<p>From its inception in 1885, the Alaska School Service was charged<br>with the assimilation of Alaskan Native children into mainstream<br>American values and ways of life. Working in the missions and schools<br>along the Yukon River were George E. Boulter and Alice Green, his<br>future wife. Boulter, a Londoner originally drawn to the Klondike, had<br>begun teaching in 1905 and by 1910 had been promoted to superintendent<br>of schools for the Upper Yukon District. In 1907, Green left a<br>comfortable family life in New Orleans to answer the "call to<br>serve" in the Episcopal mission boarding schools for Native<br>children at Anvik and Nenana, where she occupied the position of<br>government teacher. As school superintendent, Boulter wrote frequently<br>to his superiors in Seattle and Washington, DC, to discuss numerous<br>administrative matters and to report on problems and conditions<br>overall.</p><br><br><p>From 1906 to 1918, Green kept a personal journal-hitherto in<br>private possession-in which she reflected on her professional<br>duties and her domestic life in Alaska. Collected in <i>The Teacher<br>and the Superintendent</i> are Boulter's letters and<br>Green's diary. Together, their vivid, first- hand impressions<br>bespeak the earnest but paternalistic beliefs of those who lived and<br>worked in immensely isolated regions, seeking to bring Christianity and<br>"civilized" values to the Native children in their care.<br>Beyond shedding private light on the missionary spirit, however,<br>Boulter and Green have also left us an invaluable account of the daily<br>conflicts that occurred between church and government and of the many<br>injustices suffered by the Native population in the face of the<br>misguided efforts of both institutions.</p><p><b>Barbara Grigor-Taylor</b>, of Cavendish Rare Books,<br>London, is an antiquarian book specialist. She has presented papers and<br>lectures on topics ranging from Western writings on China to<br>eighteenthcentury Russian explorations. <b>George E. Boulter<br>II</b> was born in Alaska and later lived in California before<br>embarking in 1947 on a career in the U.S. Merchant Marines.