Alaska (65 page)

So in one day the Caldwells received the good news that they could rent rooms at the old Russian house, as it was still called, and the bad news that whereas there was a teaching job at the informal school, only a woman would be considered. As a result, Mrs. Caldwell became a teacher in a school that had no visible means of support, for it had no tax base, there being no agency to assess taxes, whereas her husband, with the ingenuity of a man who had wanted to leave settled Oregon for the adventure of the Alaskan frontier, devised five or six imaginative ways to earn a little money other than by being a lawyer. He did paperwork for citizens who had to communicate with offices back in the States. He served as agent for the few ships that steamed into port. He helped at the coaling station where those same ships acquired fuel for their trips north. And he was not above working as either a day laborer or a handyman. Neither he nor his wife had a steady salary, but with what they did earn, plus some money picked up by their son, who was just as adaptable as his father, the Caldwells survived, and when the father received small commissions from miners and fishermen, they came close to prospering.

But always Caldwell listened to rumors and actual reports as to when Sitka was going to have a court system, and Alaska a formal system of government in which a lawyer could make a decent living: 'When that time comes, Nora, there's not going to be anyone in Alaska who'll know more than I will about the ins and outs of commerce and customs and the importation of goods and the management of mining and fishing.

Surely, things will have to be straightened out, and then the Carl Caldwells come into their own.'

Of course, during the dismal years of 1877 and '78, his hopes of action from Washington were disappointed, and instead of order coming to Alaska, grievous disorder came.

Caldwell first became aware of impending danger when his wife came home from school one afternoon with perplexing news: 'One of our children who plays with Aleuts said that a famous Tlingit warrior who fought the Russians many times . . .'

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'He's come back to Sitka.'

'What does that signify?'

'I asked one of the other teachers, and all she said was that her brother had seen him at the edge of town. Name Ivan Bigears, a famous warrior . . . like the child said.'

'Never heard the name,' Mr. Caldwell said, but during the next days when he made quiet inquiries he learned that Ivan Bigears, if it was indeed he, had fought against the Russians and had fled to voluntary exile somewhere to the east. 'If he's come back,' one older white man said, 'it can only mean trouble. I was here when he battled the Russians. Never won but also never accepted defeat.'

Caldwell asked what this Bigears looked like, and another man said with obvious fear in his voice: 'I think I saw him the other day. Tall, robust man in his sixties.

White hair. Dark even for a Tlingit.'

About this time Caldwell noticed that the Aleut-Tlingit couple who ran the Russian house in which the four Caldwells stayed became aloof, unwilling to talk with their boarders, and when Carl tried to discover why the change had occurred, he discovered, through the kind of detective work that lawyers enjoy doing, that the owners of the house were entertaining secret guests at night, and when the three older Caldwells established a watch, the son saw four Tlingits slipping into the back of the house.

'Was one of them tall, older, white hair?' Carl asked in a whisper, and his son said: 'Yes. He's in there now.'

Carl swore the boy to secrecy: 'Important things may be involved. Speak to no one.'

But he himself stayed up all night, keeping watch on the rear door, and toward dawn he was rewarded by a clear glimpse of a tall, handsome Tlingit who must have been Ivan Bigears.

In subsequent weeks the four Caldwells, for now the daughter had joined the detective work, accumulated fairly solid evidence that the Aleut-Tlingit community was engaged in some kind of conspiracy which involved Ivan Bigears and at least several scores of Indians from other settlements across the water. And once this distressing theory was formulated, this clever family amassed a disturbing amount of substantiating data more secret meetings in the back of the house, Tlingit men who could not be identified as locals lurking along the edges of the town, a gun stolen here and there, a subtle arrogance among the natives which had not existed before. Carl Caldwell said: 'With the army gone and no agency to replace it, the Tlingits have grown bold.

Something bad is bound to happen.'

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His wife said: 'If the rumors I hear are true, enough Tlingits have filtered in to wipe us out.'

Tom said: 'The men at the dock told me more guns had been stolen,' and Betts reported that Tlingit children had begun to push white children off the footpaths.

Caldwell exploded: 'Dammit, if we can see trouble brewing, why can't the officials?'

But who were the officials? When it was agreed that Caldwell must go to them and present his suspicions about a possible uprising of the Indians, it became obvious that there was really no one in authority with whom he could conduct a meaningful conversation. The little customs boat which had shelled the wrong village near Taku Inlet still lay at anchor in the harbor, but its captain, having made a fool of himself at that bombardment, showed no disposition to do so again in response to the crazy suspicions of a man who had been in town less than a year.

So when Caldwell broached the subject, the captain stopped him with a rambling discourse: 'Were you here when General Davis was in command? No? Well, folks hereabout thought poorly of him, but when he left here he was assigned to the Oregon-California boundary where the Modoc Indians was actin' up. Real bad Indian named Captain Jack come out under a white flag and shot the American general, man named Canby. Davis was appointed to replace him, and with great courage captured Captain Jack and saw him hanged.

At the end of the Modoc affair, he gained a commendation and spent his remaining time in service chasing Indians, who he despised. A real hero.'

Caldwell had not come to talk about a general he had never known, but when he tried to bring the conversation to a serious discussion of the impending crisis whose outlines he saw so clearly, he accomplished nothing and left the customs boat in despair.

'They didn't even listen,' he told his wife, and that night when Ivan Bigears and five of his lieutenants crowded into the Russian house, Caldwell managed to overhear their agitated conversation, but since it was conducted in Tlingit, he understood nothing except the spirit of the words, but the animosity in the voices could not be masked.

However, at several points in the Indian debate about timing and tactics, men did use individual English words or phrases, and from them Caldwell obtained such confirmation as he needed:

'ammunition, ship in harbor, early morning, three men running and other words pertaining to military action, and toward dawn, when he had heard enough, he 401

convened his own meeting to discuss the steps that would have to be taken: 'If the United States can't protect us, and if there isn't any government here to take action, the only practical thing we can do is throw ourselves on the mercy of the Canadians,'

and this strategy his three listeners agreed to. But how to reach the Canadians with a plea for help?

Tom had kept a map of the approaches to Alaska which the steamship company bringing them to Sitka had provided, and from its imperfect data he calculated that the distance to Prince Rupert Island and the seaport of that name would be about two hundred and eighty miles: 'Three men in a good canoe could get there in four days, if they're good men.'

'Would you be one of them?' Caldwell senior asked, and Tom said: 'You bet.'

The question then became: 'Nora, if Tom and I have to go south to fetch aid, can you and Betts protect yourselves till we get back?' Before she could reply, he pointed toward the back of the house: 'With them scheming on the other side?'

'We'd go to the church,' she said calmly, 'find safety with the other women and their men,' and when she looked at her daughter, Betts nodded.

Tom's suggestion that to paddle nearly one hundred miles, the first half through open seas, would require at least three men was so sensible that his father had to agree: 'We must find a third man before we can set out,' and in the next days as he scanned the community, peering into white faces to calculate who might have courage, he settled upon a choice between two men who impressed him with their general bearing.

One was an older fellow named Tompkins, who like Caldwell worked at various jobs; the other, a much younger man named Alcott, whom Carl had seen along the waterfront when he worked the ships.

His inclination was to approach Tompkins first, and this was a good hunch, because when he did, Tompkins surprised him by saying immediately: 'Of course there's bound to be trouble,' but he shied off when Carl suggested begging for help in Canada: 'Too far. They'd never help Americans, anyway. They want Alaska for theirself,' and it looked as if the Caldwells would not be able to enlist his help.

However, that very afternoon a group of Indians who had come into town from the north began acting in a rowdy manner in the center of Sitka, and so terrified newcomer whites that a general panic ensued, but the quick disciplining of the rambunctious Tlingits by other Indians associated with Bigears quieted the affair, so that the general uprising which many now feared did not occur. That was enough for Tompkins, who came to report his decision: 'We've got to get to 402

Canada for help.' In the meantime, however, Caldwell had approached Alcott at the waterfront, and this bright young fellow had accumulated his own strong evidence: 'Things got to blow to hell pretty soon. Canada? Hadn't thought of it, but there's no help around here,' and he insisted upon joining the expedition, making four.

It was not a canoe in the sense that a frail birchbark affair in Pennsylvania would be called by that name; the one that Tompkins provided was a sturdy, spruce-ribbed, solidly built craft which had every chance of surviving in the ocean part of the journey. It could, in calmer water, provide space for eight paddles and ample room for four, regardless of the waves, and when the men met to inspect the craft, it was young Tom who voiced their judgment: 'We can get to Canada in it,' and the adventure was under way.

The white men used as much craftiness in slipping out of Sitka as Ivan Bigears had used when slipping in. Waiting for one of those gray, misty dawns when all things in Sitka, even the brooding mountains, seemed clothed in silvery garments which made them invisible, they took off undetected by the Tlingits, sped out of Sitka Sound, ducked in and out through the protecting islands for the first leg of the journey, then headed south for the first perilous reach of open ocean, where they found the waves frighteningly big but not overwhelming. It was a heroic trip, with muscles strained and stomachs taut, but in time they reached that wilderness of islands which provided an inside passage nearly to Prince Rupert. There was a final dash across unprotected ocean, but at last the weary messengers paddled into the safety of the Canadian harbor.

In one of the fortunate accidents which help determine history, equal in results to times with careful planning, when the four men from Sitka reached Prince Rupert they found in its harbor the Canadian warship Osprey,

a vessel of no great size stationed there to protect Hudson's Bay Company outposts on the coast, and because Prince Rupert was at the western edge of Canada, its officials were in the habit of making up their own minds without seeking approval from some distant capital: 'You say the Indians are about to overrun Sitka? Why doesn't your own government take steps? You say there is no government? Unbelievable.'

So the first task of the Sitka men was to convince the Canadians that things were as bad in Alaska as they said, but Carl Caldwell was a persuasive man, and within an hour he satisfied the men of the Osprey that without their help, real tragedy threatened in Sitka, and by nightfall the little Cana—

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dian warship was steaming north to protect American interests.

WAS SiTKA IN THE CLOSING DAYS OF FEBRUARY 1879 IN

the perilous situation that the Caldwell party reported? Probably not. Responsible Tlingit leaders like Ivan Bigears had no plans to murder the white population in their beds; what they sought was fair ownership of the land, assured supplies of food and hardware and cloth, some kind of sensible control of salmon fishing, and a just participation in the lawmaking procedure. They were willing to do battle with whatever military force might oppose them, and men like Bigears were prepared to die in defense of their beliefs, but in these delicate days when the Osprey

hurried north to put down a bloody revolution, the attacking Tlingits had no plans for one. Indeed, any kind of responsible government in Sitka would have been able to parley with the Tlingits, resolve their concerns amicably, and avoid serious trouble, but of course there was no government.

The Osprey

steamed into Sitka Sound on 1 March 1879, and its bold show of power, with guns at the ready and uniformed troops marching ashore, quieted even the remote possibility of Tlingit revolt. No lives were lost. The Caldwell women did not have to seek sanctuary in the old Russian church. And the Tlingits who had been meeting in the rear of their house gradually dissipated, with outside warriors like Ivan Big-Ears returning sadly to their isolated homes, aware that justice would be denied them for decades to come.

In this manner the legend was born that a Canadian warship had saved Alaska for the United States when no American agency was brave enough to assume responsibility.

Caldwell, in a surge of emotion aboard the Osprey,

helped launch the myth: 'It's been a dark day in American history. Even this General Davis they laugh at wouldn't have allowed this shameful thing to happen.' In April, when an American warship finally arrived, the Canadians courteously retired, taking with them the gratitude of the community.