Death Comes to the Naturalist
Naturalist Charles L McKay of Appleton,Wisconsin 1855 -1883
Wisconsin has a long history as a stomping ground for Naturalists. John Muir arrived here as a young child and was raised in the Badger state through his college years, Aldo Leopold spent the last half of his life here. Charles Leslie McKay was born on a farm in Grand Chute (Appleton) in 1855. As a youth McKay spent his time roaming the nearby fields, woods, creeks and endless deep ravines observing and collecting plants and animals. In 1873 he began his undergrad studies at the Appleton Collegiate Institute, a new college that was attracting what would someday be regarded as a solid faculty. Among them was David Starr Jordan, a naturalist and future President and Chancellor of Stanford University in California. Jordan was informal and enthusiastic. As a teacher, his only rule was that he and his students did their work in the field. Together, this small group roamed the Fox River Valley collecting specimens and observing the workings of the natural world. McKay proved to be the most gifted of the group and Jordan took him under his wing. In spite of a very successful first year, a national financial panic forced the closure of the fledgling Appleton Collegiate Institute and its buildings and property became the property of Appleton’s other college, Lawrence University. Jordan had to move on. He went to Indiana University. Charles McKay continued his studies at Cornell ansd soon joined his former mentor at Indiana University where he graduated. Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institution was selecting Signal Corps Officers for assignment to remote stations. Officers were chosen based on their level of scientific training. He contacted David Starr Jordan telling him of a “great, …opportunity…to some earnest student of natural history to acquire distinction by documenting a vast region now unknown,” McKay was the ideal candidate. In 1881 he was assigned to Nushagak, a remote former Russian trading post in the Bering Sea on the north side of Bristol Bay in Alaska. There he befriended John W Clark, the only english speaker at the post also its store keeper and main trader. Through Clark, he hired Yup’ik guides and began to explore the coast of Bristol Bay. He explored its rivers and cut across hundreds of miles of the interior region by dog and sled. He travelled extensively either collecting. trading or purchasing a wide array of biological and ethnological objects. For the next two years the young scientist sent back specimen packed crates and volumes of notes to the Smithsonian. In 1882 he sent back a pair of birds that would forever bear his name - McKay's Bunting. In April, 1883, after a hard winter, McKay, his guide and three Yup’ik paddlers from a nearby village (all five in seperate kayaks) were returning from an early spring collecting trip when they were hit by a sudden, blinding snow squall. McKay was relatively inexperienced as a paddler and with little or no storm experience. He soon fell behind. His native made kayak “was caught in gale force winds, snow squalls, razor sharp ice flows and huge icebergs propelled by a swift tidal current”. What happened next is not fully known. In one version he was briefly glimpsed, at a distance, trying to climb out of the water on to an ice floe near the shore. In another account, McKay’s boat was cut in half and he quickly dissappeared under the violent waves. In Appleton, a letter from the United States Signal Corps arrived at the home of Mr and Mrs. Hector and Sarah Mckay, the parents of Charles McKay.
Later, a second letter arrived from John W Clark - “It is my sad duty to inform you that your son left this place on the 17th of April, to make a short trip for the purpose of making collections, and that he never returned. He left in company with a Native, each of them in a single canoe and passed the night in an Indian village, sixteen miles from the station. The following day was very stormy and they lay over in the village. On the morning of the third day (19) it being calm weather, they left the village to cross over the bay, a distance of 12 miles. They were accompanied from the village by three other Native canoes. When about two thirds of the way across a strong adverse wind sprang up. In some manner, he was left behind and that was the last that was seen of him. On the 22 the report reached me and the same day we began to search for him. We found broken pieces of his canoe, a gun, his rubber boots, hat and various little articles on the beach about a mile on this side of the village they left that morning. We continued the search for over three weeks, but could not find the body. Such is a brief account of all that is at present known of the manner in which he was lost. I can readily understand with what feelings you will receive this letter, and believe me that if the sympathy of a stranger can serve to mitigate your grief in the slightest degree, you have mine. Being my sole companion for two years, I had learned to appreciate him and to esteem his manly, upright character.”
Your very obedient servant, John W. Clark. June 17, 1883
“McKay left an impressive legacy in the collections, amassing for the Smithsonian Institution approximately 400 bird and mammal specimens and a large number of ethnographic objects such as clothing, tools, weapons and toys created by various Yup’ik, Dena’ina and Sugpiat people of the Bristol Bay Region.”
McKay’s Bunting