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Today I recieved the following email from my good friends in Ketchikan, Bill & Mary Pfiefer! The title of "Sourdough" bestowed upon me by a true native Alaskan is a high honor that I cherish greatly! You may find his letter interesting. Here it is:
Buddy - You do a great job of writing as usual and I am sure that all your friends and Alaskan's appreciate your thoughts as much as we do. One small correction is that I am 1/8th Tlingit. Your story about the Carharts and coming out a local reminds me of a story.
I had just finished power trolling in the summer out of Hoonah with my Uncle Adam Greenewald and had started high school in LaConner, Washington during the time that Alaska was considering the Alaska Pipeline. I decided to do a report on the pipeline for school and requested information from a number of first hand people including the Governor of Alaska William A. Egan. I of course received information from the office of the Governor with a letter on state printed stationary. The letter began "Dear Cheechako..."
(I have pasted definitions below at the end) I subsequently showed my Uncle Albert Greenewald the letter from the Governor since our families would get together every Sunday. He was Born in Hoonah, AK and was a commercial fisherman that lived in Mount Vernon Washington in the winter when he wasn’t fishing. He laughed when he read that the Governor called me a Cheechako… He explained to me what it was and said that he, my grandmother and grandfather were all close friends with Governor Egan. He suggested I write a follow up letter to the Governor thanking him for the information. He said to include the fact that I was Tlingit, born in Juneau, Alaska and fished with my uncle Adam Greenewald (who served on the Alaska State Board of Fish and Game) in the summer. He told me to write that if the Governor considered me a Cheechako could he also please write my Uncle Albert to let him know that he was also a Cheechako since while he was born in Alaska and commercial fishes in Alaska he winters in Washington State. So I wrote the letter as my uncle advised and I am sure the Governor had a good chuckle. I subsequently received a letter from the Governor which this time had a gold embossed seal of the State of Alaska stating that indeed I was not a Cheechako and was a sourdough. He also sent a certificate making me a member of the Order of the Walrus with a little walrus head stick pin. I still have the letters packed away some place.
So I would consider you leaving Alaska as a Sourdough, even though you have not spent all 4 seasons in Alaska and I would challenge anyone that would call you simply a Cheechako. You had many new friends to help you get to this point along with a number of adventures that you had to push forward on your own having limited knowledge of what lies ahead. Alaska is a great land, filled with adventure, and will build a spirit that bonds all those who have shared in the adventures and challenges Alaska brings.
You now have shared in that legacy that bonds Alaskans. Don’t let too much time pass to where you forget that spirit that brought life into your soul. Visit Alaska and your friends often.
Until our paths cross again,
Dr Bill Pfeifer
Ketchikan, AK
CHEECHAKO
from Chinook jargon
This word originated in United States (Alaska), Canada (Yukon)
Welcome to Alaska, cheechako!
If that's the greeting you get up north, don't be insulted. In Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, cheechako means nothing more sinister than "newcomer" or "tenderfoot," a stage you will outgrow if you stay around. The harsh climate and terrain of Alaska do make greater demands on newcomers than the Lower 49, and perhaps that is why there is a special northern word for them. The word was imported from Chinook Jargon into the English of that region during the Yukon gold rush that began in 1896 and is chronicled in the stories of Jack London and the poems of Robert Service. In White Fang (1906), London takes time at the beginning of a chapter to explain:
Service's third book of Yukon poems, published in 1909, is called Ballads of a Cheechako. Chinook Jargon was a trade language spoken in the Pacific Northwest by perhaps as many as 100,000 Indians and the white traders and settlers who dealt with them. It was based on the language of the Chinook Indians of the lower Columbia River, but its vocabulary had many additions from English. Today there are just a few speakers of Chinook Jargon left. The Chinook language itself is extinct. In Chinook Jargon, cheechako means "new come," the two parts of the word deriving from Lower Chinook and Nootka, respectively. English has gained half a dozen other words from Chinook Jargon, including camas (plant with edible bulb, 1805), eulachon (fish, 1807), salal (shrub, 1825), and chum (salmon, 1902). The motto of Washington State is the Chinook Jargon al-ki, meaning "by and by." But the name Chinook, used for a wind and a kind of salmon as well as the tribe, is not from Chinook Jargon but from the Chehalis Indian language.
Alaska sourdough (or simply sourdough) is a colloquial title for an Alaskan "old-timer."
The term originated during the Klondike Gold Rush when settlers began to flood into Alaska. Due to the limited availability of leavening in the remote bush of Alaska, settlers made their bread using a sourdough starter which uses flour, water, and sugar to naturally collect yeast from the air.The use and consumption of this bread was so widespread that these settlers began to be known as "sourdoughs."[1]
In modern usage, the term "sourdough" can be applied to any old-timer in the state.
This term is also used within Canada's Yukon territory to refer to permanent residents of the territory, sometimes defined as persons who have lived in the Yukon during all four seasons.
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