The Journey of John William Adkins
In 1926, three years before Lillian made her journey across the Bering Strait, young John William Adkins from Maine had been working in Alaska when he decided he would try to obtain work in the Soviet Union. On July 27, in Nome, he hired Ira M. Rank’s Trader to take him to Little Diomede Island. There he hired some Native people to take him in their skin boat to East Cape on August 1.
Adkins reported to the GPU (the State Political Administration, which later became the KGB) as soon as he landed. He had no passport and no visa, but he stated he was looking for work, and if he could not find work, then he wanted to take a Russian ship to Japan or Argentina. He received permission from officials to board the Russian ship Astrakahn, but when it stopped at Petropavlovsk he was arrested as an illegal immigrant by the GPU there, who were less accommodating than their East Cape counterparts. Adkins was jailed for two months, but he was then given permission to live and work in the USSR. Unfortunately, after working for a few years he fell victim to the Soviet terror and died in a prison camp.6
*
I asked myself what could have happened to Lillian once she landed on Siberian soil. I believe the main problem she would have confronted, once in the Soviet Union, was the burgeoning bureaucracy of terror. It is possible that, like John William Adkins, she was immediately required to sign in with Soviet officials, and if, like him, she met with a friendly face, she may have been allowed to continue down the coast of Siberia. Alternatively, she may have come up against the full force of Soviet officialdom and been thrown immediately into jail. She appears to have had no passport that would allow her to legally enter the Soviet Union. Even if she held one issued by the pre-revolution Russian government, it would not have been valid under the new regime. In fact, it is not known whether she held a passport of any kind. Certainly she did not hold an American passport or she would not have been turned away at Hyder, Alaska. There is no record of her presenting any documents to the Canadian Customs officer at Niagara Falls, and in the three years she travelled across North America, she does not seem to have had any other identifying documents in her possession. (T.E.E. (Ern) Greenfield says that, when Lillian was arrested in BC, she carried a landing card showing that she had arrived in New York in 1927, but since she was already on her way across Canada by that date and he was recalling events some forty-five years after they happened, there is no proof that she carried this document. In addition, he is the only person to have mentioned it.)
Perhaps, though, she managed to arrive onshore unnoticed by anyone except local residents. Then the most likely scenario is that she remained in Chukotka for the winter because, if she set out alone and on foot across the treeless tundra at that time of year, she would not have access to her usual diet of berries and leaves and she would never have survived the desperately cold temperatures. It is possible, however, that she travelled farther inland by dogsled or reindeer team with Chukchi hunters. In the fall of 1928, Olaf Swenson, the Alaskan owner of the Nanuk and the Elisif, made an overland journey to the city of Irkutsk, hiring relays of dog and reindeer teams. The trip covered 4,300 miles (6,920 kilometres) and took 113 days—they often travelled day and night—but Swenson had the money to finance such a trip. As far as it is known, Lillian’s funds were extremely limited. Perhaps, however, she could have afforded passage on a boat that would have taken her farther down the coast to a larger town before she headed west, although south of the tundra she would have met the impenetrable swampy coniferous forest of the subarctic known as the taiga. In his book In Bolshevik Siberia: The Land of Ice and Exile, explorer Malcolm Burr described the Siberian taiga as Lillian would have seen it in 1929:
And so we entered the taiga … the huge, dense, impassable jungle where the trees struggle with each other to reach the light and upper air, where giants die and crash down to lay rotting on the ground and make soil for the next generation. It is a strange world. Only three roads cut it, the great rivers Yenisei and Lena, which run away to waste in the Arctic, and this great long ribbon of a railway which has cut its path through it from west to east. The rest is roadless, a mass of bog and rock covered by shrub and the endless forest with here and there an oasis cut by some enterprising settler in the neighbourhood of the [rail] line or along the trees.7
It seems to me that where Lillian was headed after she landed in Chukotka would have depended on who she really was and what her final destination was. If she was a Polish national and was trying to return to Poland, her best course of action would have been to head all the way south to the port city of Vladivostok, which was, and is, the terminus for the Trans-Siberian Railway. From there she could have taken the train all the way to Poland. The main difficulty with that choice was that she would been checked regularly by customs and passport control. But if, lacking papers and money, she could not actually ride the train, she could have chosen to walk the 4,500 miles (7,240 kilometres) through Russia to Poland following the rail line. This would have allowed her to avoid passport control and other government representatives altogether.
If she was attempting to rejoin family members exiled to Siberia, it is uncertain what her destination would have been. Polish people had been exiled to Siberia for nearly a century and were scattered throughout the entire region. She may have had a difficult time locating them, although it is possible that she had received specific instructions before leaving New York State.
However, she could not have picked a worse time to enter the Soviet Union. By this time millions people were dying in the Soviet gulags of Siberia. Some starved to death, were shot or were beaten to death. Some simply died of overwork or exposure.
In spite of all the strikes against her, I still believe there is a strong possibility that Lillian Alling not only made it safely to Siberia but also reached her ultimate destination. Part of that belief comes from a letter written to the editor of True West magazine. After Canadian author Francis Dickie (1890–1976) wrote an article entitled “New York—Siberia: The Astonishing Hike of Lillian Alling,” which was published in the April 1972 issue of the magazine, one of his readers, a man named Arthur F. Elmore of Lincoln, California, responded with a letter to the editor. It seems that a few years earlier, Elmore had been told about a woman who could have been Lillian arriving on the Siberian shore. He wrote,
After reading the article I decided to write because of a very peculiar incident that occurred back in 1965 when I was a visitor to Yakutsk, Eastern Siberia. I had been invited by a Russian ex-Army man, with whom I had become quite good friends in Mukden, Manchuria, during the closing days of World War II, to come and visit if I ever got the chance. The opportunity finally came in April 1965 when the Cold War had thawed, so I went to San Francisco where I secured passage to Moscow. In Moscow I then flew to Yakutsk where I located my friend.
It seems he, like I, enjoys mysteries, and one day while exploring around (as much as one was permitted to do), he suddenly asked what I considered a very strange question. “If I were in America, how would I be treated?”
Somewhat taken aback, I replied “In what way do you mean? What makes you ask that?” Then he told me the following incident.
As a young boy—somewhere around fourteen or fifteen—he had lived in a very small community in the Soviet far east named Provideniya [on the southern tip of the Chukotka peninsula], which is about 170 or 180 miles from the present town of Wales, Alaska, across the Bering Strait. He stated that one afternoon while on an errand for his mother he saw a crowd gathered on the waterfront and several official-looking men were present, questioning a woman and three Eskimo men. He said he recognized that the Eskimos were from the Diomede Islands in the Strait by their dress, but the woman was differently dressed, like a European or an American.
He remembered the woman telling the officials she had come from America where she said she had been unable to make a living or make friends (of necessity I’m condensing much of what I was told to save space). She said she had had to walk “a terr
ible long way because no one would lift as much as a finger to help me in any way because they didn’t want to—or couldn’t understand—my feelings. I tried to make friends at first, but everyone wanted no part of me—as a foreigner—and that so deeply hurt me I couldn’t bear it and so I began to walk. I knew it was far and it would be hard but I had to do it even if no one understood. And I did it!”
He told me he saw the girl and the Eskimos led away—he never saw them again—but the memory was to linger with him always. He also stated this took place in the fall of 1930—he was very positive of the date because he stated his parents and his family were moved two years later farther westward to a place named Ust Yansk where his father fished commercially.
For several years all of this sort of haunted me—all mysteries do, in one way or another—but I never could figure out any answer. Then this past week I happened to pick up your magazine and saw the article.
Now I’m really curious! Is it possible that the girl with the three Eskimos could have been Lillian Alling? The Eskimos were definitely dressed as the Eskimos of the Little and Big Diomede Islands do. The only thing is—no black and white dog was visible or I’m very certain my friend would have said so. Anyway, knowing the people and the country as well as I do—I’ve spent nearly two-thirds of my life in Alaska—I’m very, very sure Lillian made it! Though, of course, I have no proof.8
According to the US Veterans Gravesites listings, a man by the name of Arthur F. Elmore (June 17, 1924–November 14, 1985) did indeed serve in the US Army in World War II, beginning February 12, 1943. And as stated in his letter, Elmore may have been in Manchuria at the end of the Second World War serving with the 1.5 million Soviet men stationed in the region at that time. Could Elmore be right about Lillian’s fate?
If Lillian reached Siberia, she would still have had to face the political upheaval of the Soviet Union, not to mention the barren terrain. But if any traveller could weather these conditions, it was Lillian.
Notes
(1) Hrdlicka, Ales, Alaska Diary 1926–1931. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Jaques Cattel Press, 1944.
(2) Albee, Ruth and Bill. “Don’t Pity the Poor Eskimo,” Part I, Popular Mechanics, November 1938, pages 137A and 139A.
(3) Madsen, Charles, with John Scott Douglas. Arctic Trader. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1957, pages 142–143.
(4) Email correspondence. Blitz Information Russia, April 23, 2009, used finding-aids in the newspaper department of the Russian National Library. Other newspapers started their publications a few years later: Sovetskaia Chukotka [Soviet Chukotka], published in Anadyr since 1933; Maiak Severa [Lighthouse of North], published in Providenya since 1936; Poliarnaia zvezda [North Star], since 1938; Magadanskaia Pravda [Magadan Pravda], since 1935; and others, published in Pevek, Bilibino, Egvekinot, but at a later date.
(5) Email correspondence. Blitz Information Russia, April 23, 2009. Newspaper issues examined: 1929: starting with No. 68, September 1, up to No. 99, December 29; 1930: No. 1, January 2, up to No. 75, September 27.
(6) Perdue, Edward M. Lost Adventures: From Wango to Solovetski Island with John Williams Adkins, Westboro, MA, Curry Printing, 2004.
(7) Burr, Martin. In Bolshevik Sibera: The Land of Ice and Exile. London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1931, page 20.
(8) Elmore, Arthur F. Letter to the editor, True West magazine. Cited in Francis Dickie, “New York–Siberia: The Astonishing Hike of Lillian Alling” in Pioneer Days of British Columbia, by Art Downs. Victoria: Heritage House, 1975, page 145.
Epilogue
Lillian Alling’s story begins and ends with a mystery. Where did she come from and why did she want to return there? This book is an attempt to find the answers to those questions through a careful investigation and analysis of every word I could source that has been written about her in the last eighty-four years.
What I learned was that she was an extraordinary woman who achieved an extraordinary feat. She walked alone across thousands of miles for more than three years. Today people sail around the world or walk great distances or climb high mountains, but they are accompanied by radios, sponsors, money, the support of family and friends, emergency beacons, communications equipment and safety supplies. So although they may be responsible for the actual accomplishment, it is by no means a solo event. From the time Lillian crossed the border from New York into Ontario to the time she left Alaska to cross the Bering Strait, she had no transportation, guide, companion or any entourage at all. She had no contract to write a travelogue or a series of newspaper articles. And as far as we know, she didn’t write home—wherever home was for her.
To survive in the extreme circumstances in which she found herself requires certain personality traits. The editor of the Dawson News wrote admiringly:
Lillian Alling is so small and trim of stature that one is forced to wonder how a woman of such frail build could ever prove the conqueror of an overland course which leads through the tangled nooks and corners of a vast Northern wilderness. She has proved herself a human dynamo, a dominant driving mistress of her own destiny, a resolute woman with a will that has proved a way.1
But her unique characteristics were more than just this. She was a loner, thriving on solitude in the wilderness for extensive periods. But over the course of her journey she went from being so afraid of people she carried an iron bar for protection to trusting hundreds of strangers as she trekked through British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska. Because she learned to trust people, she survived through their help and her own strong character.
She was decisive, singled-minded, focussed and, some would say, obsessed. Of course, there’s a fine line between being admired for one’s stubbornness and being thought crazy. Lillian never wavered in her determination to go home via Siberia, and she couldn’t understand when people tried to stop her. She didn’t allow other people’s negative opinions to sway her. She just told them she must, she must get to Siberia. As a result, there were many people who met her and remembered her, even years later, because of her drive to make it home.
She was adaptable. She adapted when she was arrested and jailed in Oakalla. She adapted when she was turned away at the US border in Hyder, Alaska. She adapted to staying in Dawson City for a whole winter, got a job and met people. She taught herself to maintain her boat, and then she steered it all the way down the Yukon River to its mouth.
Lillian knew how to improvise. By necessity, much of her trip was improvised. Some people have written that she had a plan, but Lillian would have had access to comparatively few resources, aside from maps, and so left most of her itinerary to chance. She planned what she could and improvised when she was faced with unexpected or perilous situations in her travels.
During some phases of her journey, she would have been focussed entirely on survival. With no prior experience to guide her, she had to decide how to make it over the next mountain. How to cross a river without drowning. How, with limited English, to persuade someone to give her directions along a game trail. How to find food and water. How to stay warm and not die of exposure. How to overcome pain—such as that from bad shoes, sunburn, muscle or bone aches, severe bug bites, and intestinal discomfort from iffy water and food. We know these things about her because people remarked on them as she accomplished them. But what we don’t know are the times in the wilderness when she was alone for weeks at a time, where she may have fallen or encountered predators like wolves, bears or cougars or where she had no food.
She had remarkable endurance. In a three-year cross-continent trek, there would have been a lot of things to fear. Wild animals. Dying of exposure. Getting lost in the wilderness. Strange people. Crossing bridgeless rivers. Freezing to death. Drowning. Yet she kept going.
Three years is a long time for any journey and would have required much patience. Of course, the times that would have required the most patience would have been the winters she spent in Vancouver and Dawson. When she arrived in Dawson, she had been wearing the same clothes for months; she
had just travelled down an unknown (to her) river alone, and she was walking into a strange town with the knowledge she had to stay there for months. It must have been so difficult to stay in one place when she was eager to get back on the road. But while she would have had to exercise patience and restraint during times when it was impossible to travel, she would have needed a great deal of patience when travelling alone, taking her time to make careful decisions, never blundering ahead without thinking.
These character traits, which to some would seem too dogged, too rigid, or just plain crazy, not only kept Lillian going but also kept her alive in circumstances that would have killed lesser people. I think Lillian herself always believed that she would make it to the shores of Siberia, yet she was no dreamer. She was practical enough to know when to accept help from others and allowed people to give her food and clothing. She carried enough food for survival, yet she didn’t overburden herself with luggage. She was not foolhardy or insane. She was prepared.
Lillian Alling’s endurance was formidable and her bravery remarkable. Her personality and story resonate with strength more than eighty years later and touch our hearts. Who cannot identify with the desire to reach home in the face of great hardship? And this endurance is the reason I believe that she made it across Bering Strait and onto mainland Siberia.
I hope she made it home.
Notes
(1)“A Hazardous Trip: Walked Every Step of Way Hazelton to Stewart Crossing,” Dawson News, October 6, 1928.
Acknowledgements
Without the assistance of librarians, museum staff and volunteers this book would not have been possible. The Quesnel Library’s interlibrary loan service was so helpful in getting me the books I needed. The Stewart Museum gave me information that helped me to better understand the topography and geography of the area. The Hazelton Pioneer Museum and Archives sent me many useful items by mail, and Eve Hope was particularly helpful. The members of the Atlin Historical Society were terrific and also supplied some great photos, including some of the only known photos of Lillian in existence.
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