Community Conversations

Perspectives on Pioneers

Prepared for the Pratt Museum by Dr. Deland S. Anderson based on a Community Conversation held on 17 March 2006

A small gathering of people convened at the Pratt Museum to discuss perspectives on pioneers in the Kachemak Bay area. The old-timers present were very forthcoming with rich and revealing anecdotes. Perhaps the favorite of the evening concerned George and his sword. As the story goes, George worked for one of the Fritz Creek homesteaders. He was known in the community for playing his musical saw in church and at community dances and for being rather shell-shocked. One day the homesteader and George went logging with a 6X6 winch truck. Just the right tree was felled, the skid line attached, and the winch set into action. Progress was being made when the homesteader noticed George jumping about by the tree stump, waving his arms, acting for all the world like he was in a sword fight. The homesteader thought that was it: George has finally flipped his lid. Snapped. But upon closer inspection it was discovered that George did indeed have a sword, which he was flourishing with great excitement, and for good reason. This was an extraordinary find. Not only was it useful, entertaining, and free, it had mystery about it as well. It seemed to be a relic of a bygone age. How had it come to be in such an out of the way place? Who had it belonged to? How old was it? Eventually someone made a rubbing of the sword and sent it to England because they thought it looked British. And that’s it. End of story. That’s the way anecdotes are. But this one is of special interest because it begins to reveal layers of local history. And interestingly, the story is not about the sword and possibly the British officer who lost it or traded it to natives of the area. The story is about George, a real character of the community.

The history of the pioneers of Kachemak Bay is not monumental. Rather it is a rich tapestry woven of cooperation, tolerance and sharing. It is formed not of the bold actions of heroic individuals, but through the community efforts to subsist and to progress in a remote outpost of the United States. Over the course of the past 70 years unique and vibrant communities have sprung up around the bay. Anchor Point, Halibut Cove, Fritz Creek, and Homer are all homestead communities. These towns and villages represent the latest phase in the history of the peopling of Kachemak Bay.

According to archaeologists, people have made their homes on the shores of Kachemak Bay for some 8,000 years. Some of today’s local citizens are descendants of those or other aboriginal inhabitants of this region. Until the coming of Captain Cook in 1778 and imperial Russia shortly thereafter, this place had been the meeting point and melting pot of Alaska native cultures. Sea people met land people. Knowledge was exchanged. Life progressed. People came and went, sometimes seasonally, sometimes over epochs.

But that changed with the coming of the European powers. Ideology and economy worked together in a grand scheme to relocate, consolidate, and finally assimilate the natives of Alaska into the imperial realms of European society. There were differences between the British and the Russians in how they viewed the original inhabitants of Alaska. When Captain Cook established a monument to King George at Point Possession on the upper Kenai Peninsula he was claiming dominion over Alaska and its inhabitants in the name of the British Crown. Under the British there was to be no interference with the native inhabitants so long as they recognized the sovereignty of the King and His right to the economic exploitation of the labor and resources of the area. The Russians, on the other hand, sought to enslave the natives to press them into labor for the fur trade. Additionally they strove to bring the peoples of Alaska into the fold of the Orthodox Church. Finally, their men mixed with native women, and the resulting children became citizens of the Russian Empire with the appertaining rights and responsibilities. The community of Ninilchik was founded in 1851 as a retirement community for Russian, Native, and Creole persons associated with the Russian American Company. Nanwalek (formerly known as English Bay and Alexandrovsk) has connections that reach back into the colonial period of Russian and British expansionism. So too do the settlements of Port Graham and Seldovia. The British were superseded by the Russians, and then of course, the Americans bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867.

It was during the period of American occupation that the settlements of Homer, Halibut Cove, Anchor Point, and Fritz Creek were developed. When the first settlers came to the Homer area, they thought they were coming to an uninhabited land. Some have remarked that they never even knew about the villages of Port Graham and Nanwalek. The native people in the area, they maintained, weren’t even from here. And those in Ninilchik called themselves Russian, so they were not thought of as native. In a real sense then the American settlers in this area came under the assumption of terra nullius: the homesteaders laid claim to empty land. In so doing they were carrying on the mission of early European explorers to the New World. However, under the Treaty of Cession the status of the original inhabitants of the region remained essentially undefined, especially as regards aboriginal land rights. In 1906 Congress passed a law known as the Native Allotment Act to address this issue. Under its provisions Alaska natives were considered eligible to homestead: full or mixed blood; 21 years of age; head of a family; vacant, unappropriated, unreserved non-mineral land. Though some Alaska natives took advantage of this in Ninilchik, none are known to have done so in the Homer area. Indeed of the hundreds of homesteads filed for under this law, the vast majority are at the sites of rural subsistence resources, such as fish camps. This is to be expected in the case of the aboriginal peoples of Alaska, as they did not generally operate from the idea of private property as a bounded plane, but rather from community access to subsistence resources. The gap between Western concepts of private property (e.g., a homestead) and native concepts of community access (e.g., a fish camp) still exists in Alaska. It frequently contributes to tensions in the community at large and has resulted in landmark legislation and court precedents.

From 1867 throughout the entire twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the status and rights of Alaska’s native peoples have remained essentially undefined in key areas. The aboriginal right to ownership of traditional lands remains a murky legal issue despite the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA 1971) which purportedly extinguished all claims to aboriginal title and rights to subsistence resources. This is made apparent by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA 1980) which in effect restores aboriginal rights to subsistence on federal lands in Alaska.

This is all by way of explaining why Alaska natives did not homestead on Kachemak Bay: it was something of a category mistake. Perhaps there was more to it than that, though. Perhaps the homesteaders were meant to replace the natives. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law in 1862. That law was designed to repopulate vast areas of the United States with colonial agriculturalists in lieu of the aboriginal inhabitants of the lands, who had been removed to reserves. And, though Alaska’s natives had largely not been ghettoized on reservations, the Homestead Act was still thought of as a way to develop the vast frontier of Alaska. Being native was not a popular status for a long time. There was discrimination. There still is.

The United States government was the power that granted the homesteaders their authority to lay ownership claims to land that was owned and occupied by native peoples. The Homestead Act of 1862 led to the establishment of some 372,000 farms in thirty states. The last homestead proved up was in 1988 on the Stony River in Southwestern Alaska. The rules changed over the years and varied with location, but in this region they were as follows. Federal lands were available to persons who staked 160 contiguous acres and filed with the Bureau of Land Management. Homesteaders had to erect a habitable house, and live in it 7 months out of 2 years (if a veteran of the US military) or 5 months a year for 3 years (if a non-veteran). Additionally the homesteader had to cultivate a minimum of 20 acres. Neighbors signed to witness that these conditions had been met.

Homesteaders were in a sense missionaries for the federal government. For the deed to 160 acres they willingly encroached on aboriginal lands, extending the arm of the US government over its claims. Interestingly, the homesteaders had an ambivalent attitude toward the federal government (and later the state and local governments). The authority of that government, its bureaucrats, and enforcement officers were treated with suspicion and sometimes disdain. If oral histories are to be relied upon, lying was commonplace in testimonials whereby homestead candidates “proved up” to the BLM office. Fish and game laws were ignored with impunity. Homesteaders laugh at how they fooled “Fish and Feathers” by sounding a general alarm via telephone or runners when enforcement officers were spotted. Illegal moose were hidden. Lies and diversions drew attention away from evidence. Coffee might be served to the fish and game officer, but meanwhile children were watched closely and hushed if in their innocence they were about to brag about the moose papa got last night. Law enforcement officers seeking fugitives were also dissuaded. Licenses and registrations and the like were dismissed as a burden to homestead living as well.

This is the portrait of a community ruled by self-governance, however, not anarchy. In their defense, it must be said that the homesteaders were not scoff-laws so much as members of a community that had decided to interpret the laws of the land in a way that made sense to them. If you live without refrigeration, for example, you have to get meat when you can, whether in season or out. Furthermore, what sense does it make to put license plates on your vehicle just to have them torn off in the giant bogs that formed in the area’s dirt roads and tracks. And who would pay taxes on the lumber you took in trade for labor? And, over the years the homesteaders saw the need to enforce laws more stringently, to legislate locally, and to seek representation at the state and federal levels of government. Indeed they even got their own cop at one point.

But before the law came the rules. And the rules were simple: Don’t ask about another person’s past. Pay your bills. Don’t steal. Help others in need or go it alone–all alone. This last rule was especially important for two reasons. First, there simply are some things that can’t be done alone, such as building a church or a school, fighting fires, and dancing. These things require community. Second, if everyone helped each other by sharing labor, resources, and technology, no one was better off than anyone else, and so envy was not an issue. As one pioneer put it, Daddy used to say Depression? What Depression? Nobody has any money! Subsistence, barter, cooperation were the pillars of the local economy. As for paying your bills. If you didn’t, you couldn’t get anything in town. Word got around. People were more than friends. And, you couldn’t do business without getting personal. As for thieving, if you stole from another person, revenge was coming your way. For example, one guy stole gas from a drum. When he went back the next time, the drum had gas and sugar in it. When his engine seized, he was exposed and punished in one fell swoop. As for people’s pasts, where you came from and what you had done didn’t compare in importance to what you were going to do now. Generally speaking those who broke the code of the community were ostracized. Sometimes it was that no one would talk to them. Sometimes they were quietly grabbed and taken away. Needless to say, not everyone who laid a claim to land made it in the community.

In fact, the vast majority of those who originally staked claims in the area couldn’t make it and left. Their land, if it had been proved up on, was put up for sale. If not, it might have been reclaimed, or transferred to Alaska after statehood in 1959. But in any case, the intent of the Homestead Act has been fulfilled in the Kachemak Bay area despite many challenges.

Those few who did make it, and stayed on, are resourceful, resilient, and community minded individuals. None of them stand above others, really, but they all stand out as pioneers in their own respective communities. They and their descendants benefit from a certain caché. “Homesteader” is an honorific in this community.