On Some White Women in the Wilds of Northern North America

Authors

  • Josephine W. Boyd

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14430/arctic2871

Keywords:

Stellaria

Abstract

... Although some Viking woman undoubtedly preceded her onto the North American continent, Natalya Shelekhov became the first European female in Alaska when she and her merchant husband spent four years (1783-1787) on Kodiak Island. ... In Canada, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Indian women likewise became the "country" (common law) wives of fur traders and trappers of both the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company .... By the 1820s men started bringing European women to Indian country .... Although very few white women lived in Indian country during this period ... more were steadily arriving .... "country" marriages with Indian and mixed-blood women became unacceptable .... for the most part such relationships were abandoned with the coming of white women .... The European wife, in her turn, was often a misfit in the new world, terrified to look about her for fear of seeing some of the results of her husband's earlier liaisons. ... The latter decades of the nineteenth century brought some of the first white women to the arctic coast of North America. They were whaling captains' wives, often with small children. ... During the 1890s gold and all the dreams that went with it brought considerably more women north than did whaling captains. ... Belinda Mulroney, a legendary figure of the Klondike stampede, invested a hard-earned $5,000 ... in cotton cloth and hot water bottles which she and two Indians floated down river to Dawson, to make for her a 600 percent profit .... The 1890s saw white women venturing into still another part of the far north. Josephine Peary, married to the explorer for 31 years, accompanied him on the Greenland expedition of 1891-92 (Peary 1893). ... The twentieth century witnessed a steady increase in the numbers of white women to be found in the north of Alaska .... There were also the dedicated wives of missionaries. ... Single women, almost always nurses or teachers, began to reach the north coast of Alaska duringthe second and third decades of the twentieth century. ... One who did survive and endure was, perhaps, the most exemplary woman ever to come to the Arctic coast - the nurse Mollie Ward Greist. Mollie, the wife of a well-to-do Indiana physician, was shocked when her husband suggested giving up his practice and going north as a missionary to the Eskimo. ... They arrived at Wales, Alaska, in 1920 and stayed there a year before replacing the aging, ailing Dr. and Mrs. Spence at Barrow, where they remained for sixteen long years with only rare periods of leave outside the territory. ... Mollie eventually became head nurse at the hospital, as well as stores manager .... Besides all of her other duties, Mollie, short of cash like most missionaries, ran the U.S. Weather Observatory for many years. ... At the same time that Mollie Greist was at Barrow quite a few other women found their way north. ... During the 1940s petroleum exploration brought many white men into the Barrow area, and a limited number of the men ... were followed by their wives .... After oil exploration stopped, construction of the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line) commenced in 1955 .... In summer there was an influx of contractors' wives, and a few scientists' wives came too. ... In the summer of 1956 Dr. Ingrith Deyrup became the first unmarried woman scientist at the [DEW Line Research] Laboratory. ... While the camp was gradually adjusting itself to the idea that men obliged to be away from home for long periods wanted their families near them, the more forward-thinking Canadians were constructing Inuvik, N.W.T. ... Inuvik has welcomed single teacher, nurses and other workers regardless of sex or marital status, and in that respect stands in sharp contrast to Barrow Camp where the single woman has been less than acceptable. ... Very many other white women have resided in the Alaskan North. ... Even more white women have lived in the remote areas of Canada. .... Most of these people, despite the length of their stay, do not look upon the "bush" as being home. ...

Downloads

Published

1974-01-01