John Bremner was a prospector and early explorer of Alaska.
Early life
John Bremner was born in Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and emigrated to Iowa. At some point he abandoned his farm and family and probably worked as a sailor.
Life among the Indians in Alaska
In 1884 he was first recorded as living among on the Copper River, the only white man living in an area inhabited at the time by the Copper Indians, or Yellowknives. In the summers he prospected for gold. In 1884-85 he wrote a diary about his time living through the winter on the Copper River in a cabin with an Indian wife amongst the Copper River Indians which was transcribed into the book Shores and Slopes of Alaska, pp. 200-21.
Allen expedition
In early 1885 John Bremner joined the expedition of Lt. Henry Tureman Allen, a West Point graduate, traveling with Lt. Allen, Pvt. Frederick W. Fickett, Sgt. Cody Robertson, and fellow prospector Peder Johnson, through previously unexplored territory along the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers. On March 29, 1885, the party left Taral to ascend the previously unexplored Copper River. After a side trip up the Chitina River to the head of that river, they continued up the Copper to the Slana River. They traveled to the source of the Slana and then downstream on the Tetlin and Tanana rivers to the Yukon. In the Fall of 1886 Johnson and Bremner decided to stay in the town of Nuklukyet on the Yukon while the others continued. Lt. Allen and Pvt. Fickett portaged to the Kanuti and Koyukuk rivers upstream, traveled downstream to the Yukon, portaged to the Unalakleet and from there went downstream to St. Michael. Their journey was "subsequently praised as one of the greater explorations in the history of North America." Allen Glacier and Mt. Allen, near the head of the Tanana, are named for the party's leader.
John Bremner and Peder Johnson purchased a prospecting outfit from the men who ran the trading post at Nuklukyet and stayed in the Central Yukon River area during the winter of 1886-87. In the spring of 1887 they prospected on the Koyukuk River and then returned to Nuklukyet. While boating and prospecting on a tributary of the Yukon River called John's River and the Dolby River, he was killed by Indians who stole his rifle and boat. In the summer of 1888 a posse of prospectors took a steamer up the Koyukuk River and Dolby River where a village was discovered the inhabitants were persuaded to give up two native Indians, one of whom was hanged from a tree.
