Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  “I’ll help Sidney with money if he needs it,” John Evans said.

  “OK, I’ll fly her tomorrow,” Herman said. “You can pay me when I come back.”

  The next morning he flew his Curtiss Robin on skis to Hog River, picked Jenny up, and flew her to the Native Service hospital at Tanana. He said that the doctors thought that Jenny would be all right, and that she wouldn’t lose the baby. So the following day, I harnessed the team and mushed back to Hog River, arriving before dark.

  I waited a few days, but Jenny’s condition worried me, so I drove the dogs to Cutoff and I called the hospital on the village radio. News was good; Jenny was doing well. Much relieved, I headed my dog team home.

  Traveling in the cool of the evening on crusted snow, we came to the steep bank of the Koyukuk River and headed down. The surface was rough where mud had frozen. I stepped on the brake, the brake claw caught, the brake stick broke, and the sled rolled. I tried to stop the rolling, but the bank was very steep and the dogs were moving fast. I was tossed into the ice-filled river. The swift, frigid water constricted my chest so I could hardly breathe as I frantically splashed shoreward. The dogs continued on their way.

  The weight and bulk of my wolfskin parka and heavy clothing dragged me down as I was swept downstream. Soon the current pushed me against the ice’s edge along the river. Breakup was near, and the ice was candling and caving in. I couldn’t touch bottom, and the rushing current kept pushing my legs downstream, as I clung to the rotten ice.

  I had discarded my mittens when I hit the water, and my bare fingers soon became torn and raw from clinging to the ice. I struggled to pull my knife out of its sheath on my belt, then jammed the blade into a crack in the ice. Carefully, I started to pull myself up onto the weak ice by the knife handle. I was nearly out of the water when the knife broke.

  I plunged back into the numbing water, exhausted. I thought I was going to die, for the cold had penetrated my body, and it was difficult for me to move. Even thinking was difficult. Realizing I had one chance left, I tried again. I lifted one leg onto the ice. My boot caught and I inched my way up. I lay on the ice for a moment, half in the water, half on the ice, too weak to pull myself any farther.

  My hands were numb and bleeding and the blood made them slippery; gripping the ice was almost impossible. Finding some tiny holes, I jammed my hands into them and pulled myself closer to shore. I don’t know how long I lay stretched on the creaking ice, trying to gain strength. Finally, drawing a deep breath, I pulled myself upward and forward a few more inches. Alternately resting and pulling, I worked my entire body out of the water and onto the ice.

  I couldn’t move for a time. Then, keenly aware of the instability of the spring ice, I began wriggling toward shore. Stubbornly I crawled across that rotten ice toward the riverbank. I don’t know how long I struggled to reach the muddy beach, but by the time I got there my energy was spent. I passed out or slept, I’m not sure which, soaking wet, numb, chilled to the bone.

  I recovered consciousness with Dakli and a few of my other dogs licking my face. They had returned for me! Amazed by behavior so unusual for a dog team, I lifted my head and discovered the sled was still intact, although battered from bouncing on its side. Infused with new hope, I stood up.

  With my dogs clustered around me, I staggered to the sled. Happily, my gear was still lashed inside. With badly cut hands that were clumsy and numb, I opened the waterproof bag. This was one time when my habit of traveling with extra clothing on the sled paid off. Struggling to get out of my wet things, I discovered my legs were badly cut and bleeding from the sharp ice—I had been too numb to feel the cuts. I put on dry long johns, pants, and shirt, and I was grateful for the warmth of wool.

  Not having enough strength to ride the runners, I sat in the sled’s basket and headed the dogs home. I watched the trail, calling “gee” (right) and “haw” (left) to Dakli. She promptly responded to every command. If she hadn’t I wasn’t sure I could cope with climbing out of the sled to push if we bogged down in soft snow.

  I saw tracks where the team had run upriver about five miles without me. This told me that I had spent about an hour in the water and lying wet in the mud afterward, for that team traveled at about ten miles an hour. Dakli had turned them around by leading them in a big half circle, and had followed the trail back. If she hadn’t returned, I would have died.

  At the cabin I yanked harnesses off all the dogs and turned them loose. Then I collapsed on the bed. I developed pneumonia, and for weeks breathing was painful and labored, my chest hurt, and I was so weak I could barely move.

  While I recovered, the dogs were free to come in and out of the cabin. They caused no trouble, and took care of themselves. I managed to rouse myself enough to toss them their food—dried fish—every day, and they got water from the river.

  The dogs often lay close to me when I could scarcely leave the bed. Dakli seemed to understand that her closeness helped, for she spent long hours near me as I slowly gained strength. I remember that great gray dog with much fondness.

  In the 1920s and 1930s, a five-dog team was considered large among the Koyukon people. Individual animals then were much larger than the racing sled dogs that became popular in later years. My dogs weighed sixty to seventy pounds, and each could pull 100 pounds for hours at a time when in good condition.

  Before metal chains were available, Athapaskans had a clever way of keeping their dogs tied. Most dogs would chew through the rawhide ropes used to tie them, so the early people tied a thong of moosehide around the dog’s neck and tied the thong through a hole at the flattened end of a light pole; the other end of the five-foot pole was tied loosely to a tree, so the dog could travel around the tree, but could not reach the leashing. When tied this way, the dog could not cut the thong at its neck, or at the tree, nor could it chew the pole itself.

  Until arrival of dependable airplanes in the 1930s, dog teams provided most of the winter transportation in bush Alaska. The government marked dog team trails and built shelter cabins that were used by all travelers. On major routes, roadhouses, about a day’s travel apart, provided food and lodging for man and dog.

  Early in this century mail teams had perhaps five to eight dogs. By the 1920s and into the 1930s, mail teams of up to twenty-five dogs pulled one, sometimes two huge freight sleds with unbelievable loads. Mail team drivers often hauled passengers as well as mail and freight; there was no other form of winter transportation between the far-flung villages of interior and northern Alaska.

  Each summer many Yukon River residents dried tons of chum salmon to sell as food for sled dogs. Dog liveries or kennels along the Yukon River and at Fairbanks boarded sled dogs during snow-free months.

  Many of the dogs used in the Koyukuk and Lower Yukon, including mine, came from stock bred by Ben Derrick, one of the early dog team mail carriers. Reportedly, Derrick saw a wolf frequenting a woodpile across the Yukon River from his place, and tied a fine female sled dog nearby for the wolf to breed.

  He then crossed the half-wolf dogs of the resulting litter with a fine strain of sled dogs. During his breeding program he even included a large hunting hound. Eventually, he had fine sled dogs that were slightly less than one-quarter wolf. The females of the line were invariably good workers. Some of the males were lazy, but when the males were good, they were very good. The dogs were selectively bred for toughness, heavy coats, gentleness, a willingness to work, and feet that could withstand the rigors of snow and ice.

  I valued my dogs and gave them good care, keeping them in tight, warm houses. I provided dry grass for winter bedding, cooked for them daily, and made friends with all of them. This sounds like common sense, but not all sled dog owners on the Koyukuk and the Lower Yukon treated their animals this well. Sled dogs are work animals, not pets, and some owners regarded them simply as a means of transport and didn’t believe in treating them gently. I have seen teams of dogs so wild and vicious that I feared to be near them. Some dogs are left tied all summ
er, with barely enough food to survive. Even in winter some dogs receive little attention, except when in harness.

  Unlike most pet, farm, or hunting breeds known to Americans, sled dogs tend to be aloof and independent. A few wags of the tail may be an emotional response to a master. Nevertheless, sled dogs do respond to good care and affection. My dogs responded to my kindness, and I was fond of them. I believe this is what saved my life when Dakli turned the team and returned to look for me.

  I once had to take about half a cord of firewood piled on my twelve-foot-long basket sled up the Koyukuk River, and my eight dogs romped along pulling that heavy load as if it were nothing. At Cutoff I needed to take the load up a steep, fifty-foot bank, and Jack Sackett stood nearby, watching. I stopped the dogs at the riverbank for a rest. I pretended confidence, as I prepared to try that climb. I knew I would have to help too. I started cussing, making believe I was angry at the dogs.

  “C’mon boys, let’s go,” I yelled.

  They pulled. I yanked on the towline, which was stretched so tautly that the hard cotton rope felt like a steel cable. Every one of those wonderful, powerful dogs tensed their muscles and leaned into their harnesses with their bellies right against the snow. The sled started to move, and it continued to slide up and over the top of that steep bank, with me pushing and the dogs pulling for all they were worth.

  If I had had to bet whether eight dogs could pull that much weight up such a bank, I’d have bet against them. It didn’t seem possible. “I’ve never seen such strong dogs, Sidney,” said Sackett, which was high praise from an old-timer who had lived with sled dogs for half a century or more.

  For heavy loads, like my load of wood at Cutoff, my dogs wore padded work collars, which weigh only a few ounces. On long trips, padded collars are best for heavy loads because they do not cause a rash inside the front legs of the animals like web harness.

  I have great admiration for a well-trained dog team. I once watched Johnny Oldman with his dog team reach a steep riverbank. He had a heavy load in the sled, and he didn’t want to take the dogs and sled down the bank together, so he unsnapped the team and walked them down onto the snow-covered river ice.

  “Whoa,” he commanded Buster, his leader. Buster stopped and so did the entire team.

  Johnny then climbed back up the bank and pushed the sled, which slid down in a rush. Then, rehooking the towline, he was again ready to travel. The well-trained dogs hadn’t moved.

  Another impressive demonstration of control I saw was by Koyukon George Jimmy. He pushed his tiny, fifteen-pound racing sled into position, and, without tying or snubbing it down and with no one at the brake, stretched his towline out.

  George turned his team of twelve high-strung racing dogs loose and called them one at a time to their harnesses. When they were all harnessed and hooked to the towline, the dogs, eager to run, stood trembling, ready to leap ahead. But they remained steady.

  As they stood poised, George fussed around, getting organized. He put dog chains in a bag on the sled, tied on his marten-skin cap, put on his mittens, and finally stepped onto the runners. Then, at a barely audible sound from his lips, those twelve dogs shot forward like a single bullet.

  Many of Alaska’s finest racing dog teams have come from the Koyukuk and Lower Yukon country. In 1939 my brother Jimmy, in his first try at that race, won fourth place in the annual North American Championship Sled Dog Race at Fairbanks. Sadly, he didn’t receive the promised prize money, for the organizers of the race went broke. After that experience, Jimmy lost interest in the big-time races.

  Then in 1956, when he was thirty-nine, at the urging of a group of Huslia villagers, Jimmy entered sled dog races at Fairbanks and Anchorage. Sled dog racing was then a major sport in Alaska. With three of his own dogs and others loaned by me and various friends, Jimmy became the “Huslia Hustler,” a nickname hung on him by the press. In that one season, he won both the North American Championship at Fairbanks and the All-Alaska Championship at Anchorage, beating about thirty of Alaska’s top mushers.

  He didn’t make much money racing dogs, for travel to the big cities, plus living expenses, ate much of the money he made. But for the rest of his life he enjoyed the fame he rightly received for his extraordinary achievements in those two races.

  Although I had a fast team, I was raising a family and needed sure money. I knew I could stay home and in a couple of months make $1,500 to $2,000 on my trapline. If I had gone to Fairbanks to race I might have made $1,000 if I won—but after costs, little profit was likely.

  So I stayed home and trapped, but many of my dogs raced when I loaned them to Jimmy and other well-known mushers such as Raymond Paul and George Attla. My dogs were always returned with thanks and praise for their performance. And I sold one dog to George Attla, who raced him for a couple of seasons. Later, in the early 1970s, he sold the dog for $1,600, a small price compared with the $4,000 or $5,000 commonly paid today for a top racer.

  Nowadays, dogs are commonly bred for speed. A team that cannot run twenty-five miles an hour in a sprint cannot compete in Alaska’s sled dog races. Finishing times for twenty- and thirty-mile courses, such as the three-day North American Championship, keep getting shorter.

  My wife Jenny had a way with dogs. I once bought a dog team from Dr. Braflet, a dentist who practiced his profession from village to village along the Yukon River, hauling his dental equipment in his sled. He had left his practice, and I bought his team for $15 a dog. Most of them weighed around eighty pounds, and they were beautiful animals, but some of them were as wild as wolves.

  I was nervous about a big yellowish fellow. He growled and bared his teeth whenever I came near. I was intimidated and he knew it. One day I decided to harness him, so I wore heavy clothing and heavy mittens, fearing he would bite. I unsnapped his chain and pulled him against my knee, and he turned and started biting.

  Jenny, watching through the cabin window, charged to my rescue. Although she was pregnant, wearing a dress, and was bare-legged and bare-handed, she grabbed that big dog’s collar and jerked him to the towline and slapped a harness on him. The dog cooled right down.

  Jenny, who weighed no more than 100 pounds, said, “You’re scared of him and he knows it.”

  And she was right. After that I’d go to him boldly and do exactly what she had done, and he never gave me a problem again.

  Training and working with a good dog team is a joy. Years later, one fine March day, I took my five-year-old son, Carl, with me when I left the Hog River cabin to run my trapline. Carl (who was to win the 1,100-mile Anchorage-to-Nome Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1974) had begun learning to trap, run dogs, and understand the out-of-doors. I had a tent camp on the trapline, and not far from it we met a pack of wolves. With a lucky shot I managed to kill one. The others fled.

  We drove the dog team on through a portage. I stopped to check a trap, tied the sled’s snubbing line to a tree, and walked to the trap. While I was gone, the dogs scented a second pack of wolves and grew excited. They lunged and leaped until the snubbing line broke, and away they went with the sled bouncing and flying in their wake.

  That left Carl and me afoot. I had intended to cover my entire thirty miles of trapline, but without the team, I’d never make it—I couldn’t pack Carl that far. Our tent camp was about eight miles away, so I decided to head in that direction, hoping the dogs would end up there. It was more likely they would tangle the sled, harness, or towline in trees or brush, or if they happened to catch and fight the wolves, some of the dogs might get chewed up or killed.

  As I snowshoed along with Carl on my shoulders, I worried about the dogs, and was angry and disgusted. After several miles, as I walked along a lakeshore, Carl piped up, “Looks like dogs or something coming.”

  Glory be, here came our team trotting around the edge of the lake, pulling the still-upright sled. They bounded to us, tails wagging, grinning, happy. They had finished their wolf chase and returned as if it were an everyday occurrence.

  Im
mensely pleased with my dogs, I grinned widely as I tucked Carl into the basket of the sled and called, “Come gee, Dakli, come gee.”

  19

  BEAVER

  The beaver is one of nature’s great gifts. This old dam builder is a wonderful, fascinating animal who brings alive the wildlands. I’ve spent days watching beaver gnaw down trees, then tow them or gnawed-off sections to their dams, lodges, and food piles. Weighing up to fifty pounds, occasionally more, the beaver is unique among the wildife of the Koyukuk, for in his life’s work of building dams, he may create ponds that provide him with a year-round, safe home. In the pond he builds a large house of branches and mud, with underwater entrances, and, inside the house, an above-water resting place. All beaver don’t build dams and form ponds—some build houses along banks of rivers.

  Underwater near their houses, beaver store tree limbs for winter food. They eat the bark from these limbs; cottonwood, poplar, and birch are favorites.

  Because of his fine, durable, warm fur and tasty flesh, the people of the Koyukuk have always made use of the beaver. In prewhite times, the Koyukon people had their own specialized method of harvesting the animal, in winter. After that, for about half a century, from the late 1800s until the 1940s, the main method of taking beaver was to shoot them with a rifle. This was wasteful, for many beaver were lost by sinking. Since the 1940s shooting beaver has been illegal.

  One spring in the mid-1930s, my brother Jimmy and I decided to hunt beaver on Hog River. This was when Jimmy lived at Cutoff and I lived at Hog River; we were both in our twenties.

  We started from Cutoff with two teams of five dogs each. Our plan was to travel to a point upstream from the Pah River portage, a trip of eighty miles as the raven flies, probably 100 miles by dog team. The area is hilly, with mostly spruce and birch timber.

  We reached Hog River with no difficulty. The snow was still frozen, but each day the temperature neared the thawing mark. After going through the Sun Mountain area and over the hills, travel became difficult: the snow was slushy, and the dogs and loaded sleds sank deeply into it.