Tales of Old: The Story of the Iditarod
Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 6:19 pmTales of Old: The Story of the Iditarod from the Eyes of an Inupiat
by Frozen Chosen
Prologue: In the Beginning
Well, it doesn't matter who I am...I’ve been around for a while...seen many a race and have kept an eye on each and every Iditarod, well...well, since the beginning. But you know, there really isn't a beginning...if you think about it, there was the Centennial Run of the Iditarod, held back in around '67 or so. Ol' man Isaac Okleasik, okay, he wasn't exactly old back then, maybe close to 50 years age. Isaac won that very first Iditarod. He won so convincingly that no one was sure they had a chance...why a poor village musher beating all those dudes from the Anchor Town-Matsu area.
Isaac grew up roughly 70 miles northwest of the end of the Iditarod Trail, around a place called Igloo (google Mary's Igloo). Why, an appropriate name for an appropriate place. Igloo was where the Kawerakmiut Inupiat lived. A kid named Joe Garnie is one. His grandfather was one of the last "chiefs" of that tribe. They lived ON (as opposed to "off") the land: hunting, fishing, rowing and sailing their skin covered Umiaks and Qayaqs and always gathering sustenance from the land. Their mode of travel in winter was, of course, dog sled.
Isaac had a decent breed of a dog. You couldn't really pinpoint the breed, and in fact, it wasn't really the pedigree type where he had his dogs classified as such and such. But he had dogs that pretty much wiped out all the Teller teams back then too... just about always winning all the village Christmas races. Every now and then, another great dog musher, lesser known in circles today, would win: Chester Topkok. I was there, as a bright eyed school kid, when Isaac or Chester would show up at the evening celebration of Inupiat games (like high kick, leg pull, and the infamous ear pull!)...and when the time came, the winner's name would be called, and he'd walk to the front of the basement crowd in Teller’s White schoolhouse and get his prize: a nice pair of seal skin mittens, or maybe a pair of reindeer hide mukluks.
Chester’s nephew Joe Garnie...(gee whiz who knows that name today?) was just a kid then, and Joe secretly thought that someday he was going to be getting that nice prize. Sometimes it was a brand-new pair of oversized sealskin mittens! But you know, Joe and others his age, starting in the '60s were sent to far away boarding schools all across this Great Land and even down to the Lower 48. Many young people, from 12 years on up were yanked from their Inupiat, Yupik, Dene', and Tlingit homes, and sent hundreds if not thousands of miles from their home lands, from their places of birth, upbringing, and lifestyle. Joe was one of these. Not sure if he thought much about running dogs while he was in a faraway land, learning a new and many times frightening way of learning and living. But you know, almost as soon as Joe returned to Teller, he started where he had left off: feeding, caring for , and running dogs. This, in particular during the cold, dark, and foreboding months of winter, was the Inupiat way of life. Dogs. Teams. Sleds. Not for racing, but for survival.
Unbeknownst to Garnie, there was another Joe far, far away...way down south, some 1049 miles away maybe. This other Joe lived and ran dogs himself at a place called Knik.
Frozen
...to be continued
by Frozen Chosen
Prologue: In the Beginning
Well, it doesn't matter who I am...I’ve been around for a while...seen many a race and have kept an eye on each and every Iditarod, well...well, since the beginning. But you know, there really isn't a beginning...if you think about it, there was the Centennial Run of the Iditarod, held back in around '67 or so. Ol' man Isaac Okleasik, okay, he wasn't exactly old back then, maybe close to 50 years age. Isaac won that very first Iditarod. He won so convincingly that no one was sure they had a chance...why a poor village musher beating all those dudes from the Anchor Town-Matsu area.
Isaac grew up roughly 70 miles northwest of the end of the Iditarod Trail, around a place called Igloo (google Mary's Igloo). Why, an appropriate name for an appropriate place. Igloo was where the Kawerakmiut Inupiat lived. A kid named Joe Garnie is one. His grandfather was one of the last "chiefs" of that tribe. They lived ON (as opposed to "off") the land: hunting, fishing, rowing and sailing their skin covered Umiaks and Qayaqs and always gathering sustenance from the land. Their mode of travel in winter was, of course, dog sled.
Isaac had a decent breed of a dog. You couldn't really pinpoint the breed, and in fact, it wasn't really the pedigree type where he had his dogs classified as such and such. But he had dogs that pretty much wiped out all the Teller teams back then too... just about always winning all the village Christmas races. Every now and then, another great dog musher, lesser known in circles today, would win: Chester Topkok. I was there, as a bright eyed school kid, when Isaac or Chester would show up at the evening celebration of Inupiat games (like high kick, leg pull, and the infamous ear pull!)...and when the time came, the winner's name would be called, and he'd walk to the front of the basement crowd in Teller’s White schoolhouse and get his prize: a nice pair of seal skin mittens, or maybe a pair of reindeer hide mukluks.
Chester’s nephew Joe Garnie...(gee whiz who knows that name today?) was just a kid then, and Joe secretly thought that someday he was going to be getting that nice prize. Sometimes it was a brand-new pair of oversized sealskin mittens! But you know, Joe and others his age, starting in the '60s were sent to far away boarding schools all across this Great Land and even down to the Lower 48. Many young people, from 12 years on up were yanked from their Inupiat, Yupik, Dene', and Tlingit homes, and sent hundreds if not thousands of miles from their home lands, from their places of birth, upbringing, and lifestyle. Joe was one of these. Not sure if he thought much about running dogs while he was in a faraway land, learning a new and many times frightening way of learning and living. But you know, almost as soon as Joe returned to Teller, he started where he had left off: feeding, caring for , and running dogs. This, in particular during the cold, dark, and foreboding months of winter, was the Inupiat way of life. Dogs. Teams. Sleds. Not for racing, but for survival.
Unbeknownst to Garnie, there was another Joe far, far away...way down south, some 1049 miles away maybe. This other Joe lived and ran dogs himself at a place called Knik.
Frozen
...to be continued
