Moosehide

Moosehide or Jëjik dolhä dënezhu kekït (in Hän) was a meeting place of various Athabaskan groups in the Canadian Yukon , then from around 1906 to 1960 a reservation of the Tr'ondek Hwick'in , to which non-Indians (“whites”) were only allowed to enter. Since 1993 the abandoned place has been used as a meeting place every two years.

The earliest archaeologically detectable human traces go back around 6000 years. With the Klondike gold rush from 1896 over 100,000 whites came to the region. Until then, Tr'ochëk at Dawson was the summer camp of the Han group led by Chief Isaac.

A tribal council was established in Moosehide and the traditional chieftainship was replaced by elected chiefs. The raw material economy of the Yukon offered the residents only a 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. 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. At the beginning of the 1960s, the last residents left Moosehide, where since the 1990s athabasks from far and wide have been meeting again at regular intervals.

history

At Moosehide, stone chips were found around 8,000 years old , a caribou antler that was found on a tributary of the Klondike, the Hunker Creek, is even around 11,000 years old. The oldest traces in Moosehide itself can be traced back to 3600 BC. Can be dated to 4500 BC. In addition, obsidian was found there, which 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, at Mount Edziza . In addition to hunting, early fishing can be detected.

The use of a new hunting weapon can be documented for the first time in AD 600 at the latest: the bows and arrows gradually replaced the Atlatl . Further innovations were based on the beginning trade in copper , a metal that came from the Copper and the White River . The Han used very elaborate fishing nets and traps. This group was made up of local groups, two of which were known in Alaska around 1900 , as well as the group at the Klondike, today's Tr'ondek Haw'in.

Contacts with whites, gold rush

The first known contact with whites took place on April 5, 1847, namely for commercial purposes at LaPierre's House on Upper Porcupine . Fort Yukon became the main trading post for the Han by 1869, but trade was made more difficult by the border between Alaska and Canada that was established in 1867. Chief Catsah (Gah ts'at) pushed for the establishment of Fort Reliance, but in 1877 or 1878 the post had to be vacated due to hostilities.

After smaller gold discoveries from 1872 onwards, the first major gold discovery was made on the Fortymile River (Ch'ëdäh Dëk) in 1886 . The Tr'ondek Hechsel'in supplied the new village of Forty Mile with food and warming furs. Some Tr'ondek worked as porters, packers for the boats or panning for gold, but only a few Indians earned claims.

In 1892 Bishop William Carpenter Bompas came permanently to the region. 1899–1900 he lived in Moosehide. Bishop Bompas provided for a school and the presence of the North West Mounted Police under Charles Constantine, which began in 1895 . One of its main goals was racial segregation.

Gold rush town

In 1894 there were already around a thousand prospectors living in the Yukon, but with the Klondike gold rush from 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.

Until the gold rush, Tr'ochëk was the summer camp of Chief Isaac, who had risen to become the leader of the Tr'ondek Haw'in. In addition to Isaac, Silas was also considered a chief.

Move to Moosehide

In order to avoid conflicts, the Indians began to negotiate with representatives of the church and government in the fall of 1896, i.e. with Bishop Bompas and Inspector 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, paths existed that allowed hunting and salmon could be caught easily from here. At the same time, they could sell meat to the prospectors, but also take on work on the paddle steamers, in woodworks or in the harbor.

Between 1904 and 1919 the chief secured four claims, not to look for gold, but to secure the settlement around Moosehide. From 1913, his eight-year-old son attended school in Carcross with seven other Moosehide children . This school, the Choutla School , opened in 1911. It existed until the early 1960s.

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 also expressed that gold mining was accepted, but the slaughter of livelihoods was not.

Isaac's personal authority was demonstrated each morning by being the first to leave his house, waking 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.

But the resources dwindled and the hunt required more and more 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 Benjamin Totty about a wooded area on Moosehide Creek. By the late 1920s, however, the reserve was downsized in favor of loggers, as it was believed that this wood was of little use to the Han.

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.

Around 1911, the Mounted Police hired one of the tribesmen as a constable. The first recorded name is Henry Harper. 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 Councilor, Tod Isaacs, Moosehide Chiefs

In March 1921 the people of Moosehide elected a first council. Esau Harper took over the chairmanship of the seven-member committee, and Chief Isaac became vice-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 procuring wood and water for their families, and passing on chewing tobacco - probably as a preventive measure against tuberculosis - was prohibited. In addition, dogs were banned in the house. Whites were only allowed to come to Moosehide in shops. However, these deep 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 Hawksley viewed Moosehide's advice as an experiment, but resisted proposals from the capital to make this institution permanent.

Chief Isaac died of flu on April 9, 1932, at the age of 73 . His body was dragged across the ice from Dawson to Moosehide by two horses on a cart; all of the local Indians and many residents of Dawson attended the funeral.

James or Jimmie Wood, a graduate of Choutla Scholl in Carcross , became chief in 1940. He became an Anglican catechist , assistant teacher in Moosehide and served on a local patrol during World War II; 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 Mooshide Chiefs . In 1961 only seven families lived in Moosehide, four of them Han, two Peel River Gwich'in and one of mixed origins.

Economic development

For Dawson, hunting continued to offer an income opportunity. In 1904 the city needed around 2,300 caribou and 600 moose for a population of 9,000. But in 1921 Indians only had 7 of 53 hunting licenses, and they lived in the Mayo area. Most Indians did not acquire licenses, and rather sold to individual buyers, but the figures show that white competition was strong.

The Great Depression meant that the few jobs on the paddle steamers that sailed the Yukon and its tributaries were now occupied by whites. In addition, the massive unemployment drove many Euro-Canadians into the hunt, so that they made the Indians even more competition, and at the same time the fur market collapsed. At the same time, the caribou herds were completely overwhelmed, especially in Alaska. In 1920 the Forty Mile stove had around 568,000 animals, in 1953 there were only 50,000 animals. For several years she has also appeared again at Dawson. As early as the 1940s, the game population 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 remained in the territory.

In 1957 the school in Moosehide closed, which a few years later prompted the last residents to go to Dawson. Reverend Martin was the last permanent resident to leave the place in 1962.

Moosehide Gathering

In the 1970s, potlatch celebrations, which had been forbidden for a long time, were revived . The first Moosehide Gathering took place in 1993 , and a second followed in 1994. Since then, the Moosehide Gathering 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 agreement was celebrated there, and gifts were handed out to keep memories of 50 years of resettlement alive.

literature

Chief Isaac , Trondek Heritage (PDF, 588 kB)
Chris Clarke and K'änächá Group, Sharon Moore (eds.): Tr'ëhuhch'in Näwtr'udäh'¸a = finding our way home, Dawson City, Yukon: Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Publ., Approx. 2009, ISBN 9780968886830
Ken S. Coates: Best Left as Indians. Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 , Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 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
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