The Heroine of Wrangel Island
How one woman survived the hubris of a stupid, greedy white guy
Happy Wednesday, readers! 👋🏻
You all asked for an Arctic explorer this week, and I delivered!
Ada Blackjack
Ada Blackjack was born in 1898 as Ada Deletuk in Spruce Creek, Alaska (a small settlement 40 miles outside Nome, Alaska). Spruce Creek gives a whole new meaning to the middle of nowhere, per my Google Maps search. Ada was an Iñupiat woman. The Iñupiat are an Indigenous people of Northwestern Alaska, and you can read more about them here!
When she was eight, Ada and her mom moved into Nome (a bigger city compared to Spring Creek). She attended a missionary school where she learned to read and write in English, sew, and cook “white people’s food.” I swear one of the documents I consulted says that. This will be important later!
At sixteen, Ada married a dog musher named Jack Blackjack. Unfortunately, Jack was a terrible husband. He was abusive and eventually abandoned Ada and their son Bennett (their other two children died). Now, Ada had to figure out how to support herself and her son as Jack had left them nothing. Oh, and did I mention Bennett had chronic tuberculosis? Because of this, Ada was forced to walk 40 miles with her son and place him in an orphanage while she got a job as a seamstress to earn enough money to get him back.
When she heard about an expedition to Wrangel Island that would pay $50 a month for one year, she took the chance even though she was terrified of polar bears and had no survival skills. She was hired as the seamstress on a five-person crew (plus one cat named Victoria) funded by Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Stefansson was interested in Wrangel Island because he believed it to be an ample location for walrus and seal hunting and fur trapping as well as a good setup for planes to pick up and drop off goods. Sounds great, right? Well, nothing is ever as good as it seems because Stefansson already had a failed and fatal arctic mission on the books from a few years earlier, AND he wasn’t even going on this expedition. But Ada needed the money, so she joined the crew of four white male explorers.
On September 14, 1921, the explorers set off on their journey. After a few weeks, Ada began to suffer from Arctic hysteria, which led her to refuse sewing duties, wander away from camp, deny food, and constantly worry she would not make it home. The men became so frustrated with her that they tied her TO A FLAGPOLE for a night. I’m sure it didn’t help her mental state that she was alone in the wilderness with four white men while away from her son!! Eventually, Ada adjusted to the environment, but other disasters awaited.
A year into their journey, the crew’s relief ship didn’t arrive because the ice was too thick. They had only brought six months’ worth of food with them because Stefansson (the real villain of this story) had convinced them the game would be plentiful. Easy to say when you aren’t there, Steffy boy! Because the ice was too thick for their relief boat to arrive, the crew would have to wait months until summer to receive food and supplies, as the hunting conditions were not ideal. Out of desperation, three of the crew decided they had to leave their camp in search of relief and headed to Siberia. Those men were never seen again.
This left Ada with one of the men, Knight, who only stayed behind because he had contracted scurvy and was incredibly weak. Their survival depended completely on Ada, who was now doing the work of four men to maintain the camp. And did I mention she was not previously trained in hunting, trapping, or general survival skills, so she was learning in real time. Although she was terrified of guns, she taught herself to shoot. She created fox traps, gathered wood, and reinforced the camp for winter. Also, Knight was a total asshole to her during this time even though she was keeping him alive. In her diary, she wrote that he said he wasn’t surprised that her husband abused and abandoned her! Although this could have been the scurvy and fear talking, I can’t imagine being in the middle of the icy wilderness alone with a man yelling at me, never knowing if I would see another human again.
After several months, Knight passed away, leaving Ada completely alone.
Ada began to keep a diary and wrote, “I will not let Bennett have a stepmother.” She was fueled to stay alive to reunite with her son. On August 20, 1923, almost two years after she had set out on her journey and two months after Knight died, a relief boat arrived! Ada and the cat, Victoria, had survived!
She came back to town to much fanfare and curiosity, but Ada wasn’t interested in being put on display. She was traumatized and mourning the loss of her crew members. On top of that, many hoped to use her story for commercial gain, even though she didn’t want any fame from the exploration. People were also suspicious about her survival and spread rumors about how she survived. Some even blamed Ada for Knight’s death. One of her rescuers even claimed she let Knight die and tore pages out of her diary, clearly stating otherwise.
Worst of all, Stefannson (the guy who funded the expedition) took her diary without her consent, underpaid her for her work, and didn’t even give her royalties from the book he published about the expedition. The expedition he didn’t even go on! And the ONLY reason she went on the exploration was for the money for her son! And the four other explorers died because he told them not to bring as much food! GAH!
Ada was able to reunite with her son and seek treatment for his tuberculosis. While Ada has been sadly forgotten by many, she is the textbook definition of a survivor. She conquered unbeatable odds and conditions for the love of her son. I’ve only scratched the surface of Ada’s story, but her resilience is truly remarkable.
🧵Bits and Bobs🧵
📚 I just finished Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali, and it was excellent! I highly recommend for all my fellow shir zan out there (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means… or you can Google it).
🎓 This was an interesting article in the 19th about how women, particularly Black women, are more impacted by student loan forgiveness (or lack thereof) because they attend college/higher education at higher rates + that pesky gender pay gap so it takes longer to pay loans back.
Citations
https://www.wileydigitalarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Ada-Blackjack-eBook.pdf
https://home.nps.gov/articles/000/ada-blackjack-stranded-on-wrangel-island.htm
https://www.anchoragemuseum.org/exhibits/extra-tough-women-of-the-north/women-of-the-north-profiles/ada-blackjack-sole-survivor-of-doomed-wrangel-island-expedition/
https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/ada-blackjack-forgotten-queen-of-arctic-expedition-survivors
Love the pic of Ada on the relief boat.......and....this snippet left me wanting to know so much more about her! Like...how did she get her son back, how did she earn money after she returned, how did the creep, StefICK, get her diary???