Ada Blackjack Diary

Ada Blackjack (née Delutuk) was the sole survivor of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition. Born May 10, 1898 on an Iñupiat settlement in Spruce Creek, Alaska, she was sent to a Methodist mission school in Nome as a young girl. At sixteen, she married Jack Blackjack and had three children with him. They divorced when she was twenty-two, leaving Ada destitute and forced to put her surviving son in an orphanage. She made a meager living doing sewing and housework for miners in Nome, where was eventually hired to go on the Wrangel Island expedition. During the expedition, she suffered under the harsh conditions of the Arctic, loneliness and longing for her family, and mistreatment by the other expedition members. After two harrowing years on Wrangel Island, she was rescued in September 1923; she was 25. Upon her return, she moved to Seattle with her son Bennett and lived a quiet life, despite a media circus surrounding the men who had died on the expedition. She remarried and had another son, Billy. Eventually, she returned to the Arctic where she lived until her death in 1983; she died in Palmer, Alaska at the age of 85.

Lorne Knight (born Errol Lorne Knight) was second-in-command on the 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition; he was age 28 at its start. Of all the members, he had the most experience in the North, and served as the “unofficial authority.” From McMinnville, Oregon, Knight met Stefansson in late 1915 while traveling on the Polar Bear with Captain Louis Lane. While the Polar Bear was anchored a few miles off of Canada’s Cape Kellet, its crew spotted Stefansson, who had been traveling on foot in the Arctic. For the next four years, Knight was educated by Stefansson in Arctic survival. Later, he joined Stefansson and Maurer on the 1921 spring Chautauqua circuit. That year, Stefansson also asked Knight to be a member of his second Wrangel Island expedition; Maurer immediately said yes. The team arrived on Wrangel Island on September 15, 1921, and over the following years suffered immensely, facing harsh Arctic conditions as resources ran dangerously low. After returning from a short solo trip in July 1922, Knight steadily grew weaker and more ill. He died June 23, 1923, while the other men were traveling to get help.

One of Ada Blackjack’s three sons from her first marriage, Bennett was Ada’s only son to survive infancy. After Ada and Jack Blackjack’s divorce, Ada took Bennett to an orphanage in Nome, as he was sickly and needed the attention of doctors and nurses; Ada could not make enough money from her meager income as a seamstress and house cleaner to take care of him. She hoped to save up enough money to eventually get him back, and this is in part why she chose to go on the Wrangel Island expedition. Upon Ada’s return from Wrangel Island, Ada moved with Bennett to Seattle in fall 1923 to seek treatment for his tuberculosis.

Milton Galle was an assistant on the 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition. He was the youngest member, only age 19 at its start. Born Milton Harvey Robert Galle, he was raised in New Braunfels, Texas, where he first met Stefansson during a Chautauqua circuit. He went on to tour with Chautauqua; a week into the 1921 tour, he received orders to return to New Braunfels and become Stefansson’s secretary. Maurer and Knight (who met Galle during the 1921 Chautauqua circuit) had taken a liking to Galle, and told Stefansson they wanted him to come along for the next Arctic expedition. Stefansson was initially hesitant to let him join, but eventually agreed to let Galle go on the terms that he would not receive a salary, only earning a percentage of the money from furs he managed to bring back. On January 28, 1923, Milton, along with Maurer and Crawford, tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia and travel some 90 miles to get help; they were never seen again.

Jack Blackjack was a hunter and musher who married Ada Blackjack when she was age sixteen. They separated when she was twenty-two years old in 1921. He treated her brutally during their marriage and eventually deserted her on the Seward Peninsula, where they were living; destitute, she was forced to walk home to her mother in Nome (about forty miles away). While Ada was away on the Wrangel Island expedition, Jack Blackjack drowned in a river and died.

Ada Blackjack’s sister. In Ada Blackjack’s informal will, she wrote that she would like her sister to take care of her son Bennett if she did not make it back from the Wrangel Island expedition.

Born William Stephenson in 1879 in Manitoba, Canada, Stefansson was an explorer, anthropologist, public intellectual, and policy adviser whose life work included several important expeditions to the Arctic. He began planning an expedition to Wrangel Island somewhat secretly beginning in the fall of 1920, hoping to definitively claim Wrangel Island for Canada or Britain. As his active exploring career had already ended, he stayed in Canada while the team went to Wrangel Island. Ill-equipped and inexperienced, all four men hired by Stefansson died in 1923; Ada Blackjack was the sole survivor of the trip. Stefansson had a significant association with Dartmouth College, beginning in the 1920s and 30s when he was an occasional lecturer. In 1947, he moved to Vermont with his wife, working on the Encyclopedia Arctica and becoming an Arctic Consultant to the College. Though the Encyclopedia Arctica project was canceled in 1951, its unpublished chapters and associated materials are now housed in the Rauner Library as part of the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration. Stefansson continued teaching and writing at Dartmouth until his death in 1962 in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he is now buried.

Fred Maurer was third-in-command on the 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition. From New Philadelphia, Ohio, he was 28 at the start of the expedition. Before the Wrangel Island expedition, he worked as a deckhand on the Belvedere, a whaling ship; in 1906, he met Vilhjalmur Steffansson, who came aboard as the captain’s honored guest at Herschel Island (off the northern coast of Canada). Later, Maurer was hired as a fireman for Stefansson’s disastrous 1913-14 Canadian Arctic Expedition. The ship Karluk became trapped in an ice floe and later sank, stranding (and eventually killing) many; Maurer spent six months on Wrangel Island before being rescued. Later, Stefansson suggested he join the 1921 spring Chautauqua circuit, and Maurer became the opening act for Stefansson. That year, Stefansson asked Maurer to be a member of his second Wrangel Island expedition; Maurer immediately said yes. The team arrived on Wrangel Island on September 15, 1921, and over the following years suffered immensely, facing harsh Arctic conditions as resources ran dangerously low. On January 28, 1923, Maurer, along with Milton and Crawford, tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia and travel some 90 miles to get help; they were never seen again.

Born Allan Rudyard Crawford in Toronto, Crawford was aged 20 at the start of the 1921 Wrangel Island expedition. He was in official command of the expedition, partly because of his status as a Canadian citizen and British subject. At the time he was hired for the expedition, he was studying geology, paleontology, chemistry, and mineralogy at the University of Toronto. One of Crawford’s professors had given him a letter from Stefansson, who had written to the university present searching for another member for the expedition. Crawford wrote to Stefansson introducing himself in April 1921, and Stefansson eventually hired him for his strong background in the sciences. The team arrived on Wrangel Island on September 15, 1921, and over the following years suffered immensely, facing harsh Arctic conditions as resources ran dangerously low. On January 28, 1923, Crawford, along with Milton and Galle, tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia and travel some 90 miles to get help. They were never seen again. Because he was a Canadian Citizen, Crawford was the only member of the expedition to be officially honored by the Canadian government.