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Letters from Mrs. John Fletcher About Ada Blackjack -**-

Dear V.S.-

May be able to mail this at Victoria, so want to say that Ada and Bennitt are with me. At the last she decided to go. Mrs. Allen helped her get ready and got her to the boat. Miss Andrus came down to see me off. I think she will write you about Mr. & Mrs. Gore, of Nome, who came down to the boat and were very excited about me putting Ada in the movies and getting money for it. I didn't quite get the idea, and asked Miss Andrus to find out and write you. I do not know whether Ada has a receipt or duplicate paper or not. Mr. Jordan said not to pay $50 now and $450. later but all at once.

I gave her $20. and spent $10. on Bennett. I am afraid this must go as a present to her because Mr. Jordan had told her I would fix her up with clothes.

She looks very well and seems quite happy to be on the way to Calif. She told me a bit ago that she didn't tell her sisters she was going, that she didn't see them much any more for they asked her for money and she didn't give it to them and they didn't like it. She didn't mind giving them "a half or a dollar but forty or fifty - no." I hope everything is all right, and I have tried to get things fixed up to suit her.

As I wired you I talked to Mr. Glass, ass't. cashier of Dexter-Horton Bank. He has looked after her affairs. He seemed to think it wise for you to pay the money to her account there - and when I told Ada she seemed satisfied with that. Perhaps it would be well for you to write to him direct, anything you want to know. I certainly have moved rapidly this day and

Last edit 21 days ago by Samara Cary
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glad to get them safely on the boat. Best wishes.

.

Dear V.S.

I have just come up from Ada's cabin where I have been sitting and talking to her for an hour or more. She is still feeling ill. She was on deck an hour or two, but went down again and stayed in bed as she seems to feel better there. She spoke a little of Wrangell. Maurer, she said, "Was a good rustler - the best shot, all the boys said." Galle and Crawford, too, got each a polar bear. Knight and Galle were talking about coming back next year as partners and trapping.

She said each of the three seals she shot had their heads shot away - "you must shoot their heads," she told me, or they'll fall into the water.

Noice had not written her. She seemed a little put out about it. She talks quite a lot about Nome and living in Nome - sometimes about Wrangell, I don't press her much about that - thinking there is time to get the story gradually, and as I do not know what is in the paper she dictated I feel that it is best to let her come to it naturally. I tell her about you from time to time. She seems to think it is nice for you to give her the trip. She seems also worried about money matters - I think she has very little in Seattle bank and she doesn't seem to be sure what she has in Nome. She just told me Noice sold her fox skins in Nome (I think). I asked if the money was in the bank and she said Noice told her so.

She is a curious mixture, frugal in some ways - a supreme confidence in what anyone tells her about money - she ddoesn't want to spend much or carry anything with her, which I told her was right, to keep her money in the bank. Bennett told me the money you gave him was gone - then he added "it is in the bank."

Last edit about 1 month ago by Samara Cary
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I couldn't help thinking again and again tonight as I was talking to her how pretty and helpless she looked, lying in her berth - her hair so dead black and her cheeks red -- I had to try hard to imagine her going thru the Wrangell experience and coming out of it so well. This I noticed - while there was anyone left, she never took the initiative in anything - as soon as she was alone she began to act and to think for herself.

She thinks now if it doesn't cost more money she will go back to Seattle by train - poor thing, she is wretched. She says she was sick for six days coming out, so I don't blame her for wanting to go by train. She expects to go north in June. She says she wishes she was in Nome - "it is cold in Seattle. She has many colds - she never had a cold on Wrangell.

Bennett is trying to teach me Eskimo - he says horse, then gives me the Eskimo word which I promptly forget and which he patiently repeats for me. Ada smiling with pride. He is a cunning youngster and I take him upstairs with me and he amuses himself watching the gulls, calling them eider duck and imitating their cry. He tells me he can ride on his reindeer, "holding on to their horns and spanking them with his hands to make them go fast."

I can't imagine why I am making so many false starts in this letter p the ship rolls a little and many people are about - it is a good trip, beautifully sunny and bracing. I'm sorry Ada is laid up.

She told me today that she has a friend, his name is Harvey and he is on the Alameda running to southeast Alaska - I think it is not too good a thing for her to have a "friend."

Ada used a soft-pointed bullet for seal tho Knight told her she must save the soft-nosed bullets in case she met polar bear - "Nanook", bennett calls the bear.

"Knight is very weak, she has to hold up his head to give him a drink at the last" - He does not shoot as well, she hears him say, he

Last edit about 1 month ago by Samara Cary
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misses so many times." She thinks native hunters would be better. She says very little about Noice now, I think she doesn't understand why he didn't answer her letter. She hasn't told me anything about dictating her story and I haven't referred to it yet.

What I will do about that depends - certainly I must have her confidence before she will talk freely. I don't believerher sliences are all intentional - I think she has no idea of what would interest people and cares less. She has no small talk - I think we American women might learn something from her "thinking silences" - after she has been quiet for some time she often breaks the silence by saying "I have been thinking..." I asked her if she thought in English, but she said, "No, in Eskimo."

She told me about the death of her two children - and of her father. How he was so sick from poison, "eating old meat then fresh meat which makes his stomach sick." They were in Solomon (?) and they "put on his skin boots and pants and his 'parkie' and wrapped him in skins, quite warm, and put him on the sled. Her sister got the dogs and started to drive him to Nome but he died on the way." She was eight (Ada) at that time.

This ship she likes better than the "Victoria" and if it is not too much trouble she would like her meals in her cabin. She calls me on the phone when the service is slow - to get them to bring ice water. Bennett drinks gallons - and eats ice in chunks, likewise puts oceans of salt and pepper on his bread.

He is cunning as can be and I like him. I think it is a fine thing you in giving her this trip. She was quite sad today when she felt too ill to get up and see the snow-covered mountains on the land - "I would like to see some snow," she said. I asked about snow on Wrangell - "not much, for the wind blows it away - in the ravines it might be deep - it packs hard. Snowed heavily in August the first summer, but that was a cold year. Grass

Last edit 18 days ago by Samara Cary
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about three inches high, and some flowers. She fished all day hoping to get tom-cod like the fish in Alaska but had no luck." I asked if there were fish in the streams, she said they found none but there might have been some in the wide streams. Knight had found a stream so wide he had to swimacross, but that was a long way off, she had not seen it.

Crawford "makes the maps." Once he was away a week and said he climbed a high mountain. The island, he thought, in a straight line would be 100 miles long and thirty miles wide. "They all seem to like it on Wrangell." Four flour sacks of skins (fox). Noice took them. She didn't know what he did with them - she thought a good many were Galle's (she did not seem positive of this). She would like to stop at McMinnville when she comes north again. She seems to like the Knights. I think this is about all of this evening's talk. I am writing it when it is fresh in my mind. I'm sorry I'm not a stenographer - but I suppose she would shy away from any effort to take down, and stop talking.

.

Ada is able to be up on deck to-day, feeling a little better. She showed me a letter she had from Noice covering wages paid to her - including fox skins - around $1770. She knows nothing of money you paid to her bank by the month. I believe it would be well for you to look into that matter. She said I could take this (Noice) letter but send to you but I said I would take a copy to send you. Perhaps whoever has her money in charge is not wanting her to know how much she has for fear she will spend it - or her family will spend it. But I think she is very shrewd for she knows she must keep it for Bennett.

She wants to work at something. She said she had thought of buying a small boat and going into the fishing business in southeastern

Last edit about 1 month ago by Samara Cary
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