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Interview with Bill and Jean Thomas by Roger Kaye, November 12, 2002
No full textBill and Jean Thomas oral history interview with Roger Kaye.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were not Fish and Wildlife Service employees, but were long time residents of the Upper Porcupine and Upper Black Rivers in Alaska.
Names: Bill and Jean Thomas
Keywords: History, Biography, Camping, HuntingINTERVIEW WITH BILL AND JEAN THOMAS
BY ROGER KAYE NOVEMBER 12, 2002
MR. KAYE: This is an Oral History interview with Bill and Jean Thomas, conducted in
Wasilla, Alaska on November 12, 2002. The subject is their life on the upper Porcupine
and upper Black Rivers. Roger Kaye is conducted the interview. Jean and Bill, thank
you for participating in this. I’ll begin with you first, Jean. What years did you live on
the Porcupine River? I believe it was at the Salmon, Trout and Porcupine River areas.
MRS. THOMAS: I don’t remember years, we were pretty young anyway. Bobbie was
about seven or eight years old when we left Old Rampart to go to Burnt Paw because of
my dad’s health. My brother was born there, and that was in 1961 I guess. So that was
quiet a number of years ago I guess.
MR. KAYE: So you lived there, and your father had a trading post. There was your
mother, and your sisters; Bella, Doris, Barbara and Bessie.
MRS. THOMAS: Bessie’s real name is Blanche, Blanche Williams now. My dad had a
trading post and he was also a trapper.
MR. KAYE: Your father was Charlie Strong, is that right?
MRS. THOMAS: Yes.
MR. KAYE: Tell me about him.
MRS. THOMAS: I was just a little kid when we were up there. One of the highlights I
always remember when my dad came home from the trap line was us kids looking
forward to taking his boots off, and putting his slippers on for him. That was such a joy
to do that.
MR. KAYE: You were about 170 miles up the Porcupine from Fort Yukon. Was there a
sense of isolation, or being far away from everybody else?
MRS. THOMAS: I can remember times when it seems that way, but there was our
family and there was another family across the river. There were at least two or three
other families. In the wintertime we could go across the ice and visit back and forth. Of
course, my Grandmother lived near us there too.
MR. KAYE: What was her name?
MRS. THOMAS: May, May Martin.
MR. KAYE: Was she married to John Herbert then?
MRS. THOMAS: I guess she was married to him, but I don’t remember him at all. So he
must have died before I could remember.
MR. KAYE: What is most memorable about childhood way up the river there?
MRS. THOMAS: I guess we always thinking of the fun things. We don’t think of all of
the hard work! Of course, I was so young, that in the summer time and in fall, or about
August I guess, when the Salmon start coming in. My dad had a what we called a [sounds
like] petta bar. He would go out and check the nets and the petta bar would be half full
three times a day. Mom and the older kids had a lot of fish to cut. We’d cut it and dry it
and bale it and smoke it and just every way we could fix it. That is one of the things I
remember. It was always a lot of hard work. They worked hard, but I was too young to
cut fish. I helped carry it up the bank. We’d put it in a burlap bag and put it over our
shoulder, with all of this stuff running down our backs. I helped that way but I wasn’t
allowed to cut the fish because mom thought that I’d cut myself.
MR. KAYE: So, when you were seven or eight you went to Burnt Paw, just down the
river. Then you moved to Fort Yukon, is that right?
MRS. THOMAS: Yeah, my dad’s health was not very good, so we had to move.
MR. KAYE: Was that in the late 1940’s?
MRS. THOMAS: It was later than that, but I don’t remember the years.
MR. KAYE: Did you meet Bill here, in Fort Yukon?
MRS. THOMAS: I have known his family for years. I guess all my life I have known
his family.
MR. KAYE: Well Bill, let me ask you a couple of questions now. You grew up in a
trapping camp on the Black River, is that right? Just south of where Jean grew up?
MR. THOMAS: I am not sure about the distances, but it is approximately 300 miles
from Fort Yukon up the river. It used to take us seven days traveling, long days on the
boat, to get there.
MR. KAYE: Who were your parents?
MR. THOMAS: Jacob Thomas. “Tommy the Mate”, they called him. He was a Mate
on a steamer there for many years. My mother was Margaret. I think my dad came to
Alaska in 1905 or 1906. He was working on the river boats as First Mate and from there
he took on the trapping.
MR. KAYE: When did your father move up to the upper Black River?
MR. THOMAS: It was a long time ago. Let’s see, it was probably in the early 1930’s.
MR. KAYE: So, you really grew up there?
MR. THOMAS: Yes.
MR. KAYE: And how old were you when you left that area?
MR. THOMAS: I left in 1942.
MR. KAYE: So you left during the War?
MR. THOMAS: Yes.
MR. KAYE: What was childhood like up there?
MR. THOMAS: It was beautiful. There was a nice, clean environment. You don’t catch
no “bugs” because there was no people! We’d be there approximately nine months out of
the year. Then it got to be just our family. Our nearest neighbor up river was about
twenty-five miles. And the nearest one down river was about forty miles.
MR. KAYE: Was there a sense of isolation, being away from everybody?
MR. THOMAS: Yes, but you get used to it. We actually enjoy it. But it does get kind
of lonesome once in a while. You think about what all the other young people are doing,
you know, but other than that we enjoyed it. It was a good, clean life.
MR. KAYE: Was that lifestyle then, based on trapping? Was that the main thing?
MR. THOMAS: Yeah, trapping.
MR. KAYE: When you were young, what was an average day like for you?
MR. THOMAS: Well, let’s see, it depends on what time of the year it is.
MR. KAYE: Say, trapping season?
MR. THOMAS: We’d have lines going out to different areas. Then we’d have either a
small trapping cabin or in some cases we used a 7’ x 7’ wall tent if there was no timber in
the area to build with. You’d go out for three or four days at a time and come back. Then
you’d go out in another direction for a few more days and come back. You could cover a
lot of area that way. It was interesting. It was a good life, but it’s gone now.
MR. KAYE: It’s gone now! So you left during World War II. Did you serve in the War?
MR. THOMAS: Yeah.
MR. KAYE: Where at?
MR. THOMAS: I was in the Coast Guard. I shipped out to Ketchikan, to the base there
for a while. Then I was on a patrol boat up west of there in the [unintelligible] Straits
area for three or four months. I came back and joined the parachute rescue squad. I didn’t
jump, but the crew, the jumpers that had gone off for training and another fellow and I
joined afterwards. They picked us because we were equipped, you know, used to it, in
case they had to hall somebody out of the bush or someplace. They did that with a
helicopter.
MR. KAYE: Wow! So after the War then, did you ever go back to Black River to trap?
MR. THOMAS: No. When I got out of the service a took a years training at [sounds
like] Care River Technical Institute to be a mechanic. There was really nothing left to go
back to.
MR. KAYE: So you had had enough of that lifestyle, and wanted to…?
MR. THOMAS: Oh, no! Not us. It’s just that things had changed. The prices of fur
and the costs. You had to have a steady job in order to go out and trap!
MR. KAYE: I see.
MR. THOMAS: It’s a good life. I enjoy getting out, and staying there.
MR. KAYE: So, your seasonal cycle during the year then was you trapped the main fur
animals, and then in the spring would you trap beaver and rats?
MR. THOMAS: Yes and in the early days you were allowed to shoot beaver too. But
later on it was trapping only, mostly muskrat and beavers.
MR. KAYE: Then what would you do after the muskrat and beaver season?
MR. THOMAS: Then we’d head for town and celebrate! A little recreation!
MR. KAYE: Tell me about the trip from upper Black River to Fort Yukon. You had
homemade boats?
MR. THOMAS: Oh yeah. We had a large river boat and a smaller poling boat that we
towed. It’s takes about two days to get there going down river.
MR. KAYE: So who all would be in the boat? Would it be pretty crowded?
MR. THOMAS: No, just my family, my mother and dad and all my brothers.
MR. KAYE: Did you have dog teams too that went?
MR. THOMAS: The dog team went in the poling boat.
MR. KAYE: So you’d float down to Fort Yukon, and that was the first time you’d seen
other people for quite a while?
MR. THOMAS: Oh yeah. Like I say, we had a few neighbors up river, but they just
passed going one way or the other.
MR. KAYE: So what’s it like for a young boy to be entering Fort Yukon after being out
in the woods for nine months?
MR. THOMAS: Well, you enjoyed it. You notice I’m not much of a talker. You stay
out in the woods for nine months and you get used to not talking very much. Of course,
you’d talk to your family, but when you’re out by yourself for a week at a time, you’re
not used to talking.
MR. KAYE: Did you have your own dog team as a boy?
MR. THOMAS: Oh yeah. I used dog teams all of the time. It was the only way to get
around in the wintertime, unless you wanted to use snowshoes.
MR. KAYE: As a boy or young man would you go out by yourself?
MR. THOMAS: Oh yeah.
MR. KAYE: How long would you be out by yourself?
MR. THOMAS: Well, mostly ten days or so when you were out building a cabin or
something like that. But normally, if you were just trapping, five days was about the
most you were out there. Out there it would get down to sixty-five below, you’ve got to
keep going because you’ve got only so much food and fuel. It was interesting in a way.
MR. KAYE: Were you ever scared, going out that far, alone?
MR. THOMAS: No. Didn’t even think about it. You get past that after a while.
MR. KAYE: Jean, did you make the same trips from the Porcupine down to Fort Yukon
in a plank boat?
MRS. THOMAS: My dad had a big barge made out of wood. And he had a big inboard
motor that had the power. That’s what we used to go down the river with in the
springtime and coming back in the fall. They put a tent over the big barge and that kept
the wind and rain out. That’s the kind of boat we had for going back and forth.
MR. KAYE: Jean, tell me what it was like; the trip from Salmon Trout, or Old Rampart
house, it was called, down to Fort Yukon.
MRS. THOMAS: In the springtime, sometime in May, or when the ice goes, that’s
when we headed down. Of course there was high water from bank to bank and it was
very swift. I believe we had our dogs on the raft next to our boat. We had to watch them
as we were going down river. I remember that was kind of scary because the water was
so high bank to bank, and so swift. Our dogs were on the raft next to our boat.
MR. KAYE: Before you got to Fort Yukon, did you stop and dress up, or get ready?
MRS. THOMAS: We probably did. I don’t remember exactly. Of course, we were very
anxious to see our relatives that were there, our Aunt especially. Aunt Fanny and Jimmy
Carroll had a general store. Our Aunt always had us up for lunch. I remember after being
up home all winter long, you run out of different things. My dad always bought things
by case lot, but towards spring you’d begin to run out of various foods and things. She
used to open up a can of peaches and we thought that was just the most delicious thing!
We used to look forward to that so much!
MR. KAYE: I’ve got a picture that I took of the place years ago. That’s your father’s
place right, the house that you grew up in?
MRS. THOMAS: Probably, I don’t remember that far back. But that might be.
MR. KAYE: If that old building could talk, what do you think it would tell for stories?
MRS. THOMAS: “I miss you all!” I remember that it was a very nice place. We had a
kitchen. And my mom had everything so nice and clean. We had a wooden floor that was
white. It wasn’t painted or anything. Mom kept it so clean. We just utilized whatever
was available. We didn’t have a store to go to buy Comet or anything, so what my mom
used on the floor was wood ash. She scrubbed the floor with that and it made it nice and
white, just like Comet would do. That’s one of the things I remember. Of course, the
back rooms were hard wood floors. I remember that my mom baked all of the bread and
rolls and cinnamon rolls and things like that. She always had a big bowl of rolls on the
table. Even when we were outdoors playing and we came in, we would never just go to
the table and help ourselves. We had to ask, I remember. It was always nice to have that
on the table. There were always cinnamon rolls, of fresh rolls, or fried bread. She would
take part of the dough and fry it in Crisco. That’s what they used all of the time. It was
so delicious. I still like homemade bread today. My mom would bake as much as
fourteen or fifteen loaves at a time because there was no place to go to buy anything like
that.
MR. KAYE: So, your father was a trader. And he had a trading post there. Who came
to buy goods from your father?
MRS. THOMAS: People came from across the river, like I said. And the native people
that trapped, they came bought their supplies from Dad.
MR. KAYE: Did people come from Old Crow and from up on the coast?
MRS. THOMAS: I don’t remember from how far they would come up. But I know
there were quite a number of people. I just don’t know where they all came from.
MR. KAYE: What were your happiest times there as a child? What are the most
memorable things that you did?
MRS. THOMAS: I think the most fun thing we did was sledding. My dad made a
toboggan for us and we would slide down the bank and out on to the river. It was all
frozen and packed with snow from the wind that blows so much there. My dad would
help us pull it back up and we’d do it again. Then, we’d make snow houses too, like the
Eskimos do I guess. Sometimes my mom, and dad would haul the blocks of snow, square
blocks, and she’s make a house for us; just stacking them up. Sometimes we would just
make a pile of snow and make a hole inside. That was our little snow house. My mom
used to make little furniture for me, for inside of the house. There was a stove and a sink
and different pieces of furniture. When the spring came, I wanted to keep my furniture. I
didn’t want it to melt on me. So I would put it behind the house and try and preserve it
as long as I could before it melted on me.
MR. KAYE: What did you do during the summer?
MRS. THOMAS: Well, as soon as the ice was gone we went to Fort Yukon.
MR. KAYE: What did you do there in Fort Yukon?
MRS. THOMAS: We had a lot of friends and relatives that we visited we. And we had a
lot of cousins that we played with. We made little clothes for our dolls, and little fur
coats out of squirrel and rabbit skins. I used to enjoy doing that.
MR. KAYE: Was it hard for you to go back up the Porcupine River in the fall and leave
Fort Yukon?
MRS. THOMAS: No, we enjoyed it. We actually looked forward to going back up
there. It was so much fun. We never got sick when we were up there. It’s just amazing
how none of us ever got hurt or anything as much we did. My older sisters would cut
and chop the wood. That’s just the way of life. Nobody ever got hurt. Nobody ever got
sick until we came to town, and we all would catch a cold. But it was a fun way of life.
We liked it.
MR. KAYE: You mentioned the natives that lived across the river. Your mother was
native, what that right, and your father was a Scotsman?
MRS. THOMAS: A Swede.
MR. KAYE: Ok, what did you consider yourself? Was there a question about your
identity at all?
MRS. THOMAS: The kids used to just make fun of me. I guess I was lighter that they
were. And they told me that my hair was like grass in the fall. I would cry. I would
come in and say that to my mom. I would go back out and say that my hair was that
color because my mom put Mentholatum in my hair! That was kind of hard because the
kids made fun of me. I different that they were I guess.
MR. KAYE: Your father was probably a leader in that area, being a white person and
being educated and having a store. Were you kind of different from other Indian kids
whose families trapped and traveled through the area?
MRS. THOMAS: We didn’t think we were really different. We were all so close there.
I guess the only thing I can remember is that they made fun of the color of my hair and
things like that. But other than that, I think we got along pretty well.
MR. KAYE: Bill, what did you do when you were a very young boy; too young to be
out trapping? What did you do up the Black River as a child?
MR. THOMAS: I can’t remember too much before trapping. We started awful early.
We probably started at about ten years old. Of course we went to school too. Yeah we
started quite early with the trapping. I spent several years at Fort Yukon going to school
when I quite small. When we got older, why, we were part of the team. It would take
everybody to make things go.
MR. KAYE: So when did you quit school?
MR. THOMAS: I don’t remember the date, of course. I was mostly self-taught. I read a
lot so I could pass my GED. We did get too much book learning.
MR. KAYE: You were also part white, and part [sounds like] Cochin. What did you
consider yourself, or did you even think about it?
MR. THOMAS: I didn’t think about. Mother was half, and dad of course was white.
We were three quarters native, but it just never crossed your mind, really. You were just
like anybody else.
MR. KAYE: When you were a kid, living way up the Black River, you must have read
about the lower forty-eight and the outside world. What did you think of that far away
place?
MR. THOMAS: Well, I doubt we gave it much thought. As I remember, we had another
schoolboy from stateside writing back and forth as a pen pal. He mentioned some of the
things, but I don’t think we were really interested. We were more interested in what we
were doing.
MR. KAYE: Jean, when you were a very small girl living up on the Porcupine, you
probably read your father’s magazines about the lower forty-eight. What did you think
about that far away place?
MRS. THOMAS: Well, I guess it was something like a dream I guess. You just never
thought much about it I guess because you just know you’ll never go there. It was just so
impossible. We were way up there. We were so busy when we were up there, making a
living, and with chores and everything we had to do that a person didn’t think too much
about anything else. Just about what you needed to do. You were so exhausted in the
evening you’d just go to sleep. We just really didn’t think too much about it.
MR. KAYE: When you were a young girl, was there any sense of change, or any sense
that old native ways and that traditional lifestyle were disappearing?
MRS. THOMAS: Not that I can remember.
MR. KAYE: Looking back at it today, it’s gone pretty much, as a lifestyle. What do
you think about that? Is it unfortunate? Was anything lost with that change?
MRS. THOMAS: I think so. It’s such a good and peaceful life. It’s a wonderful life.
And it was clean. Instead of what the kids are getting into nowadays, you know, with all
crimes. All of the drinking and drugs and things we were spared. So we never got into
anything like that out there. In a lot of ways the younger people who live around Fort
Yukon may have a better education, but from our standpoint and with the way we were
raised, we just had better morals and things like that. We were sparred from all of that. I
don’t know which one way is the other. I prefer the other way myself, the way I was
raised. I have seen relatives, and other people that I know just going down the tubes the
way they are living nowadays and it’s really a shame. Becoming an alcoholic and using
drugs and things like that that we never even heard of when we were growing up. We
were just away from all of that.
MR. KAYE: So you think you’re a better person for having grown up that way, out
there?
MRS. THOMAS: I think so.
MR. KAYE: How about you Bill? Do you feel that having grown up and worked hard
out there in that kind life was important to the person that you became?
MR. THOMAS: I wouldn’t be important if you could make everything easy. But with
the price of fur down and the cost of everything is up, why, nowadays it would be kind
of hard to make a go of it. We’d have to work all summer in order to be able to trap all
winter. It was a good life. I really enjoyed it. I would have liked to have kept right on
with the way it was. But it’s gone.
MR. KAYE: Looking at the future now: Back when you two were young there was no
sense that the area where you grew up and trapped in would become a National Wildlife
Refuge. In 1980, a law was passed, the Lands Act. Bill your area became the Yukon
Flats Refuge, and Jean, your area became the Arctic Refuge. Do you recalled hearing
about the Alaska lands issue? It was very controversial in Fort Yukon and other places in
the 1970s. The idea of putting your area within a refuge to protect it; what did you think
of that when you heard about that idea?
MRS. THOMAS: I think it’s wonderful to preserve the land that we grew up on there.
With all of the animals, and the Caribou migrating there. They stayed up a hill out behind
our place all winter long. I’d just like to see that continue. It’s such a beautiful place. If I
was thirty years younger, I’d go back there. It’s such a beautiful country, and it’s really
neat.
MR. KAYE: How about you Bill? Do you remember the controversy to protect that
area? What do you think about the idea of being protected as a Wildlife Refuge?
MR. THOMAS: I would like to see it protected. They are all f
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