First News of the Faith in Alaska

In its issue dated the spring of 1922 the *Star of the West* printed a short but enthusiastic notice from one of the earliest travel-teachers to reach Alaska — the territory the Master had specifically named in the Tablets of the Divine Plan as one of the regions toward which the American believers were to send their pioneers.

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The Tablets of the Divine Plan had been unveiled at the New York Convention only three years before. They had named Alaska by name. The Master had urged the American friends to send teachers to the territory with the same priority they gave to the Latin American republics and to the great cities of Asia.

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The first Alaskan pioneer had set out in 1921. The journey itself — by rail across the western United States, by steamship up the Inside Passage from Seattle, then onward to Anchorage by smaller vessels — had been the easy part. The hard part was finding, on arrival, anything that could properly be called a community of inquirers.

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Alaska in 1921 was a small population of settlers concentrated in a few coastal towns and the much larger and older population of the Native peoples — the Tlingit and the Haida along the southeastern coast, the Athabaskan peoples of the interior, the Yupik and Inupiat of the north.

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The pioneer's report, summarised in the *Star's* notice, described the first contacts. A small group of inquirers had formed at Juneau, mostly settlers who had drifted to the territory from California and Washington. A second small group was beginning at Anchorage. The contacts with the Native communities had been more cautious. The pioneer had been careful to learn the local etiquette. He had been received with friendly attention by several of the Tlingit elders he had been introduced to by mutual settler friends. He had not pressed the teaching at any first meeting.

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> The Faith has now reached the territory the Master named. > The work has begun in Alaska.

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The phrase, set down by the pioneer in the closing of his brief report, gave the simple statement of fact. The Tablets of the Divine Plan had named the territory. The American friends had sent the first messenger. The first small group of inquirers had been formed. The work, from this small beginning, would in time grow.

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The Alaskan Bahá'í community would, by the late twentieth century, be substantial. It would include strong groups in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau, and a growing number of believers among the Athabaskan peoples of the interior and the Yupik peoples of the western coast. The 1922 *Star's* report, in its modest sentence, marked the small first arrival on which all the later growth would rest.

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