UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
FIELD SERVICE

Wainwright

Jan 4th 1940

Dear Dad and Mother and Dwight, Helen, Burrell, Ken:

It seems that I should be able to get out more than one letter each mail, but there always seems to be a thousand things to be done. If we were busy at the other stations, boy we are flying here steady.

Our clothes we ordered from Montgomery Ward for this winter were landed at Kotzebue and we do not have them yet as there is 800 lbs of excess mail at Kotzebue for Wainwright and Barrow. We may not even get our clothes for this year until next year.

We are almost down to straight fur clothing. You should see Mils fawn skin underwear, my dog skin pants, double parkas and snow shirt. Boy that is surely some outfit when we get it all on, but they are the only clothes for this country.

This country is what I always pictured Alaska as being. Snow, ice, and wind! No trees, nothing to stop or slow up that wind. If one gets 200 yards from any buildings you cannot even see a sign of the buildings. However, we have moonlight sometimes that is as bright as day. We have not seen any Northern lights that Wainwright is noted for; at least nothing spectacular.

We have not seen any old ice or arctic ice yet. New ice is frozen out about 15-20 miles and they say there is a little arctic ice in places outside of that, but not much. The old ice is where the polar bears live. There were about 10 polar bears killed here in about 2 weeks in November and then the wind changed and blew the old ice away. The people here are catching a few of the small and very few spotted seal. Barrow people are having much better luck at seal and also white fox. There has been no white fox caught here to date due to the severe storms and then the measles quarantine.

Barrow has 80 cases of measles but so far we have only 20 cases. We have had a very strict quarantine on here since the 23rd of December. No church, no visiting in any houses and no school. I have 3 officers appointed to patrol the town and no one is allowed into or out of the village. People are allowed to go seal hunting for one day & to the coal mines but that is all. Pretty hard on these people, as some of them have such small igloos and such big families.

The last mail caught us in roundup. We finished the reindeer roundup - counting, branding etc., [on] Nov. 5th with a very small count of 14,000 deer. Mr. Forshaug and I then made a dogsled trip to Pt. Lay 110 miles south.

Jim Allen, an old white trader and whaler here loaned me his dog team and our chief herder, a 1/2 breed, Waldo Bodfish, took Mr. Forshaug and we made the trip down in two days. Believe me this is the country to travel by dog team. 50-60-or even 100 miles a day is not an exception to the rule in this country. A person never walks unless he jumps off the sled to run a ways to get circulation up. I had eight good dogs and we just tore along, leaving Wainwright about 10 oclock we made 25 miles before lunch. The sun shone out brightly for about 2 hours at noon which was the only time it was above the horizon and we made Icy Cape by 6:00 P.M. The next day we got off at the same time and made Pt. Lay about 8:00 oclock that nite. We were slower because my dogs got loose in the nite and killed one of their team mates so I had only seven dogs and could not keep up with the rest.

Pt. Lay school is taught by a native, Tony Joule, who was educated in the East at large denominational school in Boston. He talks English just like the easterners and seems quite out of place up here. He has a very nice family & wife. We stayed there 8 days. Really more than we had planned but it had stormed every day we were there. The business of the trip was to reorganize the reindeer work at Pt Lay and get rules and practices similar as those of Wainwright as they both belong to the same reindeer company.

The 14th we finally started right into the teeth of a storm from the North. It was only 20 below but talk about cold. I froze my face in less than 5 min when I tried to face it. The dogs would not face it until another team took the lead. The trail is over lagoons and ocean ice all the way and no trail as far as you can see unless you can see the beach but we couldnt. I finally caught on to how to just take occasional glances ahead and keep my back to it, but it was hard on the dogs. It was nearly midnite when we reached Icy Cape where there is a house to stay in. A person can travel in weather like that if you just have to sit on the sled but when you have something happen you are in trouble such as I had when my anchor rope broke. I had to fix it as I could not leave my team an instant without an anchor out. The rope had to be spliced and you cant do that with gloves on. I never would have gotten it done if Waldo hadnt of helped. Both of us had pretty severe chilblains in our hands that nite from it.

Well Ive nearly run down and I have one more report to get out so Id better stop.



Bye

Dick