Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1919-02-12
25,000 Native People in Arctic
Zone Need Everything but
Refrigerators.
10 VILLAGES HAVE SCHOOLS
Teaching Hygiene in High Attitudes,
Cooperative Stores, and Raising
.Reindeer-Each Teacher
Social Worker.

den of which has been that education
and life should be synonymous, one
part of the United States has been ex-
perieneing such an ideal in actual
| practice. In Alaska each sehoolhouse
is social center for the accomplish
ment of practical ends. Many Of the
buildings, in addition to the recitation
room, contain also kitchen, quarters
of the teacher, and a laundry and
baths for the use of the native COM
munity.
Every teacher is social worker.
Every district superintendent, in visit
| ing his widely separated schools, must
travel vast distances by sled over the
frozen, trackless wilderness. FIRE.
quently he must risk his life on treach-
erous, tempestuous waters in a native
canoe or small power boat. He must
endure the violence of the northern
storms, the rigors of the arctic winter,
and the foulness of the native huts in
which he must often find shelter.
Directed by Bureau Of Education.
This work is carried on under the
supervision of the bureau of education,
| and the details of current operation
are reported upon by William Hamil-
ton. He tells that there are in Alaska
approximately $4,000 natives in viii
lagos ranging from 80 or 40, up to 300
or 400 persons, scattered along thou
sands of miles of coast line and on the
great rivers. Some of the villages ON
remote islands OF beside the frozen
ocean are brought into touch with the
outside world only once or twice a
year, when visited by a United States
coast guard steamer on it's annual
cruise, or by the supply vessel sent
by the bureau of education.
Many of the settlements have no reg
ular mail service and can commune
cate with one another and with the
outside world only by occasionally
passing boats in summer and sIeds in
winter. During eight months of the
year all the villages in Alaska, with
the exception of those on the southern
coast, are reached only by trails over
the snow-covered land or frozen rivers.
In spite of the difficulties of the
problem a United States public school
has been established in each of sew
enty villages. In many instances the
school is the only elevating power in
the community.
tuberculosis, pneumonia, rheuma-
tism, and venereal diseases prevail to
an alarming extent in many of the
native villages, and in it's endeavor to
safeguard the health of the natives of
Alaska the bureau of education MAIN
tains hospitals in five important CEN
tiers. 1t employs physicians and nurs-
es, who devote themselves to medical
and sanitary work, and provides medi-
cal supplies and textbooks to the
teachers to enable them to treat minor
ailments and intelligently to supervise
hygienic measures. There are extern
sive regions in which the services Of
a physician are not obtainable. Ac-
cordingly, it often becomes the duty of
a teacher to render first aid to the
injured or to care for patient
through the course of serious illness.
Supervise Cooperative Store.
Another duty of the teacher is to SUI
pervise the cooperative store which is
owned and. managed by the natives,
who deal in everything but refrigera-
tors. Strange to say. the government
of the white man has to protect the
native from the white man himself.
To secure the native from the intru-
sions of the INSCRIPTIONS trader, the
bureau of education has adopted the
policy of establishing reservations to
which large numbers of natives can be
attracted and where they can obtain
fish and game and conduct their own
Industrial and commercial enterprises.
The settlement at Noorvik, on the Ko-
buk river, in arctic Alaska, is one of
the most conspicuous successes of this
policy.
With their advancement in civiliza-
ton the Eskimos living at Deering,
on the bleak sea coast, craved a new
home. Lack of timber compelled them
to live in the semi-underground novels
of their ancestors, while the killing off
of game animals made it increasingly
difficult to obtain food. An uninhab-
tied tract on the bank of the Kobuk
river, Is miles square, Astounding in
game, fish and timber, was reserved
by executive order for these Eskimos,
and thither they migrated in the sum-
mer of 1915. On this tract in the arc
tic wilderness the colonists, under the
| leadership of the teachers, within two
years have built village with well
| laid-out streets, neat single family
houses, gardens, mercantile company,
a sawmill an electric light plant, and
wireless telegraph station which keeps
| them in touch with the outside world.