Ada Delutuk Blackjack was rescued from Wrangel Island. A Native Alaskan, she had survived alone on the island since September 15, 1921. The only native member of an expedition to the Arctic island, which sought to claim it for Canada, she had been hired as a cook and because she was good at sewing. The other members of the expedition died on the remote island or disappeared seeking to walk the 90 miles to Siberia to obtain help.
She was not completely alone. The expedition's cat, Victoria, also survived.
She took the job to raise money for her son's treatment for tuberculosis, and in fact upon her retrun moved to Seattle so that he could be treated there. Divorced from her first husband prior to the expedition, she remarried and ultimately returned to Alaska and died in Palmer at age 85 in 1983.
The object of a Canadian claim to the island was quixotic at best, as it is well off of Siberian Russia. The large island features flora and fauna, including large numbers of polar bears, but remains uninhabited by humans. It is believed the world's last surviving mammoth populations lived on the island, dying out only perhaps as recently as 2,000 years ago. Musk ox and reindeer have been introduced to the island for some weird reason, and wolves have reintroduced themselves.
