Frederick Schwatka
Frederick Gustavus Schwatka (born 29 September 1849 in Galena, Illinois, † November 2, 1892 in Portland, Oregon ) was a lieutenant in the United States Army with academic degrees in medicine and law, as well as an explorer in Alaska and northern Canada.
Life
1859 moved Schwatkas by German immigrants derived family to Salem in Oregon, where he later attended the Willamette University. From 1867 to 1871 was Schwatka at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In the following years he was repeatedly used as an officer in the Dakota Territory. In parallel, he studied medicine and law and was admitted to the Bar of Nebraska in 1875 and closed the following year his medical studies at Bellevue Hospital Medical College of New York University from.
The search for survivors of the expedition of Sir John Franklin in the 1860s aroused Schwatkas interest in the Arctic. When the American Geographical Society of New York late 1870s started another, privately funded search, Schwatka got transferred the lead. The expedition started on 19 June 1878 King William Iceland on in the Canadian Arctic. There were two years later found to not produce the documents to return, but objects of the Franklin expedition and tombs of some participants. With the overcoming of over 5200 km, a new course record for carriage travel was placed on the expedition.
1883, the year after his marriage to Ada Josephine Brackett, sent the United States Army Schwatka on a reconnaissance expedition to the Yukon River. He sailed the river over some 2,500 km from its source to its mouth in the Yukon - Kuskokwim Delta, which represented the longest raft voyage in history at that time. Shortly after his return, he quit the service in the army, but continued to lead by expeditions.
Between 1886 and 1891 he led two private explorations in Alaska and three northwestern Mexico. He held many lectures and published several popular accounts of his observations of flora and fauna, the way of life of indigenous people as well as survival techniques in remote areas.
Because of stomach problems in later years Schatka took laudanum. On November 2, 1892, he died from an overdose of the substance.
The Schwatka Mountains, a mountain range of the Brooks Range in northwestern Alaska, and the Schwatka Lake, an artificial lake in the Yukon River in Whitehorse, are named after him.
Frederick Schwatka was a member of the Federation of the Freemasons, his box the St. John's Lodge No.. 37, was in Yreka ( California).
Works
- Frederick Schwatka: Along Alaska 's Great River. Cassell & Company, New York 1885.
- Frederick Schwatka: A Summer in Alaska. J. W. Henry, St Louis 1894.
- Frederick Schwatka: Children of the Cold. Cassell & Company, New York, 1886.
- Frederick Schwatka: In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers. Cassell & Company, New York, 1893.
- Frederick Schwatka: Nimrod in the North. Cassell & Company, New York 1885.