Ada Blackjack’s story is so amazing it should be made into a movie. Called a “female Robinson Crusoe” she survived in the tundra for 703 days, 57 of them alone. It was the thoughts of reuniting with her ailing son that kept her going. Here is her story.
Ada Blackjack (Inupiaq), Survivor arctic expedition (1897(8)-1983)
Ada Blackjack (née Ada Deletuk) was born in Spruce Creek, Alaska. She was born an Inupiat (one group of the Inuit tribes) but was raised by Methodist missionaries. They taught her to read and she studied the bible. She also learned how to cook and sew. She was not taught any wilderness survival skills. That is what makes her story of survival on Wrangel Island alone for nearly 2 months so much more remarkable.
When she was 16, Ada married Jack Blackjack, a local dog musher. They had three children, but two of them died. A few years later, 1921, Jack abandoned her and their little boy, Bennett. Bennett was ill with tuberculosis. Ada tried to care for him but not having the resources she put him in an orphanage. She searched for jobs so she could make enough money to care for him herself.
About this time, she heard that an expedition was looking for an Alaskan native seamstress who spoke English. No other Inuit people showed up to claim the job. The crew was very small so Ada had her doubts, but she was desperate to earn enough money to get her son back so she joined the expedition. Even when none of the other native people who were promised did not show up, she still went along. “Ada didn’t board the Silver Wave, Stefansson’s ship, for the adventure. Rather, she walked onto the ship to take a job so she and her son Bennett could live a better life. That’s what she was all about.”[1]
The famous arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, was the one who put the expedition together, but he did not travel with the crew. His idea was to send some men there and claim the Island for the British Empire. He thought it would be very simple – just get the expedition there and claim the island. The men would camp on it, living off their supplies and the supposedly abundant game and fish and be picked up the next year. Four young, inexperienced men, Ada, and a cat named Victoria, left on September 9, 1921.
During the first year things went as expected. But when summer came to an end the game disappeared. Worse yet, pack ice closed in and there was no sign of a ship. The crew did not know that the ship chartered to pick them up, the Teddy Bear, was forced to turn back when they could not get through the ice. With the worsening weather came the realization that they would have to live for another year on short supplies.
By early 1923 the crew was starving. One of the men, Lorne Knight, had become very ill, probably scurvy. On January 28 the other three men decided to go for help. They left Ada, and the cat, to care for their stricken shipmate and headed for Siberia. As it turned out, they should have stayed with Ada. The three men were never seen again. (Spoiler alert for all kitty-cat lovers – Vic survived.)
For the next six months, alone with the sick crewmember, Ada served as “doctor, nurse, companion, servant, and huntswoman in one,” said the Los Angeles Times in 1924. “Ada was woodsman, too.” The dying man projected the rage he felt over his helplessness onto her, criticizing her constantly for not taking better care of him. Blackjack did not outwardly allow his blows to land, but confided in her diary, “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 [shit] out for him.”[2]
When Knight died, Ada recorded his death as of June 23rd. She put his body in a sleeping bag and left him on his bed. Then like Rizpah of old, she set about protecting his body.[3] She constructed a barricade of boxes to protect him from wild animals. She then moved into a separate tent to escape the stench of his decaying body. She fortified her somewhat battered tent with driftwood. She built boxes to store her field glasses and ammunition. She built a gun rack above her bed in case polar bears came too close. Then she continued to prepare for possible long-term survival.
Though she had not learned survival skills from the missionaries, Ada did watch Inuit tribesmen as they hunted and fished. She remembered watching Inuit women scraping hides preparing them for clothing. But she had made up her mind to survive and be reunited with her son.
For the next few months, she was entirely alone. Ada collected snow for drinking water, lined up empty tin cans for practice shooting, and chopped driftwood for fires. She taught herself how to lure and trap foxes and shoot birds. Ada scraped sealskins to make herself boots and a parka. She built a platform above her shelter so she could spot the polar bears in the distance. She built a boat from driftwood and canvas. She even experimented with the crew’s camera, taking several pictures of herself at the camp.
On August 20, 1923, almost two years after the expedition left for Wrangel Island, the schooner Donaldsonarrived to rescue Ada. They found that she was doing quite well on her own. One of her rescuers was quoted as saying that she probably could have lived there for another year, though the isolation would have been a dreadful experience.
Returning home, Ada found that the news of her survival received a lot of attention from the press. People were praising her for her courage. Ada shyly responded that she was just a mother who needed to get home to her son.
Ada was not paid nearly as much as she was promised, but she was able to reunite with her son. She retreated from public life until her death in 1983. For all of her remaining years, Ada still continued to impress everyone with her skills in herding reindeer, trapping wildlife and picking berries to survive. The arrogant Stefansson tried to exploit her story. Ada never benefitted or received any compensation from the books that were written about her.
She died in a retirement facility in Palmer, Alaska and was buried in Anchorage. On her gravestone is a plaque reading “Heroine—Wrangel Island Expedition.”
[1]John Tepton. “Ada Blackjack”. Sep 16,2022. https://www.anchoragepress.com/columnists/ada-blackjack-johnson-an-epic-story-of-arctic-survival-alleged/article_c54d0de0-8afd-11e8-9017-9b3231b27ca7.htm
[2] From “Ada Blackjack, the Forgotten Sole Survivor of an Odd Arctic Expedition”. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ada-blackjack-arctic-survivor?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9f7f5f785c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_12_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-9f7f5f785c-63544557&ct=t()&mc_cid=9f7f5f785c
[3] “Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds of the air touch them by day or the wild animals by night” (2 Sam 21:10).
