Mardy Murie oral history transcript

              MARDY MURIE, WITH PENNY AND DOTTIE

1980

MRS. MURIE: …this was some years after we moved to the Ranch. As I say, we were

in New York and we had this appointment with Angus Cameron about some matter that

he and Olaus were interested in. I can’t even remember what it was. Finally, at the end

of the conversation he said something about how I should write the story. Olaus

probably had told him that I had grown up in Fairbanks, and so on. Olaus kept

encouraging me. I can remember how keenly I felt that I could not tell our story. Except

that I had written it for the children.

PENNY OR DOTTIE: It was not that you couldn’t. It was just that you felt it was

private? It was not that you didn’t feel you had adequate words?

MRS. MURIE: No, I felt that I could write it fairly clearly, but I had a feeling that it was

something that didn’t belong to anybody else. It was a very strong inner feeling in me.

We were over in Lander for some reason or another. Olaus was lecturing over there.

There was this friend over there at Casper College who said something to me that just

sort of struck me. And Olaus had been saying the same thing in different words. But this

woman sort of made it feel differently to me all of a sudden. And I mention it in the

forward I think, that Margaret Demarest said something like, ‘Don’t you think that when

you’ve been fortunate enough to have such experiences that you sort of owe it to some of

the rest of us to share it a little?’

INTERVIEWER: She sort of touched a cord of social obligation.

MRS. MURIE: At the same time I had a letter from Angus. He said, “Write me a couple

of chapters. Anything, it doesn’t have to be the first chapter, just anything you feel like

writing at this point.” So I wrote the story of going out over the trail with the first and

last trip of the old NC Stage Line on spring break with I was fifteen. He wrote back and

asked me to sent two or three more. He said he didn’t care what chapters they were, just

anything. I did that. I wrote, I guess the early days in Fairbanks. He wrote me back and

said not to send my any more. He was sending me a check as an advance on royalties.

He told me to finish the book. He was just a psychologist, that man, or a trapper! He

had me trapped then! I have a whole big fat envelope of letters from Angus Cameron.

What a delightful soul he is! Then of course, after that came out, he wrote and said that

he now wanted me to write a book about Wyoming. I told him, “I don’t know enough

about Wyoming”. He said, “I didn’t mean that. I mean the part of Wyoming that you do

know.” Then Olaus said, “Well”. Olaus had been writing these chapters about his

various experiences during the Elk study, intending maybe to make a book of it some day.

So Olaus said, “Why don’t we combine them, and make those two into one book?” We

both worked on that. When I was finishing To the Far North, we had a young friend who

was just divorced. She was sort of at loose ends. She wanted some place to stay and was

willing to come out. She came and spent the winter with us and did the housekeeping,

and I set myself up with a typewriter in the room where I am now sleeping. It was

[sounds like] Mildred’s bedroom. I just devoted myself to the latter part of To the Far

North, that’s how it got finished.

INTERVIEWER: One of the things that impresses people when they read your book is

this sense of total recall. You do keep a journal.

MRS. MURIE: Not all of the time.

INTERVIEWER: How much is there, and how much is in your head? There are many

conversations in your book.

MRS. MURIE: Well, I remember those conversations. I’m just blessed with that kind of

a memory I think. I don’t think it’s any great credit to me. But I do remember things

fairly well. I did keep a journal on every trip. I kept a journal all through our honeymoon

trip up the Koyukuk and the Old Crow River, and the Sheenjek expedition particularly.

By that time I had sort of had a feeling that maybe some day I would do something. That

was such a marvelous experience, that summer of 1956 up there. I wanted to put as much

of it down as possible, at least for the children. Then I found, when I came to write the

book that I couldn’t seem to word the things any differently than I had done it at first

writing, sitting on a hillside somewhere. So most of that Sheenjek section is just lifted

from my journal.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of things?

MRS. MURIE: Did I put in the journal?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MRS. MURIE: Well, “Today, George went out early this morning and when he can back

he told us about seeing Lynx, and just how the Lynx had acted” and so on. “Brian had

gone in this direction and Bob went across the river and Olaus and I went up toward the

mountain” and we what we saw and all of these things. And at night, over supper we

compared notes and everybody told what they had seen that day. We were all having a

marvelous time.

INTERVIEWER: The writing about your childhood you found easy to do? That was the

place where you wanted to start?

MRS. MURIE: Yes. It all sort of came to me, and as I told you the other night, when I

sent the type script for that part to my mother for suggestions and help, all she did was

send it back to me and say, “How did you remember all of that?” She had forgotten a lot

of those things. It brought it back to her.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have much help from your editor, or did he have to put what

was there?

MRS. MURIE: Practically none. They didn’t alter things. I remember when they sent

back the first typescript edited. And it looked as though it had measles. I thought, ‘Oh

dear me, I’ve done terrible job!’ But then when I began to read and examine it, it was just

little tiny, minor things. There was no real editing, I would say. Angus just let me go my

own way.

INTERVIEWER: People speak about writing for a particular audience. When you said

that at first you were going to record this for your children, did they continue to be the

audience that you had in mind while you were writing?

MRS. MURIE: No, I think later on I was probably, if I thought about that at all,

probably half consciously thinking of this friend who had said, ‘you owe it to some of us

to share this’. I was thinking of just writing for someone who would be enough interested

in that kind of experience to enjoy hearing about it maybe.

INTERVIEWER: Was it difficult to come to a decision about how much you should tell

your reader, or about how much you should assume that they knew? Say, about animals

or the north, or anything specific?

MRS. MURIE: No. I was just telling them the things that I had learned. Because when I

married Olaus I had an English major. I knew very little about wildlife. I just knew that I

liked to be outdoors and look at things. But I hardly knew a Robin from anything. My

stepfather had taught me quite a bit about wildlife, but aside from that. I didn’t have any

feelings of trying to teach people a lot of things, or inform them particularly. Mostly, it

was just the writing of the experience as I felt it, at the time, and as I lived it. It’s a pretty

personal kind of narrative I think. It’s not very objective. I’ve been really amazed at the

number of fan letters I’ve had about To the Far North.

INTERVIEWER: It was such a personal document, but I think people feel it personally

and want to respond.

MRS. MURIE: Maybe it is something like that, apparently they did. And I remember

when the book came out and I sent a copy to my son Martin. He wrote back and said

some nice things about the book. He said something about the Old Crow part. He said,

“Of course, being an Old Crow veteran, I know all about these things. I can have an

opinion.” He was ten months old when we took him on that trip. He doesn’t remember a

thing about it! And he has never said to me exactly how he feels about it. The other night

when I was lying there with that temperature, and kind of half feverish, I was thinking

about a lot of things. I suddenly thought, ‘How on earth? How could I have done that?’

Once in a while….

INTERVIEWER: Do you mean that trip?

MRS. MURIE: Making that trip and taking that baby way up into the wilds like that

with no other human support except his father and Jessie Ross. There we were, the three

of us, and the baby. Yet, at the time, it just seemed the thing to do and I had no qualms

about it. Now, I look back. Sometimes I just get real terrified thinking back on it!

Fortunately, the only time that that baby had any illness at all was when we were in

touch with civilization. We stopped at the Rampart House at the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police Station. It’s on the border. The nice mounted policemen there were so

delighted to see us. We were the first boat up the river, and we brought mail to them. We

spent a whole day there. He insisted on giving me some Klem powdered milk to mix for

the baby instead of the Dryco that I was carrying for him. That didn’t agree with him.

He had a tummy ache. The other time was when we came back down the river. We were

in the Old Crow village and the Episcopal Missionary insisted that we stay at his house.

He was just lovely. Mr. McCollum was his name. He gave Martin some kind of hard

tack pilot biscuit to chew on and he had about four teeth then. He managed to get a

couple of chunks off and swallowed them whole I guess. Then he had a tummy ache. As

long as we were out in the complete wilderness he never had a thing wrong with him.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of milk did you give him?

MRS. MURIE: Dryco. [?]

INTERVIEWER: And that was it?

MRS. MURIE: Oh no, we carried cereal: Cream of Wheat, and some other cereal. I guess

we had oatmeal along, and dried fruit. I’d stew the dried fruit and put it through a sieve

and feed him that. Apricots and prunes. When we had any meat, we had a young Bear

and we had a couple of geese. I’d give him the broth or the juice off of that.

INTERVIEWER: Did he like that?

MRS. MURIE: Oh yes, he ate everything. He loved Grayling. I wondered if it was a

little soon to give him Grayling. It was when we were coming back down. He was then

twelve and a half months old.

INTERVIEWER: Are the fatty, the flesh of the Grayling?

MRS. MURIE: No, it’s like Trout. It’s quite dry.

INTERVIEWER: What do Indians feed their babies?

MRS. MURIE: He was crazy about that fish. He ended up eating about half of an

eighteen inch Grayling. Jessie Ross came and sat by me in the tent and said, “It won’t

hurt him, I know it won’t hurt him. It’s just perfectly good food for him!’ We carried a

case of tomatoes so that I could…There was no such thing as Gerber baby food or

anything like that. We carried about six dozen oranges. And we could have carried more

because they kept perfectly. Jess put them down in the bottom under the bottom layer

of the scow. I guess that next to that cold river water they just stayed perfect. So I had

orange juice for him.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever compare notes with Indians in say, Old Crow as to how

they fed their babies at that age?

MRS. MURIE: No. I never did. At that time most of the Old Crow Indians didn’t speak

English. They all crowded around the baby.

INTERVIEWER: Where they surprised to see you there with a child?

MRS. MURIE: Oh my goodness! They just crowded on the bank, and surrounded me. I

stood there holding this bright…he had quite blond, curly hair and great big black eyes.

For most of them, it was the first white baby they had ever seen. They were just

entranced by him. Right away, they went and started making moccasins for him. By the

end of the day he had two pair of little Indian moccasins.

INTERVIEWER: How did you dress him?

MRS. MURIE: In little coveralls. Do you remember coveralls? My mother made them

out of lightweight, kind of soft denim.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have diapers?

MRS. MURIE: Oh yes! And we washed the diapers every night and would hang them

on bushes to dry. He had a sweater suit. One of those wooly sweater suits. It had

leggings and sweater and cap to match. That was for when it was cool. But the coveralls

had long sleeves and long legs and so he was protected from the mosquitoes. We couldn’t

even have him out in the mosquito open air. When we got up into Old Crow River the

mosquitoes were so thick. He was kept under a mosquito tent inside the scow. He and I

just sat in there.

INTERVIEWER: [You were] Tender morsels.

MRS. MURIE: Then, when Olaus set up the tent at night, he’d just come and grab the

child and run and put him in the mosquito proof tent. I remember what a haven that tent

was. We burned a little beauhac [sp?] to kill the few mosquitoes that got in while it was

being set up. Then I could turn Martin loose, and he could crawl all around in that tent

and get some exercise. He just crawled around and around in there.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, that’s a long time during the day to be quiet.

MRS. MURIE: Well, if we were on an open place at noon, where we could get ashore,

we’d take him out. I had a cheesecloth, soaked in Citronella that I’d put around his neck.

That helped to keep the mosquitoes away. We didn’t have these other modern repellents

in those days.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have a little backpack, or a stomach thing to haul him in?

MRS. MURIE: No, I didn’t have anything like that because we were in the boat almost

all of the time. We had a harness for him. And when we were traveling, he sat in this big

packing box bed he had. He had this harness on and it was clipped into screw eyes on the

side of the boat. He had freedom to move around, but he couldn’t fall overboard.

Someday maybe he’ll tell me about how he feels about that. I don’t know whether inside

himself if he feels that his parents were neglectful of him or not. But of course, there

were no germs up there. There was no disease for him to get. It was just the hazards of

the trip itself.

INTERVIEWER: Which must have caused you a lot of worry!

MRS. MURIE: Well I worried about coming back down through that canyon, yes.

INTERVIEWER: How did that go?

MRS. MURIE: It went just fine when we finally got to it. It was like an old dragon in

the back of my mind all summer. We had broken the crankshaft and had no power. Olaus

and Jess had cut big sweeps out of Spruce trees. Olaus rode the scow in front and Jess

steered with the motorboat rudder in the back. The baby and I sat out on the open part

with life preserver vests pinned to him with big safety pins all over. I had one on too. I

remember when we went down that great big shoot, there is about a four-foot drop. The

baby was just having a wonderful time. I was holding him, and he was reaching out to

that white foam, going “Coom, coom, Coom!” [Baby talk] He was as happy as could be!

Sometimes I look back and think, “Dear me!” I have really lived enough for four lives!

INTERVIEWER: When you went back to Old Crow, when you saw it, didn’t you want

to go back?

MRS. MURIE: No, I’ve never been back to Old Crow since that first time in 1926. I

went back to Bettles [?] in 1975. That was on the Kuyokuk.

INTERVIEWER: I used to love the Letters Written From Old Crow. Was it written by

Annie?… Do you remember in Fairbanks [Newspaper] there was a column at least

weekly.

MRS. MURIE: Josie.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever meet Josie?

MRS. MURIE: No, but I had a letter from her. It was years after we were up there. We

were already living on the Ranch up here. It was about 1950 I suppose. I suppose we

still got one of the Alaska papers. Somehow we heard that the Catholic Priest at Old

Crow and the Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen, and the village council had voted to

have some sort of skiing program for the young people to keep them out of mischief.

They needed skis. Olaus went down to Bill Jensen and also Mr. Robertson and other

folks down at the sporting goods store. They donated skis that were perfectly good, but

had been used, and some boots and poles and I don’t know what all. Sig Olsen, Jr. who

was with the Game and Fish up in Fairbanks by that time sent word that if we could get

them to Fairbanks, he could get them flown over to Old Crow in one of the government

planes. After that, I had a letter from Josie. And I had a letter from the Priest. And I had

a letter from the Mounted Policemen. They were thanking us. I think also they sent

sometimes they’d send little clippings about what their young people were doing. You

know, they did very well!

INTERVIEWER: They had a very successful program. I remember that they used to go

to Anubik to compete.

MRS. MURIE: Yes! Jenny Wood went over there with them, not with them, but with

some other troop, and met them all over there. Yeah, they went to ski meets and they did

very well!

INTERVIEWER: This was their first introduction to cross-country skiing in this little

Indian town. It was very isolated.

MRS. MURIE: The Catholic Priest who was there at that time, Fr. Boucher, I believe his

name was, must have been a terrific man. And he was a good skier. He decided that that

was something that they could learn. Both the boys and the girls just did very well.

INTERVIEWER: Well, they were used to being on ‘webs’ before weren’t they?

MRS. MURIE: Yes that was all they knew.

INTERVIEWER: The Fairbanks News Miner used to print these letters from Josie. Was

Fred Stickman also [involved]?

MRS. MURIE: Fred Stickman was down at New Alto most of the time, and then he was

at Galena.

INTERVIEWER: He also wrote great letters, but the paper would never edit them.

MRS. MURIE: Oh no, they appeared just the way they were.

INTERVIEWER: They appeared in this marvelous, more than a pigeon English, but in a

really delightful, fresh approach to the English language. The Tundra Times used to also

have, I think, some correspondents from Old Crow.

MRS. MURIE: Yes, they did too.

INTERVIEWER: Is that still going? Howard Rock died didn’t he?

MRS. MURIE: He died.

INTERVIEWER: Did somebody take over after that? That was supposed to be the

native newspaper for Alaska, started by an Eskimo.

MRS. MURIE: I think its still going. I haven’t seen a copy lately. There was something

about Howard Rock in one recent; it must have been Alaska Magazine or something that

came. He was given some kind of an honor at some kind of banquet they had in his honor

not long before he died.

INTERVIEWER: He ran the newspaper under the most difficult circumstances.

MRS. MURIE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: It was originally subsidized by a man from Boston. Do you remember

who that was? He had a yearly subsidy that allowed it to keep going. But eventually

that ran out.

MRS. MURIE: Oh, I didn’t know that.

INTERVIEWER: He had a very difficult time with the paper. [Mr. Rock]

MRS. MURIE: I remember going in there with Olaus to talk to him several times when

we were back up there. I guess that was 1956, probably. Then we were up there again in

1961. I think that paper served a very good purpose. I think it began to give the native

people a sense of some sort of status and worthwhile ness and dignity.

INTERVIEWER: It also have them a common voice because they had never been able to

speak before as a group.

MRS. MURIE: Yes, they hadn’t had any way to speak out. I think it probably helped a

great deal in their action when Statehood came on, to demand some of their rights.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of an audience did it have besides just the Indians.

MRS. MURIE: I think it had a large audience. A lot of people subscribe to it, I think.

There was a lot of various kinds of news in it.

INTERVIEWER: I know it had a fair subscription outside of Alaska. I know people

who had been there and were interested in their causes, and were just interested in Alaska.

They had friends there.

MRS. MURIE: Do you remember the old Alaska Weekly?

INTERVIEWER: No.

MRS. MURIE: That was a paper published for Alaskans in Seattle for years. That

would be a thing that would be important. And it was full of news, all of the time. I’ve

forgotten how often it came out. But Beulah Fairbanks was one of its chief

correspondents. She lived in Seattle, but she was totally wound up in Alaska. She made

a good many trips up there. She was a journalist. You must have heard a little of her.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MRS. MURIE: She and Bea Mason formed this group called ‘Alaska Friends’ in Seattle.

I don’t know whether they are still going or not. I know that my mother belonged to it. I

used to go to the meetings with her. And when To the Far North came out, or several

years later…well anyway, they had a special “do”, and they had the book there and an

exhibition, and me on exhibition. I was just thinking that that paper would be a great

source of early history of Alaska if anyone were ever interested. I am sure. I don’t

remember how early started publication, but it went on for quite a long time. It had all

kinds of news.

INTERVIEWER: It had correspondents in Alaska as well as ex-Alaskans living in Seattle

writing for it?

MRS. MURIE: Oh no, it was up to date, up to the minute news from Alaska. It came

out once a week. I suppose they have files of it in the archives up in Fairbanks. I don’t

know when it stopped publication, but not too long ago.

INTERVIEWER: As you see them, what do you see as the historical gaps in Alaska?

The areas that have not been explored or written about.

MRS. MURIE: I have never thought of that particularly.

INTERVIEWER: What about native affairs? Anthropologists of course have written a

fair amount about that.

MRS. MURIE: Yes. I don’t know. And of course that kind of thing is going on now

under Zorro Bradley there at the University. He is with the Park Service, but he is at the

University.

INTERVIEWER: The Park Service?

MRS. MURIE: Yes, the Park Service has an Anthropologist up there. And he’s been up

there ever since the Task Force was established to study out these areas that should be

parks and lands. He is a wonderful fellow. He and his wife have gotten so, it’s amazing

because they both come from Santa Fe. Her father was the famous Natt Dodge, the Park

Naturalist at Santa Fe Region. He was the authority on the southwest for many years.

So her name is Nattalie, spelled N-A-double T-A-L-I-E. Zorro has two or three

assistants and they travel all over and they must by now have collected a great fund of

information. I think in a way, it may be that southeast Alaska has been neglected in the

history. I don’t know exactly why I say that, but I just… There may be other things in

their history other than just the fishing. But I don’t know whether there has been any

complete study of what went on in the southeast. They are sort of isolated from the rest

of Alaska. I remember in the interior, that area was sort of the ‘dog’s tale’ that was sort

of looked down on. It hardly belonged to Alaska.

INTERVIEWER: Life was too easy down there.

MRS. MURIE: Yeah, that’s probably it. Well, these two people from New Mexico,

Zorro and Nattalie Bradley have bought a place out on Cheeno Ridge. They had a place

in town. They weren’t on Giest Road. They were on Teal Avenue. Then the neighbors

sort of objected to the disturbance of their dogs. They had a dog team. They have an

adopted daughter who is now about to graduate from the University. Her name is Pat.

She was 16 when I was up there. She is a wonderful girl. And they were all interested in

dog teams, so built a house out on Cheeno Ridge. And the have the dogs and travel with

them every winter. It’s such a contrast to what life in the southwest must have been for

all of those years. But apparently they intend to stay in Fairbanks. Zorro paid me the

highest compliment that anybody ever did, about Island Between when it came out. It

was when I was up there in 1976, I guess. No it was just a year ago in September, when I

was up there. [1979] I was at the home of young Carol, she is daughter of my

bridesmaid. And she is the Curator, the Paleontologist there. Any way, the Bradleys

were there also, and Zorro said, “I am green with envy!” I said, “What’s the matter with

you?” He told me, “You put the blood and flesh on the bare bones.” I had been just

afraid to see him, because the book had just come out and I had sent him a copy. I had

had a letter from him thanking me for the book. He said that it was making the rounds in

his office. Right after that, I was up there and I had been afraid, really afraid to think

what the anthropologist might say about it, or feel about, because I am not an

anthropologist. I knew I couldn’t have given any real scientific slant on those things. I

only wrote the book as best I could from Otto’s notes, for what must have gone on with

those people. I was greatly relieved when Zorro seemed to like it. Other anthropologists

might pick out a lot of flaws in it, I’m sure. But I haven’t heard about it. That book was

more hard work that anything I ever did. I went through three versions of it. It was

different than anything else I’d ever done. I wanted to do it for Otto’s sake. I am just

sorry it didn’t come out while he was still alive. But it took all of those years for the

University to get around to publishing it. I did it because Dr. Binell asked me to. I would

try to do it, but there was such a mass of material. They shipped it down here to me. It

took me three weeks just to look through it to kind of just see what was there. There

were journals and journals and more journals and all kinds of stuff. That man was a real

powerhouse.

INTERVIEWER: How did you organize them?

MRS. MURIE: Oh, I don’t know Dottie! [Laughing] It was sort of chronologically. It is

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