History of the Tr'ondek Hwach'in First Nation
The history of the Tr'ondek Haw'in First Nation , one of the Canadian First Nations of the Athabasques in the Yukon Territory , goes back more than ten millennia to their own views. They have considered themselves part of the land along the Yukon (Chu Kon 'Dëk) and Klondike Rivers (Trʼondëk) since time immemorial . Since the members of this Indian group traditionally lived and live in the area around Dawson , they were formerly also called the Dawson Indian Band . They are mostly descendants of the largest local group of the southernmost regional band of the Han (Hän Hwëch'in) ("people who live on the river - the Yukon River") at the time of the Klondike gold rush and were therefore often named after the most influential chief Isaac referred to as Chief Isaac People, Isaac's Band . Together with a small group in the Alaska Native Village called Native Eagle Village near the town of Eagle (Tthee T'äwdlenn) in eastern Alaska , they speak the language Haɬ goɬan or Han .
In 1995 the First Nation chose the current name as its official name; it is derived from the autonym Tr'ondek Hechsel'in or Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in ("people along the Klondike River"), which is derived from the name for the Klondike River as Trʼondëk (from Tro - " Schlagsteine , for fastening the sticks of the salmon weirs "and Ndëk -" river ") as well as from Haw'in / Hwëch'in (" people "; literally:" inhabitants of a region "). Today, however, they identify themselves after their once important capital Tr'ochëk ("mouth of the Klondike River", on the opposite north side of the river is Dawson) as "people at the mouth of the Klondike River".
The Indians adapted to the harsh climate of the Canadian north-west as part of a semi-nomadic way of life, which was based on fixed winter villages with storage and migration cycles according to the hunting and gathering resources. The fishing , especially on salmon , and the hunt for caribou provided the majority of the food, but also clothes and some tools. Parts of these tools, such as obsidian , but also the jewelry, such as certain types of mussels, were procured early on through a network of extensive exchange, gift and trade contacts from Alaska, northern British Columbia , Vancouver Island and the Northwest Territories . as well as copper . The bow and arrow did not replace the atlatl until around 600.
European traders who came into contact with the extensive network of paths, contacts and goods after 1800 were integrated into this network for several decades, albeit increasingly through world trade mediated by the world powers, above all Russia and Great Britain , and later the USA dominated his wide-ranging interests. The Han first came into direct contact with the British in 1847 at the latest. In 1874 they asked an American trading company to set up a post near them. The British Hudson's Bay Company initially competed with Russian fur traders and from 1867, after the USA had acquired Alaska, with American companies, especially the Alaska Commercial Company .
However, it was less the trade than the lack of resistance of the Han against the diseases brought in by Europeans such as smallpox , measles and tuberculosis - a phenomenon that affected most of the Indians - proved to be particularly momentous . In addition to fur traders, gold prospectors increasingly infiltrated the region, which further changed the living conditions in the remote area.
The Klondike gold rush brought such massive immigration from 1896 onwards that the Han became a small minority of a few hundred people, facing up to 100,000 immigrants. Added to this was the development of an urban society and the relocation to Moosehide , a few kilometers from Dawson, where the tribe lived between 1897 and around 1960. Outstanding leader at this stage was Chief Isaac , who died in 1932. He fought against the destruction of the natural resources that are indispensable for the traditional way of life, especially against the slaughter of the caribou herds and the deforestation of the forests.
A tribal council was established in Moosehide and the traditional chieftainship was replaced by elected chiefs. The raw materials economy of the Yukon offered the Han few employment opportunities, especially since these collapsed with the global economic crisis . For a long time, the traditional lifestyle prevailed, which only had to be increasingly abandoned with the sharp decline in the fur market around 1950. In addition, the proportion of the non-Indian population fell sharply after the gold rush. The isolation of the Indian groups in the territory was reinforced by a pronounced policy of segregation , but also by neglect until well into the 1960s.
Since then, the First Nations not only succeeded in obtaining political rights, such as the right to vote at the federal level (1960), but in the Yukon the Tr'ondek Hechsel'in, like other tribes, also succeeded in restoring their traditional territories with strongly graduated rights , enforce (1998). In addition, the First Nation adopted a constitution in 1998 and has since acted internally with legislative rights. Language and culture are extensively nurtured and made known to the outside public after several decades of trying to eradicate them by the Canadian government. They have become important elements of regional tourism.
Early history
The most important archaeological site is Tr'ochëk , an island that is now a National Historic Site of Canada , and which is directly across from Dawson. The earliest livelihoods were the caribou herds , especially the Porcupine and Forty Mile herds, which roamed the Dawson area twice a year. By 2010, their number rose to 169,000. Then there were moose , sheep , marmots and Alaska pikas and birds and fish, especially salmon of the great rivers of the region, the Yukon and Klondike - the latter name is derived from Han word for Schlagstein , in English Hammer Stone from. The salmon, especially chinook ( king salmon ) and later in the year Chum ( ketal salmon ), migrated up the Yukon and its tributaries to spawn, and from the end of June offered the opportunity to catch them together. The fish were dried on wooden racks early on and thus preserved for the extremely cold winter.
The earliest secured finds in the Yukon area are the three Bluefish caves , the existence of which goes back at least 12,000 years. In Moosehide and in the area of what will later be Dawson, human traces around 8,000 years old can be found. These are stone chips that were found at a depth of around 50 cm. The oldest trace, however, is a piece of caribou antler that is approximately 11,000 years old and that was found on a tributary of the Klondike, Hunker Creek. In this early phase, the region was still largely unforested.
Around 5000 BC The massive tools that had been widespread until then were replaced by composite tools in which bones, antlers and very small blades, so-called microblades, were combined into tools. The oldest traces in Moosehide can be traced back to 3600 BC. Can be dated to 4500 BC. In addition, obsidian was found there, a type of volcanic glass that already indicates extensive trade, because it does not occur in the region, but only in the southwest of the Yukon and in northern British Columbia , on Mount Edziza . In addition, lancet-like spearheads , fragments of mammalian bones, and a stone that was probably used as a net sinker when fishing were found.
Around 3000 to 2500 BC The microblades were replaced by laterally notched spearheads and a wide range of scratches. The Atlatl was adopted by Eskimos as a hunting weapon . The annual spawning migrations of the salmon encouraged seasonal migrations between the respective fishing grounds. This phase is known as the Northern Archaic tradition .
Finds from around AD 600 indicate the use of bows and arrows for the first time. The partially stone weapons and tools were not the only recognizable technological innovation, but metallurgical techniques were added. These were based on the beginning trade in copper , a metal that came from the southwest, more precisely from the Copper and White Rivers .
In the area of the White River , near the border between Alaska and Yukon, two of the largest volcanic eruptions in North America occurred around 100 AD and again around 800 AD . They probably extinguished life on an area of around 340,000 km² in southeast Alaska and in the southern Yukon. The uninhabitable area is likely to have cut off the extreme north, and thus also the ancestors of the Han, from contact to the south. These catastrophes were followed by the phase known as Late Prehistoric , in which a slow resettlement can be recorded.
Copper was processed into various tools such as awls and projectile points , but also into jewelry. Dentalia shells (shells of scantlings ) and obsidian , from which tools and projectile points were made, came to the Tr'ondek Haw'in. They offered birch bark, from which baskets and watertight vessels were made, red ocher for dyeing and dried salmon. However, this trade is only partially based on barter, but often on the exchange of gifts , which served to show respect and to secure status . Meetings and celebrations such as the potlatch provided the opportunity for this. An extensive network of paths and river stretches served for the exchange. Although numerous sites in the streams were known, gold was of no importance.
Before the first Europeans
Around 1800 there were six language groups in the Yukon, five of which belonged to the Athabasques and one to the Tlingit . Culturally related groups met regularly, especially when fishing in spring and summer. These larger groups broke up into family groups as soon as the food supply decreased towards autumn. The cold season was spent in their own winter villages. Most of the Indians lived in river valleys or by lakes, only to hunt in the higher areas. Not all of them mastered every hunting technique. The Han used, for example, extremely elaborate fishing nets and traps. The slow regeneration capacity of nature and the scattering of the basis of life in a huge area forced a careful use of resources as well as widespread migration. Nevertheless, thousands of years of experience resulted in a relatively secure life that was in sharp contrast to the great insecurity of the Europeans, their high losses and their aversion to life in the north, an attitude that was difficult to understand for the Tr'ondek Hwhere'in.
It was difficult to establish any kind of leadership group under these conditions, and its survival depended on the success and skill of individuals. Formally, women were outside the hierarchy, but as teachers, storytellers and collectors they were of great influence.
In addition, shamans , who the Europeans often referred to as “medicine men” or “magicians”, who distinguished themselves through in-depth knowledge of nature and its powers and spirits, had considerable influence, and they were active as healers. They were also responsible for establishing contact with spiritual powers. They also helped to find hunting prey or tried to influence the weather.
Regional and local groups
Within the large groups, a distinction is made between regional bands such as the Han, local bands and task groups , i.e. groups that came together for a temporary purpose. The regional group only came together for large gatherings such as a potlatch , or in places with sufficient resources to feed a larger group. In addition, the regional group was linked by kinship and common language, as well as a traditional territory. The regional group of the Tr'ondek were the Han . The local band , like the Tr'ondek Hechsel'in here, had a traditional area within the greater area with certain rights of use. Each of these groups had a winter camp, and there was also a traditional hiking cycle that took them to the most important hunting and gathering places. The traditional territories overlapped depending on the season, the rights of use and even the individual beneficiaries. This also resulted in divisions in the closely related family structures. Occasionally, several local groups or men simply linked by friendship would come together to hunt or fish.
The Han regional group was made up of local groups known as David’s and Charley’s band in what is now Alaska around 1900 , as well as the group at the Klondike. Only the latter can be addressed as Tr'ondek Haw'in. It is unclear whether there was a fourth band around Nuklako (Jutl'à 'K'ät), where Dawson is today, or whether it was a place of the Klondike group.
Charley's band lived farthest north, at the confluence of the Kandik River with the Yukon; this is known as Charley Creek, not to be confused with the nearby Charley River . On the opposite side, at Biederman Camp, was a second village, possibly a third ten miles down the Yukon on the Charley River. This is where Independence , a short-lived gold rush town, came into being . The Charley River people may have moved to Fort Yukon between 1900 and 1910 . Charley Village was devastated by a flood in 1914. The chief brought many of the residents to Eagle Village. It is unclear whether there were possibly two Chiefs with the same name. In any case, one of them was mentioned in 1871 by the Anglican missionary Robert McDonald , whom the chief received kindly. In 1910, 25 people lived in Charley Creek Indian Village , 17 of them Han, the others belonged to three neighboring Gwich'in tribes. In 1911 there were only 10 to 12, in 1912 there were only 7. Most of them had probably fallen victim to a flu epidemic . A flood destroyed the village in 1914, and the few residents moved to Circle City .
David's band , which comprised around 65 to 70 people around 1890, regularly wintered at Mission Creek and the Seventymile River . Their hunting area reached at least as far as Comet Creek and Eureka Creek as well as American Creek. Most of them died of smallpox in the 1880s, and the survivors moved to Fortymile . One of their camps was Eagle, which had six houses. The Belle Isle trading post below the village had already been abandoned at that time. Two and a half miles below Eagle was another eight-house village that was also abandoned. Chief David died no later than 1903 when he was given a potlatch in memory. His son Peter followed as chief.
The largest local band was the one on the Klondike, but they never extended their hunting trips across All Gold Creek, a tributary of Flat Creek, around 50 km north of Dawson, because they feared the Mahoney . They had been at war with them for a long time. Before winter came, the Tr'ondek couldoe downriver to Coal Creek or Tatondiak River, or to the Nation River . They spent the winter in the Ogilvie Mountains . Shortly before the end of winter, they headed for Klondike, built moose skin boats and caught salmon at the estuary.
Trade, exchange, gift
The Tr'ondek were part of an extensive trade network. The Chilkat belonging to the Tlingit family brought coveted goods from the coast over two difficult to cross passes into the hinterland. So came seal fat, the buttery oil of the candle fish (Eulachon), Dentalia mussels, boxes made from the wood of the giant tree of life , medicinal plants, but also European goods such as knives, pans and glass beads, which were used on a large scale for the decoration of the dominant class, to the Tutchone in the southern Yukon. They supplied fur, caribou leather or copper, as well as the hair of mountain goats , sinews and colors. The Han who lived north of them exchanged these goods for other furs and red ocher, a dye; birch bark and salmon were added. They exchanged the goods acquired in this way with the Gwich'in living in the north , who in turn were in contact with the Eskimos . The commercial relations benefited from marital ties that extended the cultural and linguistic influence of the Tlingit far into the Yukon.
Trade with Europeans, epidemics (from 1789)
Both the northern and the southern groups came into contact with Europeans at the end of the 18th century. Alexander Mackenzie came into contact with the Gwich'in in 1789, and Fort Good Hope was built there in 1806 . Glass beads quickly established themselves in the region as barter goods and as a measure of value. Against the resistance of Eskimos , who attacked the fort with 500 men, the Gwich'in enforced a trade monopoly that existed between about 1826 and 1850.
In the west, the situation was more competitive and the indigenous people put up more resistance. Russians first appeared in Alaska in 1741, and in 1763 Unangan killed around 200 residents of Unalaska , Umnak and Unimak Island , whereupon Russian vengeance for their part claimed 200 lives; more fights followed. In 1784 there was heavy fighting on Kodiak between the Russians and Tlingit, in 1804 the battle of Sitka ; the Tlingit left the island until 1819. Despite their military superiority, the Russians were only able to partially enforce their monopoly on the fur trade, and the Tlingit often successfully defended themselves. The British, for their part, tried to compete with the Russians at Wrangell , and in 1838 they leased the southeastern mainland from the Russians. The Spaniards, who also tried to enforce claims in the region, withdrew in 1819 with the Adams-Onís Treaty . In 1839 the first Russian trading post called Nulato was established on the lower Yukon, and in 1842 Lavrenti Sagoskin's expedition led up the Yukon.
For the tribes outside the immediate control of the Russian and British trading companies, the arrival of European traders from Russia and Great Britain was not a major event. They only came into their immediate vicinity in 1846 and 1847 with the establishment of two trading posts, and for a long time they fitted into the well-developed trading system. In addition, they brought only a few new goods to the region.
The first disruptive factor was more likely to be diseases against which there was little or no immunity. The size of the population loss can hardly be measured. In his publication on the indigenous population in 1928 , James Mooney assumed that around 4,000 Indians lived in the Yukon Valley; according to Alfred Kroeber , it could have been around 4,700. However, these estimates are extremely uncertain. Since the 1960s, 7,000 to 9,000 have been assumed. In 1895, however, there were no more than 2,600, if that number was only a good one.
The question of whether the population has collapsed to the same extent due to epidemics as further south and on the coast from 1775 or (before) 1787 in Sitka remains particularly difficult . It is known that an epidemic of smallpox raged in Alaska and on the Lynn Canal from 1835 to 1839 . In 1847 the missionary Alexander H. Murray reported high mortality rates, especially among women; similar to Robert Campbell in 1851. Murray estimated 230 Han men were trading around Fort Youcon , making them the largest group. If this quite high number is correct, a total of over 800 members of this group alone must be expected. In 1865, boat crews from the Hudson's Bay Company brought a severe scarlet fever epidemic to the Yukon. James McDougall estimated that half of the Indians around Fort Youcon died.
Two things promoted the spread: the infected had enough time to escape to the protection of their relatives with an incubation period of one to two and a half weeks in the case of smallpox, or they suspected spells from another tribe, and accordingly began vengeance. Both led to numerous new infections, for which the shamans had no remedy. In 1865 the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) complained again that the women were particularly affected and that some of the fort's best and most important provisions hunters had died. Numerous other places where such unknown epidemics spread show that population slumps by two thirds were not uncommon. In addition, premature death prevented the transmission of cultural elements and skills, brought the thin ruling class into legitimacy problems and endangered trust in their spiritual world. When the British and Han met for the first time, their culture had already changed significantly, and the population was declining to an unknown extent.
Dispute over trade monopolies: British, Russians, Indians (from 1806)
Russian traders came to the lower Yukon by 1839/42 at the latest, British to the Mackenzie as early as 1806. Middlemen brought Russian and British goods into the region decades before the arrival of the first Europeans, with the Tlingit dominating this trade in the west, the Gwich'in in the Northeast. Rifles and glass beads, most of which were exchanged for furs, were in demand.
However, due to falling prices for beaver fur , the HBC was forced to increasingly rely on rarer and more expensive fur. This caused the fur traders to move further north. John Bell therefore opened a post on the Peel River , later Fort McPherson . But the Gwich'in there, who wanted to use their new position as middlemen, had no interest in letting the British move further west. They exaggerated the transportation problems and even misled or abandoned some traders. Bell therefore hired Indian scouts from outside in 1845, who were more successful. The Gwich'in did not succeed in preventing the loss of their advantageous position in the long run if they could hold the HBC for more than five years. In 1846 the small trading post Lapierre's House was built on the western slope of the Richardson Mountains , in 1847 Fort Youcon was built around 5 km above the mouth of the Porcupine in the Yukon. Now the Indians there profited from the fur trade and worked against commission and European goods, as well as the resulting reputation.
At the same time, the HBC started from the south, with Robert Campbell setting up trading posts at Dease and Frances Lake and the upper Pelly River in 1838/40 . However, the closer he got to the Yukon , the more clearly he came across the highly developed trading system of the Chilkat-Tlingit , so that his liaison officers returned in 1843, ostensibly out of fear of “savages”. Members of the Southern Tutchone had frightened the British when they told them about alleged cannibals. Nonetheless, Campbell opened a post at the confluence of the Pelly and Yukon rivers in 1848. However, in 1849 thirty Tlingit stopped its traders. Under these circumstances he failed to make a profit during his five years at Fort Selkirk , founded in 1848 , but made contact with the Han, through whose territory he drove down the stream to Fort Youcon. On August 19, 1852, however, the Chilkat looted and destroyed the post on an island in the Pelly River. Campbell recognized early on that knowledge of terrain, customs and languages gave the Chilkat decisive advantages. In addition, HBC was dependent on the Liard River , which was difficult to navigate, and the price structures were also specified by HBC headquarters. These in turn depended on the Mackenzie area in the east, while the Chilkat followed the prices of the Pacific region. In the Yukon, two trading circles collided, the western of which was oriented towards the Pacific and thus China, while the eastern one was much more dependent on the markets in Europe. The HBC had to give up the southern Yukon in favor of Fort Youcon in what is now Alaska.
In addition, there was another misjudgment. The HBC believed it had to establish trade contact with leading men, so-called trading chiefs . The British misjudged the different internal structures. The Indians chose a trading chief , but they were not permanently bound by his instructions and they brought their furs to cheaper places depending on the availability. In addition, the HBC demanded that goods could no longer be awarded on credit , another misunderstanding. The Indians viewed bartering not only as an exchange of goods, but also as a kind of gift trade, in which reputation and honor are important criteria. The gifts were not exchanged at the same time, but at intervals. The Indians took action and were able to get Fort Youcon to continue trading on credit. They cleverly played the HBC and the Russian-American Company off against each other, because the British rightly feared a planned expansion of the Russians upstream. When a Russian agent appeared, Strachan Jones moved several hundred miles down the Yukon to persuade the Indians there to act at Fort Youcon. In the years that followed, the HBC sent traders downstream and the Youcon Indians lost their monopoly on trade. For their part, they used conflicting interests between the Mackenzie district, where the British now enjoyed an undisputed trade monopoly, and Fort Youcon by threatening to supply this or that region - an advantage of their nomadic way of life. They also banded together and refused to deliver meat, on which the survival of the small trading posts depended, in order to enforce better terms. A monopoly was not enforceable in the Yukon. When the Americans bought Alaska in 1867 and found Fort Youcon to be on their territory, HBC had to evacuate the fort in 1869, and the trading networks changed dramatically.
First direct contacts between Han and Europeans (from 1847)
The economically relatively flexible Tr'ondek kept other tribes away from their trading places such as Forty Mile , such as the Copper Indians in the White River District. The Tlingit, who kept the Copper Indians away from Haines , acted similarly . Therefore, the first visitors of the Canadian police force for the Northwest, the North West Mounted Police , which was founded in 1873, noticed that these Indians looked comparatively backward, owned old rifles, etc. The same was true for the Kaska in the southeast and the eastern Tutchone until the gold rush .
When Europeans first came to the Tr'ondek area, their chief was Gäh St'ät or "Rabbit skin hat" (rabbit skin hat), which the newcomers called "Catsah". The first Europeans discovered that in addition to traditional trade, barter and gift goods such as birch bark, red ocher, fur or salmon, tea, tobacco, glass beads and metal kettles were also known.
The first known contact between whites and Han took place on April 5, 1847. HBC dealer Alexander Hunter Murray reports on a meeting at LaPierre's House on Upper Porcupine . Their guide was therefore a young chief who brought 20 marten skins with him, which he wanted to exchange for a rifle. Murray called them "Gens de fou". They carried half-dried goose tongues, caribou skins and furs with them. Three of them had already seen white people, probably Russians, with whom they had allegedly traded in Nulato , Alaska. In contrast to the “Rat Indians” - meaning the Gwich'in who hunted muskrats - they were happy about the planned Fort Yukon, which was closer to their area.
In early August 1847 a large group visited the fort for the first time. Murray had been warned by Gwich'in that the Han were angry with the British, who believed that the death of one of their chiefs was linked to the arrival of the British. When the 25 or so canoes docked, they did so in complete silence, without singing, as was the custom with the other athabasks. The newcomers looked particularly “wild” on Murray, as they had long hair and adorned their shirts with pearls and brass . They brought pewter and tin pipes with them that they had traded with Russians. They carried little barter goods with them, only a few bearskins, meat and a hundred geese that they had killed with the bow on the way. On the second day, some threatened that if treated badly, they would destroy the fort, as had already happened with the Russians - for which there is no evidence. Above all, however, they asked for goods on credit, which Murray refused.
By 1852, Hudson's Bay Company employees crossed Han territory at least seven times, including the Murray men who drove down the Yukon to Fort Youcon and the interpreter Antoine Hoole who sailed the river in 1851.
The demarcation of 1867, new competition in the fur trade, trade forts
Fort Yukon, despite these initial difficulties, remained the main trading post for the Han until 1869. However, with the purchase of Alaska and the establishment of a border with Alaska in 1867, the tribe was divided, so that the Han villages were formally separated by a border. The future chief Isaac, who came from the Wolf Clan and was born around 1859, also came from Alaska. He married the chief daughter Eliza Harper of the Crow Clan, the second clan of the tribe. Marriage was only allowed between these clans, not within the clans. The couple is believed to have led around 200 people.
As early as 1873, Moses Mercier, who had to leave Fort Youcon, founded a first small trading post called Belle Isle on the left bank of the Yukon, near what would later become the Eagle, and thus in the area of the Han. In late August 1874, Leroy Napoleon McQuesten, better known as Jack McQuesten , founded a second trading post called Fort Reliance , about 10 km below the mouth of the Klondike , which he knew as the "Trundeck River". Together with Frank Barnfield he built a hut, with the two men hiring Indians to cut down and carry the trees. Others hunted for them. McQuesten was the only one to stay for several years, twelve in all, in the post, which was about 30 feet by 20 feet. Han, Upper Tanana, and Northern Tutchone met at his trading post . He referred to the local Indians as "Klondike Han". For some time he and his partners made a living from trading and bought furs for the Alaska Commercial Company , on whose behalf McQuesten acted. McQuesten also ran the Yukon , the first steamboat on the Yukon River.
From the west, the Alaska Commercial Company continued that in 1867 350,000 dollars had purchased the trade monopoly of the retreating Russian competition until 1874 a far-reaching trade monopoly on the lower Yukon by. But independent fur traders competed with her. Many Indian groups took advantage of the competitive situation and turned to the Americans. The British allowed the dealers around Rampart House to trade on credit without further ado. They hired even more boy scouts, hunters, fishermen and interpreters, extended their contracts from three to six months, but could no longer travel 300 km downstream to Nuklukayet as they had before. The American competition was much more aggressive and offered better prices, sought out more distant groups, even offered British goods and made the Indians independent partners. In addition, they brought an approximately 17 m long steamboat to the Yukon, which made the transport of goods considerably cheaper and faster.
With the acquisition of Alaska by the USA (1867) and the forced withdrawal of the British from Fort Youcon on August 9, 1869, which was west of the agreed border at 141st longitude, the situation changed insofar as various companies soon competed. Chief Catsah (Gah ts'at) had urged the establishment of Fort Reliance. In 1877 or 1878, however, the post had to be vacated because - according to American sources after a tobacco theft - hostilities broke out. In 1877 there was also an incident after the evacuation of the fort. In the abandoned rooms there were remains of fat that had been mixed with arsenic to fight mice . Three women poisoned themselves with it, one of them, a 16-year-old blind woman, died from it. McQuesten and the chief agreed on compensations, the mother accepted a dog. McQuesten reopened the post in 1878, and the Han compensated for the tobacco.
In 1880, the Western Fur and Trading Company founded a competition in the Han area around 130 km downstream at David's Village near today's Eagle. Moses Mercier had to give up this unprofitable position in 1881. In 1882 he founded the Belle Isle post in the same area , now for the Alaska Commercial Company . His former employer then reopened the post he had given up, and the two companies now competed fiercely. This favorable situation for the Han ended as early as 1883 when the Alaska Commercial Company took over its rival. The monopoly now raised the prices of its own goods, lowered fur prices and limited lending.
The Americans also used steam boats, such as the Yukon of the Alaskan Commercial Company (ACC) or, from 1879, the 25 m long St Michael of the Western Trading and Fur Company, which further increased the quantities of goods. In 1887 the New Racket was added, which had been built by a group of prospectors, but which the ACC had bought out. On the one hand, bulk goods such as flour and - what the HBC rejected - repeating rifles and canvas for tents, but also exotic goods such as Chinese teacups came into the area. This strengthened the Han’s intermediary position for such goods. From 1889, the more than 40 m long Arctic was added, after the onset of the Klondike gold rush even more than 70 m long ships were added, which made the highest demands on maneuverability on the unpredictable river.
Another factor that came in the 1880s was whaling boats to Herschel Island , far north off the coast of the Beaufort Sea . They brought in Winchester bolt action rifles , which the Americans and British alike refused to sell, and alcohol.
Gold finds
As early as 1872 there was a brief gold rush in the Cassiar district, and gold was discovered on the Stewart River in 1885 . Campbell already knew about gold at Fort Selkirk and the Reverend Robert McDonald, who was stationed in Fort Yukon from 1862 to 1863, had found gold, probably at Birch Creek. George Holt was the first to send gold outside of Alaska. Some fur traders switched to the new, more profitable trade. But here the hurdles were higher, because the prospectors often rejected the Indian work. The technique of panning for gold - other deposits would have required higher capital and labor input as well as corresponding machines - hardly required paid work, but was carried out by the prospectors themselves (placer mining). In addition, this time the Europeans and Americans were extremely flexible, because more and more rumors of gold discoveries drove the men and a few women from site to site.
In 1886 the first major gold discovery was made on the Fortymile River (Ch'ëdäh Dëk) and several hundred men moved here, where they had previously fished and where a passage for caribou made hunting easier. The Tr'ondek Hendung'in supplied the new village of Forty Mile with food and the furs necessary for survival. In their eyes they received artistic glass beads, metal tools and alcohol. Their guide was now Chief Isaac, whose traditional name is no longer known, and who was the son-in-law of Gaeh St'ät. McQuesten gave up Fort Reliance (1886) and built a new post at the mouth of the Stewart River. In 1894, a new post was built 60 miles above Fort Reliance at the mouth of Sixtymile Creek, named after William Ogilvie , the historian of the Yukon gold rush.
On American territory, Circle City emerged after gold was found at Birch Creek (1893/94). In 1895 gold discoveries on American Creek brought out the village of Eagle City, where there were at times around a thousand gold diggers. Fort Egbert was built there in 1899 to monitor the border. Even before the great gold rush , the number of prospectors in the Yukon was estimated at between one thousand and two thousand, restless men who roamed uncontrolled through the Tr'ondek region.
Some Tr'ondek worked as porters, as packers for the boats, or with washing the gold, but only a few Indians earned claims. Apparently, the small prospect of far distant wages was not enough for them as a motive to take on the unhealthy and tedious work. They also had no plans to leave their homeland, and gold was rapidly falling in value there. The successful gold prospectors from outside, however, wanted to leave the area as quickly as possible and live a comfortable life in the southern cities with their earnings.
The wages for porters from Dawson to Forty Mile varied between summer and winter, as dog teams allowed larger and faster transports during the cold season. However, they only received a third of their wages. In the mines, Indians earned between 4 and 8 dollars a day, whites between 6 and 10, but it was difficult for them to enforce wage demands in view of the underlying racism. Nevertheless, the Bishop William Carpenter Bompas , who was responsible for them, said that the Indians would get rich by working in the mines and by providing the prospectors and their sled dogs with meat and fish. Some prospectors bought the log cabins from Indians for around $ 100 to $ 200. Significant inflation was already making itself felt, a phenomenon that the Indians were unfamiliar with. Hence, their home sales came at an inopportune time.
Mission, Anglican control of intercultural contacts (from 1862)
In 1862 William West Kirkby was the first missionary to come to Fort Youcon and stayed for a few days. In 1863 he had a medicine man and four young men whom he had designated for the mission read some texts with him. In the north, at Porcupine, Robert McDonald, a half-Indian from the Red River District , proselytized in 1862 . In 1864 the future bishop Bompas appeared in the north. He became Bishop of Athabasca in 1876 . In 1890 he took over the Selkirk diocese, which later became the Yukon, which in turn emerged from the division of the Mackenzie diocese.
In 1887, along with William Ogilvie and Bernard Moore, Archdeacon Robert McDonald came to the region. In the same year the Anglican missionary JW Ellington founded the mission station Buxton Mission on Mission Island above Forty Mile, but Ellington had to give up the mission two years later for health reasons.
In 1891, Bishop William Carpenter Bompas visited the region; he returned the next year with his wife Charlotte Selina. Apart from one year (1899-1900), where he lived in Moosehide, he stayed in Fortymile (Buxton) until 1901.
Bompas believed that the Han, “this lowest of all races”, had to protect them from alcohol consumption and sexual contact with the predominantly male fur traders and gold prospectors, as well as from all bad influences. After the conclusion of a trade, these held festivals at which there were drinking celebrations and in the course of which there was sexual contact with women of the Indians. As this happened over and over again in the same places and they realized that this attracted white men, the Han began to build a dance house on Mission Island. Bishop Bompas bought the construction they had started and had a church built from it. The HBC, on the other hand, promoted this type of contact, at least for the lower ranks, in order to keep the mostly young men in the country longer by marrying an Indian woman. She expressly advised against the higher ranks. Alexander Hunter Murray brought his non-Indian wife to Fort Youcon in 1847. Robert Campbell was warned by Governor George Simpson not to complicate his life with a Native American woman.
Bishop Bompas provided for a school and the presence of the 19 men of the North West Mounted Police under Charles Constantine, which began in 1895 . Fort Constantine , named after him, was built at Fortymile, and the station revived on Mission Island. One of its main goals was racial segregation.
Bompas campaigned for a strict alcohol ban, as drinking celebrations were too frequent in his eyes during the short stays of gold prospectors and Han. Since the Europeans only saw the Indians on such occasions, they believed that the Indians always behaved inappropriately and consequently issued a general ban. The police force fined up to over $ 100 on alcohol dealers who sold their product to Indians. However, it was precisely these attempts at containment that brought together moonshineers, smugglers, fur traders, prospectors and Indians and unintentionally promoted alcohol abuse . In addition, missionaries and police officers, in anticipation of increasing violence and a puritanical fear of sexual contact, were afraid of celebrations of this kind, while for the white men it often represented a means of establishing sexual contact with the Han women. This in turn is likely to be related to high cultural hurdles, especially the lack of linguistic communication and ignorance, and certainly also to the small number of women and the correspondingly rare opportunities for contact. Most of these contacts were short-lived, especially since most whites feared being insulted as "squaw men". The children from such relationships stayed with the Han, mostly with the mothers, rarely with the fathers.
Klondike gold rush from 1896, Chief Isaac, Moosehide
Economic and political classification
In Canada, global bottlenecks in the gold supply set extensive prospecting companies in motion, which were repeatedly found within a few years from around 1858.
In this environment, the first gold discoveries triggered a huge mass movement into the extremely sparsely populated and difficult-to-reach area of the Yukon. This was politically explosive for Canada, especially since the majority of the prospectors came from the USA. In 1867, the United States also acquired Alaska from Russia . The prospectors now brought not only the Indians into the minority, but also the British, who had founded Canada in 1867 to curb the expansion of the USA to the north. In 1898 Canada made the area its own territory and sent a small police force.
Some of the gold diggers came from Alaska , which dominated most of the Pacific fringe and whose ports offered easier access to the Klondike than those in Canada. It was practically impossible to control the long border along the 141st longitude, and it was neither clear nor important to the gold prospectors in the Yukon whether they were in the territory of the USA or Canada.
In the United States, there had been severe economic shocks after the panic of 1893 and that of 1896. When the Portland docked in Seattle on July 17, 1897 and brought the first successful gold prospectors with her, the approximately 5,000 present called on the passengers to show their gold. They presented it to the cheering crowd. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in the "Klondike Edition" under the headline Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! and Sixty-Eight Rich Men on the Steamer Portland of gold worth $ 700,000.
Chief Isaac and Moosehide
In 1894 around a thousand prospectors lived in the Yukon. But with the Klondike gold rush that began in 1896, over 100,000 whites came to the region. Immediately on the opposite north side of the river from the Tr'ondek village Tr'ochëk , Dawson was built, by far the largest gold rush town with at times over 40,000 inhabitants. As early as 1901, the Indians made up just over 10% of the population of the Yukon Territory.
Until the gold rush, Tr'ochëk was the summer camp of Chief Isaac, the leader of the Tr'ondek Haw'in. He came from a village in Alaska that had been part of the United States since 1867. He grew up in Eagle Village and the Forty Mile area. In 1892 he met Bishop William Bompas and was baptized. Although he often attended church services in the Anglican Church, he held fast to his traditions. He traveled frequently to potlatches in Fort Selkirk , Forty Mile and Eagle, as in 1915 when Chief Jackson died at the Selkirk First Nation . He inherited a watch from Bishop Bompas, in return for which he presented his grandfather's stone hunting knife to his successor.
In 1897, however, a fundamental change took place. The Anglican missionary Frederick Flewelling reports that he returned to the previously quiet Tr'ochëk on May 29, 1897, after completing a winter trip to Forty Mile. "Five or six hundred men have come here this spring alone, and their tents are scattered all over the place." Speculators had bought their land from many Han so they did not know where to stay in winter. Flewelling therefore bought a 40 acre tract two miles downstream and suggested that the Han be accommodated there and set up a mission.
However, the memories of the Han elders show that they and their chief Isaac took their fate into their own hands and welcomed the strangers, even if their greed for gold remained incomprehensible. Isaac watched the whites throw the gold around, wondered why they came so numerous, and said there was too much of it. He feared the negative consequences of the contact and made the suggestion himself to move to Moosehide.
Population slump
As before, introduced diseases played an extremely destructive role. The number of Indians in the territory fell by more than half between 1901 and 1911, from 3,322 to 1,489. The Han also got into trouble. The restless Dawson with its swarming gold prospectors drove the game away, the whites also used the little wood in the region as construction and firewood, the numerous rafts and boats destroyed their fish traps. The air was full of smoke as the prospectors burned the undergrowth and felled the charred logs. In addition, the Tr'ondek were attacked by diseases such as tuberculosis , to which they showed little resistance. Chief Isaac also feared the brutalization of customs and increasing dependence. Nevertheless, he managed to maintain a fragile peace. He learned English and even gave lectures.
His personal authority was manifested every morning by being the first to leave his house, waking up the village in a loud voice, and then announcing where to hunt or where the tribe should move. At Christmas 1902, every villager came to the chief's house and exchanged gifts with him.
Moosehide and Dawson (from 1896)
In order to avoid conflicts, the Indians began to negotiate with representatives of the church and government from the fall of 1896, i.e. with Bishop William Bompas and Inspector Charles Constantine. The Han first moved from Tr'ochëk to the Mounted Police reserve on the other side of the river, but this too was too close to Dawson. In the spring of 1897 they moved a few kilometers downstream to Moosehide . It was important that there was fresh water from a stream, wood was available, there were paths that allowed access to the hunting areas and that salmon could be caught easily from here. At the same time, they could sell meat to the prospectors, but also find work on the paddle steamers, in woodworks or in the harbor.
As a precaution, Chief Isaac gave many cult objects, but especially songs and stories, to relatives in Alaska, with whom he continued to maintain close relationships. In 1907, he celebrated a potlatch in Eagle with Chief Alex.
Twelve Mile or Tthedëk was also created in the course of the Klondike gold rush when some of the families did not want to move to Moosehide. The at least ten families led by Charlie Adams and his wife had closer ties to the groups in Alaska than to those around Dawson, which was 30 km above town. But this settlement had to be abandoned, in 1957 a flood destroyed the remaining houses.
In the spring of 1898, after newspapers spread the news around the world, tens of thousands of gold prospectors, known as stampeders , came to Dawson. In May, Tr'ochëk was seized by newcomers, and Lousetown , also known as Klondike City , came into being. Numerous prostitutes settled there. Archaeologists found 72 platforms for the log cabins on the steep slope of the island alone. These were attached with massive stone blocks. Other new settlers built simple tents that were held up by wood and that left only a few traces. Garbage and sewage migrated down the hill into the river.
On March 27, 1900, the government established a reservation in Moosehide. But the food situation there was so tense that year that the North West Mounted Police inspector Z. T. Wood helped out with flour, rice and tea to support the 10 to 12 most severely affected.
Chief Isaac continued to have good contacts in the city. His wife, Eliza Harper, formed a close friendship with Klondike Kate (Kathleen Rockwell), a dancer known during the gold rush, who married one of the gold diggers named Johnny Matson and lived in Bend , Oregon until her death in 1957 . They wrote each other numerous letters until her death, and Kate sent her friend dresses. Kate wrote to "Mrs. Chief Isaac". Eliza, who died in 1960 at the age of 87, gave birth to 13 children, but only 4 of them grew up - a mortality rate that was not uncommon. Their children were Patricia Lindgren, Angela Lopaschuck, Charlie and Fred Isaac, who played important roles in the oral tradition and, in the case of the sons, in the political and religious self-organization of the tribe. In 1906, Isaac's eldest son Edward died of tuberculosis . From 1913, his eight-year-old son Fred, along with seven other Moosehide children, was the first to attend school in Carcross . That school, the Choutla School , had opened two years earlier. It existed until the beginning of the 1960s, but it burned down in 1939, so the children in Moosehide smelled of home schooling from 1948 to 1957. In 1920 a house for children from “mixed marriages” was built, the St Paul's Hostel (until 1952).
In 1901 Chief Isaac, together with his brother Walter Benjamin and the medicine man Little Paul, visited his friend Jack McQuesten , who had also been looking for gold in the Yukon for a long time. In addition, the three traveled on the steamboat Sarah on the Yukon to St. Michael, then on to Seattle , San Francisco and Berkeley in California . They were guests of the Alaska Commercial Company and toured the gold rush towns along the route.
Between 1904 and 1919 the chief secured four claims, not to look for gold, but to secure the settlement around Moosehide. In 1905 the Yukon Territorial Council feared that prolonged drought would make gold mining impossible. So he hired the rainmaker Charlie Hatfield to make rain for a fee of $ 10,000. When there was little rain, Chief Isaac offered to hire four medicine men to show Hatfield how to make rain for only $ 5,000.
Reserve borders, disputes
On December 15, 1911, Chief Isaac said in an interview with the Dawson Daily News : “All Klondike belong my people… Long time all mine. Hills all mine, caribou all mine, moose all mine, rabbits all mine, gold all mine. White men come and take all my gold. Take millions, take more hundreds fifty million, and blow 'em in Seattle. Now Moosehide Injun want Christmas. Game is gone. White man kill all mosses and caribou near Dawson… Injun everywhere have their own hunting grounds. Moosehides hunt up Klondike, up Sixtymile, up Twentymile, but game is all gone. White man kill all. ”He insisted that the Klondike area had belonged to his people for a long time, all the hills, caribou, moose, rabbits and the gold. But the white men would have taken all of his gold, worth $ 150 million, and squandered it in Seattle. Now the Indians are Christians, the game has disappeared, the White Man has killed all the moose and caribou around Dawson, and the animals have also disappeared in Isaac's areas. The white man killed them all. He also expressed that gold mining was accepted, but the slaughter of livelihoods was not.
Resources dwindled and the hunt required ever greater effort and longer absence. At the same time steam boats and kilns consumed the forests around Dawson, so Isaac tried to put a forest area under protection from which his tribe could meet their needs. In 1907, for example, he asked the government through the missionary Benjamin Totty about a wooded area on Moosehide Creek. By the late 1920s, however, the reserve had been downsized in favor of loggers, as it was believed that this wood was of little use to the Han.
church
Benjamin Totty, whom Bompas had recruited, worked as a missionary in Moosehide until 1926. In 1908 the St Barnabas Church was built in memory of Bompas. Jonathon Wood, an Indian, worked as a catechist .
The church initiated the Moosehide Men's Club and the Senior Women's Auxiliary . In 1932, what was probably the only indigenous Anglican Young People's Organization in Canada was founded. These institutions primarily served to monitor the way of life and the cleanliness of the settlement by its own members.
Police duties
The constable, appointed by the police, was given further powers. Around 1911, the Mounted Police hired one of the tribesmen as a constable. These constables, the first recorded name is Henry Harper, were hired for well-specified duties. In 1912, a constable was sworn in whose job it was to prevent Moosehide residents from visiting Dawson because of a measles epidemic . Chief Isaac was also a constable on several occasions, but no other names have survived, apart from that of Sam Smith. He was a senior gwich'in from Fort McPherson who lived in Moosehide until his death in 1925.
Probably the constables received instructions from the council and the elders. The Special Constables were supposed to keep Moosehide quiet, which according to a police report they managed to do.
First village council, death of Isaac (1921–1932)
In March 1921 the people of Moosehide elected a first council. The seven-member committee was chaired by Esau Harper, Chief Isaac was only second chairman. James Woods became secretary, Sam Smith became Inside Guard, and David Robert was the guardian of the children. Tom Young and David Taylor acted as house guards. James Thompson was village inspector north-end and Peter Thompson south-end. The council saw its task in keeping the village clean, looking after the sick and the elderly, enforcing compulsory schooling, monitoring the relationship between men and women and imposing fines, including for alcohol abuse.
In its first session, the council banned young girls from walking with whites and banned non-Indians from entering the reservation. Children should go to school and be in bed by 9 p.m. All Indians should have left Dawson an hour before, women walking alone, even at 7 a.m. - unless they were with a married woman. Men were only allowed to spend the night in the city when accompanied by a comrade. Men were responsible for bringing wood and water for their families, and passing on chewing tobacco - probably as a preventive measure - was forbidden. In addition, dogs were banned in the house. Whites were only allowed to come to Moosehide in shops.
However, these far-reaching interventions met with resistance, so that the body increasingly tried to rely on conviction instead of punishment. It also drastically reduced interventions in internal family processes.
All in all, Indian agent Hawskley viewed Moosehide's advice as an experiment, but resisted proposals from Ottawa to make this institution permanent.
Isaac led the tribe until his death on April 9, 1932, and became an honorary member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers . He gave numerous lectures, such as on Victoria Day , which was celebrated at great expense in the metropolises, or on Discovery Day . Isaac was a frequent guest in Dawson's company, though he kept reminding them that the guests were on his land and that they were slaughtering the game. He even told them to give up hunting and fishing, just as the Tr'ondek refrained from prospecting for gold. He died of flu on April 9, 1932 at the age of 73 . His body was pulled across the ice to Moosehide by two horses on a cart; all of the local Indians and many residents of Dawson attended the funeral.
Succession (1932 to around 1960)
His two brothers, Johnathon Wood and Walter Benjamin, were priests. Johnathon served at St. Barnabas Church in Moosehide and died on January 6, 1938 as the oldest resident, Walter Benjamin served at the Episcopal Church Mission in Eagle Village, Alaska.
In December 1935 the council met with Indian agent G. Binning to discuss the possible removal of Isaac's successor, Chief Charlie Isaac. But the chief, who was evidently absent too often, was offered the office again. In January 1936, however, he was deposed and replaced by Chief John Jonas. Charlie Isaac served in various theaters of war in the Canadian Army from 1939 to 1945 and was stationed in Vancouver and Victoria . He died on February 25, 1975. His brother Fred had died seven years earlier. His two sisters, Princess Patricia, who went blind early, and Angela lived until 1991 and 1993. They were important sources of oral tradition.
James or Jimmie Wood, a graduate of the Choutla School in Carcross, became chief in 1940. He became an Anglican catechist , assistant teacher in Moosehide and served on a local patrol during the war; after that he supported a house building program. After ten years of illness, the chief died of tuberculosis in 1956. The second chief was Happy Jack Lesky.
Chief Jonas followed the chief again, but he was already 78 years old. He was the last of the so-called "Moosehide Chiefs". In 1961 only seven families lived in Moosehide, four of them Han, two Peel River Gwich'in and one of mixed origins.
Eagle, the Han in Alaska
The changes in relatives in Alaska were just as profound. In May 1898, 28 Americans purchased a wing on Mission Creek. Within a few months, the number of residents rose to 1,700 and over 500 log cabins were built. Fort Egbert was built in 1899 to monitor the area and the border. Oral sources only indicate that the army no longer allowed the Han to live in their territory. According to this, Chief Philip, whose house was full of Hudson's Bay Company blankets and the coveted pearls, persuaded his tribe to move three miles to where his hut was. They left their burial grounds behind.
By the summer of 1898, Alaska's first Episcopalian Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe had already earmarked a place for a church, but the next year Eagle City was occupied by the Army. Catholics and Presbyterians were also active there, so he decided to concentrate his activities on Eagle Village, where the Han had gone. The St. Paul's Mission was established between 1905 and 1906, and in 1925 the Indian Walter Benjamin was appointed lay preacher. He also supported the local missionary until 1946. George Burgess, who lived as a missionary in the village from 1909 to 1920, tried to keep out the influence of the whites, especially the soldiers from Fort Egbert, like in Moosehide. So he ended the dance events. Every man aged 12 and over had to belong to a Temperenzler society - for an admission fee of one dollar and 25 cents a month membership fee , and against the promise not to touch alcohol for a year. In contrast to Moosehide and Dawson, the Han could not purchase alcohol in Eagle City.
A day school for the Han children was established in Eagle City as early as 1902, and in 1905 the Episcopal Church opened a day school in Eagle Village. The teacher enforced the exclusive use of the English language with the stick. At the same time, the state of health was poor, and tuberculosis, lung and digestive diseases were widespread. “There was no medicine,” as one of the elderly later recalled. How many children died of these diseases has not been established, the nearest hospital was in Fort Youcon or in Dawson.
Advance of the money economy
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The money economy reached the area around Dawson and along the travel routes almost suddenly, but it replaced barter and the exchange of goods based on the exchange of goods only with resistance. The Indians supplied Forty Mile with food and furs from 1886. They received glass beads, metal tools and alcohol, apparently less often money.
The Chilkoot , who controlled one of the passports long before the gold rush, were the first to make money. They worked as porters. The men carried up to 200 pounds, women and adolescents also participated, and dragged up to 75 pounds. But the Indians hoarded the wages they received in the form of gold and silver coins, so that there was always too little money in circulation. The women also earned well, because they also sold hats, gloves and mukluks . But the more men without claims gathered in the Yukon, the lower the wages.
In the spring of 1894, Inspector Constantine and Sergeant Brown were sent to the Yukon by the government to collect fees and charges. At that time, and also during the actual Klondike gold rush, money circulated mainly between the traders and the prospectors. The more gold prospectors withdrew unsuccessfully, the more the prices of the abandoned equipment fell. Many hired themselves as wage diggers or offered the claim holders other services.
In August 1896, Joseph Ladue built a sawmill at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, as well as a department store and a saloon. From 1898 to 1899 a first commercial structure developed in Dawson. The trading district with shops and warehouses extended along the Yukon. All residents depended completely on their goods, especially during the six months when the city could not be reached by ship, and thus neither goods nor money flowed in and out.
Anyone who did not get a claim or did not look for gold for other reasons was called Cheechako . Some of them created a luxury market, for example for elaborate house facades, but also for musical instruments, expensive fabrics or jewelry.
With the arrival of women and families, the initially very high demand for laundries decreased, and the same was true for prostitution. In May 1899, however, the women had to leave the core district and were given a more secluded district between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. In 1901 they were pushed further and had to move to Klondike City, also known as Lousetown, where the Tr'ondek Haw'in had lived until 1896.
But the boom was short-lived and ended in 1906 at the latest with the demolition of the commissioner's residence. The government saw no great future for Dawson.
The Tr'ondek Hechsel'in, who had participated both in the phase of competition between Tlingit and Hudson's Bay Company in the fur trade, as well as in the short-lived phase of American-dominated free trade, were initially able - at least some of them - as porters, sled dog handlers , Hunters, fishermen or packers earn money. However, in the early phase they sat between the monopoly areas at Mackenzie, around Fort Youcon and that of the Chilkat in the southwest.
Now the gold rush broke out in the middle of their territory. They found seasonal work in different places, which was very much in keeping with their previous way of life. The new goods and products required, however, reinforced by rising prices, a higher proportion of work paid for by money and a lower proportion of pure subsistence work. As long as masses of competing labor did not arrive, the Tr'ondek found access to the capitalist labor market. The greed for gold, but above all masses of immigrants, destroyed this balance. In 1896 four out of five inhabitants of the Yukon were Indians, in 1901 it was only one in nine. The expansion of the traffic routes, especially the railway construction, cost the Indians many jobs as porters. In addition, the government's order that every prospector must bring his own equipment increased the amount of wage labor for carrying it, but reduced the provision of food for a commission. In addition, many of the prospectors who had given up the search for gold now went hunting themselves and competed with the Indians on the commission market. Dogs were popular, and so some went north and bought sled dogs, which they sold at a higher price in Dawson. The numerous steamers offered simple work, but also the wood production, some, like the Dawson Boys , immigrated Gwich'in from the north, worked on steamers, for example as pilots or handlers, but also as carpenters, boat mechanics or licensed traders, women worked in Laundries or as cooks in the camps. Most of the time the men moved to the new sources of income during the summer, similar to hunting, and then resumed their cyclical migrations and winter lifestyle, creating a mixed economy based on the old economy.
Women supplied the emerging market with clothing, but sledges and snowshoes were also in demand. While some Native American women visited the homes of prospectors in Forty Mile, and this also happened in Dawson, white competition was also overwhelming in the prostitution sector. This was in contrast to the experiences in other places where prospectors had come together.
Bishop Bompas ensured that welfare benefits were given to the underprivileged Indians, but only groups on the Bennett-Dawson Corridor along the police stations benefited from this.
However, as the industrialization of gold mining increased, the market for unskilled labor became smaller, a market that increasingly demanded better training. The Indians lacked this, however, and there was hardly any access to technical training. In addition, the pre-industrial mentality and way of life continued.
The Klondike gold rush divided the economy into two spheres, those of the extraction, processing and transport of raw materials and those of hunting, trapping, fishing and collecting. The overlaps in these areas, after having been very strong at the beginning, had reduced significantly again.
Economic offside, Great Depression, Alaska Highway (around 1905 to 1960)
After 1905, the Tr'ondek stood largely apart from regional economic development. This was dominated by large commodity companies that no longer needed the cult figure of the gold prospector. The three most important came together in 1929 in the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation . A rapidly decreasing number of prospectors searched the territory, but large finds were rare. Instead, copper mines opened at Whitehorse, silver mines at Mayo and Keno . Some Indians, like Sam Smith and Big Lake Jim, acted as prospectors and found them at Little Atlin. The growing fleet of ships on the rivers, which mainly served to transport raw materials, offered the opportunity to sell firewood along the rivers. For Dawson, hunting continued to offer an income opportunity. In 1904 the city needed around 2,300 caribou and 600 moose with only 9,000 inhabitants.
As in many industries, Indians in the Yukon were displaced by changes in the law over which they had little influence. In 1923 she pushed such a law out of a small branch, that of hunting guides, which was particularly important in the south and east. Indians were only allowed to work as auxiliary leaders and camp helpers, no longer as chief guides . However, there were only three chief guides in 1941, and this area only grew significantly in the 1950s.
In contrast to Canada as a whole, the older branch of the fur industry experienced a certain revival in the Yukon. In 1921 there were only 27 trading posts owned by 18 different companies or individuals; in 1930, at their height, there were 46 posts owned by 30 entrepreneurs, of which 11 belonged to Taylor and Drury. The market value fluctuated between 23,000 (1933) and over 600,000 dollars (1944-1946) as annual income extremely strongly. Many hunters got into excessive debt. The Territory's government attempted to ban non-Yukons from hunting by paying a $ 100 fee from 1923 to 1929, but in the north it hampered the Gwich'in living outside the Yukon, benefiting the Vuntut Gwitchin , the only group of the Gwich'in in the Yukon.
The Great Depression hit the Tr'ondek fact that the few jobs on the paddle steamers that plied the Yukon River and its tributaries, were now occupied by whites. In addition, the massive unemployment drove many of them into the hunt, so that they made the Indians even more competition, and at the same time the fur market collapsed. In the 1940s, game stocks declined so much that hunting around Dawson was banned. It was similar to shipping on the docks and in the timber industry. In addition, the last gold mines closed, many whites left the territory. Only around 2,700 non-Indians lived in the territory.
Many Tr'ondek enlisted in the army, including twelve men from Eagle Village. Others went to the southern Yukon to help build the Alaska Highway from 1942 , which the US built in anticipation of a Japanese invasion . More than 30,000 workers, mostly from the USA, were employed there. The Canol pipeline project also offered numerous new positions. In 1942 there was even a labor shortage in the mines, as many went to build roads. The mining companies therefore hired Indians, but had to find that they left their jobs in the fall to go on the usual and vital hunt. They also feared contracting diseases brought in from the south, epidemics that continue to wipe out entire places, such as Champagne on the Alaska Highway, now almost a ghost town .
In 1947 and 1948 the fur market collapsed in the USA and with it in the Western Han, the same was true for the Canadian markets. It was not until 1950 that the so-called trap lines , which had been introduced in British Columbia in 1926, were distributed in Yukon . You should only reserve certain areas for hunting appropriate tribes to keep white competition away. But the opposite happened. Fees, but above all the inheritance of rights through the male line, instead of through the female line as is traditionally the case, led to disputes and ultimately to the advance of non-Indian fur hunting.
This in turn made the Indians dependent on Canadian welfare, which had been heavily promoted during the war and which also reached the Indians of the Yukon from around 1955. Underemployment and addiction created an increasing alcohol problem. As in the Yukon, road construction, here the Taylor Highway , which was built between 1953 and 1955 , also increased the supply in Eagle. In 1964, Eagle Village voted to end the sale, a decision that is still valid today. The population continued to decline. In 1966 the place had 64 inhabitants, in 1997 there were only 24, in 2000 again 30 or 68 as a census-designated place .
In 1957 the school in Moosehide closed, which also led the last residents to move to Dawson. Reverend Martin was the last permanent resident to leave Moosehide in 1962. In Dawson, however, the Tr'ondek had no protection from a reservation, but settled in families. The city had shrunk so much that only a small police force remained. In 1904 there were still 96 men of the North West Mounted Police in Dawson, in 1910 there were only 33, in 1925 only 15, in 1945 even 3. The government supported the building of the house, but created its own Indian quarters in the by the closely spaced houses City.
Segregation, neglect (around 1905 to 1942)
Overall, the Anglican Church, together with the police force, reached a phase of relatively stable segregation from around 1905, which lasted until 1942. It was inconceivable without the development of stereotypical images of the Indian and the notions of "savagery" and general inferiority in the white society of the corridor between Dawson, Mayo and Whitehorse. In 1925, for example, Dawson strongly opposed a school for children from mixed relationships. On the other hand, every Indian woman who married a white man lost her status as an Indian (cf. Indian Act ). The age difference between the spouses increased considerably. From 1900 to 1925 it was 4 years, but from 1925 to 1950 it rose to around 12 years, the white men who married Indian women were even 16 years older.
There was no legal means of keeping Indians out of the cities, as the Whitehorse Indian agent discovered with regret in 1913, except for the "bluff". They had to leave Dawson at 7 p.m. in the summer and 5 p.m. in the winter. Punishments could be imposed on the people from Moosehide if they violated the curfew, if they drank or simply if they were too friendly to white residents. From 1929, Indians had to leave Dawson at 8 p.m., and in 1933 they needed a special permit to stay in the city. They usually received this when they presented an employment contract. It is unclear whether, as in Mayo 1947, a loud bell announced the curfew. The wives of missionaries who were allowed to stay in the city represented a special case, because the long-time missionary Toddy was married to an Indian woman who was supposed to take care of him because of an ear disease.
In addition to the actual mission schools and the schools established for the indigenous people throughout Canada, only children in Teslin attended an integrated school until 1949 . In the meantime, resistance to the admission of Indian students came neither from the administration nor from the teaching staff, but from parents' circles.
In the late 1940s, many Moosehider moved to Dawson, but the Indian agent in charge persuaded them to return because he feared outbreaks of tuberculosis. Indeed, complete neglect of health care, segregation and poverty had caused tuberculosis to spread. As early as 1907, a diphtheria wave had killed 7 people in Moosehide. These diseases kept recurring, and until 1941 it was estimated that 18 to 37 (registered) deaths per year were in the Yukon. In 1942 that number skyrocketed to 64 when the Alaska Highway was expanded.
Medical care for the Indians was taken over by the few hospitals, but, as in Mayo, they were cared for in a tent behind the building. The institute founded by the Treadgold Mining Company refused to accept them. In Dawson, white mothers refused to share the room with Indian women. Medical care was based on a physician remuneration system in which the Department of Indian Affairs stepped in when patients were unable to pay. In addition, it provided four doctors who were replaced in 1914 on the basis of a fixed fee by two doctors in Dawson and Whitehorse. JO Lachapelle, like his colleague in Whitehorse, received 1,200 dollars a year instead of the previous two dollars per patient.
With extensive segregation and neglect, the number of Indians in the Yukon stagnated at around 1,300 to 1,600 from 1911 to 1951, with a high level of disease and high child mortality. In 1901 their number was 3,322, in 1961 it was only 2,207 again, in 1971 2,580.
At the same time, their livelihoods were increasingly threatened by overhunting the caribou herds. The Forty Mile Herd contained around 568,000 animals in 1920, but by 1953 there were only 50,000 animals left. By 1973 the herd shrank to 6,500 specimens due to further overhunting. Today the herd includes 39,000 animals again; it is to be increased to 50 to 100,000. For several years she has also appeared again at Dawson.
Land claims and self-government, cultural revival (since around 1950)
In the 1950s, the Tr'ondëk began to repopulate the abandoned Tr'ochëk after Dawson was severely depopulated, so badly that the Yukon capital was relocated to Whitehorse . A few years earlier, families from Fort Selkirk had settled there. The families of the Johnsons, the Blanchards, the Baums and the Isaacs moved back to Tr'ochëk in the early 1950s, where they lived partly traditionally and partly on wage labor outside the village. In the 1960s, Fred Isaac was one of the few who still lived in Moosehide.
Only in 1960 did the Indians of Canada get the right to vote, in 1961 the Yukon Indians first took part in an election in the territory. In 1969 Percy Henry was elected chief (until 1984).
In the 1970s, the few surviving Han speakers worked with linguists like John Ritter to develop a script that could reproduce their language as accurately as possible. This gave the planned language lessons an important support. In addition, remembrance customs such as the Moosehide Gathering , a gathering from a wide area that takes place every two years, were initiated, and old ones, such as the First Hunt , were revived.
In December 1973, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was presented with the Land Demands Manifesto Together today, for our children tomorrow . In 1975 the elders of the tribe spoke out in favor of considering Tr'ochëk as an integral part of their land claims, but in 1977 gold prospectors settled there. In 1991 these activities continued illegally, with local artifacts being destroyed. Audrey McLaughlin, member of the Yukon Parliament, called on the government to immediately ban these activities.
Percy Henry was first followed by a woman as chief in 1984, Peggy Kormendy. A year earlier, Joanne Beck had been elected chief in Eagle. The tribe began negotiations with the territory for their land claims in 1991, and in 1992 the Tr'ochëk government involved in the negotiations. In 1993 four tribes signed an agreement in principle , but the Tr'ondek negotiations stagnated. In July 1995, the tribe decided to officially change their name from Dawson First Nation to Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation . In 1997, the Canadian government bought all of the claims in the Tr'ochëk area for one million dollars and a draft agreement was reached.
On August 30, 1996, the tribal office on Front Street, named after Chief Isaac, burned down.
The 1998 contract
On July 16, 1998, a contract was signed at the Moosehide Gathering with 72% approval . The contract came into effect on September 15th. It has 531 pages, plus Appendix B with numerous maps. The tribe received 2598.52 km² of settlement land, plus 1553.99 km² of category A land, where exclusive hunting rights, but also entitlement to the land surface and the layer below, and 1044.52 km² of category B land, where the Tr ' ondek only claim to the surface of the soil (i.e. not to mineral resources), and to have joint hunting rights with others. Tribesmen retain their hunting rights throughout the traditional area. In development projects, e.g. B. the extraction of mineral resources, the tribe is involved, also in the form of jobs.
In addition, the tribe receives 48 million dollars, of which 17 must be repaid for various reasons. In addition, there is access and 50 percent representation in all responsible bodies, including the associated income and fees, mostly represented by the Council for Yukon First Nations .
After all, the Tombstone Territorial Park should be under protection for all time , and the Tr'ondek should also be half involved here. This created a protected area of 2,100 km² to which part of the Mackenzie Mountains Ecoregion , the Ogilvie Mountains and the Blackstone Uplands belong.
In addition, three historic sites were established: Forty Mile, Fort Cudahy and Fort Constantine. The tribe and the territory have joint ownership rights and each delegate half of the members to the board of directors.
Under similar conditions, the contract also provides for the establishment of a Caribou Habitat Study Area to determine whether the largest caribou herd in North America, which was almost exterminated, can be restored.
In 2002 Tr'ochëk was designated a National Historic Site of Canada . The Tr'ochëk Heritage Site offers appropriate economic opportunities for use, but above all for cultural representation. The Tr'ondek make up 60% of the members of the responsible body. Parks Canada and YTG Heritage have been the remaining members since 2002, when the site was designated a National Historic Site. They offer support in archaeological and historical questions and in writing a history of the place. The local Robert Service School has an archaeological department and offers archaeological courses to school and university students.
The treaty also had a strong impact on the Han in Alaska, as anyone who can be proven to have a Han ancestor can join the treaty. One of the negotiators, Joe Joseph from Dawson, traveled to Alaska in the summer of 1997 and put applicants on a list. Under a US law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, Karma Ulvi of Eagle Village requested the return of artifacts that are in the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks . Similar constellations were made in Dawson.
Constitution, further contracts
On August 22, 1998, the tribe adopted a constitution. Nine of the eleven member tribes of the Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) have now signed contracts on land claims and self-government. Since then, most of the state's tasks have been in their hands, including, above all, legislation, the executive and its own tax system.
In 1997 Tr'ochëk returned to the property of the tribe. An excavation campaign began this year, in which the young people of the tribe played an important role and at the same time learned to understand their traditional culture. A nature trail and a refuge were built there, in 2002 the island was declared a national historical site, and in 2011 the corresponding signage was made.
Together with the First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun they signed a contract with Yukon Energy to supply Dawson with electricity over the 232 km long Mayo Dawson Power Line .
Current situation
In 2002, due to a lack of building land, a new land claim (C-4) was created at Dawson. In this new, so-called subdivision , the tribe worked together with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation , a government organization founded in 1946 to promote house construction, initially six houses, and in 2003 another six. These houses had to cope with the difficult conditions on permafrost. In addition, the Tr'ondek Haw'in usually live in large families, in which the elderly (elders) form an integral part. In addition, the HealthyHousing concepts developed for this purpose should ensure that energy efficiency and a healthy indoor climate are taken into account. In order to be able to adapt to the changing families, the FlexHousing concept was also developed. This applies to both the number of entrances and the room layout, but also the possibility of creating extensions that can be centrally heated and ventilated, as well as accessibility. This ties in with well-known construction techniques and materials that are available in the area, because the extremely short construction phase in summer requires particularly strict time planning.
Now that some of the artifacts have returned to Dawson after research and return negotiations, the Han culture is becoming increasingly visible to tourists. In addition to the cultural center, one tries to include the other places as well. The River of Culture tour has existed since 2001 and is operated by Han Natural Products , an offshoot of Chief Isaac . The ship Luk Cho (King Salmon) sails from Dawson via Tr'ochëk to Moosehide Island.
In 2008 Eddie Taylor was elected chief for three years.
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada , which was responsible for the Indians of Canada until 2020 and was called the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development until 2015 , counted exactly 692 people in August 2009, and exactly 716 in December 2011. The list kept by the tribe itself comprised 1,048 members on May 5, 2008, of whom 338 lived in Dawson, 218 in other parts of the Yukon, 492 outside, including 65 outside Canada. In May 2020, the state institution that is to be dissolved and set up as Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada had 874 tribesmen. Of these, 683 lived outside the reserves, just under 200 on crown land and only three men remained in the reserve. The corona pandemic had not yet reached the indigenous people in the Yukon by June 2020 .
Moosehide Gathering to commemorate the relocation
Every two years the Moosehide Gathering takes place, which aims to remember half a century of resettlement. Such gatherings have long been held to bring together the widely dispersed groups. Political disputes were settled there, married, people met with members of other First Nations, for example to trade, and ritual festivals such as the potlatch were celebrated. With the missionary work, Easter and Christmas came to the fore in addition to the celebrations on the occasion of the salmon migrations. After Moosehide came people from Forty Mile and Eagle, from Tetlin, but also Gwich'in from the Peel and Blackstone Rivers, Northern Tutchone and Tanana. Especially the chiefs, like Isaac, had to make return visits, such as the appointment of a successor to a deceased chief. In contrast to British Columbia, where the potlatch was banned from 1885, there were no arrests in Yukon, but the presence of the police for surveillance and the missionaries to transform it into simple celebrations. It was not until the 1970s that the traditional potlatch celebrations were revived. The first Moosehide Gathering was held in 1993, followed by a second in 1994. Since then, the celebration has taken place every two years. Hundreds of visitors from Alaska, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories attend the four-day celebration. In 1998, the acceptance of the land use contract was celebrated, gifts were distributed that keep the memory alive and bind the witnesses personally. At the same time, the younger members of the tribe are given the opportunity to experience the scope of their culture by practicing it.
Return of Alaskan Heritage and Knowledge
The songs that Chief Isaac gave to relatives living in Eagle, Alaska, have since returned to the tribe's possession. This encourages language learning again.
Dawson Cultural Center (since 1998)
In addition, in the month in which the contract was signed, i.e. in July 1998, the Dänojà Zho Cultural Center (also Long time ago house) was opened. It was created through funds received by the tribe to mark the 100th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1999 the center received the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia's Medal in Architecture for its architecture. The house is the only one in Dawson, which as a national historical site does not allow any newer buildings than those of the gold rush, combines modern architecture with elements of the much older culture of the Tr'ondek Hwhere'in.
Black City, hunting ground and settlement (until 1927)
The hunting ground of the Blackstone Uplands was shared by the Tr'ondek with two Gwich'in tribes, the Tukudh-Gwich'in from the upper Porcupine River and the Teetl'it-Gwich'in from the upper Peel River . The Uplands were connected to the Yukon by the Seela Pass and to the Twelvemile River by the Chandindu. Black City , sometimes also called Blackstone Village, was one of the local settlements with around 40 to 50 inhabitants on the west bank of the East Blackstone River, not far from the Dempster Highway . The settlement was close to a hiking trail for two caribou herds that wintered in the Uplands. Other locations were Calico Town, Ts'ok giitlin, and Cache Creek.
Many gwich'in who provided meat to Dawson twice a year on a path through the Chandindu Valley on dog sleds or carrying dogs stayed in Moosehide, some in the Dawson area. Appropriate reception ceremonies were held in Moosehide around Christmas and families were formed, such as the Martins, Henrys, and Semples, who stayed in Moosehide.
Some also brought with them unknown diseases such as the flu, and an unknown number of them were buried by Deacon Richard Martin.
The Black City, which emerged at the end of the 19th century, was abandoned again by 1927; its residents had moved to Moosehide, Old Crow or Fort McPherson . Around 1938, the last Gwich'in hunting and trading campaign took place through the area. They came from Hungry Lake , Doll Creek, or the Burning Mountains.
Today the area of Black City is protected as part of the Tombstone Park, archaeological projects serve the exploration, but also the stronger connection of the younger ones to the region. In 1989, excavations began in Black City and the surrounding area. The site is managed exclusively by the Tr'ondek Hwach'in, and hunting and fishing are still practiced today.
Destruction and rebuilding of Eagle (since 2009)
In May 2009, Eagle was hit by the worst recorded flood and largely destroyed by floating ice blocks. Among the 25 houses destroyed was the Eagle Customs House from 1900. Eagle Village was also completely destroyed, including the church as a historic building. President Obama declared a state of emergency. At least 60 volunteers stayed permanently in Eagle City during the summer, and 13 new houses were built by August. Mainly the Mennonite Disaster Service , Samaritan's Purse and the Eagle Rebuilding Construction Team built in Eagle Village .
swell
In addition to archaeological finds and oral tradition, the reports of the Hudson's Bay Company are the earliest sources . Among the oldest journals are the Murrays reports, which start in 1847 (Murray 1910). Murray was an eyewitness, but the possibilities of communication were probably rather limited. The reports by William Hardisty and Strachan Jones are of some importance, if very brief. Frederick Schwattka, who reported on behalf of the military, provides us with more detailed accounts of the Han culture for the period before 1900, even if he did not have an interpreter, as did the journalist Tappan Adney, who lived with them for a short time (1897–1898) and reported in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1900) and Outing (1902). The doctor Ferdinand Schmitter, who was stationed in Fort Egbert around 1906, also knew the Han firsthand. He was particularly interested in the medicine men, but it is not always clear whether he observed things himself or whether he obtained them from other sources. Until about 1930 there was no further investigation or representation.
In 1932 the anthropologist Osgood, who was doing research on the Gwich'in at the time, interviewed some Han in Eagle, especially Walter Benjamin, whose mother was Chief Isaac's sister, and Jonathan Wood, who was born around 1850. Richard Slobodin worked with the Han in 1963. He interviewed primarily Han from Dawson, including Charlie Isaac, Simon and Mary McLeod.
Overall, the sparse source material for the period up to the 1970s is characterized by little interest in culture, little scientific orientation, which, when it appeared, was directed towards the neighboring tribes, and poor linguistic understanding.
literature
Two largely ethnological, contrary to the title, only to a small extent historical works come from the USA, one was created in the Yukon. There is also work on archeology and house building on behalf of the tribe and the Heritage Resources Unit in Whitehorse. The contribution by Ken S. Coates is considered to be a pioneering historical work for the period from 1840 to 1973, and in part to 1990.
- Chief Isaac , Trondek Heritage (PDF; 588 kB).
- Chris Clarke and K'änächá Group, Sharon Moore (Eds.): Tr'ëhuhch'in Nawtr'udäh'¸a = finding our way home , Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Publ., Dawson City, approx. 2009, ISBN 978 -0-9688868-3-0 .
- Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 , McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, paperback 1993.
- Helene Dobrowolsky: Hammerstones: A History of the Tr'ondek Hendung'in , Tr'ondek Haw'in Han Nation, 2003.
- Helene Dobrowolsky: Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in (First Nation) Yukon Territory. Forty Mile Historic Site: bibliography: archival sources for Forty Mile, Fort Constantine and Fort Cudahy Historic Site / compiled for Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, Whitehorse: Yukon Government, Heritage Resources Unit 2002.
- Thomas J. Hammer, Christian D. Thomas: Archeology at Forty Mile / C'hëdä Dëk , Yukon Tourism and Culture, Whitehorse 2006.
- Innovative buildings. Homes for the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Hän. FlexHousingTM in Dawson City .
- Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River. Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory , University of Alaska Press, 2004. ISBN 1-889963-41-0
- Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians. A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area , Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971 - Osgood tries to portray the culture of the Han around 1850, i.e. at the time of the first direct contact with Europeans.
- Adney Tappan: The Klondike Stampede , University of British Columbia, 1994. ISBN 978-0-7748-0490-5
See also
Web links
- Website of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation
- Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Heritage Sites
- Chief Isaac's People of the River - Chief Isaac website
- MacBride Museum of Yukon History
Remarks
- ↑ First Voices Hän: words
- ↑ A photo of Chief Isaac from 1898 can be found here: Chief Isaac of the Han, Yukon Territory, ca.1898 . University of Washington, Digital Collections.
- ↑ The former comprises over 100,000 animals today, the latter is estimated at 600,000 animals around 1900. In 2007 the herd was estimated at 110,000 to 112,000 animals. No Porcupine Caribou census this year - again . ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Porcupine Caribou Management Board. 40 mile caribou herd crossing near Dawson, CBC, October 29, 2007 . More generally: Rick Bass: Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge . ISBN 978-1-57805-114-4 .
- ^ Cora Campbell: Porcupine Caribou Herd Shows Growth , Alaska Department of Fish and Game, March 2, 2011.
- ↑ This and the following according to Helene Dobrowolsky, TJ Hammer: Tr'ochëk - The Archeology and History of a Hän Fish Camp . ( Memento of April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) 2001
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 44.
- ^ KD West, JD Donaldson: Evidence for winter eruption of the White River Ash (eastern lobe), Yukon Territory, Canada . ( Memento of April 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) 2000, abstract.
- ↑ The Mahoney only appear in reports from the Department of Indian Affairs from 1869. Frederick Webb Hodge (Ed.): Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico , Vol. 1. Reprinted from 1912 edition, Smithsonian Institute, 2003, Part 1, p. 31 and Part 2, p. 734.
- ↑ Julie Cruikshank: Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders . University of Nebraska Press, 1990, p. 8.
- ^ Shepard Krech III: The Death of Barbue, a Kutchin Trading Chief . In: Arctic , 35/2, 1962, pp. 429-437.
- ↑ James Mooney: The Aboriginal Population of America North of Mexico . Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 80, 2955, Washington 1928, pp. 1-40
- ^ Alfred Kroeber: Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America , according to Coates: Best Left as Indians , p. 255, note 17.
- ^ Coates: Best Left as Indians , p. 9.
- ^ Robert Boyd: The coming of the spirit of pestilence. Introduced infectious diseases and population decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874 , University of Washington Press, Seattle 1999, pp. 23f.
- ^ Don E. Dumond: Poison in the Cup: The South Alaskan Smallpox Epidemic of 1835 . University of Oregon Anthropological Papers, 52, 1996, pp. 117-129.
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 36.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, pp. 8-14.
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 3.
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 5.
- ↑ This and the following according to Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area , Yale University Publications in Anthropology 1971, pp. 5ff. and Early Traders and Steamboats . (PDF; 422 kB)
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 5.
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 8.
- ^ After Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971: “Bonfield”.
- ↑ McQuiston, p. 104. Archaeological investigations led to the result that the area was exactly 29.4 × 20.4 feet, so the house had barely 70 m² of floor space.
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 12.
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory , University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 14.
- ↑ Quoted from Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 , McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 78.
- ↑ This and the following from Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, pp. 79ff.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 76.
- ↑ Kathryn Taylor Morse: The Nature of Gold. An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush . University of Washington Press, 2003, p. 167.
- ↑ This and the following from Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Interpretive Manual, section Chief Isaac (PDF; 600 kB)
- ↑ It is unclear whether Isaac came from the upper Tanana region, Ketchumstock, Tanacross or Chena.
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, pp. 20f.
- ↑ So reported a daughter Isaacs (Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 22).
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, Table 7, p. 74.
- ↑ Kathryn Taylor Morse: The Nature of Gold. An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush . Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books, 2003, p. 95, ISBN 978-0-295-98329-5
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 109.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 172.
- ↑ Linda Goyette: Northern Kids , Victoria: Brindle & Glass 2010, p. 115.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 177
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, p. 23
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 304 (note 105)
- ^ Cornelius Osgood: The Han Indians: A Compilation of Ethnographic & Historical Data on the Alaska-Yukon Boundary Area . Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1971, p. 18.
- ↑ Craig Mishler, William E. Simeone: Han, People of the River: Hän Hwëch'in: An Ethnography and Ethnohistory . University of Alaska Press, 2004, pp. 26f.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 50. But in 1921 Indians had only 7 of 53 hunting licenses, and they lived in the Mayo area. Most Indians did not acquire licenses and tended to sell to individual buyers, but the figures show that white competition was strong.
- ^ Yukon Territorial Game Ordinance.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, pp. 56f.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 58, Table 4.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, Table 28, p. 181.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 94.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 101.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, p. 174.
- ↑ Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal / Kingston 1991, Table 7, p. 74.
- ^ Feds to shut down Fortymile hunt . ( Memento of September 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Anchorage Daily News , August 20, 2009
- ↑ 40 Mile caribou herd crossing near Dawson . ( Memento of August 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) CBC News, October 29, 2007, archive.org, August 7, 2009.
- ↑ Helene Dobrowolsky: Hammerstones: A History of the Tr'ondek Haw'in . Tr'ondek H Wechs'in Han Nation 2003, p. 106.
- ↑ Joyce Hayden: Yukon's Women of Power. Political Pioneers in a Northern Canadian Colony , Windwalker Press, 1999, p. 233.
- ↑ contract text. (PDF; 1.3 MB)
- ^ Tr'ochëk - The Archeology and History of a Hän Fish Camp ( Memento of April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Tr'ochëk National Historic Site Receives its Plaque , in: Klondike Sun, August 10, 2011.
- ↑ This and the following from: Homes for the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Hän: FlexHousingTM in Dawson City ( Memento from June 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 442 kB).
- ↑ Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. Registered Population ( Memento from August 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Registered Population , Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in , Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
- ↑ Epidemiological summary of COVID-19 cases in First Nations communities , Indigenous Services Canada , Government side.
- ↑ Allen + Maurer Architects Ltd. ( Memento of April 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ For the Porcupine herd s. Porcupine Caribou Management Board ( Memento from August 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Yukon flood destroys Eagle Village, floods Eagle , in: Anchorage Daily News, May 4, 2009 ( memento of October 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, October 2, 2009.
- ↑ Eagle Flood Info ( Memento of 23 July 2013, Internet Archive ), archive.org, July 23, 2013.
- ^ Flooding damages Eagle
- ↑ Alexander Hunter Murray: Journal of the Yukon, 1847-1848 . In: LJ Burpee (Ed.): Publication of the Canadian Archives , 4, 1910, pp. 1–125.
- ^ William L. Hardisty: The Loucheux Indians . In: Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866 . 1872, pp. 313-320.
- ↑ Strachan Jones: The Kutchin Tribes, in: Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866 (1872) 320-327.
- ↑ Frederick Schwattka: Along Alaska's Great River , New York 1885 (360 pages); ders: The Great River of Alaska . In: Century Magazine , 30, 1885, pp. 739-751 and 819-829; der .: Report of a Military Reconnaisance made in Alaska in 1883 . In: Compilation of Narratives of Exploration in Alaska . Washington 1900, pp. 283-362.
- ^ Edwin Tappan Adney: Moose Hunting with the Tro-chu-tin . In: Harper's New Monthly Magazine , 100, n. 598, 1900, pp. 494-507; ders .: The Klondike Stampede . New York / London 1900; ders .: The Indian Hunter of the Far Northwest on the Trail to the Klondike . In: Outing , 39/6, 1902, pp. 623-633.
- ^ Ferdinand Schmitter: Upper Yukon Natives Customs and Folklore . In: Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections , 56/4, 1910, pp. 1–30.
