November In The Copper Valley In 1899: Heavy Snow, Frostbite & Ice-Crushed Boats

 OUR HISTORY 

THE COPPER RIVER COUNTRY JOURNAL 

November, 1899 

Early Explorers Wouldn't Have Survived If The Ahtna People Hadn't Helped Them 

They Faced 15-Foot-High Ice Jams & Ate Their Horses 

1901 map of Copper Valley. (Alaska Digital Archives) 

Edward Cashman was a soldier who led a branch of a U.S. military exploratory expedition – with a pack train of horses and a mule –  on a difficult trek north from Valdez into the Copper Valley in the fall of 1899. 

He left Valdez on October 18th. Even today, October is a transitional time and not easy for travel. In Alaska, October is actually "winter", and Cashman, moving with four other people through two feet of heavy snow, started badly. He frostbit all the toes of his left foot and the big toe of his right foot.

On their way north, the men were weak with hunger. Cashman wrote in his military report: 

 "We were eight days without a thing to eat. We saw 11 bears. It took us eleven days to make the trip. We kept walking too much to the northwest. It is my opinion that you can make a good trail to Copper River via Lowe River"  

He was right. The eventual trail between Valdez – followed by the current route of the Richardson Highway – did find its way through the Lowe River Canyon. 

The group arrived in Copper Center on November 1st. They got a boat, and entered the Copper River, which was full of slush ice as winter set in. On November 1st the unthinkable happened. 

They ran into a massive ice jam. Wrote Cashman:  

"Our boat was lifted 8 feet in the air. We had to take the seats out of the boat and use them like snowshoes to get to a shoal about 100 yards from us, as the ice was not solid enough to hold us. We camped on the shoal, and about 3 o'clock next morning we were awakened by the ice moving. We were like rats in a trap. Our boat was gone and the ice was moving all around us. it piled up, cake on top of cake, until it was almost 15 feet high in the middle of the river. It was forced up on the shoal and stopped within 3 feet of our tent..."

The recurring theme of Copper River life -- the cold, the problems of fueling your transportation method  (whether  horses or vehicles) and the lack of food, shelter or any other amenities, plagued Edward Cashman, as it did all newcomers to the Valley.

He began shooting horses by the day because they would lie down and not get up. One day the men shot four horses. Finally, the soldiers resorted to cutting up a horse and eating it.

The only thing that saved them, as it had the Lt. Henry T. Allen party (the first Americans to breach the mountains of the Copper Valley more than a decade before) was the generosity of the Ahtna people they stumbled into along the trail...

Edward Cashman knew this and was grateful. At one point, he wrote, 

"The Indians at this shack could not do enough for us. All they had was dried salmon and tea. They gave us all we could eat."

He added, in his report to the government:

"I wish to say a word of thanks to the Indians whom we met down the river. They treated us most kindly. They would come out 3 or 4 miles to meet us and invite us to their houses, where they would share their food with us. They make excellent tea by mixing a native leaf with English breakfast tea... Whenever we went to their houses they would seat us close to the fire and look us over. 

"If our mittens or moccasins were torn they would take them from us and repair them. Stewart's moccasins, which were worn out, were replaced by a new pair, made of moose hide in half an hour by a [woman] who would take no pay for him.... Another night, after they had repaired our stockings and mittens, I showed [them] where Stewart's pants were torn at the fork. She wanted him to take them off so that she could fix them, but he was bashful and would not do so. 

"Before he realized it, two [men] caught him by the arms and held him, while one pulled off his pants. He yelled at me to help him, but it was such a funny sight I could do nothing but laugh. The [woman] fixed his pants in good shape..."