The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1905-09-20
THE RED BAR n

This was the sort of adieu that hap
pened at the "diggings" one morning
when old Skukum was well enough to
travel. To understand the interest at
taching to him we have to tell you a
few lines of Alaskan history not gen.
orally published by the boomers OF
the northern mining operations.
There was time just before the
breaking out of the Spanish-American
war and the discovery of gold in the
Klondike that there were some second
rate steamers on the Pacific coast
which were not making very big prof
it's for their owners, and members or
transportation companies, seeing no
prospect of big profits to be made in
consequence of changes following the
short war between China and Japan,
were anxious to start an exodus to the
far north or anywhere that promised
good traffic at fancy prices. Rumors
of gold discoveries in Alaska were al
ways eagerly sought out and pub
lished and every encouragement CIV
en- to men to explore the north. Such
lllCll do lIduC duu ILuthy i)uu"ih VI
San Francisco, Weare and Healy OF
Chicago and lot of others whose
steamers ploughed the seas or the
Alaskan rivers fitted out expeditions
to explore the north or establish trad
ing posts or both, while others sought
to get up plausible reports of rich
discoveries and get people to act upon
them, and place themselves where
they would be obliged to mine trade
and prospect for existence. Such a
circumstance happened to Dave Lane,
an ordinary on the whaler Alaska,
who, for misbehavior, was beached
Just west of Cape Nome in
the fall of 1898, and nearly starved
before he fell in with reindeer herd
ers in whose company he became i'm
rich, and who, in the spring
of 1900 sat in his Office overlooking
the beach where he was cast ashore
from the Alaska and saw that vessel
driven helplessly on the shoals and
beaten to pieces. He calmly smoked
a cigar and watched her go to pieces.
The same season that Lane was ex-
lied, an Inflated bark loaded with
nearly fifty men and women anchored
in Kotzebue Sound northeast of Be-
ring strait, and packed their goods
thirty miles inland to work rich placer
ground, only to find when it was too
late to get out that the stories Of gold
in the Kotzebue country were made OF
whole cloth by men who never saw
the land of long night. Four-fifths Of
the party died that winter from sour
vey and the survivors followed the
coast afoot for a thousand miles in
the summer of 1899 and came upon
the first contingent of beach miners
near Cape Nome. Old Skukum was
one of the party from Kotzebue and
spent a miserable winter in the camps
at Nome. In the spring while the
Blackfoot men were picnicking and
CLAN baking" at Dutch Harbor on
their way north, the bark Alaska load
ed with supplies was driven on the
Nome beach by storm and Skukum
tried to secure a grub stake" by
battling with the waves and picking
up supplies as they washed ashore. In
this effort he was caught between
floating timbers and had his leg brok-
en-. In the fall we find him trying
to make enough money "shoveling
OUT to take him back to Connecticut
and as he said, ito pay his family
grocery bill when he got there"
He passed up the creek with 500
in gold dust bound for Connecticut.
but the second day he was robed near
the Neusoluk summit and he reached
Nome City destitute and nearly crazy.
On the 18th day of October he was
'mushing" back and forth on the
beach as he had been for nineteen
days, vainly wishing for a chance to
get on vessel, but the steamers lay
at anchor a mile away and IL he were
aboard one of them it could only get
him ashore in a coast city with the
continent between him and home. On
that date, according to- the statement