| Summary: | ROGERS PICTURES FAR NORTH LIFE: This Article Last He Penned Before His Death. ROGERS PICTURES FAR NORTH LIFE This Article Last He Penned Before His Death. ABOUT ESKIMOS His Final Story One of Praise for Arctic Circle People. The day before the airplane crash in which Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed, the beloved humorist mailed three articles from Fairbanks, Alaska. The first article is published in The Spokesman-Review September 1 and the second September 8. This is the third and last. By WILL ROGERS. Well all I know is just what I run onto awhile back when I was messing around up in Alaska. That's a most interesting country. I was mentioning to you about being in the fine museum in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. There is a little Russian man in there, he was born in Alaska, before it was sold to us "Father * * * " (some Russian name). Well he has made a great study of Alaska customs, relics, languages, its history and everything, and if ever a fellow fit in a museum its him in this one. Snooty to Indians. It has some marvelous work of art by the Indians and Esquimos. Those Esquimos are really a mighty high class bunch of folks, and plum proud. They won't mess at all with the Indians, and not much with the whites. They think they are superior to the whites, and it don't take much to tell that they have kinder got it on us. What they can do with the skin of some old wild animal! The women folks kinder work it down some way with their teeth. Some of the older women's teeth are all wore down just gnawing on various skins to get 'em sowed. Handy With Needle. A doctor up there told me that the Esquimos sow anything or stitch it up just like the doctors do a wound. Lots of their winter stuff have the fur inside. They can spread fish net under the ice. Now how could you spread a fish net under the ice. They got wooden boxes that are absolutely solid, that is they take one piece and when they get to the corner of the box they cut it, but not entirely in too, but so it will make a square bend, then sow the corners to keep it solid. And they have a water tight box, not a nail, and its absolutely one piece of board and not cut in two at all. Marvelous things cut from rocks, like hatchets and fish line sinkers and in fact anything you need. Fish seems to be their specialty, fact its got to be, for thats about all they got to eat, and thats what they feed the dogs on too. They have to catch a lot of fish for a team of dogs, which is five, or seven. Course something bigger than a porpoise but white. Hunting, Serious Work. You know I found out up there that regulated lives there is. That is, almost to a day of the various months or seasons, they will go from the hunting or trapping of one animal to the other. White fox takes up just so many days, perhaps a couple of months, that they will stop and move to another place to take up another game. Muskrat, then white seals, then their seal and fishing for their supply of dog food. They all come in and hold a celebration on Christmas, then by New Years they are out again, and hold one at one of the native places. Then the polo bear season occupies so much of their time. He is pretty hard to get. He is worth real money to 'em. Oh yes then they got the caribou to hunt. There is literally thousands of caribou all over Alaska and the Yukon, and Northwest territories. They say they pass in great herds like the old timers say, the buffalo used to do. I kinder thought they was always kinder stringing us about those buffalo, but these folks say the caribou do that right now. I want to tell you the great story some time of the big drive of 3 thousand reindeer from away over in the very northwest tip of our country of Alaska, clear along the very banks of the Arctic Ocean for 2 thousand miles to the place where I stayed a couple of days at Aklavik, the very mouth of the McKenzie River. They was five years getting them there, its the greatest story in animal driving I ever heard. The Canadian government had bought them from the Loman Brothers the big reindeer men of Alaska. Its a great country, is Alaska and the Canadian northwest, where you have to live off the country, hunt, trap, kill, and live. Four mails a year into that place, two and a half months when its not frozen in. It's just 150 miles from Hershel island out in the Arctic (where we went, too) and it's the place where all the old whalers of the old days used to come in and freeze in and stay for the winter. Money in Whales. A whale used to net 'em about 18 or 20 thousand dollars, when whalebone was selling, but the minute the women started reducing and trying to get some sort of shape with a rubber corset, the old whalers were pretty near put out of business. The blubber and oil had to make up for the old whalebone corset stays. Polo bear hides are not worth anything now they say. Furs have been pretty cheap but there is no depression up here and never was. Ground only thaws out one foot in the summer and from that on down it's froze plum on down. An Esquimo dog from the time he is just a half sized pup is never untied. He is always tied with a chain, and he don't bark at all, he howls. They call all Esquimos "Huskys." I always thought it was the dogs that were called "Huskys" but its the Esquimos themselves. That's enough northern knowledge for one lessGn, especially when some of it maby aint so. (Copyright 1935)
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