Koyukuk

ARCTIC VILLAGE--Robert Marshall-- Smith & Haas ($3). When young Plant Physiologist Robert Marshall decided to spend a summer in Alaska he looked at the map. found there were two large uncharted sections. He chose the Upper Koyukuk because it was farther north, inside the Arctic Circle. He liked it so much that a year later he went back there to spend over a year. Arctic Village, May choice of the Literary Guild, is the fascinatingly factual record of his visit. Like Robert Lynd's famed Middletown (statistical study of Muncie. Ind.). Arctic Village's data cover every phase of human activity in the Koyukuk. neatly arranged under anthropological heads, backed up by tables of statistics, pointed by photographs that would do credit to Dr. Erich Salomon. Civilization in miniature, the Koyukuk's total population is 127 (whites. Eskimos & Indians). Wiseman, the principal town, where Author Marshall had a cabin and spent most of his time, has 48 houses. Marshall took plenty of stiff reading with him. expecting to have time on his hands. but found Wiseman so sociable he seldom had time to read. Thirty-one days in Winter (Dec. 7-Jan. 6) Wiseman never sees the sun, but the winter Marshall spent there was unusually mild: the thermometer's lowest was 50DEG below. Wiseman is a gold-mining town that has long passed its boom dividends. In 1916 its richest claims were exhausted, high Wartime wages "Outside'' drew many of its most energetic citizens, Prohibition went into effect. In 1919 the last prostitute left town. Today, says Marshall, Wiseman is one-quarter its boom size, but it is neither depressed nor dreary. Most of its inhabitants came to make a fortune, stayed to enjoy life. Said one old sourdough: ''My God. the time runs away to nothing. Ain't it a corker the way time goes? You can't accomplish anything before you're ready to be buried." Marshall persuaded most Koyukukers to take the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, found them by & large the most intelligent people he had ever known. The ''very superior" class was four times as large as among normal U. S. citizens. Popular. Marshall went everywhere in the hospitable Koyukuk. talked to everybody except the few Eskimos who spoke no English, painstakingly tabulated his findings. He even listed the quarrels during his stay (43). their ten causes, from insults to insanity. In "the 1,477 minutes spent on matters not directly connected with the life and experience of the talkers." he found the most popular topics were "abstract scientific discussions, economics and government, religion and philosophy, sex from a factual standpoint"; least popular topics were exploration and sporting events. His conclusion: "When I picture the life in the North and here, I say--my stomach is better off here but my mentality lives its best up there. . . . The inhabitants of the Koyukuk would rather eat beans with liberty, burn candles with independence, and mush dogs with adventure than to have the luxury and the restrictions of the outside world. A person misses many things by living in the isolation of the Koyukuk. but he gains a life filled with an amount of freedom, tolerance, beauty, and contentment such as few human beings are ever fortunate enough to achieve." The Author, though born in Manhattan (1901), soon got outdoors. While still a boy he was known as the first person to climb all the high Adirondacks. Graduated from the New York State College of Forestry and the Harvard Forest School, he spent four years with the U. S. Forest Service in Montana and Idaho. Two years at Johns Hopkins gave him his Ph. D. in plant physiology. At present Dr. Marshall is in Washington. D. C. with the Government's Forest Service.

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