Volunteers uncover fate of thousands of Lost Alaskans
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Lucy Pitka McCormick’s relatives cooked salmon, moose, beaver and muskrat over an earthen firepit on the banks of the Chena River, just outside Fairbanks, as they honored her life. They whipped whitefish, blueberries and lard into a traditional Alaska Native dessert, and dolloped servings onto a paper plate, setting it in the flames to feed her spirit.
The family prayed as McCormick’s greatgrandson built a small plywood coffin that was filled with gifts and necessities for the next world, such as her granddaughter’s artwork and a hairbrush.
The weeklong Koyukon Athabascan burial ceremony in September was traditional in all ways but one: McCormick died in 1931. Her remains were only recently identified and returned to family.
McCormick was one of about 5,500 Alaskans between 1904 and the 1960s who were committed to a hospital in Portland, Oregon, after being deemed by a jury “really and truly insane,” a criminal offense.
There were no facilities to treat those with mental illness or developmental disabilities in what was then the Alaska territory, so they were sent — often by dog sled, sleigh or stagecoach — to a waiting ship in Valdez. The 2,500-mile journey ended at Morningside Hospital.
Many never left, and their families never learned their fate.
They are known as the Lost Alaskans.
For more than 15 years, volunteers in Fairbanks and in Portland have been working to identify the people who were committed to the hospital. Many were buried in Portland cemeteries, some in unmarked pauper graves. A few, like McCormick, have been returned to Alaska for proper burials.
“It was pretty powerful that we had Lucy back,” said her grandson, Wally Carlo. “You could feel the energy when she came back to Alaska, like she had to wait 90-some years for this.”
A new database went online in February to help families see if their long-lost auntie or great-grandfather were among those sent to Morningside. The website, which builds on an earlier blog, is a clearinghouse for research performed by the volunteers. Finding information has been laborious. Most records at the private hospital were lost in a 1968 fire, and territorial officials didn’t document those who were committed.
The volunteers became history detectives in an investigation that has spanned more than 15 years. Among them: former Alaska health commissioner Karen Perdue; two retired state judges, Niesje Steinkruger and the late Meg Green; and two other Fairbanks residents, Ellen Ganley and Robin Renfroe, aided by Eric Cordingley, a cemetery volunteer in Portland.
They combed through dusty Department of Interior records at the National Archives, the Alaska and Oregon state archives, and old Alaska court records for any tidbit: the results of commitment trials, cemetery files, death certificates, old newspaper stories and U.S. marshals reimbursement records for the costs of escorting patients.
Ganley and Perdue started the search at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, in 2008. Armed with laptops and a scanner, they gave themselves a week to find any reference to Perdue’s uncle, Gilford Kriska, who had disappeared from western Alaska as a boy.
Finally, they saw her uncle’s name on a patient trust account, showing the federal government owed him a few cents. That entry provided his patient number, which they used to uncover more about Kriska, including that it was village nuns who had him committed.