C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

280 Notes to Pages 153-158"A young white trader and ex-policeman," he hosted Margaret,Olaus, and Martin Murie, and Jess Rust in June 1926. He gavebreakfast to the Sherwood Platt party in his cabin on 25 August(Platt 29). Vyvyan's photo of him appeared in the articlesabout the trip that she published in 1931 (54) and 1938 (304).His widow Clara (nee Moses) and several of the Frosts' ten childrenreside with their families in Old Crow. His son Stephenrecently stated that, being a white person, his father "couldn'tadapt to the trapping as well as the people who lived off theland" (Rampart 20).David was a sturdy looking young IndianDorrien Smith's field note for 2IJuly supplies the guide's lastname: Elias. At the very end of her field notes, in the accountsfollOwing the last dated entry (229), Vyvyan lists "David Elias(alias)" and payment to him as £10 lOs, or $50, which musthave been calculated at the rate of $5 per day for ten days,assuming the return trip would take Elias only as long as thetrip downstream.In that room we had the joy of sleeping in partial darknessVyvyan's field note for 22 July does not mention where thenight was spent, but Dorrien Smith's note confirms that Frost"took us in, cooked us a meal, and let us bed down in his backroom."Martha, who had spent the night making our moccasinsThe identity of this woman has not been established but shemay have been the same person who, a month earlier, hadmade a pair of moccasins with similar haste for Martin Murie,Margaret's infant son. At the urging of the woman's four-yearolddaughter, the moccasins were presented as a gift in theafternoon of the same day-26 June-that the Muries arrived atOld Crow (283; 2nd ed. 228)."Those two women they carne down the river paddling theircanoe like a couple of squaws"At first glance, there appears to be a basis for this sentence ofdialogue in Vyvyan's field note for 21 July, but the seven words,uCame down the river like 2 squaws," are written in blue ink,not the black ink that Vyvyan invariably used to overwrite theoriginal pencil, and there is no pencil underneath the words inblue ink. In combination with the fact that the handwriting ofthese seven words is not firm, this evidence suggests that Vyvyanwrote the sentence later, perhaps as late as the time when shewas preparing her book for publication in 1961. This bibliographicalmatter promises further significance, for theawe-struck response ascribed to the "the whole settlement"seems farfetched. The subsequent dialogue attributed to Frostdoes appear in pencil. as the last words of the original fieldnote, and is overwritten in black ink.the solitary cabin of a trader named CadzowScottish by birth, Daniel Cadzow went to the Klondike in 1897by way of Edmonton and the Rat River (Coutts 41). As an independenttrader in 1906, he opened a store at Rampart House(Balikci 35). On 30 August 1907, during his trip from FortMcPherson to Fort Yukon, Stefansson met Cadzow there(Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Hunters 237). Bishop Isaac Stringermarried Cadzow to Monica Njootli at Rampart House inNovember 1909 (Frank Peake, The Bishop 126; Hannah Netroand Mary Kassi gave her name as Veronica [Rampart 15, 58]). InJanuary 1924, during his trip from Aklavik to Fort Yukon inthe company of Lazarus Sittichinli, Philip Godsell also met the"grey-bearded American veteran of the Klondike days" atRampart House (Arctic 291). According to Godsell. Cadzowdied two years after their meeting, that is, sometime in the yearof the women's visit to Rampart House (Arctic 292n). He wasstill alive in late June 1926, when Margaret Murie's husband,Olaus, found him "crippled with rheumatism" (280; 2nd ed.226). He is remembered fondly by Hannah Netro: "He reallytook care of people" (Rampart 16).Vyvyan's description of Cadzow's residence is surprising,for his two-storey house would easily have been the biggestbuilding seen by the women since leaving Aklavik (see above,157). In the oral history of Rampart House published in 1993,it is remembered fondly by many Vuntut Gwitchin (Rampart).Rampart House ... the international boundary of Canadaand AlaskaWhen, in 1869, Americans took possession of Fort Yukon, itsHBC servants moved east up the Porcupine River and erectedRampart House, it was thought, in British territory. There itstayed for three decades; however, when he surveyed its locationin 1889,J.H. Turner found Rampart House some thirty milesdownriver from the I4Ist meridian; the HBC agent took immediateaction, dismantled the post, towed the logs upriver, anderected new Rampart House (Rampart 45) east of the survey stake