Once in a while, maybe only a few times in a lifetime, we stumble upon something truly unique and undeniably beautiful. I met Elizabeth B. Pinson, “Betty,” on a park bench in Seattle the summer of 2002. This was clearly one of those moments. Never before had I encountered a stronger embodiment of the human spirit, courage, and grace. At ninety years old, this half German, half Iñupiaq Eskimo from Teller, Alaska, held more life in her eyes than many a quarter her years. Though our encounter was brief, it would mark an important point in both our lives, and...

On my mother’s side of the family I am Eskimo. My father was a German sailor shipwrecked in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s northernmost coast. Ouiyaghasiak (pronounced ow-ee-yag-has-ee-ak), my mama, was born about 1889, daughter of Ootenna (pronounced oo-ten-nah) and Kinaviak (pronounced kin-ah-vee-ak), at the village of Shishmaref, Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle, facing on the Chukchi Sea about sixty miles from the easternmost point of Siberia across the Bering Strait. By the time of Mama’s birth, whalers, sealers, explorers, and traders from the outside world had already brought alcohol and diseases into the North, which began to decimate...

My mother, Ouiyaghasiak, attended the missionary school operated by William T. Lopp and his wife at Cape Prince of Wales, and during this time they gave her the Angelican name of Agnes. In her second year of school, at the age of ten or eleven, she learned rudimentary reading and writing. Mr. Lopp and his family soon moved to the Teller Reindeer Station, which later became Teller Mission. He took over management of the reindeer station there. It was during this period that my grandparents and their children also migrated to Teller Mission. For the remainder of their lives Ootenna...

In 1918, when I was six years old, I lost both of my legs to frostbite. In order to set this tragic event into some perspective, I must provide some background information relative to my grandparents.

Every spring after school was out and the ice on Grantley Harbor had broken up and been carried out to sea by offshore winds and tidal currents, we’d move to our fishing camp at Nook across the bay from Teller. The house that Papa had built had been added onto to accommodate our increasing family. That summer he built a house for the boys....

Although Teller was more or less isolated in the years I was growing up, as was most of the northern half of Alaska from the mainstream of travel in the world, interesting and historical events always seemed to be happening there. During the early 1920s, while the Russian Revolution was still going on over in Siberia, refugees would cross the Bering Sea by open boat in summer or escape the encampment at Big Diomede Island, which was a possession of Russia and only a mere twenty-one miles across the Bering Strait from Cape Prince of Wales, practically next door to...

The last summer that my father worked at hauling freight to the Tin City mine was 1918, the summer before the fall of my accident. Taking care of seven children was just too much for Mama to handle with help only from the older ones, along with fishing, berry-picking, preparing skins, sewing, and all her other duties. Papa’s presence at home was more important than the cash he earned at the mines.

It was over fifty miles from Nook to Tin City, and if anything happened while he was there, it took too long to get home—a two-day walk...

No more children were born to my parents after Robert came into the world in 1928. Albert Junior, who was given the same name as the one-day-old baby boy who had died during the flu epidemic, came along in 1920, just two years after the previous Albert Junior. Five children were brought into the world between 1920 and 1928. By this time, the four eldest had gone away from home with Papa and Mama’s good wishes, which left nine of us still at home. We were a lusty crowd and sometimes Papa had his hands full keeping us in line....

With the coming of aviation to remote regions of Alaska, the demand for dried salmon for dog feed began to dwindle as dogs were no longer needed except for local travel. By the early thirties mail and supplies began to come to us by air, and long trips by dog team were getting to be uncommon. Before the airplane, summer travel was mostly by water because overland treks were virtually impossible. The way was blocked by the countless lakes and ponds and mosquito-breeding swamps that filled the valleys between impassable mountain ranges.

In the winter it was easier. There was...

The air was crisp and clear, not a cloud in the sky, and the gentle wind blowing from the shoreline seemed to caress my face. From astern a low bright sun cast a long shadow of the vessel and her rigging as the ship slowly cruised a straight course through the choppy green water. Besides the familiar scent of salt sea and kelp, there was an aroma in the breeze that I could not identify. I asked, “What’s that sweet smell?”

“That’s the woods, the spruce trees.”

This was my first look at real, live trees. The ones I had...

It wasn’t all work and no play in the summer of 1931 for the kids at Jesse Lee. When the crops were planted and the cleanup and maintenance work was done, we had some free time. It was often spent going camping or picnicking, taking boat rides on the bay or motor trips out the Hope Road. We all loved those carefree times. We felt happy walking the clean, sandy beaches.

A bunch of us would pile onto the school’s old truck after breakfast and ride out to see the old mining camps at Sunrise and Hope, sixty miles away...

The four youngest in the family never knew the two eldest in the family. Tommy, the eldest of the clan, left home at the age of twenty-one. He was experienced in handling boats with our father; consequently, when he made up his mind to become a seaman, Captain Pederson of the old MS Herman took him aboard as a member of his crew on his way south from the Arctic to San Francisco, his home port. Tommy never came back north, but he spent thirty-seven years sailing the seven seas. Through all those years, he sent me post cards from...