The shooting practice entries.

The record of Knight’s death.

The sewing of the moccasins.

The notations about weather and bears and the state of the camp supplies.

These diaries are what Ada Blackjack left behind from Wrangel Island.

In them, the daily work of surviving is documented in her own imperfect English — the work of a woman who had learned to read and write in a mission school, who kept records because the expedition required it, who wrote down what she did each day because writing it down was how she made sense of what she was living through.

“I was over to the traps today nothing but raven track and I shoot a shot gun one time.