MOTHER OF THE NORTH

Hokitika Guardian, 7 February 1931, Page 6

MOTHER OF THE NORTH

AN EXAMPLE OF REAL GRIT. “I had only seven dollars to my name, i didn’t know a soul in Alaska. I stood on the beach in the rain, while tented Skagway of 1897 shouted, cursed, shot, and surged about me.” Mrs Harriet Pullen, who is perhaps the best-know woman in Alaska, was telling me how she began her career which has earned for her the title “Mother of the North” (writes Barrett Willoughby, in the American Magazine). “Necessity had forced me to seek my fortune in the new gold -rush town. 1 had lost my husband. 1 was in experienced in business matters. 1 had lost- my beautiful home, a ranch on the coast of Washington, and all my stock except seven horses that 1 had raised from colts. .1 had four little children to provide for—and 1 had never been trained to work. “When the climax came it was my cook who advised me to go with the Klondyke rush to Skagway, where unskilled workers might find a job. Having barely enough money to pay my fare. I left my babies with a friend and boarded the crowded steamer, hour days later we were put ashore.

“Frightened and alone L stood shivering. A man in a red m a kin aw stopped and looked me over.

£! ‘Ever cook’ he asked. “ ‘You’re hired. Three dollars a day Come along.’

“Eagerly I followed him up the beach up through a maze of flapping tents, along a tented street crowded with people, horses, dogs, all sloshing through mud a foot deep. “We came to a tent under a tree. ‘Here’s my lay-out,’ said my employer hurriedly. ‘Grub’s in a tent alongside My men are cutting piles for the new wharf. When thej r come in to-night they’ll be hungry enough to eat raw clog. You’ll have 18 for supper.’ “With that he rushed.out.

“I was aware of smells of rancid grease and smoked meats. A pan of beans was burning on the stove where the ,Jap cook had left it an hour before. when he deserted to go on into the Klondyke country. The dirt floor was littered with scraps of food, the rough table heaped with soiled tin dishes. And with this wretched equipment I must prepare meals lor 18 men! J3nl 1 didn’t dare give up my first job. So I tied a flour sack about my waist and began to clean up that place. Old-time Alaskans have described Harriet Pullen as she was that day—a splendid, young beauty with a proud head crowned with a mass of dark red hair.

“1 raked the scraps from the floor,” she continued, “’scoured the dishes with ashes, and by evening bad a fairly good supper ready.”

- Cooking in a tent was hard work, and Mrs Pullen’s hands crackeiT ami bled.

“It took me three months to save enough money to send for my children,” she went on. “Since Skagway was no place for a little girl, I left my daughter in the States. When my boys arrived 1 had a home ready lor them —a tiny log cabin on the water!rout, with a, small stove in one corner and a bale of straw for a bed in another. Mv boys were too small to realise how desperately poor I was. They considered .me a wonderful mother. 1 hey believed I’d given them that straw to iyleep in just so they might have fun!

“Yet, even though they were sc small, they helped me. The brought in boxes from the beach, and nights after work, I made these into furniture—chairs, a table, a cupboard, ant* shelves.”

As the weeks went bv, Mrs Pullen saw that her three dollars a day would not provide adequately for her growing children. Her boarders were loud in their praise of her cooking, but liei employer felt that she was not experienced enough yet to merit an increase in wages. To get more money she made dried apple pies for a woman who ran a restaurant.

“1 worked at them at nights after my other tasks were done. I made them by the dozen, by the hundred. Why 1 built enough dried-apple pies to pay the freight on the seven horses I’d left in Washington!

“By this time horses were in demand in Skagway. The beach was blocked with thousands of tons of freight awaiting transportation over the White Pass Trial to the head of river navigation. Horses didn’t last long on the AVhite Pass Trial. “Afy own horses—it filled me with anguish to think of them in Skagway. But I knew that with the horses I could make the money necessary to get my babies a better home and education.” The horses arrived—though their harness was stolen! —and Airs Pullen began to run a pack train on the AVhite Pass Trial.

“The Heartbreak Trail!” “The Worst Trail this side of Hell!” I cleared 2o dollars a day. But I never made as much as a man, because I refused to overwork my horses. “I knew this prosperity could last but a little while, however, because already in Alay of 1898 the AVhite Pass railroad was under construction. I had noticed a great house standing empty just off the main part of the town. I knew I could fill that house with paying guests.” She rented the place, and that vas the beginning of the Pullen House, the comfortable, rambling hostelry that is known to world travellers to-day as Alaska’s best. Thirtv years have passed since then. As a guest, of the present-day fallen iHouse I sat in the sunny dining room

chatting with, its owner, a .Tunoesque woman with an air of command. AY hat of those three little boys who slept in the straw?

Her oldest son, Dan, was the first cadet from Alaska at AA’est Point. He was the flaming-haired young giant, famous All-American football tackle. who finished with more honours than had ever before been accorded a cadet. A colonel of engineers in the late war. he was pressed into service as a tank commander. With his squadron of tanks lie took a German position : but the infantry following him failed to consolidate. The red-heatlied Dan charged back on foot, reformed the infantry, led them back, anil retook the position. General Pershing, when ho heard of this, exclaimed fervently: “J wish 1 had a regiment of Pullens!” Before he “went, west” young Colonel Dan Pullen was honoured with the Croix de Gurro with two palms, a Distinguished Service Cross, and the Belgian King’s decoration of the Order of the Crown. Chester Pullen went -singing away one vacation afternoon and was accidentally drowned in the swil t-rushing liver.

Royal Pullen came back from the wan with wounds and citations for gallantry, and is to-day in charge of one of the biggest mines of tbe world. “Don’t you often wish that he lived here where you could he with him 7 I asked this poiueer mother. “No.” she said promptly. “His work lies out- in the world. T would not dream of handicapping my son ( .\riih such weak wishes.”