In 1943, Mrs. Mae Field talked about her life in the Klondike stampede in an interview with Helen Berg, a writer for the Alaska Sportsman. "I didn't care for the gold," Mrs. Field said in a voice still as clear as a bird song. "It was what the gold could buy—the pleasure it could give others, the suffering it could alleviate. The gold itself was too common, just like pebbles that were picked up and thrown around."¹

Helen Berg was charmed by her subject, a fragile little woman "with a beautiful, sweet old face," sitting in her quaint, old-fashioned parlor. The frail pioneer said she had been barely seventeen when she wed Arthur Field and headed north from South Dakota for the gold rush. Mrs. Field said that she still pined for Arthur, even though he'd left her to make her way alone in the world as a dance hall girl. She had been so successful that she was known as the "Doll of Dawson," she added.

Had Berg checked the papers of that era or discovered Mae Field's extensive Canadian police record, she might have titled her story, "The Moll of Dawson." But Mae, who must have been over seventy at the time, had been a respected resident of Ketchikan, Alaska, for thirty years.

"Everyone knew her, and thought they knew all about her. I was to learn, however, that a capricious fate had tossed her on waves of heavenly joy and abysmal sadness about which even her closest friends knew nothing," Berg reported in her best purple prose. Mae, a tenacious survivor with a grand sense of humor, led her a merry chase.

According to her account, Mae had been raised in a quiet Minnesota town. "My parents were respectable, God-fearing people of the old school. They were horrified with me, because I wanted to dance. And dance I did! I ran away from home and went to Duluth," she told Helen Berg.

The petite brunette with milk-white skin and a marvelous figure attracted the attention of promoter "Whiskey" Bartlett at the Comique Theatre, who took her career in hand until her brother fetched her home. A few months later she was off again, dancing in Hill City, South Dakota, where she fell in love with Arthur Daniel Field. He was the son of a wealthy family from Hot Springs, South Dakota, and Mae gave up her promising career for him, she said.²

In truth, Arthur Field, age thirty-four, seems to have had no family ties in Hot Springs but had owned or managed bars in the area since about 1890. The local government occasionally voted itself dry and when it did, Arthur was usually arrested for bootlegging. In 1894 he and his partner, W. H. Carter, were arrested for running a whorehouse, but they beat the rap. When it was again legal to sell alcohol, Arthur was the first to buy a license. He owned a lot downtown where he built a two-story hotel, then purchased additional land and invested with a partner.³

Mae's history during this period is murky. It is well-documented that Arthur Field was married at Hot Springs on September 10, 1897, but his bride's name was recorded as Mrs. Lavina B. Wells, age twenty-four, whose place of residence was St. Paul, Ramsy Court, Minnesota. The marriage license was signed by Clerk of Courts Thomas H. Wells, who may have been the brother of Mae's former husband.⁴

The formal wedding made the local social column.⁵ Mae would later claim that her bridegroom gave her valuable property in Hot Springs as a nuptial, and land records show the couple co-owned valuable property there until 1902. A confirmed bachelor until his marriage, Arthur appears to have delighted in the match. The local newspaper extended congratulations and best wishes.

The Fields honeymooned on the Klondike Trail. Arthur had invested heavily in mining equipment, and at Lake Bennett they built scows to transport it, accompanying in a canoe numbered 2187 by the Northwest Mounted Police.⁶ All went well until a horrible gale blew up while they were crossing Lake Lebarge.

"I was so frightened that I seized the bottom of the sail, and clung to it with all my might," Mae recalled. "Arthur shouted at me to let go, but in spite of his commands I hung on for all I was worth! But do you know, the wind caught that taut-held sail and blew us, bow up, high and dry on the banks without a scratch. All the other boats hit broadside, and many people were hurt."⁷

The Fields lost most of their mining equipment but arrived in Dawson on June 20, 1898, which was early in the rush. Arthur staked claims #19 and 20 on Bear Creek, just below the discovery claim on Hunker Creek. With several partners he also applied and won another liquor license back in Hot Springs, in case things didn't work out.⁸

With food shortages pending and a long winter ahead, Arthur sent Mae home to her mother. She recalled scaling Chilkoot Pass at midnight with a group of twenty-six travelers all headed Outside. "It was a frozen mountainside of ice, with stair-like steps chipped out. One slip would have meant almost certain death," she said. "But even after we'd crossed the pass at night in order to get to Skagway in time to catch the boat, it turned out to be the old, unseaworthy Georgia, the most feared steamer on the Skagway-Juneau run. I, alone, of the twenty-six who crossed the pass, took a chance on it. I had a safe voyage, too,- but the others had to wait ten days for the next boat out of Skagway."⁹

Mae's mother was upset when her daughter arrived in Minnesota. "She said my place was with my husband, no matter where he was, so she sent me right back to him," Mae told her biographer. And it appears she managed to return to the Klondike before navigation closed.

She claimed that she was matron of honor at the Dawson wedding that December of well-known packer Mike Bartlett to her friend Mollie Walsh, another Minnesota girl, who had done well running a "grub tent" on the White Pass Trail. A newspaper account of the wedding names Mrs. J. P. Douglass as matron, but Mae still might have attended because she accurately described the event to her biographer. Mike Bartlett soon would murder his new bride, a beautiful woman with a roving eye, but the Fields' union went well during this period.¹⁰

"We joined the Sourdough Club that winter, and made many good friends. There was Antone Stander, Roy Lund, the well-known hockey player, Rose and Jack Blicks, the Spencers. We had gay parties at first one home and then another."

The Fields lived eight miles out of Dawson. "Arthur bought me a pony and cart to drive to town," Mae later reminisced. As for money, Arthur and his crew of about fifty had cleaned up about $100,000 from Bear Creek Claim #19 that spring of 1899, which simplified shopping. "I just took a hammer and knocked the gold loose in the cut, caught it in a pan, and took it into town," Mae recalled.¹¹

In mid-summer, she again traveled to the States, returning that fall for another harrowing trip through Chilkoot Pass. Hiking it was still required but a freight tramway had been installed. On Mae's trip, the cable broke when the tram was halfway up the mountain and it crashed down, carrying a pink parrot riding atop the luggage.

"For once the trained bird was speechless," Mae said. "Then after the bucket had landed with a thud, right beside me, the parrot screamed, 'What the hell! Cut it out!'"¹²

Mae missed the boat from Bennett to Dawson by a few hours, and it was nearly a month before she could book another, according to her account. During the wait an epidemic broke out, and because the town was short of nurses, she went to work at the hospital. Finally, just before freeze-up, she headed home on the Willie Irving, billed as the "fastest steamer on the Yukon."