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Updated: June 16, 2025
It was our plan to follow the main valley of the Kuskokwim until the confluence of the Takotna with that stream, just below the junction of the main North and South Forks of the Kuskokwim, and then strike northwestward across country to the Iditarod. The snow had passed and the sun was bright and the thermometer around zero all day when we left Minchúmina to pursue our journey.
A Greek church, which the natives built entirely themselves, and which boasted a large painted icon of sorts, was the most important building in the place, and was served by the lay minister referred to before. Thus far the Kuskokwim is navigable for vessels of light draught, and a small stern-wheel steamboat lay wintering upon the bank.
A half-breed trader, long resident at a point perhaps two hundred miles lower down the Kuskokwim, told me of coming back to a populous village after an absence of a few weeks, to find every person dead and the starving dogs tearing at the rotting corpses. It is terrible to think what the irruption of a new disease may mean to these primitive natives.
Their destination was a mysterious stream at the headwaters of the unmapped Kuskokwim, where rumor said there was gold, and whither they feared other men were hastening from the mining country far to the north.
Going up the Beluga and down the Skwentna Rivers, they crossed the range by the Simpson Pass to the south fork of the Kuskokwim, and then skirted the base of the mountains until a southwesterly ridge was reached which it is not very easy to locate, but which, as Doctor Brooks judges, must have been near the headwaters of the Tatlathna, a tributary of the Kuskokwim.
The denizens of the confines of the world, painted for war, had driven them back from the shores. At last, when one boat was cut off and every man killed, the commander had abandoned the quest and sailed back to the north. The years had passed. He had served under Tebenkoff when Michaelovski Redoubt was built. He had spent two years in the Kuskokwim country.
A glance at the map will show that the Innoko and Iditarod country lies between the two great rivers of Alaska, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, much lower down the Yukon than any of the earlier gold discoveries; that is to say that while the Tanana gold fields lie off the Middle Yukon, the Circle fields off the upper Yukon, the Iditarod camp belongs to the lower river.
But the climate of the Kuskokwim valley is evidently different from that of the rest of the interior, if, as John said, such weather is not remarkable in these parts at this season.
Just beyond the southwestern edge of the lake runs a deep gully for perhaps a mile that leads to another lake called Tsórmina, which drains into Minchúmina. And just beyond Tsórmina is a little height of land, on the other side of which lies Lake Sishwóymina, which drains into the Kuskokwim. So that little height of land is another watershed between Alaska's two great rivers.
In 1889 Frank Densmore, a prospector, with several companions, crossed from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim by way of the Coschaket and Lake Minchúmina, and had the magnificent view of the Denali group which Lake Minchúmina affords, which the present writer was privileged to have in 1911.
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