by Melinda
Pillsbury-Foster
Erika, from
the Ketchikan Museum, emailed me using our contact form to ask about
some of the images in their collection from the Gold Rush years in
Alaska. The museum had, she told me, a number of images from Arthur
C. Pillsbury, who had passed through the town on his way up to the
mining fields with his cameras, including the circuit panorama camera
he had designed and built while a senior at Stanford in 1897. He
paused to record images of the totem poles and native people, as they
worked and carried out their every day lives. These shots show the
inside of native homes with the mixture of possessions of their own
making along with objects manufactured elsewhere.
These
images fascinate people today, showed a world now lost, and many of
them have survived as post cards. While postal cards were in use
from around 1851 the one penny post cards, privately printed, were
only authorized by Congress on May 19, 1898.
The City of
Ketchikan sponsors two museums, one for the largest existing
collection of native totem poles and another for the history of
their community stretching back to its founding in the 1880s to
process the abundant salmon in the offshore waters.
The most
southern town in Alaska, Ketchikan is also the earliest town,
boasting a population of around 8,000 people, making it the tenth
largest town in Alaska.
Today the
Totem Heritage Center serves the town as a cultural center, a
resource for appreciating and continuing the artistic traditions of
the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people.
Grandfather
went to Alaska to record the opening of the mining fields. Once
there, he became fascinated by its native population, caught in a
transition enforced on them by the overwhelming influence of Western
culture. Those images which remain are still compelling today.
As
Grandfather traveled through Alaska he would sometimes leave a supply
of glass negatives with a local merchant, starting a Pillsbury Studio
to print more cards. Purchased and mailed, these traveled around the
world.
His
originals were lost on April 18, 1906 in the San Francisco Earthquake
and Fire. So, when one of his images turns up from places you would
never expect each one is precious. And even now the number of
images rediscovered is steadily increasing. I never know what to
expect when I open an email. But it can be wonderful.
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