Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 264, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1912 — BLOND ESKIMOS LONG KNOWN [ARTICLE]

BLOND ESKIMOS LONG KNOWN

Old Revenue Cutter Captain B£ya Stories of {Burning Mountain Were Laughed At. CjTacoma, Wash. —Captain Fraficis Tuttle of the revenue service, retired, says that for thirty years or more stories of Stefansdon’s blond Eskimo tribe have been told by old-time whalers who were sometimes driven into Bankland by ice floes. Whalers were laughed at when they described Eskimos with red hair seen in the far north. In the early nineties Captain Tutr tie, commanding the cutter Bear, met the whaler Ballene, commanded by Captain Bert Williams, now residing at Irondale. Williams told Tuttle of a strange tribe in Bankland which came out to the whaler. Some of them went aboard. Williams could not understand their language and learned little about them. From his winter quarters Williams could see a burning mountain of coal. The native* led him to a place where he ob- • tained enough coal to supply his vessel that winter. By signs they made Williams understand that the great mountain had been burning for 200 years. Captain Tuttle believes Williams is the man of whom one tribe told Stefansson. During his thirty years of service on the Alaskan coast Captain Tuttle heard of blond tribes from otheV whalers, but the stories were generally given little credence.