The elderly Tlingit memory keeper was sick, and her sidekick was grumpy.
So the role of village guide in Kake, Alaska—indeed, the job of Virgil to most passing nomads, layabouts, moochers, ne’er-do-wells, bums, pilgrims, bludgers, pariahs, and sundry aquatic drifters in the waterlogged region—fell to Bagman John.
John Peterka got his nickname from his business: the Sagebrush Bag Company. Peterka operated a tiny, premium outdoor bag factory in the isolated Alaskan Native village of 543 souls on Kupreanof Island, a green speck in the immense archipelago wilderness that made up the Inside Passage of Alaska and Canada. We were nosing through in kayaks. Everyone told us the same thing: Stay with John the bag guy.
“There are three other Johns in the village, so that’s how people identify us,” said Peterka, whose unruly hair, plastic Crocs, and unfazed air made him a doppelganger for the actor Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. “There’s also City Shop John, Mow the Lawn John, and AML John. AML means Alaska Marine Lines. Unfortunately, AML John passed.”
The highest single-tree totem pole in the world. For now. It’s crumbling from the top.
Photograph by Paul Salopek
A son of the North Dakota bean belt, Peterka stepped ashore in Kake almost a decade ago eager to take over the bag company and have an adventure.
“When I got off the ferry, it was like walking into the 80s,” Peterka recalled. “The old analog gas pumps. No credit cards. It was a conversational environment. Chatty. I liked it.”
As one of the few private business owners in the Indigenous village, Peterka sometimes advised his Tlingit neighbors on finances. He taught sewing classes at the school. (“Mostly, we make sweatpants.”) He drove a battered, purple van with the front passenger seat bolted in backwards. (“It came that way.”) Peterka lived in a flat in his factory. He kept a bullwhip by the door against the bears raiding his vegetable garden. (“It’s that cracking sound that works.”) Village life in Kake offered spectacular marine outdoor recreation—camping on pristine islets, harvesting seaweed, fishing for wild salmon—and a familiarity with death.
The highest single-tree totem pole in the world. For now. It’s crumbling from the top.
Photograph by Paul Salopek
A son of the North Dakota bean belt, Peterka stepped ashore in Kake almost a decade ago eager to take over the bag company and have an adventure.
“When I got off the ferry, it was like walking into the 80s,” Peterka recalled. “The old analog gas pumps. No credit cards. It was a conversational environment. Chatty. I liked it.”
As one of the few private business owners in the Indigenous village, Peterka sometimes advised his Tlingit neighbors on finances. He taught sewing classes at the school. (“Mostly, we make sweatpants.”) He drove a battered, purple van with the front passenger seat bolted in backwards. (“It came that way.”) Peterka lived in a flat in his factory. He kept a bullwhip by the door against the bears raiding his vegetable garden. (“It’s that cracking sound that works.”) Village life in Kake offered spectacular marine outdoor recreation—camping on pristine islets, harvesting seaweed, fishing for wild salmon—and a familiarity with death.
“I’ve helped dig a few graves,” said Peterka. “It’s real. Not hidden. In the fishing life people often go overboard. Families have loved ones leave them before their time. It’s never ‘normal.’ But it’s part of the game.”
John “Bagman” Peterka has made nearly 10,000 bags in the Tlingit village of Kake. “A bag develops a soul after a while,” he says.
Out of Eden Walk
As for the waterproof bags that he and an intermittent staff seamed together by hand—the bags were promoted largely by word of mouth, among boaters, hunters, and climbers—he described the work like a mission.
“A bag develops a soul after a while,” Peterka said. “It gets passed down from, say, an uncle who taught you to fish. We repair it, you keep it. That’s rare these days.”
Peterka said at least two hours of labor goes into each bag. He’s made close to 10,000 by now. “People say, ‘What? $350 for a bag?’ Really?” Peterka moaned. “Like, ye-ah! ’Cause I’m living here like a king.” He laughed. Then he sighed. Competitors were ripping off his designs and undercutting his prices by churning out bags in Taiwan. “I’m a bit burned out,” he admitted.
Peterka took me to see the world’s highest single-tree totem pole. It was weatherbeaten and stood 40 meters tall on a hill in Kake. The crest figure atop the pole had broken off and lay in the grass. A boy was shooting hoops nearby. He bounced the basketball off the rim again and again and again.