Giving gustatory thanks in the early days
Celebrations of the Thanksgiving holiday in early Alaska and the Yukon Territory had much to do with available edibles.
Prospectors often chose to spend most of their time digging test pits, thawing ground and panning ore - not hunting. They relied for food on grubstakes acquired once a year, and occasionally on Dall sheep, venison, and other game sold by local Native Americans. Most existed on the "Three B's": beans, bacon and biscuits. Only a minority bothered to prepare soil and raise crops like cabbage, turnips, rutabagas and potatoes.
No matter what their situations, American and Canadians alike tried to celebrate Thanksgiving traditionally - turkey and all. (Canada had adopted the American holiday in the 1870s.) Journalist Tappan Adney and his cabin mates put together a feast in 1898 in Dawson that included canned peas and canned turkey. Men with more gold in their pockets bought one of the live turkeys freighted in crates over the White Horse Trail on mule-back.
Near Copper Center in 1898, with not even a cabin roof over his head yet, stampeder George Hazelet had a "hi-yu" (Chinook jargon for "fancy") bachelor's feast with a centerpiece of beans. Side dishes recorded in his diary included "onions and potatoes (evaporated, of course), first boiled then fried to a crisp brown in bacon 'sop,' and bacon with the epidermous taken off."
A group of stampeders from California who had sailed North in 1898 to prospect on Kotzebue Sound also put a big meal together. Originally the company numbered 20. But more than half of them, disappointed in their quest for gold, retreated south before the snows flew. The remaining nine built a spacious log dwelling and holed up beside the Kobuk River. They took turns doing the cooking.
On Nov. 24, the men of the Long Beach and Alaska Mining and Trading Company put on their warmest clothing, turned up their collars and marched down the frozen Kobuk to join their neighbors at Hanson camp for dinner. Company member Joseph Grinnell wrote in his diary the following day that "It was one of the most gratifying Thanksgivings, as far as the gastronomic and social celebrations are considered, that I have ever experienced."
The menu was inscribed on birch plaques at each place at the table. It featured split-pea soup, roast ptarmigan, turkey potpie, sweet potatoes, corn, sago pudding, mince pie, jelly tarts, olives, and cocoa. Many of these dishes were made with canned ingredients or staples like powdered eggs.
Grinnell's toast at the conclusion of the dinner was to the ptarmigan: "To the Turkey of the Kowak (Kobuk)."
Stampeder Robert Hunter Fitzhugh Jr. spent Thanksgiving 1899 at claim No. 12 above Hoosier Creek near Rampart. In a letter to his mother back in St. Louis, Fitzhugh looks forward to the coming holiday: "There is going to be a minstrel (show) in town Thanksgiving gotten up by camp talent and they have begged me to be 'old man.' It would astonish you (to) see what a rep I have in camp as an all round entertainer. They want me to sing ... songs or make a speech or do any old thing. They say that everybody they see tells them I am the only man for the job, even Prevost who by the way is main guy in it and sings - he has a splendid voice 'Asleep in the Klondyke Vale.' "
For Thanksgiving, he cooked all day, and notes that "everything costs 50 cts a can and butter $1 per pound, sugar 30 cts and milk 50 cts ...." Unfortunately the precise menu is not recorded, although he does mention "I have my bread in the oven." (When he entertains the Rampart parson, Mr. Koonce, in December, he gives him a dinner of corn, peas, roast mutton, potatoes, ginger snaps and cornstarch pudding.)
In Wrangell in 1938, members of the local Pioneers' Igloo held their celebration in the banquet room of Red Men's hall.
The Pioneers - originally an organization of Gold Rush stampeders - had once had a large membership in Wrangell, but by this year had dwindled to just eight men: S. Cunningham, Fred Stackpole, L. A. Olsen, John Olson, Martin Taffuld, Charles Room, Peter "Rescue Pete" Peterson and S.N. Harvie. Only six of them showed for the dinner, because Peterson and Harvie were spending the winter elsewhere, according to an article in the Nov. 15, 1938, Wrangell Sentinel. The turkey dinner was prepared by Charles Room.
"No matter what the menu," the Sentinel records, "the men always have a bottle of soda pop to drink before eating, and they finish with black coffee, disdaining sugar and cream as being unsuited to men who pioneered Alaska." The dinner was financed by the terms of the will of William Lloyd, who had left $1,200 to the Pioneers' treasury.
The Sentinel also noted on its front page that 1938 marked the first year that "home grown turkeys" would grace a select number of Thanksgiving tables there. Gifford Close had imported 15 turkey eggs the previous spring and incubated them with his chicken and duck eggs. He managed to raise nine of the birds to adulthood on his property on Zimovia Strait. Close also raised 25 ducks and 75 chickens. The ducks, Close remarked, minded the rain much less than the turkeys - for which he had to provide a roofed shed with a board floor to take refuge in.