Synopses & Reviews
The third volume in a series on Point Hope, Alaska, Ultimate Americans examines the first encounters between the native Tikigaq people and Anglo-Americans during the nineteenth century. Tom Lowenstein investigates the interactions between Native Alaskans, commercial whalemen, and missionaries in Point Hope, charting the destabilizing elements of alcohol and disease among Native populations, as well as cultural collisions and the eventual mutual assimilation of the groups. An in-depth historical chronicle, Ultimate Americans will be invaluable reading for historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists alike.
Review
“An account of the founding of Port Hope, an Iñupiat settlement in northwestern Alaska, [Ultimate Americans] is the most authoritative account of this community and one of the richer ethnohistorical accounts of the relationships between settlers and Iñupiat. . . . The study focuses on the life-histories of two individuals: Ataŋauraq, a mercurial Iñupiat leader, and John B. Driggs, a ‘bohemian missionary. . . . In between these two biographies, Lowenstein provides the reader with excellent chapters giving details of economic relations, the earlier history of contact, and the health and spiritual life of the local population.”
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
About the Author
Tom Lowenstein is the author of Ancestors and Species: New and Selected Ethnographic Poetry, Ancient Land, Sacred Whale, and The Things That Were Said of Them.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
“Eskimo! White Man!”
Preface
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Brief Chronology
Historical Characters
Missionaries at Point Hope
Spelling and Terminology
Pronunciation Guide
1. Introduction: First Encounters
2. Contact with the Chukchi and Europeans Up to 1854
3. The Alaska Purchase and the Russian Period
4. The U.S. Navy, the Alaska Commercial Company, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service
5. The Commercial Whale Hunt—1
6. The Commercial Whale Hunt—2
7. Jabbertown: Point Hopes Shore-Based Whaling Station
8. Jabbertown: The Transformation of Point Hopes South Shore
9. Atanauraq: Shaman, Trader, Point Hopes “Chief”
10. Atanauraq and the White Man
11. Atanauraq and Charles Brower at Point Hope, 1884
12. How Atanauraq Was Assassinated
13. Disease in Alaska
14. Sheldon Jackson Takes on Alaska
15. The Search for Order
16. John B. Driggs: Medical Missionary to Point Hope
17. First School on the Arctic Coast
18. The Hidden John Driggs
19. Driggs: Consolidation in the Village, 1892-93
20. The Missionary Edson—Fear and Trembling
21. Sunny Teachings: Death and Resurrection
22. Disease in Point Hope and the Great Sickness
23. Millenarian Alaska: Return of the Spirits—1
24. Millenarian Alaska: Return of the Spirits—2
25. Driggs Homecoming, 1896
26. Driggs: The Final Years and Deposition
27. Reburying the Ancestors
Appendix A: The Point Hope and Jabbertown Census of 1908
Appendix B: The Point Hope Qalgi and Its Changes
Appendix C: Driggs and the Issue of Missionary Trading
Bibliography
Index