An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past

Chief Sesui and Lieutenant Herron: A Story of Who Controls the Bacon /

Chief Sesui and Lieutenant Herron A Story of Who Controls the Bacon WILLIAM SCHNEIDER Morgan Sherwood asserted in Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 7965) that the United States government did not ignore Alaska during the early American period, contrary to the charges of the several hundred non-Native inhabitants who regularly sought some form or another of federal assistance. In fact, Sherwood found that the federal government rather generously funded research and exploration by such institutions as the United States Geological Survey; the Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Army. These activities were documented by those who undertook them, and the accounts understandably reflect the Western culture's point of view. William S. Schneider has examined exploration and initial contact between Natives and non-Natives from the Native point of view. Schneider, who received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Bryn Mawr in 7976, is Curator of the Oral History Collection in the Alaska and Polar Regions Department of the Elmer Rasmuson Library, University ofAlaska Fairbanks. Schneider helped to create that collection and implemented the first systematic statewide oral history indexing system. His research projects have included an oral history of the Alaska Steamship Company and interviews for the Alaska Statehood Commission. The bulk of his work, however , has been with Native Alaskans. He initiated the Life History Series, which resulted in the publication of Moses Cruikshank's The Life I've Been Living (Fairbanks : University ofAlaska Press, 7986), and he is presently working through that program on a biography of Waldo Bodfish, an Inupiat whaling captain. In the following article, which first appeared in the Alaska Historical Society's journal, Alaska History, Schneider describes Lieutenant joseph Herron's 7899 expedition to the Upper Kuskokwim and explains that Herron and his men probably would have perished had they not been rescued by the Athabascan Chief Sesui and his people. Schneider concludes that the incident is an example ofposThis article appeared originally in Alaska History 1 (Fall/Winter 1985): 1-85; it is reprinted here by permission. 176 Chief Sesui and Lieutenant Herron 177 itive cultural adaptation among the members of Chief Sesui's band and suggests that because of their location Upper Kuskokwim Athabascans were able to maintain an unusually high level of cultural integrity following contact with nonNatives . In 1899 Joseph Herron, a First Lieutenant in the 8th Cavalry, United States Army, led a small detachment of soldiers through the Alaska Range into the Upper Kuskokwim drainage. Enroute to the Yukon, this party became lost in the broad flatlands of the Upper Kuskokwim and was rescued by the Athabascan Chief Sesui (Shesoie or Shesuie) and his followers . The soldiers were cared for and then led to Tanana on the Yukon, where a new military post had just been established.1 The story of that extraordinary rescue is dramatic, but the events leading up to the rescue and the conditions of the rescue provide fascinating clues to the successful cultural adaptation of the Natives in the Upper Kuskokwim. Examples of positive cultural adaptation by Native peoples in times of rapid change are few. The usual pattern is marked by disruption of the seasonal cycle of hunting and fishing, strains on the social system , and curtailment of culturally valued activities. That does not seem to have happened in the Upper Kuskokwim. Indeed, the Upper Kuskokwim Natives, living in an area remote from outside supply and maintaining a high level of flexibility and trading options for much of their history, were able to sustain cultural integrity and to take advantage of economic opportunities which finally developed in their region. For years the Native population of the Upper Kuskokwim had engaged in limited contact with traders, missionaries, and perhaps the lone prospector . But the Natives had not, until Herron's expedition in 1899, experienced prolonged interaction with a non-Native population in the heart of their homeland. Because 1899 is a comparatively late date in the history of white-Native contact in Alaska,2 the event therefore provides a good setting for evaluating the ways that Native people at the local level learned about outsiders before they actually arrived and how they selectively incorporated the foreigners' goods and way of life. The expedition reports and Native oral accounts which persist even today provide rich detail on the response of the Upper Kuskokwim people to Herron and his men. And the circumstances surrounding the expedition help to explain the history of exploration in Interior Alaska. These circumstances gain added...