For Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Fairbanks, Spring 2018

Walter Harper’s Life Story

•  Sheds light on an era when Western immigrants and culture inundated Alaska Native peoples and cultures. –  The effects of new belief systems, products, habits and

diseases ranged from liberating to crushing.

•  Illustrates Episcopal mission efforts to protect Native peoples from harm, even as they, too, introduced change.

•  Demonstrates the capacity for human interaction to maximize the individual’s potential.

•  Exemplifies resilience in a young man whose physical, mental, and moral excellence reflected acculturation in both Athabascan and Western life ways.

Walter Harper •  Born in late 1892 at Nuchelawoya/Tanana, the

youngest of eight children •  Parents were Athabascan Seentaána (Jenny) and

the legendary Irish immigrant Arthur Harper. – Arthur Harper had arrived in Alaska in 1873.

•  Prospected and traded in AK - Yukon for next 25 years •  Ogilvie credited him with being the first to recognize AK

- Yukon’s potential as a gold field

•  The Harpers separated in mid-1890s; Jenny returned to Tanana with Walter –  She raised him in the Athabascan tradition.

•  Walter became adept at subsistence skills at a young age.

•  When he was 15, (1909) Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck met him at his family’s fish camp. –  Stuck convinced Jenny to send

Walter to school at St. Mark’s Mission, Nenana.

•  Spring 1910 – Stuck chose Walter as his trail guide and river boat pilot/engineer. –  Walter knew his own (long

deceased) father only by reputation

–  He would become like a son to Stuck.

Walter Harper at St. Mark’s (standing)

•  The British-born Hudson Stuck immigrated to America in 1885 at 21.

•  He arrived in Alaska in 1904; became Episcopal Archdeacon of Alaska.

–  Until his death in 1920 he traveled among the Episcopal Missions in Alaska’s Interior, visiting fish camps and villages.

•  Advocated for Alaska Native rights

•  Urged Natives to maintain their traditional ways

•  Like other missionaries, he spurred change through introducing Christianity and western education.

Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck

Since Stuck began his work as a traveling missionary in Alaska, he had selected bright Native boys as trail guides. •  He mentored and tutored them.

•  Harper became Stuck’s valued assistant –  Trail guide in winter

–  River boat pilot in summers

–  Interpreter

•  Their home base was Fort Yukon.

On the Trail and River w/ Archdeacon Stuck

Walter with a fox he caught and brought aboard the Pelican

Harper on the winter trail

The Ascent of Denali •  Hudson Stuck, an amateur mountaineer, had long

dreamed of climbing Denali. –  North America’s tallest peak had never been summited.

•  By fall of 1912, plans were in place.

•  He and outdoorsman Harry Karstens would co-lead an ascent in spring 1913.

•  The ascent team included Stuck, Karstens, Harper, and Robert Tatum. –  Johnny Fredson and Esaias George, students at St. Mark’s

Mission, provided support.

•  They set out from Nenana in March 1913.

•  And they reached the summit on June 7 – Walter first.

Denali In Athabascan Denali means the Great One

In 2015 President Obama restored the mountain’s traditional name - Denali

Hudson Stuck on Harper’s performance: “Twenty-one years old and six feet tall, he took gleefully to high mountaineering, while his kindliness and invincible amiability

endeared him to every member of the party” (Stuck, Ascent of Denali, 6).

The Northeast Ridge shattered by the earthquake in July, 1912

The Linchpin in the Expedition •  Initially, team was exuberant, lighthearted

–  Walter and boys hunted for food –  Frolicked, pulled pranks

•  Challenges mounted, conflicts arose –  Harper’s cheerfulness, non-confrontational

style smoothed tensions –  His strength, stamina and stoicism pushed

team forward •  He assumed Stuck’s burdens, chores •  He and Karstens did hardest work

•  Karstens: “The deacons boy Walter was a good one 21 years old strong fearless and fine & lovable disposition as I ever saw in a man he was my main standby.*

•  *Karstens to Charles Sheldon

The Canadian Pacific Railway-owned Princess Sophia ca. 1912

In the fall of 1913, Harper and Stuck traveled Outside on the Princess Sophia. Walter entered the Mount Hermon School for Boys in NW Massachusetts.

Mount Hermon School for Boys

Renowned Christian evangelist, Dwight Moody, founded Mount Hermon Boys' School in 1881. •  It offered an education to "young men of sound

bodies, good minds, and high aims" with “limited means.”

•  Unlike government industrial schools of the era (such as Carlisle), Mount Hermon did not seek to assimilate Native Americans or to train them exclusively for trades.

•  It sought to prepare Native American (and other) students for the professions (medicine, law, teaching) and encouraged them to return to leadership positions in their communities.

In 1913, Mount Hermon had 663 students, including 165 foreign students. The average age was 20.5 years. Tuition, room and board cost $120 per year.

Crossley Hall at Mount Hermon, where Walter lived

Walter’s Faith

•  In July 1910, he was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at Tanana and took his first communion.

•  According to Stuck, Harper lived his faith, rather than proclaiming it. He said Harper was not religious in a formal or pretentious way. – His faith shone in his conscientiousness and in maintaining

his self respect, in his kindness and consideration of others, in resisting temptation, in his honorable bearing.

–  Stuck concluded that the basis of Harper’s character lay in “an intense self-respect.”*

•  No record of Walter’s own characterization of his faith . . .

*Stuck, “Vale Walter Harper,” Fairbanks Daily News Miner, December 4, 1918.

Walter Harper at Mount Hermon

Impacts of the Mount Hermon Years

•  The “foreign” setting and demanding curriculum shook his confidence.

•  Yet he made great strides in his western education.

•  He left, resolved to prepare himself for medical school, so he could serve his people as a medical missionary.

•  Despite a remarkable ability to navigate in Western society, he was only at home in Interior Alaska.

Return to Alaska •  Walter left Mt. Hermon after 3 years. •  On their way to Alaska in 1916, he

and Stuck traveled across the country. –  Rev. William Thomas, joined them in

Chicago. •  He was to begin missionary work in Alaska.

–  They spent 9 glorious days backpacking through Yellowstone National Park, then traveled by boat to Alaska.

•  Back home, Walter resumed his role with the traveling Archdeacon. –  Again he thrived.

Harper and Thomas aboard the Pelican

At the Allekaket in 1917 – Stuck with goggles; Walter with hand on handlebar

Evolving Plans

•  Harper and Stuck continued Harper’s education together, now preparing for college and medical school.

•  Frances Wells, a missionary nurse, and the Great War altered his plans – Walter and Frances met when she arrived

in Fort Yukon in the summer of 1917. – By summer’s end they had fallen in love.

– The romance didn’t receive much support . . .

The Winter Circuit traveled by Harper and Stuck 1917-1918

WalterHarper

APortrait

Walter and Frances married on September 4, 1918.

Could this photo be from their wedding day?

Hunting Trip - Honeymoon •  Honeymoon - 3 weeks of “roughing it”

in Walter’s favorite hunting territory, having “one famous time.”

•  Their luck was fair: Walter felled 2 caribou, 2 moose, 3 bears, and some small game.

•  “It was all miles of fun and I venture to say that no two people could have gotten more real pleasure out of it than we did,” Frances later wrote Walter’s sister Margaret.

•  On October 10, they left Fort Yukon on the Alaska.

•  On October 23 they boarded the Princess Sophia in Skagway.

Frances Wells 1917 or 1918

Walter Harper 1918

The Princess Sophia grounded on Vanderbilt Reef October 1918

On October 25, the Princess Sophia foundered. All 350+ people aboard perished.

March 1919: Stuck notified officials at Mount Hermon of Walter's death. "It has been a terrible blow . . . . He was as a son to me. He has left behind him a sweet memory and the light of a bright example. He was at once the strongest and the gentlest, the cleanest and the most amiable youth I have ever known, the fine flower of the mixed blood. . . . At the same time he was the best shot, the best dog-driver, the best hand with any sort of boat from a birch bark canoe to a power launch, the most resourceful and capable man I have known in Alaska.”*

*Stuck to Henry Cutler, Mount Hermon, March 15, 1919, Walter Harper file #7697MH, Northfield Mount Hermon Archives.

Acknowledgements & Main Sources

•  APR – Rasmuson Library: Rose Speranza and Charles Hilton •  UA Museum of the North: Angela Linn •  Peter Weis – Northfield Mount Hermon Archives

Main Primary Sources: •  Walter Harper’s Diary of the ascent •  Mozée Family Collection, APRCA, Rasmuson Library, UAF •  Stuck, Karstens and Tatum diaries of the ascent •  Hudson Stuck diaries and correspondence (Episcopal Church) •  Hudson Stuck publications: Ten Thousand Miles, A Winter Circuit,

Voyages Along the Yukon, The Alaska Missions + articles •  Wells family website with numerous of Frances’ letters •  William Thomas diaries