8/5/2023 0 Comments Yukon gold rush![]() ![]() Eventually they lost all their money and parted ways. Keish and his family came across gold by chance it was not the focus of their trip (Cruikshank 1990:124–133).Īfter striking it rich, the group headed to Seattle with their newfound wealth and spent their earnings with abandon. In Tagish oral history accounts, the purpose of Keish’s trip downriver was not to look for gold but rather centred on a family obligation: he was looking for his two sisters, Aage and Kate, who had left home with their non-Indigenous gold-prospecting husbands. In this telling, Keish and his family and friends purposely headed to the Klondike to search for gold, and they discovered it after George Carmack was informed of a good location to search by another non-Indigenous gold seeker. The often-exaggerated non-Indigenous version romanticizes Skookum Jim and describes him as an Indigenous man who “longed to be a white man-in other words, a prospector” (Berton 1958:44). The story of how Keish and his group discovered gold varies with the teller. ![]() But it was not until 1896, when Tagish community members Keish (Skookum Jim), Káa Goox (Tagish Charlie), Shaaw Tláa (Kate Carmack), and Kate’s non-Indigenous husband George Carmack discovered gold on Bonanza Creek, that a major Yukon gold rush began (Coates 1991:36 Cruikshank 1979:45–47 Cruikshank 1990:186 Cruikshank 1991:122–124 Porsild 1998:3 Spude 2011:14). On the Alaska side of the border, another mini gold rush occurred on the Yukon River in 1893 in what became known as Circle City. This was followed by a small gold rush on the Fortymile River in 1886. The first large gold strike was on the Stewart River in 1885. It was not until the late 1880s that gold seekers began to report finding gold in large quantities in Yukon this was associated with rushes that had already occurred in California and British Columbia (Brands 2003 Forsyth and Dickson 2007). Campbell and McDonald were not eager to report their findings because they feared newcomers would come to Yukon and tamper with fur-bearing animals or influence Indigenous peoples in a negative way. As well, geologist George Dawson identified gold deposits in the 1880s (Cruikshank 1991:122). Missionary Robert McDonald indicates that gold was present in Birch Creek (near the Yukon-Alaska border) in the 1870s (Cruikshank 1991:122). For instance, Robert Campbell describes seeing gold near Fort Selkirk in his journals (Wilson 1970). ![]() Prior to the 1898 rush, gold had been found within Yukon by Indigenous people, explorers, fur traders, and missionaries. This is ironic since a Tagish family was central to the discovery of Klondike gold. Big-city news reports and miners’ journals typically focused on the newcomers and their adventures in the North. But, for the most part, Indigenous peoples were ignored in early accounts of the Klondike gold rush, even though their participation was integral to the survival of thousands of gold seekers. The gold rush of 1898 has been described in countless books, newspapers, and magazines inside and outside of Yukon (Figure 4.4). Chapter 4 – Yukon First Nations’ Relationship with Newcomers ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |