Bob Marshall Lectures & Shows Slides at U of M on Artic Village
Large Audience Hears Marshall Speak on Artic
Former Missoula Man Illustrates Lecture With Many Colored Slides
“In the Koyukuk river drainage, northernmost tributary of the Yukon river, is 15,000 square miles of country north of the Artic circle. It is as big as the combined areas of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and contains only 127 people, 50 Eskimos and 77 white people,” said Robert Marshall, chief forester for the Indian service, Washington, D. C., in a lecture at Main hall last night. A large audience attended. Proceeds from the lecture will go to the Frontier and Midland magazine.
Mr. Marshall showed 120 colored lantern slides, illustrating life beyond the Artic circle. He described each scene as it was shown and told its relation to artic life.
The first of the slides pictured the different types of people, white and Eskimo, and the three types of architecture, log with dirt roofs, log with tin roofs, and igloos, which contrary to the popular belief were not snow, but dugouts.
The main economic pursuits of these people are gold mining, with which most of the inhabitants are occupied; fishing, trapping and hunting. Their pleasures are dancing, (they hold 138 during the year, 11 of which are big dances and last from 6 in the afternoon until 10 the next morning) gossiping and going to school. They go to school at all ages. One grandmother was in the second grade, her daughter in the fourth and her granddaughter in the first. Mr. Marshall said that the Eskimo children were of extraordinary high mentality; one of them eight years old, getting 134 in the Stanford I. Q. which is as high as the topmost one per cent of the American children.
Their methods of transportation are dog sled and snowshoe in the eight months of winter. In the four months of summer they travel by foot, horse, pole boat, outboard motor boat, barges holding up to 60 tons of goods and pulled by horses up the river 65 miles from where the last steamboats go, and by airplane.
“Interesting to note,” Marshall said, “is the fact that it costs 7 cents per pound to ship goods from Seattle to the point where steamboats stop and 8 cents a pound for the last 65 miles to Weisman.” The mail arrives once a month, in the winter by dog, which is most reliable, and in the summer by outboard motor. As it is light all the time from early in January until August, summer travel is done by night in order to avoid the necessity of blankets and to evade the worst of the mosquitoes.
“Their social customs differ greatly from ours,” he continued, “in that a man and a woman live with each other whenever they feel like it and separate when they wish. If a mother does not wish to take care of the children, they can be given to one of the families always ready to care for them.
“To me,” said Mr. Marshall, “they live an ideal life. They are free to speak, think and act as they please, and are not bothered by our complex modern economic and social problems.”
The above article appeared in The Montana Kaimin on February 27, 1934.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2459&context=studentnewspaper
Robert Marshall wrote about his Alaska experiences in his book ‘Artic Village: A 1930’s Portrait of Wiseman, Alaska’ – see Amazon –