a significant scaffolding and support structure that transcend every aspect of pre-Christian society. Shamans, for example, also played an important role in traditional Gwich’in society and culture. A shaman was said to develop his powers in his mid-teens. In time, once this power was fully developed, shamans would adopt a “companion animal” and carry various animal-related paraphernalia with them, such as the head of that animal.
Shamans served in a variety of functions. Economically, they assisted in bringing success to the hunt. Their ability to intercede between the animal and human worlds was essential in drawing the two together in order to facilitate success in acquiring food in a harsh and unforgiving environment (Osgood 1936: 158). Moses Sam, for example, told the following story in this regard (1987):
One old-timer told me a story that a long time ago people starving and don’t know where he’s gonna get food. And medicine man, he talked to him. And he make a big fire, people circle around, circle around just singing. And the medicine man just sing. And all the people follow. Circle around to the fire. The medicine man, he sing. The big pile of snow, he just go in there and he grab a caribou horn … [then] he pull it out.
That’s medicine man. Then in the early morning people just go out. Everybody go out there. When the daylight come, they see caribou. He use the bone marrow to find it. The caribou try to run away but he had the bone marrow. So he saved the people’s life.
Shamans also acted as medical professionals. They knew the land and its resources well and could use various plants and animal resources to cure sickness, help with childbirth, and aid in other similar needs. Again, the shaman served as intermediary, being most familiar with the natural world and recognizing what is foreign or abnormal. His role was to remove or eliminate that which was harmful or unnatural, using all means at his disposal (Dinero 2003a: 10).
Upon European contact and the arrival of Christianity to the region, the role of the shaman saw immediate decline, but shamanistic behaviors, values, and beliefs would persist for decades to come (Dinero 2003a: 12). The “meshing” of the traditional with the White, Western, Christian, European system of religious thought was revolutionary, with ramifications reverberating to the present day.
The History of the Church and the Role of Albert E. Tritt
The early origins of Episcopalian Christianity in the Alaska Interior follow a trajectory of White imperial intervention and conquest. The Church came to the region, via Anglican Canada, after the Hudson’s Bay Company built a trading post at Fort Yukon in 1847 (Mishler 1990: 121). However, it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that the Church penetrated the most distant Native communities in the territory, home to the Nets’aii Gwich’in Athabascans of the northeast region. Both White anthropologists and Church officials have documented the events that occurred during this period and their early aftermath (McDonald 1863; Nelson 1986; Slobodin 1981; Stuck 1916, 1920; Wooten 1967).
Archbishop Hudson Stuck, the first archdeacon of the Alaskan diocese, for example, writes of how this region of Alaska was allotted to the Episcopal Church as part of what amounted to a “gentlemen’s agreement” (1920: 13):
A meeting of the secretaries of the principal missionary boards was held at which an informal working agreement as to the allotment of certain regions … was reached … It was a wise, statesmanlike thing to do; it has resulted in an almost complete absence in Alaska of the unfortunate, discreditable conflicts between rival religious bodies which have not been unknown elsewhere.
The missionaries of the day were apparently willing to recognize that each church had “limited resources” and it was only “reasonable” that those who had already converted to a particular faith of Christianity were to be left alone (Mishler 1990: 122). Still, Mishler suggests, the Episcopal Church succeeded in winning over the hearts and minds of the Nets’aii Gwich’in by the mid-1860s (1990: 125) only after a lively competition had ensued with the Catholic Church, during which this “agreement” was often ignored.
The missionizing of this region of Alaska used a multipronged approach. On the one hand, missionaries such as Rev. W.W. Kirkby, who arrived in 1861, were sent directly into the field to work with the population and to teach them about Christian beliefs and values. Successful aspects of the appeal to Gwich’in sensibilities included speaking the local language and showing an appreciation for local customs and habits; additionally, Mishler suggests, some locals were “bribed” into conversion through the attractive offer of tobacco (1990: 122). But perhaps to greater effect, these same missionaries located and educated Native community members, who were to prove equally if not even more effective in transmitting Christian views to the people in a more easily understood and accepted way (Dinero 2003a: 7; Mishler 1990: 125). The millennia-old culture, beliefs, and traditions of the Nets’aii Gwich’in were all now under attack from insidious means that were difficult to detect or fend off. Another missionary, Rev. Robert McDonald, made his first visit to the region in 1863 and found that the Gwich’in were a curious people, eager to hear about Christianity and to adopt its practices (McDonald 1863; see Dinero 2003a: 7).
Such unguarded receptivity also appears to have come at a high price, for those carrying the message of Christian teachings and beliefs were firm in their convictions, and non-Christian behaviors were viewed with contempt—or worse. Archbishop Stuck was beloved by many in the Native community; he strove to respect Native culture and traditions and was thus highly regarded. Yet, when it came to the question of traditional spirituality, Stuck was firm in his highly ethnocentric and imperialist views. He writes:
The “animism” of the Yukon Indians was a gloomy and degrading superstition. It had not anywhere, I think, the horrible accompaniments of human sacrifice and cannibalism found elsewhere, but it lived in a constant dread of the baleful activities of disembodied spirits, and in constant subjection to the shaman or medicine man, who possessed the secret of propitiating these spirits and of subjecting them to his own commands … Many of the thaumaturgic stories told of these conjurors suggest the possession of clairvoyant and hypnotic powers. The people, without exception, cowered under this sordid tyranny, a prey to its panic terrors …
[T]hat the Indian race of interior Alaska is threatened with extinction, there is unhappily little room to doubt; and that the threat may be averted is the hope and labour of the missionaries amongst them. (Stuck 1916: 317 as quoted in Dinero 2003a, emphasis added)
The contempt for traditional Nets’aii Gwich’in values and culture that underpinned the views of one of the Natives’ most influential and highly regarded longtime friends and supporters is not likely to surprise the twenty-first century reader. Given the era, the values of the missionary effort, and the mentality of those who led this movement, imperialistic attitudes were to be expected. Of far greater interest here, however, is the question of how the Gwich’in were socially encapsulated into this new mindset—for it is one thing for outsiders to degrade or undervalue one’s history, heritage, and cultural traditions. It is another thing entirely to foster a sentiment through which a community begins to alter course, slowly but surely accepting foreign set of values and beliefs that vary from, if not contradict entirely, the bedrock ideologies of the past.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the conversion of most of the Gwich’in to Episcopalian Christianity was clearly well under way. Yet, as the furthermost northern Gwich’in community, the Nets’aii of the region who were slowly settling at Arctic Village continued to practice more traditional aspects of pre-Christian spirituality. In this regard, the most significant figure in this transition was Rev. Albert E. Tritt. By all accounts, Tritt may be viewed as one of if not the central founding fathers of Arctic Village, though his biography has yet to be written. Lincoln Tritt, one of his grandchildren, was perhaps best suited to this task (L. Tritt 1999), but when he passed suddenly in late October 2012 while still working on Tritt’s papers, few were able to quickly step in and fill his shoes. I have previously documented a portion of what exists in written form
