Alaska's Daughter

http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/84/
Update Item Information
Title Alaska's Daughter
Subject Indians of North America; Indian children; Alaska; Fiction; Literature; Indigenous peoples--North America
Keywords Native Americans
Publisher Utah State University Press
Source Utah State University
Language eng
Description Elizabeth B. Pinson shares with us her memories of Alaska's emergence into a new and modern era, bearing witness to history in the early twentieth century as she recalls it. She draws us into her world as a young girl of mixed ethnicity, with a mother whose Eskimo family had resided on the Seward Peninsula for generations and a father of German heritage. Growing up in and near the tiny village of Teller on the Bering Strait, Elizabeth at the age of six, despite a harrowing, long midwinter sled ride to rescue her, lost both her legs to frostbite when her grandparents, with whom she was spending the winter in their traditional Eskimo home, died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. Fitted with artificial legs financed by an eastern benefactor, Elizabeth kept journals of her struggles, triumphs, and adventures, recording her impressions of the changing world around her and experiences with the motley characters she met. These included Roald Amundsen, whose dirigible landed in Teller after crossing the Arctic Circle; the ill-fated 1921 British colonists of Wrangel Island in the Arctic; trading ship captains and crews; prospectors; doomed aviators; and native reindeer herders. Elizabeth moved on to boarding school, marriage, and the state of Washington, where she compiled her records into this memoir and where, now in her 90s, she lives.
Type Text
Rights Reproduction for publication, exhibition, web display or commercial use is only permissible with the consent of the Utah State University Press (435) 797-1362
ARK ark:/87278/s6jq3x2x
Creator Pinson, Elizabeth Bernhardt, 1912-
Date 1912
Spatial Coverage Alaska
Setname uaida_main
ID 387265
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6jq3x2x
Back to Search Results