Ada (Deluktuk) Blackjack Johnson was born in 1898 in Spruce Creek, Alaska. She was a full-blooded Eskimo. When she was eight years old, her mother sent her and her sister, Rita, to Nome. She was raised by missionaries who taught her to read and write the English language. She was a small girl with olive skin, straight black hair, five feet tall, weighing less than one hundred pounds.
She married Jack Blackjack and had three children, but only one, her son Bennett, survived infancy. After divorcing, she was left destitute. When Bennett became seriously ill with tuberculosis, Johnson, unable to afford his care, placed him in an orphanage so he could receive treatment. Determined to earn enough money for his care, she made a desperate choice.
In 1921, at the age of twenty-three, she joined an expedition to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. The expedition, led by Allan Crawford and funded by Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, aimed to establish a territorial claim for Wrangel Island on behalf of Canada and the British. Johnson was the only woman and the only Inupiaq on board.

Johnson was called a “city Eskimo” at the time. She had very little training in survival or traditional Inupiat skills, except as a seamstress. When she was on the island, she had to teach herself the skills she needed to survive.

On September 9, 1921, the crew boarded the Silver Wave. Aboard were Allan Crawford, Lorne Knight, Fredrick Maurer, and Milton Galle. None of the Eskimo families they hired showed up. The men acquired a cat in Seattle, named Victoria. They called her “Vic.”

Two days later, they arrived in Siberia. Stefansson had instructed them to hire several Eskimo families and purchase an umiak. But the umiak was expensive, so they purchased a dory. It was a significant mistake; without a proper lightweight boat, it would be impossible to hunt for walruses, and they would desperately need that meat later.

They landed at Rodgers Harbour on Wrangel Island and unloaded their cargo. Johnson considered returning to Nome but said, “When we got to Wrangel Island, the land looked very large to me, but they said that it was only a small island. I thought at first that I would turn back, but I decided it wouldn’t be fair to the boys.”

The expedition was scheduled to last two years, but they were only given enough provisions for six months. When Knight checked the supplies, he found that most were rotted, and the rest were in poor condition. The seven dogs they had purchased in Nome were also in bad shape.

For the men, it was an adventure.

For Johnson, it meant money, which equaled survival and the opportunity to provide medical care for her son.

For Stefansson, it would prove his theory that anyone with common sense could live in the north country because it was just like living in any other city in the world.

They fell into a routine, and Johnson sewed hoods for their fur coats. She was shy and desperately afraid of bears. She was a diligent worker and got along fine.

In September, the first snowflakes fell. Then the blizzards came, and they watched as the ice covered the sea.

Johnson experienced Arctic Hysteria the first winter. The condition is caused by darkness and harsh weather, and you do things out of character. She was homesick and crying a lot. Some days she would work and some days she wouldn’t. The men grew frustrated with her behavior and lack of productivity. She had a crush on Crawford. She walked for miles, almost naked, and she packed her suitcases and left them somewhere out in the snow. She believed Knight was going to kill her.

To punish her for not working, they tied her to a flagpole, denied food, made her sleep outside, and once made her walk fifteen miles home in freezing weather while they rode the sled. On Thanksgiving, she didn’t do her work and was sent to bed without food.

The winter was cold and windy and was the harshest she had ever known. To Johnson, wind was an omen of bad things to come, and it meant that the ship would not be able to break through the ice to reach the island in the summer.

In December, the blizzard came. The boys let Johnson into the house, but she would sleep outside if she refused to work. It was cold outside, colder than anything in Nome, and it was much nicer by the stove. Johnson chose to work. She brought out her supplies and began to sew, laboring until supper. She worked until Knight told her to stop. And then she was better.

Johnson sat as still as a statue, slowly freezing to death. She sat in the house, surrounded by the cold darkness, and listened to the heavy footfall outside. There was sniffing and snorting, and thunderous footsteps and labored breathing. Nanook. There was nothing to do but sit very still and try not to make a noise. Otherwise, Nanook might find her there and kill her. She prayed. She held her breath for a long time. She heard Galle come home, and with one shot, the bear fell dead to the ground. Galle ran into the tent, looking for Johnson. He found her sitting rigid and fixed, a look of terror on her face.

The weather was cold and windy for the first few months of 1922. They were not starving yet, but they were starting to worry. Every day they went hunting, but they couldn’t find any game, and what they did find wasn’t enough. It was like the animals had vanished.

By May, they moved to the new summer camp. In June, the weather took a turn, and where the ice had opened up, it was now covered in ice.

In June and July, the sealing had been strong, and they had shot more ducks and geese than they could count, but by September, the hunting was sparse again. The men successfully shot a walrus but lost most of the meat to the ocean when their sled turned over. They ate every bit of the walrus that they saved, all the way down to the flippers. They managed to store twelve hundred pounds of blubber for the winter, if they had to stay,

They kept their hopes up and in July started looking forward to the relief ship that would be arriving in August. They would be happy to see other people and replenish their rations. Johnson wanted to go home. She would stand on the beach looking for the ship.

Early in September, Knight stood on a ridge to check the ice. The island was surrounded, and he knew they would be spending another winter on Wrangle Island.
Joe Benard, the Captain of the Teddy Bear, was hired for the relief trip and left Nome on August 20, 1922, carrying all the correspondence for the men and a fresh team of explorers to take over. The news was that all ships sailing into the Arctic that summer were locked in ice. The ice conditions were unusually bad. The Teddy Bear steamed ahead. When they entered the ice pack off East Cape, Siberia, they were delayed by ice that was getting thicker as they moved north. By September 2, Bernard had returned to Nome.

In early August, Crawford, Maurer, and Galle had left on an exploratory trip, leaving Knight and Johnson in camp. While the men were gone, they had taken a walk a short distance out of the camp, and Knight managed to kill a polar bear. He and Johnson skinned it but didn’t collect the meat. He said they had enough ducks and geese to keep them fed. But he was lying. They needed that meat, but he knew there was no way he would be able to haul it home with only Johnson to help him.
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On August 28, Crawford gathered everyone, including Vic, for their only group portrait. They sat together, huddling closely. They had changed. The men had bushy whiskers, and their bodies so thin that they were hardly recognizable. Johnson’s cheekbones stood out, and womanly lines etched the corners of her eyes and mouth.

The rain returned at the end of August. Johnson watched as the ice floated back into the harbour, and the ice grew until it covered the sea.

In September, they hunted for walrus. They shot several but found it too hard to carry home. Of what they did get home, they ate every bit of meat they could, down to the flippers.

On the tenth, Knight climbed a high ridge to check the ice, and he knew they would be spending another winter on the island.

In late September, they moved to the new campsite, and then the sun set until Spring.

The men realized they were in a dire situation. Johnson knew they needed to do something to get food, and they couldn’t wait until spring. By December, they were out of coffee and tobacco. Hard bread, walrus skin, and seal oil made up their Christmas dinner.

In early January, Crawford and Knight packed the sled, hitched the dogs, and set out for Nome to get food and help. The weather was severe, and they were unprepared. They turned home, admitting failure.

January had seen bad weather and wind, but Crawford, Maure, and Galle, along with the five remaining dogs, set out on January 28, 1923, for Nome. Days were still short and dark, and the dogs were weak from the shortage of food. Despite the darkness and dangers, they went out to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia, then to Nome to get help. They planned to reach Nome in sixty days.

Before the men left, Galle pulled Johnson aside and assured her he would be back for her. Then they headed due south and were soon out of sight.

They were never seen or heard from again. She later said, “I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they fell through the ice, or they could have been killed by a polar bear or Russians. I don’t know.”

Knight stayed behind, too weak from the scurvy that was raging back. Maurer left Knight his trap line map that covered about three miles. Johnson took it and followed it to locate the traps. Then she taught herself how to set them and to cover them with snow so the foxes couldn’t see them. When she figured out, she could kill them with her hands, she got more foxes. The increase in fresh meat didn’t help Knight.

She later said: “When I was out, I was afraid of meeting a polar bear, and every little while I would turn and look around to see if one was in sight, and if there had been one I would have fainted, for I only had a snow knife with me and I didn’t know what to do to defend myself.”

Knight wasn’t going to get better. He wished the men would come back. He was brutally aware of how hard it was going to be on Johnson when he became completely bedridden. In early February, he lay down and never got up again.

Johnson knew he wasn’t going to get better. She searched for food every day. She was going to keep him alive as long as she could. Without him, she would be alone.
In March, Johnson started a diary. Knight was now unable to take care of himself, let alone write, so she wrote down the things he couldn’t. She missed her family, and when she wrote in her diary, she wasn’t so lonely. She wrote about the foxes she caught, how she checked the traps every day, the weather, and her feelings.

One day, when he was in a mood, he told her that her kids had probably died because she didn’t take care of them, just like she doesn’t take care of him. “This is the wosest life I ever live in this world,” she wrote. Though it is hard enough for me to wood work and trying my best in everything and when I come home to rest here an talk against me saying all kins of woeds against me then what could I do?”

There was little she could do for him. She was watching him die a horrible death. Although she was not aware of it, she was beginning to show the early symptoms of scurvy herself.

“He never stop and think how much its hard for women to take four mans place, to wood work and to hund for something to eat for him and do waiting to his bed and take the shiad out for him,” she wrote in her diary.

Johnson took to watching the sea. She prayed for the men to come back. She was sure that they would, Galle had promised her.

She was afraid. He had lain in bed since February, and now it was April. What would she do when he died?

She had a dream. A dream that Knight had died, and she was alone. When she woke up, she was not afraid, and she was ready to live.

She honed her skills. She became familiar with the rifle and developed the skills needed to hunt birds. She built a platform on top of the house and watched for polar bears so she would see them coming. She made herself seal skin boots, a blanket coat, a parka, and a sun hat, for hunting, along with a pack to carry them. And she made herself a umiak.

On June 23, 1923, Knight died during the night. She couldn’t move him. She couldn’t bear not having him around. She left him in his sleeping bag and moved into the storage tent with Vic.

She started typing entries on Galle’s typewriter, and she took pictures of herself with Crawford’s camera. She continued hunting for foxes, seals, and birds. When the polar bears came to her door, she knew not to shoot at them. They would attack if she missed, so she fired over their heads until they were out of sight. She started storing food.

Johnson talked to Vic as if she were a human and thought she would go insane without her. She often stood on the beach looking for the boys and the ship. Praying it would come and take her home.

In July 1923, Stefansson retired as an explorer, with no intention of returning to the Friendly Arctic. Still believing any person with common sense could make a living in the North, he went on a speaking tour.

With his reputation in tatters, he was unable to get any help from Canada or the British. No one wanted to be a part of what he was doing, and he almost caused a war with the Russians.
Harold Noice went to New York, looking for an opportunity to go north. Stefansson offered him the coveted spot of Captain of the relief ship to Wrangel Island. He signed up immediately.

Noice went to Nome and procured a ship named the Donaldson. He set sail on August 2, 1923, at 3:00 pm.

Noice found Johnson on August 20, 1923. She had kept herself alive for eight months, two of those months completely alone. “If I alive I keep going,” Johnson lived by these words her entire life.

She left Wrangel Island on August 23 and was in Nome on August 31.

Upon his request, Johnson gave Noice her diary, Knight’s diary, Galle’s typewriter, and Maurer’s papers. Noice devoured Knight’s diary, and by the time they reached Nome on August 31, she was under suspicion of having killed Knight and being a prostitute. They let her go after questioning. She knew she had done the best she could.

Johnson hated the attention, but everyone wanted to see her. She was an extremely private person. She hid out in Nome for a short time and, early in the fall, moved to Seattle with Bennett. There, he was able to get the medical help he needed. She could pay for it now. While Bennett was in the hospital, she lived in a rundown apartment next to her sister, Rita, and her husband. She was living with W. Harvey, whom she met on the ship to Seattle.

She visited the Knight family in Oregon. She wanted to give them Lorne’s Bible, but they insisted she keep it. She used it until she died. She spent a week with them.

She spent a little time in California with Peggy, a friend of Stefansson’s. Stefansson was using Peggy to get material for his book from Johnson. Peggy would listen to her and write the words down after she got back to her room. Then she would send it to Stefansson.

It was during this California trip that Noice put out his most damning article. On February 11, 1924, Noice released his article about Johnson, which accused her of killing Knight by starving him. He accused her of knowing how to use a gun and not hunting or trapping to save Knight’s life. He described Knight as weighing 90 pounds and Johnson as “fat and healthy”. He also accused her of tearing out the last 10 pages of his diary to cover it up.

On February 26, Johnson went to the newspaper office and asked for a reporter. It was the first time Johnson had told her story in her own words. The paper was going to run an article every day for three days, but Johnson asked them to stop. It was too painful.

Johnson went back to Seattle, but she knew that if she was going to move forward, she needed to get out of Seattle and away from Harvey. Secretly, she moved to Spokane, WA, to hide out.

In October, Noice went to Stefansson and offered a retraction. Noice had told his wife, Frances, lies about Johnson and the men. Frances cornered him when she insisted, he go public with the truth. At that time, he couldn’t tell her he was lying, but now he was ready to publicly admit he had lied and that Johnson was a hero.

When Stefansson released his book, it didn’t have a lot of success. The Crawford and Maurer families found the book insulting and condescending, making the boys look like idiots. Johnson had been promised her share from the book sales but never received any compensation. Stefansson couldn’t stand Johnson and was hoping never to hear from her again.
Johnson’s reputation was restored, but she still disappeared. The next news heard about her was an article in 1925 that she had returned home to Alaska.

And two years later, it was reported she was in the hospital, dying from tuberculosis, and she had put Bennet and Billy in the Jesse Lee home. The doctors expected her to die, but she held on. In May of 1928, Johnson married Ralf Traffers. They divorced soon after, and then she married George Johnson. That marriage also ended, but she had had a baby. She called him Billy. She moved from Juneau to Kodiak and back down to Seattle, where she lived for 14 years.

When Billy was nine, she took both children out of the Jesse Lee Home. She herded reindeer and trapped to earn a living. She eventually moved to Anchorage.

She had Knight’s bible, but the memories continued to haunt her. No matter where she ran, she would never be able to get over Knight’s death, or the disappearance of the boys, or the hardship she endured on Wrangel Island.

In 1973, Johnson broke her 40-year silence and granted a newspaper interview. It is the first first-person interview she gave after California. It was the last interview she ever granted.

On May 29, 1983, she died at the age of eighty-five at the Pioneer Home in Palmer, Alaska. She is buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery, with Bennett buried at her head.

For ten years, Billy had been campaigning to obtain official recognition for his mother’s bravery in the Arctic. After Johnson’s death, he was determined that she not be forgotten. “I consider my mother, Ada Blackjack, to be one of the most loving mothers in this world and one of the greatest heroines in the history of Arctic exploration,” he said. “She survived against all odds. It is a wonderful story that should not be lost, of a mother fighting to survive to live so she could carry on with her son. Her story of survival in the Arctic will be a great chapter in the history of the Arctic and Alaska.”

For Billy, his mother had been badly hurt by Noice and badly used by Stefansson. Since 1923, her life had been a constant fight to survive, grief, poverty, public accusations and humiliation, illness, and the memories that haunted her. She alone had sustained herself and her boys. She alone had done the work to earn the money to bring them back to her so that they could once again live together as a family, and she alone had lived to tell the story of Wrangel Island.

“The final chapter,” Billy Johnson wrote to the Alaska Legislature, “should read that the State of Alaska recognized Ada Blackjack as the heroine of the Wrangell Island expedition. It could read that the State of Alaska has a true native heroine who participated in the early exploration of the Arctic. The State of Alaska has within it the power to write a happy ending to such a sad happening.”

One month after Ada’s death, she was granted her happy ending. The Alaska Legislature officially honored her and recognized her on June 16, 1983, as a true and courageous hero,

Ada Blackjack Johnson is one of the most heroic, yet unheralded, Alaskan women in history.

Johnson is still considered one of the bravest Arctic explorers in history.

After serving two brutal years on a deserted island, she became known as the “Female Robinson Caruso”

“You have the will the survive the worst man, nature, and events can throw at you. You Never Give Up, no matter how horrible the circumstances,” said Johnson.

References:
Michael Johnson
Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival In The Arctic, written by Jennifer Niven
YouTube: One Woman’s Worst Nightmare Comes True: The Ada Blackjack Story by Adventures Gone Wrong
YouTube: The Strange Case of Ada Blackjack by Weird World
Wikipedia
Dartmouth College Arctic Exploration Collection: Ada Blackjack
Marooned in the Arctic: The True Story of Ada Blackjack, The “Female Robinson Crusoe”, written by Peggy Caravantes