Minuk: Ashes in the Pathway

Spring 1890

They are all away at spring camp when the white people come. It’s a very big surprise when they get back to the village. The children are crazy with excitement. Everything the white people have and wear and eat amazes them. And the grown-ups are just as wide-eyed as the children are. Minuk wonders what their faces look like the first time Panruk and her see white people’s underwear, sit on chairs, and look through window glass. Minuk wonders how big the white peoples’ eyes are.

They go away to spring camp every year to fish and hunt ground squirrels and muskrats. They need the first to make warm parkas to wear, but most importantly, they need the squirrel and muskrat skins to trade for seal oil from the people at the mouth of the river. They need at least 600 skins, so they usually stay at camp for six weeks.

After the animals are snared, they have to be skinned and stretched. Even Minuk’s little brother, Maklak, works hard. There are thirteen in their family. There’s Mamma, Auntie Kakgar, and Auntie Nunagak, who are Grandma and Grandpa’s daughters. There’s Auntie Naya, their daughter-in-law. Auntie Kakgar is Panruk’s mother. Auntie Kakgar’s husband drowned a long time ago. Auntie Naya is a widow, too. She had been married to Grandma and Grandpa’s son, but he died before Minuk was born. Auntie Nunagak and Uncle Aparuk have one son, Taulan.

Minuk’s parents have one daughter, her, and two sons. Iraluq is older, and Maklak isn’t even five. In their family, all women are good. Mamma is always patient and gentle, and Panruk’s mother and the other aunties are the same.

Minuk is not like Panruk, who is as sweet and obedient as their mothers and aunts. Minuk wanted to know things. Why, how, and “what if.” The old men speak to them and caution them about modesty, and Minuk tells herself she must guard herself more carefully. She’s like Grandma who has opinions. Grandma even sometimes tells the men what she thinks. But Grandma is old, and old women, because they are wiser, can say things younger ones can’t.

In Yup’ik villages, men don’t live with women. They live in their own big house: the men’s house. But when they go away to spring camp, the whole family lives together in one house. It’s hard to get used to because when the women live alone, they’re easier in their ways. The rules about men’s tools and clothing and foods are so easy to break that when men come to live in the house, the women get nervous.

Minuk’s father is very strict, and he never breaks the rules. If anyone breaks a rule or acts frivolously, her father is stern. He’s widely respected in the men’s house for that. Maklak’s not like his father at all. He’s very merry-hearted. So much so that Grandpa used to say, “I can tell you weren’t meant to be a shaman!” People always watch the serious boys to see if they look like they might become shamans. But they never watch the laughing ones like Maklak.

Minuk thinks her father is disappointed that Maklak is so happy-go-lucky. Their other brother, Iraluq, and their cousin, Taulan, are not quiet or solemn either, and sometimes they break the rules. Minuk’s father wishes his family was more serious, like Uncle Aparuk. He’s very quiet and hardly says anything at all. Minuk never knows what Uncle Aparuk is thinking.

They have good luck at spring camp, and soon the cache, which is used for storage, is full of dried fish, ground squirrel and muskrat skins, and bird skins. When the snow is gone on the hills, they’re happy because it’s time to put everything into their boat and go back to the Kuskokwim River.

Going home takes five days. It takes longer to go home by water than it does by dogsled, which is how they travel on the hard crust of the snow. They know their village is near before they can see it. They smell wood smoke and hear children laughing and dogs barking. Most of the others returned from their camps before Minuk’s family. There are boats on the riverbank, and men sit on top of the men’s house, smoking their pipes, and children squat in the mud playing.

The children on land stumble over each other in the rush to get down to the riverbank to meet Minuk’s family. They’re so excited that Minuk and her family can hardly understand what they’re saying. Kass’aqs, white people, have built a house in their village. They rafted the logs down from Kolmakov as soon as the ice moved off the river and had put up a house fast, in just a few weeks. A man, his wife, and their little boy are staying in the house. They’re missionaries, and they can speak Yup’ik.

Minuk looks at her uncle and father and grandfather to see what they think of the news. They look up from the boat quickly to see if they can see the missionaries’ house, but they don’t say anything. But Minuk sees her father’s jaw harden, the way it did when he isn’t pleased.

Panruk and Minuk want to go see the log house right away, but first, they help unload the boat and get settled into their house. They quickly carry the wooden bowls and water buckets to the house and run back for another load. Other children help them unload things, chattering about the missionaries all the while.

They know about missionaries because the Russians first came to Alaska when Grandpa was a little boy. They sent priests to baptize the people along the Kuskokwim River. Some of the older people have been baptized and have Russian names. Grandma has a silver cross she keeps in her sewing kit and a little picture of a lady with a circle around her head. She was given a Russian name, too, but she’s forgotten it by now.

After the Russians sold Alaska to the United States, there weren’t many priests left. So, no priests have visited since Minuk was little. But she remembers the priest because he was so tall and thin. He wore a long black robe.

Minuk had never seen a log house built in the Russian style, although most grown-ups have seen them. The Russians long ago built a fort and trading post upriver from them at Kolmakov, and there are log houses in the mouth of the river as well. They sometimes see Russian or half-Russian men when they come up the river to trade, and the Americans who come after them, but they have never seen a kass’aq woman or kass’aq child.