I Called My Grandmother Gammie by Virginia Lacy

I called my grandmother “Gammie.” My very first recollection is sitting with her in the sun as she taught me to make French knots on a piece of yellow fabric. Gammie had long, coal black hair that she braided and wore in a coronet. She was born in the village of Nuchek on Hinchinbrook Island [Prince William Sound], the daughter of Chief Makari Chimaviskey.

Nuchek at that time was a bustling village, a stopping place for ships to replenish water and supplies as they left the Gulf of Alaska. Many Russian explorers had visited the area and in 1788 the Imperial Russian Fur Company established a trading post and fortress there. The Russians made virtual slaves of the natives in the village and forced them to hunt the precious sea otters for them. They had them make special bidarkas with three holes so that a Russian could go along to make sure the natives did not keep any of the furs for themselves. They provided guns for the hunters but charged them exhorbitant prices for shells for their own use.

One of the ships that stopped there was the government survey vessel “MacArthur”. One of the sailors aboard, August Tiedeman, came to the United States while a member of the German Navy. He jumped ship in Baltimore MD, later joined the United States Navy and traveled to and from the Philippine Islands during the Spanish American War. History repeated itself when he jumped ship in Nuchek. He had met my grandmother, Matrona, and they were later married.

The young couple left Nuchek with two small children and moved to Ellamar. There two more children were born. Ellamar was a small city with a promising copper mine and they also mined for gold. The mine had a company store, large warehouses, a school, homes for the miners, a dance hall, and a dining room for employees. The miners worked long hours. Much of the work had to be done at low tide and it was necessary to construct caissons to keep the water out of the “Glory Hole”. Grandpa bought a boat so they could fish to add to their income. He named it the “Mary F” after my mother, Mary, and her sister, Freda.

When the mine closed they moved the family to Makaka Creek on Hawkins Island near Cordova. Nuchek suffered a severe smallpox epidemic and many residents died. Chief Makari took the orphans to Makaka Creek and established a settlement there. Chief Makari possessed many of the spiritual powers which accompanied the position of Chief. He could predict weather changes from observing the behavior of animals and it was said he had seen sea otters with human faces. I remember that he had piercing grey eyes that seemed to look right through me.

My grandparents built a two-bedroom house on a bluff above the creek. My mother told me that in their house the kitchen table had legs about a foot high and they would sit around it on little stools.

After a few years they moved to Alice Cove, thirteen miles from Cordova, where they operated a blue fox farm and worked in the herring saltery. The saltery was a large operation with a dock, a cannery, and a warehouse where they stored the salted herring until a ship came by to transport the barrels to Seattle. The foxes were kept in pens in a meadow some distance from the house. They had to be confined or they would be a good meal for the black and brown bear that shared the meadow. Bears did not often come down near the house but we did lose chickens when the occasional coyote came through.

The family would move into Cordova during the winters so that the children could go to school. None of them went further than the fourth grade as everyone had to work to help the family, but they learned to read and write and had many books that they read as they sat around a big table in the kitchen under the gas light. I marvel at the things they were able to accomplish with their limited education.

Uncle Art and Uncle Otto were both boat builders and for many years the “Tiedeman Skiff” was used for fishing in the Cordova area. Both of Uncle Art’s boys learned boat building, starting out with toy boats that we sailed from the beach in front of the house.

Gammie taught Mother to crochet and they were both amazing. They could just look at a doily and reproduce it stitch for stitch. They knitted sweaters for all of us and made the feather beds and wool patchwork quilts that kept us warm.

My father was a Bulgarian immigrant, a WWI veteran who met my mother when he was logging in Sheep Bay, just a short distance from Alice Cove. I was born in my grandparents home—Gammie and her sister Kate were the midwives—and we lived with them until I was six and had to go to Cordova to school.

We lived in a seven-room house that had been moved in sections from the old wireless station at Whitshed. You had to walk a ways to the outhouse which was cantilevered out over the water so the tides could keep the area clean.

My brothers, Jimmy and Perry, were born after we moved to Cordova, but we spent our summers at Alice Cove. We played on the gravel beach in front of the house. There was a sandy area at one end where my cousin Gladys and I would build houses with flat rocks and driftwood. Gladys was two years older than me and we had great adventures. One day we rowed a small skiff around the dock and saw dozens of dogfish that looked like small sharks. They were in a feeding frenzy on herring that had been thrown overboard. We were sure we going to be attacked and rowed toward the beach yelling for help. I remember that everyone laughed at us and called us babies.

We slept in a big room upstairs and I went to sleep with the sound of the waves on the beach and the call of Sandhill cranes and geese as they flew south.

They had a steambath and Gammie really liked it HOT. She would ladle more water onto the hot rocks until my mother and I would stagger out into the cool air. One of my tasks was to go with Gammie up into the woods and pick stiff ferns that she used as “spankers”. Mother and I did not use the them but Gammie and Aunt Kate felt they were a necessary part of having a steambath. And in some places they are still used. A few years ago my grandson was a crewman on a boat that had been sold to a Russian company and they t ook it from Cordova to th e Sakhalin Islands off the coast of Russia. After three weeks on a boat with limited water they were really in need of a bath. Their guide took them to a luxurious steambath with large deep tubs, and an attendant was standing by with branches for whoever might want to use them.

We spent every Christmas at Alice Cove. Santa Claus came in person to see us, carrying a bag of gifts, and always a box of Japanese oranges. I’m told that the first time I saw Santa I was terrified and climbed under the treadle sewing machine until they coaxed me out with a baby doll. When I got older I could help decorate the Christmas tree that was put up in a corner of the living room. We would make garlands of cranberries and popcorn to string on the tree. Only the grown-ups could attach the candles in the snap holders. After Santa came to see us the candles would be carefully lit while we watched wide-eyed, and then as carefully extinguished.

There was a large living room and Gammie had a huge begonia plant that she really treasured. She watched me like a hawk because before I learned to walk I would push my walker all around the plant and fill the walker tray with blossoms.

Gam mie was my teacher. When she baked bread, which was every other day, I made my own small loaves. When she made custard pies from seagull eggs, which were gathered and put down in waterglass, I made my custard pies from pigeon eggs. We walked around the cove to a rocky island where we harvested gumboots [limpets] by prying them off the rocks with a screwdriver. We picked blueberries, cloudberries, cranberries and crowberries to make pies and jelly. We had no pectin, but longer cooking made delicious jelly and jam. Nothing tasted better than her sourdough hotcakes with blueberry syrup.

They planted a garden behind the house and grew carrots, potatoes, radishes turnips, rutebegas, onions, and lettuce. Us kids used to sneak out to the garden with a dish of sugar and eat the tender new lettuce leaves. Another favorite was pulling up young carrots and munching on them. We would blame the rabbits but I don’t think anyone believed us.

My grandfather was an autocratic German and would not allow the Aleut language spoken in his hearing. Gammie and her sister talked between themselves but they did not teach their children or us grandchildren any of their native language. The only time I know that she spoke Aleut was when she was hired by Frederica de Laguna, an anthropologist exploring Palugvik, an ancient site on Hawkins Island about 15 miles southwest of Cordova. Frederica needed information from my great grandfather and since he spoke little English, Gammie translated for her.

She spent several months with the archeological team. She was the cook, preparing Native foods, and showing them how they could live off the land. She and my grandfather took them in their boat to explore the eastern shore of Prince William Sound, where they visited several sites and collected artifacts. She told them many Eyak folk tales and interpreted stories told by Chief Makari. We liked the stories about the little people who lived in trees. She said she had seen them and they had pointed heads. We often left food out for them and they must have been satisfied with our gifts as they did not play tricks on us.

One of the stories she told us was a tale told by Chief Makari aboutthe dwarfs on Hawkins Island. Two men from a village on Montague Island went there to go hunting. They went ashore, climbed a mountain, and saw a flat area below them with no trees at all. Then they heard someone shouting “Ahoo! A boat has come in.” But they could see nothing but the bare flat and they were very confused as n o people were supposed to live there. They went down to the flat and saw smoke coming from the ground. Then they saw a little man coming to meet them and he was about as big as a thumb. There was a tiny smokehouse made of bark and house so small the hunters could pick them up like toys. Several other small men joined them. One little fellow said “Don’t abuse us. If you do you will never get home.” They did not like their houses picked up. One of the fellows told them they found a whale and wanted them to see it. It was a silver salmon. Another day the small men left, carrying their tiny bows and arrows, and then came back as they said they had shot a brown bear and needed help.

One of their men had been bitten and killed. The hunters followed the little men and found a mouse hole with an injured mouse so they killed it and the little men were very happy.

They had never seen big people before and told the hunters that anyone who found them would be lucky all their lives. But the hunters made a mistake. They stole two of the dwarfs and hid them in their clothes and started back home. They walked and walked but when they looked around they had not moved. They could not get anywhere. The little fe llows told them they must turn them loose or they would never be able to move. They turned the dwarfs loose and the dwarfs told the men, “When you get home do not let anyone come this way because they will never get home.” The hunters believed them and did not go back to Hawkins Island again.


My grandmother had been taught the subsistence ways. We lived in an environment rich in natural resources. Crab, clams and fish were plentiful, as well as deer, goats, and seal, and we especially liked the seal liver. There was a stream at the head of the bay where pink salmon spawned, and they harvested these fish, drying them for food for the foxes. During the fishing season Gammie put up King salmon and sockeye salmon, some plain in jars, and some would be first smoked and then canned, just like Mary has been teaching in her classes. Every year she would prepare a supply of hard smoked salmon. They also kept chickens, geese, pigs, pigeons, rabbits and goats. We drank the goat milk and it was also used in cooking.. I didn’t like it when they killed the pigs and dipped them in a huge vat of boiling water to remove the hair. I would hike up in the meadow and talk to the foxes until the operation was complete One of the goats was really mean. You didn’t want him to get behind you or he would butt you when you were not looking. He also ate anything. We called him “Tin Can” because he would even eat cans.

Gammie was a perfectionist housekeeper. Floors were scrubbed on hands and knees and sand was used to keep the wood looking white. There was a big stove made from a barrel that kept the living room warm and a huge kitchen range with a warming oven. They used both wood and coal and had a big copper boiler used for heating water for laundry. We took our baths in a large washtub that she put next to the barrel stove.

Alice Cove was a regular stop when friends from around the Sound came by on their way to town for supplies. There was always a big stew, fried bread, pie, tea and coffee, and lots of talk and laughter. Uncle Art would entertain us by playing his piano accordian. Gammie raised many children besides her own two boys and girls. They might be orphans or perhaps a child who did not get along with his parents. It didn’t matter to her. She raised them as if they were her own.

They spent many years at Alice Cove, but after the children moved to other l ocations it was difficult for them to tend the foxes and a garden. Then one weekend when they came to town shopping, their house burned with everything in it. They were going to move to Cordova but didn’t want to get rid of the foxes so they got leases on North Island and Observation Island, which are in Orca Inlet. You can see both islands from Cordova. They put the foxes in pens to transport them and then let them loose on the two islands as there were no predators to bother them. They had feeding stations and several times a week would put dried fish out for them. They made a garden, had rabbits in a big hutch, and there were raspberries and blueberries right next to the house. Of course it was not long until the market for blue fox furs was so poor that it was not worthwhile to stay in the fur business. They ended up with two foxes who were really pets—“Beansoup” and “Peasoup,” so named because they relished the leftover soups that were put out on the ramp for them.

Then it was the end of an era. Gammie was sick. She came to town to stay with us and was in and out of the hospital. Then she and Mother went to Juneau on a steamship so that she could go into a hospital there. She only lived a month in Juneau and di ed at the young age of 54. And she still had cold black hair with not a trace of grey.

Gammie had been the driving force for the family for so many years that my grandfather did not know what to do when she was gone. He tried living by himself but soon moved to town and lived with us until his death at the age of 90.

Gammie was a strong, brave woman who spent all of her life nurturing, teaching and helping all of us to be better people. She lives in my memory forever.

Prince William Sound

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