Last Letters from Attu. Mary Breu

SUMMER DAY, we landed late in the afternoon at Old Harbor. As the Starr dropped anchor in the cool clear depths of the strait, we seemed to be in Paradise. The green hills were deep and smooth and luscious. From a distance it appeared like a well-kept lawn. “Wouldn’t think that foliage is shoulder high, would you?” said a fellow traveler. Later, we discovered that to be true. The silence after the noisy engine was soothing, and the shadows of the hills crept out over the smooth water. We landed at the rickety dock, with its unfinished dock house and barnacle-covered pilings. Although it was midsummer, it was fairly cool. The town was situated along the water’s edge, on a low bank, so low that at high tide sometimes it seemed as if the town would be flooded. The storekeeper welcomed us. He was practically the only one in the town. All the Natives were working at the salmon cannery at Shearwater Bay, about twenty-five miles distant. Their little toy wooden houses and tiny yards were neat and clean. The hills across the strait, within sight of the village, were snow covered most of the year. On part of another island there was a glacier that glistened all the year round.

      While in Pittsburgh, Etta had embraced the tenets of Christian Science. She believed that God and creation are good and that spiritual thought would bring a person closer to God. She also believed that healing was possible through the power of prayer, and she prayed on a regular basis. Her doctrines allowed her to accept other religious sects that she encountered, including the Moravians and Alaska Natives’ Russian orthodoxy.

      THE ALUTIIQ NATIVES of Kodiak were friendly and likable. Being very devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church, they steadfastly refused to drink during Lent. I loved to go to special services in their church, be it Easter or Christmas. They had good singing voices and good ears for music. In the beautiful chants of the Orthodox Church, without instrumental accompaniment, they sang four parts in perfect harmony.

      The memory of their funeral services remains strong. There were solemn words in the church followed by the slow procession going up the stony path to the burying ground on the hilltop. They chanted the hymns as they carried the coffin. An emotional service was held at the gravesite. Artificial flowers, expertly made, were always in evidence when there were no real ones.

      The hills of Sitkalidak Island, across the strait, were just as green, with bare gray crags above them and many turbulent streams running down the sides. Later, in exploring these hills, we found deep gullies where the streams came down, covered with luxuriant bushes, mostly salmonberries. It was fun to pick them, mostly from bushes over my head and berries as big as large strawberries. It seemed almost like picking cherries. We picked gallons and gallons, eating the fresh, and making jelly of some. They were too seedy and too watery to can whole.

      The school was built to accommodate twenty-eight students. Stoves heated the building, and coal oil and gas lamps were used for lighting. In the summer of 1930, a play yard was cleared. Bookcases, a schoolroom cabinet, medicine cabinet, workshop, storeroom, and coal bin were built. In 1931, playground equipment was constructed and sewer connections were installed.

      December 27, 1931

      Dear Mother and Dump:

      We are expecting a boat soon with mail, so I will have a letter ready to go back on her. I hope there will be lots of good news for us, my usual hope.

      I have been wondering about your Christmas. It must have been a very quiet one for you, Mother, if you and Russ were alone. I suppose Dump had her new family with her, and Nan, too. Christmas tree ’n everything. [Marie had married Frank Wiley, a friend from her church. Frank had two grown daughters, Helen and Betty.]

      We had a nice, quiet Christmas. It looked like Christmas, too. More snow than they have had here for years, several inches. There was bright sunshine during the day, and a brilliant moon at night, so the snow sparkled all the time in true Christmas style. The day before Christmas we had our little tree in the school. It lasted well, and looked quite gay with its decorations. The children did their little pieces. Much of the English could not be understood, but listeners did not know the difference. Everyone in the village came except one woman who was in bed with a new baby.

      I was surprised by the gifts I received. This was the first tree and school entertainment they had ever had here, and I didn’t think they would know about gifts, but two of the women had been raised in a Baptist orphanage, and they got the rest of them started. They knew what was what. I got: four bags of bear gut—two trimmed with eagle feathers, one with bits of colored yarn, one with beads; a little basket woven of Native grasses, beautifully done; a homemade necklace; some kind of ring; an ermine skin; a very much worn fancy comb for the hair; a washed handkerchief; and a much worn “boughten” necklace.

      The eagle feathers make the best trimming. Foster got a ladies new handkerchief. That night there was a dance in the schoolhouse, which everybody attended. There was a dance also the next night, but few came to that. Two dances in succession seemed too much.

      Well, I’ll sign off until I get your letters, and then I’ll write again.

      Lots of love,

      Tetts

      January 17, 1932

      Dear Mother and Dump:

      We are just finishing up the Christmas holidays. After our regular Christmas, there were all the Russian celebrations. Tonight the whole village masks and goes around from house to house to mystify each other. There can’t be anyone at home in most of the places except children and old folks, because everyone else is on the road. There is a continual procession of them in here and some of them are good. We are supposed to guess who they are, and we usually guess everyone in the village, beginning at one end and going right through. In that way, we are sure to hit the right one sooner or later. Some of them are so funny, I have laughed till my sides ached. They get a lot of fun out of it. They have done this masking every night now for over a week. Usually there was a dance, where different masked ones danced the Weasel dance, but tonight being Sunday, we will not let them dance in the schoolhouse, and last night being Saturday, and part of their Sabbath, they would not dance. As one of them expressed it, “The priest might give us hell.”

      The first three days of their Christmas were strictly religious, church twice a day, and carol singers going from house to house with the Christmas star. That is a very pretty custom, and the singing is beautiful. I went around with them for two nights, and when they came here, I treated them to cake. It kept me busy baking, because I used three cakes each of the three nights, nine cakes, all iced, too. Tonight’s masking is different from the other nights. There is something about not seeing their shadows, so they back in, all wrapped up in sheets or blankets, and stand very solemnly until we guess who they are. Tomorrow there is a church service in the afternoon, and that ends their holidays. What tickles us is that the U.S. flag has been hoisted over their church at this time, and no other so far as we can find out, and the explanation is simply “holiday.”

      We are more than anxiously looking for a boat from Kodiak tonight, because it has been more than a month since the last one was here, and we have been looking for it almost every day since New Year’s Day. The weather has been pretty cold and stormy for ocean travel, so I suppose that is the reason for the delay. The last few days have been delightful, warm and quiet, and a boat from Seattle was expected in Kodiak two days ago, so surely one must be on the way here. A trader’s boat stopped in here a few days ago on its way to Kodiak, and they took the mail for us, but they may not have connected with the Seattle boat. In that case, it will be a long time before you get my letters. I hope they did make connections. The next two months will be just about as bad, because they are stormy months, but after that, mail will be more regular.

      Although we have had some cold and stormy weather so far, the winter, as a whole, has been a mild one. We hear over the radio of fifty below temperatures around Fairbanks and other places, but here, except for two nights, it hasn’t gone below zero. The radioman tells us of the queer freaks played by the weather in Alaska. At Takotna, there were seven feet of snow, and twenty-eight miles from there only seven inches. The temperature in one place rose over seventy-five degrees in twenty-four hours, from around fifty below to thirty above.

      I’ll