User:Jay D. Easy/sandbox/Frederick Schwatka

Frederick Gustavus Schwatka (September 29, 1849 – November 2, 1892) was an American officer, physician, and explorer known for leading a total of four Arctic expeditions and three privately funded expeditions into northwestern Mexico.

Early life
Schwatka was born in Galena, Illinois, on September 29, 1849, the son of Frederick Gustavus Sr., a first generation German-American, and Amelia Hukill, of English and Scots descent. He spent his first ten years in Illinois before the family moved to Salem, Oregon, in 1859, where Schwatka later worked as a printer's apprentice and attended Willamette University.

Army career
He was appointed to West Point in 1867, graduated in 1871, and was subsequently appointed as a second lieutenant in the Third Cavalry in the Dakota Territory. Studying law and medicine simultaneously, he was admitted to the bar association of Nebraska in 1875, and received his medical degree from New York's Bellevue Hospital Medical College that same year. As a lieutenant, Schwatka took part in the Great Sioux War of 1876 and led the initial cavalry charge at the battle of Slim Buttes.

Arctic expedition
In 1878, at the behest of the American Geographical Society, he led an expedition to the Canadian Arctic to look for written records thought to have been left on or near King William Island by members of Franklin's lost expedition. He traveled to Hudson Bay on the schooner Eothen and initial personnel included William Henry Gilder, second in command; naturalist Heinrich Klutschak, Frank Melms, and Ipirvik—an Inuit interpreter and guide who had assisted explorer Charles Francis Hall in his search for Franklin between 1860 and 1869.

The group, assisted by other Inuit, went north from Hudson Bay "with three sledges drawn by over forty dogs, relatively few provisions, but a large quantity of arms and ammunition." They interviewed Inuit, visited known or likely sites of Franklin Expedition remains, and found a skeleton of one of the lost Franklin crewmen.

Though the expedition failed to find the hoped-for papers, in 1880, during a speech at a dinner given in his honor by the American Geographical Society, Schwatka noted his expedition set a record for "the longest sledge journey ever made both in regard to time and distance", for a total of eleven months and four days, and 2709 mi traveled. It had been the first Arctic expedition in which whites explorers relied entirely on the same diet as the Inuit.

Subsequent expeditions
In 1883, he was sent to reconnoiter the Yukon River by the Army. Going over the Chilkoot Pass, his party built rafts and floated down the Yukon River to its mouth in the Bering Sea, naming many geographic features along the way. The traveled more than 1300 mi, the longest raft journey that had ever been made. Schwatka's expedition alarmed the Canadian government, which sent an expedition under George Mercer Dawson to explore the Yukon in 1887.

After his resignation from the army in 1885, Schwatka led two private expeditions to Alaska financed by William D. Boyce, and three to northeastern Mexico and published descriptions of the social customs and the flora and fauna of these regions.

Schwatka received the Roquette Arctic Medal from the Société de Géographie, and a medal from the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia. He was an honorary member of the Geographical Societies of Bremen, Geneva, and Società Geografica Italiana.

Death
Schwatka died in early morning hours of November 2, 1892, in Portland, Oregon, in circumstances that remain unclear. Sources report a police officer found him at 3 a.m. on First Street, unconscious and with a half-empty bottle of laudanum beside him. The Baltimore Sun states he had been troubled by a chronic stomach complaint for a couple of years, and that he was known to frequently take fifteen to twenty drops of laudanum to relieve pain. Two years prior, in January 1891, he sustained an injury to his spinal cord when he fell down a flight of stairs at a hotel in Mason City, Iowa – possibly a contributing factor to his dependence on laudanum.

Initially thought to be intoxicated, he was brought to a nearby hotel where futile attempts were made to bring him to his senses. An hour later, amidst growing concerns, he was transported to the city jail. His symptoms were quickly recognized by the attending physician, whereupon he was immediately rushed to the Good Samaritan Hospital. However, Schwatka died within a couple of minutes of his arrival, never regaining consciousness.

Though there is little speculation that Schwatka died of a laudanum overdose, contemporary sources were divided on whether it had been a deliberate or accidental overdose. The Washington Evening Star left little room for speculation: "It was undoubtedly a case of suicide." Wheeler, the physician who had first diagnosed Schwatka's symptoms, and who would subsequently perform his autopsy, was of the opinion that "death was caused by an overdose of laudanum taken to allay pain in the stomach, not with suicidal intent." Schwatka was buried in Salem, Oregon.

Legacy
Mount Schwatka in northern Alaska's Brooks Range was named after Schwatka, and since 1960 the cruise boat MV Schwatka has ferried passengers along the Yukon River and through the Miles Canyon Basalts to Schwatka Lake in Whitehorse.

Publications

 * Along Alaska's Great River (1885). New York: Cassell & Company.
 * Nimrod in the North (1885). New York: Cassell & Company.
 * Children of the Cold (1886). New York: Cassell & Company.
 * "Among the Apaches" (May 1887). The Century Magazine, Vol. XXXIV.
 * In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers (1893). New York: Cassell & Company.
 * A Summer in Alaska (1894). St Louis: J. W. Henry.
 * The Search for Franklin (1899). London: T. Nelson and Sons.