Aleutian Honeymoon

PREKASKA'S WIFE--Helen Wheaton--Dodd, Mead ($3).

"You sure don't be de dype to seddle down in a hole like dis," said the Norwegian skipper gloomily as he watched pert, young Santa Fe Schoolteacher Helen Wheaton get ready to clamber over the side of his dinky schooner in Atka Harbor. As she said goodbye to the skipper and boarded the bobbing dory in which her bridegroom waited with open arms, Helen was thinking much the same thing.

"Nothing I write," says Author Wheaton in this light, gay record of her year-long (1935) honeymoon in the bleak Aleutians, "can possibly . . . show [me] to be a woman of strength and initiative." As wife of the local prekaska (storekeeper), and the only white woman on Atka, Helen regarded her Aleut neighbors with amazement streaked with alarm. The black haired, giggling, almond-eyed Aleuts, smelling strongly and permanently of fish, regarded Helen in turn with open admiration.

Is Much Fun. One of Helen's first tasks was to hang out an accumulation of family wash. As the intimate objects sailed out one by one along the pulley line stretching from her kitchen window, Helen heard a spirited commentary from dozens of Aleut women, who had assembled on the square below. "Is funny pants," shouted one when Husband Thornie's pajamas appeared. "What is?" When Helen's blue net dressing gown sailed out, it drew a tremendous round of applause. "Is pretty!" shouted the gallery. "To dance or bed in?"

Discouraged with laundry, Helen advertised for help. Three women promptly appeared. After a long day, Helen asked what she owed. "No moneys at all," they answered happily. "Is much fun come wash in house of Prekaska's wife. . . . We like tell other Aleut womens about your house."

Aleut males shared their wives and money with equal unconcern. Every member of the community received an equal share from the sale (to Husband Thornie's company) of the island's blue-fox pelts, whether or not he had helped in the trapping. Chief Dirks, who invariably retreated to his bed when any trouble loomed, explained the system: "Mike Creveden very lazy, no catch foxes, only two or three. We say shouldn't do that but he say he lazy and can't help it."

Snigeroff's Nose. Drunkenness was regarded as an affliction rather than a misdemeanor. Nobody except Helen minded the endless consumption of a beverage brewed by "tossing sugar, flour and yeast--and sometimes a handful of rice or half-rotten fruit--into a dirty butter barrel" filled with water and allowing the mess to "make" for four days. "Don't be silly," said Thornie, dismissing Helen's alarm at the battle royal which invariably accompanied this wassail. "The boys are just having a good time. Just like kids. . .They really enjoy it."

Bitterly Helen asked him who had enjoyed it when Nick Houdikoff bit off a piece of Cedar Snigeroff's nose. "Nick's wife did," answered Thornie triumphantly. "She put that piece of nose in a bottle of water, then showed it around to prove what a good fighter her husband was."

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