The 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition Team, center, Ada Blackjack
Wrangel Island was the last refuge of the mammoths . Its arched fangs appear in riverbeds, in the gravel of the beach, outcrop in the grass that survives only a few months, until the arrival of the ice. The island, 160 kilometers from the coast of Siberia and 250 from Alaska , is today a natural park of the Russian Federation.
Polar bears, musk oxen, reindeer, arctic foxes, snowy owls, walruses and seals they occupy the tundra plains and the coastline which, in winter, extends into a frozen sea. Just four guards They live there throughout the year. They are joined in summer by scientific groups and some tourists.
Sunset on Wrangel Island
It was foreboding that the Russian navigator who gave the island its name he never found her. Icelandic-American explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who had carried out expeditions in arctic territory, found her in 1913 because of a shipwreck . His boat, the Kalkuk, he was trapped in the ice until he cracked like a walnut. He fled and left his crew at the mercy of winter. Some of them **took refuge on Wrangel Island. **
Driven by a colonial fantasy, he decided, eight years later, to offer both Canada and the British monarch to take possession of the island. He omitted that Russia had legally claimed the territory.
Despite the indifference of both governments to his proposal, he undertook the expedition in 1923 . He assembled in Seattle a crew consisting of two surviving sailors from the Kalkuk and a Canadian . He appointed a university student who had not yet graduated as head of the mission. Stefansson remained on land.
It was planned that in a stopover in Nome, Alaska , join a group of Inuit hunters, guides and trappers, but he just showed up at the pier Ada Blackjack . The rest yielded to the bad omens predicted by a local shaman.
Ada Blackjack and her son
ada had twenty-three years. She had been educated by Methodist missionaries, so she spoke and wrote english . She knew how to sew and cook to western taste. She belonged to the Inupiat, ancient inhabitants of the surrounding lands Bering sea.
She had never lived on ice. Her husband, who drove packs on sleds, had abandoned her. Her son suffered from tuberculosis. , so she needed the salary to pay for her treatment. Despite the reluctance that she caused him to be the only eskimo of the expedition she, she embarked she.
The Silver Wave reached Wrangel in September. The members of the expedition planted the British flag and took possession of the island On behalf of King George V. It was necessary to stay in a territory for two years to claim it. Stefansson provided them with six months' supplies. The absent explorer friendly arctic defender , assured them that they would find everything they needed on the island: abundant game and wood.
They set up a camp made up of tents. Ada sewed hoods to reindeer parkas she, she repaired sealskin boots, she cooked. Crawford , the university, typed the mission diary.
After winter, food began to run short: foxes, bears and seals migrated . The traps remained empty. The wood, for the most part arrived on the island in marine drifts, was exhausted. A ship with food and supplies failed to arrive to the island because of an early frost.
In January it was decided that three members of the group would try return to Alaska through the frozen Bering Strait with sleds, driven by dogs. They were never heard from again.
Wrangel Island gives away postcards as spectacular as this one
Ada remained in the camp with Knight, sick with scurvy . She was his nurse until she died. She kept her Bible, which she read assiduously.
She did not touch the corpse of her and settled in the warehouse. Every day she cleaned her rifle and, when the weather permitted, she left the camp. The snow hid the traps. She gathered roots, she stole seagull eggs she, she chased the bears away with gunshots, but she was unable to bring down arctic geese.
In her mission journal, which she had picked up on the typewriter, she protested. She had no aim. She learned from every mistake: sink ankle deep in snow , shoot too far to the right or to the left, scare the birds , pull the trigger and miss.
One afternoon, on the way back, a cloud of geese flew over her . She raised her gun, she aimed and shot , but the geese continued their flight in silence. a hundred meters away, a bird lay on the ground . Ada ran to pick her up.
We read in one of her diary entries: “I am going for a walk to the small island. I saw the polar bears Get to the shoreline from the ice road west of camp. Now it's four o'clock. I write when I saw them. I don't know what I'm going to do if they come to camp . Well, God knows."
"I'm alone. There is no one left”
The growls of the walruses announced her return. Her aim improved. Some foxes fell into the traps . She set up her rifle on her bed to prevent a bear attack. With the skin of a seal that her companions had hunted ** and collected wood ** on the beach, she built an umiak, an Inuit boat. She had seen the men of her village do it.
In the lonely hours she experimented with the mission's photographic equipment . She was taking photos in front of the camp. Her loneliness and boredom led her to capture your own image of it.
when three months after Knight's death, a frigate arrived in search of the expedition, Ada told the captain: “I am alone. There is no one left” . Upon her return, her press extolled her as the Female Robinson Crusoe. She shied away from attention.
The relatives of the deceased undertook actions against Stefansson for negligence and lack of foresight. The Explorer bought Ada's silence with an amount that was enough to your child's treatment . She returned with him to Alaska, where she lived her until she was 85 years old.
A musk ox roaming the island