Heartbroke Bay (41 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
NINETEEN
Negook sits in the bow of the canoe, a bearskin cloak wrapped around his scrawny frame for what warmth the coarse fur can bring to his bones. He has been shivering for weeks, since watching the bizarre actions of the whites from the shadows of the forest after the tall, yellow-haired one had come and asked him to make his mark on the paper. It has been a long time since anything scared Negook, but watching the cruel acts of these people drove an icicle into his belly that nothing seems to melt.
After watching the hanging—an ugly, utterly undignified thing—he spoke quietly to his ravens, making soft mewing sounds until the birds flew away to fetch the People home. Now the clans rightly refuse to take the
Guski-qwan
into their canoes to return them to their own people; purifying a valuable canoe of that sort of crazy evil might be impossible. But they have agreed to take the white woman’s papers to Skagway and tell the other white men to come for the survivors. He is worried that somehow the whites will think of a way to blame the Lituya-kwan for all of the craziness and would prefer to see the whole thing disappear, but that is impossible. No, he has to do this one last thing, but after this, if he ever sees a white person again, he is going to run into the forest as fast as his brittle old bones will carry him.
Guski-qwan
into their canoes to return them to their own people; purifying a valuable canoe of that sort of crazy evil might be impossible. But they have agreed to take the white woman’s papers to Skagway and tell the other white men to come for the survivors. He is worried that somehow the whites will think of a way to blame the Lituya-kwan for all of the craziness and would prefer to see the whole thing disappear, but that is impossible. No, he has to do this one last thing, but after this, if he ever sees a white person again, he is going to run into the forest as fast as his brittle old bones will carry him.
The buzzing trill of a migrating thrush calls out from the forest, as Hannah hikes her skirts to her knees and wades out to the waiting canoe, the bundle of papers wrapped in a piece of canvas. The meat of the bear is nearly gone (foul, horrible mess) but there is a certain softening of the air, a dulling of the razor-sharp wind that says spring will eventually come, and she knows that somehow she and Hans will survive. She stops, listening to the call-and-response of the rhyming thrushes, and touches a hand to her throat. Her lips work, mouth opening as if to reply, but only silence emerges.
A north wind curls the heaving sea back on itself. The canoe rocks in the shallows. Salt spray torn from the waves glitters in diamond-shaped points. As Hannah comes alongside, she stumbles, and Negook sees her hand dart to cover her belly before grabbing at the gunwale for balance. Sighing to himself at the thought of the small life he sees struggling in her womb, he signals the paddlers. It is time to go.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Heartbroke Bay
is a work of fiction, based on an actual event that took place in Alaska during the fierce winter of 1899, on the outer coast of what would one day become Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Nearby Lituya Bay was said to be home to the angry demigod Kah-Lituya, a toadlike spirit whose fierce temper tantrums were credited by the Tlingit Indians with causing the powerful earthquakes that have ripped through the coastal region at regular intervals, creating huge tsunamis that have wiped out entire villages. In 1958, one such earthquake created the largest tsunami ever recorded in history, a mind-bending wave 1,720 feet high.
is a work of fiction, based on an actual event that took place in Alaska during the fierce winter of 1899, on the outer coast of what would one day become Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Nearby Lituya Bay was said to be home to the angry demigod Kah-Lituya, a toadlike spirit whose fierce temper tantrums were credited by the Tlingit Indians with causing the powerful earthquakes that have ripped through the coastal region at regular intervals, creating huge tsunamis that have wiped out entire villages. In 1958, one such earthquake created the largest tsunami ever recorded in history, a mind-bending wave 1,720 feet high.
The real Hans and Hannah Nelson came to Lituya Bay in September of 1899, shortly after an earthquake of similar size ripped through the coast. They were drawn north into the gold rush by a broadsheet of sweet promises published by a group of “investors” calling themselves the Lituya Bay Placer Gold Mining Company, and claiming offices in New York and San Francisco. In truth, the company had no real assets other than title to twelve hundred acres of mining claims north of the bay, and certainly not the neatly laid-out township or modern gold refinery projected by the pie-in-the-sky prospectus.
Promised easy access to “the biggest fortune ever dreamed of,” the Nelsons and their partners—Sam Christianson, known as Dutch; Fragnalia Stefano, known as Harky; and Michael S. Severts—expected a benign climate and easy pickings. What they found instead was hardscrabble mining of the most laborious sort, in one of the most remote and hostile environments in the world, where a long day of arduous pick-and-shovel work might yield a meager twelve to fifteen dollars’ worth of gold; nothing like the riches promised by the prospectus. Their only amenity was a small, crude cabin built of logs and moss, a squalid shelter little better than the canvas tents in common use during the gold rush.
Nonetheless, the Nelsons and their cohorts set to work, digging so intently at the sands throughout the summer and on into autumn that they missed their chance to catch the last boat leaving the coast before the onset of winter. Not long afterward, the five miners found themselves marooned by fierce weather and settled in as best they could to pass the long months of frigid darkness.
With food low and rationed, some degree of cabin fever was perhaps inevitable, but there is nothing in the record up to this point to indicate that there was any significant discord among the group, nothing to hint that beneath the time-killing banter of storytelling and card games an ember of violence was smoldering. Nothing, that is, until one October evening when Severts suddenly got up from the dinner table, walked outside, came back inside carrying a gun, and started shooting.
Harky was killed instantly. Dutch fell to the floor with a wound in his neck. Contemporary newspaper accounts vary in detail (and often cross the line from journalism into creative fiction), but most agree that Hannah and Hans reacted quickly, attacking Severts as he tried to reload. Hannah threw a dishcloth around his neck and choked him while Hans pummeled him. Somehow during the struggle Severts was wounded in the leg. At the end of the melee, the battered killer was bound hand and foot and roped in a bunk, and the Nelsons were left with a murderous prisoner to guard. After a long period of deprivation, Severts began to suffer from his wounds and begged to die, but the Nelsons—Hannah in particular—were reluctant to take the law into their own hands. It was not until it became evident that they would all succumb to hunger and the elements if they continued that they decided to extract themselves from the situation by holding a trial and handing down a sentence of capital punishment.
I first came across a reference to the tragedy in 1986, in the opening pages of
Glacier Bay: The Land and the Silence
, a seminal work on the park by the writer and photographer Dave Bohn. Glacier Bay had only recently been designated as a national park, after being upgraded from a national monument in 1980, the result of a long and arduous effort to safeguard a wilderness that has since become the crown jewel of the national park system. I was on a sailing trip to the bay, and moving through the stark, peak-lined fjords in a small boat among glittering icebergs brought to life Bohn’s brief description of the ordeal the Nelsons faced over the course of that terrible winter. In that context, their decision to hold a trial seemed a reasonable, though somewhat byzantine, solution.
Glacier Bay: The Land and the Silence
, a seminal work on the park by the writer and photographer Dave Bohn. Glacier Bay had only recently been designated as a national park, after being upgraded from a national monument in 1980, the result of a long and arduous effort to safeguard a wilderness that has since become the crown jewel of the national park system. I was on a sailing trip to the bay, and moving through the stark, peak-lined fjords in a small boat among glittering icebergs brought to life Bohn’s brief description of the ordeal the Nelsons faced over the course of that terrible winter. In that context, their decision to hold a trial seemed a reasonable, though somewhat byzantine, solution.
Bohn took the details of his brief account from a story written by the gold rush era’s best-known storyteller, Jack London, for
McClure’s Magazine
in 1906, five years after the incident. Shortly after my sailing trip ended, I obtained a copy of London’s article from the Alaska State Historical Library, read it, and was enthralled. London’s version of the event was clearly highly colored, but the story raised numerous questions. What effect would such extreme duress have had on the psyche of a Victorian woman, isolated in a vast wilderness, when violence and a harsh environment conspired to strip away all notions of law and civility? How could anyone fend off the seemingly inevitable psychological decay inherent under such protracted privation, yet still hold to the values inculcated over a lifetime?
McClure’s Magazine
in 1906, five years after the incident. Shortly after my sailing trip ended, I obtained a copy of London’s article from the Alaska State Historical Library, read it, and was enthralled. London’s version of the event was clearly highly colored, but the story raised numerous questions. What effect would such extreme duress have had on the psyche of a Victorian woman, isolated in a vast wilderness, when violence and a harsh environment conspired to strip away all notions of law and civility? How could anyone fend off the seemingly inevitable psychological decay inherent under such protracted privation, yet still hold to the values inculcated over a lifetime?
Somewhere in the event, I felt sure, was the material for a novel or a screenplay, so I threw myself into research, threading my way through yellowed newspaper clippings and rolls of microfilm, and learned that word of the hanging had first reached the outside world as an aside at the bottom of a short article on the front page of the May 12, 1900, issue of the
Alaskan.
The newspaper headline read “Sloop Lost,” and the article described how a month earlier, a sailboat in tow behind the steamship
Excelsior
had been lost when the towline parted. After entering Lituya Bay during the search for the lost vessel, the
Excelsior
reported that a double murder had taken place there the past winter, followed by a “lynching bee,” during which the “Lituyans thought proper to take the law into their own hands,” and “hence the elevation of the criminal.”
Alaskan.
The newspaper headline read “Sloop Lost,” and the article described how a month earlier, a sailboat in tow behind the steamship
Excelsior
had been lost when the towline parted. After entering Lituya Bay during the search for the lost vessel, the
Excelsior
reported that a double murder had taken place there the past winter, followed by a “lynching bee,” during which the “Lituyans thought proper to take the law into their own hands,” and “hence the elevation of the criminal.”
More research taught me that Hannah’s maiden name was Butler, and that she had come from England to work in service as a Victorian lady’s assistant. After meeting Hans in Chicago, she eloped with the strapping young Norwegian and headed for the gold fields of Alaska, where they connected with Harky, Dutch, and Severts. Over the next few years, I also learned how the story had filtered its way out of Alaska into the world of sensationalist journalism, coming to roost in William Randolph Hearst’s notoriously yellow
San Francisco Examiner
under a shrill headline that shouted “Woman Hangs a Man and the Law Upholds Her!” The headline was accompanied by a fanciful illustration of a slender young woman decked out in a jaunty little hat and a bustled skirt, dangling a hangman’s noose from one delicately gloved hand.
San Francisco Examiner
under a shrill headline that shouted “Woman Hangs a Man and the Law Upholds Her!” The headline was accompanied by a fanciful illustration of a slender young woman decked out in a jaunty little hat and a bustled skirt, dangling a hangman’s noose from one delicately gloved hand.
Whether the reader was supposed to be more troubled by the fact that murder had been committed or that a woman could be capable of hanging a man is not clear, but in any case, it was a remarkably bad piece of journalism. The writer not only had embellished his report with details he could have had no way of knowing but also got Hannah’s name wrong, referring to her as Edith Whittlesay instead of Hannah Butler. Severts, the killer, somehow became Michael Dinnen. Jack London apparently used the
Examiner
piece as a primary source for his own story because he, too, referred to Edith Whittlesay and Michael Dinnen.
Examiner
piece as a primary source for his own story because he, too, referred to Edith Whittlesay and Michael Dinnen.
Reaction to London’s version of the event was swift, kicking off a grumbling match between various newspapers (primarily the rival
Seattle Post Intelligencer
and
Seattle Times
) regarding the “truth” of London’s story, with each calling on its own experts to confirm its stance. But none, apparently, tumbled to the fact that Sam Christianson (Dutch) had not only survived the wound to his neck but had also returned to Juneau and become a beer wagon driver. By the time London’s story was published, he had been entertaining the patrons of Juneau’s saloons with his own version of the event for several years.
Seattle Post Intelligencer
and
Seattle Times
) regarding the “truth” of London’s story, with each calling on its own experts to confirm its stance. But none, apparently, tumbled to the fact that Sam Christianson (Dutch) had not only survived the wound to his neck but had also returned to Juneau and become a beer wagon driver. By the time London’s story was published, he had been entertaining the patrons of Juneau’s saloons with his own version of the event for several years.
All agreed, however, that Hannah was a “plucky little woman,” as stated by the federal judge who ruled that her execution of Severts was a valid judicial proceeding. This opinion was reinforced by an article run by the
Alaskan
after London’s story ran in the
Examiner
. “Those who know her best,” declared the article, “say she is a kind, patient, never tiring soul, yet brave, heroic and unflinching for all that is right or good.”
Alaskan
after London’s story ran in the
Examiner
. “Those who know her best,” declared the article, “say she is a kind, patient, never tiring soul, yet brave, heroic and unflinching for all that is right or good.”
Such high praise provided me with a good measure of Hannah’s character, which helped answer the question of how she had survived the emotional mauling of being witness to a murder amid grinding isolation, and how she withstood the horror of putting a rope around a man’s neck to strangle him. But as I plowed through the research and plotted the novel, one more question kept coming back to me. I wondered how—or even if—the Nelsons’ marriage had survived. Looking back from our modern era, when relationships often seem to fail for the smallest reason, I could not help but wonder what effect such an ordeal would have on a marriage.
It took nearly a decade to answer the question, and even then it required a stroke of luck. I was visiting the small mining town of Atlin, a community of less than four hundred souls in the northernmost part of British Columbia. As the crow flies, Atlin lies less than seventy miles from Juneau, but it is seventy miles of cloud-raking peaks, glaciers, and broken ice fields, so getting there requires a sixty-mile ferry ride and a long day of driving, much of it on a narrow gravel road, to make an end run around the impassable mountain range. On the last day of my visit, I stumbled across a slender pamphlet of the sort small-town history buffs put together to document their community’s past, and inside the pamphlet was a reproduction of a newspaper clipping titled “New Arrivals in Town,” dated almost ten years after the hanging. The writer seemed delighted to announce that a Mr. and Mrs. Hans Nelson had recently moved to Atlin to manage the new hardware store.
Lynn D’Urso
Juneau, Alaska
Juneau, Alaska
May 12, 1900
The Alaskan
The Alaskan
SLOOP LOST.
The Lituya Bay Gold Mining Co’s schooner Dora B., in tow of the S.S. Excelsior parted the tow rope in heavy sea off the bay, but being a staunch boat and perfectly sea-worthy, Capt. Whitney deemed it prudent to allow her to take her own course which she shaped for the bay. This happened on the evening of Sunday, Apr. 15, and since then nothing has been heard of the schooner; the supposition is, however, that she was driven ashore and broke up. The body of a man supposed to be one of the four on board was found on the beach at Yakutat but no clue was obtained as to his identity.
The Excelsior also reports a lynching bee at Lituya bay. Two men were murdered there last fall and it being impossible to communicate with the authorities at Sitka and fearing to ser the murderer at large in the community, being satisfied of his guilt, the Lituyans thought proper to take the law into their own hands, hence the elevation of the criminal.
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