Saloons, Prostitutes and Temperance in Alaska Territory
By Catherine Holder Spude; University of Oklahoma Press; $24.95
The blurb: Prostitution, gambling and saloons were a vital, if not universally welcome, part of life in frontier boomtowns. In "Saloons, Prostitutes, and Temperance in Alaska Territory," Catherine Holder Spude explores the rise and fall of these enterprises in Skagway between the gold rush of 1897 and Prohibition in 1918. Her gritty account offers a case study in the clash between working-class men and middle-class women, and in the growth of women's political and economic power in the West.
Where most books about vice in the West depict a rambunctious sin-scape, this one addresses money and politics. Focusing on the ambitions and resources of individual prostitutes and madams, landlords and saloon owners, lawmen, politicians and reformers, Spude brings issues of gender and class to life in a place and time when vice equaled money and money controlled politics. Women of all classes learned how to manipulate both money and politics, ultimately deciding how to regulate individual freedoms.
As progressive reforms swept America in the early 20th century, middle-class women in Skagway won power, Spude shows, at the expense of the values and vices of the working-class men who had dominated the population in the town's earliest days. Reform began when a citizens' committee purged Skagway of card sharks and con men in 1898 and culminated when middle-class businessmen sided with their wives — giving them the power to vote — and in the process banned gambling, prostitution and saloons.
Today, a century after the era Spude describes, Skagway's tourist industry perpetuates the stereotypes of good times in saloons and bordellos. This book instead takes readers inside Skagway's real dens of iniquity and depicts frontier Skagway and its people as they really were. It will open the eyes of historians and tourists alike.
Excerpt: Pop Corn Kate, aka Maggie Marshall, worked in a one-woman business on Seventh Avenue, a place she leased from a landlord. However, she actually resided in a home she had purchased on Thirteenth Avenue, separate from her place of business. In 1900, she told the census enumerator that she had come to Alaska in December 1898 from Pueblo, Colorado. At that time, she was 28 years old, and despite the daily newspaper referring to her as "Mrs. James," she claimed to be single. According to her account, she was born in Ireland in 1872, and she immigrated to the United States in 1890, but by 1900, she had not yet become naturalized. For that year's census, she listed "housekeeper" as both her current and previous occupations. It was common for prostitutes to use this word to define their occupation. When Marshall identified herself as a housekeeper, she did not mean that she was a household servant in a lady's home. It was far more likely that she was referring to her management of a house of prostitution for an absent madam or landlord.
It appears that Marshall first appeared in Skagway in December 1898. There she staked a claim to half a lot on the northern edge of town, not having arrived early enough to stake a more lucrative lot in midtown. Yet the ease with which she located, staked, and purchased property indicates that prostitutes, like other women of the time, had no trouble procuring real estate in Alaska.
Marshall seems to have acquired the nickname "Pop Corn Kate" in Skagway. It is by that name that she appears in the memoirs of Richard "Dixie" Anzer. Writing more than sixty years after the events of his Klondike adventure, he recalls her as a cheerful, high-spirited woman, in contrast to the image of the newspaper reports of the time. Anzer claims she ran a lodging and eating establishment at Log Cabin, a packer's stop on the White Pass Trail, which led into Canada and the Klondike regions. Log Cabin was located 14 miles north of White Pass summit and the Canadian border. While it is difficult to place exact dates in Anzer's narrative, it seems likely that this meeting with her occurred during the first few months of 1899. When he encountered her at Log Cabin, she had organized a drinking game for her male customers that took the form of a contest to see who could hold the most liquor. She charged the men a fee to join the game, as well as charging the contestants for the liquor that they drank. When a competitor fell over insensible, she helped him to her bunkhouse, where she charged for a bed while the inebriation wore off. Ironically, Anzer had nothing but praise for Kate's "generosity."
The spring of 1899 witnessed a gold rush to Atlin, British Columbia, another 80 miles or so into Canada. Anzer records Pop Corn Kate buying a hotel on Dominion Road in that picturesque boomtown. Built of logs, Kate's hotel was one of the few two-story structures in the community and, at 30 feet wide, a substantial building for the time. The lower floor was used as a saloon. A large bar placed in front of a mirror graced one wall of the saloon; the main floor also contained two small rooms of unspecified function, possibly for Kate's use in the sex trade. The upper floor constituted a single large room full of bunks. Kate claimed the glass for the front window had been hauled all the way from Skagway.
Shortly after Anzer arrived in Atlin in the summer of 1899, Kate approached him with a business proposition. "I had high hopes when I came here," she said, "but now I'm so disappointed, I want to get back home. I expected to have a tavern and hotel, but the gold commissioner refuses to grant me a liquor license." The Canadians were notorious for refusing licenses to Americans, and they discouraged prostitution. She convinced Anzer to take the hotel off her hands, giving him a free and clear quit-claim deed.
Charlie and the Blanket Toss
By Tricia "Nuyaqik" Brown and illustrated by Sarah "Anuyaq" Martinson; Alaska Northwest Books; $16.99
The blurb: Charlie loves to watch his relatives and friends get thrown high in the air during the traditional Inupiat blanket toss. But secretly, he's afraid to try it himself. At the whaling festival, he's ready to step up and overcome his fears. Warm humor and good energy fill the pages of this children's book while authentic details of Alaska Native life are shared to anchor the story.
Excerpt: "Yay-hey-hey!!"
Charlie heard his father's happy shout. He knew what it meant: A whale had given itself to the people.
Today the whaling crew's flag would fly over the captain's house — our house, Charlie thought — as a sign to the whole village. Good news! Our crew was successful. Every family in the village would enjoy some fresh-boiled whale meat and muktuk, the skin and blubber.
Charlie hopped in place and clapped as Dad pulled Mom into the folds of his hunting parka. Then Charlie threw himself in to join the hug. Suddenly, he was shouting, too, as his father tossed him up-up-up.
"Whoaaaaaaa!"
?At the very top, where up meets down, Charlie shut his eyes and held his breath. His stomach did a flip. And then he was in his father's arms again, laughing and squirming.
"Just getting you ready for Nalukataq, son," his father's big voice boomed.
Nalukataq, the Summer Whaling Festival, was Charlie's favorite Inupiaq holiday. Tradition said that those who caught a whale -- his father's crew -- decided when the outdoor celebration would be, usually in June.
There would be an all-day feast, storytelling, drumming, singing and dancing to honor the whalers who helped provide for the community. And best of all, Charlie thought, the blanket toss.