Women have lived in the far northern regions for thousands of years without writing about it. But author Mary Winchell found herself on the windswept Aleutian Islands by the Bering Sea, a contrast to the warm Caribbean where she had wanted to go — yes, “found herself.”
In the book of her many experiences of living in Unalaska, a distant Alaskan village also known as Dutch Harbor, Mary does not mention the date of her relocation from Denver in Colorado, but some of the provided photographs date back to 1906. She arrived at the distant island by an old steamship which first stopped at the Alaskan port of Seward, still 1600 kilometers from her destination.
Moving on from there to the Aleutians, as they passed by a tiny mining settlement on a dark day, Mary remarked to the captain, “I should think people would lose their minds in a place like that.” His alarming reply was, “They’ve lost them already or they wouldn’t have come.” Had she been wise in coming here?
After a long and stormy trip they finally arrived at Unalaska which, though having only 200 inhabitants, was the largest settlement in the lengthy Aleutian Islands chain that stretches for 1800 kilometers. The remote village was the ship’s last port-of-call.
Mary was welcomed by many village folk and by one of two doctors who headed up the Methodist homes for orphans there. “I am glad you have come,” he said, “for we need you badly.” So she went to work immediately with other staff members as teacher, den mother, and many other roles in the lives of several dozen children from babies to teenagers. Most of the children had lost parents to epidemic diseases, especially tuberculosis and influenza, and mishaps on the sea. They were native Aleuts, but even more were of mixed-blood, part-Russian or part-Scandinavian, and photos in Mary’s book showed both black-haired children and blond light-eyed ones. Some teaching assistants were also native or mixed.
In those days long before antibiotics and vaccines, everyone went through a series of childhood diseases in addition to the epidemics, and there were some deaths among children whether they were living at home or at the orphanage. In one particularly poignant chapter Mary told of Hilda, who had lost both her Swedish father and her Russian-Aleut mother to illness. Over a number of years Hilda had blossomed at the mission and at the age of seventeen had begun to think of an adult life and having children of her own. That winter, measles and other sicknesses hit hard, and despite the best personal care that Mary and the doctor could provide, the hopeful teenager passed away.
Mary discovered that the orphanage actually provided the only formal medical care in the whole of the Aleutian Islands, so she was also sometimes required to nurse adult patients. In January of 1910, when a large sailing vessel called the S.S. Farallon was wrecked not far away, Unalaska hosted, fed, and treated many survivors for many days. The photo at right was taken by a Farallon survivor of girls from the orphanage; at the bottom he wrote “Just as we arrived at the Mission, Unalaska, from the Arctic.”
The mission received clothing and lots of other items from American donors, and provided the staff with vacation days and furlough leave, avoiding burn-out. The workers had made their own choice to come and most returned voluntarily after each vacation. One of the features of Mary’s memoir are several stories reflecting the generally good relations the orphanage mission had with the people of the Aleutians.
Although the village had some of its own issues of differences in language and culture among themselves, such things were offset by the shared love of their island home and mutual concern for the safety and welfare of each other. The First World War, however, had an impact on that. It was “a white man’s war,” most of it in far-away Europe, and people started talking of reports they heard of the fighting. The children now began to get a sense of the odd concept of “nationality.” One child, after turning over his chinaware plate to find that it was “Made in Germany,” refused to eat from it anymore.
Feodor Selekoff, the Russian name of the son of an Aleut chief, had a great memory for all the native songs, tales of war and of nature. By the time of Mary’s stay in Unalaska he had grown very old and lost most of his sight, but he would still sometimes sing in homes and at the Russian Orthodox church at Christmas time. Mary suggested to the doctor that they invite him to come sing for the children while he still could. Indeed, the feeble old man came with his indigenous drum, and despite his age he sang and danced up quite a remarkable performance for them. Mary commented, “We looked at each other in amazement — what were the words of this song to so strengthen and inspire him?”
When she herself got older, Mary retired and convalesced in sunny southern California, more like her young dream of the Caribbean.
[ “Women in the remote north, part 2” published this Sunday afternoon, March 12 ]
Reference: Home by the Bering Sea, by Mary E. Winchell, 1951
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