REVIEW - ANIAKCHAK

Ringsmuth, Katherine Johnson. Beyond the Moon Crater Myth: A New History of the Aniakchak Landscape. National Park Service. 262 pages. Colored and black& white photographs. Contact Jeanne Schaaf, 240 West Fifth Avenue, Suite 236, Anchorage, Alaska, 99501 or telephone 907/644-3639 for copies.

The Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve is the middle part of the Alaska Peninsula, where volcanoes erupt from time to time, most famously in 1931. What made it famous were the writing and photographs of Fr. Bernard Hubbard S.J., the self-styled Glacier Priest in his book Mush, You Malemutes.

This leads to the current lengthy history, well-researched, of the area. Most will know the mixture of Aleuts (Alutiiq as the Peninsula dwellers are now known, the Aglegmiuts (some Yupik Eskimo people who came down after battles further north),some Dena'ina Athabaskan Indians, and later, Russian Creoles. Although much archeology remains to be done, it is clear humans have been in the area for at least 1,600 years, leaving only when eruptions forced them out. They returned around 400 years ago. Such a mix of people requires a great deal of sorting out, but certainly accounts exist of many battles among the residents.

Then the Russians arrived, beginning in 1761, bringing with them European diseases to which the locals had (and have) no immunity. They also brought the concept of trade for the valuable sea otter pelts. The Russian Orthodox Church brought a new religion, which the natives managed to synthesize and make their own.

Early Americans brought gold prospectors, oil hunters, and finally, successful fishermen and canneries.

Around 1910 the Inupiat Eskimos from the north brought down reindeer to herd and harvest. U. S. missionaries also moved in with their mistaken idea that assimilation, in other words, turning all Alaska natives into white people with brown skins, was the best way for the people to survive. The fishing industry brought numbers of outsiders to the area, some of whom married and stayed on.

World War II and the Cold War saw bases established, although the lasting effect was limited.

In spite of all these disruptions, the people of the middle peninsula remain, retaining an amazing part of their cultural heritage.

The writing ranges from adequate to excellent. However, at the end, the ambivalence of this book, not to mention its often maddening repetitions, make the reader long for, if not throw a tantrum, about the need for an editor. Someone should have thrown out the redundancies on the fish canneries, the search for oil, narrowed the attempt to cover the entire Russian exploration and exploitation of Alaska, as well as the rationale for reindeer herding. The attitude towards Hubbard is also so ambivalent the poor reader is left wondering if the man was a cynical self-promoter who would write anything to gain fame or a famous writer and lecturer who took marvelous photographs and without whom the 1931 eruption would be unknown to a wider audience. His efforts meant the eventual establishment of the Aniakchak National Monument, so the staff there should be thankful.

Overall, a good general editor would have enormously strengthened this account, but it is well worth reading at any rate, and certainly the price couldn't be bettered.

D. L.
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