SEPT 21-23, 2019 PART 3 OLSON IN NOME, ALASKA, AND HIS OTHER STORIES
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL
JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018-19
Part 3: Lars Matt Olson and His Stay in Vermont with the Kents
Sept. 21-23, 2019
ABOVE – Olson mentions Tom Boswell quite a bit in the story I’ve
been retelling in the last few entries. Further down you’ll read about him
meeting Boswell in 1897 in Seattle, ten years after their prospecting trip into
the Yukon and Alaska. We can attest to the reliability of Olson’s memory from
this ad in the Feb. 2, 1897 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Boswell is cashing in
on all his experience by selling advice to the stampeders flooding into Seattle
on their way to the Klondike Gold Rush.
OLSON OF THE DEEP EXPERIENCE
PART 3
Now having crossed the bay, thick wooded
coast confronted us, and we worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that
shore {Humpy Cove}. But all at once there appeared as if from
nowhere a little motor-driven dory coming toward us. We hailed and drew
together to converse. It was an old man alone. We told him frankly what we were
and what we sought.
“Come with me,” he cried heartily, “come and I show you the place to
live.” And he pointed oceanward where, straight in the path of the sun stood
the huge, dark, mountain mass of an island. Then, seizing upon our line, he
towed us with him to the south.
Rockwell Kent in Wilderness, describing his meeting Lars Matt Olson on August 29,
1918 as he and his son explore Resurrection Bay in a borrowed dory seeking a
place to settle for the winter.
BELOW -- Lars Matt Olson's identification card for access to the docks in Seward. The Great War increased security along the port of Seward due to the importance of the construction of the new Government Railroad. Resurrection Bay Historical Society Collection.
If Tom Boswell
was to head down river for grub in the spring, he would need a boat. Olson used
a whipsaw and a small block plane to build a riverboat. He had no nails, so he
stripped the sled of its runners and cut out some. One day some of Boswell’s
friends, the “Montana Boys,” showed up.
“Come on
over,” shouted Boswell. “I’ve struck it fine, and you shall share.”
“What do
you mean by that?” Olson countered. “We’ve nothing to do with them.”
“I told
them that whatever I found I’d share with them,” Boswell told Olson.
“Well
then,” said Olson, “you’ll have to choose between us.”
Boswell chose
the Montana Boys. The two groups camped beside each other and started making
their rockers (sluice boxes). Boswell knew best how to make a rocker, but
wouldn’t share the information with Olson’s group. Olson closely observed him
working and learned the technique.
While the
Montana Boys worked with Boswell on his claim, Olson took his group up river to
the spot Louis had staked. Finishing work there, they headed further upstream
to John’s claim, but found it cleaned out by Boswell and the Montana Boys.
Olson later learned that Boswell and his group had headed up stream to Carter
and Mahon’s claim. They found the two clumsily hacking out a rocker with an
axe. “Don’t do that,” Boswell told them. “Go down to the claim we’ve left.
You’ll find slabs there that we’ve sawed out. With these, you can make…your
rocker.” With thanks, Carter and Mahon went down river to Boswell’s old claim,
collected the slabs, and headed back up river When they got back to their
claim, they saw that Boswell and his boys had cleaned it out. Carter was not
only angry, but he also felt foolish. He had known of Boswell’s reputation.
“He’s the greatest rascal in Alaska,” he later told Olson. “The money he took
out last year he stole from his partners on the Stewart River!”
ABOVE – I can’t
confirm the negative portrait Olson creates of Boswell. Maybe someone will
eventually find sources with evidence. I did find an article in the
Oct. 17, 1889 Butte Miner (Montana) that shows some thought Boswell guilty of
murder. The article quotes Charles B. Sperry, an engineer and minor who spent
four years in this area, including time at Fortymile.
BELOW – Map of
the Fortymile area from Gold At Fortymile
Creek: Early Days in the Yukon by Michael Gates (1994)
Olson and his
group continued up river experiencing many adventures. Olson caught pike using
fishhooks he made from sled runners. He climbed a tree to escape a bear, only
to learn her cubs were up the same tree. He shot both cubs and carried them
back to camp. They killed a moose for the meat and loaded it in their boat,
which made it difficult for Olson to handle. Louis mocked him, so Olson turned
that operation over to Louis who recklessly overturned the boat – losing
Olson’s guns, blanket, all their gold and some of their grub. “If I’d had a gun
I’d have shot that fellow then,” Olson told Kent. They were eventually able to
recover some food and two guns. With most of their food gone, they headed down
the Yukon River to Forty Mile{sic.} over three hundred miles away. On the way
they met Carter and Mahon who gave them some sugar, flour and salt. One night,
hearing some splashing in the river, Olson roused the others and they found and
shot a moose. The meat saved their lives, but it soon began to spoil. They met up with some Alaska Natives who gave
them salt to cure the meat, which they traded for a 75- pound King salmon.
Finally, they reached Forty Mile.
ABOVE –
Restaurants and bars along First Avenue at Fortymile in 1898. Photo by Eric A.
Hegg: Univ. of Washington.
BELOW – Tom
Boswell had a brother, John mentioned below. He also had a brother named George who joins him prospecting. This notice from the Oct. 17, 1886 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.
With little
more than some tobacco that Olson shared with his friends, the party survived
on one meal a day. Soon Carter and Mahon arrived at Forty Mile. After a while,
they learned that Tom Boswell, his brother, George, and one of the Montana Boys
named McCloud – had camped not far from the settlement. This would be John
McCloud mentioned by Gates in Gold at
Fortymile Creek, again verifying the accuracy of Olson’s story. Gates in
his book says McCloud arrived at Nuklukayet with Al Mayo in the summer of 1892.
In The Trading Trio of Arthur Harper, Al
Mayo and Jack McQuesten, Jane Gaffin describes Nuklukayet: A settlement at the junction of the Yukon
and Tanana rivers had supported a well-established Indian trading locality long
before the Europeans came on the scene. It was near what was later called
Tanana Station and where, in 1880, Arthur and Jennie Harper established an
Alaska Commercial trading post which was sometimes referred to as Harper's
Station but which he named Nuklukayet--probably under his wife's influence.
At Nuklukayet,
McCloud became suspicious of two other miners, Pitka and Cherosky, who had
arrived with $250 worth of gold and stocked up on tea, tobacco and calico. When
asked where they found the gold the two were silent, so secretive that McCloud suspected
they had found a profitable site, so he and two others followed them when they
left, hoping to find their location. The stopped at Fortymile where Pika and
Cherosky got blind drunk and told several of their discovery. The two later
built a cabin along the Yukon River and spent the winter there. Others built
around them, a trading post was established, and that place became known as Old
Portage. In the spring McCloud and others followed Pika and Cherosky and
they all prospected along Birch Creek to Squaw Creek to Harrison Creek – and
finally to Mastodon Creek and nearby Independence Gulch where they hit pay dirt (gold). That started a
stampede to what later became known as Circle. Jack McQuesten grubstaked
(financed) half the miners in Fortymile to work those creeks. This story
independent of Olson’s tale gives us another perspective of what was going
there.
BELOW -- Circle, Alaska in 1899, and the same scene in 2008. Source: Wikipedia.
Back to Olson’s
story: One night Carter took his double-barrel shotgun loaded with buckshot and
went after Boswell, but at their camp he found that Boswell and his group had
left. Olson later learned that after they left, Tom Boswell, his brother
George, and McCloud had “rolled” (robbed) the other Montana Boys of their gold
and headed to Nuklukayet, where they bought supplies from a storekeeper named
Fredericks and hid out on a nearby island. They build a cabin, “procured” a
native woman, and settled in. The “gold dust” Boswell had used to buy supplies
from Fredericks turned out to be a mix of copper and quicksilver with a little
gold to give it color. In those days, there was scant official law in Alaska. A
local miner’s meeting decided that Boswell had to repay Fredericks. “Mind your
own business,” Boswell responded, then prepared his cabin for a siege. The
other miners gave him a time limit to surrender or be attacked. Boswell
eventually gave in, but not until the siege had taken its toll. His brother George
was near death and others were ill. Olson later learned that Boswell led some
of his group to Russian Mission, portaged to the Kuskokwim River and got a
sloop. Heading to the
Bering Sea, Boswell eventually ended up in Unalaska and took a steamer to the
Outside (“Outside” is a term still used to refer to anyplace outside of Alaska,
usually the Lower 48 states). That winter at
Forty Mile, Olson recalled, 27 died of scurvy, including “Napoleon,” the giant
Frenchman. Olsen’s group took George Boswell, now a convalescent, downriver to
Nuklukayet to be tried for his crimes. George later made it to St. Michael, but
there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him.
(My research
indicates to me that what we’re getting here with Olson’s story is the kind of
inside information about what was going on during that period along the Yukon –
stories that just don’t make into the history books. Olson told these tales with confidence no doubt. They sounded authentic to Rockwell Kent because, as we can see here, he was authentic as were his memories.
Olson arrived
back in San Francisco in 1888 with his “little band of weather-beaten, crippled
miners.” As Kent retells it, “Olson was on crutches from scurvy, his beard and
hair were a year’s growth; all were in their working clothes, all bearded,
brown, free-spirited.
ABOVE – Article
about scurvy in the Yukon from the Nov. 1, 1888 The Victoria Daily Times
(Victoria, B.C.).
BELOW – Another
article about life along the Yukon from the Nov. 22, 1888 issue of the Tarborough Southener (Tarborough, North Carolina). Cases of survey are mentioned.
Arriving in San Francisco, each of
them carried bags, some containing up to $7000 worth of gold. Still dressed in
their old clothes, they visited the music halls “and drank gallons of beer.”
Because they spent so freely, all the girls in the upper boxes and balconies
wanted to join them. “Two days later,” Olson told Kent, “they were paid in coin
for their gold – by the mint – and all went to the tailors and got them fine
suits of clothes.” At the Chicago Hotel in San Francisco, the German landlady
was a “motherly woman who put all the grub on the table at once so you could
help yourself…” She told them: “You boys have some of you been in Alaska for
years and I know about how you lived. Now that you’re back you must have a
hankering for some things. Tell me whatever you want and I’ll get it for you.”
One of Olson’s companions replied: “I remember how my mother used to have
cabbage. I want you to get me one big head and cook it and let me have it all
to myself.”
Ten years
later in 1897, Olson met up with Tom Boswell in Seattle where, now with a
wooden leg, he managed an information bureau for prospectors. The year 1897
would be the perfect time to enter that business. Gold was discovered in the
Klondike in 1896. Word reach the outside in 1897. Prospectors flooded into
Seattle seeking advice, purchasing an outfit, and making travel arrangements to
the goldfields. The actual stampede would occur in 1898. In Seattle during
that winter of 1897, these “CHEE-chalk-ers” (tenderfoots) called Boswell “Peg
Leg Tom,” sat at his feet, absorbed his advice, and enjoyed listening to his
story about how a Polar Bear chewed off his leg. Some versions had him cutting
it off himself, Olson said; others claimed it had been amputated in Unalaska.
Olson learned that Boswell eventually led another group of prospectors North by
the Stewart River – to an old claim he called “Boswell’s Bar,” later known as
“Peg Leg Bar.” Finding no gold, he
started robbing Native caches but was found out. Escaping toward Dawson, he
learned that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were after him and
disappeared into the wilderness. That was the last Olson heard of him. (A note on
CHEE-chalk-ers. You’ll almost always find it spelled “cheechalko.” Some of the
real old timers I knew (all dead now) – and one in particular – insisted that
the real sourdoughs pronounced it as I’ve spelled it, with the accent on the
CHEE.)
So, old Tom
Boswell lost a leg, chewed off by a Polar Bear? Or maybe he cut it off himself?
Sounds like one of those tall tales told by the old sourdoughs around the camp
fire to all the naïve CHEE-chalk-ers. Well – a newspaper ad and story confirms the
validity of Olson’s memory.
ABOVE – Peg-Leg
Tom Boswell in Seattle, from the Feb. 28, 1897 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
BELOW – The
story of how Tom Boswell lost his leg to a bear in the Nov. 2, 1891 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. Rather than summarize the story, I’ll let you read it
yourself. Olson got it right -- even though it wasn’t a Polar Bear.
NEXT ENTRY
PART 4
OLSON TALE OF HIS
ADVENTURES IN NOME, ALASKA
AND A FEW OTHER OF HIS
STORIES
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