'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 Big-ears 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 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 Big-ears 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 Canadian warship was steaming north to protect American interests.
IT 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 Big-ears 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 Big-ears 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.
Later, an able, quiet-spoken Commander Beardslee reached Sitka in the Jamestown, whose afterdeck became the capital of Alaska, with Beardslee issuing orders regarding things about which he knew little. Fortunately, he had the advice of Lawyer Caldwell, and many of the good rules the latter had sought were promulgated by Beardslee, who installed Caldwell as a kind of judge in an informal court.
It was not a good system of government and both men knew it, but it was the only one available, so for two years these well-intentioned men more or less ran Alaska, but neither believed such a system could prevail. 'It's a disgrace,' Beardslee growled one day when something had gone wrong, and Judge Caldwell agreed. But they did not take themselves too seriously, because at this time Sitka contained only one hundred and sixty whites and Creoles, plus about a hundred Indians, and all of Alaska had only thirty-three thousand people, counting everybody.
THE IMPLACABLE COURSE OF HISTORY AND THE NATURE OF the human beings who enable it to evolve make it impossible for a condition like that of Alaska in the post-1867 period to continue. Either revolution churns the chaos, as the uprising of the Tlingits nearly did, or some alien power steps in, as Canada might have done, or some giant like Abraham Lincoln or Otto von Bismarck steps forward to take command and reshape things sensibly. Alaska in these crucial times was blessed in having two giants of dissimilar character come to its shores and assume responsibility; between them they brought a semblance of government to an abandoned region.
The first of these men was an irascible dark-browed mariner with the good Irish name Michael Healy, who had a foul vocabulary, an insatiable craving for strong drink and an inherited willingness to use his fists. A hulking six feet two with a temper he could not control, he was hardly the kind of man one would expect to evolve into a respected leader, but that's what happened in the frozen seas of the north. Born in Georgia, he hated the cold, but of all the American seafarers of his time, he better than any other mastered the arctic seas and tamed the wild coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He had been a junior officer during that humiliating experience in 1876 when the inadequate revenue cutter Rush tried to discipline the semipiratical Erebus for illegal sealing, and he would never forget the oath he took as he watched the insolent white-haired captain of that ship glide away with an insulting grin. 'I'll get that bastard,' Healy swore, and the rest of what he vowed to do with the German when he caught him would be unprintable. He was so infuriated that an American vessel, a warship really, had been demeaned that he retired to his quarters, sneaked out his smuggled liquor, and got drunk. Late at night, when he sobered a bit, he promised the tame parrot he kept with him on his cruises: 'By the saints, we'll get that cocksure bastard. Somewhere when the ice is thick and he can't run from us ...' and his dark right fist punched at air.
On duty in the little revenue cutters, Lieutenant Healy, Commander Healy and, finally, Captain Healy gained increasing praise from his superiors and repeated humiliation from the Erebus, but he did not lose these near-battles through incompetent seamanship or any lack of courage, but only because he sailed an inferior ship. Once while in charge of the Corwin, th
e better of the two revenue cutters, he caught the Erebus engaged in illegal sealing at the Pribilofs: 'We have him, men! Hard to!' But almost as if aided by divine winds, the big indigo ship unfurled its square sails and ran right away from the cutter. Pursuit was impossible, and the government ship had to limp off to other duties as Captain Schransky, standing on the bridge of his sleek vessel, laughed once more at Healy's frustration.
If the profane and hard-drinking Irishman failed repeatedly in his attempts to discipline the dark rogue ship, what did he accomplish on his tours of duty through the northern oceans? To find the answer, one must accompany him on one trip made in the late 1870s.
In early spring, in command of the Corwin, he sailed out of San Francisco with a full crew and considerable implied powers, for he was the major American representative in Alaska and the surrounding waters.
Putting in to Sitka on the way north, he listened to local complaints and summoned to his afterdeck scoundrelly men accused of selling hooch to Indians; these he fined, making careful duplicate copies of receipts showing his handling of the money involved.
From there, following the reverse of the historical course which had brought Aleksandr Baranov to immortality at Sitka, he crossed an arm of the Pacific that carried him to Kodiak, where a deputation of old-time Aleuts and newcomer Americans awaited his decision on a fishing-rights controversy which had embittered the two groups. Moving ashore this time, but taking a ship's scribe with him, he listened patiently as the contesting parties made their presentations, then surprised everyone by announcing:
'Let's think about this carefully,' and he invited the entire party back onto the ship, where a feast from the Corwin's supplies was provided. There was no public drinking, of course, since a major responsibility of the Corwin or any other cutter was to end the illegal sale of alcohol to natives, but he did slip into his cabin for a healthy nip from the bottles he carried hidden there. At the conclusion of the feast he took the leaders of the two factions, some seven men, to the railings of the cutter and said: 'You Aleuts have ancient rights which must be respected. But you newcomers have rights too. Would it not be sensible if you shared the ocean in this way?' And when he handed down a verdict worthy of a judge, the combatants accepted it, for on Kodiak as elsewhere in these waters it was understood that 'the word of Cap'n Mike is as good as we'll ever get.'
From Kodiak he sailed westward to the Aleutians proper, putting in at Unalaska, where he learned from six daring shipwrecked sailors, who had made it through great hardship to that haven, that twenty of their mates were still marooned on the north coast of the big Unimak Island to the east. Diverting his cruise to that bleak island, he rescued the men, sailed back to Unalaska, and paid with government funds for the forwarding of all twenty-six sailors to Kodiak, where they would transship to San Francisco.
From Unalaska he sailed across the Bering Sea for he always chose this in preference to the Pacific Ocean, since that sea was in a certain sense his body of water to one of his favorite towns, Petropavlovsk, at the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
In this beautiful land-protected harbor he met with old friends, learned from them what had been happening along the Siberian coast and where tribal wars were brewing.
Since Russian officials looked upon him as an arm of their marine police, the last nights ashore were riotous and drunken affairs, with Mike Healy being lugged back aboard the Corwin in time for a dawn departure to the north.
His next stop, at Cape Navarin, far distant from Petropavlovsk, had great significance this year and would have even more for the years ahead. Heaving to off the forbidding coast, he fired a salute which brought ten or fifteen canoes speeding out to the Corwin, where normally there would have been only a sullen silence. But Healy had raised the American flag, and now men and women who had some years before rescued sailors from an American shipwreck clambered up the sides of the Corwin to greet these new Americans. When all were aboard, Healy lined them up as if they were dignitaries representing an alien potentate, then fired another salute and had his bugler blow assembly. In broken Russian, which only a few of the Siberians who spoke only Chukchi would have understood had it been perfect, Healy said with the visible emotion that possessed him at times of solemn significance:
'The Great Ruler in Washington always knows when someone of good spirit aids an American who is in danger. You and you and you went out into the sea to rescue our sailors from the doomed ship Altoona, and you kept them in your yurts for more than a year. You delivered them in good health to the rescue ship sent by the Russians, and the Great Ruler in Washington has told me to come here and thank you.'
He then asked that members of the visiting party line up before him so that each could receive a gift of considerable valuea saw, a set of tools, enough cloth for three dresses, a parka, a set of kitchen pots, a ceremonial hat with feathers for the chief. On and on the gifts appeared, each one personally chosen by Captain Healy, each one delivered personally by his hands. When the presentations were over, he mumbled to his first mate: 'Next time an American ship gets wrecked along this coast, the sailors will have no fear.'
But the lasting outcome of this good-will visit came by accident, for the Siberians were so gratified by this gesture of appreciation that they insisted upon taking Captain Healy back onshore with them, and while there, his restless imagination forced him to ask: 'How can you live so well on land that is so poor?' and he poked his forefinger into the fat that covered these healthy people, and they explained: 'Reindeer,' and they showed him how, at the edge of their village, they maintained pens made of wooden timbers, inside which clustered herds of reindeer, nine owned by one family, thirty to a group of families, perhaps sixty in a community-owned group.
'What do they eat?' and they pointed to a far hill where a shepherd boy tended a herd of free-roaming reindeer that grazed on the tundra moss, and he sent runners, one to replace the shepherd, one to bring him back to the village, and when the boy arrived Healy gave him the belt off his own trousers and said that the Great Ruler in Washington wanted him to have it for his brave behavior three years ago.
FROM CAPE NAVARIN HE PROCEEDED UP THE SIBERIAN coast past St. Lawrence Island and the Diomedes and into the Chukchi Sea, where he stopped at a lonely village whose residents had once traded with him, and they too had troubles which they placed before him, and in his dark-browed way he listened to words he did not begin to comprehend, but finally a sailor who knew some Russian found a Siberian who knew a little, and they pieced together what the problem was and what a reasonable solution would be.
Delivering this judgment, he resolved the matter for the time being at least, and one of his men said to him when they were back aboard the Corwin:
'The Russians at Petropavlovsk would be afraid to come up here and listen to a problem like that,' and he said with some truth: 'But this is my ocean. These are my people.'
He ran from Siberia across the Chukchi Sea to an anchorage he knew well, Desolation Point, where he learned with dismay and personal sorrow that a fine missionary, Father Fyodor, had been murdered by a demented man who still roamed loose after all this time because there was no jail in which to incarcerate him. When he was caught and brought before Healy on the Corwin, only a few questions sufficed to show that the poor fellow was incompetent, so he was locked in the brig, which all the cutters had. Healy then went ashore to visit with Mrs. Afanasi and her two children, and he heard how Dmitri with his Russian gun had protected his mother against the crazy man, and Healy said: '1 have aboard ship a medal for a brave lad like you,' and when the ship was about to sail southward to its other duties, Dmitri was rowed out and Captain Healy rummaged through his pile of gifts and came up with a medal he had bought along the waterfront in San Francisco. It showed an eagle, and as he pinned it on the boy's tunic he said in his deep, solemn voice: 'This belongs to a real hero.'
His next stop on this particular trip was at forlorn Point Hope, where winds from the north were incessant and where his l
ookout spotted a group of white men huddling among sand dunes, and when small boats were sent to investigate, they discovered something so terrible that when Captain Healy, back aboard the Corwin, was told of it, his face turned almost black as he thundered: 'I want no record of this. No entry in the log. We did not stop here,' but then impulsively he jumped down into the longboat, sped ashore and gathered the marooned men, treating them gently as if they were his children, and brought them to safety aboard his ship.
Then he fled to the sanctuary of his cabin, where his first mate found him caressing his parrot and mumbling: 'Who knows? Who knows?'
'We know damned well who knows,' the mate said in great anger. 'They're cannibals.
They ate the flesh of their own companions, and from what I can piece together, they probably killed some before they died naturally.'
'Who knows?' Healy mumbled, whereupon the mate grew bitter: 'I know, that's who knows.
Henderson knows. And so does Stallings. They're goddamned cannibals and we won't have them aboard this ship.'
Almost pathetically, Mike Healy looked up at his righteous mate and asked: 'Who knows what you and I would do? Who goddamned bloody knows?' And during the remainder of the trip, till the marooned sailors could be handed over to other authorities, they ate apart, ostracized by the other men, but Captain Healy sat with them to talk of how they had lost their whaler in the ice pack, and he listened attentively as they told of how the timbers strained and cracked and tore apart as the relentless ice continued its crushing advance.
Before the next stop he summoned the first mate and said: 'I want to make an entry in the log. "At Point Hope we rescued six sailors marooned when their whaler Cassiopeia out of New Bedford was lost in the ice."'
'Is that all? No dates? No disposition?'
'That's all,' Healy roared, and when the entry was made he signed it.