Anchorage 1910 - 1940 Legends & Legacies

Basdut (Chief Ezi)

1870-1935 | Dena’ina Athabascan Indian Elder and Chief, Upper Cook Inlet

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Basdut, or Simeon Esia (his last name changed to Ezi by non-Indians), was a respected Dena'ina Athabascan Indian elder associated with the now abandoned Native village of Niteh near Palmer just west of the Matanuska and Knik Rivers. He was born in 1870 and was one of the last recognized chiefs of upper Cook Inlet. He married his wife Olga about 1896 and they lived in Eklutna and in what is now Palmer. Knik Lake (Lake George) flooded almost annually, however, and the family moved to the other side of the Knik River in 1913. The couple had five children, Bill, Pete, Jack, Mary, and Annie and frequently took orphans into their home as well.

Early in his adult life, Basdut operated a small boat delivering supplies from the large ships in Anchorage to the smaller communities of Cook Inlet. The Ezi family also followed a traditional subsistence lifestyle, fishing in season and hunting moose, ducks, and sheep in the fall and winter. According to Shem Pete the area around Niteh was good hunting for moose and rabbits. They also trapped in the Jim Creek, Friday Creek, and Nancy Lake areas. Basdut and his family represent both the changes brought by Euro-Americans to Alaska Natives as well as the persistence of Dena'ina culture, values, and skills.

Shem Pete told a story about how Basdut became rich. His wife, Olga, was from the Tyone Lake/Copper Center region; according to Shem Pete, her father was a "big medicine man." He was staying with the Ezis in the 1920s when a Knik Lake flood washed away several homes and businesses. As a result of the flood, a store drifted onto Fire Island with most of its wares intact. A safe, however, washed out and was eventually buried in the sand. Basdut's father-in-law instructed him to find the safe by poling into the sand. The father-in-law also gave directions on which way Basdut should go. When Basdut found the safe, it was so heavy with twenty-dollar gold pieces he could not lift it. He packed the gold home load by load and later held a potlatch at his village of Niteh (Matanuska).

Basdut died of pneumonia in 1935. The Anchorage Daily Times ran four separate stories about him and his funeral between January 18 and January 24. The funeral combined Orthodox ritual with traditional Native rites; scores of people, both Native and non-Native, attended. John Bagoy, who researched the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery, helped located Basdut's grave site, which may have originally been marked by a wooden grave house often used by Dena'ina Russian Orthodox believers. Bagoy remembered seeing grave houses over Native graves in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery in the 1940s. Granite headstones replaced the long-gone grave houses for Basdut, Chief Nicolai, and Chief Nicolai II in 2003.

The 1920 Alaska federal census shows "Esey," aged fifty-one, occupation trapper, with wife Olga, aged 45, with five children aged between six and twenty-one, living at Eklutna. The 1930 Alaska federal census shows "Chief Ezi," occupation trapper, then sixty-two, living with his wife Olga, fifty-four, in Eklutna. Adjacent households are headed by Pete Ezi and wife Ruth and William Ezi and wife Arlissa.

The 1940 Alaska federal census lists Olga (age sixty-nine) as a widow living with her son Jack (age thirty). Her occupation is listed as 'skin sewer,' and they lived either at Matanuska Village or Matanuska Bridge, the latter being described by the census enumerator as being inhabited by Natives. In the adjacent dwelling lived Pete Ezi, probably Olga and Basdut's son, with wife Ruth and children Alberta E. and Peter A. Neil Ezi, a brother-in-law, lived there also. Pete Ezi is listed as a fisherman and Ruth as a skin sewer. Olga is listed as a resident of Eklutna in the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs 1945 village census rolls, but also as a resident of Matanuska by Dr. Hoehn, a census taker for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

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