The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1909-10-26
ESKIMO UTOPIA IN FAR NORTH

POINT HOPE, Alaska Sept 4-Home-
bound Aactic whaling ships will take to
the south with them this fall the story
of one of the strangest Utopias that the
world has ever dreamed of. The founder.
of this colony is DR.. John B. briggs,
formerly Episcopal missionary here.
The other members of the colony are
all Eskmos, while the soil occupied is
miles above the Arctic Circle, where it
is utterly impossible to produce cereals
or even vegetables.
In a barren little valley ten miles
about Cape Lisbourne and nearly nine
ty miles from the nearest white man,
the Utopian dream of kindly old man
is shaping itself into something that
resembles a reality. AS the ships came
past they found new houses where no
one had ever dared to build before. On
the bleak shore there were men and
women and children and dogs and
everything that indicates life in the
Arctic world
Behind them rose the blush gray
sleeps of the last range of the Rocky
Mountains, which here rises with pre-
cipitous grandeur above the sea, leav-
ing only here and there little shelf
of beach upon which buildings may be
erected or boats landed. Trees there
are none and the only vegetation worth
mentioning is moss. 1t would be diff
cult to conceive 2 more unpromising
place on EARN for such a venture as DR..
briggs is now making.
How this colony came to be, how
man of more than ordinary intelligence
came to hide himself away from the
civilized world among these desolate
rocks and cofortless ice fields, is story
of more thai passing human interest.
Twenty years afo DR.. John B. briggs
came to the Arctic. He was not a
young man, for he had practised medi-
cine for some years before coming
north. Twenty years above the Arctic
Circle will make the youngest Of ten
derfeet prematurely old. The hair turns
gray sometimes within a few months
and the white mans form becomes bent
from long marches across an unmeasur-
ed wilderness. Although DR.. briggs is
not yet 60 he has all the appearance
OF a man much older and men shake
their heads and say that the old man
came back to die.
During the score of years that he
spent here as a missionary DR.. briggs
has come to love his dusky people as
few men come to love an alien race.
Their whole souled sincerity their de-
votion to each other and their unim-
peachable honesty appealed to him
strongly.
There is something in this primitive
society that fascinates those who come
that is manly and upright and strong
and kindly. Civilization may bring its
blessings but it has also brought its
curses into the northland, and one of
the worst things that it has done for
the younger Eskimos is to make them
sharp and crooked and conceited. DR..
briggs saw their nature change and the
change panied him. He longed to get
his people away from the demoralizing
forces that in some way work in and
through the new society that is creep
ing northward.
Sometimes he promised himself that
he would leave it all and forget the
Arctic world and it's people, but year
INTN hn niT M 10 f1Na
sick, he TAUGHT school and he did all
the preaching that e say any sense
in doing. Unlike many a more devout
missionary, he was not a trader. He
never seems to have thought of making
stake as they call it in the north.
But years of association with these
people has a way of changing we'll
groomed doctors into something that
resembles an Eskimo. DR.. briggs had
come to dress like an Eskimo to speak
like an Eskimo and to eat the Eskimo
fare when other fare was to be had.
He learned tie myths and folklore of the
race and its simple childlike imagery
pleased him.
cipal authorities removed DR.. briggs
and sent a missionary to take his place
but the process Of adaptation to a sa-
wage environment had gone further
than it's victim had suspected. Down
in the States DR.. briggs was a man
without a country. He had changed
and the world had changed during his
long sojourn in the north.
Old friends had long since passed
away Old associations were broken
up Coming from a simple society,
the ways of civilized society Jared on
him. SO he spent the year writing a
book and dreaming of an Eskimo ITO
pia in which he and his people might
start all over again and in which the
primitive communism of those kindly
people could flourish again.
With the opening of northern naviga-
tiOn DIR. briggs was once more on his