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Ice Window: Letters from a Bering Strait Village: 1892–1902, edited and annotated by Kathleen Lopp Smith and Verbeck Smith

2003; Arctic Institute of North America; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.14430/arctic675

1923-1245

Ellen Bielawski,

Science Education and Perceptions

This is a rich, gorgeous book, a treasure for anyone interested in northwest Alaska and traditional life along the Bering Strait.Through a correspondence remarkable for its frequency and detail, it shows Inupiat life at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th.The volume is well illustrated, annotated, and beautifully printed, especially given its moderate price.It will be useful to both the student and the scholar.Tom Lopp went to the Inupiat village of Kingegan, now called Wales, in 1890.At that time, this village of 527 inhabitants was, in his words (p.364):the largest Eskimo village in Alaska, if not in the world….Wales was the summer rendezvous for the Eskimos of the region, for those living to the southward as far as Nome, and northward to the great Kotzebue Sound country.Here they would assemble with their great walrusskin boats, or oomiaks, to make ready for their annual trading cruise to Siberia.Seventy to eighty of these canoes, manned by thirty to forty natives, would cross the stormy strait to obtain from the Siberian Chukchis furred reindeer skins for clothing, reindeer sinew for thread, and Russian leaf tobacco.A most adequate native merchant marine, for tons of material were transported to Alaskan shores in this manner.