Johnson Moses

Orville Huntington interviewed Johnson Moses in Allakaket on June 6, 2003. The interview was edited and produced by Clinton Brown.

JOHNSON MOSES was born in 1924, to Billy and Ceza Bergman, two of Allakaket's best known and most respected recent historical figures. Johnson was raised until he was thirteen by Lucy and Henry Moses; then he went to live with Lucy's father, Big William. Johnson went hunting with several different families as a teenager, learning a variety of hunting skills and learning several different areas of the country around Allakaket. Johnson learned to play the violin when he was 14 in a hospital in Tanana and continues to play with other Athabascan muscians both in Fairbanks and other communities. He has been a regular since the inception of the Athabascan Old Time Fiddlers Festival in Fairbanks.

Johnson married for the first time when he was 19. As with many people of his generation, the marriage was arranged. His first wife died from TB when he was 23. Within about a year, Johnson asked Bertha Moses to marry him. Bertha is an Inupiaq woman from Alatna, the Inupiaq community across the river from Allakaket. Johnson and Bertha had 11 children (9 survived) and lived a subsistence lifestyle. Subsistence activities have always been an important part of Johnson's life, and he remained an active subsistence hunter until he moved to Fairbanks in 1983. His knowledge of the animals and their habits, and particularly of the landscape around Allakaket is extensive.

Johnson has worked at various short-term or seasonal wage jobs to supplement his income from trapping. During the late 1940s and 1950s, he worked briefly at the gold mine near Hughes, he made some money one summer by cutting logs, and he worked for Les James, the store keeper in Hughes. He worked at the Hog River Gold Mine in the 1960s where he progressed from ditch-walker, to deck hand, oiler, and finally winchman on the dredge. There he also learned to drive a Cat and a pickup and operate other machinery. During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, he worked on various fire-fighting crews, on the pipeline, and as a carpenter for the FAA, the Yukon Koyukuk School District, and a contractor for Tanana Chiefs. The Hog River job in particular was difficult because some of his older children were then going away to high school. Often he left home before they returned for the summer, and they left again before he returned. He finally quit so he could spend some time with them. Johnson moved to Fairbanks in 1983 and worked as a seasonal technician for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge. After he retired, he received a special achievement award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Kanuti Refuge field station and [Kanuti Lake] was named in his honor for providing valuable local knowledge an expertise in the Kanuti Refuge.

The goal of Raven's Story is to record elders' stories, observations, and experiences relating to wildlife, fish, and subsistence in the Koyukuk and middle Yukon areas of interior Alaska. This Raven's Story was produced by Clinton Brown at public radio station KIYU-AM in Galena, Alaska, with the support of Louden Tribal Council and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.