ORIGINS OF THE ALASKAN BASKET SLED

INTO THE SAVAGE LAND…..The Alaskan Journal of Edward Adams
Edited by Ernest Sipes
Hancock House Publishers Ltd. 2007

I have wondered for some time about the origins of what mushers normally refer to as the Alaskan basket sled, and whether or not the development of this type of sled was also simultaneous with the utilization of the gangline/tugline system of running dogs or what is more commonly referred to as the Nome hitch. Some information strongly suggested that the roots for both of these developments was in northern Russia. I wondered if researching the period of Russian colonization in Alaska might shed some light onto this topic, for it would seem reasonable to expect that it would be during this period of colonization that the Russian way of doing things might have been introduced to Alaska. But where would it be possible to find this information short of learning Russian and travelling to that country on a research mission?

In the Editor’s Forward of this book, Ernest Sipes refers to this research dilemma. “The Russian American period of Alaska’s past is a time little known except to a small group of history scholars residing primarily in Alaska and Russia. There are several reasons for the apparent lack of interest in the period, with perhaps the largest obstacle being that the majority of the surviving records kept by the Russian American Company are inaccessible or have not been translated into English…..Very little literature is available that gives to the reader any idea of the day-to-day life of the men involved in the Alaska fur trade. Such basic questions as what obstacles were faced while manning a remote outpost in close proximity to often-violent Natives, what style of clothing was worn by the traders or even the social structure of a Russian fort in the time of the Tsars remain, to a large extent, unanswered”.

With the Czarist Charter of 1799, the Russian-American Company formally administered the colony of Alaska [Alyaksa] and reaped the financial rewards that were to be found in the new land, for sixty-eight years. Alyaksa was sparsely populated by semi-civilized Natives, some tribes resisted the efforts of the Russian American Company to export furs and bring order to the colony. This is what makes the Alaskan Journal of Edward Adams so special. “It presents a candid view of this time, and contains details of interest to several academic disciplines, a list that includes ethnologists, anthropologists and historians”.

It was helpful for me to first of all try and gain an understanding of just what the Russian presence in Alaska looked like at the time that Adams arrived in that country. I was surprised to learn that the presence of the Russians was in fact not limited to Alaska, but that the Russian American Trading Company also had a trading post [Fort Ross] in present day California, two in Hawaii as well as throughout Alaska, including the “capital” of their operation which was centred at Sitka There were posts on Kodiak Island, at Darabin/Fort Nulato, on King William Sound, at the mouth of the Stikine River at present-day Wrangell as well as other posts.

The Russian American Company were keenly aware of the operations of the rival Hudson’s Bay Company and indeed they formed working “agreements” out of respect for each others interests, this was particularly true in the region of present day British Columbia. The closest HBC post that had some influence over the Alaskan trade was Fort Yukon, which was located [in Alaskan territory] at the confluence of the Yukon and Porcupine rivers. The profits of the Russian American Company waned and in 1867, the Alaska Purchase transferred control of Alaska to the United States and the commercial interests of the Russian American Company were sold to Hutchinson, Kohl & Company of San Francisco who then renamed their company the Alaska Commercial Company which had a great presence throughout both Alaska and the Yukon during the various gold rushes.

In the 1850’s, the quest for information on the fate of Sir John Franklin and his ships Erebus and Terror had become almost an obsession for a large percentage of middle-class England. The Russian governor of Saint Michaels [Michalaski], had received an inaccurate report that Franklin or some of his men had been stranded in the interior of Alaska. This information had been relayed to Captain Moore of the British search vessel Plover, who then informed the captain of Plover’s sister-ship, Enterprise. In 1850, three British Sailors from Enterprise were set upon the shore at St. Michaels to determine if there was any fact associated with this story.

The members of this party were:
Edward Adams, the author of the journal which is the subject of the book INTO THE SAVAGE LAND, and the assistant surgeon of HMS Enterprise
Lieutenant John James Barnard, military commander of the shore party [who was to suffer an agonizing death at the hands of invading Natives]
Thomas Cousins, able bodied seaman who was assigned by the captain of the Enterprise to join the landing party at St. Michaels

I will only focus on those aspects of Adams’ account that I believe might offer some insight into the use of sled dogs during this time and in this place. It is important to note that Adams had interactions with not only the Russian traders [which included Russians of various ethnic backgrounds, half-breeds or Creoles born of Russian men and Native women, as well as a number of Finns who were employed by the Russians to man their trading posts], but also those that Adams refers to as Natives or Indians as well as Eskimo [Esquimaux] people. I sometimes found Adams’ narrative a bit confusing when it came to determining if he was interacting with Indians or Eskimo. What became quite evident is that the wide cultural gulf that existed between Indians and Inuit in Canada did not exist to the same extent within Alaska. Indians and Eskimo clearly interacted regularly and their respective cultures “borrowed” ideas from each other when it seemed like the smart thing to do.

It is important to note that none of Adams’ interactions with these peoples were what could be termed “first contact”, all of the indigenous Alaskans had interacted and traded with white Russian traders for up to 100 years and had adopted to a lesser or greater extent, some of the Russian ways of doing things. Some Native Alaskans were even sent to St. Petersburg in Russia to study and many returned to hold positions of authority in the “colony”. This was clearly a time of significant flux and change for Alaskan indigenous people, the result of the Russian presence and no-doubt also associated with the devastating effects of the various epidemics that had killed so many Native and Eskimo people.

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My plan for ongoing discussion is to introduce quotations from Adams’ journal and to comment on these using italics to clearly indicate my opinions and observations. Everything from the book is in quotations.

“During the summer the men are employed in piling driftwood for the winter’s use, and taking the dogs to Garishka, a fishing station on the coast to the Northward, but the principal part of the fine weather is occupied by conveying stores to the three interior Posts on the Quekopuk river, or Kockpak as the Russians call it”. Feeding sled dogs, particularly throughout the winter months was a constant chore. It is clear that sled dogs in Alaska were fed fish almost exclusively. Before the arrival of the Russians, the notion of putting up fish to last over the winter was not something that the indigenous Alaskans had ever done. For this reason, they had historically kept only very small numbers of sled dogs. This is not unlike the Inuit of the Canadian Eastern Arctic. It should be noted that the sled dogs and their owners ate exactly the same thing. In a hunter-gatherer society, the quest for food is never ending, often there was barely enough for the humans to eat, there was seldom the luxury of a surplus to feed large numbers of sled dogs.

“The fishing season commenced about the later end of the season [?], and is carried on at some little distance up the river where the water deepens under a huge cliff of sandstone. The fish are brought down to Garishka every evening, and are then split and laid upon the stage to dry in the sun. These are what are used for the dogs in the winter and little trouble is taken with them. They appeared to be a species of salmon trout, but they were all too much mutilated when I saw them to make out if they really were so”.

“Since we left the Governor’s house he has avoided us and appears ashamed of his conduct, but today he sent us word that he could feed our dogs only 2 days longer, as he had no fish to spare. He had before told us that he could feed 20 dogs if we got them and we had now only16. Finding him perfectly deaf to reason, we proposed sending to Garishka for a supply to last till the end of the month”. “Garishka is the small fishing station mentioned in the preceding paragraph consisting of a small house and a store house under one roof, two out houses and a cooking house. These buildings are surrounded by stages for drying fish…it is inhabited by only one Russian with his native wife and family, but in summer a considerable party from Michalaski go there to carry on the fishing”. “We proposed starting for Darabin….and upon this he told us that it was no use going to Garishka as there was no stock of fish there, and that we must get rid of our dogs. Upon inquiring of some men, who seemed ashamed of our being treated in this way, they told us that there was plenty of fish!!! In June following when I left Norton Sound just at the beginning of the fishing season there was still a large storage house half full of dried fish, enough to keep 20 dogs for a winter”!

“With this information we set about procuring dogs, intending [during the upcoming winter] to go as far as Darabin/Fort Nulato] to inquire more particularly into the matter, [of a report that there were English sailors stranded in the interior]…The Russians state that sledge traveling is impractical far beyond Darabin, as there is no food to be had for either dogs or men, nor any guides, on account of the country being uninhabited during the winter…..There were no dogs to be obtained near Michalaski, so that we were obliged to wait quietly until the ice would enable us to travel in search of the men”. Almost immediately Adams started to look for sled dogs that he intended to use during the winter in his search for news of the English sailors who were allegedly stranded in the Alaskan interior. There was no question that he would be travelling by dog team, Fort Nulato, which is located on the Yukon River is about 400 miles from St. Michaels. The use of dogs for winter transportation was an established part of both the indigenous culture as well as part of the fur trade. It is also apparent that there weren’t a lot of dogs available.

“This morning we walked to Altoravik village to look for dogs. This is a large village snugly situated on a plain under a bold b luff, about 12 miles from Michalaski……We could only purchase two dogs and it was dark before we succeeded in getting these, so we’d determined to sleep there and so took our quarters in the dancing house”.

“In the course of the day we picked up 8 fine dogs at prices varying from 1 lb. to 1 ½ lb. of tobacco, and these made our number up to 14, nearly all that we required”. Tobacco seemed to be a major trade item in Alaska which is all the more amazing when you look at the route that the tobacco had to follow to get from where it was grown to remote Alaska.

Adams visited an Eskimo tribe inhabiting part of the coast of Norton Sound, he described their small village in some detail. It should be noted that there were very few inhabitants in this village….. “most of these people were badly marked by the small pox. From various sources I judged it to have prevailed here about 11 or 12 years since. Probably it entered this area through the Hudson’s Bay country, when it prevailed to a great extent in 1838. Many of the villages here were half depopulated and some few suffered extremely. It has not again appeared, but they have not scarcely recovered from the devastation and speak of it with the utmost horror”. It is perhaps difficult to fully comprehend the impact of the various epidemics that swept through the indigenous populations of western North America in the second had of the 19th century. Villages, tribal groups, families were decimated. It is a wonder that Native people were able to continue to function at all after experiencing this gutting of their world.

Adams describes the few small dwellings as well as the one multi-purpose building in the community. “The dancing house is built of logs in the same way as the other houses, but is much larger and higher. It is 30 feet square and in height 13 feet. The floor instead of being clay, is boarded, and the central boards are loose, so they can be removed when the fire is lighted. The dancing house is used principally as a workshop during the day by the men, and here they clean their skins, make kayaks, sledges etc.”. It is interesting to read that the men, who were the hunters, actually had a workshop in which they worked out of the weather.

“The principal tools used by the men are for carpentering, and consist of a cutting bow etc. They consist of a native adze, which is used instead of an axe and much preferred to it. It is merely a flat piece of iron ½ inch broad, made fast to the end of a wooden or deer antler handle with thongs. This tool seems to be in use amongst the whole Eskimo nation, from Siberia to Greenland. I once saw one of their original stone adzes, which they used before the introduction of iron amongst them. It was formed of a large piece of chert-like stone, a foot long and 2 inches thick. It took a good edge, and they said it made a very good tool, but was heavy compared to the iron one. They use a common sheath knife, which is seldom more than a piece of hoop iron, and they complain much that the Russians will not let them have tools, or the curved knife, which is considered the most useful of all their tools. They use it for hollowing all sorts of things, wooden dishes, boxes etc. A knife of any sort is always held with the little finger on the blade, as they hold a dagger”.

“For cutting ivory, bone etc., they use a piece of blunt iron of the adjoining form, with the sharp angle of which they cut through the bone as well as a saw would do. They use drills with a bow, like the common European one, but instead of leaning upon it with the arm or chest, they hold between their teeth a piece of wood, in which is a hole for the drill end, and this is pressed upon, the left hand therefore free. The drill bow is generally a piece of Walrus tusk, on which is cut figures of man, deer etc.”.

“These few tools, with an old file, constitute all their apparatus, with which they make their sledges, kayaks, huts, bows and indeed everything. As fastening for kayaks etc., they use nothing but wooden or ivory pegs, glue and lashings of hide, and these are far better for their purpose than nails or screws would be…..by mixing the refuse or burnt oil with fresh blood they make a cement far stronger than glue. They use this for joining wood work and for sealing the seams of kayaks etc.”. Adams is talking about the Eskimo. These are the people who fabricate the incredible kayaks, umiaks and baidarkas. They are incredible craftsmen and it is amazing to read that they manufactured everything with these few essentially quite primitive tools. It is even more remarkable when you realize that they were doing it even before the introduction of metal to their culture. With this kind of woodworking ingenuity, it is not hard to believe that these men were quite capable of building the basket sleds that evolved into those that were used throughout Alaska beginning early in the 20th century.

But it was not just the Eskimo who were skilled woodworkers, the following quote indicates that the woodworking skills were indeed transferred one from culture to the other. “I saw at Darabin some of the canoes used by the Indians of Lake Mentor. They are beautifully made and very elegant. Their length is 12 feet, width 1 ½ feet and depth 10 inches. The frame work is of light hickory rods, which is covered in birch bark. The stem and rise about 6 inches and about 4 feet forward is covered in. They are flat
bottomed and so light that one of them, with its double paddle, may be easily lifted with one finger”.

“The Russians’ sledges are well and strongly made of driftwood with birch runners shod with bone. The native form will be better understood from my sketches than from a description”. Unfortunately the sketches apparently did not survive and do not appear in the report, although there is a great photo in this book of a Russian sled taken in Kotzebue in 1887.

“The Native sledges are made entirely of driftwood with long narrow runners instead of the broad flat ones of the Russians. The former are best upon sea ice, but the latter for general work and inland traveling, though the Russian sledges are fastened entirely by thong but in the Native ones, the runners are kept on by pegs, the uprights and arches being mortised into them. This makes the Russian sledge much the stronger of the two, but both are well adapted to the peculiar wants of their owners. The Russian generally carries a heavier load--the Native, never”. “There is some disagreement on the design of the Eskimo dog sled in the late colonial period. Adams’ comments here seem to suggest that the Native sled was not designed for usage in deep snow and would have been quite fragile”. Indeed, throughout his journal there are references to the Native sleds breaking apart when overloaded. What developed into the modern Alaskan basket sled is most likely a combination of the heavily built Siberian sledge which was modified for use with dogs. This style of Russian dog sled is still widely used today. In many ways it is a scaled-down version of the sled that was developed for use with both reindeer and horses throughout northern Russia. However it is designed so that the musher sits on the sled holding onto a curved handlebar located close to the front of the sled.

The interior Athabascan Natives did not utilize sleds with dogs “until the Russian American Company began chopping trails through the forest for transporting furs in the winter”. When you consider how difficult it would be to clear trails through forested areas without the availability of metal axes and other cutting tools, it is no wonder that much of the winter travel by dog team was limited to that on the frozen rivers and sea ice. As mentioned above, before contact it was also a fact that the Indians simply did not have the ability to process and store enough protein to feed dogs, so the primary method of transportation in winter was pulling small sleds behind themselves on their never-ending quest for food. This is not unlike the First Nations people of central and northern Canada and their use of the toboggan which was initially designed to be pulled behind a hunter as he travelled on snowshoes throughout the forested taiga. It should be noted that the indigenous Alaskan people also used snowshoes.

As the Alaskan Natives began to use sled dogs more extensively, they began to adapt their sleds, drawing on some of the ideas they saw in the Russian sledges. It would appear that from the outset the Native sleds incorporated what is known as the basket sled design, utilizing two runners, uprights or stanchions and cross pieces which formed the base of the bed of the sled or what became known as the basket. In order to carry larger loads the Native sleds were made longer. In order to carry heavier loads, rather than making their sleds heavier like the Russian sledges, the Alaskan Natives adapted the Russian method of lashing or tying their sleds together to allow for an increase in their flexibility, which meant that they could bear the stress of heavier loads without fear of breaking. The wooden and ivory pegs that had been used by the Alaskan Eskimo and Natives might have their place in the construction of kayaks and canoes and hunting equipment, but they didn’t work with dog sleds.

I would suggest that the evolution of the handlebar at the back of the basket sled in order to increase the driver’s ability to manoeuvre the sled, the use of side rails in order to keep the load in place in the sled [in the basket] and the addition of the brush bow at the front of the sled in order to glance off of obstacles, were later developments. Similarly, with the introduction of sled dog racing in Alaska in the early 20th century, the runners were extended at the back of the sled so that the dog driver could stand on the runners. This also necessitated the use of commands and trained lead dogs, up to this point, the dog musher ran beside the sled or in front of the dog team.

With the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 19th century there also came a number of influences that impacted the evolution of the Alaskan basket sled. The sled of choice during the Klondike Gold Rush was the factory made mass produced Yukon sled sold by the Alaska Commercial Company by the hundreds. This was essentially a platform on runners, designed to be pulled by dogs, humans, horses and even oxen. It was the semi-trailer transport truck of the Gold Rush. Innovative freighters modified these Yukon sleds by adding a primitive handlebar at the back, poles along the sides, even a curved bow on the front…while they were workhorses that were great for freighting all of the goods that miners needed on the creeks, these sleds were heavy and cumbersome. For tasks that required speed such as delivering express mail or passengers, the lighter, flexible Alaskan basket sled was the answer and in some ways, its development was parallel to that of the Yukon freight sled, one being the sporty sedan while the other was the heavy duty flat deck truck.

“There are seldom more than 3 or 4 dogs yoked to a native sledge and those in the most promiscuous manner, one or two before and the others at the sides.” This is fascinating and suggests that the Natives were struggling with the idea of just how to make the switch from pulling their sleds themselves to having their dogs pull them. The sight of the precursor of a Native basket sled with 3 or 4 dogs tied to the front and the sides must have been something to see. It is no wonder that it was necessary for the musher to walk in front of the team….

“The Russians always harness the dogs to a rope attached to the sledges, 2 and 2 with a leader and usually have 7 or dogs. A man has always to run ahead of the dogs to herd them, except with two of the Russian dogs which came from Petropaulowski and which obey the word of the driver. This however is more custom, for in 3 weeks I taught two native dogs to be driven with the whip and I had no trouble with them afterwards”. This is a definitive description of the fact that the Nome hitch -- the use of a centreline with tuglines was imported from Russia. It is a shame that Adams’ diary is missing his drawings of the harnesses used. Initially these might have been no more than a thong around the dog’s neck, but by the time Adams was observing these dogs, an actual harness probably made of some type of hide like sealskin and in design probably not unlike the Inuit harnesses used in Canada’s Arctic was being used. These were the precursors to today’s nylon/polypropylene “X Back” or Siwash harnesses. During the early years of the 20th century, Alaskan mushers struggled to find the perfect harness for use with the Nome hitch and there are many different styles that incorporated padded collars, spreader bars, back pads, etc….with the common feature that they all incorporated the use of a tugline and centreline.


“About this time I became acquainted with an old Tungusion who was living on the opposite side of the bay. “The Tungus people are recognized to have been scattered throughout eastern Siberia to the Okhosk seacoast and represent the inclination of the Russian American Company to transplant individuals from the Russian Empire who had the greatest chance of success in Alaska. The “old Tungusion” referred to here is an example of the Colonial Citizen as created by the Russian American Company in 1835. With the guarantee of a small pension, as well as the opportunity to work on short labour contracts with the Company, men who had served the organization for many years would settle into relative comfort close to Russian posts”. He had been a servant of the company for some years and had married a Native woman. When his contract expired he built himself a hut on the opposite coast about 4 miles from Michalaski and now supports his family by fishing and hunting. He is an excellent rifle shot and a very resourceful hunter. He is well acquainted with the zoology of the district and gave me much information on the subject”.

“He had some dogs which he had bred between the Eskimo dog and spaniel. They were by far the best sledge dogs in the country. I offered him 30 dollars for the leader, but he would not have parted with him for any sum. This dog, though not large, would alone pull down a fully grown deer, and upon one occasion, he made two men prisoners who were approaching the hut at night, and kept them down till his master came out and released them”. This offers some first hand insight into the evolution of the Alaskan Husky or the Village Dog. The Eskimos all along the Arctic coast had Eskimo Dogs, these dogs were part of the many migrations of the Inuit people from northern Asia along the North American coast to the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and south into Labrador. These dogs were distinctive for their size, their conformation and their temperament. Some refer to the Eskimo Dog as being a purebred dog but this in incorrect. A dog breed is something that is man made or man produced. It is much more correct to refer to these dogs as a landrace, a living thing that has evolved with the land and the people and their distinctive culture and way of life over time. The Old Tungusion is an example of a hunter deliberately crossing the Eskimo Dog with another type of dog, in this case a dog that Adams refers to as a spaniel. The end result was apparently a great dog, but nevertheless a crossbred dog.

Following are a few quotes that provide insight into just how the dogs were worked, the distances travelled, the plans for camping overnight as well as the condition of the dogs. They also offer some insight into the personalities of those who were driving the dogs [i.e. the dog mushers]. “The plan of the sledge traveling here amongst the Russians is this. They generally make a start in the morning about 5 o’clock and keep on till 11 or 12 o’clock, when they stop for half an hour or one hour for luncheon. They then go on again till 2, 3 or 4 o’clock when they halt for the night. They have certain places which they are accustomed to stop and these they seldom pass. By this plan, getting the day’s work done early, they are enabled to feed the dogs and cut a sufficient quantity of firewood to last the night before dark”.

“We left Pastolik this morning with the Governor, and having laid in a good stock of whitefish, we returned by the route we came, Pavel leaving us altogether and keeping with the Governor’s sledge…..We slept at the first hut together, but on the second afternoon when we arrived at our sleeping place, the old man expressed his determination to go on and reach Michalaski without stopping, our dogs however were in bad condition, and we did not like overworking them without cause, so we made up our mind to stop at the hut. The Governor went on with his two men and about 6 miles further on his dogs knocked up and they had to sleep in the snow”.

“The Russian sledges were going to Garishka for a load of fish and as I began to wonder what had become of the Plover’s party, I determined to go too, in search of some intelligence of them…..We started accordingly at 7:30 in the morning, with two sledges and 15 dogs and one man to each sledge. As the sledges were empty and we had the Petropaulowski leaders, [these were the two Russian lead dogs that knew their commands] we reached the first village at 11 o’clock. The distance is about 24 miles by the coast but as the ice was pretty good we drove nearly all the way at a good pace……we came to a solitary hut….and here took up quarters for the night. This little hut….was built chiefly for the use of travelers along the coast…the inside of the hut was abundantly small, and at night we were pretty closely packed, 7 men, 3 women and 1 child, and some of the natives wished to sleep outside to give me more room, but I had not yet got to understand turning people out of their homes for my particular convenience, so we all packed into a space 14 ft. by 8 ft. including fireplace, cooking utensils and dogs”.

“As to the rate of traveling, I should say that upon a pretty good day, the Russians usually travel 4 to 5 miles an hour, sometimes as much as 7, but they seldom perhaps never, exceed this rate. Overland upon soft snow no rate can be given as it constantly varies with the depth, state of the snow, the openness of the country, etc. The Natives seldom average more than 3 or 4 miles an hour, for which the relative number and condition of the dogs will account”.

“From 25 to 30 miles may be considered as an average day’s journey. Upon good ice, it depends much upon the situation of huts or villages and they satisfy themselves with anything between 20 and 40 miles, very seldom, however, going beyond the latter”.

“The next afternoon the party [of Indians] arrived. It consisted of 27 men and women, and 9 sledges, with 3 or 4 dogs to each. They had been several days traveling overland from their village, they call themselves Ingalik, and form a very large tribe occupying the Koikpuk and its boundaries, from its mouth to Darabin, a distance of 400 miles. The river in this part of its course runs mostly North and South so that they have the Koiukok Indians, or Koikuuse’ to the Eastward of them, and the Esquimaux along the coastline to the West”.