David Salmon

"I grew up in woods. I play with my bow and arrow. I learn all the stories - night after night, my father tell me the stories. We have no radio. All the stories go straight into my heart. "

On the 40th anniversary of his ordination into the Episcopal Priesthood, David Salmon (right) participated in the baptisms and confirmations of two Chalkytsik babies and several youth. Bishop Mark MacDonald came from Fairbanks. Deacon Mary Nathaniel (left) also helped. The same year that the boy, David Salmon, caught both his first caribou and his first moose, his mother died. "It was 1923. I was about 11 years old," Salmon remembers. "In those days, there's no government help, no welfare to take care of the orphans. The children who lost their parents go to the Episcopal boarding school in Fort Yukon."

Feeling unable to care for his son, Salmon's grieving father put him in the school. Two years later, he picked him back up again. Salmon had just finished the second grade, which was all the primary schooling he would ever get. "In them days, there was sickness, tuberculosis," Salmon explains. "It spread quickly. Once you get it, there is no cure. My father figured out he wanted to save me from sickness, so he moved me out."

His father took some of the earnings he had made on his trap line, bought enough supplies to last an entire year, loaded all his gear and supplies into a boat powered by a heavy inboard motor, and headed out onto the river. He passed Salmon Village where David had been born, and then ventured 200 miles up the Black River. From there, he continued up the Grayling River until he was so far out into the wilderness, he and his son were unlikely to see other people throughout the course of an entire year.

"He built a home there. That is where I spent my young life," Salmon relates. Salmon and his father worked a trap line covering a huge area. Some years, they went as long as 10 1/2 months without seeing any other people. Then they would get back in the boat, travel to Fort Yukon, spend a month-and-a-half resupplying themselves, turn around and head back up again.

While Salmon's formal schooling had ended, his learning had not. He took books with him, and read them. When they did come in contact with people, Salmon would learn from them. If they were people educated in books, he would ask them to help him with his English. If they were people educated in the land and culture, he would learn of those things. He saw the tools and weapons that had sustained his people, and studied their construction.

Salmon especially learned from his father, who made him a bow and arrow, and taught him how to make anything he needed from the materials nature supplies. He even saw his father make a birch-bark canoe.

"I grew up in woods. I play with my bow and arrow. I learn all the stories - night after night, my father tell me the stories. We have no radio. All the stories go straight into my heart. I know all the stories to this day. I know about the migrations, I know about my family tree."

Young David learned of his grandfather, King Salmon, one of two brothers born in Arctic Village. "They are the biggest people in the whole country. They are tall, they say eight feet, maybe taller. They are strong, but gentle and kind ."

Because of his great size, the brother of Salmon's grandfather's was given the name Bull Moose. King Salmon was named for the strongest fish in the river. David learned that this big grandfather of his died in the year 1898, at about 90 years of age. His own father died in 1951. "Now I have grown to be an old man," Salmon ponders. "That's three people, three generations, covering nearly 200 years."

In 1941, after having spent 18 years in the woods with his father, Salmon moved into the Black River village of Chalkytsik, with his young wife, Sarah. There, he was elected First Chief.

"We still live in the country," Salmon recalls the Chalkytsik of those days. "We have no government help. We work hard to feed ourselves. There's not much liquor, either. Sometimes I'm the Chief, sometimes I'm the Second Chief, sometimes I'm on the council. We were a happy little village. We do everything - potlatch, dog sled races, everything - but there is no minister here."

During Salmon's early childhood, the Episcopal Church had become important to him. Despite his years alone in the wilderness with his father, the church had remained close to Salmon's heart.

"About 1953-54, I began my studies. I began to think, maybe we should start a church in Chalkytsik."

Salmon began talking with Fort Yukon clergymen about entering the ministry. He undertook the construction of a church house. With help from community members, he cut logs from upriver, and sledded them back down by snowmachine. With a chain saw, he cut each log smooth on two sides. "I tell you, that's hard work," Salmon remembers. From this labor, the people built their church, St, Timothy's - "a big church." It is the building they meet in today. A plaque inside bears the names of all who helped.

About this same time, Salmon undertook a course of study that would lead him to Bible schools in Michigan and New York. "I received a little more training, I learned a little more English." On May 28, 1958, he was ordained a Deacon. On May 31 of this year, Salmon celebrated the 40th anniversary of that ordination by participating in a baptismal and confirmation ceremony for two Chalkytsik babies and several youth.

After his ordination, he spent the next four years flying about a huge area, stretching from the flats all the way to Huslia, to hold services with another clergyman and woman. "I study more and more, all four years," Salmon relates. In 1962, he was ordained a priest. He served the next five years in Venetie, where he preached in his own language. He then moved to Fort Yukon, where he served for three more years and then he went to Arizona. There, in the searing desert heat, the Athabascan from the Yukon Flats, who had gone only as far as the second grade before his father took him away from the world of people, attended two years of college.

Afterwards, he finally returned to Chalkytsik, where he would serve nine more years before retiring.

Everywhere he had traveled, Sarah had been by his side.

"She was a very wonderful woman," Salmon speaks softly. "We had 54 years together. She's a very good housekeeper, very good mother, very good worker. She helps me in the ministry. She is a very faithful woman. She is a very strong woman. This wonderful woman died in 1991."

They raised one child. Salmon now has an ever-increasing crop of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great great grandchildren.

Salmon, who is now 91, speaks of his current life. "I'm getting weak now, but I'm still active in the church. I enjoy my life. I still make service. Sometimes, I'm invited for a revival. Sometimes I invite the community to my house, to pray and sing.

"I know I'm old, but I love my people."

Not long ago, he spent some time in the hospital in Fairbanks following painful knee surgery. When other Native patients learned he was there, they came to his room, even by wheelchair, to have him lay his hands on them and bless them.
"All my life, I'm learning. I'm still learning. If I spend time with you, I'm going to learn from you. I'm going to ask you questions, so I can learn from you."

In his old age, Salmon is also a teacher - not only of the Gospel he follows, but also of his Gwich'in culture. His students include his own people, schoolteachers, college students and university professors. One scholar - Thomas O'Brien, was so taken by classes Salmon taught at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, that he collaborated with Salmon on the making of two books - one on the construction and use of Athabascan tools. Salmon did not just describe the old tools, he set down and made them - everything from bow and arrows, caribou clackers, and a spear with a long point made of antler with a broad, flat base. With the help of friends, a brave hunter would taunt a grizzly bear, until it attacked him. As the bear charged, the hunter would brace the base of the 12-foot spear against the ground. The bear would lunge at the hunter, only to have its heart pierced by the antler point. If all went well, the flat base of the point would break the bear's charge, and it would soon die.

"The history of this country is not known," Salmon explains his reasons for doing that book, plus another on the oral history of his people. "Young people do not know it. Old people die with it. Well, I don't want to die with it. I want the young people to have it."

Salmon is the Second Traditional Chief of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, of which he was one of the original organizers. He also was instrumental in starting up the Denakkanaaga Elders.