Jennie Bosco Harper, Seentaána (~ 1860 - 1921)

Seentaána (Jennie) was a Koyukuk woman raised in the Athapaskan tradition in the Nuchelawoya [Noukelakayet] region of Alaska. In 1874, the river froze their boat into the ice and Arthur Harper, Jack McQuesten and Al Mayo were forced to spend the winter at [Noukelakayet], at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon rivers. People came to a trading post near Noukelakayet from up and down the Yukon River, and from the Tanana and Kuskokwim river basins. Mayo and Harper enquired about eligible marriage partners and family tradition says that women were chosen who were deficient in some way. Margaret, who had inadequate sewing skills, married Al Mayo and her cousin Jennie was chosen to marry Arthur Harper because she was too tall. Jennie was fourteen and Arthur was thirty-nine in 1874. Jennie and Arthur poled up the Yukon River to the site of an old Hudson’s Bay Company post at Fort Selkirk in the summer of 1875. Over their years together, Arthur operated posts at various places along the Yukon River including Eagle; at the mouths of the Stewart, Fortymile, and Sixtymile rivers; at Fort Reliance; and at Fort Selkirk. Arthur had a reputation as a fair and reputable trader.¹⁾ At one point Jennie and Arthur joined Margaret and Al Mayo in establishing a trading post at Tanana, near the traditional trading site of Nuklukayet.²⁾

Jennie never abandoned her native traditions and continued to speak the Koyukon language.³⁾ Arthur was frequently absent as he roamed the country to prospect. He sent seven of their children outside to boarding school in Ross, California when they reached the ages of six or seven.⁴⁾ Jennie and Arthur were separated in 1895 and Jennie moved back to Tanana with Walter, her last child, born in 1893.⁵⁾ Jennie then married the chief of the tribe at Tanana.⁶⁾ Jennie and Robert Alexander had two children and she returned to a traditional way of life and only spoke Athabascan in her later life. She became a respected Tanana elder and was known as a great potlatch orator. He youngest son, Walter, was a protégé, student, and camp assistant to Anglican Archdeacon Hudson Stuck.⁷⁾ Her other boys came back north in the mid-1890s, when their father could no longer pay their tuition. They had no knowledge of traditional skills, and discrimination against mixed-race children left them alienated from both cultures. Her daughters, Marianne (Jessie) and Margaret, continued their studies in California and graduated from the San Francisco Teachers College before they moved back north.⁸⁾