John B. (John Beach) Driggs

Born in 1852, John Beach Driggs trained as a physician at New York University and later went to Point Hope in northwestern Alaska as part of an Episcopal mission. There he served not only as a doctor, but also as a teacher, living for years in close contact with the local community.

Driggs is best known for Short Sketches from Oldest America (1905), a collection shaped by his time in Alaska and by the stories, customs, and daily life he recorded there. Readers today often encounter him as both a missionary-era observer and an early collector of traditional tales from the Inupiat world.

He died in Alaska in 1914. While his perspective reflects the era he lived in, his writing remains a window into Arctic life as he saw it and tried to preserve it.