The Real Natchiq
THE CHARACTER NATCHIQ IN this story is based on a real Eskimo prophet and social reformer who lived in Northwest Alaska in the nineteenth century.
His name was Maniilaq and Natchiq’s life is drawn from his, the greatest difference being that Maniilaq was not murdered in the Brooks Range. Instead, he reached Canada, as far as can be determined, and his descendants reportedly live there today.
Natchiq’s teachings and prophecies, as related in this story, are borrowed from the teachings and prophecies of Maniilaq, as set down in oral histories recorded by Eskimo elders who, as children, saw Maniilaq in the flesh. Maniilaq opposed the angatquqs, advocated better treatment of women, and tried to prepare the Inupiat for the waves of change about to wash over them.
Where he got his ideas and his information, no one knows, though it is possible he came into contact with Westerners— whalers or traders—in his travels through various coastal villages, and transformed what he saw and heard into the things he told the Inupiat of his day. As with Natchiq in this story, however, Maniilaq never explained the origin of his ideas, other than to say they came from his source of intelligence in the sky.
Relatively little has been written about this mysterious and fascinating figure, and much of what there is tends to exist in the shadow world of “gray literature”—material either out of print or never published, available only to the specialist or the determined or lucky generalist. However, at least two books that deal with Maniilaq in greater or lesser detail are in print, according to an Internet search at the time of this writing:
Maniilaq, Prophet From The Edge of Nowhere, Onjinjinkta Publishing
The Kotzebue Basin, Alaska Geographic Society
In addition, a useful chapter on Maniilaq can be found in Tomorrow Is Growing Old, an excellent history of the Quakers in Alaska (Barclay Press). That book, regrettably, is out of print and so falls into the category of gray literature. But it may be available in libraries or used bookstores.
In addition, an Internet search for the word “Maniilaq” may turn up useful information as more gray literature makes its way into the light.
Maniilaq’s legacy of concern for the well-being of his people lives on today in the form of the Maniilaq Association, an Inupiat-controlled nonprofit corporation set up in the 1970s to provide human services in Northwest Alaska.
And Shaman Pass? There is indeed a real place in the Brooks Range where the wind is said to blow so hard it kills caribou. That place is called Howard Pass.
—Stan Jones
Anchorage
June 2002