Lisl's Bits and Bobs: Great Land History: The Legend of the Sleeping Lady

Happy Alaska Day!!

Great Land History: The Legend of the Sleeping Lady

October 18 is set aside each year to celebrate in the Great Land the transfer of Alaska from Russian to American governorship. When the date falls on a Sunday the official celebration is the following Monday. If the 18^th is a Saturday, as is the case this year, Friday does double duty in celebrating both the end of the work week and raising of the American flag over Alaska for the first time on October 18, 1867, in Sitka. It is marked by parades, dances, costume balls, memorial services and other festivities to commemorate the anniversary.

People will also be talking about and re-visiting in various ways all things Alaskan. In the case of Anchorage one subject frequently on the residents’ radar is the Sleeping Lady, who rests within sight of their shores, a little over 30 miles across Cook Inlet.

Sacred to the local Dena’ina people, Dghelishla, little mountain, also bears an English name, Mount Susitna, from the nearby river with the same name, Tanaina for sandy. To the Dena’ina, she is connected to the mighty peak Dghelay, big mountain, known to Alaskans as Denali, Athabaskan for The Great One.

 No one can say for sure how or when the legend of Sleeping Lady started, and elder and storyteller Shem Pete did not perceive it to be part of his people’s traditional legends. What is known is that about five million years ago, melting glaciers crushed solid rock, eventually forming a mountain over 4,300 feet high and 13 miles long. The resulting sculpture strongly resembles a woman in repose, her long hair streaming behind her as she lay in slumber. 

It has been speculated that prospectors seeing Susitna as a woman brought her story to life, but whatever the case, as Ann Dixon writes, it continues to be told far and wide, including amongst Athabascans in the Tyonek area today. Dixon sets the story down in her children's picture book, The Sleeping Lady.

*********

********* 

 

In a warmer time than it is in Alaska today, when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers peacefully shared the land with fruit trees and the gentle people of what today is known as the Cook Inlet area, a boy and a girl were in love and planned to marry.

The day before Nekatla and Susitna were to wed, a stranger burst into their village, wildly warning about warriors from the north who left a trail of destruction: murdered kinsman, plundered lands, houses set to fire.

The villagers gathered and spoke of many ideas, but it was Nekatla’s plan that was eventually adopted. Wanting to preserve the peaceful ways his people had enjoyed for so long, his proposal entailed meeting up with the frightful warriors, bearing gifts instead of weapons, and persuading them to live in peace. The villagers agreed and all the men prepared for departure on the morrow.

The next morning, rather than being unified in marriage, Nekatla and Susitna bade each other a sad farewell, with promises nonetheless:

“We will be married as soon as I return.”

“I will wait for you at this very spot.”

And so Susitna waited at the same spot she promised Nekatla she would, a hill upon which the pair had previously spent many happy hours. With the baskets she had collected, Susitna gathered fruit until the day became spent. When the daylight marked the second morning since Nekatla’s departure she wove more baskets. On the third day, certain her beloved would return at any moment, she sewed, keeping an eye for his arrival.

Susitna waited, though each day seemed longer than the last, and in this way many days and nights passed, alas, still with no Nekatla in sight. Weary of her tasks, her imagination feeding possibilities regarding the men of her village, Susitna lay down to sleep, but only for a moment. 

*********

"Nekatla was brave."

This was reported from a boy who had escaped what became a slaughter, initiated with a spear thrown by one of the northern warriors. The Inlet men had tried to defend themselves, but the fearsome attackers set upon them, unrelenting until all were perished, even some of their own. 

Wakening Susitna to tell her of the horrible news did not bear thinking about, and so the women of the village wove soft grasses and wildflower blossoms into a blanket and gently laid it over their sleeping sister. 

That night all warmth and joy left the village. As the air grew colder and colder, Susitna settled more deeply into sleep. 

All around her, the fruit trees froze and died, falling like the men in battle. 

The tears of the villagers gathered into clouds, and, in the chill air, returned to earth as Alaska’s first snowfall.

And so the time went.

Days, weeks, months, years, hundreds at first, then thousands, passed. Warmth eventually returned to the land but only for a brief period each year. New animals and even people, though not giants like the Inlet people, came to settle the land.

*********

*********

The Lady slumbers beneath the aurora borealis

And now here, too, are we, and we see what the settlers saw, and now has passed to us. In our snowy country called Alaska there lay a watershed, near which rests a mountain called Susitna, but that we know is really the slumbering form of a woman dreaming of, waiting for, her beloved. The seasons come, they go, and still she waits. We call her the Sleeping Lady or, simply, the Lady. 

In the winter when we look across the Inlet, she can be seen beneath a thick, snowy quilt. In summer she rests beneath the flowered blanket laid upon her form so long ago by her people, unable to bring grief to the girl so in love. 

Now our people say that Nekatla shall one day return. War will cease to ravage the land, peace once more shall reign, and on that day, Susitna shall awake and be re-united with her beloved. 
 

The Best of the Review: Favorite Posts from the First Half Year (Volume IX)

Anchorage, Alaska: Tent City in the run up to Christmas 1916~~Lisl

(From the Great Land series)

Simon Stirling writes ...Where do you start?  There have been so many great posts, and such a variety, that I needed to narrow down my criteria if I was going to make a choice. I'm naturally drawn to nonfiction, and so one of Lisl's fascinating pieces about Alaska and its history was a must.  After plenty of umming and ahhing, I settled on her brilliantly illustrated post about Tent City (Anchorage) in the run up to Christmas 1916.

"No other part of the earth known to man surpasses
Alaska in imposing and beautiful scenery."--John Muir

The city of Anchorage, located in the Southcentral region of Alaska, lies within a bowl along the Cook Inlet and is overlooked by the Chugach mountains to the east. Although Russians had an established presence in the 19th century, Alaska Geographic notes settlements of the Dena'ina people, possibly as early as 500 AD (Volume 23, Number 1).

 The late Dena'ina elder Shem Pete remembered seeing the tents of Anchorage for the first time in 1914 (AG). The white tents had begun to spring up in response to talk--and later confirmation--of a western route selected for construction of a federal railroad from Seward, south of Anchorage on the Kenai (KEE-nigh) Peninsula, to the region of Alaska known as the Interior. This tent city was located under a bluff now known as Government Hill, and rested on land subject to siltation and vulnerable during earthquakes. By June of 1915, according to Michael Carberry quoted in AG, "more than 2,000 souls packed the short-lived settlement."

Though it was 1920 before Anchorage became incorporated, men looking for work didn't wait around to establish lives in their new location. After a short time it was determined that more women and families were needed and indeed they came. Conditions were harsh but life was conducted and the people of Anchorage wasted little time isolating themselves. The Pioneer-News (later Anchorage Daily Times) published its first issue in May of 1915. Perusals of the ADT's archives by late 1916 show a people who remembered their origins, but looked forward to the future and where they were then, which included living life as typically as they would anywhere else. Adverts are seen in the issues of the day for bowling alleys, pool parlors, cafes, hotels, barber shops, photo studios, furniture, sweets, banking, cigars, candies and fruits, auto service, lumber, druggists, packing companies, toys, books, periodicals, glassware and more. 

They also wished to keep up with goings-on in the world, especially as by this time the Great War was raging around the world. As Christmas 1916 approached the people of Anchorage lived a sort of dual life: attempting to maintain standards and create satisfying lives whilst simultaneously coping with hardship and bad news.

Click here to continue reading...

*********

The Strange Case of Mr Brodie and Mr Hyde~~Stuart Laing

(From the Edinburgh History series)

Edinburgh is a city which lends itself to notorious characters both real and fictional. From the body snatchers Burke and Hare to Inspector Rebus, all have trod on the cobbled streets of the Old Town, but one criminal from the 18th Century has been remembered with a pub, a play, a close (alley), a song and a film all named after him. His name? William Brodie.

Born the son of a well respected and much admired cabinet-maker young William followed in his father's footsteps and became a skilled cabinet-maker in his own right. With the death of his father William inherited not only the business but also a huge sum of money.

This sudden wealth allowed William to experience all those finer things in life which had previously eluded him and he quickly became firmly hooked on gambling, boozing and whoring his way through the best brothels, gambling clubs and pubs on the dark and dangerous streets of Edinburgh. All of this was unknown to those who continued to seek his services as both cabinet-maker and locksmith, and through the good name of his father he was eventually invited to become a member of Edinburgh Town Council which earned him the title of Deacon Brodie: the title by which he is best known today.

Unfortunately for the now Deacon Brodie, the inherited wealth was rapidly running out and with a string of mistresses and several illegitimate children to care for he was placed in a quandary of his own making. He could forego the High Life, knuckle down and make the best of a bad situation through hard work and frugality with the little money he had left, or he could seek an alternative means to maintain his wild lifestyle.

Unfortunately for the now Deacon Brodie, the inherited wealth was rapidly running out and with a string of mistresses and several illegitimate children to care for he was placed in a quandary of his own making. He could forego the High Life, knuckle down and make the best of a bad situation through hard work and frugality with the little money he had left, or he could seek an alternative means to maintain his wild lifestyle.

His skill at cabinet-making meant he was never short of work and added to his skill was his position and title which meant that the Great and Good of the town were only too happy to employ him in their own homes. Unknowingly they were inviting the devil in with their smiles and kind words. Brodie took full advantage of their trust to make copies of their house keys and spy out what was valuable and where it was to be found at a later date.

Click to continue reading...

Great Land History: 1964: Good Friday Earthquake

 March 27, 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Alaska's devastating Good Friday Earthquake

We remember this week those who lost their lives and pledge to help others 

When earthquakes in the United States come into conversation, people tend to think of California, memories being so vivid of the terrible destruction that has so often visited that state. However, what many outside the state of Alaska—Outside, as Alaskans say—are unaware of is that the northern state is much more seismically active than the sun-drenched, western one, with movement occurring nearly every day, often many times within 24 hours.

Of course, Alaskans tend to be used to their earthquakes; the great majority of them are quick and small. There is a minor amount of shaking and people may pause and look at one another (or not), waiting out the few seconds it usually takes to be done. Occasionally buildings will sway, as they are designed to do; sometimes a plate may fall off the wall or glassware rattle on the shelves. Typically this is all.

When the shaking started on March 27, 1964, people generally responded in the same way. It was a Friday, Good Friday in fact; schools were closed and businesses wrapped up early for the holiday. The weather had warmed up to 28 degrees (-2 C) and the afternoon and early evening proceeded like any other.

Unbeknownst to Alaskans, however, the Pacific plate pushing under the North American, 100 miles east of the largest city, Anchorage, had been grinding away and was about to subduct. They were to know soon enough, however, as the rattling continued and the ground began to move beneath them. Surface waves motioned and gaping fissures in the ground split downtown Anchorage apart. 

Linda, a woman I worked with some years back, would occasionally remember that day for me, her most significant memory being of a man “running buck naked right through downtown.” He had been dressing following a sports activity when the quake struck. She said she was so traumatized by the sight and how devastated and humiliated the poor man might have felt, that she vowed she would never find herself in such a situation. “To this day,” I recall her declaring, “even showering at home involves having clothes at the ready, right there for me to grab if needed.”

Simultaneously in various areas, trees were torn from their roots, houses and buildings collapsed and people held onto anything they could grab to keep from falling over, or into the split streets themselves. Fourth Avenue, Anchorage’s main street, fell by 12 feet and an elementary school on Government Hill was torn into pieces. In a residential area 30 blocks of land slid into the water and the international airport’s control tower fell like a house of cards.

Valdez (Val-DEEZ), a small city close to the epicenter near Prince William Sound, was in utter ruins. The ground rose and fell, cracked wide open and snapped shut, and buildings collapsed. A cargo freighter, the SS Chena, was hurled onto dry land and the dock shredded; later it was carried back out to sea.

The effects were similar in other cities: Resurrection Bay hungrily swallowed nearly one mile of Seward’s seafront, the train yard destroyed and the oil tank farm erupted into flames. Kodiak lost half its fishing fleet. After four minutes of the earth violently churning beneath and around them, surviving Alaskans around Southcentral surveyed the devastation, and were horrified. The destruction related here was just a small portion of the aftermath: the cost of damage was $311 million (seen elsewhere: in today’s currency, $2.8 billion).

That wasn’t all. Next to come was the tsunami, occurring when the Alaskan seafloor lunged upwards, causing the water above it to be hurled into the air and towards land. Some survivors managed to outrun it (likely having had a head start) or escaped to higher ground. Valdez was beaten by tsunami waves late into the night and eventually fell to the torrent, rendered uninhabitable. The tsunami caused such destruction to trees that now, 50 years later, their corpses are still seen along the highway near Portage and Girdwood, where 20 miles of the Seward Highway had to be rebuilt as it had sunk to below the high water mark.

Dennis Giradot remembers the earthquake even though he was only five at the time. KCAW transcribes an audio in which Giradot recalls a flying pot of chili, his Beatles-fan brother’s guitar-shaped birthday cake (decorated with chili) and the sway of buildings outside their window.

[T]he next two nights we actual [sic] slept in our car[;] my dad had this big Mercury something… it was a blue thing with big fins in the back. The aftershocks were so constant and so strong we didn’t know if the building would hold up.

 

Others’ memories aren’t necessarily so lighthearted: Kim Kowalski-Rodgers recalls for KTUU the sounds she heard first as an eight-year-old child playing outside her family’s home on Third Avenue. “I knew it was a monster.” Indeed, the horrible noises the earth made did sound like those emitted from the brawling lungs of a dark imagining. When I first saw video of the earthquake, at Good Friday Earthquake Rocks Alaska, as it had occurred in Anchorage, the audio impacted me at least as much as the destruction in action before my eyes: the awful noises sounded like those Grendl might have made as he was mortally wounded, and I thought people surely must have been terrified by them.

 

In terms of death toll, numbers don’t come close to the 700 lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake: 128. However, when measuring magnitude activity, this 9.2 quake went on record as the largest US quake in recorded history and in the world second only to Chile’s, occurring in 1960.

The disaster is still remembered by people around the world because although the damage was worst in Alaska, effects were felt around the world. The initial seismic waves shook buildings in Seattle and lifted Houston, Texas ground by six centimeters, 10 in Florida. Like a wave that ripples from one end of a body of water to another, so too did the shock waves across the globe, as they circled the world for the next two weeks. The tsunami that destroyed Valdez also reached the Hawaiian Islands and Japan, and killed 10 people in Crescent City, California. 

Alaskans are frequently reminded their land is "overdue" for another sizeable earthquake, but next time the damage is likely to be worse, especially if it occurs on a day open for business and academics.With a now-larger population and infrastructure, there is more to be lost. Shipping remains as weather dependent as ever, however, and it were to occur in winter months, the death toll could rise in the aftermath if lodging and food supplies are inadequate.

 

In this week of remembrance we reflect on those who lost their lives in 1964, and prepare as best we can to help those in need following any future disaster. 

Sources (not listed above) and further information:
Earthquake preparedness at AEIC

Tom Irvine 

USGS: Historic Earthquakes

Great Land of Alaska: 1964 Good Friday Earthquake