IDA ROSS Overhanging willows smacked a dog on the raft and threw her up in the air. Guy bent over me, protecting me from the dangerous brush. He said I was the first Eskimo baby he ever held and that I'm gonna be his girl.
My father was Jonas Ward, Akatak, a great nephew of the famous Inupiat healer Maniiliaq. My mother was Faith Black; her Inupiat name was Deluwak, Black Raven.
Most people in those days had their babies in their camps, but in 1935 I was lucky enough to be born in Shungnak, where there were midwives. My grandmother named me Emmorsek, for the ancient seal oil pot used for lighting our homes.
Before I was born, the people used to raft their hides downstream before Fourth of July, trade furs, dance, eat and play games for days.
Outside miners from the coast came up the river to Lohgveek, which meant "cutting lots of trees" and then began calling the village "Long Beach, California." But mail addressed to the real Long Beach began arriving up the Kobuk! So they changed the village name to Kobuk.
It was a large place then, offering a lot of things. The miners worked California Creek back by the mountains. But by the time I was born, only a few miners remained.
TRADITIONAL LIFE
Traditionally we made our homes of split cottonwood trees, lined up vertically around the outside of a hole and then overlaid the trees with sod. Inside, we had a dirt shelf. Our roof was made of birch poles covered by turf and the floor was covered with willow branches.
In the fall, we cut grass and used it for bedding throughout the winter. The stove was our heat, and when the seal oil lamp went out, it was our light as well.
We sat by the glow on our caribou hides and trimmed our clothes with sheep hide, not yet having beads in those days. Our door was seal intestine.
My friend Bertha Moses from Allakaket wore western clothing, but I wore a slipover parka of caribou belly hides, fur inside. My mukluks were caribou leggings, which I tied with strings around my waist.
Our people hunted in the mountains during the summers and caught whitefish, sheefish, grayling and dog salmon in mid-summer.
During the winter, we netted fish under the ice for our eight dogs, our only transportation. In those days, no caribou came through; in the winter, we had to go around the mountains to hunt them.
In the spring, we walked with our dogs up to Noyutak Lake in the mountains, 100 miles north of Kobuk, where we trapped beaver, marten, wolf, weasel, mink and lynx. The second week of July, we walked 15 miles out to the Kobuk River, cut trees and rafted the rest of the way home to Kobuk.
A good friend of my father's, Guy Moyers of Pottsville, Pa., prospected between Noyutuk Lake and California Creek. When I was 4, he rode the spring raft out with us.
We tried to catch the deeper channel, but the current took us down the shallow one. Overhanging willows smacked a dog on the raft and threw her up in the air. Guy bent over me, protecting me from the dangerous brush. He said I was the first Eskimo baby he ever held and that I'm gonna be his girl.
As we traveled, we got geese and gathered wild onions. When we arrived, we shared those with the villagers.
My grandmother, Bella Black (who only spoke a little English), used to tell us stories. She told of when white man first came to Alaska. She said they brought 50-pound sacks of flour, but our people dumped it out, washed that white stuff out and made kuspuks and dresses of the cloth. They didn't know what that flour was.
GUY'S PROMISE
We lived in Ambler when I was little. Dad trapped in the winter, and in the summer he worked in the Nome and Candle mines, but a lot of men there got tuberculosis.
With World War II, mining shut down. In 1942, when Guy left for the Army, he said if anything happened to my Dad, his best friend, he would take care of me and my brother, Elmer.
In 1943, most Kobuk River people (including us) moved to Shungnak for its higher river banks and its new B.I.A. school.
My father passed away the previous year, leaving my younger brother, Elmer, me and our youngest sister, Stella, Mom and our grandparents. I had to quit school in third grade to baby-sit, but my grandparents were my best teachers. They taught me to tan skin, sew, make snowshoes.
Mom snared ptarmigan and rabbits, but we had no moose, no caribou. We used to play with rabbits' feet and skins, and we got tularemia.
We got no medical help for it and took care of it the Eskimo way with stinkweed, "sahvlyuk," a poultice that sucks out the toxins. But my Grandmother and Stella died. I have a big scar on my neck, but I survived that "rabbit fever."
Guy Moyers went to work for the railroad in Fairbanks and somehow heard about our situation. When he came, we had nothing to eat, and he asked my Grandpa, William Ward, if he could marry my mom.
When she hesitated, my grandpa said to Mom, "You want to watch the rest of your children die of starvation?"
So in 1951, Mom married Guy Moyers, who raised us as his own. He wanted to send us to Pottsville for schooling, but we didn't want to go. Instead, Guy taught us to read and write a little bit.
KEEPING THE FAITH
In 1956 I moved to Fairbanks and met Kenneth Ross from Ohio, who had just gotten out of the Air Force. In 1960, we married. We applied for a foster home license and began caring for the first of hundreds of "our" children -- blacks, whites, Indians, Eskimo -- over 30 years.
As my husband was dying, the children began coming back to see him. After the last one, he said, "Ida, the circle is complete." He passed away in 1987.
After going through a rough period, I met and married Sam Maes. People from the village needed a place for a prayer meeting. Since we had a big house, we invited them to our place.
After a while, I became a Christian and began traveling and ministering. My neighbor told me, "There's a church for sale." So my mom, Sam and I, we came to the church every day, prayed and thanked God for it.
I talked to the Assembly of God, and they said, "We'll see what we can do." So my husband and I founded Wings of Healing, this church, together.
My husband eventually left, but I kept on. I enjoy the church. When I get tired, people come in and help me. I feel whatever God has for me, I want to keep on doing it.
Somebody said, "We're going to build a new church," and I am ready. I'm not in the best health, but I am not ready to go on unless that new church is up!
Judy Ferguson is a publisher and a freelance columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She is the author of Alaska histories "Parallel Destinies" and "Blue Hills" and the children's books "Alaska's Secret Door" and "Alaska's Little Chief." Her Web site is www.alaska-highway.org/delta/outpost.
