worst they were compelled to throw part of their cargo overboard. And even the three dogs that came along had to go the same way. But the dogs swam ashore and followed them obediently back to the village, running along the snore. In Unalakleet Karlsson was welcomed by the chief of the village.

His name was Nashalook, and together with his brothers he had a decisive influence over the 400 or so Eskimos that made up the population of the village. In Unalakleet Karlsson felt at home immediately. The village was sound, with a stable population and moderately isolated. It was a typical coastal village where a mission station could be expected to function. Here he would settle.

After spending the winter in St. Michael Karlsson returned to the States by the first boat after the pack ice had broken up in May, 1888. In San Francisco he got help in acquiring the absolutely essential equipment for a home, as well as lumber for the first building he was to erect in Unalakleet.

Most of the inhabitants of the village were disposed to be friendly to Karlsson when he returned to the village to settle there for good. As was usually the case in the Eskimo villages, there was, besides the chief as headman of the village, a medicine man with unlimited power in his way. What distinguished this man, called shaman by the Eskimos themselves, was of course his magical powers, especially in determining the rain or snow and wind, and success in hunting and fishing. His power also consisted in being a kind of soothsayer, and calling down all kinds of misfortune on those who did not conform to his word. In general the shaman was not a very scrupulous person, but used his contact with the spirit world for personal gain.

The shaman in Unalakleet immediately saw in Karlsson an enemy and a strong threat to his own power. Clearly Karlsson represented a teaching and a religion that would cause his own spirit world to fall in shambles, and nullify the powers on which he had lived well all these years.

He succeeded in enlisting some of his faithful in a campaign of slander against Karlsson.

On a few occasions the enmity of the shaman overstepped into bloody seriousness. During the first winter Karlsson was made the target of an out and out murder attempt. It happened when one of the medicine man’s own men, in a drunken state, forced his way into Karlsson’s house late one evening. He held an axe high to fell his man, and rustled from behind upon the unsuspecting Karlsson.

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If one of Karlsson’s own friends in the village had not been close by, this event could have ended in the greatest tragedy. Karlsson’s friend, a brother of the village chief, jumped between them and grasped the man’s arm and twisted the axe out of his hand. Rendered harmless in this way, it was easy to talk sense to the man. Thanks to friendliness and persuasive speech he soon became a friend of Karlsson whom he had just tried to kill.

Later this man became a trusted worker with Karlsson in the rapidly growing congregation around him.

It was no accident that it was the brother of the chief that was nearby and rescued Karlsson.

Chief Nashalook had himself suspected that there would be trouble, especially with the shaman, and he was careful the whole time to keep a watchful eye on Karlsson. Nashalook had chosen the place in the village for the white man to build his house. It was between his own house and the house of one of his brothers, in order to be of help to Karlsson if his suspicions of impropriety should prove to be true. And that this thoughtfulness on Nashalook’s part was well motivated was proven many times curing Karlsson’s first period in Unalakleet.

Concerning the dwellings of the Eskimos, Karlsson noted succinctly in his diary, “All the living reside in the ground, and all the dead are above the ground.” A simple description that tallies exactly with the customs of the Eskimo villages along the coast in those latitudes at that time.

Eskimo families lived in earthen caves with small superstructures of logs or boards, or only thick layers of skins sewn together. The dead, however, were never buried in the earth. Normally the corpses were laid upon a high structure of logs on the ocean shore, so dogs and wild animals could not get at them. The corpses were carefully wrapped in skins together with their most prized possessions such as ornaments or weapons, and this completed the graves.

Karlsson’s first simple dwelling was the first house in the village that was not built partly in the ground. Later, of course, the picture changed both regarding the dwellings of the living and the last resting place of the dead. Even before the turn of the century the dwellings of the Eskimos had to a large extent moved up out of the ground. And the dead were buried in the ground. This is an example of how old and new customs can quickly change--in this case they have literally exchanged places.

Besides the above attempted murder, Karlsson was threatened in other ways during the early period. When his first summer in Unalakleet began to draw to a close, there was a radical reversal in the fishing fortunes. Salmon fishing in the ocean around the mouth of the river and for a distance up the river suddenly became abnormally bad. Many people in the village blamed the newly arrived white man for the bad luck. Naturally the shaman was the leader in this slander. He held secret meetings with his cronies, and a decision was made - 36 -

that Karlsson must die if they were to regain their good fishing and rescue their winter food supply. The decision spread and won more followers in the village while days went by without the nets in the sea or the river producing more than a fish here and there.

Then quite suddenly, one day the salmon returned. The Eskimos caught more fish in their nets than they had caught on many good days. Their boats filled up so they had difficulty bringing their catch back to the village. With this change the danger was over for Karlsson.

That the salmon returned, and especially in such great numbers, was a blessing to him.

In an entry in his diary on April 20, 1888 Karlsson tells of another event that threatened his life. Karlsson and a couple of Eskimo friends from Unalakleet were on a trip by dog team to the neighboring village of Golovin. Half way there they had put up for the night with an Eskimo family that they knew who lived in one of the smaller villages. A big party was going on in the village, and of course, with plenty of their home brewed liquor. One of the celebrants came into the room where Karlsson was. He had heard tell of the white man in Unalakleet and now he had come with the intention of putting an end to his activity in Alaska.

The man pulled a big knife from his belt and rushed upon Karlsson. But this time too he was saved by one of his friends. One of the youths who were traveling with Karlsson sprang between them and threw his arms around the drunken man with the knife. Thus the attack on the missionary was foiled.

That Karlsson’s life hovered in manifest danger during his first period in Alaska, was certainly not entirely because of overt enmity toward the first white man in Unalakleet. It is to be assumed that attacks on him arose in equal measure from capriciousness among the people.

There were threats not only from the natives. The barren land often offered anything but pleasant surprises, to which the new people in the villages• were complete strangers. In another entry Karlsson tells of another event that took place barely a month after the knife threat in the neighboring village. It was May 25, 1888, when it happened that Karlsson was alone on a free floating ice flow going out to sea. Karlsson had gone out on the ice early in the morning to fish. The warm spring sun had soon loosened the already fragile body of ice at the shore, without Karlson noticing it. The floating ice carried Karlsson farther and farther southward. After several hours of drifting his situation was noticed by a single man on the shore. This man, with the help of driftwood and logs, was able to bring Karlsson to land.

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Irrigalik--a Name Spoken With Respect In spite of the fact that many Eskimos in the village continued to look upon Karlsson with disapproval, he soon came to be accepted more and more. Not least his willingness to give advice or to help in the most variable contexts, won the trust of the villagers. They were compelled to acknowledge that Karlsson, with his full, black beard and his big glasses in reality did more good for the villagers than he caused them trouble or vexation.

The custom of the Eskimos of giving their own names to people and animals according to traits of character, was meted out to Karlsson also. His name became Irrigalik, “The man with the glass eyes”. Karlsson was the first person the villagers had seen wearing glasses. Irrigalik soon became the only name the Eskimos called him, and to this day the name is pronounced among the elders with greater respect than most of the other well known pioneer names along Alaska’s coast.

When Axel Karlsson took his trip down to the States to acquire equipment, he took the opportunity to present his desire for more missionaries in the northland. He was not thinking only of getting help for the work in Unalakleet, but also from there to be able to broaden the mission field to include other villages in Norton Sound and out on the Seward Peninsula. The Covenant in Sweden quickly heeded Karlsson’s request for help.

Early in the following year, 1889, August Andersson was sent out from Sweden, in accordance with a decision by the Board of Missions in Stockholm. In August of the same year August Andersson from Rattvik in Dalarna, sprang ashore and was brought together with Karlsson in Unalakleet.

The workdays of both Karlsson and Andersson were immediately filled with the exertion of building the first mission house in Unalakleet before winter. With many helping hands from the side of the villages, the house was ready for use just as the first snow was falling at the end of September. In October of 1889 the first school class was begun in the mission house. Twenty nine Eskimo children took part in the opening exercises, 20 boys and 9 girls. From the first day of school the teacher and the students came to a decision between themselves that the Eskimo children “shall wash themselves every morning before they go to school”!

Language was naturally a barrier during the first years. For Karlsson, his knowledge of Russian was a good help in making himself understood among certain groups of Eskimos. For Russian was still a prevalent language in the isolated coastal villages, or perhaps more accurately, a kind of Eskimo Russian. Later they went over completely to English as the major language. During the early period there were only here and there a very few who could make themselves somewhat understood in English, and then with a very limited vocabulary. It was these Eskimos and the ones who knew a little Russian who functioned as translators in the meetings and also in the school classroom during the first period.

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The language problem is best illustrated by the fact that sometimes there were three translators at one and the same meeting so that all who were gathered might understand something of what the English speaking missionary was saying. In Unalakleet alone at this time there were also Eskimos from three different tribes, each one with big differences in the meanings and pronunciation of words in their greatly varying dialects. The three tribes in Unalakleet were the Unalik, the Malamute, and the Kaviarramute.

Besides the fact that the first mission station functioned as a church and a school, and in case of need as a sick ward, it was rendered complete after a year by the addition of a children’s home.

Here the mission workers welcomed and took care of children who, for whatever reason, had lost their parents. In most cases it was various kinds of respiratory epidemics that cut them down.

Axel E. Karlson and August Andersson soon had reason to present additional requests for help in the north, and since interest in the Alaska mission was great, their requests were soon granted.

Accordingly in the spring of 1891 Hanna Svensson, born in Smaland, arrived from Massachusetts to be superintendent of the children’s home, and traveling with her was David Johnson from Iowa to take charge of the instruction in the mission school. Hanna Svensson soon moved into Karlsson’s house, and they were married a year or so later in the village church. Hanna Svensson was the first white woman ever to set foot in Unalakleet. She was a strong, courageous woman to whom the Eskimos gave the name Arrenakpuck, “The big woman.”

Adolf Lydell built up his work in Yakutat, among the Thlinket Indians, in about the same way.

Just as Karlsson had done, he returned to the States to get equipment and building materials.

In 1888 he was back in Yakutat, and with him he had another Swede, Karl Johan Henriksson.

This man came from Oregon, without any special training or experience in missionary work. He compensated fully for this with a passionate interest in accomplishing the work that Lydell had enticed him with. In 1889 Henriksson was officially accepted as an Alaska missionary of the Swedish Covenant.

Unfortunately Adolf Lydell was stricken with declining health rather soon. He fell ill and on the advice of the physician he left Alaska in 1889. He never regained sufficient health to return to the strenuous missionary work in the wilderness. In his own special way, and particularly with his eloquence and unflagging interest in the Alaska mission, he continued indirectly to work for his friends in the north. For a number of years he traveled around among the churches in the States, telling about the mission in Alaska, creating interest in what had been accomplished up there, and informing people of the need for help in the form of money and materials. Adolf Lydell had reached the imposing age of 92 years when he died in 1951.

As the replacement for Adolf Lydell and colleague of Karl Henriksson in Yakutat, Albin Johnson from Sweden was sent out. In his turn he was soon joined by his wife Agnes, and later by another female missionary, Selma Pettersson.

Karl Henriksson later moved up north to work in the expansion of the mission field in Norton Sound.

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Chapter 5

Golovin Next A Swedish Snowball Started the Avalanche July 29, 1889 is a historic date for the Alaska mission. That was the day the American Covenant took over the work in the northland.

It was the missionaries themselves who planted the thought right after the establishment of the work in Yakutat and Unalakleet. The reasons for this thinking were many, but chiefly they were of practical nature for the continued expansion. From the financial point of view the work in Alaska was already being supported for the most part by the churches in the States. The Covenant in Sweden had paid the costs at the beginning, the little snowball that started the avalanche, by sending out Axel E. Karlsson and Adolf Lydell.

The most important reason was the considerable advantage of simplifying the work in the north, administratively as well as politically. Alaska became an American territory in 1867. With the Alaska mission as the work of the American Covenant, there would be big advantages in all areas requiring support and contact with the American authorities. The missionaries themselves from time to time became American citizens, if they were not already before they went north. For them everything became so much simpler if they became American citizens, since they belonged to and worked for an American denomination.

A request was sent by the Covenant in America to the Covenant in Sweden that the work might be turned over. The Covenant in Sweden had carefully followed the successful beginnings in Alaska. And it was not without a sense of loss that the conference in Stockholm complied with the request. But the decision was unanimous and for the best for the Alaska mission. The Covenant in America took over.

The transfer absolutely did not mean that the Swedish Covenant lost contact with the Alaska mission. The union was maintained intimately both between the two Covenants and between Sweden and the Alaska mission directly. For many years the stream of missionaries from Sweden to Alaska continued, although the recruitment of missionaries naturally was done more and more from their own congregations in the States.

Another circumstance that contributed to the maintenance of contact was the fact that the members of the American Covenant were, in principle, all immigrant Swedes or the descendants of Swedes. Which is the case to this day.

It is therefore no accident that the majority of the nearly 150 missionaries who have served in Alaska for longer or shorter periods, had surnames like Andersson, Henriksson, Swanson, Almquist, or other typically Swedish names. Names with direct or indirect Swedish heritage - 41 -

continue to appear even in the present work in Alaska. In Unalakleet, which has Peen the strongest station in the north ever since Axel E. Karlsson started the work, the chairman of the station since 1966 is named Donald Erickson.

The Swedishness through the years has been on-going and very obvious. In Eskimo homes it is to this day not uncommon to see a coffee pot standing on the stove with the elegant and well known text “Coffee is the best drink. . .” in Swedish. Similarly it is no great sensation if an Eskimo in today’s Unalakleet is duly baptized and christened Lars Katchatag. He exists, is commonly called Big Lars, is the son of the old lady Tora Katchatag, and was named after Lars Nordlund who served a short time in the 1920s in Unalakleet.

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The Station in Golovin Is Speeded Up By a Catholic Priest One of the first tasks for August Andersson after he came to Karlsson in Unalakleet, was to try to establish the next big mission station. Karlsson had already chosen the village of Golovin farther up on Norton Sound. In 1891 Karlsson had paid a visit to the States as well as to Sweden. In San Francisco he chanced to meet a Catholic priest who mentioned that his order had plans to establish a mission station right in Golovin.

Karlsson kept a straight face and said nothing about his own thoughts. Back in Unalakleet he received quick permission from Covenant headquarters in Chicago to start in Golovin.

In the spring of 1892 August Andersson went up to Golovin in a little sailing schooner from Unalakleet. He had Stephen Ivanoff with him, one of the first Eskimo workers. When they arrived at Golovin Andersson invited all of the villagers to a big meeting. There he posed a direct question to the Eskimos, whether they wanted a mission station in the village, whether they wanted a school where their children could receive instruction, whether they wanted Christian work. The response was a unanimous yes. The Eskimos supported it wholeheartedly.

Inspired by the successful visit in Golovin, August Andersson began immediately to build the station. Under the leadership of Andersson the Eskimos of Golovin themselves did most of the work. Karlsson, for his part, made another trip to the States to gather funds for the new project. The enthusiasm was just as great there, and the offerings in the churches amounted to the imposing sum of 11,100 kronor for the project in Golovin.

These funds were sufficient not only for the materials and equipment for the station, out also to send up additional workers. Accordingly, when Karlsson returned he had with him the two new missionaries, Nils Hultberg and Malvina Johnsson. Hultberg’s fiancée, Hanna Holm, soon came to Alaska and they were married in the Unalakleet church in 1894. They were assigned to take charge of the mission in Golovin.

Reinforcement for Golovin came in 1897 with the arrival of Paul H. Andersson. He and Hultberg were to leave the mission later to try their luck in the gold fields around Nome where great discoveries were made around the turn of the century. At about the same time there was another Andersson in the area, a newcomer to Alaska. His initials were O.P., which also became his name. O.P. had come north in the gold business as controller for the Good Hope Mining Company. He came from Moreland in the States, and had also in his background complete pastoral training. Now when conditions called for responsible people for the station at Golovin, the invitation went to O.P. Andersson. He accepted, left his gold business and moved to Golovin. In Golovin he soon had the company of a woman missionary, Amanda Johnsson. She was trained as a teacher and nurse, and took charge of the children’s home which was completed in 1901. They were married in 1904, and together O.P. and Amanda Andersson had responsibility for the work in Golovin from this time until 1910. O.P. was named Inukpak by the Eskimos, which means “Big man and speaker”, and - 43 -

which describes O.P. Andersson in a nutshell. He was also a good organist, and at special musical services that he arranged in Golovin people came from distant villages to hear him.

The children’s home in Golovin came into existence very quickly. The direct cause was the very severe epidemic of influenza that swept through the villages of Norton Sound in the fall of 1900. Thousands of people died and many children were left orphans. Karl Johan Henriksson was called from the station in Yakutat. He was a skilled carpenter and craftsman, and he was commissioned to build the home in Golovin where the orphans could be cared for.

On a trip to Nome he awakened the interest of some Swedish gold miners in the project.

From them he received at once money enough to buy lumber for the children’s home. It was unplanned lumber, to be sure, but fully acceptable. A few of these Swedish gold miners even went to Golovin to help with the construction of the house on the slope down towards the sea, connected to the earlier mission house and along side of the school house.

August Andersson was all this time a Kind of stand-in who relieved everywhere he was needed in the event of a brief vacation or rest period on the part of the regular missionaries.

He spent much time traveling between villages on the coast, by boat in the summer time, and by cog team in the winter. August was a little rotund man, gifted with an eloquence seldom heard, which he used to the full.

Outsiders sometimes saw him as a little peculiar, but if that was the case in his activity in the villages, it was still his device to win friends and followers wherever he went. Koblaratjurak was his Eskimo name which could be translated “The man with the staring eyes”. August had surprisingly big eyes which gave rise to his Eskimo name. Koblaratjurak functioned until 1918 as a stand-in and reserve strength in the Alaska mission. For a short period he was also in government service as a teacher in the village schools.

In his more advanced years he continued his interest in the Alaska mission by brief visits to his previous places of service, but still more as a traveling lecturer. Back in Sweden he was for a long time a valued visitor when he made lecture tours especially to the Covenant congregations. He spent his last days in Rattvik.

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Ojjarrak Rock Stephen Ivanoff was August Andersson’s right hand man on many occasions on his travels in the villages. Hundreds of other Eskimos joined in and took part very actively in the work of edification. Ojjarrak Rock is probably the most talked about from the earliest period. He had a past that was as boisterous as it was unusual, before he became acquainted with Axel E. Karlsson.

Ojjarrak Rock’s father was married four times. In his second marriage Ojjarrak was born in mid winter outdoors in a snow drift. Being born outdoors in this way was looked upon by many tribes as the best start in life an Eskimo could have. If the newborn was weak this could, of course, lead to death. On the other hand if the baby was in good condition it was looked upon as becoming so much stronger after a birth outdoors.

The father’s fourth marriage ended precipitately. On an occasion of mental aberration combined with intoxication from his own home brew, he shot his wife to death. Her brothers took revenge at once, and after killing the fattier they set out after the two sons, Ojjarrak and Akoolak. For blood revenge like this was not complete until the whole family was liquidated. The two boys were hunted for several days. They succeeded in staying hidden out on the tundra. When things quieted down after about a week, they returned home at least to find the bodies of their parents. Everything loose in the home was stolen and moved out.

Rock was only twelve years old when he lost both parents and home. He grew up almost as a wild man. Under unbelievably difficult circumstances he survived on his own. Later he made a living by activities that were not always within the law.

When Axel E. Karlsson came to Unalakleet Ojjarrak Rock was fascinated by the tall Swedish missionary, and he was one of the first to join him in his work. Rock was a very skillful dog team driver and he had decidedly the best dogs in the area, which he had trained himself. He was at this time engaged in fur trading. He traveled around in the villages buying up skins which he in turn sold to the buyers of the big companies. It was always Rock who prepared for Karlsson and the other missionaries when they were to go out over the expanses of snow to call upon the outlying villages.

Ojjarrak Rock’s energy never flagged. For a number of years he held meetings in the villages he visited in his fur business. This was going on for several years before Karlsson and the others learned about it. Rock was true to his style, going his own way without asking permission from anyone. He simply followed the law of his own will, and now he had entered deeply into the things that Karlsson and the other missionaries talked so much about. Consequently he saw it as most appropriate that, on his fur trips, which took him to villages seldom or never visited by white men, he should bring the Gospel there.

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Rock was clearly cut out for this role. Through his constant travels along the coast he had picked up enough of the speech of the people so he could make himself understood in most of the dialects. Besides he was an exceptionally captivating speaker. He did not hesitate to embellish his anecdotes from his own imagination, for he knew that the people in the desolate and isolated villages liked it. In this way he made them listen.

Little by little this work of Ojjarrak Rock became known. The missionaries, of course, had no objection to this competition. Through Rock’s spontaneous entry into the work the teaching was spread to the most distant villages, and everywhere curiosity and interest were sown in the work of the mission. The missionaries soon called Ojjarrak Rock The Apostle of the Eskimos�, when they fully realized kind of access they had through this remarkable man.

Frank and Misha Kamaroff, Andrew Kakorin, the siblings Misha and Kaitcha Ivanoff, Fred Walker, Peter and Dora Egelak, Samuel Anarick, and David Paniptchuk were other Eskimos that the Swedish missionaries could hardly have done without in the building of the work. Misha Kamaroff was the best linguist among them. He could speak both English and Russian, as well as several Eskimo dialects. As translator Misha was invaluable for Axel E. Karlsson.

Alice Omegitjoak belonged to those female workers who through the provision of the mission received an education in the States, and then returned to Alaska as commissioned missionaries. At a later period others joined as established Eskimo workers, such as Julius Pleasant, Paren Wilson and Minnie Gonongnan, Reuben and Katherine Paniptch, Harry and Carrie Soxie, Axel and Clara Oyumik, Joshua Avinona and many, many more.

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An Extremely Difficult Introduction The coming of the new missionaries and the situation on the field up north might have been handled better than it was in 1910 when Ludvig Evald Ost from Sweden and his young bride from Wisconsin landed in Alaska. The situation was the same for their traveling companions on the way north, Henning and Hilma Gustafsson, another newly commissioned missionary couple who were sent to Alaska. Henning, like Ost, was born in Sweden.

Why was the situation so serious? It was not simply the natural problems that pile up before young, new missionaries who have come to grapple with unfamiliar tasks in a wild and strange environment.

In the first place Osts and Gustafssons had to take over from two pioneers who had become legendary after their successful work in earliest period. Ost had been given the task of taking over the station and children’s home in Golovin from 0.P.Andersson. Gustafsson had to become responsible in Unalakleet after Axel E. Karlsson. This alone, to take over from two such lofty forerunners, was a very delicate task.

The second reason was the new situation that the Alaska mission found itself in just at this time. Serious discord had arisen in the American Covenant because of missionaries becoming involved in the gold business. The good that came of the gold affair was an unusually good financial state during the period of development. Directly or indirectly the gold discovered by the missionaries contributed considerably to the successful results.

Not least, Axel E. Karlsson himself discovered a lot of gold which he turned over to the mission. (More will be told later of the missionaries and the gold mining.)

Axel E. Karlsson, born September 15, 1858 in Svanhult in Ostergotland, Sweden, died in Unalakleet, Alaska on January 15, 1910, at the age of 51, having been a missionary 27 years of which three were in Russia and the rest in Alaska. On the tombstone of his grave the following was inscribed: “There were no Christians when he came, no heathen when he died�. His wife, Hanna, moved immediately to Seattle, where she later died on November 20, 1933. In keeping with her wish her body was shipped up to Unalakleet where she was buried beside her husband.

With the passing of Axel E. Karlsson the direct support from his gold interests also disappeared. This plus the cooling interest in the States diminished the support they had enjoyed earlier, and meant that the new missionaries in Unalakleet and Golovin had to begin by tightening their belts.

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Alice Omegitjoak, one of the supporting pillars in the early development.

Alice Omegitjoak, one of the supporting pillars in the early development.

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Axel E. Karlsson built the first mission station and the church in Unalakleet.

Axel E. Karlsson built the first mission station and the church in Unalakleet.

Axel E. Karlsson built the first mission station and the church in Unalakleet.

Eskimos in Alaska have never lived in igloos. The word “igloo” or “iglu” in the Eskimo language means house.

- 49 Eskimos in Alaska have never lived in igloos. The word “igloo” or “iglu” in

PioneersininUnalakleet.

Unalakleet.

Pioneers - 63 - 50 -

A “cache” in Unalakleet village. A little log cabin on poles which “cache” in Unalakleet village.

A little log cabin on poles which functions asA in a pantry.

It is also used for drying and smoking fish.

A “cache” Unalakleet village.

A little log cabin on poles which functions as a pantry. It is also used for drying and smoking fish. functions as a pantry. It is also used for drying and smoking fish.

The present church in Unalakleet, where the Swedish Covenant started the mission in 1887 by sending Axel E. Karlsson there.

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The present church in Unalakleet, where the Swedish Covenant

On Axel E. Karlsson’s tombstone in Unalakleet are the following words:

“There was tombstone no Christian in when he came, no when he died.”

On Axel E. Karlsson’s Unalakleet areheathen the following words: “There was no Christian when he came, no heathen when he died.”

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The mission board in Chicago was aware of the harsh financial realities in this new situation.

It was for this reason that they gave such close attention to their choice of missionaries.

Henning Gustafsson and Ludvig Evald Ost were both sturdy men who could work with their hands if it should be necessary, and they could make wise decisions on their own.

The leaders in Chicago were convinced that these were the best people they had to send up north to manage the difficult situation there.

Henning and Hilma Gustafsson remained in service for six years, and they were successful in maintaining the work in Unalakleet in spite of the meager resources. After them came August Andersson for two years, the last time he served as a stand-in. He was replaced by Lars and Dagmar Almquist.

Ludvig Evald and Ruth Ost, when they arrived in Alaska, had a brief visit in Nome with their predecessors in Golovin, 0.P. and Amanda Andersson. The Anderssons had left Golovin for good and had tickets back to the States by the same ship that brought the Osts. There was no time for any extensive exchange of ideas.

When the Osts landed at Golovin after their delay in Nome, the whole population of the village awaited them on the shore to see who the new missionaries were. In the first row stood the 45 Eskimo children who for the time being were living in the children’s home.

Management of the children’s home was the most urgent task. The orphans could not be left to themselves any longer, and the Osts had to dig into that work immediately. Anna Hagberg and Mary Westdahl, two of the many women missionaries working in the school and sick ward, were there, and were always ready for other duties.

It was an uncertain future that confronted the Osts. Much turned out to be as people had predicted, a hard job often done with bare hands. Difficulties appeared when they were least expected, when only sound common sense could help them. It was a time of meager financial resources when the small missionary salary of 75 dollars a month was not always enough to put food on their own family table.

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Chapter 6

The Land of the Eskimos Custom and Practice Evald and Ruth Ost had hardly even seen an Eskimo before they arrived in Alaska. It was a new acquaintanceship with a northern people who had very quickly in recent decades assimilated so-called civilization. But still at that time there were among the Eskimos some older customs and practices well preserved, which they did not abandon in their daily life.

The word “Eskimo” means, literally translated from most of the dialects along the coast, quite simply “raw fish eater”. Or, as it has sometimes been translated, “People who eat their food raw”. The Eskimo name originated in times when the coastal people lived in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

It was to these people that the Osts came to carry on their missionary work. The Eskimos had long since learned to cook their food, with the exception of certain dishes that continue to be eaten raw. Gradually the new missionaries in Golovin became accustomed to and accepted a series of elements preserved by the Eskimos from an earlier culture.

What is most commonly associated with the Eskimo in this respect is, of course, seal oil.

Seal oil is and remains the elixir of life for the Eskimos, and is consumed at one or more of the daily meals. This evil smelling stuff continues to be the most natural food on the table in an Eskimo home. Nothing could replace seal oil. That many Eskimos say they could not survive without the daily dose is absolutely not an exaggeration.

It is poured over fish and meat as a sauce, it is used to dip pieces of food in before it is eaten, or as a kind of seasoning which is eaten by dipping the fingers in the oil and licking them clean. The latter procedure was earlier the most common. It was also very important that the woman used three fingers and the man two for dipping into the vessel containing the yellow transparent oil. Seal oil is, of course, not an Eskimo production simply for enjoyment.

On the contrary it fills an important function in that it keeps the stomach satisfied with what is usually an unbalanced diet. In the past it was an excellent stomach medicine for serious illness that could strike when the daily fish was eaten raw. In the hospital in Nome the Eskimo patients complained, not so long ago, that the menu did not have seal oil. The discontent became so great that at last the hospital was forced to offer it so the Eskimos could get their daily dose.

The raw material of seal oil is seal blubber. The old method of preparation, which is still used by those who prepare their own oil, is to hang the blubber up in a bag sewn of dried seal skin. It hangs in a warm place until the blubber has broken down into a sludge. After a month or more, depending on the weather in the spring or early summer when the preparation - 55 -

takes place, the sludge has become clear and liquid. Earlier it was even common to bury the seal skin bag with the blubber on the warm seashore and let it go through its ripening process until it was ready.

Evald and Ruth Ost were obliged, of course, to try the seal oil a good many times over the course of the years, exactly as they tasted other unusual foods that the Eskimos, with the best of intentions, offered them. If the food was unusual and a delicacy in the eyes of the Eskimos, then it was most often raw fish or meat prepared in a variety of ways.

On several occasions they tasted rotten fish entrails. At the time of cleaning the fish, care is taken of the entrails, head, fins, bones, etc. The entrails are put in a bucket or barrel with a lid, which is buried in the ground during the warm part of the year. When the fish remains have brewed together and begun to bubble and ferment, and the odor for the uninitiated is repulsive, then the entrails are most dainty and best to eat.

In a neighboring village farther inland from Golovin, it happened shortly after the Osts arrived that three men over ate on rotten fish entrails. A few weeks after the perilous party two of the men died. The Eskimo specialty on the bill of fare, entrails that have gone through the rotting process, originated in the difficulty in ancient times of keeping and preserving fresh food. Drying was of course the most acceptable, but rotting as a means of preservation was a tolerable variant.

The missionaries Ost had also to become accustomed to the Eskimo custom of giving names to the newborn children in the village. It was very common for the newborn to receive the surname of the last person to have died in the village. The purpose of it was that the soul of the deceased would in this way live longer and at the same time it brought happiness to the newborn, that is if the deceased had been a good and able person.

As a result of the fact that surnames could go from family to family in the village, sometimes there was great confusion about relationships. This was no small problem for the missionaries who had to ferret out these things in order to get the right names on the children in the home or on new members in the church membership book. For the Eskimos themselves it was hardly a problem, since relationships from ancient times had never been an obstacle to marriage.

Living together without marriage was just as common as a man being married to four or five wives at the same time.

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Many Stratagems for Survival The Eskimo name of the new missionary Ludvig Evald Ost in Golovin soon became quite simply Grandpa, a right so fitting name for the nearly two meter tall Swedish missionary.

During his travels by dog team between the villages Grandpa received detailed instruction in how to treat the dreaded snow blindness which could be fatal on a journey alone on the tundra along the coast where the weather could change so suddenly during the polar winter.

The most common method was to bathe the eyes with warm sugar water. Another acknowledged procedure that was long used by the Eskimos, was to stick a sharp needle into the base of the nose and let the blood spread into the corners of the eyes and under the lids. In earlier times a sharpened bone splinter was an obligatory piece of equipment for an Eskimo in case of snow blindness. Grandpa Ost was forced to try both methods on several occasions, and these simple treatments were certainly effective, but he found the sugar water both more effective and more pleasant.

Still at this time the Eskimos used old, well preserved methods of curing and resisting illnesses, which they had developed over the centuries when they lived as isolated people.

One’s own urine, for example, was useful in many respects. Often whole villages were struck with epidemics difficult to conquer, and then the word went out to use urine for washing dishes and clothing, as well as for bathing. Urine was looked upon as preventing the spread of illness, and also having a good effect on open sores.

Regarding the outcome of incipient illness and sudden death among the older Eskimos, they had a sure sign for predicting such disquieting events. The hair of the Eskimos usually becomes gray or white rather early. In old age the hair may darken again. When this change takes place, tradition has it that the person in question will die before the year is out.

Methods of burying the dead varied in different parts of Alaska. A few years into the twentieth century the Eskimos continued to bury their dead on the shores of seas or rivers, in a bag of skin on a high wooden structure.

A still older custom was to bury the dead in a heap of stones on a hill outside of the village.

They were careful to have the head of the deceased rest on a large flat stone and toward the west. This arrangement would enable the deceased to see the sun rise in the east, for with the light from the east “something new would come.” Along side the corpse were placed all the most necessary personal belongings such as weapons, ornaments, kitchen utensils or other home equipment that the deceased used in life. A woman’s fish knife was always placed in her grave. Every Eskimo woman still considers this utensil as probably the most important of.a11. It is usually a curved sharp blade with a handle of walrus ivory. This knife is called in the Eskimo language “Ooloo” or “Ouluu.”

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The Shaman’s Mighty Power When Grandpa Ost and his wife Ruth came to Alaska in 1910, the people in the most isolated villages were still devotees of the primeval “shaman religion.” This means that the Eskimos blindly believed in and prayed to spirits and ghosts and believed in magic. It was all guided by the magician himself, the shaman. In a self-appointed profession, inherited or simply taken over from some shaman who had died, he became the link between the spirit world and the wretched ordinary people.

The shaman was always in the picture in case of illness or other kinds of misfortune. He had the power to cure illness with his sorcery and art. The art consisted most often of beating on a drum with a pair of bone drumsticks, or blowing a delirious sound from hollow bone pipes, or simply waving his magic wand. “Andgatkok”, meaning “the exorcist”, was the Eskimo name for the shaman. That he sometimes failed in his work as witch doctor, that his conjuring often came to nothing, did not mean much to him. He always had excuses at hand, most often that someone in the village had disturbed him in his work. At such times the shaman would point out some weak loner in the village, who would then receive his punishment of flogging and mistreatment. Many who in this fashion fell out of favor with the shaman were sooner or later killed.

Eskimos in the coastland, strangely enough, prayed only to evil spirits. Good spirits have never been a part of the Eskimo world view. The absolute worst of all evil spirits was “Doonerrak,” the devil himself in his own majestic person. To protect themselves against the wrath of the spirits, all adult Eskimos carried amulets of the most varying kinds. The amulets were worn nearest to the body and sometimes they were sewn in the everyday clothes.

The old Eskimos had their own version of creation. Popular belief had it that there was a little bird called “the diver” and a raven, who were the first creatures on earth. These two quarreled for a long time about which of them was really first. At last the raven gave in. But in order not to be considered inferior to the little bird, he began to create other creatures and phenomena.

Since it continued to be dark he began with the sun and moon and stars which he hung up in the sky. Then he took a serious flying trip along Alaska’s long coastline. All the larger stones on the sea shore he changed into men. Toward southern Alaska he saw a big flock of crows, and he changed them into women. With this, creation was finished. The raven left the future to the life he had brought about.

The greatest pleasures of the Eskimos were the many special festivals that were arranged at regular intervals. The food festival was the greatest. At that time everything edible in the village was gathered together and the people ate and ate for days and weeks until everything was gone. Not infrequently the food festival was followed by a long period of starvation in the village.

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The gift festival was another, known today as the “patios” of the Eskimos. This festival originated when the first Russian fur trading ships put in at the villages along the Alaskan coast. In bartering for the furs the Eskimos received blankets and cloth, but above all tobacco and liquor. After such a bartering session the Eskimos gathered for a gift festival. All the blankets and cloth were laid in a single big neap, whereupon everything was cut into small pieces. Then the pieces were dealt out to all the women of the village, all during dancing, singing and general celebration. Later the women sewed the small pieces together and made clothing, and how they eventually looked is self-evident. But the many colors made cheerful and desirable garments which the Eskimos wore on festive occasions.

The dance festival included the most diversified rituals. The shaman stood in the center and mediated contacts with the spirit world. In different ways the shaman himself and his invisible masters were propitiated. The participants in the dance festival disrobed until they were half naked and painted their faces and bodies with all kinds of colors. They dressed up by hanging on themselves everything loose they could lay hands on such as rags bottles, empty cans, pieces of bone and other rubbish. The most important was to have it rattle as loudly as possible around them. The dance continued to a medley of shrieks and songs as long as the leader was able. Short breaks were taken solely to let the shaman tell one of his many boastful hunting or fishing stories in which he of course, through his magic powers, played the leading role.

The smoke festival arrangement was that all the tobacco and smoking materials in the village were gathered together. Then the participants gathered in one of the biggest houses in the village and smoked it all up. The metaphor “the smoke was so thick that you had to cut through it with a Knife” is hardly adequate to describe the enormous smoke production at this particular festival.

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As shaman and people’scontact contact man with thethe spirit world, Angatkok, As As shaman and the people’s man with thespirit spirit world, Angatkok, shaman and thethe people’s contact man with world, Angatkok, the medicine man andsorcerer sorcerer of the village, had had unlimited power. power. thethe medicine man the village, unlimited medicine manand and sorcerer of of the village, had unlimited power.

The Eskimos’ special festivals continue to be a pleasure for the people. The dance festival is one, the food festival another, and the gift festival a third The Eskimos’ special festivals to befor a pleasure people.

The The Eskimos’ special festivals continuecontinue to be a pleasure the people. for The the dance festival is one, festivity.

The rhythm, is beaten on the tightly stretched sealskin drums to the food festival another, andthe thefood gift festival a third festivity.and The rhythm, beaten onathe tightly dance festival is one, festival another, the giftis festival third bring success to the hunting and fishing. stretched sealskin drums to bring success to the hunting and fishing.

festivity. The rhythm, is beaten on the tightly stretched sealskin drums to bring success to the hunting and fishing.

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Mother Ruth

Mother Ruth

Mother Ruth

The whole Ost family in Golovin in 1928.

- 75 The Thewhole whole Ost Ost family family in in Golovin Golovin in in 1928.

1928.

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Chapter 7

Ever-Changing Activity Wedding In a Sleeping Bag On one of his trips on the tundra with his dog team in the winter of 1911, Grandpa Ost met a young Eskimo couple who had lived together for a good many years without being married. This meeting with Ost took a very amusing turn for them.

The Eskimo couple were Gladys Omignuk and Tomas Kayuk. They lived in a small cabin of hand hewn small spruce, with the barest necessities and yet functional. Tomas had himself built their little nest. He had found Gladys in one of the villages on the coast. He had brought her home to his village which had the high-sounding name of Spruce Creek Village. There they were to raise their children and live off of nature as did most of the others in the village.

The snow lay a meter deep outside their little cabin, and the polar wind swept over the village in an icily frigid draft. Gladys and Tomas had chosen to stay indoors that day. They lay there well bedded down in their thick, warm sleeping bags on a family bed on the middle of the floor in front of a rusty iron drum that served as a heating stove. Then there was a bang on the door.

In came Grandpa Ost from Golovin. He was passing through on his way to a village farther up along the river. Grandpa Ost had been in Spruce Creek Village earlier, and knowing about the unwritten law of hospitality, especially in bad weather, he stopped off for a break and a warming cup of tea. It was only by chance that he stepped into the cabin of Tomas and Gladys.

Grandpa was not particularly surprised to find the Eskimo couple still in bed. In the frigid weather outdoors there was no way to accomplish anything worthwhile. Grandpa understood full well why they had chosen to stay indoors and Keep each other warm.

Grandpa made himself acquainted with the young couple while he served himself some tea from the Kettle on the tin stove. Quite naturally the conversation turned to marriage and the Eskimo regulations for cohabitation. Grandpa explained carefully to them the meaning and implications of marriage, its significance and responsibility. Gladys and Tomas listened ever more amazed and attentive. They had not thought much about this, and soon their first child would be born.

“Therefore”, explained Grandpa seriously to them, “You can’t continue to live in this way.”

With that the conversation ended, a conversation that concluded with an act of marriage! For the two young people took Grandpa Ost at his word and let him marry them immediately.

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Grandpa explained to them carefully that this was not merely a legal formality and a contrivance of church and state, but it was of significance for the very relationship between two people and its implications for time to come.

The Eskimo couple still lay on their mat on the floor as Grandpa pronounced them husband and wife. A moment later he thanked them, said farewell and continued on his way, while Tomas and Gladys were still in their sleeping bags.

For Grandpa Ost this was a strange interlude among many other unusual situations that he encountered in this equally unusual wilderness land. For Gladys and Tomas it was an event of meaning for the rest of their lives. That before this cold winter day had ended they would be married to each other they had not anticipated or even dreamed when they made the decision to stay indoors -- and to get married without even having to get out of their sleeping bags.

Spruce Creek Village was one of the villages that later was hit hard by one of the epidemics of influenza that raged at regular intervals. In the beginning of the 1930s the village was abandoned and left desolate. Gladys and Tomas and their growing family had long since moved out to one of the larger and more robust villages along the coast.

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The Language Like most of the mission workers in the early years, Grandpa Ost soon learned enough of the language of the Eskimos to carry on simple conversations with them. All of Ost’s eight children also learned the Eskimo language more or less well, as a result of living and working daily among the Eskimos, and for long periods being isolated with them out in the villages.

This was so natural that the original language of the parents, Swedish, was unessential.

It was more important for the Ost children to understand the language of the aboriginal population than to try to learn Swedish, in of the fact that Grandpa himself and mother Ruth often Swedish with each other, and in spite of the fact that into the decade of the forties Grandpa had meetings in Swedish for the large groups of Scandinavians who had become permanent residents in the Nome area after the discoveries of gold.

Grandpa has preserved his Swedish mother tongue very well, but he speaks an old Swedish which without doubt would be completely unique in Sweden today. he has kept all the archaic verb forms as well as a number of expressions that were either provincialisms or words that were current when he left Sweden, and have become obsolete since. This old Swedish is best expressed when Grandpa quotes from old story books or song books, or when he recites old stories for children from his sharp memory without hesitation or missing a single syllable.

Characteristic of the Eskimo linguistic usage are the dialects with great variations from village to village. Word formation follows completely different principles than those we are used to.

A standard word which no visitor to Alaska can escape hearing is “ko-ja-na” or “kooyah-naft.” Additional variations in spelling exist depending entirely on where one lives in Alaska. “Ko-ja-na” is a friendly word that really expresses recognition or agreement, but it is used in all contexts as a compliment or a greeting or the response to a greeting, etc.

The Eskimo language is acknowledged to be difficult, not least because most of the sounds seem to be forced out and come from the throat or the back of the mouth. It is said that no white man or woman has yet succeeded in mastering the Eskimo language.

Language study was quite naturally an important activity at the first mission stations. For the missionaries it was a voluntary task, out it was self evident that hardly anything could be accomplished unless people could understand each other. It was equally self evident that English became the principal language from the beginning. Soon the schools came under public administration. In the early period and for many years a Presbyterian missionary named Sheldon Jackson functioned as Superintendent of Schools. At the end of the nineteenth century he was given the task of organizing the school system of Alaska.

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Under Jackson’s influence the school work and the mission continued for a long time to go hand in hand. The great majority of the teachers were also missionaries, or, if you like, vice versa. The government salaries that were paid them for their work in the schools contributed greatly to enabling the church denominations to send out anti support as many missionaries to Alaska as became the case.

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High School In Unalakleet The American Covenant has over the years put a strong emphasis on school work out in the villages where they have established mission stations. It is no accident that the Covenant is the only one of all the denominations in the north to operate a private school. Covenant High School was founded in 1954 in pioneer Axel E. Karlsson’s village of Unalakleet. The first year they had seven students as a tentative beginning, but it grew quickly later.

Today the school in Unalakleet has about 100 students from seven to eighteen years of age.

It provides a complete basic education in which the final examination is the equivalent of the Swedish Gymnasium. It is a school with a high status. The school in Unalakleet under the administration of the Covenant is without doubt a unique undertaking.

The instruction follows completely the American curriculum, which is a presumption of academic excellence. The only departure is that in addition to the regular instruction thirty five minutes per week of Bible study is required.

In the budget year of 1976 the American government contributed $250,000 to the school in Unalakleet. The remainder of the cost, about the same amount, was paid by the American Covenant and the students themselves. In that year the student fee for the whole school year was $500.00, of which $300.00 was paid in cash. The remainder was paid in various kinds of work assigned among the students, such as work in the kitchen, housekeeping, snow shoveling, maintenance work on the school building, etc. As a rule 50’ of the students go on to further studies at the universities, in the university cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks in Alaska, or in Seattle, Washington.

Along the north coast of Alaska, beside Covenant High School in Unalakleet there are similar schools only in the villages of Bethel, Nome, and Kotzebue, all under government administration. For the present and future of the missionary work in Alaska the school in Unalakleet is a great advantage. Every year, not many, but two or three of the students become active as indigenous missionaries. Through the school the staff of mission workers can be steadily increased. Basically the aim is that-the Eskimos shall themselves take over most of the missionary work and carry it out with the white fellow workers from the American Covenant functioning only as helpers and counselors.

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A Charming and Dangerous Land During his many years in Alaska Grandpa Ludvig Evald Ost and his growing family have had innumerable proofs of the fact that the northland is capricious, charming and dangerous, all in a balanced blend that hardly ever became boring. In the world in which the Ost children grew up, often isolated for long periods, it was the simple everyday events that comforted and supported them, together with the phenomena that constantly reminded them of the seriousness that underlay the usually tranquil surface.

An example was the time Grandpa came home with a baby porcupine. On a late summer day he had gone out for a few hours to hunt ptarmigan on the mountain slopes outside their home in Elim. On his way home he had seen an excellent specimen of porcupine high up in a spruce. Porcupine meat is an outstanding delicacy and Grandpa did not miss the opportunity to add to the booty in his bag.

Somewhat surprised, but too late, Grandpa saw that he had killed a female. A couple of noisy bundles came creeping out to him. There was nothing else Grandpa could do but take the youngsters home with him to the village. One of them died but the other became for several months the pet of the whole family, although it was necessary to deal gently with such a specimen of Alaska’s wildlife. Porcupine quills are not only needle sharp, but they are also barbed which makes it advisable not to be stuck by one of them. The young porcupine, with the useful ability to climb trees, was nourished on milk from a baby bottle.

It became properly tame and a good friend of the children in the house, following them everywhere as they played. The friendship with this different kind of animal from Alaska’s rich fauna, ended a few months later when they found him dead in the pantry with his head stuck in a glass jar. He had removed the lid in some way from a peanut butter jar and had suffocated in his effort to reach into the jar.

A crane became another friend of the family on a later occasion when the Osts were stationed farther inland in the gold mining town of Council. For a period of two weeks Grandpa had watched a lone crane out on the tundra a few kilometers from home. One day he went out to the crane. Imagine his surprise when the big, beautiful bird not only seemed completely fearless, but followed him when he returned to the village. The crane became the playmate of the village children until late in the fall. The bird’s doom was sealed, however, just as abruptly as that of the young porcupine. In an excessive solicitude for the welfare of the crane, one day the children gave the bird such a large amount of fried reindeer meat that it was too much of a good thing. The crane quite simply over ate, and besides he was not accustomed to fried meat, and died later the same day.

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Grandpa Ost, now over 90 years of age, continues to be active in his dear Alaska.

Grandpa Ost, now over 90 years of age, continues to be active in his dear Alaska.

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OnOn oneone occasion a big bearbear watched the girls occasion a big watched thefrom girlsafrom a distance when theythey werewere picking blueberries. distance when picking blueberries.

On one occasion a big bear watched the girls from a distance when they were picking blueberries.

The slopes of the tundra outside of the villages are full of berries. Chiefly blueberries and cloudberries.

The slopes the tundra outside of outside the villages are villages full of berries.

Theofslopes of the tundra of the are full of Chiefly blueberries and cloudberries. berries. Chiefly blueberries and cloudberries.

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Andro Bango, the last descendant in Alaska of the Laplanders Andro Bango, the last descendant in Alaska of the Laplanders who emigrated from Norway at the end of the 19th Century in who emigrated from Norway at the end of the 19th Century in connection with Sheldon Jackson’s great reindeer project.

Andro Bango, the last descendant in Alaska the Laplanders connection with Sheldon Jackson’s greatof reindeer project. th who emigrated from Norway at the end of the 19 Century in connection with Sheldon Jackson’s great reindeer project.

The aim of the reindeer project was to contribute to a higher degree of self-support and independence for the Eskimos.

The aim of the reindeer project wastotocontribute contribute to to aa higher The aim of the reindeer project was higher degree of self-support and independence for the Eskimos. degree of self-support and independence for the Eskimos.

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help of of thethe Native missionaries theenergetically work spread With the help Native the work spread With the With help ofthe the Native missionaries themissionaries work spread in the energetically thethe decade of the 1930’s.

New churches werewere energetically in decade of the 1930’s.

New churches decade of the 1930’s.inNew churches were established in about ten places. established in about tenten places. established in about places.

The only private high school of the coastland is in Unalakleet, established The only school the coastland in Unalakleet, established under the administration of the American Covenant.

The teacher in theunder The onlyprivate private high high school ofofthe coastland is inisUnalakleet, established under the administration of the American Covenant.

The in isthe picture is Annabelle the pupil is Lamb Nanauk. the administration of theTowarak, American Covenant.

The teacher in teacher the picture Towarak, the pupil is Nanauk. picture isAnnabelle Annabelle Towarak, the is Lamb Nanauk.

- 87pupil - Lamb - 72 - - 87 -

Only a few weeks later the crane had a successor in Ost’s ever changing family of outstanding guests, both human and animal. This time it was a capricious but very good natured goat.

An Indian from a village on the Yukon River had come to Council one day and offered the goat for sale. He said he was tired of the wretch because of its ever changing moods.

Grandpa bought it for ten dollars. For three years the goat was a member of the family just like any of the others. The goat was pampered and given good care. The goat thanked them in her own way with a never-failing supply of milk for the Ost family and the nearest neighbors to boot.

But neither did the goat survive the hard wilderness life. One winter when the goat in an unguarded moment slipped out of her secure nook in Grandpa’s house, the white bearded pet was much too roughly treated by a number of sled dogs a short distance from the house.

When the goat came within reach, they threw themselves at once on the defenseless animal.

The ravenous dogs soon tore the goat to pieces.

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Grandpa Killed a Grizzly With One Shot Through the Wall During their time in Council a most remarkable episode took place in which a grizzly bear and Grandpa Ost played the leading roles. There are lots of bears in Alaska that have a taste for all the good things that can be found in a food store. In all solitary houses, for example summer homes or the huts of fur hunters, there is always a certain supply of food for emergency use. It happens constantly that bears break into such houses, and destroy and lay waste in their search for food. It was an example of this common event which forms the introduction to the story about Grandpa and the grizzly.

At a creek called Crooked Creek, about ten Kilometers northwest of Council, Grandpa and his family had had a cabin for several years where they lived during the summer months.

Besides, Grandpa had, together with his son-in-law, bought a small mining claim beside the creek where mostly for pleasure they washed for gold a couple of summers. During berry season all the girls in the family went out over the tundra to pick blueberries and cloudberries for the winter’s supply of jam and juice. One fall they noticed that the berry picking went on for several days under the watchful eye of a big bear. The bear could sit at a respectable distance for several hours watching the berry pickers. But no one gave it a thought. Bears in the neighborhood was not unusual, and this one, like so many others, was certainly only moderately curious. but the next weekend it was discovered that the bear had been there on a very special errand.

The whole family had gone in to Council to take part in a three-day mission conference. On Sunday evening they came back to their summer home only to discover the abomination of desolation. When the grizzly found himself alone in the vicinity he quite naturally broke into the dwelling house. With great care he had broken all the windows, smashed in the door and even ripped off several boards from the walls. Inside the house there was hardly a single item untouched or missed by bruin’s rampage.

All the pans on the stove and everything on the shelves and in the cupboards the bear had swept down and thrown all over the house. Two big sacks of flour he had ripped open in the middle of the floor and in the mess he had torn open cans and spilled out coffee, torn bags of salt, lemons from a wooden box which the bear had, of course, broken in two. Two one-kilo cans of cooking fat he had feasted on sitting on the heap of flour, salt and coffee.

A crate of toilet paper was broken open and the rolls were thrown around and unrolled like a kind of decoration on the whole chaos.

There had been an open can of shortening on the table. It had apparently fallen off the table and rolled under one of the large beds which stood along one of the long walls. The bear had squeezed under the bed and in his efforts to get at the can, had ripped out all the stuffing and feathers in the bottom of the bed. The grizzly had in all respects been very thorough.

Hardly anything of the food could be salvaged.

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The sequel, however, was not so merry for the food happy bruin. A few days later Grandpa found himself alone at Crooked Creek. It was calm and silent in the vicinity. His plan was to try to find out if the bear was still in the neighborhood. He had a hot fire going in the wood stove, had prepared and eaten a good supper and had lain down to rest, with a rifle and a shotgun within reach. At about seven o’clock in the evening he was awakened by a loud banging on the door as though someone outside struck with a big hammer.

Sure enough! The grizzly was back. He threw himself against the door so that it bent under the weight, but he could not get in. He then went around to the side of the enclosed the porch where he could get at the easier walls of corrugated iron. Grandpa could of course no longer stand there and not do anything. The bear was on his way into the house and the danger was clear.

Grandpa took his .30.30 Winchester rifle, a powerful weapon, and went out into the porch.

He heard the bear puffing and snorting outside the tin wall. He had no difficulty locating the bear by its scratching on the wall. When the grizzly rose to his full height and Grandpa heard the paws scratching higher than his own head, he aimed carefully and shot.

Grandpa fired several shots. The heavy bullets went right through the wall and found their mark. The grizzly fell dead, shot through the heart by one of the bullets. It was a big bruiser that lay out there. Claw scratches were found two and a half meters up on the wall. The end of the story was that the grizzly was transported in to Council, hung up, skinned and cut up. Then there was a party in the village. To be sure, the meat of a big grizzly or of other brown bears is not very tasty, but an adventure like this, of course, had to be celebrated in some fashion. Everybody in the village took part in the party, and it did not take many hours before all the meat was divided and distributed.

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Chapter 8

The Mission and the Reindeer Reindeer From Siberia and Herders From the North Might Have Made Alaska’s Eskimos Independent.

Among the unusual duties that a missionary in this unique land might have was the responsibility for a particular form of reindeer management which fell upon Grandpa Ost and the other missionaries. Herds of varying size were given to the nearest mission stations so that the Eskimos might learn to take care of the animals and benefit from them in about the same way that the Laplanders did.

The history of domestic reindeer in Alaska is interesting. In earlier centuries there was in the northland a mountain reindeer that was identical with the northern domestic reindeer, good natured, gentle, and without respect for people. For a long time it was the favorite quarry of both the Eskimos and the Indians for it gave them meat the year round. But this mountain reindeer became extinct with the arrival of the white people in Alaska. The Eskimos gained access to fire arms, and the sensitive reindeer were wiped out by a few decades of intensive and effective hunting. The Eskimos themselves could hardly regulate their hunting of the reindeer, and were unaware of what was happening until the day when there were no more.

Suddenly there were only the other reindeer, the caribou or forest reindeer of North America.

In appearance they were much like the northern domestic reindeer, but Digger and more powerful. A decisive difference is that the caribou are and will continue to be wild animals that cannot be tamed and made into domestic livestock.

After the gentler mountain reindeer became extinct on the tundra and mountain sides, a situation arose that the Eskimos themselves could not have anticipated, that is, the possibilities of obtaining ample food supplies became catastrophically limited. The Eskimos had to turn to hunting and fishing on the sea. This was a considerably more hazardous occupation which, with poor results could hit the villages very hard with long periods of hunger.

The name of Sheldon Jackson comes up again, the Presbyterian missionary and the first Superintendent of Education in Alaska. Jackson is one of the great men of this period who worked indefatigably for a more tolerable life for the aborigines in many communities.

It was Sheldon Jackson who originated the idea of bringing in domestic reindeer again to Alaska’s fauna. In 1890 he had made a trip northward which brought him to the coastland of Siberia. There he saw now the Russian Eskimos and even the white people carried on reindeer husbandry and apparently lived well on this food. When he returned to Alaska he - 77 -

went as soon as possible down to the States to interest the government in a project to bring in domestic reindeer again. He also had a plan of careful follow-up so that the reimportation would have the desired results.

Sheldon Jackson’s fondest dream was that the domestic reindeer would multiply and make all the Eskimos in Alaska self supporting. The dependence of the Eskimos on successful hunting and fishing seasons was well known. Domestic reindeer would give them the security they did not have in present circumstances. At the very least it would increase their chances of living on in their individual villages as a vigorous people who had survived in the great expanses. The return of the reindeer would give the Eskimos draft animals, milk, skins and last but not least an unfailing reserve of food if the hunting and fishing should fail.

But on his visit to Washington, the capital, Jackson was given the cold shoulder. The government did not want to fund his project. But he did not give up easily, but went to private individuals and to the churches of the Methodist denomination (sic, should be Presbyterian).

In the spring of 1891 when Jackson returned to Alaska he had barter materials worth an impressive 18,500 kronor. He went at once to Siberia where, without much trouble but at a high price, he bought thirteen reindeer from the Russian Eskimos. The Russians knew the value of the animals and demanded payment accordingly.

The next year Jackson was able to buy more reindeer. His whole herd was taken to a small village north of Nome on the Seward Peninsula. The village was later named Teller to honor a Congressman of that name in Washington who succeeded in getting some small support for Jackson and his reindeer project. Here the first reindeer station was built. Two years later the report could be sent to the south that 79 fawns had been born at that station.

In the introductory period some Eskimos from Siberia had come to teach their colleagues on the Alaska side to care for the reindeer. Sheldon Jackson considered this less than successful, mostly because the Russian Eskimos were very severe and brutal toward the reindeer, and made use of methods that were not the best. Besides, a man named N. T. Lopp, whom Jackson had appointed as overseer of the station in Teller, was murdered by one of the Russian Eskimos.

Later W.A. Kjellman, a Norwegian from Hammerfest in northern Norway, was appointed chief of the station. Kjellman saw to it that a number of Laplanders from his home district came to Alaska to help with the reindeer husbandry. The Laplanders brought with them considerably better skills in management, better harnesses and sleds, and they were also careful with the animals.

At the end of the century there were about 1,300 reindeer in Alaska. The animals had then been divided into four herds. One remained in Teller, and one of the others was turned over to the Covenant station in Golovin. The arrangement was that the reindeer were delivered as a loan. After three years the loan was to be repaid with the same number of animals as - 78 -

they had received. The surplus, that is, the ones born during the period of the loan, were to be kept.

One hundred reindeer were turned over to Golovin. The following year the herd was increased by forty fawns, and the second year by ninety fawns. The project was very successful up to this point. Jackson’s idea was that the repayment of the reindeer would continue in such a way that the nearby Eskimo village would receive a herd. In this way reindeer husbandry would spread from village to village and reach the goal of Jackson’s project.

In addition it would be possible to establish a network of communication between the villages in the winter time, with the reliable reindeer to pull the sleds. For mail delivery, light freight, and eventually passenger transport, this would mean great improvement for the villages on the tundra which are isolated during the six winter months.

That the Covenant missionaries were not tardy in accepting the offer goes without saying.

It was obvious that the government system of loans would give the villages a valuable increment to their living capital. The missionaries at Golovin who had received responsibility for one of the four herds arranged at once to put the Eskimos to work with the reindeer. This involved chiefly Eskimos related to the mission.

Sheldon Jackson’s idea of reindeer husbandry as an aid to independence for the Eskimos snowballed in pace with the growth of the animal population. There was a total of about 1,280 reindeer Drought into various places before the turn of the century. By 1905 the reindeer population in Alaska had reached 12,800 animals. In 1917 the total was calculated at 95,000, and the number in 1936 was up to 600,000. After that the stock diminished because of incompetence in management, and at the same time the interest of the people diminished severely and later disappeared.

On the tundra of Alaska’s coastland there is today a population of about 30,000 domestic reindeer, thus only a remnant remains of Jackson’s great dream. The tundra reindeer now wander around in the north like any other animals. Neither the Eskimos nor anyone else take any notice of their existence as a food source to solve the problem of subsistence or livelihood for the people of the country.

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13,000 Animals in Golovin Bay A few years after Grandpa Ost arrived at Golovin the reindeer herd in that region consisted of 13,000 animals. Misha Charles was one of the Eskimos who, under the leadership of Grandpa, took part in the work of reindeer husbandry in Golovin. Other reindeer herdsmen were Sigfrid Aukongauk, Jacob Kenick, Wilson Gonongnan, and Reuben Paniptchuk. The latter was a reindeer herdsman until the mid 1940s when interest in reindeer began to dwindle seriously.

From the beginning at the turn of the century the northern Laplanders had functioned as teachers and instructors. At the most about a hundred Lapp families lived in Alaska. Gradually most of them returned to their homeland again. Their dream of a better life and a brighter future in Alaska did not materialize into what they had hoped for.

In the whole area along Alaska’s northern coast where reindeer had become a significant source of food until the 1940s, there are now only two descendants from the Laplanders who had emigrated from northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. These two are Maria Bahr and Andro Bango, both born in Alaska a few years after their parents came to Unalakleet from Kautokeino in northern Norway in 1898.

Maria Bahr, born in 1901, was one of eight siblings. The parents were named Klementsson.

Maria and a few of her brothers remained longest in Alaska and later changed their surname to Bahr. Today Maria is the only one left of the family. From her childhood Maria has belonged to the congregation in Unalakleet, and for many years she was, among other things, the church organist.

Andro Bango was born in Unalakleet in 1903. His father was Isak Andersson-Banch, a Laplander from Kautokeino. He took the name of Andro Bango later for the sake of simplicity.

Andro was one of the very last Laplanders to fulfill his commission as an expert in the care of Alaska’s reindeer.

Andro had his own small herd of reindeer in Unalakleet, which he sold to the American army in 1940. The following year he was invited by the army to accept a new herd and take care of it to provide food for the troops patrolling the coast of Alaska during the world war then in progress. Andro, however, declined with thanks because he foresaw that he would be alone with the work. The Eskimos were definitely tired of the hard work involved in the care of the reindeer. Instead Andro opened a small business in Unalakleet.

Maria Bahr and Andro Bango are now enjoying their declining years in Unalakleet. They are each in their own small house with a few Eskimo dogs as their chief companionship. Andro and Maria always attract attention by their typical Laplander appearance with their crystal clear blue eyes as their most distinctive feature. But they are known especially as the last descendants of the Laplander migration to the land of the Eskimos at the end of the nineteenth century.

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In addition to Sheldon Jackson’s intensive work in bringing reindeer over from Siberia to Alaska, there were other interested persons who made a valiant but unsuccessful effort with the same motives as Jackson’s. Such a comprehensive project was launched in the middle of the 1890s when five hundred domestic reindeer from northern Norway were bought and shipped across the Atlantic to the west coast of the States. After reloading in Seattle they were shipped to one of the port cities in southern Alaska. From there the reindeer were herded on a long and exhausting overland journey to their final destination of Teller north of Nome.

Only one hundred twenty five of the animals survived the journey to arrive at Teller. The others succumbed to accidents on the way northward. They drowned trying to cross the great rivers, were injured on the mountain slopes and the glaciers, or they fell behind and became the prey of wolves.

The project was doomed from the outset, not least because all the reindeer were stags! And males alone, as is well known, cannot bring about an increase of the tribe. The 125 that arrived were butchered for food the following winter.

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Daniel SoxieSoxie of Unalakleet is on a is picnic river.the Tworiver. cultures meet.

Daniel of Unalakleet on aalong picnicthe along Two On Daniel’s knee is his open Bible as he stirs his daily dose of seal oil. cultures meet. On Daniel’s knee is his open Bible as he stirs his daily dose of seal oil.

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Elvira Omegitjoak and the other patients in the hospital in Nome complained loudly because they did not get their ration of seal oil.

Elvira Omegitjoak andisthe patients in thesupplies. hospital in Nome Now there sealother oil among the medical

complained loudly because they did not get their ration of seal oil.

Now there is seal oil among the medical supplies.

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Chapter 9

Hardships Shortly after his arrival in Golovin Grandpa Ost received as his share a herd of 500 reindeer.

Some time later it was augmented by a herd of about the same size which was moved from Unalakleet to Golovin. From his early period in Golovin Grandpa had begun to discuss seriously with leading Eskimos in the village the idea of moving, not only the mission station, but also parts of the village to a better protected location.

Grandpa had received permission from the Covenant for such a move. A man named Olsson, a member of the Board of Missions in Chicago, in connection with a week’s visit in Golovin in 1912, had recommended the move. But only if Ost could accomplish it without financial help from the Covenant.

Olsson went a step farther and suggested to Grandpa that he had full right to sell some of the mission’s reindeer to finance the establishment of a new station on a better site. He was of the opinion that Grandpa could dispose of the reindeer he had received from Unalakleet.

But nothing came of that good idea. For the Unalakleet herd had hardly arrived at Golovin before it was sold. The Executive Board in Chicago itself decided to sell this surplus to get money for the school at North Park in Chicago which was in financial difficulty at that time. Grandpa Ost did not even have time to attempt the sale before word reached him that the reindeer were already sold and that Olsson did not nave the authority to propose such a transaction to Ost. Grandpa Ost did not get a red cent out of this transaction which amounted to several thousand dollars. That he was deeply disappointed by what had happened is an understatement. Not without justification he considered the reindeer to belong to the Alaska mission in the first place, and not to the Covenant. The event had taken place in a situation where the money from the sale would have made the move from Golovin Bay possible.

The setback of the vanished money did not, however, hinder Grandpa and his friends in Golovin from proceeding with their plans to move the mission station. The present site was untenable. The building in Golovin, which contained the church halls, the children’s home, and dwellings for the Ost family as well as for the other missionaries, was in very poor condition.

Water and wind toad been hard on it. The building was finally erected down by the sea shore, the upper part on secure and frozen ground. The lower part closest to the sea was supported on heavy logs in the loose sand in which frost did not last through the summer months.

When the frost thawed in the ground in early summer some settling occurred causing bending and cracks in the whole house. Sometimes it was almost impossible to open or shut the windows and doors in the building.

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Since the building was exposed to the sea and wind, an arrangement was made for the times when the usually hard winds off the ocean increased to storm proportions. In the last section of path up the slope to the house they tied a rope between poles that were driven into the ground. The rope served as a hand rail when the wind was at its most violent. Without this the risk was obvious that children might be “blown away� in a storm.

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The Storm of 1913 and the Move to Elim The thoughts of Grandpa and others in Golovin of moving had caused them to go out and look for a more appropriate and safer place. Grandpa himself had made many trips over the expanses. At last he was struck by a place farther inland, about forty five kilometers from Golovin. It was the site of a former Eskimo village which was now deserted. It was a high situation and there was forest in the area.

In 1913 something happened that made moving from Golovin as necessary as it was grim.

In August Alaska’s west and north coasts were hit by a storm that was the worst in the first half of this century. It would not be until 1974 that winds of equal velocity would be recorded. Catastrophe was the word for the whole coastland.

Thousands of people were left homeless and hundreds lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of the storm. To this day people talk about the events of 1913 when house and home were destroyed or washed out to sea by the high water that made even the mouths of the rivers overflow their banks. Dead bodies floated along the shores outside the villages, and for a long time people continued to find those who had perished because they could neither withstand nor hide from the enormous powers of nature.

Golovin Bay was no exception. The already severely damaged old mission building was almost completely destroyed. The waves of the sea swept over the house and everyone had to flee headlong up to the hills. They could save only the most important things from destruction. There were at that time seventeen Eskimo children in the home. They were temporarily cared for in homes farther into the village where the storm had not done as much damage.

Grandpa Ost began at once to make preparations to move. And the destination of the project was the old Eskimo village he had selected as being appropriate. The ancient name of the village was “Neveocharlok” which means “The place of the wretched woman”.

During the hectic and busy weeks and months before the coming of winter, Grandpa organized and carried out the move from Golovin. Grandpa gave the place the Biblical name of “Elim”, which it retains to this day, a living and well established Eskimo village.

No help was forthcoming from the Covenant in making the move. The only help he received from outside the mission was from the gold miners in the Nome district who had heard of the on-going project and made their contributions to Grandpa. Some of them gave money and a few others went to Elim and participated in building the dwelling house and the mission station.

The move itself demanded much patience. From the business men then in Golovin, who also dealt in boat traffic, he was able to borrow a tugboat and two barges. All the cash that - 87 -

the Ost family had at that time amounted to 210 dollars. All of this was dispensed for boat rental and to pay the tugboat captain for his cooperation. At the time he arranged to borrow the boats he made it clear that the move by boat was completely his own responsibility.

The old mission house in Golovin which had been destroyed by the storm was used for the framework of the new buildings in Elim. Grandpa sawed the roof into three parts. He also sawed away all the corners of the building and thereby had the walls relatively intact. The parts of the house were then transported whole by barge to the new site.

The biggest problem upon their arrival at Elim was how to get the parts of the house up the steep banks of the river. Grandpa solved the enigma by constructing a gangway of logs and pieces of wood, and a pulley which he remembered from his childhood in Sweden. Then with ropes they were able to crank the heavy parts of the house up to the place that Grandpa had chosen.

The first thing they did when they came to Elim was to erect a big tent as quickly as possible. A very tight and windproof shelter was raised up in the middle of the grounds and became the dwelling of the whole company for the first several weeks.

Grandpa stored all the food they had brought along for the winter in a big hole in the ground which he covered with boards. This improvised cellar became the beginning of the Ost family house in Elim. Grandpa built his house over the cellar and it continued to be used for food storage after they moved into the house. It was common in the homes in Alaska to have a trap door in the Kitchen leading down to the food storage area. The frost in the ground, which never thaws more than a half meter at the most during the warmest part of the summer, is adequate for preserving fresh food in this way. It is also a convenient arrangement in the winter since it is not necessary to go out of doors for food.

For Grandpa, his family, and the Eskimos who came along from Golovin, there were several weeks of unprecedented work before the coming of winter in October. But on this new location they were protected from water and wind, and that was most important. And with the help of many hands the first big building was completed and occupied in good time before the first snow fall.

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The Swedish Gold Strikes in Nome and the Mission’s Transactions in Gold Grandpa Ost had responsibility for the finances of his family and the seventeen Eskimo children, and at this time they were meager to the point of poverty. As his monthly salary as a missionary Grandpa received seventy five dollars from the Covenant. It was a long time before the next sending would come, and the money he had before the move had gone for rental of the tugboat and barges.

At this point, like rescuing angels, came some other Swedish gold miners from Nome. This time it was no fewer than two of the “Three Lucky Swedes” who in 1898 had made the big gold strike outside of Nome. These two, John Bryntesson and Jafet Lindeberg, saw to it that Grandpa and the mission received two thousand dollars as a contribution toward the building work in Elim. In succeeding years the two “golden Swedes” continued to support the Elim station with varying sums.

Grandpa Ost showed his gratitude by traveling by dog team to Nome during the six months of winter, where meetings were arranged with the Scandinavian colonists of the mining families who lived in the vicinity. Even into the decade of the 1940s Grandpa Ost continued regularly to travel to Nome to hold his Scandinavian meetings.

Grandpa spoke in Swedish, of course, for that is what the gold mining families wanted as a reminder of the old homeland. The songs at these meetings were especially popular. Not only believers came to the meetings, but many more than church members. These meetings with Grandpa were considered an open door to contact with others and a preservation of their Swedish origins. The old well known hymns were sung from songbooks that had the Swedish text and they all took part so they had a great time.

It was not unusual that these old, tanned “sourdoughs” burst into tears and cried loudly in a Kind of joyous intoxication over the reminder that fundamentally they were Swedes. In this fashion, over the decades, Grandpa Ost became regarded as a fine man among thousands of Swedes and Scandinavians in the area. He became acquainted with them and learned to know them all more or less.

Among these acquaintances Grandpa Ost counted the three legendary Swedes who made the richest gold strike ever to be made in Alaska. To be precise, it was made at Anvil Creek, a small stream just outside of Nome. When the Alaska ship “SS Portland” landed at Seattle with, as the boastful news releases that went all over the world had it, “a cargo of a ton of gold”, a gold rush northward followed such as the world had never seen. Earlier still richer discoveries had been made in the Yukon district of northern Canada on the border of Alaska. In a single winter about 50,000 people went up to the Yukon and the valley of the - 89 -

Klondike River outside of Dawson City. At the same time reports had gone out about the first lesser discoveries around Nome in Alaska.

Enticed by the wild rumors and dreams of riches, the three Swedes, John Bryntesson, Jafet Lindeberg, and Erik Lindbom arrived in Nome. Bryntesson was from Smoland and was of an upper class family. Lindeberg was by origin a Laplander from Norrbotten. Lindbom was the madcap of the three. His route to Alaska and Nome had been by a Russian whaling vessel. Just off the coast of the big island of St. Laurentz between Alaska and Siberia Lindbom jumped off. Later he succeeded in crossing the ice on foot from St. Laurentz to Alaska’s mainland. Then he continued down along the coast to Name. This took him several months and he apparently kept himself alive on reindeer moss.

When the three Swedes found gold along Anvil Creek, the first thing they did was to stake out as big claims for themselves as the law allowed. Then they staked out more claims in the area around in the names of their friends and acquaintances. It was in this way that many of the Covenant’s missionaries got into the gold circus.

In Nome the “Lucky Swedes” had a manager by the name of Nicklasson from Dalarna in Sweden who took care of some of their business. It was through Nicklasson that the new mission in Elim received the contributions from Bryntesson and Lindeberg. Nicklasson, or Nicholson to which he changed his name, and his wife were very kind people. They helped Grandpa Ost in many contexts, not least in connection with his visits to Nome to hold his popular meetings.

Grandpa kept up his close contact with “The Three Lucky Swedes” for a long time. Erik Lindbom, the madcap, soon broke out of the gold business in Nome. The proper life of the business man to which his comrades devoted themselves was not for him. The fortune he had with him when he left Nome he spent freely in an impetuous life of pleasure down in the States and eventually he died penniless.

For his part, John Bryntesson used his money in a more sensible way. In the autumn of his life he moved home to Sweden where he bought up a lot of land in the southern part of the country and proceeded to make good money.

The Laplander, Jafet Lindeberg, got into the banking business in the States. But he had a misfortune in a very big business deal. He had contracted to build fourteen ships for the American navy. But the contract was broken a short time after the project was begun. Lindeberg was faced with a crisis and was forced to borrow money from his own bank to the extent that it was bankrupted. Lindeberg finished his days as a prospector for the government, and not without a certain success in that. But the large part of his millions in gold from Nome he had lost.

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The The hard winds theBering BeringSea Sea often to tempest hard windsfrom from the often riserise to tempest strength.

The hard winds from the Bering Sea often rise to tempest in strength.

Many severe storms have caused great destruction Many severe storms have caused great destruction in the coastal villages. strength. Many severe caused great destruction in thestorms coastalhave villages. the coastal villages.

When Grandpa cameto Golovin in1910 1910 there were 45 children children When Grandpa came totoGolovin Golovin inin1910 there werewere 45 children in the in When Grandpa came there 45 in the the children’s home on the mission station.

In 1913 the home was destroyed children’s home on the mission station.

In 1913 the home was destroyed children’s home on the mission station. In 1913 the home was destroyed byaasevere severe storm and was a dramatic movemove to Elim. stormand andthere there was dramatic to Elim. byby a severe storm there was aadramatic move to Elim.

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The mission station with the children’s home in Elim—the village that missionborn station with the children’s home in Elim—the that theThe Swedish missionary from Dalarna, Grandpavillage Ost, founded.

The mission station with the children’s home in Elim—the village the Swedish born missionary from Dalarna, Grandpa Ost, founded. that the Swedish born missionary from Dalarna, Grandpa Ost, founded.

Tora Katchatag,the the old old lady Unalakleet whowho grew grew Tora Katchatag, ladyinin Unalakleet Tora Katchatag, the old lady in Unalakleet who the children’s home in Elim. upupininthe children’s home in Elim. grew up in the children’s home in Elim.

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Careofof sick and teaching dominated the early mission Care thethe sick and teaching dominated the early mission work.work.

Care of theNow sick the andpronounced teaching dominated the early mission work. social the most important.

Now the pronounced social workwork is theismost important.

Now the pronounced social work is the most important.

During the years that the Ost family lived in Council even Grandpa tried panning for gold in the summers. But without becoming much richer.

the years thatfamily the Ostlived familyinlived in Council Grandpa tried During the During years that the Ost Council eveneven Grandpa tried 108 panning for gold in the summers.

But without becoming much richer. panning for gold in the summers. But without becoming much richer.

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The first big gold strike was discovered by “The Three Lucky Swedes” in the year 1898. Several of the missionaries had The first bigThe goldfirst strike discovered “The Threeby Lucky Swedes” in the year 1898. bigwas gold strike was discovered “The Three Lucky productive claims inbythe Nome district.

The gold meant much Several of the missionaries had productive claims in the Nome district.

Swedes” in the year 1898. Several of the missionaries had indirectly in theindevelopment mission.

The gold meant much indirectly the development phase phase ofof thethe mission. productive claims in the Nome district. The gold meant much indirectly in the development phase of the mission.

Outside of Nome and on several other places on the Seward Peninsula fantastic discoveries of gold were made around 1900.

Outside ofof Nome and and on several other on places the Seward Outside Nome on- several other on the Seward 109 - places Peninsula fantastic discoveries of gold were made around 1900.

Peninsula fantastic discoveries of gold were made around 1900.

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The Alaska gold brought with it much good for the mission. Through the gold business to which some of the missionaries devoted themselves, the mission indirectly received a good trade off and a good financial situation. At the same time the gold miners gave a certain support to the mission work.

But the part that the Alaska mission played in the gold discovery had a very unfortunate end.

Soon after the intervention of the missionaries became known at headquarters in Chicago the dissension began.

The dissension was over the question of whether the money from the gold strikes belonged to the individual missionaries or if it should go to the Covenant. It was undoubtedly true that the missionaries themselves had taken charge of and made decisions about the gold they had mined. But it was equally clear that they used this unexpected increase in the daily cash for the most part in the mission work. In addition many larger sums from the gold mining were sent directly and without pressure to the Covenant in Chicago.

So far everything ought to have been well and good. But for some reason, which perhaps can best be regarded as pure jealousy, a law suit followed about the gold affair. Several missionaries ceased their service in the north and anxiety was high everywhere. Axel E. Karlsson was one of the few “gold missionaries� who remained in service, although he obviously continued with his financial interests. That this could continue depended clearly on the fact that Karlsson always in a satisfactory way kept the Covenant informed about how he used his gold.

The right of possession of the gold found by the missionaries continued to be discussed over and over for a long series of years. In the view of the Covenant the missionaries who were sent out and paid by the Covenant did not have the right to their finds.

Even a few years into the decade of the 1920s the suits continued. This subject was under discussion also in certain circles of the Covenant of Sweden. Among other things the President of the American Covenant, Hjerpe, gave an account of the gold law suit when he visited Sweden in 1922. He was able to report to the Swedish Executive Board that the suit had just then finally come to a close in a clearly legal way. But the practical results had meant a severe loss for both sides.

The biggest loss was suffered by the on going Alaska work, because by this time interest in the northern mission had cooled almost to freezing. Almost no one was willing to go there as a missionary, and almost no one in the congregations was willing to support the work. Both of these factors are foundation stones in carrying on missionary work.

The comic relief in the whole story of the right of possession of the gold mines was that the question, with the passage of time, became moot because by theme the law suit was over, most of the people involved had liquidated their businesses.

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Chapter 10

The Pioneer Hoijer A Dream About Siberia With Bloody Elements The dream of a mission in northern Russia and Siberia had been one of the motives behind the Swedish Covenant’s sending of Axel E. Karlsson and Adolf Lydell and the establishment of the Alaska mission in 1887. But as the mission field in Alaska quickly broadened and the undertaking increased, thoughts of Siberia were put aside. The American Covenant, which took over the field from the Swedish Covenant, naturally felt that Alaska was fully sufficient as a field of work.

Resources did not permit expansion into Siberia.

But there was a man who never gave up the original idea of going to Siberia and then into Russia by the back door of Alaska. That man was Nils Fredrik Hoijer, born on February 20, 1857 in Svanskog parish in Varmland. He was the Swedish Covenant’s missionary in Russia for twenty years. Hoijer was, without exaggeration, one of the great adventurers among the pioneers of the mission. He was a true Christian, but a man who followed his own intentions when he was faced with a quick decision, usually in abnormal circumstances. Hoijer’s actions were often looked upon critically by the Executive Board in Stockholm. After many adventurous years in Russia, Hoijer made his way to America. But his thoughts about a Russian mission occupied him until his death in 1925.

Grandpa Ludvig Evald Ost and Nils F. Hoijer met for the first time at a mission conference in Chicago in 1917. Grandpa Ost has taken his first vacation since he came to Alaska in 1910 for a trip to the States. Ost and Hoijer became acquainted anti their conversation soon came around to the great interest of the latter, a mission in Siberia. Even at that time Grandpa promised to help Hoijer to make missionary incursions into Russia if he would come up to Alaska.

Sure enough, a few years later Hoijer came to Alaska. He arrived at Grandpa’s home at the mission station in Elim, accompanied by a Doctor of Theology, C.J. Sodergren, who worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their purpose was to get Grandpa, with his local knowledge and experience on the sea, to take them on an expedition to Siberia. In the States Hoijer had traveled around to the churches, told of his plans to spread the Gospel in Siberia, won many followers of the project, and gathered a considerable sum of money for his goal.

In the neighboring village of Unalakleet Grandpa Ost rented a small schooner from an Eskimo friend named Charlie Trigger. The boat, named “Jenny”, was equipped with a twelve horsepower diesel engine and was rented for ten dollars per day. Grandpa equipped the boat for the expedition with food and other necessities in sufficient quantity that if worst came to worst they could survive through a winter on the other side of the Bering Sea. He also hired two Eskimo friends named Jan Katoongan and Julius Kajiiksak. There were consequently five men on board “Jenny” with Grandpa Ost as captain and officially responsible.

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Otherwise, of course, Nils Hoijer was the self appointed leader. He spoke, more or less, fourteen languages, all with his thunderous voice. Hoijer was in all respects a dominant person with a good deal of pomp in his actions, but not with any unfriendliness or malice. On the other hand it was not wise to oppose him in his decisions without very well founded arguments. About Hoijer’s coarse bass voice Grandpa Ost used to say, “He had a dreadful voice that would wake the dead!”

The little schooner “Jenny” with her crew sailed from Elim in Alaska in the beginning of August, 1921. The course followed the coast around the Seward Peninsula. On one occasion when Grandpa had anchored in a bay to make some adjustments on the boat’s rudder, they were held up for several days. A small freighter, “The Wasp”, owned by some Eskimos from King Island, and on its way to Siberia for fur trading, came and put in. On board was an acquaintance of Grandpa’s named Papb Omaak. He was ill with a high fever, a toothache, and inflammation of the oral cavity. Grandpa took Omaak back to Wales and saw to it that he received medical care, an act that probably saved the Eskimo’s life.

From Wales “Jenny” took a direct course to the eastern most tip of Siberia with the first stop at the little village of Naukon. Hoijer, the enthusiast, who spoke fluent Russian, arranged with the village authorities for permission to hold a meeting on the seashore. On the boat there was a small but functional organ. It was set up on the shore and Sodergren functioned as a good organist. When he squeezed out the heaviest tones that rebounded to the Eskimos, they wondered where the powerful sounds came from, whereupon they came closer, only to jump back again from the deep organ bass. It was the first time they had seen such an instrument. Kajiiksak and Katoongan functioned as translators, and this contact with the villagers gave Hoijer especially great satisfaction. The Eskimos on the Russian side of the sound spoke a language that was closely related to that of the Alaska Eskimos. In the village of Naukon there were also Eskimos of the Chukchi tribe who were widely known for letting their hair grow down to their knees.

“Jenny” continued westward along the coast. Hoijer of the burning heart saw to it that they made short stops at most of the villages they could see from the boat. One of Hoijer’s many devices for becoming acquainted with the villagers was to offer them good things to eat that they had probably never tasted before. He always had raisins, prunes, and other dried fruit in his pockets to deal out. This apparently simple gesture for becoming acquainted, proved very often to have the intended effect.

In a couple of weeks the 900 kilometer voyage along the coast brought them to the Anadyr fjord.

Wherever they had stopped in the villages they were directed to the big city of Anadyr. It was there that Hoijer, Sodergren and Ost would be able to get information about an eventual mission in the vicinity. When “Jenny” at last slipped through the narrow sound to the eighty kilometer long fjord, Hoijer thought they ought to take it a little cautiously and anchor a good while before they came into city center. But Grandpa Ost, as captain, had another opinion, and he prevailed.

He believed that they ought fearlessly to continue right into the city and try to anchor as near as possible to a Russian flag or a building that might house the city’s government.

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The city of Anadyr lies on one shore of the mouth of the mighty river of the same name. Grandpa hit the bull’s eye with “Jenny”. Not many minutes after the anchor was let down a small boat came out to them. In it were two uniformed men who proved to be commissioners of the Russian government in Anadyr. One of them knew a little English, but the conversation between him and Hoijer was carried on unhindered in Russian. The other, who was of Polish origin, could talk German with Sodergren. Grandpa Ost, for his part, had gone down into the cabin to shave. The weeks at sea with all the duties on board in his hands, had not given him time to shave. Grandpa had raised a beard not to be despised.

An amusing incident and also an episode of emotional release took place when the two Russians wanted to talk to the captain, who according to them had responsibility for both the boat and the visit. The men on deck called for Grandpa. Without further reflection ne stuck his head up through the hatch. With one side of his face clean shaven and the other side well lathered, he was in truth a comical figure. The result was a roar of laughter from all of them, and from then on the conversation proceeded with less tension.

After the two Russians were told about the errand of the visitors, they explained that this was something that would have to be decided by a meeting of the authorities in the city. A meeting of the justices was to take place the following day where the question of the visitors’ interest in starting a mission would be taken up and decided. The two commissioners were careful to clarify the situation. If the missionaries received permission they could stay without fear of any consequences, but if the answer was “no” then it would be best for them to leave Anadyr at once, by the same way they came.

The weapons on board were carefully checked. Jan Katoongan and Julius Kajiiksak were forbidden to disembark. Disturbances had come one after another in Anadyr ever since the revolution. In the distant cities like Anadyr, with poor communications in all respects, small wars between the reds and the whites might erupt again for very simple reasons, as though the interior disturbances in the country had never officially ceased. In Anadyr not fewer than ninety people had died in open opposition just a few weeks before Hoijer and his party arrived. It would clearly be a cause of trouble if Katoongan and Kajiiksak should be permitted to disembark. They were ordered to stay on board “Jenny” and not to permit anyone to come aboard.

Hoijer, Sodergren, and Ost were housed with a family named Sjeltukin, originally from southern Vladikakas, who fled northward and then across the whole of Siberia to Anadyr during the turbulence of the revolution. They lived with the Sjeltukins the whole week they were to stay in Anadyr. The family, as well as all others that the three missionaries met, showed them friendship and great hospitality.

On the other hand, everything was very formal and serious at the meeting of the justices which was held the day after their arrival. It was Grandpa Ost as the captain of the “Jenny” who was required to answer and was cross examined about their errand and plans for eventual missionary work in Siberia. Nils Hoijer, with his knowledge of the Russian language, was Grandpa’s spokesman.

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They were subjected to a real cross examination by the leading person in the gathering, who might be regarded as the judge or the mayor of the city. He sat at a long, heavy rough cut table, and behind him, along the wall, stood about twenty very serious men who clearly belonged to the city authorities empowered to pass judgment. The government building in which the hearing was conducted bore fresh marks from battles of the weeks just preceding. A few boards in the rough table and several logs along the walls had clearly been splintered by rifle bullets. It came out that one of the warring groups had been besieged in the house for several days during the feud.

After an hour of examination which the three missionaries considered to be more than enough for them, the Russian authorities gathered for a brief consultation. They returned quickly with their decision. The missionaries could stay! They were welcome to conduct a mission and school instruction as long as they wanted to. They especially expressed the desire for language teaching, and they explained without beating around the bush that it was English they wanted taught. Since he was still considered the responsible person for the expedition, Ost received an official certificate giving permission to stay in Anadyr or at any other place they desired along the Siberian coast in the direction of Alaska.

For Hoijer this was a moment of triumph. This was an occasion he had long desired, an official acknowledgement that they could take up missionary work in Siberia. But from the permission on paper to practical action and accomplishment was still a very long step. Neither Hoijer nor the others had ever planned to stay there themselves to establish the mission work. No, Hoijer considered that his foremost task was to investigate the possibilities and then get other people in to do the pioneer work. He was, and continued to be until his death, a person always on the move toward new goals. Sodergren, for his part, had come along simply as a helper, and Ost had come as captain and the one locally experienced. He had a big family and the mission station at Elim to take care of.

After a stay in all respects successful in the Russian port city and the country’s biggest northern outpost, they bade farewell to their new friends in Anadyr. Hoijer had received his permission, and now it was necessary to try to make use of it quickly. Hoijer’s thoughts had already gone to the village of Naukon at East Cape, on Siberia’s outermost point toward Alaska. Making the authorities willing to have them start the Siberia mission in that great city, he and the rest of the expedition considered impossible. But that was something they could not say, of course, directly to the authorities in Anadyr.

The last memory of the week’s visit in Anadyr was when one of the two commissioners, who were their first acquaintances at their arrival a week earlier, came on board just before their departure.

With great caution he took Grandpa to one side and delivered his message. He wanted Grandpa to take him along to Alaska and America. Grandpa explained carefully to him that even though he would be glad to do it, it was far beyond his authority in view of the obvious consequences that would unfailingly arise from smuggling a person between the two great powers.

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Hoijer’s Dream Was Cruelly Dashed In Pieces Back in Alaska the group dispersed and “Jenny” was returned to her owner in Unalakleet.

Nils Hoijer went down to the States to raise money as the first step in continuing the Siberia project. He was a master in pleading for his plans and soon he returned to Alaska with new capital. A short time earlier the Alaska mission had bought its own boat, chiefly because of Hoijer’s energetic activity. It was a schooner twelve meters long named “New York”.

The boat had earlier been involved in illegal traffic and had been confiscated by the Alaska authorities. The mission, therefore, could buy the hull for a relatively modest price. The funds for the purchase had come from a big mission meeting just previously in Chicago.

Grandpa Ost was present at the purchase. He bored into the wooden structure just under the waterline to test its quality and found that the old boat was well preserved. For three hundred dollars Grandpa arranged for the purchase of a suitable diesel engine which he himself then installed.

The schooner “New York” was for several years to be Nils Hoijer’s vessel and abode in the waters of Alaska. On repeated occasions he set his course toward Siberia, sometimes several trips during a summer. Hoijer directed his attention to the village of Naukon on East Cape. On one of these trips Hoijer became the early cause of the later establishment of a mission on Little Diomede Island, a small island in the middle of the Bering Sea, but on the American side of the boundary, with the larger Big Diomede on the Russian side as its nearest neighbor. Hoijer had stopped several times at Little Diomede and in the winter of 1922-1923 he was even compelled to spend the winter on the island after one of the many groundings of the “New York” in the frequently rough and dangerous waters.

In St. Michael Hoijer had met a newly arrived missionary couple from Norway named Laura and Gustav Nysater. Hoijer interested them in Little Diomede, and in the summer of 1923 he brought the Norwegian couple to the isolated island where they started their work at once. Even in this action Hoijer had his thoughts on Siberia. From Little Diomede it was not far to the Eskimo people on the Russian side.

The same year Nils Hoijer deemed that it was time to seriously implement the plans and station the first missionaries in Siberia. The choice fell on the young couple Anna Carlsson and Ernst Andersson. Anna, born in Minnesota of Swedish parents, had already for several years served as nurse and teacher at the mission schools at Elim and Unalakleet. Ernst Andersson was from Sweden and had come directly to Alaska from his theological seminary in Lidingo. Grandpa married these two missionaries in the church in Nome just before they left with Hoijer to become the first missionaries stationed in Siberia.

In June 1923 when the ice broke up along the coast the voyage was made on the “New York” to the village of Naukon on East Cape, Siberia. Everything was well prepared for Anna and Ernst to live in the house that had been made ready for them. For Ernst this was to be his first experience as a missionary.

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But the voyage to the other side of the Bering Sea was to be the biggest disappointment in Hoijer’s life. All his bright assumptions would be cruelly dashed in pieces in very precipitate fashion.

When Hoijer and his party landed at the Russian coastal village, Hoijer went to the Russian authorities to arrange a few formalities. Two of the Russian coast guards took charge of Anna and Ernst and invited them to lunch at one of the state houses in the village. One of them was able to speak tolerable English, and the whole time he showed an open attitude and desire to establish the best contact with the newcomers. The other expressed himself only sporadically, and in the house he stood quietly and seriously just inside the door with his gun cradled in his arms.

Ernst and Anna were invited to sit at the big table in the room just outside the kitchen. The friendly and talkative Russian began at once to set the table and arrange things for a meal.

He ran back and forth between the kitchen and the room with plates and table ware, and on the stove he warmed up what he intended to serve. Al’, the time his observant Russian comrade remained by the door.

Suddenly there was a thundering rifle shot! In a flash a form freed himself in the doorway to the room, staggered a few steps toward the table where Anna and Ernst sat, only to fall full length. It was the accommodating and friendly Russian guard. His head was almost shot away by the heavy bullet that hit him at short range. Blood gushed out on the floor and splattered Anna’s clothes. The Russian was most certainly dead even as he fell over the threshold and into the room.

Everything happened very quickly, from the friendliest atmosphere of welcome to malicious death in a few seconds. Anna and Ernst rushed out of the house. They had to step over the dead body to get into the kitchen. Outside they found the taciturn soldier in conversation with another soldier who had come there when he heard the shot. Anna and Ernst were obviously very upset and in disconnected questions they tried to find out what had happened.

The only answer they got was a few clipped words in English from the serious soldier: “Too much talk. We don’t want him!”

That was approximately what Anna and Ernst understood him to mean. The truth was clear to them. The man with the rifle had heard the eager conversation that his comrade carried on with the two guests, and probably didn’t understand anything of what was said.

The men had seen this exchange of opinions as too friendly and too verbose. The deeply rooted suspicions and the carefully inculcated instructions in military training resulted in this brutal execution.

For Anna and Ernst this was the most difficult moment of their lives. Anna suffered a serious shock with memories that were to plague her for many years. Ernst was also severely - 102 -

exhausted by what had happened at the very beginning of what was to be his initial work on the mission field. As fast as they could they ran down to the shore and went on board the boat on which they had just come.

The event resulted in an immediate departure from the Russian village. For Anna and Ernst it was completely clear that they could not think of staying there another second.

They wanted to go back to Alaska immediately. Nils Hoijer had come down to them on the boat after a while. He had found out what had happened in the guard house, as well as the seriousness of the situation. He gave orders to leave quickly. Missionary work in Naukon for Anna and Ernst could not be considered.

For Hoijer this was a great personal tragedy. He had succeeded in getting permission to do missionary work and a house had been prepared in Naukon. Everything was ready when the execution turned everything upside down.

This event contributed strongly to the Andersson’s giving up further missionary work in Alaska. Their experience and the proof of the cruelty and methods of the Bolsheviks, made them return the following year to settle in Minnesota.

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A Shipwreck Spells the End In spite of these events Nils Fredrik Hoijer did not give up hope for Siberia. He continued to undertake voyages along the Alaska coast and across the strait. But he was pursued by stubborn misfortune, all the while his health rapidly deteriorated. In the winter of 19231924 Hoijer was able to pay a visit to Sweden, in the first place to visit his wife who lived outside of Karlstad.

The following summer, 1924, Hoijer was back in Alaska making new voyages on the Bering Sea. He had succeeded in gathering more funds, bought his own boat and returned with new energy. The boat was named “Ariel”, a small coastal craft that he had acquired from the American navy at a low price. As a helper this time, as on several earlier trips to the north, he had a young adventurer named Ernest Bohman from Idaho, the son of a banker working in Washington. Young Bohman’s zeal for Hoijer himself and his ideas compensated in most respects for the sacrifice of life style and normal experiences by coming into the northern latitudes.

On this voyage, which was to be the final one for Hoijer, in addition to young Bohman, an Eskimo named George Taruk also came along. He called himself, with a little partiality, “Captain George”, although his knowledge of navigation and sailing for the most part left much to be desired. Hoijer experienced that well enough on several occasions when there was a storm and George quite simply went to bed and slept in order to escape the responsibility. On these occasions Hoijer and Bohman traded off at the helm.

“Ariel” and her crew were heading back to Nome, having just come from Little Diomede Island when it happened. “Ariel” had had several land sightings, when in the middle of a. dark night late in September they finally ran aground. The shipwreck occurred just north of the mouth of the Sinuk River on the Seward Peninsula. They were hardly more than fifty kilometers from Nome when they ran aground and the boat for the most part was knocked to pieces. Everything that Hoijer had with him was lost including all his notes and writings.

The three shipwrecked men were able to pull themselves ashore. It was decided that young Bohman would try to follow the coast down to Nome to get help, while Hoijer and George stayed near the wreckage. But Bohman did not accomplish his task. He was going to swim across the Sinuk River but he was carried down stream. His strength failed him and he drowned. His body was found several weeks later on the seashore south of the mouth of the river.

Just a couple of days after the shipwreck the predicament of Hoijer and George was seen by a passing boat. They were taken on board and brought to Nome. Hoijer was very weak and wracked by severe pains. He had been troubled with gall stones and kidney stones for many years. During a visit with Grandpa Ost in Elim, his medicine had somehow been lost for a few days, and Hoijer was immediately bedridden and writhing with abdominal pain.

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Hoijer took the first boat available down to Seattle. There he was immediately hospitalized at Swedish Hospital. Before the end of the year 1925 life had departed from this unusual missionary pioneer. In Sweden he is regarded as the founder of the Slavic Mission. But Hoijer’s dream of Siberia became a disappointment, and with him the great exertions in the north also died. No one after him has made any effort to establish a mission on the other side of the Bering Sea.

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Radio KICY In Alaska With Address In Sweden The only fragment that remains today of the original thought and Hoijer’s dream of spreading the Gospel from Alaska to the other side of the Bering Sea, is a radio transmitter in Nome. Radio KICY is the station’s official designation. It is owned and operated by the American Covenant and is a significant element in the missionary work in Alaska.

The Covenant officially launched its radio ministry, popularly called “The Voice of the Arctic”, on March 27, 1960. Since 1970 a special program with religious content in the Russian language has been sent out every evening at fixed times. When the Covenant and KICY decided to begin broadcasts in Russian, it took place entirely in keeping with the history of the Alaska mission with its strong desire to use Alaska as a back door for reaching Siberia and Russia with the Gospel. Even if it would only be by air waves, it was seen as a duty to the former pioneers to produce ale program in Russian.

A reminder of the strong Swedish connection to the dream of a Siberia mission comes every evening at the sign off of the Russian hour. It is when the listeners are encouraged to send in their letters. To ask them to send their letters to an address in America would be to hope for too much from the severe Russian censorship. Instead the Russian listeners are requested to send their letters to a post office box in Stockholm, Sweden! The key to the box is kept at the Covenant Headquarters, who also take care of the mail. During the course of these years KICY in Nome has received much evidence that there is a listener interest in in Stockholm letters from listeners in Russia have come to the station in Alaska which shows that mail is coming through. Alaska radio has even received letters from Japan with information that the broadcasts have been heard half way around the world.

The historic premier radio program with religious content on Alaska’s coastland took place at Christmas time in 1943. During World War II the American army constructed a radio station in Nome. One of the three at the Covenant church in Nome who were commissioned to create the program was Ruthie Towner, a daughter of Grandpa Ost who had for many years been energetically engaged in missionary work in the district. This became the preamble to many years of work together with the army radio station with continually recurring programs having Christian content. At last this resulted in the American Covenant establishing radio KICY in Nome.

The broadcasts continue from six o’clock in the morning until midnight. Not more than twenty percent of broadcast time is given to programs with religious content. For the rest KICY is a conventional radio station with customary programming and of course with commercials. KICY is no exception regarding the need for money, and the commercials provide a significant income.

About ten people take care of the station, of whom half are permanent personnel and the rest are volunteers with interests either in radio or missions, or in many cases with both aspirations.

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About 30,000 people listen daily to Radio KICY. Most of the programs are in English, but besides the Russian hour late every evening, several hours are given daily to programs in the Eskimo language. These special Eskimo programs are extremely highly valued. They are sent interchangeably in three dialects so that the Eskimos far to the south as well as those in northernmost Alaska may be able to profit from the programs in their own languages.

In Alaska’s coastland to the west and north there are another couple of stations. But KICY is incomparably the biggest both in programs broadcast and in the number of listeners. It is also the only station with programs directed to Russian citizens on the other side of the Bering Sea. Today this is the only tangible remnant of the Alaska mission’s original purpose to reach into Siberia and Russia through the “back door” with the Gospel.

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Only90 90kilometers kilometers separate America and the Soviet Union.The Theboundary boundary runs in the the Only 90 kilometers separate America and theSoviet SovietUnion.

Union. runs in the Only separate America and the The boundary runs in middle the Bering Strait, with the barren islands Little Diomedeonon on the American middle ofBering the Bering Strait, with the barrenislands islandsLittle Little Diomede Diomede the American middle ofofthe Strait, with the barren the American side and Big Diomede on the Russian. side and Big Diomedeon onthe the Russian.

Russian. side and Big Diomede

Many times over Alaska has been exposed to hard exploitation. First it was the sea Many times over Alaska has been exposed and totohard exploitation.

First it was the sea Many times over Alaska been exposed hard exploitation.

First itwhich was the otters, then gold andhas other minerals, very recently petroleum is sea otters, then gold and other minerals, and very recently petroleum which is otters, then gold and other minerals, and very recently petroleum which is transported from the fantastic discoveries in Prudhoe Bay in the north. transported fromthe thefantastic fantastic discoveries discoveries ininPrudhoe Bay in the north. transported from Prudhoe Bay in the north.

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Rueben Paniptchuk, reindeerherder herderin in Golovin Golovin and thethe Rueben Paniptchuk, reindeer andElim Elimupuptoto mid-1940’s.

He has worked for the mission all of his active life.

Rueben Paniptchuk, reindeer Golovinalland Elim up tolife. the mid-1940’s.

He has workedherder for theinmission of his active mid-1940’s. He has worked for the mission all of his active life.

The Eskimos are descendants of the Mongolian peoples.

The Eskimos are descendants theMongolian Mongolianpeoples. peoples.

The Eskimos are descendants of of the - 127 - 127 - 109 -

Dwight Millignockwas wasaacompanion companion of hishis trips to Siberia.

Dwight Millignock ofHoijer Hoijeron onone oneofof trips to Siberia.

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What remains of Hoijer’s dream of a mission in Siberia is the Russian language What remains of Hoijer’s dream of a mission in Siberia is the Russian language radio broadcast that goes out every evening from Radio KICY in Nome. radio broadcast that goes out every evening from Radio KICY in Nome.

What remains of Hoijer’s dream of a mission in Siberia is the Russian language radio broadcast that goes out every evening from Radio KICY in Nome.

The workers at KICY are all busy in church work in Nome.

“Chip” Swanson is a Sunday School teacher.

Theworkers workers at in in church work in Nome.

The at KICY KICYare areall allbusy busy church work in Nome.

“Chip” Swanson is a Sunday School teacher.

“Chip” Swanson is a- Sunday 129 - School teacher.

- 129 - 111 -

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Chapter 11

The Eskimos Take Over Wilson Gonongnan the First Indigenous Missionary 1919 A colleague in Grandpa Ost’s work at the time of the dramatic move to Elim from the storm ravaged Golovin in 1910, was a teacher named Anna Hagberg. Anna Carlsson, teacher and nurse, also joined the Alaska forces in 1914. She served interchangeably with Ost in Elim and with Henning Gustafsson at Unalakleet. Anna Carlsson’s younger sister, Alma, both from Minnesota, arrived in 1921 as a new teacher and Ost’s fellow worker in Elim. Alma Carlsson took nurse’s training later. In 1928 she became the first flying and traveling nurse in Alaska, appointed by the government but at the same time active in missionary work. Besides flying, her means of travel included boats, and in winter, chiefly dog team.

After Henning Gustafsson came Lars Almquist as the new chairman at Unalakleet, and his wife Dagmar. Dagmar was a sister of Ruth Ost, and as brothers-in-law Almquist and Ost developed an intimate and happy collaboration. In the summer of 1919 they together arranged a historic missions conference at Elim. In the first place, all of the Eskimo church members were invited. At the conference it was made clear that now was the time for the Eskimos to take over a part of the responsibility and themselves support their own missionaries.

No real effort had been made in this direction before this. But Ost and Almquist were well prepared to convince the Eskimos. Among other things Ost explained: “By now you have been Christians long enough to know what is needed to carry on work, and that you yourselves must support your own missionaries. We white people have come here to Alaska simply to help and support you. Now the time has come for you to take over a part of the responsibility”.

The participants in the conference accepted the proposal completely. At the last meeting of the Elim conference the first indigenous missionary was consecrated. This Eskimo pioneer was Wilson Gonongnan from Golovin.

Wilson Gonongnan received his first commission in the fall of the same year. In his own little boat with the promising name “Hope”, Grandpa Ost took Wilson Gonongnan and his wife southward and upstream on the Yukon River. The new Nome and work place of the Eskimo couple was Mountain Village on the Dank of the mighty Yukon River, about sixty kilometers from where it empties into the sea.

It became a very successful undertaking for Wilson Gonongnan as the first Eskimo missionary.

To be sure, the building work of this new mission station was accomplished under reduced financial conditions. But little by little it became a church, and Gonongnan remained there for about ten years of progress. After that he continued as indigenous missionary in other places where the mission later expanded.

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Dried Fish and Sealskin in the Collection This pioneer contribution of the duo Ost and Almquist would be seen to have come at exactly the right moment. The sad events that accompanied the gold affairs of the missionaries had hit the Alaska mission hard. Interest in the work in the north had reached the absolute bottom in the middle of the 1920s. Veterans and ardent men like August Andersson, Karl Henriksson and many others had left the Alaska mission for good. Later Lars Almquist also left the work in the north, and only Ludvig Evald Ost in Elim was left as well as E. M. Axelsson and his wife Nellie among the Indians at Yakutat in southern Alaska. Axelsson had taken over the directorship in Yakutat as early as 1914, and he was to continue there until 1941 with the exception of a sabbatical winter in 1922-1923.

During this single lengthy rest period that the Axelssons allowed themselves in all their years, they were replaced by a newly trained young missionary named Ernst B. Larsson.

He was born in Sweden, at Tradet in Vastergotland, but he had come to and entered the service of the American Covenant. From the beginning the plan was that he would stay in Yakutat. But the cries for help from northern Alaska resulted in Ernst Larsson’s arrival at Unalakleet in August of 1923 as the new director. He took over from the Almquists, and came to be the next leader in the Alaska mission. Ernst Larsson remained on the field until 1945, all the time with Unalakleet as his base. His coming became the deliverance in a very tight situation.

But in spite of the anxious conditions relative to interest and financial support from the churches in the States, after a few years some things began to happen that became the beginning of a new era in the mission with the Eskimos themselves in the chief roles. At the conference in Elim in 1919 the first Eskimo missionary was called, and it was in this direction that the work was now focused. As a result churches were established in about ten villages in that area, always with indigenous missionaries and leaders following the model of Wilson Gonongnan in Mountain Village. Ernst Larsson went with Grandpa Ost in the leadership of this project of placing Eskimos in the service of the mission.

The financing of this new and mildly revolutionary effort at development in the small villages of the area took place in all sorts of ways, and not without considerable effort.

Offerings were taken regularly at the meetings and the money went entirely to their own Eskimo missionary work and the establishment of new places. It was not always money that landed in the collection bags. For to the true Alaska residents, Eskimos as well as whites, often the practical things were worth more than dollars and cents. Dried fish, sealskin, articles of fur: fox, beaver, squirrel, reindeer, and wolf, were common in the offerings.

On one occasion a newly captured whale was given! All such things were exchanged for money by sale to various merchants.

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Ernst Larsson concerned himself deeply in finances. In articles to the Covenant papers he was very active in calling for cooperation in the development of this Eskimo mission in the north. His efforts were not in vain. A new generation had grown up in the States, uninfluenced by the gold problems at the turn of the century. Interest in the Alaska mission was once again on the rise, in large part thanks to Larsson’s efforts. Among other things he received a beautiful answer from the Covenant women’s Auxiliary which had for a long time devoted itself solely to the support of the Alaska mission.

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The Gardener Pastor, Ernst B. Larsson Beyond all else that Ernst B. Larsson accomplished during his many years in Alaska, it is for his ideas in garden cultivation and agriculture that he will always be remembered in the northland. Only on a very modest scale had any earlier efforts been made to raise vegetables so far north, when Ernst B. Larsson seriously launched a project which was to have great significance in many respects. Just as Sheldon Jackson was convinced of the validity of his reindeer project at the end of the 19th century, so Ernst Larsson was convinced that the cultivation of garden vegetables and potatoes was completely feasible and would certainly contribute to the self support of the people on the coastlands.

Ernst Larsson’s idea would soon be recognized as fully realistic. Before long he was known as “The gardener pastor up north.� He introduced his project by himself, at first by gradually enlarging the little garden behind the mission house at Unalakleet. The garden became bigger and bigger. Larsson experimented with more and more varieties of fruits and vegetables, kinds that had never been seen to grow in these latitudes. He was not least successful with his potato garden.

By beginning the project himself and demonstrating his success after a few years, Larsson was able to prove to the village population of Unalakleet that cultivation really did work. His aim of arousing interest succeeded beyond his expectations. The new fangled occupation spread like wild fire. Every house soon had its own garden of vegetables, potatoes and flowers. Larsson had great difficulty in supplying everybody in the village with seeds, plants, and set potatoes. Soon there was competition among the villagers of Unalakleet to produce the most beautiful and most productive gardens.

The news spread far and wide of what had happened at Unalakleet. Cultivation began so far north in Alaska that it seemed hardly possible. No one really wanted to believe the rumors.

Scientists in the area, government people and even business men came from the big cities of Alaska out to Unalakleet to see the miracle with their own eyes. And sure enough the rumors were true. In the height of summer the most beautiful and varied flowers were displayed in the flower beds along the walls as well as inside the houses. Out in the gardens all kinds of vegetables thrived and the potato plants grew so fast you could hear the joints crack.

This resulted, among other things, in orders coming in from the neighboring villages, but also from Anchorage and places much farther south. Ernst Larsson organized the sale of these things for a number of years, but only of surplus from the gardens. Larsson was careful to see that set potatoes and plants for the following year were put aside, just as every household laid aside sufficient supplies for food for the winter. There was a considerable amount anyway that could be sold. One year, among other things, more than a ton of potatoes were shipped out of Unalakleet.

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The surplus from these undertakings was divided by a kind of collective bonus system. The villagers could buy coffee, sugar, flour and other commodities in the village store at a lower price commensurate with what the respective gardeners had contributed for sale. The one who succeeded best and invested the most effort on a fine garden, could therefore receive the best profits from his labor. Larsson was always the inspiring and ex officio director of the operation. The garden of the mission station itself yielded annually a fine surplus which was put entirely into a pool for the support of their own Eskimo missionaries in the vicinity.

Ernst B. Larsson, “the gardener pastor in the north� was the one who, as a matter of principle, imported gardening as a new and living industry in Alaska. On the bank of the Unalakleet River, a couple of miles outside the village, there is an imposing garden with irrigation from the river. The conditions are excellent. Fertile soil and a sun that shines almost twenty four hours during the summer months. The work is carried on by the present mission station in Unalakleet, with one of the missionaries, Ken Anderson, as the responsible person. Later imitators of Larsson on a considerably bigger scale arose in one of Alaska’s largest valleys in the south, Matanuska Valley. About ten miles north of Anchorage lies the big agricultural area like a pearl necklace, with a level of production that has made Alaska to a certain extent self sufficient in terms of vegetables, potatoes and dairy products.

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The Eskimo Mission Expands In the 1920s Unalakleet and Elim were the strong stations in northern Alaska, from which the mission spread through the contributions of the Eskimos themselves, to a line of other villages. The pioneering work was the establishment at Mountain Village in 1919, but the next step was not taken until 1926. This was Hooper Bay which received its church and its own native missionary. The village of Golovin, where the old mission station and parts of other buildings were washed away by the storm waves in 1913, had been built up again but in a more secure place 15 kilometers farther in on the bay. In 1928 Grandpa Ost and his family moved from Elim to settle in the new Golovin. Ost had a big new house built for himself and his family, which over the course of the years came also to function as a mission house. The work was thereby taken up again in Golovin.

The next village to receive a church building and a work was Scammon Bay in 1929. After that new establishments followed one after the other. Up to 1940 Eskimo missionaries were placed one by one in the village of Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island, in Shaktoolik, White Mountain, Candle, Solomon, and Koyuk, as well as in Bethel later on. Still later a work was started in the little village of Marshall, or Fortuna Ledge, on the bank of the Yukon River.

That took place in 1953 when Grandpa Ludvig Evald Ost moved there after his wife died that same year.

Wilson Gonongnan, Misha Ivanoff, Jacob Kenick, Harry Soxie, Sigfrid Aukongauk, Reuben Paniptchuk, and Oscar Andrewuk were the ground breakers in this new wave of the Eskimos’ own missionary work. The first three of these, Gonongnan, Ivanoff, and Kenik, were brothers-in-law, married to the three sisters Omegitjoak, Minnie, Alice and Sara.

At all of these places with the exception of Candle and Solomon the American Covenant continues to carry on work. Beside these the Covenant has launched work in the larger cities of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Nome. Eskimos, and among them many members of the village churches, have moved into the larger localities to an ever greater extent. This development meant that the missionaries were more or less compelled to go along and open work in the big cities also. In Nome the work was begun with their own church ready to be used two years later. In 1960 work was started in their own church in Anchorage and finally work was begun in Fairbanks in 1971.

Yakutat in southern Alaska had been a progressive field of work for many years, ever since Adolf Lydell arrived there in 1887. But more and more the Indian village became isolated from the larger field in northern Alaska. The missionaries in Yakutat could not have any fellowship or exchange of ideas with their colleagues to the north. In the rest of the area of Yakutat Bay the Presbyterians carried on missionary work in several places, and for them the conditions were the same respecting their only station in the north, the village of Wales on the extreme point toward Siberia. This resulted in an even exchange. The Presbyterians took over the station in Yakutat and the Covenant took over the work in Wales. This exchange - 118 -

took place in August, 1954. Some critics looked upon it as something highly unusual to “trade in souls� in this fashion. But conditions in Alaska have never been especially usual, and they never will be. The exchange of stations between the two denominations is only an example of how practical solutions and sound judgment may arrive at different decisions in Alaska.

The Alaska mission continues to function in general as a mission field. But officially the work is no longer a mission in the traditional sense. Since Alaska is a State among the United States, the Covenant decided in 1973 to move responsibility for the work to the denomination’s home missions office. But in a purely practical sense this has not caused any change. In 1977 the Covenant had, in round numbers, 6,000 members in Alaska on the 15 stations of established work. For comparison it can be said that at the same time the churches in the States had 65,000 members. The cost of the Alaska work in recent years has been about a quarter of a million dollars, inclusive of the school in Unalakleet which is not aided by government money.

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Epidemics and Conflagration In times of catastrophe in the villages along the coast the missionaries in northern Alaska had to show what they were good for. Before the resources of the community were built up, it was the mission personnel that had to come to the rescue. From the earliest years until well into the 1940s, there were various kinds of epidemic illness that kept returning with greatly increased power of devastation. To this day the people, with terror in their eyes, speak of the black death, the Spanish contagion, and the many influenza epidemics which sometimes devastated whole villages. The fall storms have likewise always been threatening visitors. Periodically, usually at about ten year intervals, the Bering Sea has become more violent than usual causing great material damage and suffering for the population.

One of the worst influenza epidemics to advance along the coast in modern times came in the winter of 1919. As so many times earlier it came with a boat from the south. This time it was an English boat that put in at Nome. Several of the crew were very sick and the boat was quarantined. But in spite of that most of the crew came ashore and so the catastrophe became a reality. The epidemic advanced like a forest fire along the coast. Several hundred people died in Nome. The Eskimos were hit hardest, who for the most part lacked the immunity to withstand this form of misery from the outside world.

This time it fell to Grandpa Ost to arrange for guard maintenance between the villages so as to help to keep the influenza under control. His nearest help was from Anna Carlsson at the mission station in Elim. At strategic places outside of St. Michael in the south and outside of Golovin in the north Grandpa erected road barriers with guards in all directions.

All travelers who came, had jolly well to return to where they came from. The guards were armed and had orders if it came to the worst they should use their weapons. Anna Carlsson headed up the care of the sick and traveled between the road barricades and divided out the medicine she had ordered.

But nothing could keep the influenza from taking its victims in practically every village.

In reality it was not the influenza itself that killed. It caused very high fever and dizziness, and, in severe cases, unconsciousness. In the usually poorly constructed houses the weakened people could not withstand the severe winter. Usually the patient was stricken with pneumonia which then led to his death. In one home at the edge of Golovin village Grandpa Ost, on an inspection trip, found a mother and her son. The mother had lain dead in her bed for a whole week. The son lay half dead staring at the ceiling in the cold house.

The son also died shortly after that. In Golovin alone sixteen people died in the influenza epidemic.

The next big epidemic in northern Alaska broke out in 1925. It was influenza this time too and with the same severe consequences. Thousands of people died along the coast.

1925 was a disastrous year in many respects for northern Alaska. In addition to influenza, Nome was stricken with diphtheria. In a legendary relay race with the best dog teams that - 120 -

could be found, the diphtheria antitoxin was carried from Fairbanks over the expanses of hundreds of miles out to Nome. It became clear later that their fears had been exaggerated.

The illness of those who were stricken was of a mild strain.

Much more serious for Nome was the fire that broke out that same year and laid waste half of the city. The cause of the fire was distilling of liquor. In the Golden Gate Hotel in the center of Nome a man had rented, for a long term, a little attic nest. Under the ridge of the roof he had secretly built a private still. One day the apparatus exploded. In a few moments the hotel was ablaze and soon almost the whole inner city was afire. In a few hours the devastation was complete. The home brewer himself died in the flames. When the cause of the fire became Known the excited and hard hit city dwellers considered this the best thing that could nave happened to him.

The winter after the great fire was the most severe in living memory for Nome and the environs, since the businesses and the supplies including the necessities had for the most part gone up in smoke. In all haste the news of the catastrophe was sent south, and several boats were able to make it to Nome before the sea froze over. Indicative of the power of money and alcohol over the gold mining district, the cargo of the first boat was exclusively wine and liquor and tobacco supplies. Only after that did food and building materials begin to arrive in Nome.

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Flying Comes to Alaska Alaskans on the northern coastland experienced an event of a more revolutionary kind during this significant year 1925. That was when the first airplane made its first flights over the arctic circle. For the isolated people in the coastland this intrusion was one of the most fantastic that had ever happened. It was the three Norwegian brothers surnamed Wien who were the pioneers of flight in Alaska. Later they founded what is still the biggest domestic airline, Wien Air Alaska.

For many of the totally unprepared aboriginal people the arrival of the airplane was a great surprise. The story is told of the reaction of an Eskimo out hunting ptarmigan, when for the first time in his life he saw an airplane in the air. He flung himself, in mortal fear, into a hole in a sand bank and strayed there two days and two nights before he dared to come out in the daylight again. Another Eskimo had just shot a porcupine when he heard the dull roar of an approaching airplane. The man thought that an evil spirit had suddenly begun to talk to him, and he blamed the dead porcupine for it. In order to stop the noise and defend himself against the evil spirits he took his rifle and completely shot the porcupine to pieces with a series of shots.

Little by little the Alaska mission also made use of flying. Conventional means of travel had always been boats in the summer time and dog sleds in the winter. Both of these were, of course, charming in their own way, but they were time consuming and, in the long run, expensive to maintain. The Covenant recognized the significance of flight. In 1938 they bought their own airplane. Missionary Paul Carlson, experienced in the art of flying, became the first pilot for the mission.

The aviation base for the mission is now on the Kenai Peninsula outside of Anchorage.

The head of the operation is Roald Amundsen, Norwegian born missionary and trained aviator. He has a couple of airplanes and pilots at his disposal. The pilots are also in reality traveling missionaries who are both able and willing to plunge in as leaders in the Christian work on the field.

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Chapter 12

Grandpa and Mother Ruth The Long Autumn At the age of ninety and with nearly seventy years on the mission field, Ludvig Evald Ost holds an unbreakable record in the history of Alaska missions. In 1910 he came to the northland where the now hundred year old Swedish Covenant, as a new denomination had already started mission work among the Eskimos. He is still to this day active in the congregations in Norton Sound and round the mouth of the Yukon River. He alone remains of the pioneers who emigrated from Sweden, and following different paths, arrived in the Alaska mission. His official home address has, since 1953, been the little village of Marshall, or Fortuna Ledge, 260 kilometers up the Yukon River, reckoned from where it empties into the Bering Sea. The autumn of old age has been unusually long for this still tall pioneer. He still spends long periods traveling around to his old congregations. As he himself expresses himself on these journeys, “I live where I put my shoes at night and where my cap hangs when I wake up.�

It is absolutely not by chance that Ludvig Evald Ost is, all along the coast, Grandpa to everyone he meets. There are many reasons for this. As this was being written the sum total of his own children, grand children, and great grand children increased to 142 persons. The number increases steadily year by year. The majority of his direct descendants are scattered and active all over Alaska.

Unofficially Ost is also the Grandpa for a total of 145 Eskimo children for whom Ost and his wife Ruth were responsible and reared in the children’s homes at the mission stations of Golovin and Elim. For these orphan children Ost has continued to be Grandpa throughout all his years in Alaska. He wears the name with honor. With his physical frame of nearly two meters he still radiates strength and spiritual power which has helped him through many toil filled years. His memory is as clear as the water in a murmuring mountain brook.

In Grandpa the new generation of missionaries has a personality to look up to, and the Eskimos who nave learned to know him since the beginning of the century have an example, and a white man they could always depend on.

In May, 1911 John, the first son of the Osts, was born. During the following years until 1926 the family was increased by an additional seven children. In order of birth they were: Jonathan, Joseph, Ruthie, Betty, the twins Lincoln and Lois, and finally Daniel. In 1943 they adopted their ninth child, an Eskimo girl Mamie Andruyuk from Hooper Bay.

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All of the children in the family have more or less been active in missionary work. Son Jonathan in Congo for more than 30 years, Joseph equally long in the Ivory Coast, Daniel in Mexico for 25 years. The daughters Betty, Ruthie and Lois have all taken part in their father’s daily mission work, as leaders of the Sunday Schools, Bible Schools, music groups, etc. But on the other hand, none of the Ost children has inherited the father’s deep feeling for Sweden. None of them learned Swedish as a child. In Alaska’s wasteland they learned the Eskimo language instead, for they grew up with the aborigines and their children.

The daughter Ruthie, born in 1917 during their time in Mina, is the one who carries on the family traditions in Alaska more than the others. She is looked upon as a native just as much as the Eskimos. When she was twelve years old she was given the name Kugighlveluk to carry on, which was the name of an Eskimo who has died in Golovin. The name means “neck”. Later she received several other Eskimo names such as Cup-si-tock (Darling), Tugh’ick (Salt), and Aghan-ak-puk (Big Woman). Ruthie herself says, “I dare say it is the latter name that fits me best. I don’t really know where the Eskimos found the others”.

Ruthie is presently active in Christian work in Soldotna on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage.

Ruthie is in most respects a copy of mother Ruth Ost. At the time of the birth of her first child in 1911 she came down with rheumatoid arthritis. Mildly at first, but the illness broke her down completely before she died in Nome on April 9, 1953. Just as much as Grandpa himself was respected by everyone, Mother Ruth is remembered as one of the foremost persons in the Alaska mission.

She took part voluntarily in the mission work without compensation, along side the heavy work with the ever growing troop of children. Mother Ruth never called attention to herself but she was always there for some contribution in the most changing circumstances.

During the time that the family lived in the gold mining town of Council at the end of the 1940s she had simultaneously to manage a business and the village post office, do all the correspondence for the mission, teach and be responsible for the Sunday Schools and the Bible Schools in the church, and conduct a correspondence school for Sunday School teachers in the whole district. All of this during the time that her rheumatoid arthritis had begun to confine her to a wheel chair.

In an article written after her death in 1953 Mother Ruth was described in the following words: “Her wheel chair was an altar where all who came to her were met with calm and trust and found new courage to overcome their difficulties.”

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new courage to overcome their difficulties.”

In the summer if 1977 Grandpa had had 142 grandgrand In the summer if 1977 Grandpa 142children, children, children and great grand children. Beside these he is also children and great grand children. Beside these he is also “Grandpa” to many more Eskimos.

“Grandpa” to many more Eskimos.

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Alaska’s coastland a difficult environment. But But in thethe Alaska’s coastland is aisdifficult environment. in the thevillages, villages,ororonon tundra, or out on the ocean the Eskimos have a better chance of survival Alaska’s coastland is a difficult environment.

But in the villages, or on the tundra, or out on the ocean the Eskimos have a better chance of survival thanon on the ocean main streets of Fairbanks and Anchorage. tundra, than or out the Eskimos have a better chance of survival on thethe main streets of Fairbanks and Anchorage. than on the main streets of Fairbanks and Anchorage.

In Unalakleet there is today a big cultivation project scientifically In Unalakleet there is today a big cultivation project scientifically with irrigation the river.

In Unalakleetdone there is today a bigfrom cultivation project scientifically done with irrigation from the river. done with irrigation from the river.

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- 146 - 126 -

At the Sunday worship service news is announced, often dealing At with the Sunday worship service news is announced, often dealing accidents of the week past.

The people pray for hope At the Sunday worship service news is announced, oftenand dealing with accidents of the week past.

The people pray for hope and comfort for those involved in accidents and their families. with accidents of the week past. The people pray for hope and comfort for those involved in accidents and their families. comfort for those involved in accidents and their families.

Sunday is the great day of the church in the villages, all year long.

Sundayisisthe thegreat great day the church villages, year long.

Sunday day ofof the church in in thethe villages, allall year long.

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Tuesday or inin Unalakleet.

TwoTwo young Eskimos come to the pastor Tuesday orany anyday day Unalakleet. young Eskimos come to the and pastor and ask him to marry them.

On the afternoon of the same day Allen Savitjlik and ask him to marry them. On the afternoon of the same day Allen Savitjlik and Evelyn Anagick are pronounced husband and wife the in school house. house.

Evelyn Anagick are pronounced husband andin wife the school - 148 - 128 -

A Difficult Choice As the eight Ost children grew up, became older and needed more care and money, Grandpa Ost was suddenly faced with a very difficult choice. The small missionary salary he received from the Covenant could nowhere near feed that big family of ten persons. An obvious impossibility. Even earlier Grandpa, together with his oldest sons, had taken on various small jobs and occasional commissions to eke out the meager family finances.

The difficult decision for Grandpa was whether he could continue as a missionary or not. It was completely out of the question to continue as a full time pastor. One alternative was to leave Alaska’s wilderness and move with the whole family to some central place or simply go down to the States. For the good of the family from the point of view of economic security, this would have been the simplest. But neither Grandpa nor anyone else in the family saw this as a happy solution.

For they all wanted to stay in Alaska. There was no talk of anything else. All of the children had been born in Alaska. The whole family considered themselves to be natives just as much as the Eskimos themselves. The decision was difficult to make. But in spite of everything Grandpa made the decision. The Ost family would remain in Alaska.

As a result of the decision to stay in Alaska it was now necessary to adjust to the new situation.

Grandpa was forced to put the family and its support in the place of first priority. This change of circumstances for Ost and his family led, in 1928, to his resignation as an official missionary in the Covenant. But this was only on paper. In spite of the fact that the support of the family was now his priority, Grandpa and his wife Ruth continued their Christian work but now as volunteer workers.

Grandpa Ost’s great contribution during the following period was to recruit and encourage the Eskimos themselves to work in the villages. The Osts continued themselves as leaders, almost as though nothing mad happened, except that now there was no longer any monthly salary from the Covenant. But at the same time this gave them an independence that was valuable in making changes to other and more profitable conditions for the family’s support. As a volunteer worker Grandpa was better able to combine his duties as father of the family and worker in the service of the mission.

In 1928 the Ost family moved from Elim back to the new Golovin which had grown up on a better and more protected place farther in on Golovin Bay. In the new Golovin Grandpa and his sons had themselves built a new home for the family. The move meant that Grandpa immediately took up the work of the church in the village again with continual meetings and Bible studies. From Golovin Grandpa traveled as often as he could to the nearby villages and held meetings, not least with the motive of stimulating the Eskimos themselves to do the work. Together with Ernst B. Larsson in Unalakleet, Ost was very successful in this work.

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Horse Drawn Barges The daily life of Ost and his family in spite of everything became directed to the support of the family. Grandpa Ost and his sons were occupied at different times with reindeer husbandry. They chopped wood and timber which were hauled out by horses or were floated on the river down to the coast to be sold later.

Grandpa built simple but easily handled barges for bigger cargos from Golovin Bay up to the villages along the river. He procured a couple of horses and used them as draft animals to pull the barges up the river. The cargos went from Golovin Bay up to White Mountain and Council. In the vicinity of Council many rich discoveries of gold had been made and an energetic work was underway to recover the precious metal. Several big mining companies had dredging operations, and everywhere along the river and the small tributaries people were panning for gold on a bigger or smaller scale. The mining companies and the individual prospectors were constantly in need of equipment and other necessities.

Pulling the barges took place in a very primitive but effective way with the aid of the horses.

On the flat, shallow-draft barges there was a special place in the bow for the horses. When the counter current became stronger or the water became too shallow for the small motors, the horses were put to work. They simply had to wade ashore and pull the whole load farther up stream. When the river gave up, the horses were taken on board again. In this fashion they proceeded slowly but surely up the river. From Golovin to White Mountain the distance is about 20 kilometers; from Golovin to Council it is about 100 kilometers.

A barge load up to Council, under unfavorable conditions, might take several days. But downstream back to Golovin went all the faster.

Grandpa had for a long time considered the interior and certain villages along the Yukon River as being at least as interesting an area for missionary work as the villages along the coast. In the summer of 1929 Ost launched a project with the idea of going down to the Yukon River and up into the interior. Grandpa had planned so well for the trip that he was prepared to spend the winter. His purpose was partly to start missionary work in this new region, and partly to find a suitable place for a new home for the family.

But the adventure almost came to a tragic end and had to be abandoned. Grandpa and his sons plus a few Eskimo friends as helpers had gone south from Golovin to the little coastal village of Egavik, about 25 kilometers north of Unalakleet. There they had camped on the beach and pitched a big tent of genuine tarpaulins. In the evening they made a fire in the tent. Not only for warmth and cooking, but also to keep the swarms of mosquitoes at bay.

Suddenly and without warning the flames shot up. The tent had ignited, presumably by sparks from the fire. In a few moments the whole tent was involved and burnt down. Most of it was destroyed by the fierce fire. There was now nothing for Grandpa and his party to do but return to Golovin.

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In Golovin Grandpa had rented out the family house before he left. When Grandpa and the boys had left, Mother Ruth and the girls moved temporarily into a smaller cabin. Now when Grandpa and his party unexpectedly returned after a few weeks, a perilous housing problem arose.

During the following winter the whole family had to squeeze into the little shed whose only room had a floor space of five meters by six meters, or 30 square meters. Five of the children slept together in the biggest bed, the sisters Ruthie and Lois had their bed on the floor under the small table, and the oldest brother, John, slept all winter long outdoors in a little tent that was well insulated with tightly packed snow.

The following summer Grandpa built a new house for himself and his family in Golovin.

A big and imposing house which to this day is the biggest building in the village. The family moved into it. The biggest room on the ground floor was used for several years as a meeting room for Grandpa’s continued services and the church’s activity in the village.

About twenty years later the “Ost house” was rebuilt to become the Golovin church.

No further attempt was made during this period to move to the interior of the Yukon Delta.

Grandpa and his sons instead continued the wood chopping, barge transport, together with reindeer husbandry and various other activities. The frequent trips to the gold mining town of Council required Grandpa and his big family eventually to build a home for themselves also at this place. In 1931 the family began little by little to move over to the new, and almost as big, house in Council. But they kept the house in Golovin until 1946, and the family lived at both places for several years. The summer months were spent principally in Golovin, and inasmuch as they worked along the whole way up to Council it was practical for them to keep a home at each place.

Among the bigger projects that Grandpa and his sons undertook during the 1930s was to build landing strips or to restore those that had been built earlier in the coastal villages.

Grandpa had acquired a large tractor, and borrowed in addition the necessary machines for the work. Only in the late winter, while the ice remained along the seashore, could they transport the machinery and equipment from one village to another. During the summer they carried out the work on the flying fields. Among other things Grandpa directed the work on the still functioning flying field at Unalakleet. He took part also during the war in maintaining the flying fields at Nome, Council, and Elim.

For four years from 1938 the family made meteorological reports from Council to the head station in Nome by telegraph. They were paid fifty cents for each report, and at most they might take in two or three dollars per twenty four hours, but still a welcome addition. When the war broke out and even Alaska came to feel what was going on in the outside world the number of reports was increased considerably. This, of course, added somewhat to their income.

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During the time that the family lived in Council Grandpa also tried looking for gold. Together with a couple of his sons-in-law he bought a claim near a place called Melson Creek outside of Council. Later also a claim at Crooked Creek, also in the vicinity of Council. For several years during the summers the whole family gave themselves to panning for gold, but with very simple equipment and not very great seriousness. There was a certain profit in gold but definitely no riches.

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Alone in Marshall In this fashion Grandpa Ost and his big family were able to continue to live as citizens of Alaska. Grandpa himself never for a moment dropped his mission work, especially the work that was gradually being started in new places. When the family moved to Council he started a congregation there also. His chief support in this continued Christian work was his wife Ruth, but the growing children also gave more and more help. For Grandpa this became a volunteer work for which he received no major help from the outside. Not infrequently a part of the family income was used for the expenses of the meetings and other work. There was no formal bookkeeping, but money was used wherever it was most needed.

The Ost family remained in Council until 1951. By that time several of the children had already left home. Three of the sons, after studies in Chicago, had become missionaries in other parts of the world. During the last years in Council Mother Ruth suffered increasingly from her arthritis. Her health in other respects also deteriorated severely. In 1951 she was moved to Nome. There she spent her last two years living alternately with her daughters Betty and Ruthie, who had married and had their own homes in the city. Grandpa spent the major part of his time with his wife during this last difficult time of her life.

When Grandpa was not with his beloved wife he made repeated trips down to the Yukon River and up the river to a place called Marshall, 260 kilometers inland. Grandpa had never dropped the idea of going inland with both mission and family. The unfortunate effort of 1929 had not discouraged him. On his visits to Marshall, or Fortuna Ledge as the village is known today, Grandpa built himself a new home. His purpose was to move his wife down to Marshall and let her have a peaceful existence until the inevitable end which was quickly drawing near.

But Mother Ruth was never to see the new home. She closed her eyes for the last time in Nome in April 1953. With that Grandpa was practically left alone, notwithstanding all his children and grandchildren scattered all over Alaska and to the ends of the earth. He moved that same summer to his new house in Marshall. He received at once new work to occupy himself with, which helped him overcome the pain and sorrow of his wife’s departure.

Along side the work of building up a congregation and church work in Marshall, he was soon invited by the State to become juridical deputy for the district of Marshall which extended up along the Yukon River for a distance of nearly 400 kilometers. With the duties and authority of a judge Grandpa had to enter into tangled problems between individuals.

In cases of fighting and other forms of controversy in the district he had to hold a hearing with those involved, undertake an investigation if that was called for, and in certain simpler cases even pronounce judgment. With respect to the latter cases it was more common that the people concerned be transferred to Nome for trial. Or if many people were involved the judge and jury themselves traveled to the villages in order to reduce expenses and simplify the procedures.

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Grandpa Ost functioned as a deputy for the State in the Marshall District from 1954 to 1959. Earlier he had also had a record brief career as a politician. In 1947 he tested the political waters in the Alkaska territory and was elected to the highest territorial Assembly as Republican Representative from the town and vicinity of Council. He soon recognized that politics was not for him. It lasted only a year. He did, however, on several occasions plead that it was high time the Eskimos and Indians were represented on these decision making bodies. The place that Grandpa vacated when he departed was filled by an Eskimo.

He also proposed that an investigation be made of the possibility of importing black grouse and wood grouse from Sweden to the forests of inland Alaska. Grandpa himself believed that the Swedish black grouse and wood grouse would adapt well and become permanent species among Alaska’s fauna. But Grandpa’s suggestion was met with hardly more than a shrug of the shoulders. A trial or investigation of this matter was never made.

From Marshall, in his old age, Grandpa has continued his work in the name of God with all his spiritual and physical strength. Not for a moment has he failed in his duty in Alaska. He never forgot for a second what Paul Peter Waldenstrom said when he consecrated him as a missionary in Chicago in 1910, “This is not an ordination for a certain period of time, but for a lifetime”.

Grandpa Ost has his own way of describing his life which he for the most part invested intensively in one of the most inhospitable corners of the world: “There has never been a question of abundance for me and my family. On the contrary belts have often been tightened more than normal.

“I know that the water of the river, once it has gone under the bridge, will never return.

“But if I should be given the privilege of living my earthly life over again I would live it in the same way. Perhaps I would try to avoid some of the small traps that have come in my path.”

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Chapter 13

A Much Too Rapid Revolution A Gloomy News Medium a Feature of the Church Day Alaska is a difficult land in which to live. The barren wilderness and troublesome climate constantly demand their evil quota of sudden death and suffering. Accidents are everyday events, and the fact that people slowly break down and fail to overcome the many strains of this wild land is equally normal. The mortality rate is abnormally high in Alaska’s several hundred isolated villages along the coast and the equally harsh interior. Residents of Alaska live with death nearby, a fact that is known and accepted by everyone.

At worship services and other meetings in the Covenant churches in Alaska, much time is reserved for intercession and comfort for accident victims and their relatives. It is a standing feature every Sunday for the minister to sum up what has happened on the accident scene during the previous week.

Sunday, August 1, 1976 was an ordinary day of worship for the villagers of Unalakleet. The chairman at Unalakleet since 1966 has been Donald Erickson from Minnesota, who, like so many others now working on the Alaska mission field, has a Swedish ancestry. As usual he closed his sermon with the accidents and illnesses of the previous week. The report, which is followed by prayer and hope of comfort for those involved and their relatives, is at the same time a gloomy news medium for the villagers. An official confirmation of what has happened.

Donald Erickson’s summary on that day dealt with the fifty-year-old Eskimo Aloysius Adonis of Unalakleet who on July 22 drowned when he fell from his boat while fishing at Sheldon’s Point at the mouth of the Yukon River. with the American Roger Croughan who on the same day and under the same circumstances drowned while fishing not far from there at Alakanuk a mile or so farther up the Yukon River. with the twenty-year-old Eskimo youth John Walluk in Nome who, on his birthday July 24, was shot to death with a pistol. A friend of the same age fired the shot during the birthday party. with the sixteen-year-old Eskimo youth Wilburn Jones who drowned on July 18 under unknown circumstances in the Unalakleet River not far from the village.

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with the twenty-one-year-old Eskimo pilot Martin Olson from Golovin who was killed when his plane crashed on July 30. He crashed into a cliff in very bad flying weather, flying alone between Golovin and Council. Just a few days earlier he had rescued two stranded people whose boat had capsized in the ocean outside of Bluff, a point not far from Golovin. with Glenn Ivanoff, an elderly Eskimo member of the Unalakleet church who was hospitalized with incurable leukemia.

In Donald Erickson’s list of misfortunes he also included a report of the great flood in Colorado with its toll of over two hundred deaths. For an outsider such a cavalcade of violence at one and the same worship service for a limited number of people can become strangely overwhelming. But for the Alaskans it is definitely nothing more than everyday events forming an ordinary Sunday service in Unalakleet. The summary of unfortunate incidents related at the church service on August 1, 1976 was no exceptionally long listing of such events for the previous week.

Sunday is the big church day the year around in Unalakleet as well as in other village churches in the area. But much more also happens during the three-hour meeting. The program is always divided into two parts. First there is the customary worship service with a sermon, unison singing, offering, as well as some numbers from the instrumental and singing groups that are found in almost every congregation. The Eskimos themselves are particular about forming their own groups so they can sing in their own language. Plenty of time is given in the worship service to deliver greetings from people all over the world who have a connection with the village, or from church members who, for whatever reason, could not be present.

The other half of the Sunday meeting consists of Bible school. All through the year all those who nave attended the worship service are divided into groups, each with its leader, to study and discuss some section in the Bible. In Unalakleet it is required that people coming to church bring their own Bibles to the service. The groups are divided by age, from the youngest pre-schoolers, then the juniors and so on to the various groups of the adults. Discussions can become very intense among the older Eskimos. They are remarkably inquisitive regarding Biblical interpretation, and at the same time very quick to call in question the message of the Bible. The leader of the group in such cases may have great difficulty defending himself.

Beside the Sunday services in the churches, the whole gamut of the customary activities of a denomination of the type of the Covenant is carried out. Throughout it all the greatest emphasis is put on group Bible studies, often spontaneously arranged in the homes of members. The good fellowship in these meetings is not to be overlooked.

On the side of the young people there are many programs of games and physical exercises.

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places in the wilderness far from the nearest village. In most cases the mission’s planes must be used to transport the young people from their villages to the camps. Clay Norton and Daniel Sjoblom are at present the mission pilots in Alaska. The summer months are hectic for them when they spend considerable time in the air operating a shuttle between the villages. In addition to the youth camps several conferences are also held during the summer. So far as the limits of time and passenger seating permit, it is the task of Clay and Daniel to see to it that as many people as possible from as many villages as possible are able to come to the conferences and youth camps.

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Social Work Is the Most Important Task In earlier times school work and the care of the sick were the natural areas of work for the mission in Alaska. Later the State of Alaska took over these responsibilities in the villages.

Social work was therefore left in the hands of the mission. The pastors and the church workers in the present day must often function as social workers and family counselors rather than doing purely evangelistic work. In today’s work in the villages social work is one of the most important contributions. Perhaps it is the very most important.

The country’s aborigines in their earlier solitude in the north lived in utter misery and wretchedness. But the problems were definitely not solved with the arrival of the white man and so-called civilization. Exactly as in any other place on earth discord reigns also in Alaska, among the Eskimos as well as among other people of the northland. Alcohol abuse and narcotics problems dominate and are the cause of great social problems in the usually large families. In spite of their isolation from the outer world the villages are not shielded from these modern perils.

Eskimos in their natural environment, even in modern times, are the children of nature.

In the wilderness, whether hunting or fishing, they have no larger problems to solve. The ability to survive they have inherited from their ancestors. That is a heritage that will remain with them for generations to come. On the tundra or on the ocean the Eskimos have a considerably greater chance to survive than on the main streets of Fairbanks or Anchorage.

Eskimos are born to a wilderness hard to manage and an equally troublesome climate. But in the close battle with social evils in the dark backyard of civilization this inherited quality does not go far.

The Eskimo people of the north have an easy going character. Their disposition is as close to tears as to laughter. Sorrows are to be forgotten. The nonchalance of the moment is necessary to make the everyday life bearable. It would be easy to characterize the Eskimos with the ancient cliché: “We must not trouble ourselves today over what may trouble us tomorrow”. And in spite of everything this is in part expressed in action. Out in the villages the Eskimos continue to have a certain freedom to set out on the ocean with fishnets or wander over the hills with a rifle when that is convenient, dropping everything else for a little fishing or hunting.

The attractions of civilization in all its forms have without a doubt brought out a certain recklessness in the Eskimos, often with disastrous results. Even in the introductory period, after the discovery of Alaska in the eighteenth century, this nonchalance was expressed with unbounded recklessness. In the first place hard liquor was brought in by the white people. The fur traders gave the people whiskey and then swindled them of their furs. Little by little the Eskimos learned how to brew or distill their own liquor.

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In less than a hundred years the Eskimos have been wrenched out of their old culture and brought into the modern, faster merry go round. The Eskimos themselves offer very little resistance. There is no written history of the aborigines. When the white man came to the northland they quickly submitted to his power to the same extent as earlier they had blindly followed the order of the spirit world through the medicine man.

In recent times there has been an expression circulating among the older Eskimos in general which is rather enlightening: “I think it was about 50-50 better before, and I think it is about 50-50 better now�. This means that in many respects conditions were better before the white man came, but civilization has provided better conditions in other respects. A development which is certainly not unique to the Eskimo people. Hardly any people on earth, where transformation of structure has changed society and the environment, have escaped without the resulting problems. For Swedes, Russians, Americans, Eskimos or Indians there are always changes and always will be for both good and evil.

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Everything Has Gone Too Quickly The only thing that is really certain concerning the changes for the aborigines of the northland is that everything has gone too quickly from being an isolated people with a unique lifestyle and culture, to being drawn into the variety of the modern era in less than a century. Such a transformation in such a short time can hardly yield more than a halfway tolerable result. The timetable for the transformation of the Eskimos went awry at an early period. The Eskimos, like the Indians and the Aleuts in Alaska, have not kept up with the great changes. To go from hunting and fishing as the chief source of food in an emphatically wilderness life, to all the modernities that swept over them, implies a change of direction that can hardly be accomplished in one generation. Especially since the aid to overcome the resulting problems was not always given with the best intentions. Even altruistic desire to help often missed the mark.

Fur traders, business men, missionaries, gold miners, oil magnates and government officials all bear responsibility for their part in the rapid revolution in the land of the Eskimos. All categories of immigrants have contributed to the rapid change of milieu and living conditions in the formerly isolated small villages.

The mission in its way has without hesitation brought about an awareness of a variety of things that have been useful for the natives. There were the early introduction of reindeer husbandry and Ernst B. Larsson’s gardening project, to take a couple of practical examples. But it was the church work above all that led to results of a social character. Many times the church and mission workers have rescued individuals and whole families who directly or indirectly suffered from the rapid changes.

On pioneer Axel E. Karlsson’s tombstone in Unalakleet the inscription reads that there were no Christians when he came to the village, and no heathen when he died twenty three years later in 1910. This must be taken as a truth with qualification. Through all the years there have been rises and falls in the curve of results in the mission. This can be described simply and drastically by an example. When an Eskimo is baptized and with great devotion joins the church, it is not uncommon that in the evening of the same day he celebrates this event with a very wild party, and perhaps on the following day proclaims himself again to be a true Christian and separates himself from all such forms of worldly entertainment.

The missionary work that the Swedish Covenant started in Alaska and which a short time later was taken over and developed by her American sister Covenant has, like the work of other pioneer denominations, a very good reputation. But there is, especially in recent times, a battle for souls in Alaska that is anything but good for the future of the work. New revival organizations rise up with lightning speed only to disappear just as quickly again after a period of work. There are countless examples of how such organizations have used the most dramatic methods and enticements to rapidly win members, most often where there-already are churches, just because those who have a religious consciousness are the most easily influenced.

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From the standpoint of the Covenant it is felt that there is room for all. Not least because there still are countless villages in Alaska’s remote areas that do not have either churches or regular Christian work. But Christian denominations that fight among themselves over the favor of both the native and other people out in the villages present an unfortunate appearance, which everyone agrees should be controlled. The city of Nome with a population of barely three thousand had, at one time in 1974, not less than ten denominations at work. It is obvious that such a situation does not enhance the total picture of a successful church work in Alaska.

The pioneer work that the Swedish Covenant launched in Alaska by sending out missionaries Axel E. Karlsson and Adolf Lydell was, on the contrary, not a fly-by-night project. The seeds that were sown then have reached full growth. The fruits and harvests of the work throughout the years have been varied. But it has all taken place with the clear aim of, not only spreading the Gospel, but with equal emphasis helping a people who live at the end of the earth to attain a better environment and better living conditions.

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