Met a nice Eskimo on the flight down from Prudhoe. He has just been elected village President (He didn't know about the election or that he was running until one of his friends called him and said, "ha ha, you are elected.) and was coming down to Fairbanks to negotiate $400,000.00 in back taxes for the villagers with the IRS.

He told me about how a shaman drummed his grandfather to death. The shaman beat the drum while walking 'round his grandfather's house five times and a blood vein burst in his grandfather's head. He said he guesses that's what his grandfather gets for stealing another man's woman -but he's kinda glad his grandfather did, else he wouldn't be here!

We talked about whale hunting. He says he feels safer on the ocean behind a whale than in Fairbanks (He owned six cars before he gave up driving. He didn't wreck them or anything, they would just stop running!). That the whale can only move his head around eighteen degrees & can only lift his "arm" around four or six inches. That if you know about whales they're pretty safe. But he saw one time, a skin boat got too close. The whale he lifted his arm only four inches but he picked up the front end of that skin boat twenty feet out of the water and the back end was out of the water too. The boat was broke, all the ribs stove in, where the whale's arm hit it but it still floated. It was lucky, he said, that the whale didn't hit it under one of the seats that somebody was sitting on 'cause it sure would have broke their back. That's when he found out how really good those old skin boats are by golly!

He said he was out another time alone when he was working with a geologist in the mountains near Barter Island (Near's a relative term, he's refering to the Romanzof Mountians,some 90 miles from Barter Island.). He was walking alone going up a pass when he saw a big Silvertip Grizzly sitting in the middle of the pass. The pass was between two loose gravel hills and he couldn't go far up the sides to go around the Griz. He was standing there trying to think what to do & the Silvertip was sitting there looking at him. Finally the Silvertip he snorted and then he took about three leaps up the gravel banks and sat there on side the hill. The Silvertip he looked at him and then slowly he turned his head and then he looked down the trail. The Silvertip he did this three times and then kinda snorted "what are you waiting for, man!". Well he watched the Silvertip and then took off down the trail then, lookin' at the Silvertip. He walked just as fast as he could without running and he went right past the Silvertip stepping in the hollow the Silvertip was sitting in before in the trail and the Silvertip just sat up there and looked at him until he was past and then the Silvertip he came back down and sat again in the same hollow. The Silvertip he didn't even sniff the tracks or anything, he just came back down and sat there again.

He told me another time he was out in his boat with his cousin and they saw a big polar bear. He looked at it and it would be easy to kill. He would shoot it in the ear after it got up on the ice. It would be easy for him to shoot it in the ear, -he shot seals there and this bears ear was as big as a dinner plate- so it would be easy to kill. He looked at it and looked at it and so did his cousin. It was a big bear. He figured if he did kill it he couldn't fit anything but the skin in his boat. He said to his cousin, "Moe, do you want that bear?". Moe said, "No, I don't want him, do you?" He told him how all they could haul is the skin so they didn't shoot him. Another boat came along and they asked them if they wanted that bear. They figured they couldn't haul it either. He said that in all three-four boats came along and let that big bear go that day.

This was on Monday, three days before Christmas, that we were flying down from the North Slope to Fairbanks. He planned to finish up with the IRS and fly back home to Barrow for Christmas. I told him he'd better make sure of his reservations because the plane will probably be pretty full then. He said he would but if he had any trouble he wasn't really worried 'cause his grandmother she would take care of him. She passed away twenty years ago but she would help him -she had helped him many times before when he needed it.