They needed someone who could sew fur clothing — survival gear, essentially. The plan had been to hire Alaska Native people from the Nome area, who would know how to handle the environment and could make and maintain the equipment. At the last moment, the families who had been approached declined to go. The reasons were not fully documented, but the result was that the expedition departed without the skilled Indigenous workers who had been part of its design.
Ada Blackjack was hired as a replacement — one person where a group had been planned. She was a seamstress, she spoke English, and she needed the fifty dollars a month that Stefansson’s organization was offering.
## The Hiring: What Fifty Dollars a Month Meant
Fifty dollars a month in 1921 was not a fortune, but in Ada Blackjack’s circumstances it was meaningful. Bennett needed tuberculosis treatment. She was cleaning houses and sewing for miners. She had no property, no savings, no family support that the available record documents.
The Nome police chief, E. R. Jordan, suggested her for the expedition, which needed someone who could sew fur clothing — parkas, mittens, mukluks, the gear that kept people alive in the cold. She was considered skilled. She was available. She was desperate enough to take the job.
She had misgivings, by subsequent accounts. She had been told other Alaska Native people would be coming on the expedition, and the late withdrawal of those families left her as the only Indigenous member of a group that was heading to an island north of Siberia. But the financial need was real, and the contract was signed.