Alice Rollins-Crane

Alice Rollins-Crane Moraczewski (also Morajeski/Morajeska; 1856 – April 4, 1929) was an American ethnologist, author, business owner, and miner well known for her work with the Apache Native Americans and her time in Alaska and the Yukon. She is the compiler of Smiles and Tears from the Klondyke, and the author of Our Klondyke Success and various other short pieces.

Alice Rollins was born in Indiana in 1856, the oldest of five children born to J.J. and Hannah Rollins and then moved to Ohio. In the late 1870s, Alice's widowed mother relocated the family to Iowa, where she would remarry in 1893. In 1877, Alice married Frank Higbee, a traveling salesman, and they had a son, R. Fred Higbee. Frank and Alice would divorce in 1880, only to remarry on Christmas Eve of that year. They divorced a second time in 1890, and Alice travelled west.

In 1894, Alice married Lorin P. Crane, apparently a retired army officer in Los Angeles. Eventually, they too, divorced.

Rollins-Crane spent nine years living with the Apache tribe in Arizona, becoming acquainted with Thomas Jeffords. [the first is an unsubstantiated claim by Rollins herself; there is no proof she ever lived among Native American tribes for any amount of time]. Rollins-Crane wrote an essay refuting the idea that no sites in the United States deserved the serious attention of archaeologists, saying that La Casa Grande (today the Montezuma Castle National Monument) in Arizona did deserve this attention, and that even in the 16th century, the local native peoples had no tradition as to its builders.

It was also during this time that Rollins-Crane became a devotee of Chinese herbal medicine as an alternative to surgical procedures.

Alice Rollins-Crane arrived in the Yukon sometime in 1898, likely as a stampeder during the Klondike Gold Rush but also, she claimed, "armed with a government commission from the SmithsonianBureau of Ethnology" as well as "credentials from several newspapers and journals, which were duly honoured by the Canadian officials."She climbed the White Pass Trail and then ran the Whitehorse Rapids, claiming to be the first white woman to do so.

In Dawson City, Alice worked as a writer, author, and miner while still continuing to perform some ethnological work. In 1900, she was employed as a prison inspector, and was sent by the bureau of ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution to study and report on the prison life. The Smithsonian Institution also commissioned her to study the tribal traditions of the Yukon and Alaska. [again, this is an unsubstantiated claim by Rollins herself; she sent some photos to the Smithsonian, but there is no proof the institute had commissioned her]. Though none of her notes have survived, she is known to have performed interviews with Yukon Tagish First Nations on death row about their religious beliefs, and concluded that they may have been sun-worshippers.

Rollins-Crane became the domestic partner of William Galpin, an author and miner living in Dawson City. In 1903, however, she launched a lawsuit against him for assault and threatening to kill her. According to her testimony, she and Galpin had become estranged when they disputed over the authorship of The Widow of Dawson, both claiming to be the author. She sent the manuscript to publishers, and he ordered it sent back. The assault charges against Galpin were dismissed on May 13, 1903. However, Galpin would later charge Alice with perjury.

It was during this period that Alice met her third husband, miner Witold Moraczewski, later Victor Morajeski, who born in Warsaw, Russian Poland. He claimed to be a count. According to newspaper reports of the time, William Galpin had been pursuing Rollins-Crane with propositions of marriage. She sought shelter in a roadhouse kept by Moraczewski, where he allegedly protected her from assault by Galpin.

In 1904, both Alice and Count Moraczewski were jailed for several months in Nome, Alaska on charges of theft after being unable to pay a bail of $5,000. Before this point, Alice had been fined for contempt of court three times. In 1905, Victor Moraczewski told newspapers that he would sue the American government on the grounds that his wife had been the victim of mistreatment and personal violence at the hands of government officials.

During this time she also wrote for National Geographic Magazine and the Dawson Daily News.

In 1898, Alice organized and became the manager of the Los Angeles Woman's Mining Syndicate, a group of about fifty women who advanced $2500 for the development of Yukon mining properties. According to the contract, the property would be owned by Alice Rollins-Crane, but a certain percentage would be paid back to the syndicate. The syndicate was never officially incorporated, but in 1900, the same women organized the Los Angeles and Yukon Mining Company, and acquired an interest in Alice's mining properties, including 36 below discovery on Hunker Creek for the Los Angeles and Yukon Mining Company. William Galpin, Alice's erstwhile domestic partner, wrote to stockholders in 1903 to tell them that Alice "was no lady" and "was not working in the interests of other stockholders." Alice was forced to step down from the management of the company, although she retained her interests in it.

After she left the North, Alice Moraczewski opened the Alaska Glacier Ice Cream Parlor in Rhyolite, Nevada. She and her husband, Victor Moraczewski, owned the Owls Head Silver Mine North East of Tucson, and handled the estate of Tom Jeffords, the 'blood brother' of the Apache Chief Cochise.

Rollins-Crane is buried in Los Angeles, in an unmarked grave.

Some of Rollins-Crane's photograph collections of the Yukon are held by the Smithsonian Institution.