The Wit of Porportuk

The Wit of Porportuk by Jack London

El-Soo, a full-blooded Indian girl taken in as a child by Sister Alberta, grows up at Holy Cross Mission, excelling in learning, singing, and mathematics, and displaying a fiery, equity-loving spirit. At sixteen, as the Sisters plan to send her to the United States for further education, a messenger arrives reporting her brother's death and summoning her to her aging father, Klakee-Nah, a once-powerful and lavishly hospitable chief at Tana-naw Station. She leaves the Mission for him, restoring and elevating his great log house into a place of feasting and revelry, funded by loans from Porportuk, the richest and most miserly Indian on the Yukon. El-Soo becomes a unique figure, socially equal to white women, fluent in English, wearing white women's clothing, and never insulted by white men, while a young hunter named Akoon becomes her devoted suitor. As Klakee-Nah lies dying at a final riotous feast, he summons Porportuk and, in a mocking bid, offers to sign a note for his entire debt of nearly sixteen thousand dollars payable in the next world; Porportuk refuses, saying he deals only in this world. When Klakee-Nah finds he has no property left to cover the debt, Porportuk demands El-Soo herself as payment. Enraged, Klakee-Nah has him thrown out into the snow, then dies soon after among his revelers. Settling the estate, El-Soo finds only debts owed to Porportuk. Refusing both to marry him and to leave her father's honor unsatisfied, she announces she will sell herself at public auction when the first salmon run in June to pay off the debt, despite pleas from the missionary, Akoon, and Sister Alberta. Akoon vows to kill whoever buys her. At the auction on the riverbank, El-Soo advertises her own skills and qualities; bidding escalates dramatically between Porportuk and an Eldorado king until Porportuk wins at twenty-six thousand dollars. El-Soo insists on paying gold at the older, lower valuation of sixteen dollars an ounce, uses part of the sum to settle her father's trading-post debt and provide for his four old slaves, and defiantly throws the remaining gold into the Yukon River, angering Porportuk over his miscalculated loss. Though the bill of sale names her Porportuk's property, El-Soo declares that while she would have been a true wife to any other buyer, she will only ever be his "dog," and dares him to catch her if he wants her. When he lunges, Tommy trips him, and El-Soo flees. A wild chase through the Indian camp and forest ends without Porportuk catching her; she disappears for a day, then escapes further by canoe just as Porportuk's steamer pursuit nears, aided by Akoon, who is piloting the steamer and slows it just enough for her to board, mocking Porportuk as she is carried away. Akoon and El-Soo travel together up the Porcupine River and over the mountains toward the Mackenzie, intending to journey south for the winter and return to Alaska later, with El-Soo promising to teach Akoon to read. Their journey is interrupted when Akoon is accidentally shot, breaking his arm and ribs, and they stop among a band of Mackenzie Indians for him to heal. Porportuk arrives with six men and demands El-Soo be surrendered under tribal law. A council of dying old men is convened to judge the matter; despite Akoon's argument that Porportuk is too old for her and El-Soo's admission that she took the price yet fled, the council rules that because Porportuk paid so great a sum, El-Soo belongs to him. Porportuk, however, declares that since El-Soo is like a dog that always runs away, he will give her to Akoon without price after all — but first, to ensure she can never run again, he shoots through both her ankles at close range, shattering them permanently. The old men pronounce the mutilation just. El-Soo, weeping for the first time, is left crippled beside Akoon, who tells her his legs are strong but will never carry him away from her, as the old men sit on in silence.

By Jack London · First published 1908 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Drama · 10,749 words

First lines

El-Soo had been a Mission girl. Her mother had died when she was very small, and Sister Alberta had plucked El-Soo as a brand from the burning, one summer day, and carried her away to Holy Cross Mission and dedicated her to God. El-Soo was a full-blooded Indian, yet she exceeded all the half-breed and quarter-breed girls. Never had the good sisters dealt with a girl so adaptable and at the same time so spirited.

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The Wit of Porportuk is listed on Textopian as a novella by Jack London, dated 1908 CE.

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Adventure · Humor · Satire · Social Commentary · Literary Fiction · Classic Novel · American Literature · 19th Century Literature · Fictionalized Autobiography · Coming of Age · Self-Discovery · Identity Crisis

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