Marooned in the Arctic: The True Story of Ada Blackjack
AUTHOR S NOTE MY PURPOSE IN WRITING this book is to share the story of Ada Blackjack Johnson an incredibly courageous woman who became the only survivor of an Arctic expedition in the early 1920s However her story cannot be told without including the men who inter acted with her These were the expedition's sponsor Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the four men with whom she shared the experience Allan Crawford Lorne Knight Frederick Maurer and Milton Galle Between each of the first six chapters is a short biography of one of the men Most of Ada’s story appears in the latter chapters because there is very little information available about her earlier life I have chosen to use the term Eskimo rather than today’s preferred Inuit in referring to Ada because that was the terminology used at the time of her sto ry The men are mostly referred to by their last names and Ada by her first name this was done to avoid confusion as that is how they are discussed in the sources quoted Most of the story is based on the diaries of Lorne Knight and Ada Blackjack as well as on fragmentary notes written by Milton Galle As the reader will learn at the end of the book these manuscripts
underwent some abuse before they were retrieved and eventually made part of the Stefansson Collec tion at Dartmouth College Copies are all that are available today In some cases there may be slight dif ferences in the wording of various
Evans Point Herald Island IS I and Cape Varing Gieleton River Wr a nge Cape Hawaii Chukchi Sea South Harbour Cape Blossom Boy Banks Island Wrangel Island Point Berge Come on a Victoria Island SPERIA ALASKA Cape RUSSIA UNITED STATES Pacific Ocean CANADA
WRANGE GELL IS LAN detached peak IN THE BEGINNING ADA DELUTUK WAS BORN on May 10 1898 in the remote settlement of Spruce Creek eight miles from the small village of Solomon Alaskal As a child she listened to stories passed down by her ancestors Some of the tales taught her about stars in the sky Others told about Nanook the polar bear the ani mal most feared by Eskimos From an early age Ada developed a dread of being eaten by a polar bear and forever trapped in its stomach Imaginary fears turned into real troubles when Ada was eight years old Her father died of food poi soning and her mother sent her and her sister Rita to a Methodist mission school in Nome Ada had another sister Fina but it's not known when she was born or where she lived during this
