Twila's Story-Coming to Alaska & Indian Potlatch
Let me tell you how i came to live in Alaska. I was
born in a podunk place called Potlatch, Idaho. i have three older brothers. When I was born Dad was in the army in Alaska. After he was discharged he continued to try and talk Mom into moving up but she refused. He moved in with some of the indians in the village of Northway after discharge so he could learn how to trap. he stayed seven years. Eventually Mom said ok after she got the local doctor/good friend to promise that he and his wife would raise my brother Monte if he didn't "do well" in the cold climate. He had rheumatic fever. So Dad came outside and moved us all up towards the end of August in 1949. I was five years old. I have only a few very hazy memories of life in the states. The Alaska Highway at that time was little more than a rutted road. We arrived in Alaska after numerous breakdowns, etc. on September 7th (Mom's birthday). We had no home and only $64. It snowed the day after we arrived and also Nothway is the coldest spot in Alaska! My uncle had been up here trapping with Dad for awhile and he had a little 8 by 10 trappng cabin and the six of us moved into that for the winter. I remember it as a fun filled winter with lots going on however the rest of the family describes it as a winter that we never would have lived through if it wasn't for the Northway indians. They brought us fish, moose, caribou, ducks, bear, etc. so we wouldn't starve- and berries. Dad was gone trapping a lot. However there was only one person that bought fur and he was dishonest. The indians gave us dogs and Dad made a sled and that was our transportation for many years since the car had bit the dust shortly after arrival. Dad always said he had it held together with bailing wire until we hit Northway. Anyway the indian people fed us through the winter and they even made sure we had a Christmas. The ladies made moccassins, beaded gloves,and little pins that said 'Alaska' on them for each of us kids, and I got a fur doll (that now hangs on my wall!). When spring came old Walter Northway who was the chief came and asked Dad if he'd open up a store for "his people". So we moved up on the Alaska Highway and opened our first store in a tent. By fall time Dad had the beginnings of a building up and it eventually grew into a trading post --- store, restaurant, fur buying, and four cabins for rent in the summer to the tourists. And a small garage with gas. After several years we sold that and moved over closer to the village and had just a store and Dad still bought fur. It was by the banks of Moose Creek. That's the spot I think of when I think of my childhood years. We (my brothers and I) lived at home and attended the little log cabin, one room, schoolhouse until we'd enter the ninth grade. Since there was no high school around we'd go away to boarding school down in Sitka, Alaska which is way down in southeastern Alaska. Since there were no schools in small villages then there were kids from all across the territory there. It was a wonderful boarding school owned and run by the Presbyterian church. My two oldest brothers did all their high school there, My brother Dean went there for three years and I went two years there. Then Mom and Dad moved to Homer, Alaska in an attempt to save their marriage. Didn't work. I did however graduate from high school there. I went back to Sitka to junior college (which they'd added on to the high school) and then I went to Texas for a year or two and that started my wandering years! Also went to Mexico City where I lived for awhile. I ended up joining Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) which was like the peace corps only in the United States. Spent my time on Coney Island, New York. I always enjoyed wherever I went but I always missed home, so after a few years I was home for good---more or less! Met Dick and we got married in Anchorage in 1969. Lived there until he took an early retirement in 1984 and we moved to Willow where we've been ever since! I still love to travel but Dick doesn't. If I had the money I'd be running all around this old globe! Dick had been married before and had four sons. At the time of our marriage Todd was fifteen, Mark thirteen, John eleven, and Lloyd was nine. They lived with us a lot and it was a surprise going from being single to part time mom of four boys! They were good kids however. Then FINALLY in 1975 I had Malinda!! All the kids are all grown now. Todd's a veterinarian, Mark runs a big construction company and Lloyd is a jouneyman carpenter, John is Executive Secretary of the State Carpenter's Union, and Malinda works for the Aleut Native Corporation as a social worker. They all live in Anchorage now which is just 70 miles away and we get to see them often, which, of course, is very nice.
NORTHWAY
POTLATCHES--- as I mentioned, Northway is the coldest spot in Alaska. As you enter Alaska on the Alaska Highway, Norhway is about the first place you come to. The interior of Alaska gets much colder than up at the top of the state where the ocean currents warm things up. The indians at Northway are Athabascans. There are about 100-150 people in the village. there is a weather station at Northway which is run by all white people and live and work about seven miles from the village in government housing-most of them. I went with a childhood friend back to Northway last winter because a mutual friend had died. she died in Anchorage but her body was being taken back to the village for burial and a potlatch. After Lucille died Pam and i drove up for the potlatch. You attend a potlatch to show your respect for the person that died. This was in November and we left the day after Thanksgiving. Northway is about six hundred miles from here. we stayed with James and Becky. James lived with my family off and on when he was a little boy as did his sister, Rosy. Now he's the state trooper up there and oh! so handsome in his uniform! Anyway, Pam and I visited the people around the village and then late afternoon the guns started going off. Lucille's body was back home. That is done when a body is brought back to the village. So everyone congregated in the little log church and the preacher said a prayer. People filed by the casket to say their goodbyes, and then they took her body to be buried. It was minus thirty- five degrees and the wind was blowing wickedly so i didn't go to the cemetery which is about a mile away and on the top of a hill. and everyone walks. Then starting the next morning you could go by the community hall at any time of the day and there would be food ready for you to eat. It's all bought by the family of the deceased. they had killed two caribou for Lucille's potlatch. The caribou were hanging outside the hall and they cut meat off as it was needed to prepare big pots of soups, stews, boiled meat, etc. Pam and I ate all our meals there since we were from out of the village. The third day is the important day. The day of the potlatch! In the evening the entire village comes to eat together. There are benches all around the walls of the communiy hall where people are sitting. A big roll of paper is rolled out on the floor in front of these folks for use as a table. Another row of people sit in folding chairs facing the "table". People from the kitchen would come out with big pots and pans of food. You were asked not to refuse any as they had worked so hard to prepare it in Lucille's memory, etc., etc. We had moose stew, caribou soup (man that was good!), boiled meat, indian fry bread, a dessert made with raspberries, and I don't remember what else. I hadn't had so much good indian food since I was a kid! After everyone finishes eating the paper's thrown away, chairs are re-arranged and let the dancing begin! Indian dancing that is!! Old Kenny Thomas got his drums out and a couple of the other men that drum ,and my dear old friend Fred Demit was the first dancer out. He is Lucille's brother. and he's an elder who is very respected. Soon everyone was out dancing! Little kids to elders! All the dances tell a story and my indian mama Ada, who is herself an elder now, made sure to tell me what each story was about. Some of them I'd remembered from when I was a kid and used to go to potlatches. After the dancing is over everything is moved out of the center of the room and tarps are brought in and layed down. And then the men of the village go help carry in all the things to be potlatched. Stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of blankets, all kinds of them; all colors of them; and moccassins, beaded gloves, mukluks, guns, jewlery, and all kinds of things!!! The family has this all figured out ahead of time, for you see, all these items are given away in honor of Lucille. There are seats out on the floor for the pallbearers to sit in. They each get a rifle to start with. They, Pam, and i begin receiving things. (i imagine because we were honored guests. They knew our families from many years ago and we had been friends of Lucille's and helped her out towards the end). And then after us the elders; then other respected village people, clear on down to every little child that was there! I was potlatched a new pair of moccassins; a beautiful, beautiful pair of gloves (moosehide and beads), and three blankets. I also received a twenty dollar bill, a beaded necklace and earrings, a birch bark basket, and several other things that i can't even remember now! Pam and i figured that each of us had received approximately five hundred dollars worth of things! Now, every member of that family must be in debt big time because, you see, lucille's one hundred year old mother, old Bertha, had died two weeks before Lucille and they had thrown an even larger potlatch for her! I hear Bertha's potlatch was really big which would befit her status in the village and her age. A potlatch is kind of a hard thing to describe to someone who has never been to one. I think they are a lot more civilized than funerals. Cost more but many of the families start stockpiling blankets for years just so they'll have them in case of a death in the family. Potlatchs can also be thrown just to honor someone alive or for any reason. And sometimes they have them for someone that died many years earlier. I went to one once that a lady had for her son because he'd almost drown but didn't so she made a potlatch for him. Did I tell you that nobody that is related to the deceased-through the matriarchal line-can be potlatched anything? They are family! Not proper for them to receive things. Of course they have no written histories from generations past but believe me! they know! Last thing at the potlatch they take cases of soda pop and bags and boxes of candy and just throw them out over the floor. Kids appear out of every nook and cranny grabbing hands full. When you are potlatched something you aren't supposed to sell it or use it in another potlatch.
I hope you have enjoyed my reminiscing.
Twila
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Monte-Twila-Dean-Lavell Wilson
and her step-brother, John Huff.
Ada- my "Indian Mom" on the right--
See the Alaska flag -it's all beadwork--and is on moosehide made into a jacket.
Dancing at the Potlatch--
