On This Day in History: September 15

Ada Blackjack Survival on Wrangel Island

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Wrangel Island is as far north as the northernmost part of Alaska, also known as ColdAsShitLand. Definitely not a place you want to be stranded for a couple of years. The four men on the expedition died, but the sole survivor, an Iñupiat woman named Ada Blackjack, survived for months with only a cat for company.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: September 15, 1921--

Wrangel Island is way closer to Siberia than Alaska, but some Icelandic Canadian dude decided possession nine-tenths-something-something if we park our asses there we fucking own it. So, he financed an expedition to lay claim to a place that was so fucking frozen it’s where woolly mammoths last roamed before going extinct.

Five settlers were sent on the expedition: one Canadian, three Americans, and Ada. The other four were chosen as the science geeks of the mission, knowing about geography and shit. Ada, who was 23 and lived her whole life in Northern Alaska, was recruited to sew them fur clothing and as their cook. Blackjack needed the money to care for her ailing son, but was tricked into joining the expedition, having been told she would be one of many Alaskan Natives on the voyage. She wasn’t thrilled about the deception, but survival is the best revenge, I guess. On September 15, 1921, a boat left the team on Wrangel Island and they were bid good fucking luck.

A year later their rations ran out and the resupply ship didn’t show up and they weren’t able to kill enough game to survive. So three of the men decided to hike out for help. It was January of 1923, and they were able to hike to Siberia because the ocean was frozen. Who knows how far the three made it? They were never seen again. The fourth dude lived a little longer; he was scurvy as hell and Ada looked after him. He died the following June.

Then it was just Ada and the cat, Victoria. I’m not sure if Ada was a cat person, but I bet she loved that fucking cat. I bet the cat loved the reindeer meat Ada hunted. Speaking of hunting, Ada (and the cat) faced regular threats of death, being hunted by polar bears. Ada was determined to survive to return to her son.

On August 19, 1923, almost two years after landing on Wrangel, another ship showed up with new settlers and Ada, wearing a reindeer hide coat she’d sewn herself, and the cat were rescued. There was a media shitstorm, and she was like fuck off let me live my life. They called her “the female Robinson Crusoe” because she couldn’t just be her own damn person. She took the pay she had from the excursion along with money earned from selling furs she trapped on Wrangel and took her son, who was suffering from tuberculosis, to Seattle for treatment. Ada later remarried and had another son and returned to the Arctic, living to be 85.

Never underestimate the power of a woman and her cat.

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