Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands: the North-West Mounted Police, the United States Army, and the Klondike Gold Rush

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2020-04-22 Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands: The North-West Mounted Police, the United States Army, and the Klondike Gold Rush

Dumonceaux, Scott Drew Cassie

Dumonceaux, S. D. C. (2020). Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands: The North-West Mounted Police, the United States Army, and the Klondike Gold Rush (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111867 doctoral thesis

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Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands: The North-West Mounted Police, the United States

Army, and the Klondike Gold Rush

Scott Drew Cassie Dumonceaux

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

APRIL, 2020

Public and academic historians of the Klondike gold rush have long positioned the

Alaska-Yukon border as an established fact, serving as a firm dividing line between perceived

American lawlessness and Canadian order as thousands of miners rushed to the Yukon and

Alaska from 1896-1899. A wider, regional analysis of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, however, reveals that at the beginning of the gold rush, the border was little more than a line-on-a-map.

When the North-West Mounted Police and the United States Army first arrived in the region in

1894 and 1897, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was largely a borderless region, with miners, merchants, and transportation companies crossing the unmarked Alaska-Yukon border without interference. As thousands of miners began rushing to the region during the fall of 1897, the efforts of the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army to control the situation transformed the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region.

This process of remaking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands involved establishing government control in Alaska and the Yukon, developing transportation routes that linked the region to the North American industrial economy, and clarifying the location of the Alaska-

Yukon border. The U.S. Army and the Mounted Police gathered information about a constantly changing situation, cooperated and negotiated with local transportation companies, miners, merchants, Canadian and American customs officials, and each other, and formed different understandings of the situation on the ground than their respective governments. By the end of

1899, the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had created two separate but connected territories and a functional Alaska-Yukon border that allowed people and supplies to move across the border and the police and the army to enforce national sovereignty - just as international negotiators met to discuss the boundary question for the first time.

ii Acknowledgements

Many people have provided their time, insights, and support during the researching and writing of this dissertation. My supervisor George Colpitts has always been excited about the project. He gave me the time and space to develop the project in the way I envisioned and put up with my overly optimistic estimates of productivity. I tell anyone who listens that I couldn’t ask for a better supervisor. The other members of my superiority committee, Elizabeth Jameson and

Rob Huebert, provided valuable suggestions and encouragement throughout the researching and writing process. I’d also like to thank the other members of my examine committee, Sheila

McManus, David B. Marshall, and Sabrina Peric, who stepped into the superiority committee at the last minute. The Department of History at the University of Calgary provided financial and academic support. Professors Frank Towers, Jewel Spangler, and Hendrik Kraay’s thoughtful suggestions during a presentation at a department colloquium were a great help. Our Graduate

Program Administrators Lori Somner and Diane McInnes made sure I moved through the program smoothly. My graduate student colleagues Rebecca Ralph, Paula Larsson, and Chris

Hyland have become close friends. Financial support for the many research trips I undertook for the project was provided by the University of Calgary Department of History, University of

Calgary Faculty of Graduate Studies, and a Northern Scientific Training Program Grant. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my family. The love and support of my parents Adrien and

Maureen Dumonceaux has been invaluable throughout the researching and writing of this project and my whole academic career. My brother Jeremy Dumonceaux is always available for a phone call about nothing in particular. I’d also like to thank Carl, Alex, Braxton, Kinsley, Arya, and

Odin Dumonceaux, and particularly my nephew Braxton, who every time I see him asks if I’ve finished my “book.” His suggested title is “The Brave Explorers.”

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

Table of Contents ...... iv

List of Figures ...... v

List of Abbreviations ...... vi

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1 The Mounted Police and the Borderless Region, 1894 ...... 56

Chapter 2 The Mounted Police and the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands, 1895-1896 ...... 100

Chapter 3 The Mounted Police and the Beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897 ....127

Chapter 4 The U.S. Army and the Beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897 ...... 186

Chapter 5 The Alaska Relief Expedition, 1897-1898 ...... 224

Chapter 6 The Lynn Canal Border, 1898 ...... 270

Chapter 7 The Mounted Police and the Yukon Transportation System, 1898 ...... 318

Chapter 8 The U.S. Army and the 1898 Expeditions ...... 360

Chapter 9 The Mounted Police and the White Pass and Yukon Route, 1899 ...... 404

Chapter 10 The U.S. Army and the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands, 1899 ...... 447

Conclusion ...... 487

Bibliography ...... 505

iv List of Figures

Figure 1 Map of the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands ...... 5

Figure 2 Map of Miller and Glacier Creeks, 1896 ...... 120

Figure 3 Map of Chilkoot and White Pass Trails, Fall 1897 ...... 148

Figure 4 Ray’s Notice ...... 210

Figure 5 Map of the Disputed Territory ...... 277

Figure 6 Map of the Skagway to Lake Bennett and Lake Bennett to Dawson City Routes, 1898 ...... 326

Figure 7 Payments to Chilkoot Company, 1898 ...... 334

Figure 8 Goods Purchased for the Portland and Brixham...... 346

Figure 9 Statement of Division of Expenditures, 14 April 1899 ...... 349

Figure 10 Map of the Region Explored by Expeditions 2 and 3 ...... 361

Figure 11 Map of Cook’s Inlet and Copper River, 1898 ...... 374

Figure 12 Route of Glenn and Castner, 1898 ...... 394

Figure 13 Map of White Pass Railway, 1899 ...... 408

Figure 14 Call for Tenders, 16 February 1899 ...... 416

Figure 15 Mounted Police Call for Tenders, 1899 ...... 417

Figure 16 Map of the Lynn Canal Border, 1899 ...... 430

Figure 17 WPYR System, 1902 ...... 444

Figure 18 Map of Cook’s Inlet and Copper River, 1899 ...... 456

Figure 19 Route of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road and Territory Explored by Babcock, 1899 ...... 461

Figure 20 Route of Lieutenant Herron’s party, 1899 ...... 471

v List of Abbreviations

ACCo. - Alaska Commercial Company

BPSC - Bruce Peel Special Collections

CDCo. - Canadian Development Company

LAC - Library and Archives Canada

NAT&TCo. - North American Transportation & Trading Company

SSSC - Sir Samuel Steele Collection

NARA - United States National Archives and Records Administration

WPYR - White Pass & Yukon Route

YA - Yukon Archives

Introduction

“For many people today,” the Klondike’s most well-known historian Pierre Berton wrote in 1958, “the entire story of the Klondike gold rush is evoked by a single scene.”1 The iconic image of “a solid line of men, forming a human chain, hanging across the white face of a mountain rampart” - the steep slopes of the Chilkoot Pass.2 “Caught in the instant of a lens opening,” Berton continued, “each man, bent almost double under weight of his burden, yet still straining upwards towards the skies, seems to be frozen in an attitude of supplication.”3 An instant later, each man would be met by resolute North-West Mounted Policemen at the summit, guarding the Alaska-Yukon border and protecting the Yukon from perceived American lawlessness. A second, no less famous, image of the Klondike is the contrast between Dawson

City, Yukon and Skagway, Alaska as gold rush towns. Skagway - “little better than a hell upon earth,” in the words of famed Mounted Police Superintendent Samuel Benfield Steele - tormented by murder, robbery and lawlessness at the hands of gangster Soapy Smith, and

Dawson, under the watchful eye of the Mounted Police, who rigidly enforced the law but were willing to let vice pass as long as it was orderly.4

Central to both images is the idea of the border between Alaska and the Yukon and

British Columbia as a dividing line between the American “lawlessness” and frontier violence of

Alaska and the Canadian “peace, order, and good governance” of the Yukon. From Berton’s classic 1958 account of the gold rush to a 1993 episode of Historica Canada’s well-known

Heritage Minutes series, where Sam Steele turns away a loud, bellicose, gun-toting American

1 Pierre Berton, Klondike: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1958), 244; Pierre Berton, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899, Revised Edition (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 236. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Government of Canada. Report of the North-West Mounted Police, 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 4.

from the Alaska-Yukon border, this idea of Canadian-American difference has been firmly established in popular memory of the Klondike.5 In scholarly memory, historians too have used a similar contrast to frame the gold rush. The Yukon’s first historian Morris Zaslow wrote in 1971 that “the Yukon was the locale of a fascinating contrast between two different North American political philosophies.”6 The American system of frontier self-governance “stressed local autonomy and the right of settlers to establish their own system of government and frame their own regulations.”7 The Canadian/British system was based on “a tradition of authority, of rules and regulation established from outside, of development controlled and directed in the presumed general or national, rather than the particular local or regional interest.”8

In both images of the gold rush, the North-West Mounted Police appear as the key difference between law and order in the Yukon and chaos in Alaska. Yukon historian Ken S.

Coates writes that “historians of the Canadian and American Northwest have been mesmerized by the image of the Mounties. Standing tall and straight at their border posts, serge-coated and honest to a fault.”9 Such views have come to symbolize the active role that the Mounted Police took in maintaining law and order in the Yukon, while the supposed violence and disorder in

Alaska has been used as evidence of the inability of the U.S. Army to maintain control on their side of the border.

5 “Heritage Minutes: Sam Steele,” Historica Canada, https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/sam- steele. 6 Quoted in Ken S. Coates, “Controlling the Periphery: The Territorial Administration of the Yukon-Alaska, 1867- 1959,” in An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past, ed. Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Mangusso (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 192. The American system of frontier self-governance is discussed by: Charles Howard Shinn, Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885). For the implications of this contrast on conceptions of national sovereignty see: William R. Morrison, “Eagle Over the Arctic: Americans in the Canadian North, 1867-1985,” in Interpreting Canada’s North: Selected Readings, ed. Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1989), 169-184. 7 Quoted in Coates, “Controlling the Periphery: The Territorial Administration of the Yukon-Alaska, 1867-1959,” 192. 8 Ibid. 9 Coates, “Controlling the Periphery: The Territorial Administration of the Yukon-Alaska, 1867-1959,” 192.

In a less well-known image of the gold rush, U.S. Army Captain P.H. Ray and Lieutenant

W.P. Richardson face down a group of seventy-five armed miners at Fort Yukon, Alaska, fleeing the food shortage at Dawson City during the winter of 1897-1898 and demanding provisions from an army cache. While this image has all the drama of the first two, it has been largely forgotten because it challenges the idea of Canadian-American difference and the Klondike gold rush.

Despite the importance of American-Canadian difference to the way the Klondike story has been told by both popular and academic historians, however, the actual border between

Alaska and the Yukon has not received much attention. In many histories, the Alaska-Yukon border appears as an established and immovable fact. Once Klondikers reached the summit of the Chilkoot or White passes, they crossed the border into Canadian territory, leaving American lawlessness behind for the protection of the Mounted Police. There is a problem with this telling of the story. As late as February 1898, a full year-and-a-half after gold was first discovered on a tributary of the Klondike River in August 1896, there was no discernable border at the summits of either pass.

The Alaska-Yukon border was originally set by the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825, but the line was never surveyed and the location of the border in the Alaska panhandle remained disputed. For the prospectors and miners who entered the region before the gold rush, the border was little more than an imaginary line with no local significance. It was not until thousands of would-be miners began arriving at the Chilkoot and White passes during the winter of 1897-

1898, and the Canadian and American governments began attempting to collect customs duties from them, that anyone really began discussing the location of the border. On 26 and 27

February 1898, Mounted Police Inspectors R. Belcher and D.A.E. Strickland hoisted the Union

Jack at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes and began collecting customs duties and enforcing the location of the Alaska-Yukon border for the first time. It was only then that

Berton’s “solid line of men” were greeted by Mounted Policemen at the summits. In the following months, the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army, along with American and Canadian customs officials and other groups, continued negotiating a location for the border. It was only at the end of the gold rush in late 1899 that something resembling the current Alaska-Yukon border took shape, and it was not until 1903 that the border was officially set by the Alaska boundary tribunal.

Exploring the development of the Alaska-Yukon border as a process, rather than an established fact, reveals a region undergoing borderlands transformation. When the Mounted

Police and the U.S. Army arrived in 1894 and 1897, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - a region roughly encompassing the Yukon River basin and the routes it is most easily accessible from - was a borderless region, largely outside of American and Canadian government control. As prospectors rushed to the Klondike, the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police, along with other government officials, transportation companies, and individual miners, remade the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands, bringing the Yukon and Alaska under government control, developing transportation routes that linked both territories to the North American industrial economy, and clarifying the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. It was only at the end of 1899, just as the main rush to the Klondike was ending, that the Canadian and American governments were truly in control of Alaska and the Yukon in an administrative sense. By then, the Alaska-Yukon border had been established at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, just as international negotiators were meeting to discuss the formal boundary question for the first

time.10 During the course of the Klondike gold rush, the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless region to the bordered region that popular and academic historians remember. The story of this transformation - the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - is the subject of this dissertation.

Figure 1 Map of the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands. By the author.

10 The term “border” is used in this dissertation mainly to refer to the actual on-the-ground border that was established during the Klondike gold rush, while “boundary” is used in the context of the Alaska boundary dispute and the international negotiations to set the dividing line between Alaska and the Yukon.

The key role of Canadian-American difference in how Klondike historians have written about the gold rush has its roots in the founding myths of the American and Canadian Wests. The

American West has been characterized by the idea of the frontier and the ideologies of freedom, individualism, and democracy - rugged individuals, moving west in the search of opportunity on their own initiative, without assistance from the government, and creating communities governed in the spirit of frontier democracy. In the Canadian myth, the Canadian West was founded in opposition to the American frontier. The North-West Mounted Police stamped out American whisky traders and protected indigenous people from settlers and violent Indian wars. While the

American West was governed by violent vigilante committees and corrupt sheriffs, the Canadian

West was controlled by the Canadian government and law and order was strictly enforced by the

Mounted Police.11

The Klondike gold rush fit easily into both narratives. Miners began rushing to the Yukon just three years after historian Frederick Jackson Turner discussed the closing of the American frontier in his famous 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”12

Turner argued that the settlement of the American frontier, which he described as waves of settlement moving across the American West, transforming the West from savagery to civilization, was responsible for the American character - the values of freedom, democracy, and individualism. The end of the frontier period left many Americans wondering what would become of American democracy with no frontier to settle.13 Within this context, Alaska became

11 See: R. Douglas Francis, “Turner versus Innis: Two Mythic Wests,” in One West, Two Myths II: Essays on Comparison, ed. Robert Thacker and C.L. Higham (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006), 15-29. 12 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays by Frederick Jackson Turner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 59-91. 13 See: Adam Arenson, “Anglo-Saxonism in the Yukon: The Klondike Nugget and American-British Relations in the “Two Wests,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 3 (2007): 373-404; Paul Sabin, “Home and Abroad: The Two ‘Wests’ of Twentieth-Century United States History,” Pacific Historical Review 66, no. 3 (1997): 305-335.

the last frontier, the last opportunity for Americans to participate in the activities that Turner identified as essential to the opening period of American history.

At the same time, Canadians began to discuss what would happen to the Mounted Police once the settlement of the Canadian West was completed. The force had been created in 1873 to secure the West from American whiskey traders and to prepare the West for settlement. The

Canadian government always assumed that the Mounted Police would be eliminated once the

West was settled enough for local law enforcement to take over. Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government, elected just months after gold was discovered in the Klondike, came into office with the intention of reducing the size of the force. The gold rush, among other factors, convinced the government, and the Canadian people, that the Mounted Police were still useful. The Yukon became another place for the Mounted Police to prepare for settlement and defend Canada from the American expansionism.14 These themes were picked up by Steele and other contemporaries and later writers like Berton.

When academic historians began exploring the history of Alaska and the Yukon in the

1970s, they fit the Klondike into these established narratives, and the contemporary historical narratives of Canadian and American historiography. Historians Elizabeth Jameson and Jeremy

Mouat wrote in 2006 that in Canadian history the forty-ninth parallel border “functions much as the frontier did in Turner’s, as the line that divides U.S. cultural and economic savagery from

Canadian civilization” and separates “what is and is not Canadian.”15 This narrative, although always present in English Canadian thought, emerged in Canadian historiography in the 1940s,

14 R.C. Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976); William R. Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985). 15 Elizabeth Jameson and Jeremy Mouat, “Telling Differences: The Forty-Ninth Parallel and Historiographies of the West and Nation,” Pacific Historical Review 75, no. 2 (2006): 189.

as Canadian historians sought to explain why Turner’s frontier thesis did not apply to Canada.16

Jameson and Mouat argued that Canadian historian George F.G. Stanley, in a paper presented to the Canadian Historical Association in 1940, “defined the key difference between the two national characters as American violence versus Canadian order.”17 The Canada/U.S. border, they continued, “separated American violence, lawlessness, and greed from Canadian civility, order, and managed development.”18 Canadian historians continued to stress these narratives of

Canadian/American difference in the postwar period.19 Writing in 1954, Canadian historian

J.M.S. Careless argued that the metropolitan/hinterland relationship was the key difference between the Canadian West and Turner’s frontier. Careless argued that the metropolitan connections between Canadian government and manufacturing centers, particularly in central

Canada, and the resource hinterlands of the West defined Canadian development, in contrast to

Turner’s waves of settlement.20

When Zaslow described Yukon history as “a fascinating contrast” between the American and Canadian political systems in his 1971 The Opening of the Canadian North, 1870-1914, he placed the Klondike within Stanley’s narrative of Canadian/American difference and Careless’s metropolitan framework that linked the Yukon with southern Canada.21 The Mounted Police appeared as metropolitan agents, bringing the Yukon under the control of the Canadian government and reinforcing the Canadian political system. Writing as part of McClelland and

16 Ibid., 199. 17 Ibid., 200. 18 Ibid., 200. 19 Ibid., 203, 207-209. See also: Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing since 1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986). These narratives of separation between Canadian and American history were challenged by Canadian historian Walter Sage in the 1930s and American historian Paul F. Sharp in the 1950s, but neither argument found much traction, see footnote 51. 20 Careless’s discussions of metropolitanism are reprinted in: J.M.S. Careless, Careless at Work: Selected Canadian Historical Studies (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1990). 21 Morris Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870-1914 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971).

Stewart’s Canadian Centenary Series, Zaslow’s study also appeared at a time when Canadian historians were particularly interested in emphasizing the differences between Canada and the

United States. Fear of the growing influence of American culture in Canada and the perceived threat of Quebec nationalism to Canadian unity convinced the series editor W.L. Morton, and many of his contemporaries, that Canadian history should focus on unifying the country under a single history that showed that all regions of Canada were connected.22 A narrative of what

Zaslow described as the triumph of the Canadian approach23 - the Mounted Police protecting the

Yukon from American lawlessness - fit into both Steele’s and Berton’s narratives of the

Klondike24 and the direction of Canadian historiography emphasized by the Centenary Series.

By highlighting the importance of Canadian and American difference to the Klondike story,

Zaslow also framed the gold rush and the Yukon as part of Canadian history and Canadian national narrative. The Canadian aspect of the gold rush, particularly the role of the Mounted

Police, made the gold rush different from the later, more chaotic gold rushes that occurred in

Alaska, making anything that happened on the Alaska side of the border American history.

In the 1980s, Yukon historians reinforced the separate history of the Yukon and Alaska, as Canadian historians adopted the approach of regionalism in Canadian history.25 Ken S. Coates

22 Lyle Dick, “‘A Growing Necessity for Canada’: W. L. Morton’s Centenary Series and the Forms of National History, 1955-80,” Canadian Historical Review 82, no. 2 (2001): 223-252; Jameson and Mouat, “Telling Differences: The Forty-Ninth Parallel and Historiographies of the West and Nation,” 214-215. 23 Morris Zaslow, “The Yukon: Northern Development in a Canadian-American Context,” in Interpreting Canada’s North: Selected Readings, ed. Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1989), 133- 148. Also published in Regionalism in the Canadian Community, 1867-1967, ed. Mason Wade (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 180-197. 24 The introduction to the 1972 revised edition of Berton’s Klondike is clearly influenced by Zaslow’s work, in addition to a desire to link his work on the Klondike and the Canadian Pacific Railway into a single narrative. Berton, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899, xi-xx. 25 Regionalism in Canadian history shifted the focus of Canadian historians from national narratives that explained the development of Canada from a national, central Canadian perspective to a regional perspective that acknowledged the individual identities and histories of Canada’s regions. Regionalism also addressed the other side of the metropolitan/hinterland relationship, looking at hinterlands as distinct regions with identities forged by

and William R. Morrison’s 1985 history of the Yukon Territory stressed the other side of the metropolitan history of the Yukon, suggesting that the territory has been treated as a colony of southern interests.26 In his 1985 history of the Mounted Police in the Canadian North, Morrison argued that while the police were the metropolitan agents of the Canadian government, they had some degree of autonomy in how they carried out their orders.27 Coates and Morrison also wrote in a period of renewed interest in the Canadian North, after the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker

Polar Sea’s voyage through the Northwest Passage in 1985 renewed Canadian interest in northern issues.28 Although Coates and Morrison moved away from Zaslow’s metropolitan approach, they kept his focus on the national perspective, rarely looking across the border to

Alaska. American historians, also taking their lead from Zaslow and the traditional narrative of the gold rush, likewise focused on the history of Alaska, largely leaving the Klondike to

Canadian historians.29

By the time American historians began seriously looking at Alaska history in the 1970s, they were influenced by two major developments in Western and Alaska historiography. While

Turner’s frontier thesis emphasized the exceptionalism of the American West in the shaping of

American history and the American character, in the 1950s consensus historians such as Earl

Pomeroy began to stress continuity between East and West and the importance of eastern

unequal relationships with metropolitan centres. See: R. Douglas Francis, “Regionalism, W.L. Morton, and the Writing of West Canadian History, 1870-1885,” American Review of Canadian Studies, 31, no. 4 (2001): 569-588. 26 Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). 27 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925. 28 Ken S. Coates et al., Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (Toronto: T. Allen Publishers, 2008), 114; Rob Huebert, “Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security in a Transforming Circumpolar World,” in Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Stewardship, by Franklyn Griffiths, Rob Huebert, and P. Whitney Lackenbauer (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011), 35-36. 29 See for example: Ted C. Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897 (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1972); Stephen W. Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).

economic connections and government to the settlement of the West.30 The development of what historian Terrence Cole called the neglect thesis of Alaska history also shaped the way historians viewed Alaska. First popularized by historian Jeannette Paddock Nichols’ 1924 history of

Alaska, the neglect thesis suggested that since the Alaska Purchase, the federal government had ignored Alaska and the interests of Alaskans.31 Nichols argued that Alaska history could be characterized as, in Cole’s words, “a struggle for supremacy between the pioneer residents of the north and the ‘vested interests,’ the greedy monopolistic corporations” and their supporters in the federal government.32 The idea that the federal government had always neglected Alaska’s needs also played a key role in the push for Alaska statehood in the 1950s. Nichols’s own views on

Alaska history were influenced by politician and advocate for Alaska statehood Ernest Gruening,

Alaska’s Territorial Governor from 1939-1953 and Alaska’s U.S. Senator from 1959-1968, who published his own book on Alaska history, The State of Alaska, in 1954.33

Ted C. Hinckley’s 1972 book The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897 was one of the first academic works on Alaska to address these developments. Hinckley described the

“Americanization” of Alaska as a combination of the arrival of American style territorial government, through the 1884 Organic Act, the arrival of large corporations with substantial business connections to the south, and the establishment of “civilizing” influences, particularly missionary and educational institutions.34 While he noted that the arrival of government and

30 Earl Pomeroy, “Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41, no. 4 (1955): 579-600. For a discussion of this shift see: Brian W. Dippie, “American Wests: Historiographical Perspectives,” in Trails: Toward a New Western History, ed. Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 112-36. 31 Jeannette Paddock Nichols, Alaska: A History of Its Administration, Exploitation, and Industrial Development during Its First Half Century under the Rule of the United States (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1924). 32 Terrence Cole, “The History of a History: The Making of Jeannette Paddock Nichols’s Alaska,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1986): 137. 33 Ibid., 131; Ernest Gruening, The State of Alaska (New York: Random House, 1954). 34 Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897.

business connections allowed Alaska to “become socially, economically, and politically durable,”35 Hinkley also acknowledged, like Nichols, that by 1897 “Alaskans protested that the

District had become a colonial banquet table for voracious corporate giants.”36 Two state histories, William R. Hunt’s 1976 Alaska: A Bicentennial History and Claus-M. Naske and

Herman E. Slotnick’s 1979 Alaska: A History of the 49th State, touched on similar themes.37

A focus on government neglect and corporate greed also reflected a generation of historians who questioned the effectiveness of government and the political and economic elite in American society. By the 1990s, new western historians had adopted the approaches of social history, stressing the role of indigenous peoples, minorities, and women in the settlement of the

West.38 Historians such as Patricia Limerick and Richard White highlighted western dependence on the federal government, the presence of indigenous people and minorities, and the recreation of eastern American society in the West.39 This approach is best reflected in Alaska history by

Stephen W. Haycox’s 2002 survey Alaska: An American Colony. Haycox argued, as the title suggests, that Alaska has been treated as a colony of the mainland United States, or that “Alaska has always been economically, politically, and culturally like the United States as well as dependent on the United States.”40

The importance of Canadian-American difference to the traditional narratives of the

Klondike and a desire of Alaska and Yukon historians to fit their work into the contemporary

35 Ibid., 218. 36 Ibid., 185. 37 William R. Hunt, Alaska: A Bicentennial History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979). 38 For this shift see: Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, eds., Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991). 39 Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987); Richard White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 40 Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 160.

themes of Canadian and American historiography have contributed to the development of separate histories of Alaska and the Yukon. But perhaps this development is unsurprising.

Zaslow’s Opening of the Canadian North, Hunt’s history of Alaska, and Coates and Morrison’s

Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon are national, state, and territorial histories.

Working in distinct historiographical fields and separate national, state, and territorial archives,

Alaska and Yukon historians have focused on highlighting the major themes in the history of their respective regions, which has naturally pushed regional and transnational connections to the background. Yet, as the similarities between Haycox and Coates and Morrison’s colonial arguments show, Yukon and Alaska history share many similar historical themes and processes, including the Klondike gold rush and the history of the Alaska-Yukon border. As late as 2008, however, Coates and Morrison wrote in a historiographical essay on the Canadian North that

“even regional sub-disciplines as close as Yukon and Alaskan history have few connections between them, despite important overlaps in personnel, events, processes and influences.”41

While the majority of histories of the Yukon and Alaska have focused on the separate history of Alaska and the Yukon, since the 1980s, a number of historians have begun to look at the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a more regional perspective. An early attempt was Melody

Webb’s 1985 book The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska.

While Webb frames her study as a history of both sides of the Yukon River valley, the book largely relies on American sources and discussions of the Canadian side of the Yukon River are

41 Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, “The New North in Canadian History and Historiography,” History Compass 6, no. 2 (2008): 649.

limited.42 In a 1987 article, Ken S. Coates compared the approaches of the Canadian and

American governments to the Yukon and Alaska, challenging the notion that the Canadian government was more involved in northern affairs than the American government.43 Ken S.

Coates and William R. Morrison’s 1990 book The Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the

North Down with Her positioned the Yukon and Alaska as a distinct region linked together by the Yukon River transportation network. The sinking of the Canadian Pacific Railway steamer

Princess Sophia on 26 October 1918 claimed the lives of 353 people from both sides of the

Alaska-Yukon border, killing a significant number of the non-indigenous population of both territories.44

The two most recent studies of the Klondike gold rush also adopt a more regional outlook. Charlene Porsild’s 1998 social history of Dawson City is a community study largely focused on Dawson itself, but highlights the international character of the gold rush and the development of a regional community in the north.45 Kathryn Morse’s 2003 environmental history of the gold rush highlights the relationship between miners and the environment on both sides of the border. While mining or traveling in Alaska or the Yukon, Morse shows miners

42 Melody Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985). Webb’s awkward attempt to directly apply Turner’s frontier thesis to Alaska history limits the critical analysis of the book, but the narrative of Alaska history in the Yukon Basin is thorough and the bibliography is an excellent resource for the history of the region. 43 Ken S. Coates, “Controlling the Periphery: The Territorial Administration of the Yukon and Alaska, 1867-1959,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 78, no. 4 (1987): 145-151. Also available in: Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Mangusso eds., An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 191- 205. 44 Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, The Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the North Down with Her (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990). 45 Charlene Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998).

struggling to transport supplies over muddy trails, developing river routes and railways, cutting down trees, hunting for game, bringing in the same supplies, and mining for gold.46

While these regional histories acknowledge that the Klondike was a more interconnected region than the traditional narrative of the gold rush suggests, the Alaska-Yukon border does not feature prominently. Like the traditional narrative, the location of the border as a dividing line between two sides of a regional history is taken as an established fact. The Alaska-Yukon borderlands are positioned as an interconnected region, but the ways in which the Alaska-Yukon border, not permanently set until the 1903 Alaska boundary tribunal, was imagined, contested, and informally negotiated remain largely unexplored. This study positions the Klondike gold rush as a wider, regional event that encompassed both sides of the border and puts the efforts of the Mounted Police, the U.S. Army, transportation companies, miners, and other groups to develop a functional Alaska-Yukon border at the center of the history of the region.

Focusing on the wider regional history of the Yukon and Alaska and the Alaska-Yukon border reveals several important factors in the development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

First, the location of the border was not permanently set before or during the Klondike gold rush.

While the Alaska-Yukon border was originally set by the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825, the line was never surveyed and the Canadian and American governments largely ignored the region. At the beginning of the gold rush, the location of the border had not been marked. The majority of people in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands knew that the region was divided by a border, but as they did not know where it was located, it did not significantly influence their actions. The large influx of people into the Alaska-Yukon borderlands during the gold rush finally forced the

46 Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003).

American and Canadian governments to send the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army to take control of the region and start enforcing the border in a borderless region. Their work was not simple. It involved substantial negotiation not only between the police and the army, but with customs officials, miners, merchants, transportation companies, and other local groups, each with their own agendas and ideas about the - until that point imagined - border. Despite their divergent views, these groups were able to develop a functional Alaska-Yukon border that allowed the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police to enforce national sovereignty and miners, merchants, and commercial interests to cross the border when they needed to.

Previous histories of the development of the Alaska-Yukon border have focused on the international negotiations between the United States, Canada, and Britain that settled the Alaska boundary dispute in 1903. Historians Charles S. Campbell Jr., Norman Penlington, and others have discussed the development of the border from a diplomatic perspective, placing the boundary dispute in the context of Anglo-American relations at the turn of the twentieth century.47 They used the rush to the Klondike and other local issues to provide context to the diplomatic negotiations, but made little attempt to examine the role of on the ground negotiations between the U.S. Army, the Mounted Police, and other local groups in the development of the border. The diplomatic history of the boundary dispute has international negotiators meeting for the first time at the 1899 Joint High Commission, before negotiating the final location of the border at the 1903 Alaska boundary tribunal. A close look at the negotiations between the police, the army, miners, transportation companies, and customs officials, however, reveals that a local,

47 Charles S. Campbell Jr., Anglo-American Understanding, 1898-1903 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1957); Norman Penlington, The Alaska Boundary Dispute: A Critical Reappraisal (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972). See also: John A. Munro, The Alaska Boundary Dispute (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970); Edward P. Kohn, This Kindred People: Canadian-American Relations and the Anglo-Saxon Idea, 1895-1903 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004); Iestyn Adams, Brothers Across the Ocean: British Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Anglo-American “Special Relationship,” 1900-1905 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005).

functional Alaska-Yukon border had been developed on the ground by the time negotiators met at the Joint High Commission in October 1899, a local border that would be made permanent by the boundary tribunal.

Borderlands historians argue that the international boundaries negotiated by diplomats are little more than abstract lines-on-a-map until they are backed up by government authority and turned into permanent on-the-ground borders.48 This process of “making a border” was first discussed by Friedrich Katz in his 1981 book The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United

States, and the Mexican Revolution. Katz argued that Mexico’s northern frontier provinces were politically and economically isolated from the central Mexican government until the late nineteenth century, when a combination of Mexican state expansion and growth in U.S. interests in the region transformed the frontier into the U.S.-Mexico border.49 Juan Mora-Torres called this process “frontier to border.” In his 2001 book The Making of the Mexican Border: The State,

Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo Leon, 1848-1910, Mora-Torres described two “parallel processes” that characterized this transformation, “the incorporation of the frontier into a

48 Despite what the name implies, the term “borderlands history” original had little to do with borders. Herbert Eugene Bolton, the founder of the borderlands school of history and author of the 1921 book The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest, conceptualized the borderland as an extension of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis into the northern reaches of New Spain. While Bolton and his students told “romantic stories of Indians, missionaries, and solders,” Samuel Truett and Elliott Young wrote in their 2004 introduction to Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History that beginning in the 1930s Chicano historians begun writing histories that focused on ethnic Mexican communities in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. David J. Weber’s 1982 book The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846 bridged the gap between these two approaches and led a generation of borderlands historians, also influenced by new western history, to combine “ethnohistory, ethnic and gender studies, economic and environmental history, and cultural studies into an increasingly multivocal portrait of New Spain’s northern frontier.” As late as the mid-1990s, however, Truett and Young noted that borderlands historians preferred to focus on the period before Mexican Independence in 1821, or at least before 1900, approximately when the U.S.-Mexico border was formally mapped. It was only in the 1990s, then, that borderlands historians began exploring the creation and impact of the border itself on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Herbert Eugene Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921); Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, “Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands,” in Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, ed. Samuel Truett and Elliott Young (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 3-6, quotes from 3, 5. 49 Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Truett and Young, “Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands,” 13-14.

centralized political system,” bringing government agents into the region who began enforcing the location of the border, and “the integration of the frontier into the capitalist economy,” expanding Mexican and American industrial networks into the region and reinforcing the creation of a border to separate them.50 By the early 2000s, historians of the Canada-U.S. borderlands also began highlighting the “making a border” process in the development of the border along the 49th parallel.51 Ken S. Coates’s introduction to the 2002 anthology Parallel

Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies, for example, described the imposition of boundary lines in the Oregon Territory that ignored geography, indigenous territories, and colonial trading patterns, turned into borders by the arrival of the modern

Canadian and American states at the end of the nineteenth century.52

This process has been elaborated by Canada-U.S. borderlands historian Sheila McManus and U.S.-Mexico borderlands historian Samuel Truett. Both historians position borderlands as

50 Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo Leon, 1848- 1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 2. 51 Although Canadian/American difference has always been important to Canadian historians, the approach of borderlands historians has only recently been applied to the Canada-U.S. borderlands. Writing contemporaneously to Bolton, historian Walter Sage emphasized the connections between Canada’s western provinces and northern American states and the movement of immigrants across the border, but this approach was soon forgotten as Canadian historians adopted the idea of the border separating American lawlessness from Canadian order. In the 1950s, Paul F. Sharp examined the nineteenth century whiskey trade in the Alberta-Montana borderlands and how efforts to stop the trade in advance of settlement helped harden the border. As Johnson and Graybill note, however, Sharp’s work generated little attention from Canadian historians, who largely remained focused on the Canada-U.S. border as a dividing line between two distinct cultures into the 1990s. It was only at the beginning of the 2000s that Canadian historians began examining the borderlands history of the Canada-U.S. border, just as U.S. Mexico borderlands historians were beginning to adopt the “making a border” approach. Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill, “Introduction: Borders and Their Historians in North America,” in Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories, ed. Benjamin H. Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 10-14; Jameson and Mouat, “Telling Differences: The Forty-Ninth Parallel and Historiographies of the West and Nation,” 196-206. See also: Sheila McManus, “Border/Lands - A Historiographical Survey,” in The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States, ed. Jerald Podair and Darren Dochuk (New York: Routledge, 2018), 292-301. 52 Ken S. Coates, “Border Crossings: Patterns and Process along the Canada-United States Boundary West of the Rockies,” in Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies, ed. John M. Findlay and Ken S. Coates (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 3-27. Other examples include: Jeremy Mouat, “The Forty- Ninth Parallel: Defining Moments and Changing Meanings,” in The Great Northwest: The Search for Regional Identity, ed. William G. Robbins (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001), 121-144.

distant, often unknown regions, far from national centers, but with their own established systems of government, trade patterns, and social relations.53 These regions have to be brought under the control of government and business interests before borders can be enforced.54 Truett’s examination of the copper borderlands of Arizona and Sonora during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and McManus’s discussion of government efforts to establish particular ideas of race and gender in Alberta-Montana borderlands can be used as a framework for understanding how this process unfolds.55 Since corporations, governments, and individuals arrive in distant borderlands with little knowledge of local conditions, their first step is to gather as much information as possible about the region and its peoples - surveys of mineral resources, reports on the region’s population, maps showing national and corporate boundaries. Second, supply lines, transportation routes, government posts, and mining towns have to be developed. Control over local indigenous populations has to be established. Third, they can move forward with their plans to transform the region - establishing mining centers and exporting resources, encouraging desirable immigrants to settle in the region, and attempting to reimagine borderlands into firm national entities with permanent political, social, and cultural borders. Both historians stress that this process is never straight forward. Reorganizing the borderlands often required substantial negotiation with local groups, both well established and new to the region, and other governments and corporations - groups that wished to continue to cross a national border, maintain traditional ideas, or fight for labour rights. In the end, they are never able to fully take

53 Recent studies of indigenous borderlands have also stressed this point in particular: Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 54 Here the term borders doesn’t only refer to political borders, but to borders between groups of people, borders between ideas, etc. 55 Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Sheila McManus, The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta- Montana Borderlands (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2005).

control of distant border regions, leaving considerable freedom for locals to cross borders and form their own communities.

The Klondike gold rush brought a similar transformation to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The Mounted Police and the U.S. Army arrived in the region in 1894 and 1897 with little knowledge of local conditions. They both began by sending officers to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands to assess the situation and begin the process of gathering information on the region’s people, gold mining potential, transportation routes, and whether or not a permanent government presence was required. Both groups had to contend with established transportation companies, routes of travel, and local miners’ systems of government. As the gold rush picked up steam during the winter or 1897-1898, the police and the army continued to gather information, while traveling side-by-side with miners rushing to the Klondike and working alongside commercial interests and customs collectors as local conditions rapidly changed. At the same time, both groups put considerable effort into exploring and developing transportation routes and supply lines, building posts and other infrastructure to support a government presence, and preventing unrest. As both groups and both governments learned more about local conditions and established more reliable transportation routes and infrastructure, they turned their eyes to establishing and enforcing the location of the Alaska-Yukon border.

All along the way, this process required negotiation between the police and the army and their information sources, miners and merchants who wished to cross the border freely, transportation companies wanting to transport goods to the interior without interference, and even between the police and army and their own governments. This negotiation could take a number of forms, from direct negotiations, to expressing grievances and demanding action, to working towards a common goal or commercial interest. By the end of 1899, these groups had

negotiated a working, functional border, just as international negotiators were first meeting to discuss the boundary question at the Joint High Commission - remaking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region.

The idea of borderlands being transformed into bordered regions has been the subject of some debate among borderlands historians. U.S. historians Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron argued in a controversial 1999 article that the term “borderlands history” should be reserved for the “making a border” process - the shift from North American empires, meeting at the edges of distant frontiers, to nation-states, meeting at firmly defined national borders.56 Once the process is complete and political borders have been established, borderlands regions cease to be

“borderlands” and become “frontiers” at the edges of nation states. Critics of Adelman and

Aron’s approach argue that the imposition of national/political boundaries are only the beginning of the process.57 After international borders are established, the process of incorporating borderlands regions and peoples into national societies are only beginning, and, in a sense, never ending, as governments, business interests, and local groups of different races, classes, and ethnicities continuously negotiate their place in both borderlands regions and the national society.58

56 Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 814-841; Truett and Young, “Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands,” 14-15. 57 For critiques of Adelman and Aron see: “Form Essay: Responses Borders and Borderlands,” and “Form Essay: Reply Of Lively Exchanges and Larger Perspectives” American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (1999): 1222-1239; Truett and Young, “Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands,” 14-16; Elizabeth Jameson, “Dancing on the Rim, Tiptoeing through Minefields: Challenges and Promises of Borderlands,” Pacific Historical Review 75, no. 1 (2006): 20-21. 58 Examples of this literature include: McManus, The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta-Montana Borderlands; Jameson, “Dancing on the Rim, Tiptoeing through Minefields: Challenges and Promises of Borderlands”; Beth LaDow, The Medicine Line: Life and Death on a North American Borderland (New York: Routledge, 2001); Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Kornel S. Chang, Pacific Connections: The Making of the US-Canadian Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Grace Delgado, Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

Once the Mounted Police, the U.S. Army, and other local groups had negotiated a local

Alaska-Yukon border, and international negotiators finally made the location of the border official at the 1903 Alaska boundary tribunal, Adelman and Aron’s approach argues that the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands should have ceased to exist, becoming bordered regions - the separate territories Alaska and the Yukon. The remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, however, suggests that borderlands should be separated from borders. The Klondike gold rush transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region, but the region did not cease to be a borderland. The shift did have significant meaning for the region’s history. The

Alaska-Yukon borderlands ceased to be a borderless region and became the national territories of

Alaska and the Yukon. But through the “making a border” process, the U.S. Army, the Mounted

Police, and other groups developed borderlands transportation networks and an Alaska-Yukon border that allowed the region to continue to function as a borderland despite the imposition of national boundaries.

The process of borderlands negotiation and transformation has also been discussed by scholars in other disciplines. Historical geographers have bridged the gap between diplomatic and local negotiations by focusing on the role of boundary commissions in the border-making process. Established after international negotiations are complete to survey the actual border, boundary commissions must negotiate with various local concerns and instructions from their national governments to draw a line that respects the international boundary and the interests of local groups.59 In the case of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, much of this type of negotiation took place before the conclusion of the Alaska boundary tribunal and the 1904-1920 boundary

59 For a summary of this literature see: John W. Donaldson, “Politics and Scale in Boundary-Making: The Work of Boundary Commissions,” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 3 (2008): 393-96.

commission that surveyed the line.60 Political scientists have also analyzed the development of borders and borderlands, particularly within the context of contemporary international relations and national security apparatuses.61 Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly has theorized that borders and borderlands can be understood through four “analytical lenses” - the policy activities of multiple levels of government, market and trade flows, local cross-border culture, and the political clout of borderland communities - that explain how borderlands regions develop.62 When governments attempt to introduce policy in borderlands regions, they have to compete with market and trade flows that cross the border, the local borderlands culture of people on the ground, the political interests of local groups, and the policies of other levels of government.63 The approaches of both disciplines, like that of borderlands historians, involve negotiation among various local and national interests with their own competing ideas about how borderlands should develop.

The second factor revealed by putting the Alaska-Yukon border at the center of the regional history of the Yukon and Alaska is that transportation played an important role in the development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.64 Kathryn Morse positioned transportation as the

60 On the Alaska Boundary Commission see: Lewis Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982). 61 Like borderlands historians, political scientists view borders as political and social constructions that continuously evolve and change. See: Heather N. Nicol and Julian Minghi, “The Continuing Relevance of Borders in Contemporary Contexts,” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (2005): 680-687; Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, ed., Borderlands: Comparing Border Security in North America and Europe (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2007). 62 Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, “Theorizing Borders: An Interdisciplinary Perspective,” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (2005): 633-649. 63 Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly and Bruno Dupeyron, “Introduction: Borders, Borderlands, and Porosity,” in Borderlands: Comparing Border Security in North America and Europe, ed. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2007), 9. 64 Transportation has long been an interest of those who have written about the Klondike Gold Rush and the early history of Alaska and the Yukon. Images of prospectors climbing up and down the Chilkoot and White passes, building boats at the foot of Lake Bennett, and floating down the Yukon River to the Klondike are some of the most enduring of the traditional narrative of the gold rush. Gordon Bennett writes that “the history of transportation during the gold rush can be said to have been practically synonymous with the history of the gold rush itself.”

key to the development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as an industrializing region. As miners

“hauled their sacks of pork and beans and flour over the Chilkoot Pass,” and transportation companies built steamers on the Yukon River and constructed a railway over White Pass, Morse argued that they “carried [the North American] industrial economy north to the Yukon and

Alaska.”65

Morse built on the work of environmental historian William Cronon, who argued that the construction of railways and transportation routes across the American West spurred western development and brought the West into the eastern industrial economy. Cronon flipped Turner’s frontier thesis around to position cities, Chicago in his case, as the driving force behind western settlement, building railways and other transportation links into the hinterland to bring commodities into the city for market.66 This idea of transportation and resource extraction driving development has also been well established in Canadian historiography, from Harold A.

Innis’s staples thesis to J.M.S. Careless’s metropolitanism.67 By the beginning of the Klondike gold rush, this transnational process had resulted in an industrial network of railways, commodities, and products that stretched across the North American West. Morse argued that the discovery of gold in the Klondike was the driving factor in the expansion of this industrial network into the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

The transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands into an industrializing region shares many similarities with the “making a border” process. For miners, merchants, and entrepreneurs, the first step to industrializing the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was to gather as much information

Gordon Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History” (Canadian Historic Sites Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 19, 1978), 24. 65 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 10. 66 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991). 67 Both scholars stress the importance of resource exploitation in hinterland regions and transportation networks that brought resources to metropolitan centres in Canada and Europe as keys to explaining Canadian development. See: Francis, “Turner versus Innis: Two Mythic Wests.”

as possible about the region’s geography, resources, existing transportation routes, weather conditions, and development potential. At the same time, miners started to work small placer claims, merchants started importing goods and building stores, hotels, and other businesses, entrepreneurs and transportation companies started making improvements to transportation routes. During the first steps, these groups often relied on the knowledge and expertise of indigenous populations and transportation networks. The next step, the development of large- scale transportation infrastructure, often marginalized of the roles of indigenous peoples.68 The construction of steamers and steamer infrastructure on the Yukon River, tramways over the

Chilkoot Pass, and the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway over the White Pass, allowed for the importation of people and consumer goods and the exportation of gold and other resources.

With transportation and industrial links to the North American economy in place, the final step was the establishment of industrial mining operations - a process that largely occurred after the

Klondike gold rush and the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.69

Morse largely focused on the role of miners, merchants, and transportation companies in the industrialization process, but Richard White, Liza Piper, and others have highlighted the important role that governments played in transportation and industrial expansion.70 As the main government representatives in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, the Mounted Police and the U.S.

68 See: Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike, 24-59. 69 During the first two steps, Morse argues that these groups remain closely connected to nature. They worked in nature, they mined a nature product, they hunted animals, and they carried their own supplies through nature, but as transportation infrastructure and industrial links became more developed, they became more alienated and distanced from nature, moving through nature on steamers and railway cars, eating canned goods and other food brought in on the same transportation links, and mining gold with dredging and hydraulic operations rather than shovels and sluices - although as Richard White, Liza Piper, and Morse herself note, industrialized regions remained deeply connected to nature. Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 10-15; Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); Liza Piper, The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009). 70 Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011); Piper, The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada.

Army became agents of this transformation. The Mounted Police spent much of the first months of the gold rush concerned with rushing reinforcements and supplies into the Yukon. They used the same transportation routes as miners and did much to develop these routes, along with supervising people on their way to the Klondike. The police made large contracts with many of the transportation companies in the Yukon and Alaska, providing critical sources of secure revenue and business to companies developing transportation infrastructure. They worked with miners, merchants, and transportation companies to ease customs restrictions and keep goods flowing over the border. The U.S. Army pushed to open new transportation routes to the upper

Yukon to support the development of commerce in the region, attempted to organize a massive relief expedition to Dawson City, and explored new transportation routes in Cook’s Inlet and the

Copper River Valley. Environmental historian Jonathan Peyton also argued that governments played a key role in reimagining new regions into industrializing spaces. As governments moved into new regions seeking to establish government control and develop transportation infrastructure, alongside miners, merchants, and transportation companies, their efforts, even unsuccessful ones, demonstrated the potential of the region to be improved and brought into state and metropolitan networks.71

Morse also largely ignored the Alaska-Yukon border, positioning the industrialization of the Yukon and Alaska as a transnational process. While environmental histories often ignore political boundaries in favour of ecological ones, the Alaska-Yukon border was an important factor in the industrial development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.72 At first, miners,

71 Jonathan Peyton, “Moving through the Margins: The ‘All-Canadian’ Route to the Klondike and the Strange Experience of the Teslin Trail,” in Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, ed. Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017), 35-62. 72 Theodore Binnema, “The Case for Cross-National and Comparative History: The Northwestern Plains as Bioregion,” in The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests: Essays on Regional History of the Forty-

merchants, transportation companies, and the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army largely ignored the still unsurveyed border as they focused on developing transportation routes and gold fields.

But as governments established more firm control of the region and attempted to locate the border, these groups had to work together to develop a system that allowed industrial development to span the border while also respecting national territories and interests.

Finally, putting the Alaska-Yukon border at the center of the history of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands reveals that miners, merchants, transportation companies, and government officials on both sides of the border had much in common. The Klondike occurred at the height of technological and industrial transformation in the North American West. The expansion of railway and telegraph technology remade space and time, allowing enterprising individuals, businesses, and governments to expand into new regions and complete the “making a border” and industrialization processes. Historians across many disciplines have identified that nineteenth century North Americans strongly believed in the power of science and technology to improve their lives and their societies.73 Whether railway transportation, telegraph communication, farm machinery, or typewriters, technology not only allowed North Americans to increase standards of living and financial security, it fueled the expansion of the United States and Canada into new regions. Canadian historian A.A. Den Otter, writing on railways, argues

Ninth Parallel, ed. Sterling Evans (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 17-41. The idea of bioregions is another theme in environmental history with relevance to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, with the Yukon river forming an environmental corridor that encouraged the formation of regional connections even as the Alaska-Yukon border developed. See: Dan Flores, “Place: Thinking about Bioregional History,” in Bioregionalism, ed. Michael Vincent McGinnis (London: Routledge, 1999), 43-59. 73 See for example: A.A. Den Otter, The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Railway Idea in British North America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America; Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); R. Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997).

that technology “embodied a sense of divine purpose, a mission to conquer the surrounding wilderness” that brought Canadians and Americans together.74 During the winter of 1897-1898, prospectors brought this divine mission to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

Another mission that brought Americans and Canadians together was a shared ideology of imperial Anglo-Saxonism. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century, as the United States and the British Empire fought imperial wars in Cuba, the

Philippines, and South Africa, American historian Adam Arenson argues that people of both nationalities shared “the conviction that ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ regardless of their geographical location, had a joint responsibility to conquer, rule, and uplift other peoples all over the world.”75

In the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, Arenson writes, “Americans and Britons successfully sought gold, displaced native groups, and lived together peaceably, implicitly providing encouragement for each other’s imperial adventures in distant lands.”76 This joint mission, expressed through 4th of July parades in Dawson City and the flying of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes in

Dawson and Skagway, among other ways, brought Canadians and Americans on both sides of the Alaska-Yukon border together. With many of their own members implicated in these foreign adventures, the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police shared this sense of comradery.

Environmental historians argue that North Americans often linked their belief in science, technology, and imperial expansion with nature. Kathryn Morse writes that Klondikers viewed searching for gold as “the natural thing to do.”77 The scarcity of gold and the labour required to extract it made gold a natural currency, and periodic gold rushes, and the prospectors driven to

74 Den Otter, The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Railway Idea in British North America, 12. 75 Arenson, “Anglo-Saxonism in the Yukon: The Klondike Nugget and American-British Relations in the “Two Wests,” 376-377. 76 Ibid., 375-376. 77 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 16.

join them, were essential to maintaining the supply of natural currency and the economy as a whole. Richard White argues that nineteenth century North Americans also viewed “personal profit and national progress” and “the organic and the mechanical” as natural pairings.78

Klondikers, regardless of national origin, viewed traveling to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands in search of gold - or to run a hotel or saloon, or operate a river steamer - as a way to both make money and to do their part in expanding the industrial economy and the British and American empires into new territories. Mining for gold, establishing transportation routes and supply lines, bringing new regions under national and government control, and establishing borders between national territories were all viewed as natural processes that brought Klondikers together. The

Mounted Police and the U.S. Army likewise viewed their activities in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as natural. When enterprising North Americans moved into a new region, it was natural that the army and the police should follow, maintaining law and order, providing assistance to citizens, and enforcing government policy.

These unifying ideas were all the more important in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

Before and during the gold rush, much of this distant and remote region was unknown and unexplored. The Yukon River served as a transportation gateway that linked the region together and promised resource potential on both sides of the border. Klondikers of all origins arrived in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands with the similar goals and faced similar local conditions - the need to explore the unknown region, search for mining resources or other profitable ventures, develop transportation routes, and bring the region into national orbits. While many historians, and many Klondikers themselves, believe that the population of the Klondike was mainly

American, the population was actually much more international. Charlene Porsild wrote in 1998

78 White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, 88.

that “the Klondike attracted people of more than forty nationalities, among them English and

French Canadians, Americans, Britons, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, Greeks, Chinese,

Japanese, and Russians and Poles.”79 Porsild calculated the Klondike population at 40%

American-born, 40% Canadian or British-born, and 20% foreign-born.80 The ideologies of science and technology, imperial expansion, and nature in North American, then, were shared by people of various origins who met in the Klondike. These factors encouraged cooperation.

Miners, merchants, businessmen, transportation companies, and the Mounted Police and the U.S.

Army all relied on each other to travel to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, gather information about the region, establish business ventures, maintain law and order, and locate the undetermined Alaska-Yukon border. Local groups often cooperated when it was in their best interest and clashed when competing interests came together. The Mounted Police, for example, relied on American transportation companies to ship supplies to the Yukon, while at other times, they clashed with American miners angry with the police over customs regulations and the border. Whether they agreed or disagreed, local groups often had to negotiate with each other in order to meet their needs in a changing borderlands region.

The wider regional history of the Yukon and Alaska reveals the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a region being transformed by the Klondike gold rush. The arrival of the Mounted

Police and U.S. Army began the “making a border” process, bringing government control to

Alaska and the Yukon, integrating the region into the North American economy, and establishing

79 Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike, 18. 80 Ibid., 17-18. See also: Ken S. Coates, “The Klondike Gold Rush in World History: Putting the Stampede in Perspective,” Northern Review 19 (1998): 21-35. For the international character of other gold rushes see: Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); Jeremy Mouat, “After California: Later Gold Rushes of the Pacific Basin,” in Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World, ed. Kenneth N. Owens (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 264-295.

the location of a functional Alaska-Yukon border. The development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as an industrializing region led to the establishment of transportation routes and economic links to the United States and Canada. United by these processes and a shared belief in science, technology, and expansion, the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army, other government officials, transportation companies, merchants, and miners all cooperated and compromised to remake the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

The final factor influencing the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was the

Klondike gold rush itself. Canada/U.S. historian Jeremy Mouat writes that “gold rushes were remarkable events” - triggering the mass movement of tens of thousands of people, across long distances and into new regions; fostering the development of transportation and supply networks and the expansion of government into new regions; displacing indigenous groups and established systems of trade and governance; and capturing the national and international interest and imagination of contemporaries and future generations.81 The same process occurred over and over again during the second half of the nineteenth century, from California, Colorado, and the

Black Hills in the United States, to the Fraser River and Cariboo rushes in British Columbia, to

Australia and New Zealand. Each time, thousands of miners exhausted placer deposits in a short period of time, leaving behind a radically different region than they found.82 The Alaska-Yukon borderlands were no different. The chaos and excitement of the Klondike dramatically accelerated the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Within only a few short years, the

U.S. Army and the Mounted Police, along with transportation companies, other government

81 Mouat, “After California: Later Gold Rushes of the Pacific Basin,” 264. 82 Ibid. See also: Kenneth N. Owens, ed., Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002); Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush; Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998); Daniel P. Marshall, “American Miner-Soldiers at War with the Nlaka’pamux of the Canadian West,” in Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies, ed. John M. Findlay and Ken S. Coates (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 31-79.

officials, businessmen, and miners, transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless region to a borderlands space that allowed national governments to control their respective territories and merchants and miners to cross the border when they needed to.

The main actors in this story - the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army - have also been, like the Klondike itself, shaped by the idea of Canadian-American difference in both the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands and the North American West. In Canada, the narrative of the Mounted

Police protecting Canada from American lawlessness is intrinsically tied to comparisons with the

U.S. Army. While the army fought years of expensive and violent Indian wars to secure the

American West for settlement, the benevolent hand of the Mounted Police ensured fair treatment for indigenous people and the orderly settlement of the Canadian West - or so the traditional narrative tells. Historians of both the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army have attempted to explain this dichotomy. In one of the first academic histories of the Mounted Police, R.C.

Macleod argued that the combination of police, judicial, and administrative powers put the police in a better position to maintain law and order than other jurisdictions.83 U.S. Army historian

Robert M. Utley cited the sparsity of settlement in the Canadian West as a key factor in preventing Indian wars and violence between indigenous people and settlers.84 In a 1977 article comparing the role of the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army in the Canadian and American

Wests, Canadian historian Desmond Morton concluded that “perhaps the Mounted Police

83 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905. 84 Quoted in Desmond Morton, “Cavalry or Police: Keeping the Peace on Two Adjacent Frontiers, 1870-1900,” Journal of Canadian Studies 12, no. 1 (1977): 27.

deserved only incidental credit for avoiding Indian wars in Canada,” suggesting that the relative peace of the Canadian West was largely the result of factors outside of police control.85

In one of the few studies that directly compares the roles of the Mounted Police and the

U.S. Army in the Yukon and Alaska, anthropologist Thomas Stone - adopting the Alaska-Yukon border as the traditional dividing line between frontier violence and order - suggested that the authoritarian presence of the Mounted Police in the Yukon, carefully asserting Canadian sovereignty and strictly maintaining Canadian style law and order, was responsible for the lack lawlessness on the Canadian side of the border. The U.S. Army, Stone argued, “did much less to foster the kind of ‘rule of law’ in Nome and Skagway that the NWMP so effectively engendered in Dawson and the Klondike.”86 The reluctance of the U.S. Army to become involved in the day- to-day lives of the miners and assert the kind of control that the Mounted Police used in the

Yukon resulted in more violence on the Alaska side of the border, particularly in Skagway and the later Nome rush. In other words, the Mounted Police succeeded in maintaining law and order in the Yukon, and the U.S. Army failed to do so in Alaska.

In an important 2012 book, however, American historian Catherine Holder Spude convincingly argued that the idea that Skagway was a lawless town during the gold rush, an idea so engrained in academic and non-academic histories, is pure myth. The tale of a town tormented by gangster Soapy Smith and his followers, only to be saved by vigilante Frank Reid, who shot and killed Smith on a Skagway wharf on 8 July 1898, is, Spude argued, a “tale of regeneration through violence and of community redemption that reinforces the myth of the American

85 Ibid., 34. When “examined closely,” Morton found more similarities than differences between the police and the army: “both were shabbily treated by government; both could furnish ample evidence of human frailty; both lived at odds with the surrounding communities, white and Indian.” Ibid., 35. 86 Thomas Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902 (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), 278.

frontier.”87 This tale was repeatedly retold and reinforced by town boosters, writers, and historians, but, as Spude demonstrated, has little basis in fact. Far from being a lawless town, by the end of 1897 Skagway had established the early mechanisms of law and order. The

Committee of One Hundred and One, consisting of most of the town’s prominent citizens, had appointed a city council to protect the rights of land owners and a safety committee “to act as a voluntary police force,” and a U.S. Commissioner had been appointed to handle judicial matters.88 And far from being a violent murderer and gangster, Soapy Smith was “a man who had done nothing worse than cheat petty gamblers going to and from the Klondike.”89

While Mounted Police Superintendent Sam Steele described Skagway as “the roughest place in the world” in his 1915 memoir - writing that “robbery and murder were daily occurrences” - Spude noted that Skagway and Dyea and the Yukon had similar murder rates in

1898, with eight murders in each jurisdiction.90 The correspondence files of Mounted Police

Inspector Z.T. Wood, U.S. Army Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, and Captain R.J. Yeatman, all stationed at Skagway and Dyea in 1898, make little mention of lawlessness in either town, and in fact describe them as peaceful. The existence of petty gamblers and swindlers would certainly not have been tolerated by the Mounted Police in a Canadian town, but, Spude concluded, “it seems likely that Steele, like the Canadian Pierre Berton forty-three years later, was interested in inventing a contrast between American and Canadian ways of enforcing the law, to make himself and his organization appear more ‘civilized.’”91

87 Catherine Holder Spude, “That Fiend in Hell:” Soapy Smith in Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 2. 88 Ibid., 20-34, quote from 27. 89 Ibid., 115. See also: William R. Hunt, North of 53: The Wild Days of the Alaska-Yukon Mining Frontier, 1870- 1914 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1974), 42. 90 Spude, “That Fiend in Hell:” Soapy Smith in Legend, 107-109, quote from 146. 91 Ibid., 147. Recently, borderlands historians and western Canadian historians have also suggested that unfavourable comparisons between the police and the army in the West are based on myth. They highlight the

Moving beyond the idea of Skagway and Dyea as lawless towns reveals that the Mounted

Police and the U.S. Army in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had much in common. Both groups were sent to Alaska and the Yukon to establish government control over their respective territories. Both put substantial efforts into maintaining law and order in the region. Both played significant roles in the development of transportation routes to the gold fields. And both played an important role in the development of a functional Alaska-Yukon border.

While few studies directly compare the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police, historians have described both groups as multi-purpose forces. In addition to normal police duties - enforcing law and order, protecting indigenous people, and providing assistance to settlers - the

Mounted Police were responsible for all manner of important judicial and administrative tasks in the Canadian West and the Yukon. They acted as justices of the peace and ran the courts in the prairies. They helped negotiate with indigenous groups to sign many of the treaties and settle on reserves. They enforced land policy and helped facilitate the construction of the Canadian Pacific

Railway, while also helping other government departments carry out their duties.92 The U.S.

Army was not only responsible for fighting Indian Wars in the American West, but constructing posts, roads, and bridges, making improvements to rivers and harbours, exploration, scientific missions, protecting national parks, public relief work, and even regular law enforcement and

similarities between the Canadian and American Wests, as the title of the edited collection One West, Two Myths puts succinctly. Robert Thacker and C.L. Higham, eds., One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004); Robert Thacker and C.L. Higham, eds., One West, Two Myths II: Essays on Comparison (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006). 92 The best history of the Mounted Police in the Canadian West remains: Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905. See also: Hugh A. Dempsey, ed., Men in Scarlet (Calgary: McClelland and Stewart West, 1974); William Beahan and S.W. Horrall, Red Coats on the Prairies: The North-West Mounted Police, 1886-1900 (Regina: Centax Books, 1998); William M. Baker, ed., The Mounted Police and Prairie Society (Regina: University of Regina Press, 1998). Mounted Police historiography is discussed by: William M. Baker, “Twenty-Five Years After: Mounted Police Historiography since the 1973-74 Centennial of the Force,” in The Mounted Police and Prairie Society, ed. William M. Baker (Regina: University of Regina Press, 1998), vii-xvi; Michael Dawson, The Mountie From Dime Novel to Disney (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1998).

police work.93 American historian Michael L. Tate wrote in 2007 that the multipurpose U.S.

Army “served as the right arm of the federal government in its nineteenth-century expansionist endeavors.”94 Tate’s statement is also very much true of the Mounted Police. Both groups were the main agents of their respective government, multipurpose forces that could carry out a wide range of tasks, assist other government departments, and collect information for their governments. If there was a task that needed to be done, and no other government department on hand that could do it, the American and Canadian governments turned to the U.S Army and the

Mounted Police. Indeed, it was in this capacity that both groups were sent to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, with both groups intent on carrying out the duties they performed in the West.

The Mounted Police and the U.S. Army also both arrived in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands during times of transition. Between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the American public did not hold the U.S.

Army in high regard. As the army’s duties shifted from the Civil War to running a military government in the reconstruction south, fighting Indian wars, and performing the role of a multipurpose force in the West, Americans became distrustful of the standing army and critical of large military appropriations and the army’s peacetime role.95 Even though the army continued to

93 Michael L. Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007); Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). Earlier works on the multipurpose army include: Francis Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815-1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953); Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword and the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 (New York: Macmillan, 1969); Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1861 (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1890 (New York: Macmillan, 1974). 94 Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898, 99. 95 On the 1865-1898 army see: Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898; Joseph G. Dawson, The Late 19th Century U.S. Army, 1865-1898: A Research Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990); Jack D. Foner, The United States Soldier Between Two Wars: Army Life and Reforms, 1865-1898 (New York: Humanities Press, 1970).

do important work, as historian Joseph G. Dawson writes, “operating on limited budgets with under strength units using second-rate equipment, the Army was not a national priority from

1865 to 1898.”96 The start of the Spanish-American War in April 1898 marked the beginning of a transition from, in historian Marvin Fletcher’s words, “an inefficient, disorganized poorly armed Indian constabulary to an efficient, organized partially armed force.”97 The conflict in

Cuba and the Philippines showed that the army had major organizational and operational problems, and convinced the War Department to introduce proposals to reform and professionalize the army in December 1899. The army continued to be a multi-purpose force, performing the role of policeman, building public works projects, suppressing strikes and providing relief, but expanded into new international theatres, ran military governments in Cuba and the Philippines, and became a combat ready fighting force, held in high regard by the

American public.98 With the Spanish American War beginning just months after the start of the rush to the Klondike, the U.S. Army largely continued to act as a frontier army in the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands, exploring new territories, providing relief to starving miners, constructing roads, and policing mining towns, but adopted some aspects of the new army, particularly organizing a military government in Alaska.

The Klondike gold rush also found the Mounted Police during a time of transition in the

Canadian West. The police had been sent to the West in 1873 to take control of the region for the

Canadian government and prepare for settlement. By the end of the nineteenth century, with that process largely completed, many assumed that the Mounted Police would be eliminated and local law enforcement would take over. The decision to send the police to the Yukon in 1894 marked

96 Dawson, The Late 19th Century U.S. Army, 1865-1898: A Research Guide, 2. 97 Marvin Fletcher, The Peacetime Army, 1900-1941: A Research Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 10. 98 On the 1898-1941 army see: Fletcher, The Peacetime Army, 1900-1941: A Research Guide; Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

the beginning of a new northern mission for the force, a new frontier to police and a reason for the forces’ continued existence. Like the U.S. Army, the police also began a new international role during the gold rush, with a substantial number of Mounted Police volunteering for

Canada’s contingent for the South African War in late 1899. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Mounted Police participation in the Klondike gold rush and the South African War, along with demands from prairie towns and cities alike to continue to be policed by the force, had convinced the Canadian government that the police still had a role to play.99

As the primary agents of their respective governments in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police had much in common. But there are several important differences to the way they operated in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. First, as Thomas Stone suggests, the U.S. Army did do “much less to foster the kind of ‘rule of law’ in Nome and

Skagway that the NWMP so effectively engendered in Dawson and the Klondike.”100 Unlike the

Mounted Police, who were the only government agents in the Yukon responsible for enforcing law and order, the army was only one arm of the American political system that could maintain order in Alaska. In Skagway, for example, the Committee of One Hundred and One quickly established a safety committee to help police the town shortly after it was founded, and the

Office of the U.S. Commissioner had appointed a U.S. Commissioner and deputy marshal. In other Alaska towns, miners’ meetings, town councils, and deputy marshals worked to maintain law and order. With these systems in place, the army was reluctant to become involved in simple law enforcement unless there was a serious threat to public safety. The Mounted Police and the

Canadian government were unwilling to give local groups such control over law enforcement in

99 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 57-63. 100 Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902, 278.

the Yukon, particularly as miners’ meetings and town councils could be dominated by American miners committed to frontier self-government.

Second, the Canadian government was much more concerned with protecting Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon than the American government was in Alaska. Anxiety over the still- remembered threats of manifest destiny, the Fenian raids, American whiskey traders in the

Canadian West, and the events of the Fraser River gold rush convinced the Canadian government, and especially Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton, that the Americans were interested in the Yukon. William R. Morrison writes that “the nineteenth-century territorial quarrels between Canada and the United States, and especially the Oregon crisis of 1846, stood as examples to apprehensive Canadians of what could happen if Americans were permitted to occupy a disputed area unchallenged.”101 The large number of American citizens who rushed to the Klondike sparked fears that they would establish frontier governments and eventually declare independence and cede the Yukon to the United States. The Canadian government responded by quickly increasing the number of Mounted Police in the Yukon to strictly maintain law and order and establishing a territorial government that would ensure that the Klondike remained

Canadian. These fears led the Canadian government to send the Mounted Police to the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes to begin enforcing the location of the border in January 1898.

Without the same existential fears, the American government was much less concerned with the border situation and willing to let the international negotiations play out. The American government was concerned with maintaining order and providing assistance to Americans in the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands, which meant that it was only concerned with the border if it received complaints from the public.

101 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 16.

While the Canadian government was deeply concerned with maintaining Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon, however, those fears were not necessarily shared by the Mounted

Police. Indeed, the police were much more concerned with rushing men and supplies to the

Yukon, establishing safe and reliable transportation routes, and building posts than with establishing the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. The Mounted Police also realized that the threat of unrest among angry American miners was much more of a threat to Canadian sovereignty than a less rigidly enforced border. If ignoring the border made it easier to do their job, the police in the Yukon were more than willing to do so. Of course, when the government ordered them to the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes to collect customs duties and enforce the location of the border, the police did so without question. Likewise, the U.S. Army in

Alaska also had a different understanding of local conditions than the American government in

Washington. When the War Department decided to send the Alaska relief expedition over the

Chilkoot and White passes during the winter of 1897-1898, for example, it only took a brief survey of Skagway and Dyea by Major L.H. Rucker to determine that the army had no hope of successfully sending supplies to the interior before spring. Unsurprisingly, being on the ground, talking with local groups, and gathering up-to-date information gave the Mounted Police and the

U.S. Army a different, more realistic understanding of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands than their respective governments.102

102 This dichotomy between federal governments and their agents on the ground has been discussed by borderlands historians. Benjamin Johnson noted in 2006 that borderlands historians have tended to portray national governments in negative terms, imposing national policies on people in borderlands regions with different interests, wants and needs. More recently, Kelly Lytle Hernandez’s history of the U.S. Border Patrol in the U.S. Mexico borderlands showed that the agents of federal governments in borderlands regions face a “constant struggle” to translate government policy to fit the reality of borderlands regions. Environmental historian Jonathan Peyton also addressed the differences between governments and people and agents on the ground in his 2017 discussion of the all- Canadian route to the Yukon via Teslin trail, arguing that the Canadian government’s plan to construct a railway on the route clashed with the reality encountered by those who actually tried to travel on the route. Benjamin H. Johnson, “Problems and Prospects in North American Borderlands History,” History Compass 4, no. 1 (2006): 186-

This dynamic challenges traditional narratives of the gold rush that would have the police and the army at odds and suggests a more complicated understanding of American-Canadian difference in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Mounted Police historian R.C. Macleod notes that in the late nineteenth century “crime was very closely tied to class and to popular concepts of class.”103 Crime was linked to lower-class individuals, who were expected to break the law, while the middle and upper classes were viewed as respectable and law abiding. These ideas were compounded by the class structures of the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army. Both groups recruited officers from the upper classes of Canadian and American society, who had a distinct sense of the social hierarchy and their place in it. Constables and enlisted men were selected from lower classes, but in both groups they too were instilled with a sense of their place in the social hierarchy when compared to lower class criminals. For the Mounted Police, these ideas of class structure were combined with their suspicion of Americans, a suspicion shared by many

English Canadians in the late nineteenth century. The stereotypical American, loud, unruly, and lawless, was linked to lower class criminals. So when the Mounted Police in the Yukon referred to the threat of the lawless “American element” in the Klondike, they referred to the lower class criminal type, whom the police despised, not the middle and upper class members of the mining and business elite and not the U.S. Army, with whom the police were happy to cooperate.104 This sense of the lower class criminal and the respectable middle and upper class elite was also shared

92; Hernandez, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol, quote from 4; Peyton, “Moving through the Margins: The ‘All-Canadian’ Route to the Klondike and the Strange Experience of the Teslin Trail.” 103 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 127. 104 This dynamic also helps explain why the Mounted Police and Canadian government were alarmed by the large “American” population in the Klondike even though only 40% of the population was American born.

by the U.S. Army, who were more likely to refer to the “lawless element” in both Alaska and the

Yukon.105

While there are few examples of the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police in the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands directly cooperating with each other, their interactions were always friendly and cordial. U.S. Army officers often referred to what the Mounted Police were doing in the

Yukon as examples to follow in their own policies in Alaska. While the Mounted Police believed too much in the superiority of the Canadian system of law and order and governance to admit to following an American example, they looked at the U.S. Army in Alaska as fellow law enforcement authorities, equally committed to the development of the region and maintaining law and order.

The roles of the American and Canadian governments in Alaska and the Yukon have also been a topic of discussion among historians of the region. The myth of the American frontier has long stressed freedom and individuality, downplaying the role of the federal government in the

American West and Alaska. Historians and politicians who support the Alaska neglect thesis trace the American government’s neglect of Alaska to the role of the U.S. Army during the

Klondike and argue that they failed to meet the needs of Alaskans.106 The Mounted Police, on the other hand, have served as an important symbol for the active role that the Canadian government took in the Canadian West and the Yukon. In a 1987 article, historian Ken S. Coates challenged this dichotomy, arguing that the American government took on a much more active role in

Alaska than the Canadian government in the Yukon. While the Canadian government initially

105 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 73-88; Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865- 1898, 59-66. 106 Cole, “The History of a History: The Making of Jeannette Paddock Nichols’s Alaska.”

rushed to protect its sovereignty during the gold rush by sending the Mounted Police to the

Yukon and establishing a territorial government, in the long run, the Canadian government neglected the needs of Yukoners, in favour of spending as little as possible.107 The American government, on the other hand, influenced by progressive politics, made a sustained effort to assist in the development of Alaska during the early twentieth century, building transportation routes, passing legislation to promote resource development, and granting Alaska self-rule and eventually statehood.108

The Klondike gold rush and the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands occurred during one of the periods when both the Canadian and American governments were heavily involved in Yukon and Alaska affairs, but there were important differences. The role of the

Mounted Police in protecting Canadian sovereignty made the force a much more visible symbol of government authority in the Yukon. The concern with which the Canadian government greeted the gold rush led to a much more urgent response, with the Mounted Police taking an active role in enforcing law and order and the government moving to secure the territory as fast as possible. The American government took a more long-term approach, spending much of 1897 and 1898 gathering information on the needs of Alaskans, before developing a plan to have the army take control of the upper Yukon and foster the development of the region in 1899 and

1900, with much of the major legislation coming in the early twentieth century.109

107 Coates, William R. Morrison, and others have argued elsewhere that the Canadian government has only been active in the Canadian north when they perceived Canadian sovereignty to be under threat. Morrison, “Eagle Over the Arctic: Americans in the Canadian North, 1867-1985”; Coates et al., Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North. 108 Coates, “Controlling the Periphery: The Territorial Administration of the Yukon and Alaska, 1867-1959.” 109 Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 214-219.

Previous histories of the role of the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army in Alaska and the

Yukon have focused on what the police and the army did in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - rather than how the police and the army carried out their duties. Historians of the U.S. Army in

Alaska in particular have focused on the multitude of tasks that the army carried during the

Klondike gold rush. In the most extensive history of the U.S. Army in Alaska, non-academic historian Lyman L. Woodman argued that “the U.S. Army has played many roles since its

Alaskan duty began in 1867,” from exploration and mapping and enforcing law and order to buildings trails, roads and bridges and providing aid to the destitute and the sick.110 In order to show the wide range of duties performed by the Mounted Police in the Yukon - in fulfilling their role as metropolitan agents of the Canadian government - William R. Morrison divided his history of the police in the Yukon into thematic sections - law enforcement, civil service duties, and political roles. Explaining his approach, Morrison wrote that “the challenge faced by the police in the Yukon became so complex that it is better examined topically. Moreover, chronology can be confusing and deceptive. Although the police responded quickly to any challenge, the end result - the official reaction to the situation - was often considerably delayed.”111 While this approach allowed Morrison to provide a wide overview of police activities in the Yukon, it is exactly in the “confusing and deceptive” aspects of chronology, the differences between what the police did and the response from the government - how the

110 Lyman L. Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917 (Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1996), xv. The role of the U.S. Army in Alaska is also discussed by: Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska; Elva Scott, Northern Army: Army Activities in the Upper Yukon (Eagle: Eagle Historical Society, 1986); Jonathan M. Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988). So focused have historians of the U.S. Army in Alaska been on discussing what the army did, that they often overlook placing the role of the army in Alaska into an analytical framework or explaining the importance of the army’s role in the development of Alaska. 111 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 30. The role of the Mounted Police in the Yukon is also discussed by: Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870- 1914; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon.

Mounted Police carried out their duties in the Yukon, and how the U.S. Army carried out their duties in Alaska - that reveal the complexities of the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands during the Klondike gold rush.

What the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police did in the Yukon and Alaska is the subject of the government reports and documents that make up many of sources used by Morrison,

Woodman, and others. How the police and the army performed their duties in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands is often the subject of the correspondence files between Mounted Police and U.S.

Army officers stationed in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and their respective superiors in

Washington and Ottawa. The following chapters deeply examine these files, going over in detail the conversations that were at the root of the development of government policy in Alaska and the Yukon and the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The intricate details of these conversations and discussions reveal the complexities and contradictions of a region undergoing borderlands transformation. They reveal that the police and the army were often working with incomplete information from a variety of reputable and questionable sources, both from within and without the government. They show that both groups were often overwhelmed by the changing situation on the ground as they struggled to respond the best they could, while also maintaining their respective positions in the region. They show how ideas and perceptions of the

Alaska-Yukon border and the Alaska-Yukon borderlands changed and developed over the course of the gold rush. They reveal that police and army officers, both in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and the south, often disagreed with the policies of their respective governments, or had different understandings of how they should be implemented. The remaking of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands can be seen through the way the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police discuss, critique, and weigh, often at length, the information they gathered, developing transportation

routes, establishing government control, and locating the Alaska-Yukon border in real time, and as local conditions continuously changed. In short, written correspondence mattered in the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

The subjects of the correspondence files come from the upper ranks of the officer classes of both groups, from the Mounted Police and U.S. Army commanders in Washington and

Ottawa, Mounted Police Comptroller Frederick White and Adjutant Generals of the U.S. Army

Samuel Breck and H.C. Corbin, to army and police officers stationed in the Yukon and Alaska,

Captain (later Major) P.H. Ray, Inspector (later Superintendent) Z.T. Wood, and others. They corresponded with a wide variety of individuals, both Canadian and American, from subordinate officers, enlisted men, and constables, government officials, and transportation company officials to greedy entrepreneurs looking for government contracts and individual miners. The correspondence and conversations between these groups follow the developments that transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

While the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army were the main government agents of their respective governments in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and they, along with the groups they corresponded with, played a key role in the transformation of the region from a borderless to a bordered region, their records have some blind spots. Although indigenous peoples, women, and other minority groups played a role in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and were impacted by the changes it brought to the region, they are not often discussed in the records of the army and the police.112 The absence of indigenous peoples, given the importance of the

112 On the impact of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands on indigenous groups see: Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005), 213-242. The relationship between the Mounted Police and upper-class women in Dawson City and women who worked as prostitutes and in dancing halls is discussed by Porsild, but is beyond the scope of

relationship between the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army and indigenous groups in the North

American West, is somewhat surprising.113 Historian Charlene Porsild and others have shown that indigenous groups participated in a number of roles that were essential to the gold rush, from

Tlingit packers transporting supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes, to Koyukon pilots working as river guides on the Yukon River, to Hwëch’in hunters supplying food to miners at

Dawson City.114 The Mounted Police and the U.S. Army certainly benefited from the work of indigenous packers, hunters, and guides, but they receive few mentions in correspondence files, usually a simple reference to an “Indian” packer or guide. Early in the remaking of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands, references to indigenous packers and guides appear more frequently, but as more transportation companies and non-indigenous packers arrived in the region, indigenous people were pushed out of many of these services. The indigenous presence in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands did not disappear, but government documents increasingly disregarded the region’s indigenous population. In the absence of open conflict with indigenous groups, it seems that the army and the police were preoccupied with other duties.115

The U.S. Army and Mounted Police correspondence files reveal that the Klondike gold rush transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region. Words on the page show that the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - the expansion of the

the records examined for this study. Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike. 113 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905; Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898. Acceptable terms for indigenous peoples differ between Canada and the United States. “Native American” and “American Indian” are generally used in the United States, and “Indigenous,” “Aboriginal,” and “First Nations” in Canada. This dissertation uses “Indigenous” in most cases. Individual group names are used when applicable, while the language in quotes is left in the original. 114 Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike, 24-59. See also: Ken S. Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). 115 Mounted Police views on indigenous people in the Yukon are discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 58-60. See also: Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973.

Canadian and American governments into Alaska and the Yukon, the development of transportation systems and industrial networks in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, and the negotiation and development of a functional Alaska-Yukon border - required gathering substantial information on local conditions and cooperation and negotiation between governments, government agencies, merchants, transportation companies, miners, and other groups. These developments occurred within the chaos of the gold rush, which saw the Mounted

Police and the U.S. Army as caught up in the rush to the Klondike as any miner - a story traced in the following chapters.

Chapter 1 begins in 1894, when the Canadian government first received information that suggested a government presence was needed in the Yukon. In January 1894, Mounted Police

Comptroller Fred White began gathering information from Ottawa on the possibility of sending the police to the Yukon. By May 1894, the government decided to send Inspector Charles

Constantine and Staff Sergeant Charles Brown to the Fortymile, a small mining town at the confluence of the Yukon River and Fortymile Creek, to investigate local conditions. White,

Constantine, and Brown’s investigations revealed that, in the absence of government control, the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands had developed as a borderless region. All three had to deal with an established borderlands system that ignored the Alaska-Yukon border and was governed by transportation companies and frontier self-government. The 1894 investigations showed that if the Mounted Police and the Canadian government wanted to establish government control in the

Yukon and enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border, they would have to remake the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands into a bordered region.

After reviewing Constantine’s report, the Canadian government decided to take the first steps to remake the Alaska-Yukon borderlands by sending Constantine and a detachment of 20 police to the Yukon to establish a permanent presence at Fortymile in 1895. Chapter 2 examines the efforts of Mounted Police in the Yukon to establish Canadian government control at

Fortymile and begin to enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border at Miller and Glacier

Creeks, tributaries of Sixtymile Creek, from 1895 to 1896. This process was much more drawn- out than historians have assumed, with the police continuing to focus on gathering information and the need to survey the location of the 141st meridian before the border could be enforced. On the eve of the Klondike gold rush, the police had made some progress in establishing government control of the Yukon and the location of the Alaska-Yukon border near Fortymile, but the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands very much remained a borderless region.

Chapter 3 begins with the discovery of gold in the Klondike in August 1896. During the first months after the discovery, communication problems prevented the Mounted Police from organizing an effective response. When the arrival of the gold-laden steamers Excelsior and

Portland in San Francisco and Seattle in July 1897 kicked off the rush to the Klondike, the

Mounted Police and the Canadian government responded quickly by taking the next steps to remake the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - rushing supplies and reinforcement to the Yukon to maintain Canadian control of the Klondike and developing a transportation route for police supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes. In their hurry to meet the needs of the coming rush of miners, the Mounted Police became caught up in the Klondike gold rush, carrying their own supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes, battling poor weather and treacherous trail conditions, and largely ignoring the location of the Alaska-Yukon border in the Lynn Canal region as they focused on developing transportation routes and bringing in men and supplies.

Unable to comprehend the effort required just to send reinforcements and supplies to the

Klondike, the Canadian government was more concerned with protecting Canadian sovereignty and appearing to effectively respond to the gold rush. This dichotomy led to the development of different understandings of the situation in the Yukon between the Mounted Police and the

Canadian government in Ottawa.

The response of the U.S. Army to the arrival of the Excelsior and Portland is discussed in

Chapter 4. After hearing reports of unrest in the gold fields, the War Department decided to send

Captain P.H. Ray and Lieutenant W.P. Richardson on a fact-finding mission to Alaska in August

1897 to investigate. Ray and Richardson’s arrival in the upper Yukon River coincided with the beginnings of a reported food shortage in Dawson City during the winter of 1897-1898, which brought hundreds of desperate miners from the Klondike, in Canadian territory, to Circle City and Fort Yukon, in American territory. Their search for food forced the pair to begin establishing

American government control of the Alaska side of the border to maintain control of the situation. During his time in Alaska, Captain Ray developed a detailed set of recommendations to establish a military government on the American side of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and explore new all-American transportation routes to the region, based on his observations of local conditions and his response to the food shortage. Ray’s plan would become the basis of the U.S.

Army’s response to the Klondike gold rush and the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands in 1898 and 1899.

When news of the food shortage at Dawson reached Washington and Ottawa, it set off a flurried response by the American and Canadian governments, cumulating in the American

Alaska Relief Expedition - tasked with delivering relief supplies to Dawson City during the winter of 1897-1898. Chapter 5 traces the origins of the relief expedition, the efforts of the U.S.

Army to gather information and organize the expedition, and the negotiations between the

American and Canadian governments to coordinate the expedition. In the end, the Alaska Relief

Expedition failed to get off the ground, in part because the American government learned that the food shortage was not as serious as first thought, and in part because both the American and

Canadian governments lacked the kind of local knowledge that was required to organize the expedition - the kind of knowledge that the Mounted Police in the Yukon and the U.S. Army in

Alaska had gathered on the ground, but was not understood by their respective government. The discussion around the Alaska Relief Expedition also occurred during a transition period in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The American government was more than willing to continue to treat the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a borderless region, organizing a relief expedition that would deliver assistance to miners in Canadian territory. The Canadian government, on the other hand, was more concerned about the implications of such an expedition for Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon than providing relief to miners and was reluctant to allow the expedition to pass through Canadian territory, even though government officials concluded they could not refuse.

During the same time, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government began taking the first steps to establish the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes. Chapter 6 discusses the impact of American and Canadian efforts to collect customs duties from miners traveling from Skagway and Dyea to the interior on the development of the

Alaska-Yukon border. A number of customs disputes convinced the Canadian government to order the Mounted Police to the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes to enforce the location of a temporary border and collect customs duties. The move marked an important turning point in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, beginning a period of local

negotiation and adjustment. While the move was greeted with anger by many of the miners and merchants in the region, neither the American customs officials or the U.S. Army in the Lynn

Canal region were willing to challenge the Canadian move. During the following months, the

Mounted Police, the U.S. Army, and American and Canadian customs officials adjusted to the new reality of a bordered region at the head of the Lynn Canal.

Chapter 7 returns to the development of transportation routes to the Klondike. During the fall of 1897, the Mounted Police had largely relied on their own efforts to transport supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes. During the 1898 season, transportation companies did much to improve the Yukon transportation system, building wagon roads, tramlines, and a railway on the

Chilkoot and White passes and developing steamer routes on Lake Bennett and the Yukon river, allowing the Mounted Police to make contracts with many of these companies, rather than transporting supplies themselves. Despite their efforts to enforce the location of the border for miners crossing the Chilkoot and White passes, the developing transportation system allowed the

Mounted Police to establish a borderlands transportation network to ship supplies across a functional Alaska-Yukon border.

The U.S. Army also turned to the development of transportation routes during the 1898 season. In response to Ray’s recommendations that the army explore Cook’s Inlet and the

Copper River valley in search of all-American transportation routes to the Tanana and Yukon

Rivers, the War Department organized three exploring expeditions to gather information on potential routes. Chapter 8 explores the organization, development, and activities of these expeditions - Expedition 1, eventually cancelled, to travel through Canadian territory and establish a post on the American side of the Yukon River, Expedition 2, to explore the Copper

River valley, and Expedition 3, to explore the country north and east of Cook’s Inlet, following

the Sushitna (Susitna) and Matanuska Rivers. The search for an all-American route to the Yukon

River was driven by the developing Alaska-Yukon border. With the Mounted Police and the

Canadian government enforcing customs regulations on the Chilkoot and White passes,

American miners could no longer rely on traveling through Canadian territory without interference. An all-American route to the Yukon from Cook’s Inlet or the Copper River would allow miners to bypass Canadian territory altogether and direct commercial activity in the region to Americans. Expeditions 2 and 3 succeeded in identifying a number of possible all-American routes to the Yukon, but substantial effort remained to develop them into reliable transportation routes.

Chapter 9 traces the continued evolution of the Mounted Police transportation system from Skagway and Dyea to the interior during the 1899 season. The police began the year stringing together a number of individual transportation companies to ship police supplies between various points along the Skagway and Dyea routes, leaving the police with the labour and trouble of transferring freight between companies themselves. The completion of the White

Pass and Yukon Route railway from Skagway to Bennett became the solution to these transportation problems and allowed the Mounted Police to fully develop a borderlands transportation system. The railway made traffic agreements with other transportations companies operating on the Skagway and Dyea routes, allowing the Mounted Police and other shippers to drop bonded supplies off in Vancouver or other west coast ports and simply pick them up at their destination without having to transfer freight themselves. The completion of the Railway also disrupted the uneasy peace between the Mounted Police and U.S. Customs officials and led to another round of negotiations on the Alaska-Yukon border that helped create a stable system that

allowed the Mounted Police and U.S. Customs to enforce the location of the border and goods to flow smoothly across the border.

At the same time, the U.S. Army decided to move ahead with Ray’s recommendations to build an all-American route to the Yukon and establish a military government in north Alaska.

The Copper River Exploring Expedition was organized to pick up where Expedition 2 left off and construct an all-American military road from Port Valdez, on Prince William Sound, to the

Tanana River and Eagle City, on the Yukon River. The Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition was also organized to continue the exploration work of Expedition 3. In May 1899, the War

Department ordered Captain (now Major) Ray to take command of the new military District of

North Alaska, with headquarters at Eagle City, and establish a military government on the Yukon

River. The creation of the District of North Alaska marked an important step in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. With the U.S. Army in control of the Alaska side of the border and the Mounted Police in control of the Yukon, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had been transformed into a bordered region. The decision to construct an all-American route to the

Yukon also marked a rejection of the borderlands transportation network the Mounted Police had established with the White Pass and Yukon Route. With the Alaska-Yukon border established, the U.S. Army was unwilling to rely on a railway that passed through Canadian territory to reach

Alaska and worked towards developing their own route to North Alaska.

When Constantine and Brown arrived at Fortymile in 1894, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region. By the end of 1899, the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police had remade the Alaska-Yukon borderlands into a bordered region. The location of the Alaska-

Yukon border had been determined. The police and the army were firmly in control of their respective sides of the border. The U.S. Army was well on its way to constructing an all-

American route to the Yukon to bypass Canadian territory and the Mounted Police had established a borderlands transportation system at the Lynn Canal border that allowed goods to freely flow across a functional Alaska-Yukon border. By the end of 1899, the U.S. Army, the

Mounted Police, and local miners, merchants, and transportation companies had succeeded in developing a functional Alaska-Yukon borderlands that allowed the Canadian and American governments to control their respective sides of the border and local groups to transport goods and supplies across the border - just as international negotiations over the location of the border were beginning at the Joint High Commission. By the time international negotiators began considering the Alaska boundary question, the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was already complete.

Chapter 1 The Mounted Police and the Borderless Region, 1894

On 22 June 1894, North-West Mounted Police Inspector Charles Constantine and Staff

Sergeant Charles Brown boarded a steamer in Victoria. Traveling to Dyea, the pair climbed the

Chilkoot Pass and descended the Yukon River by boat to Fortymile. After about a month at

Fortymile, Constantine returned south in September 1894 to report to the government, leaving

Brown to spend the winter collecting customs duties.

Responding to the pleas of William Bompas, the Bishop of Selkirk - who informed the government in May 1893 of “the danger to which the Indians of this neighbourhood are now exposed” due to “the free and open manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor” 1 - Constantine and Brown’s expedition was part of a fact-finding mission to determine if the Yukon required a

Canadian government presence. In 1894, the Mounted Police knew very little about the Yukon.

Constantine and Brown’s trip to Fortymile was the first time a Canadian government official had visited the Yukon since a Geological Survey of Canada expedition led by George M. Dawson had explored the Stikine, Liard (Yukon), and Porcupine rivers in 1887-1888, and no one in the government was particularly knowledgeable about the region.2 Six months before the pair left

Victoria, Mounted Police Comptroller Frederick White in Ottawa began gathering as much information as possible on the Yukon, before sending Constantine and Brown to assess the situation on the ground and determining the necessary steps the government should take.3

1 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, W.C. Bompas to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, May 1893. 2 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 65-68. The Dawson Expedition is discussed further in Chapter 2. 3 Constantine and Brown’s expedition is discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 10-21; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 69–75; Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870-1914, 98-99; Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902, 121-124, 131-132; Allen A. Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon (Sidney: Gray’s Publishing, 1976), 251-265; Michael Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994), 69-71, 88-90.

This chapter examines the state of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands on the eve of the

Klondike gold rush, as revealed by the activities of the Mounted Police as they first arrived in the

Yukon, setting the stage for the transformation of the region from a borderless to a bordered region. White’s inquiries and Constantine and Brown’s expedition revealed that the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands had developed as a borderless region. In the absence of government control and a clearly defined location of the 141st meridian border, the fur traders, miners, and merchants who entered the region since the 1830s largely ignored the Alaska-Yukon border and developed fur trade posts and mining communities that connected the region together. Gathering information about this borderless region - the first step in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - was the primary concern of the Mounted Police in 1894. The police had to determine if the local miners or indigenous people required the assistance or supervision of the government. They had to learn how to travel to the region and transport the supplies they needed to maintain a presence in such a distant and isolated territory. Constantine and Brown had to travel to the Yukon, explore the region, and report back to the government, before the police could proceed with establishing a permanent position in the Yukon.

Since the Mounted Police were gathering information about a borderless region, they had to fit into the borderland system that had been established by the miners, merchants, and fur traders who had settled in the region. They gathered information from people with knowledge of the region, regardless of who they were and how reliable they were. They worked closely with officials from the North American Transportation and Trading Company, an American company run by a former Montana whiskey trader, because there were no Canadian companies operating in the region. The police were also forced to deal with the established system of government,

miners’ meetings and frontier self-government, until they could begin enforcing Canadian style law and order.

This chapter begins by tracing the development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a borderless region up to 1894, before examining White’s efforts to verify Bompas’s assessment of the situation at Fortymile, and gather information on available transportation routes to the Yukon and potential customs revenue for the government. After the decision was made to send

Constantine and Brown to the Yukon, the final preparations for the expedition, Constantine’s report to the government, and Brown’s observations during the winter of 1894-1895 will be discussed. The information gathered by White, Constantine, and Brown in 1894, their reports to the Canadian government, and their interactions with people who had visited or lived and worked in the region, revealed that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region. At the end of the year, the Mounted Police had gathered enough information to decide whether or not they wanted to establish Canadian government control in the region and begin the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands to a bordered region.

The Development of the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands to 1894

In the years before 1894, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had largely developed as a borderless region. The first Euro-North Americans to enter the Yukon River basin were Russian

American Company fur traders, who began venturing up the Yukon River in the 1830s, establishing posts at Ikogmiut (Russian Mission) in 1836 and Nulato in 1839, but the Russian presence on the Yukon River was never substantial, with Russian settlement largely limited to the coast.4 The Hudson’s Bay Company moved into the upper Yukon River basin in the 1840s, venturing west of the Mackenzie River and across the Richardson Mountains, following the

4 On the Russian presence on the Yukon River see: Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 28-29.

Porcupine and Pelly rivers to the Yukon. Alexander Hunter Murray founded Fort Youcon near the confluence of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers in 1846 - a place thought to have been on the

Russian side of the 141st meridian. Despite the occasional threat of Russian expulsion, the

Hudson’s Bay Company inserted itself into local indigenous trading networks and competed with

Russian fur traders working from the Siberian coast.5

Following the American purchase of Alaska in 1867, the San Francisco based Alaska

Commercial Company stepped into the Yukon River trade, establishing the first American post at Nuklukayet (Tanana Station), at the junction of the Yukon and Tanana Rivers, in 1869. In the same year, U.S. Army Captain Charles W. Raymond traveled up the Yukon River and determined that Fort Youcon was on the American side of the 141st meridian. In one of the few instances of the Alaska-Yukon border being enforced before the Klondike gold rush, Raymond expelled the Hudson’s Bay Company from Fort Youcon. Retreating up the Porcupine River, the

Hudson’s Bay Company continued to successfully trade in the upper Yukon, and across the border, until 1893, when the company pulled out of the region due to dwindling returns. By

1875, Francois Mercier, Leroy “Jack” McQuesten, Arthur Harper, Alfred Mayo, and other

Alaska Commercial Company fur traders had established posts on both sides of the 141st meridian, at Tanana Station, Fort Yukon, Fort Reliance (near future Dawson City), and other places and were successfully competing with Hudson’s Bay Company posts on the upper Yukon

River.6

5 For more on the Hudson’s Bay Company presence in the Yukon see: Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 17-41; Ken S. Coates, “Furs Along the Yukon: Hudson’s Bay Company-Native Trade in the Yukon River Basin, 1830-1893,” BC Studies 55, no. 3 (1982): 50-78; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 29-31, 37-42; Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon. 6 On the Alaska Commercial Company’s fur trade see: Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 55-75; Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897.

The first miners arrived in the upper Yukon in the early 1870s. Following the trail from

California north to the Fraser River area and the Cariboo country in British Columbia, these early miners were convinced that there was gold in the Yukon and small amounts kept them interested.

In 1885 a streak worth several thousand dollars on the Stewart River led to a small rush of 200 miners into the region. The following year, a large gold discovery was made on the Fortymile

River and the majority of miners in the northwest flocked to the new town of Fortymile, located at the confluence of the Fortymile River and the Yukon River, just inside Canadian territory. The mini-rush to the Stewart River convinced McQuesten that there was money to be made selling goods and supplies to the miners. The Alaska Commercial Company began selling mining supplies at Fort Nelson on the Stewart River in 1886, under the name McQuesten, Harper &

Mayo, and later that year the company moved its operation to Fortymile. During the winter of

1893-1894, gold was again discovered in the Birch Creek region, on the Alaska side of the 141st meridian, which led to a rush of miners from Fortymile to the new town of Circle City in the spring of 1894 and convinced both the ACCo. and NAT&TCo. to open stores there. With no government control in the region and mining districts and communities that crossed the Alaska-

Yukon border along the 141st meridian, miners and traders moved freely across the border with little or no thought.7

In the absence of government control, miners relied on miners’ meetings - informal gatherings of miners that set laws and regulations - to govern the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

When a mining community was established, all the miners in the area would organize a miners’ meeting to create and enforce laws and regulations by majority vote. Laws governing the size of

7 On mining/prospecting in the Yukon before the Klondike see: Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon; Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon; Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon.

claims, how often they had to be worked, how many claims a person could have, and punishments for criminal matters were all dealt with by the miners’ themselves.8 As the most prominent citizens of many mining communities, transportation company officials often played a significant role in frontier self-governance in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

By 1894 Fortymile had grown to a town of about 150 buildings and a population of around 600 people, before the rush to Circle City. The town, located on the southeast side of the junction of the Yukon and Fortymile rivers, was dominated by the Alaska Commercial

Company’s large, two-story trading post and store. Other services included two bakeries, two restaurants, two blacksmiths, a hardware store, a barber shop, a theatre, and no less than six saloons. Located on the opposite side of the Fortymile River, on the banks of the Yukon River, was Fort Cudahy, the trading post and warehouse of the upstart North American Transportation and Trading Company. The new company was founded in 1892 by former Montana whiskey trader and veteran of the Canada-United States borderlands John J. Healy, who after leaving

Montana had operated a store at Dyea since 1886. Fort Cudahy had been constructed in 1893 and the NAT&TCo. was determined to break the ACCo.’s hold on the Yukon trade. Social activities at Fortymile included drinking, gambling, and dancing, which, naturally, caught the attention of local missionaries like Bishop Bompas.9

William Carpenter Bompas arrived in Fortymile in 1892. Born in London, England,

Bompas began his service with the Church Missionary Society in northern Canada in 1865. He was named Bishop of Athabasca in 1874 and Bishop of Selkirk in 1891. As a missionary,

Bompas spent most of his time traveling between remote indigenous villages on the Yukon and

8 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 60-63, 75; Thomas Stone, “The Mounties as Vigilantes: Perceptions of Community and the Transformation of Law in the Yukon, 1885-1897,” Law & Society Review 14, no. 1 (1979): 95-101. 9 Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon, 71-80.

Porcupine Rivers.10 The arrival of miners in the Yukon greatly alarmed Bompas. He established

Buxton Mission, located on Mission Island, just south of Fortymile, in 1892, where he could keep an eye on the situation and protect the local indigenous population from liquor and “a seemingly insatiable appetite for Native women” on the miners’ part.11 His “irascible and combative personality” did not make for a good relationship with the miners, or with the indigenous population for that matter, but it did not stop him from writing to the Canadian government about what were, in his mind, dire conditions at Fortymile.12

In May 1893, Bompas wrote to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Thomas Mayne

Daly informing him that around 210 miners had spent the winter at Fortymile and “there had been drunkenness of whites and Indians together with much danger of the use of firearms.”13 He suggested that “arrangements should be made without a moment’s delay” to send a force of police to the Yukon to address the situation.14 In a second letter on 9 December 1893, Bompas wrote that “the whiskey trade and manufacture are on a large scale” at Fortymile, with “many thousands dollars’ worth of whiskey” being imported from British Columbia.15 “About 6 drinking and gambling saloons are now running,” he continued, “whiskey manufacture from sugar and molasses is also carried on unchecked on a large scale, in this the Indians are also involved.”16 He warned that “already one nearly fatal brawl had occurred among the Whites with

10 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 69-71. Also H.A. Cody, An Apostle of the North: Memoirs of the Right Reverend William Carpenter Bompas, D.D. (London: Seeley, 1908). 11 Coates and Morrison, 70. 12 Ibid., 69. 13 Bompas to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, May 1893. 14 Ibid. 15 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Bompas to Minister of the Interior, 9 December 1893. 16 Ibid.

dangerous stabbing and shooting, I fear a repetition of this and should Indians become involved, the consequences may be yet more serious.”17

On 29 November 1893, the Privy Council met to discuss Bompas’ first letter. Daly recommended that because it would require traveling through several hundred miles of

“unexplored and almost unknown country,” at great expense, “the Dominion Government should not assume the responsibility of sending a small body of men so far away from supplies or re- enforcements until they have carefully considered the general question of the government of the enormous area of territory lying North of the Electoral Districts of Saskatchewan and Alberta.”18

The Privy Council agreed that Bompas should be informed that “it is not possible to promise the immediate dispatch of either a Magistrate or a force of Police to the Upper Yukon District,” but

Daly instructed Mounted Police Comptroller Frederick White to begin investigating the possibility of sending the Mounted Police to the Yukon.19

Gathering Information

As Comptroller of the Mounted Police, stationed in Ottawa, White was responsible for the financial administration of the force and aligning police priorities with Canadian government policy, leaving the actual day-to-day operation of the force to the Commissioner of the Mounted

Police. Investigating the possibility of sending police to the Yukon, however, was outside the force’s existing mandate to police the North-West Territories, and the file was assigned to White himself. Frederick White began his civil service career as a clerk in the Justice Department, where he was made clerk responsible for the Mounted Police in 1876. He became Prime Minister

17 Ibid. 18 LAC, Orders-in-Council Database, 1893-2344, “St. John’s Mission, Upper Yukon River - Pres. [President] of Council submits appln. [application] of the Bishop of Selkirk for police protection at,” 29 November 1893, http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/orders-council/Pages/orders-in-council.aspx. 19 Ibid.

John A. Macdonald’s private secretary in 1878, a position he held until Macdonald’s death in

1891. When the Macdonald government created the position of Comptroller in 1880, in a move to reduce the workload of the Commissioner, Macdonald appointed White to the position, where he would remain until 1912.20 Straight-backed, stern, with white hair and mustache, White was described by historian R.C. Macleod as “the ideal civil servant… highly efficient, tactful, discreet, courteous but firm with his subordinates, friendly but distant with his equals, and never presumptuous with his superiors.”21 Once the main rush to the Klondike began in July 1897, the government attached so much importance to maintaining law and order and protecting Canadian sovereignty that White was given control of all police operations in the Yukon, so the force could be directly controlled from Ottawa. White served as an important go-between for the

Mounted Police and the Canadian government, balancing the needs of the force while ensuring that the government’s policy goals were always implemented - making him a key player in the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

White began investigating the possibility of sending a force to the Yukon in January

1894. His initial investigation had two primary concerns, verifying Bompas’ assessment of the conditions at Fortymile and determining how to send a force of police to the Yukon - how the police would travel there, where they would stay during their investigation, and how much it would cost the government. In both cases, White turned to George M. Dawson of the Geological

Survey of Canada, who, as the leader of the Dawson Expedition in 1887-1888, was one of the last government officials to travel to the Yukon and one of the few reliable sources of information on the Yukon in the Canadian government. Dawson turned to Captain William

20 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 41-42; Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 189. 21 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 41.

Moore, a member of the Ogilvie party of the Dawson Expedition (which had surveyed the location of the Alaska-Yukon border on the Yukon River and Fortymile River) and the Gauvreau

Expedition (which surveyed the Stikine River and White Pass for the British Columbia government in 1892), who had maintained his connections in the far northwest.22

The initial concern of Moore’s letters to Dawson, which Dawson forwarded to White, was transportation. In his May 1893 letter, Bompas had recommended that the force of police be sent to Victoria and charter a steamer to St. Michael, “where are now several Steamers, large and small running on the Yukon River” that could bring the police to Fortymile.23 The Yukon River route was the most established route to the Yukon in 1894, and was the route used by the Alaska

Commercial Company to operate its fur trade posts and mining supply stores. Ocean-going steamers transported passengers and freight from the west coast to St. Michael, a small coastal settlement located north of the mouth of the Yukon River. At St. Michael, passengers and freight were transferred to smaller river steamers for the journey up the Yukon River to Fortymile,

Circle City, and other settlements in the upper Yukon. While the Yukon River route appeared to

Bompas as the easiest and most established route to the Yukon, Moore suggested to Dawson that

“I think all the available routes can now be safely reduced to two for practical purposes” the

Taku route and the White Pass route.24

The Taku route went from the head of Taku Inlet, up the Taku River to the head of canoe navigation, and then overland to Lake Teslin and the headwaters of the Yukon River (see Figure

1). Moore, however, did not describe the Taku route as very practical. He wrote that Taku Inlet was “always more or less encumbered with icebergs, and when the prevailing winds - which are

22 Roy Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1987), 19-35; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 66. 23 Bompas to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, May 1893. 24 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, George M. Dawson to Frederick White, 13 January 1894.

from the southwest - blow strongly, the upper end is packed with ice and rendered totally impassable to even steamers. There are no sheltered harbours, and absolutely no safe anchorages free from icebergs.”25 He noted that the distance to the head of canoe navigation on the Taku

River was fifty-five miles, but “this might as well be termed ‘Land Travel.’”26 He explained, “I have known miners with a little outfit of about a ton, who have gone up there in the middle of

May and have had to unload their canoes in order to get over the shallow bars.”27 The overland route to Lake Teslin also appeared to be tough going. “I have interviewed at least 30 miners who have been over that Portage, and they agree unanimously upon the existence of extensive swamps which compose a large part of the 79 miles to Teslin Lake,” Moore wrote.28

He described the White Pass route - which went from Skagway Bay, at the head of the

Lynn Canal, over White Pass, to the headwaters of the Yukon River at Lake Bennett - more favourably. Skagway Bay, Moore wrote, “is accessible at all seasons of the year… and has accommodation for at least eight or ten vessels to swing at their moorings and possesses the very best holding-ground for anchorage.”29 Additionally, he noted that “the entire distance from

Skagway Bay to the navigable waters of the Yukon is about 35 miles.”30 The first four or five miles of the trail “is plain,” he wrote, “there being but few swamps encountered, and the underbrush being very thick.”31 The next eight miles passed through a canyon and would require heavy work to build a road or trail, Moore thought. “The remaining four miles is also ordinary trail-building, and a portion of it through the Pass is quite level, while there is not over 80 feet of

25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, “White Pass Route,” Moore to Dawson, 5 January 1894. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid.

the down grade to Summit Lake.”32 He continued, “from Summit Lake, the valley opens out at once, and a trail, a wagon road, or a tramway, could be constructed quite easily.”33

Of the two routes, then, Moore clearly favoured the White Pass route. What he failed to mention, however, was that he had an interest in the Canadian government selecting the White

Pass route. Moore owned land at the head of Skagway Bay and was very interested in seeing the pass developed. He had explored the White Pass route in 1887 for William Ogilvie during the

Dawson Expedition and became convinced that the pass would become the gateway to the

Yukon if gold was discovered in the interior. After finishing his work for Ogilvie, Moore and his son Bernard returned to Skagway Bay and marked off 160 acres of land and 600 feet of shore for a wharf.34 Moore had spent the next seven years pushing for the development of White Pass.

When N. Belleau Gauvreau’s 1892 report on his expedition to the Stikine River described the

White Pass route as impractical, Moore wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia

Edgar Dewdney criticizing Gauvreau’s conclusions as “in many respects, erroneous and misleading.”35 According to author Roy Minter, Moore would also meet with Ernest Edward

Billinghurst and Charles Herbert Wilkinson, representatives of the British Columbia

Development Association, a forerunner of the White Pass and Yukon Railway Company, to push for the development of White Pass in December 1895 and January 1896.36

On 10 February 1894, Moore also wrote to Dawson and C.N. Wallace, the Comptroller of

Customs in Ottawa (who he presumably confused with White), asking for a job if the government moved into the Yukon. “Although advanced in years, I am still capable of packing

32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 25-33. 35 Quoted in Ibid., 35. 36 Ibid., 34-45.

my hundred lbs and doing my share of the work,” he wrote to Wallace, “besides, I possess a great deal of knowledge about the section in question, and this information would doubtless prove of value of your Department.”37 “I am open for a mail contract… or exploration – anything remunerative,” he wrote to Dawson.38

White certainly had reasons to question Moore’s assessment of the best route to send police to the Yukon. As Dawson noted in his 13 January letter to White, “Capt. Moore is evidently working hard in supporting his projects.”39 “Ogilvie knows him well, however, and could tell you more about him than I can,” Dawson concluded.40 Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney described Moore to Inspector Constantine in June 1894 as “meddlesome” and “with a black mailing tendency.”41 He noted, tellingly, that Moore “is in the Chilkoot working on a gov’t road, which work has been given him to keep him quiet.”42 Moore also appeared to contradict his earlier assessment in a 10 February 1894 letter to Dawson, where he noted that “goods enter that country via three different routes, viz: Taku, Chilkat, and Chilkoot.”43 The Chilkoot Pass “is high and perilous, but all, or nearly all miners and prospectors go through it, because it is the shortest.

Traders go through the Chilkat, almost invariably.”44 Moore continued, “the Taku route is not used much, for, out of about 2,000 miners who have ventured into the Yukon country, only 35 have gone via Taku, and of these very few indeed have returned that way.”45

The Chilkoot route, soon to be made famous during the Klondike, began at Dyea, a small trading post at the head of the Lynn Canal, crossing the Chilkoot Pass, before descending to Lake

37 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Moore to C.N. Wallace, 10 February 1894. 38 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Moore to Dawson 2, 10 February 1894. 39 Dawson to White, 13 January 1894. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Charles Constantine to White, 20 June 1894. 43 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Moore to Dawson, 10 February 1894. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

Lindeman, from where it was possible to float down the Yukon River to Fortymile. The Lynn

Canal trails, the Chilkoot, White, and Chilkat routes, were initially controlled by the Chilkat

Tlingit, who used the trails to establish economic, social, and cultural connections with their

Athapaskan trading partners in the interior and guarded access to the Chilkoot, White, and

Chilkat passes.46 The first Euro-North American to cross the Lynn Canal route was a George

Holt, who crossed the Chilkoot or White Pass in 1874 or 1875 without the permission of the

Tlingit. In 1880, U.S. Navy Captain L.A. Beardslee negotiated permission from the Tlingit to send an exploratory party over that Chilkoot Pass. The Chilkat worked as packers for the expedition, and after that it seems that miners were able to freely use the Chilkoot route.47 The

Chilkat route remained closed until the early 1890s, when trader Jack Dalton opened a trail into the interior. The Dalton Trail went over the less steep Chilkat Pass, overland 342 miles to Fort

Selkirk on the Yukon River.48

Moore’s financial conflicts of interest (and Bompas’s missionary interests) reveal that, as the Mounted Police gathered information and established a presence in the Yukon, they had to work with people who often had their own ends in mind. The police knew little about the Yukon and they had to rely on the few people who did have knowledge of the remote and isolated region, until they could verify the information themselves at least. The police would continue to deal with the competing interests of local individuals and companies seeking to take advantage of the Canadian government’s development of the Yukon. White, then, does not appear to have taken Moore’s route suggestions too seriously, at least for the moment. Moore did, however,

46 On the importance of the Lynn Canal trails to the Tlingit see: Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination. 47 Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 69. 48 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun, 95-96; Michael Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives (Madeira Park, British Columbia: Harbour Publishing, 2012), 69-73. For a history of the Dalton Trail see Gates.

provide other information that helped White verify Bompas’s assessment and identify a possible revenue source for the government.

On the issue of liquor, the principal concern of Bompas’ appeals to the government,

Moore sent Dawson a letter from his son Ben Moore, which Dawson forwarded to White on 7

April.49 “There is a big quantity of liquor going into the Yukon this way,” Ben Moore wrote from Dyea, “there is about 750 gallons of liquor buried in the snow at Sheep camp and scattered along the road.”50 The American customs officer from Juneau had visited the Chilkoot three days before, but he was only able to seize “a could [sic] of cases of brandy that happened to be left lying on the ice down at the landing.”51 The rest had been “sleighed out on the road a piece and buried in the snow” so the customs office could not see them.52 Dawson had also sent White a report from English explorer and author Warburton Pike, who had traveled to the Yukon in

August 1893, confirming Bompas’s assessment.53 “With regard to the liquor,” Pike reported, “a good deal of whiskey has been brought into the country and last year was being sold to Indians in some quantity. The miners however put a stop to the traffic and have threatened any other offenders with summary punishment.”54 In general, he continued, “Hoochinoo [a locally made spirit] (I am doubtful about the spelling) is distilled freely at 40-mile and sold openly over a bar for 50 cents a drink.”55

49 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Dawson to White, 7 April 1894. 50 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Ben Moore to Moore, 18 March 1894. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Dawson to White, 29 January 1894. On Pike see: R.H. Cockburn, “Warburton Pike (1861-1915),” Arctic 38, no. 2 (1985): 152-53. 54 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Warburton Pike to Dawson, 19 January 1894. 55 Ibid.

Dawson’s letters from Moore also informed White of a possible advantage of sending

Mounted Police to the Yukon - potential customs revenue. On 19 February, Dawson sent White another letter from Moore, who noted that “there have already been a number of miners landed at

Juneau on their way to the Yukon” and that “goods enter that country via three different routes, viz: Taku, Chilkat, and Chilkoot.”56 He continued “it must also be borne in mind that the goods going in via Chilkat are entirely American, and are disposed of in Canadian territory, and that the goods going in by the Chilkoot are American as well. Miners are already starting from Victoria, and are purchasing all their supplies in the United States.”57 Moore informed Dawson in another letter that “as the matter stands, small batches of men are leaving here twice a month for that country [the Yukon], purchasing their supplies in the U.S.”58 Because many people had wintered in the Yukon, he wrote, “great quantities of goods are now passing over Chilkoot portage, while the number of traders, selling American goods exclusively, is greatly in excess of last year.”59

Moore also wrote to Dawson on 31 March that the Alaska Commercial Company “Steamer

Arctic is now some 350 miles up the river, waiting for the ice to break to continue her journey to

40 and 60 mile Creek, and she is loaded with Mdse [merchandise].”60 He suggested that the

Customs Department could collect duties on these goods.

In addition to the information provided by Dawson, White also spoke with C.H.

Hamilton, the Assistant Manager of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, who was in Ottawa sometime in April and provided White with much information on Yukon

56 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Dawson to White, 19 February 1894; Moore to Dawson, 10 February 1894. 57 Ibid. 58 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Moore to Dawson, 3 March 1894. 59 Ibid. 60 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Moore to Dawson, 31 March 1894. The Arctic is also mentioned in: Dawson to White, 6 March 1894; Dawson to White, 13 March 1894.

conditions.61 The origin of the relationship between the Mounted Police and J.J. Healy’s

NAT&TCo. is not clear. William Bompas wrote in his 9 December 1893 letter that Healy had offered to make arrangements for Mounted Police to travel to the Yukon and to provide board and lodging at Fort Cudahy.62 After founding the North American Transportation and Trading

Company in 1892 and entering the Yukon River trade, Healy established his base at Fort

Cudahy, just outside of Fortymile. William R. Hunt argues that Healy disliked the “abuses of liquor” at Fortymile and, after being ordered by a miners’ meeting to pay his maid’s wages for a year and for her return to the south, he wrote to his old friend from Montana, Mounted Police

Superintendent Samuel B. Steele, asking for help.63 This letter does not appear in White’s correspondence.

In any case, the information provided by Hamilton included travel distances, the distance from Victoria to the mouth of the Yukon River (3000 miles), the distance from the mouth of the

Yukon River to Fort Cudahy (1650 miles), and the distance from Dyea to Fort Cudahy (650 miles). He noted that the upper Yukon River was generally ice free from about 20 May to 20

September. The NAT&TCo steamer to St. Michael would leave around 20 June and arrive around 20 July, and the river steamer trip to Fort Cudahy was about twenty days. There were three steamers operating on the Yukon River, the NAT&TCo’s P.B. Weare (500 tons), and the

Alaska Commercial Company’s Arctic (250 tons) and Yukon (50 tons). Hamilton also reported that there was fortnightly steamer service from Seattle to Juneau and regular steamers to Chilkat

61 Hamilton in Ottawa from LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White, “Memo re the proposed dispatch of Mounted Police to the Yukon District,” 2 May 1894. 62 Bompas to Minister of the Interior, 9 December 1893. 63 William R. Hunt, Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader (Missoula: Mountain Press, 1993), 148. This story has been cited by a number of authors, but the source appears to be Allen A. Wright’s Prelude to Bonanza, but he provides no source. See: Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon, 256–57; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 60; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 88. It is possible that Wright confused the incident with Healy’s maid with a later miners’ meeting witnessed by Charles Brown in January 1895, see below.

during the summer, if the police chose the Chilkoot route. The NAT&TCo passenger rate from

Vancouver to Cudahy was $200, with 200 lbs. of baggage, the freight rate was $100 per ton. The

NAT&TCo would provide rations to the police for $1.00 per day and board and quarters for

$2.50 per day, and the company would advance money to the police for salaries and other payments. He noted that there were two sawmills at Cudahy and the coldest day the past winter was minus 77 degrees Fahrenheit. And he provided a list of prices at Cudahy: team of dogs

($125), sleigh ($15), flour ($8 per bag), bans ($12), lumber (8 to 10 cents per foot), and nails (15 cents per lb.).64

Hamilton also wrote to Minister of the Interior T.H. Daly on 10 April 1894 with a

“statement of facts concerning the state of affairs in the Yukon.”65 He told Daly that “there is a great amount of whiskey smuggling and illicit manufacturing going at Fort Cudahy and other points in the North West Territories, both by Whites and Indians.”66 “Our country is settling up very fast now,” he wrote, “we are very much in need of a Collector of Customs, Collector of

Internal Revenue, and some Police protection.”67 Hamilton assured Daly that the government would make more than enough revenue from customs duties alone to pay for the cost of sending the Mounted Police there.68 He also suggested that the government “license the liquor traffic there among the Whites,” which would make it easy to “break up the illicit business, and keep it from the Indians.”69 “I cannot urge on you too strongly the necessity of immediate action in this matter,” he wrote, noting that the United States was going to send its own customs offices there

64 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, “Review of information obtained from Mr. C.H. Hamilton,” No Date. 65 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, C.H. Hamilton to T.H. Daly, 10 April 1894. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.

soon.70 “Any delay in sending police in there, may result seriously, as there is no telling what time the Indians will break out if they are allowed an unlimited amount of liquor, as they have at present,” he concluded.71

By April 1894, White had gathered as much information as he could, without sending an agent to the Yukon. He had identified five possible routes for a force of police to travel to the

Yukon, the Yukon River route, the Taku Route, the White Pass route, the Chilkat route, and the

Chilkoot Pass route (see Figure 1). He had received information that much liquor was being imported into the region, and identified a possible source of government revenue, customs duties.

White appears to have given the information provided by Hamilton more value than Moore’s, despite Healy’s past as an American whiskey trader. In his final report, White settled on the routes suggested by the NAT&TCo, likely because it was easier and more cost effective to work with an established company than to travel via undeveloped trails.72

Although White’s report makes no mention of it, his investigation also showed that the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region. William Bompas, William Moore, and other people White spoke to drew attention to the uncertainty around the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. Moore suggested on 5 January that the White Pass route was ideally suited to accommodating bonded warehouses at Skagway Bay, which would allow Canadian goods to pass through American territory duty free.73 “You will also doubtless bear in mind that Skagway

Bay may very probably belong to Canada, but that the completion of the boundary survey is too

70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 White, “Memo re the proposed dispatch of Mounted Police to the Yukon District,” 2 May 1894. 73 Moore to Dawson, 5 January 1894.

long a time to wait for these suggested facilities,” he wrote.74 Bompas addressed the issue of the border in his May 1893 letter, noting that “the British have treaty rights of passage on the Yukon

River, and I cannot suppose that any attempt would be made to exclude the Police,” in reference to the 1871 Treaty of Washington, which gave British subjects the right of navigation on the

American portions of the Yukon, Porcupine, and Stikine Rivers.75 He also wrote that “the question as to how far it would be possible to open up direct communication hither from British

Columbia, without entering American Territory is so far as I am aware still unsolved,” noting that “the old Hudson Bay Co. [Stikine] route is certainly still available.”76 In his November 1893 report to the Privy Council, Minister of the Interior Daly had warned that “the doubt respecting the location of the boundary line should also cause hesitation, as an attempt to enforce Canadian law might at any moment result in International complications.”77

None of these issues, however, seem to have caught the attention of White and the

Mounted Police. White was aware that Fortymile was in Canadian territory and “in the vicinity of the International Boundary,” a fact he acknowledged may require Constantine’s careful attention.78 But, other than that, White did not appear particularly concerned with the location of the Alaska-Yukon border, and he certainly gave no second thought to sending Constantine and

Brown through American territory to reach the Yukon. Since the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region and the vast majority of people in the region simply ignored the existence of the border, it made little difference to White’s assessment of the situation and his plan to send the

74 Ibid. 75 Bompas to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, May 1893. 4103 76 Ibid. 77 “St. John’s Mission, Upper Yukon River - Pres. [President] of Council submits appln. [application] of the Bishop of Selkirk for police protection at,” 29 November 1893. 78 White to Herchmer, 26 May 1894.

police to the Yukon to investigate. The police would need more information about local conditions before they could address the uncertainty of the border issue.

On 18 April 1894, the Minister of the Interior submitted a report to the Privy Council, along with the letters he had received from Hamilton and Bompas, recommending that “in the interests of peace and good government of that portion of Canada, in the interests also of the public revenue,” it was “highly desirable that immediate provision be made” to regulate the liquor traffic, administer mining lands, and collect customs duties in the Yukon, “for the protection of the Indians, and for the administration of justice generally.”79 Daly requested that the government send a Mounted Police inspector, “vested with full power and authority to act for all the Departments of the Government,” and five men to take possession of the Yukon.80

These provisions reveal the concerns of the Canadian government in the Yukon in 1894.

In the Canadian west, the government considered protecting indigenous people from the evils of western settlement and particularly the ill-effects of open liquor trade as one of the primary responsibilities of the Mounted Police - and key to preventing unrest between indigenous people and settlers.81 William R. Morrison also notes that actions like taking possession of territory, administering mining regulations, and collecting customs duties were recognized assertions of symbolic sovereignty. Sending a small force of Mounted Police to the Yukon to collect customs duties and mining fees was an easy way for the government to enforce its sovereignty while also making a small profit to pay for their efforts.82

White submitted his final report to the Privy Council on 2 May 1894, addressing the practical considerations of Daly’s request. “There two routes by which men can be sent to this

79 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, “Report of a Committee of the Honourable the Privy Council,” 26 May 1894. 80 White, “Memo re the proposed dispatch of Mounted Police to the Yukon District,” 2 May 1894. 81 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 21, 32. 82 Morrison, “Eagle Over the Arctic: Americans in the Canadian North, 1867-1985,” 170.

District,” he wrote.83 On the Yukon River route, White noted that “an Ocean Steamer will leave

Seattle about the 15th June and should arrive at the mouth of the Yukon about the 5th July. The

River boat which connects with thus Steamer at the mouth of the Yukon should reach Fort

Selkirk about the end of July.”84 The North American Transportation and Trading Company

“quoted a special rate of $200.00 per man from Vancouver, or Victoria, to Fort Cudahy which is

240 miles North of Fort Selkirk, each passenger being allowed 200 lbs of baggage.”85 On the

Chilkoot route, White noted that “if the Police were sent in via Chilkat, they would have to purchase or build a boat to carry them to Fort Selkirk,” at a cost not likely to exceed that of sending “half a dozen men” via the Yukon River route.86

In either case, White wrote, “equipment, baggage, and supplies” should be sent via the

Yukon River route, “for which the freight rates from Vancouver to Fort Selkirk would be on a basis of $100.00 per ton.”87 He also wrote that the North American Transportation and Trading

Company had agreed to supply provisions for the police at a rate of $1.00 per day or supply

“lodge, board and ration” for $2.50 per day.88 “This undoubtedly would be the most satisfactory arrangement for the first year,” he noted.89

White agreed with Daly’s report that the Mounted Police inspector should have clear authority to enforce mining, customs, and liquor regulations in the Yukon. He warned that “no mining regulations of any kind have been enforced in the past, and it may be found that some miners have taken up larger areas than the law permits,” but he suggested that the limit on the size of claims or the number of claims a miner could own not be applied to the Yukon because of

83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid.

“the shortness of the working season.”90 On customs, he wrote that “the Officer should be instructed whether he is to examine the books of Traders and collect duties on goods imported into Canadian territory during recent years, or collect only on importations arriving after he has established himself in the District.”91 He concluded that “with the exception of Customs duties, the revenue from this District will be very small.”92 In addition to the cost of maintaining the police presence, “it would cost between $15,000 and $20,000 per annum to establish a mail service” for the region.93

“Personally the undersigned would be glad to see the usefulness of the Mounted Police extended to the opening up and development of this distant region,” White wrote.94 But he was unsure if a Mounted Police officer and five men “would be met in a proper spirit by between three and four hundred miners who hitherto have respected no laws except those of their own making.”95 He asked, “would it not be better in the first place to dispatch an official, who might, if deemed desirable, be an Officer of the Mounted Police, but styled and known as Agent of the

Dominion Government, with one carefully selected man to act as his clerk.”96 The two men could proceed to the Yukon “via the Chilkat [Chilkoot] route” and collect customs duties for the season, while also “discreetly, but without risk of complications,” investigate the conditions of the district and report to the government at the end of the season, “thus placing the Government in possession of information upon which further development of a system of government in the

Yukon District could be based.”97

90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.

White elaborated in a letter to W.B. Ives, President of the Privy Council, that accompanied his report: “if the Mounted Police formally take possession of the District, will not the Government be committed to keep them there permanently, and, if necessary, increase their strength, no matter what the cost may be?”98 A single government agent, on the other hand,

“could… quietly feel the pulse of the miners and ascertain whether they would be disposed to support him in carrying out the criminal and other laws of the country.”99 He concluded, “the

Government would thus be free to leave the miners to squabble amongst themselves, or send in a larger force next Spring.”100

The government decided to follow White’s plan. White wrote to Mounted Police

Commissioner L.W. Herchmer that “the decision to ‘proceed slowly’ is a relief to me. I did not like at all the idea of half a dozen Police, with the reputation of the Force in their hands, being sent so far away from reinforcements without our having more information than we now possess of the country and the people.”101 In an Order-in-Council dated 26 May 1894, the President of the Privy Council W.B. Ives officially recommended following White’s plan to the Governor

General.102 White selected Inspector Charles Constantine for the job, and on 14 May, he had

Constantine recalled to Regina from his post at Moosomin.103

Constantine and Brown Expedition

On 26 May, White formally wrote to Commissioner Herchmer with the plan for the

Yukon.104 As Commissioner of the Mounted Police, Lawrence W. Herchmer was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the police, overseeing general police activities, the distribution of

98 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to W.B. Ives, 2 May 1894. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 14 May 1894 2. 102 “Report of a Committee of the Honourable the Privy Council,” 26 May 1894. 103 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to L.W. Herchmer, 14 May 1894. 104 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 26 May 1894.

the force, and supplying the force. After the government had decided to send Constantine to the

Yukon, it was up to Herchmer, in consultation with White, to organize the details of the trip.

White informed Herchmer that the government had “decided to send an Agent to that District” with the authority to act “for the Customs, Interior, Inland Revenue, and other Departments” and to serve as a justice of the peace and police officer.105 White noted that “the preservation of law and order” in the district would “demand most careful judgment and discretion” on Constantine’s part.106 “The Yukon District has hitherto been without any form of government,” the mining districts were “reported to be in the vicinity of the International Boundary,” and Constantine would be dependent on the support of the locals.107 “In the event of his finding a disposition to resist authority,” White wrote, “he will abstain from excising his Magisterial and Police powers until he has reported the condition of affairs for consideration and instructions of the

Government.”108 Constantine should reach to the Yukon as quickly as possible.109 He should take every opportunity to send reports back to the government. “He will be permitted to exercise his own discretion,” in whether or not to return to Ottawa before the next winter and report personally to the government, White concluded.110

Charles Constantine was born in Bradford, England in 1846. His family immigrated to

Lower Canada in the late 1840s. Constantine served in the Canadian Militia during the Red River

Rebellion in 1870 and the Northwest Rebellion in 1885, and was deputy sheriff for Manitoba from 1873-1880 and Manitoba’s chief of police from 1880-1885, before being commissioned as an inspector in the Mounted Police in 1886. He was stationed in Banff, Regina, and Moosomin

105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid.

before being selected by White for Yukon duty.111 After being recalled to Regina, Constantine traveled to Ottawa to received instructions from White and the other government departments for which he would be acting. He left Ottawa on 26 May with instructions to travel to Chicago to meet with C.H. Hamilton of the North American Transportation and Trading Company and then to return to Moosomin to prepare to leave for the Yukon.112 In Chicago, Constantine learned that

Hamilton had left for Seattle, but he was able to meet with Weare and Cudahy on 28 May.113

Constantine reported that “Mr. Weare tells me Mr. Healy is at Chilkoot and will put me through, of course, on payment, which doubtless will be less expensive than if arranged for by myself.”114

He also noted that “they appear to be very anxious to assist me in every way without any attempt to make it seem a personal favor, or with a view to the future.”115

The North American Transportation and Trading Company’s reasons for working with the Mounted Police were rooted partly in the Company’s position at Fortymile. J.J. Healy and

Portus B. Weare had formed the North American Transportation and Trading Company in March

1892, with the goal of breaking the Alaska Commercial Company’s monopoly on the Yukon trade. In 1894, the NAT&TCo. had been at Fortymile for just one year, and they had not been well received by the miners. The company refused to offer goods on credit, although they did have lower prices.116 The miners did not like Healy, and he did little to make friends - Melody

111 Glenn Wright, “Constantine, Charles,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/constantine_charles_14E.html. 112 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer to White, 17 May 1894; White to Herchmer, 25 May 1894. White to Herchmer, 26 May 1894. 113 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 28 May 1894. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 For more on Healy see: Hunt, Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader; Gordon E. Tolton, Healy’s West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy (Calgary: Heritage House, 2014).

Webb describes Healy as “cranky, stingy, even vindictive.”117 McQuesten, Harper, and Mayo had been trading for the Alaska Commercial Company since the early 1870s, and supplying miners since 1885, and the majority of miners remained loyal to them. In addition to his concerns about liquor at Fortymile, Healy feared that, “as an unpopular trader,” he would be treated unfairly by the miners’ meetings and he needed a way to break the ACC’s monopoly.118

Healy had learned from his time as a trader in Montana and Alaska of the benefits of a close relationship with local governments. At Fort Benton, Healy managed the government’s horse farm on the Sun River Indian reservation, a job which allowed him to trade with the local indigenous population. As the local and general agent of the Fort Benton Record, Healy served as a scout for the U.S. Army in Montana in 1877 and reported on the Nez Perce War. He was also Sheriff of Fort Benton from 1877-1882. At Dyea, Healy was the deputy collector of customs and deputy marshal, a position he used to further his plan to make the Chilkoot Pass a toll road and control traffic into the Yukon.119

From his time as a whiskey trader in the North-West Territories, Healy was also aware of the impact that the Mounted Police could have on a borderlands region. In 1869, Healy and his partner A.B. Hamilton (no relation to C.H. Hamilton) crossed the Canada-US border and built

Fort Hamilton or Fort Whoop-Up at the confluence of the St. Mary’s River and the Oldman

River in present-day southern Alberta. They spent the next four years trading whiskey and other supplies with local indigenous groups, until 1873, when a group of traders got into a gun fight at an indigenous camp near Cypress Hills, resulting in the death of some twenty indigenous people.

The Cypress Hills Massacre was greeted with anger in central Canada, and the Canadian

117 Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 87-88. 118 Hunt, Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader, 148. 119 Ibid.

government formed the North-West Mounted Police to take control of the Canadian West and investigate the incident. After learning that the Mounted Police were coming, Healy decided to leave the Canadian trade in 1874.120

In 1894, Healy hoped that a close relationship with the Mounted Police at Fortymile would allow him to benefit from their arrival this time. Perhaps the Alaska Commercial

Company would be on the losing end, allowing Healy to expand his foothold in the Yukon trade.

So Healy wrote to Sam Steele and had C.H. Hamilton write to Ottawa.

The Mounted Police decision to work with an American trading and transportation company, run by a former Montana whiskey trader, appears slightly more puzzling. As a former

Fort Whoop-Up whiskey trader, Healy characterized what the Mounted Police feared in the

Yukon, a brash American trader intent on subverting the law in Canadian territory and ceding it to the United States. The police should have been equally concerned with Healy’s role as a catalyst for the creation of the force in the first place, although Healy’s past does not seem to have been discussed by anyone in the government in 1894.

The antagonism between the Mounted Police and Montana traders, however, was not as big of an issue as this myth implies. While the arrival of the Mounted Police in the Canadian

West may have driven a few American whiskey traders back across the border, historian William

R. Hunt notes that when the police came to Fort Benton to investigate the Cypress Hills

Massacre in 1875, “the Benton merchants were not hostile to the Mounties and welcomed their efforts to transform the Alberta frontier into a law-abiding community.”121 Hunt further notes that, in exchange for lucrative stock, Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories Edgar

Dewdney awarded Mounted Police provisioning contracts to Fort Benton merchants. In the late

120 Ibid. 121 Ibid., 64.

1870s, half of the Mounted Police appropriation went to purchasing supplies from Montana traders.122

In any case, the Mounted Police had no choice but to work with the North American

Transportation and Trading Company. In the same way that White relied on Bompas and Moore to gather information on the Yukon, despite their conflicts of interest, the police needed to work with people who had knowledge of the Yukon. The NAT&TCo. offer to assist Constantine in crossing the Chilkoot Pass and to supply him with provisions and room and board at Fort Cudahy was too good to pass up. Without it, Constantine would be left traveling to the Yukon with only enough provisions to last the year and with no local knowledge of the journey. Since the police were traveling to a remote borderlands region, they could not pick and choose to work with a

Canadian company over an American one. The NAT&TCo. offered to help the police establish a presence in a remote region about which they knew little, and they readily accepted. For their part, the police seem to have embraced working with Healy and hardly given a thought to working with another American company. In 1894, Mounted Police and the NAT&TCo. needed each other.

In the meantime, White continued to make arrangements for Constantine’s trip from

Ottawa. As he noted in a 29 May letter to Controller of Customs N.C. Wallace, “in order to avoid misunderstanding, I ordered him [Constantine] to Ottawa where he personally received instructions from the several Departments which he will represent. I further instructed that in all matters of routine or relating to returns he would communicate direct with the Department interested,” meaning that White did not have to personally organize Constantine’s non-police

122 Ibid., 73-74.

duties, making any final arrangements easier.123 On 26 May, White was informed that the

Minister of Justice had recommended that Constantine be appointed a Commissioner of Police in the North-West Territories, which would enable Constantine to swear in special constables in the event of an emergency in the Yukon.124 White also forwarded Constantine two copies of the

Geological Survey map of the Yukon, a copy of the statutes under which he was appointed a

Commissioner of Police, a copy of the Magistrate’s Manual, the Order in Council dispatching an agent to the Yukon and the Order in Council appointing Constantine Commissioner of Police, all things that Constantine would need to carry out his special duties.125 Anticipating that

Constantine would be outside the reach of regular mail service in the Yukon, he nonetheless instructed on 1 June: “don’t fail to let me know whether you hear of any way by which letters can be forwarded to you.”126

After leaving Chicago, Constantine returned to Moosomin to make the final arrangements for the journey and to meet his chosen assistant, Staff Sergeant Charles Brown. The pair left for

Victoria on 6 June 1894, arriving in Calgary on 11 June and Victoria on 17 June.127 In Victoria, he finally met with C.H. Hamilton, who traveled from Seattle to meet with Constantine and discuss details of the trip. Constantine also met with the Lieutenant-Governor of British

Columbia Edgar Dewdney.128

123 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to N.C. Wallace, 29 May 1894. 124 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Minister of Justice to Unknown, 26 May 1894; White to Herchmer, 28 May 1894. 125 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Constantine, 30 May 1894; White to Constantine, 1 June 1894; White to Constantine, 5 June 1894. 126 White to Constantine, 1 June 1894. 127 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1895), 70; LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Unknown to White, 6 June 1894; Constantine to White, 11 June 1894; Herchmer to White, 18 June 1894. 128 Constantine to White, 20 June 1894.

Constantine and Brown arrived in Juneau on 26 June.129 Constantine reported to White on

8 August 1894 that they had reached Fort Cudahy the previous afternoon “after a hard and tedious trip of 37 days – 16 of which were lost through bad weather + boat building.”130 His early impression was that Fortymile would need “a lot of straightening out and will take a fairly strong detachment to do it.”131 He continued, “it is run by a whiskey ring who control everything, and has its gents in almost every mining camp in the country.”132 Constantine noted that “there are not many miners in yet. The season has been a bad one, late with high water.”133 Many miners were on the Stewart, White, and Hootalinqua rivers, but the majority were on Millar

Creek and Birch Creek, both thought to be in American territory.134

That was all White heard from Constantine until 4 October 1894, when Herchmer reported that Constantine had arrived in Victoria.135 Constantine send two reports to White on his arrival, explaining the means of his return. He had left Fort Cudahy for St. Michael on 3

September, traveled from St. Michael to Onalaska on the United States Revenue Cutter Bear, and from Onalaska to Esquimalt on the HMS Pheasant.136 “I have left Staff Sergt. Brown at Fort

Cudahy, it being… in my opinion that he should remain,” Constantine wrote.137 White responded simply, “Welcome back. Get report type-written in triplicate and forward soon as possible.”138

129 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 26 June 1894. 130 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 8 August 1894. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 135 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer to White, 4 October 1894. 136 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 3 October 1894 1; Constantine to White, 3 October 1894 2. 137 Constantine to White, 3 October 1894 2. 138 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Constantine, 10 October 1894.

Constantine sent his report, dated 10 October 1894, to Ottawa on 15 October.139 At first glance, Constantine’s report shows just how little the Canadian government knew about the

Yukon. Constantine introduced the government to general information about the Yukon, such as the primary transportation routes to the region, available resources, and issues that would have to be addressed if the government took control of the region. On transportation routes, he reported four available routes to the Yukon. He described the Chilkoot Pass as “the one used,” the Chilkat

Pass “is seldom used except by the Indians,” and the White Pass “is not used by any one.”140 He spent the most time on the Taku route, which he noted “would necessitate a travel over about thirty miles which lies in American territory.”141 Constantine learned that “the Taku River is far from being an ideal highway to the interior,” but “the country… is practicable for pack animals with the expenditure of comparatively little labour in constructing a trail” and that “a trail built from Nah-Kina Junction to Teslin Lake could be kept open for horses five or six months during the year.”142 Constantine also noted that Dawson had suggested in his 1887 report that the Taku route “might be well worth a thorough exploration and survey.”143 Finally, Constantine suggested that tramways could be built on the portages between Lake Lindeman and Lake

Bennett and at Miles Canyon and the White Horse rapids and that rocks in the Five Finger rapids could be removed in the winter to speed navigation on the Yukon River.144

Constantine spent considerable time discussing the region’s natural resources potential, its timber, fisheries, agriculture, fuel, fur, and game resources, noting that the region’s timber had

“no commercial value outside of house logs, firewood and for use in mining operations” and “the

139 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 15 October 1894; Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 70. 140 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 71-72. 141 Ibid., 72. 142 Ibid., 72. 143 Ibid., 72. 144 Ibid., 73.

amount of land fit for cultivation is very limited.”145 Constantine suggested that the future of the country lay in mining. Gold, he wrote, “commences at the boundary and goes through the country in all directions.”146 He noted that “the size of the claims as laid down in the Mining Act are considered too small by the miners, who think that it should be 500 feet up and down the gulch, and from rim to rim in width.”147 Constantine suggested that “I think the case would be met by having the size of the claim changed.”148 He also noted that “what the miners require… is a comparatively easy route by which they can get in their supplies at a reasonable cost in quantities sufficient to last them a year.”149

Constantine also addressed non-commercial aspects of the government taking control of the Yukon, including schools, mail service, and the region’s indigenous population. He noted that there was only one reliable mail service per year on the Alaska Commercial Company steamer.150 He suggested that a government mail service would help open up the country, but he cautioned “this is a matter that requires careful consideration,” given the expense involved.151

Constantine described the local indigenous population as “a lazy, shiftless lot and are contented to hang around the mining camps,” but they were peaceful and friendly to the Canadian government.152

Constantine’s discussion of transportation routes, resources, and other general information served a number of purposes. Since the government knew so little about the Yukon,

145 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 73-74, 79- 80, quotes from 73-74. 146 Ibid., 76. 147 Ibid., 75. 148 Ibid., 76. On 24 December 1894, the Privy Council agreed to increase the size of mining claims in the Yukon from 100 feet to 500 feet and to make the fee to register a claim $15.00. LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Report of the Privy Council to Minister of the Interior, 24 December 1894. 149 Ibid., 72. 150 Ibid., 77. 151 Ibid., 77. 152 Ibid., 77-78.

Constantine had to include enough information about the region for the government to decide if further action was justified. If government officials did decide to establish a permanent presence in the Yukon, they would also have to have access to information on how to get to the region, what future development might look like, and some idea of what it would take establish control of the Yukon. Commercially, Constantine’s report of the region’s natural resource potential would be read by investors inside and outside the government with great interest, and would highlight potential sources of government revenue. Finally, William R. Morrison notes that

Constantine’s report “advised the government on a wide variety of matters, in many of which, such as liquor, mail, mining, Indians, and Americans, may be seen the beginnings of tasks which were to occupy the police over the following six or seven years.”153

Like White’s May 1894 report to the Privy Council, Constantine’s report also demonstrated that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region, outside of government control or influence. Constantine wrote that “the Yukon district has been up to the present time a sort of ‘No man’s’ land, the boundary between Alaska and the North-west Territories not having been defined or officially declared.”154 Dominion Land Surveyor William Ogilvie had surveyed the location of the 141st meridian where it crossed the Yukon River and the Fortymile River in

1888, but he only marked the line “by blazing trees on both sides of the river and marking a few with ‘A’ for Alaska on the west side and ‘C’ for Canada on the east” (see Chapter 2).155 These marks meant little seven years later. All Constantine could report in 1894 was that the gold- bearing creeks on the west side of the Yukon, including Fortymile and Sixtymile creeks, “are

153 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 20. 154 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 80. 155 Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 24.

wholly or partly in Alaska,” but “there is a large difference of opinion as to which side of the line they are on.”156 The gold-bearing creeks on the east side of the Yukon, including the Stewart and

Pelly rivers, “are wholly in the North-west Territories.”157 Constantine noted that “the miners are anxious that the boundary in the gold-bearing belt should be fixed without delay.”158

As Fortymile was known to be on the Canadian side of the 141st meridian, Constantine was able to collect $3,248.82 in customs duties from miners and merchants in town, and he expected Brown to collect an additional $2,000-$3,000 during the winter.159 Historians Ken S.

Coates and William R. Morrison argue that by collecting custom duties “from the miners on the

Canadian side of the 141st meridian,” Constantine and Brown “made an important demonstration of Canada’s sovereignty over the Yukon.”160 Given the uncertainly surrounding the location of the border, however, this statement is slightly misleading. While Constantine and Brown were able to collect customs duties at Fortymile in 1894, they were not able to collect duties “from the miners on the Canadian side of the 141st meridian” because they did not know where the 141st meridian was located, and which mining districts fell on the Canadian side of the border.161

Constantine and Brown were able to assert Canadian sovereignty over Fortymile, which was known to be in Canadian territory. Before proceeding with enforcing the Alaska-Yukon border, however, the police would have to learn where the border was located. For Constantine’s part, he simply wrote “customs duties were distasteful.”162

156 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 74. 157 Ibid., 75. 158 Ibid., 75. 159 Ibid., 84. 160 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 72. 161 Coates and Morrison, 72. 162 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 84.

In the absence of government control, Constantine wrote, “law and order in the country has been enforced by a committee of miners [miners’ meetings].”163 At Fortymile, Constantine wrote that “with the exception of one shooting and cutting case last winter, it has been quiet and orderly.”164 While Constantine described the region as peaceful, however, there was an uneasiness to his assessment.165 He wrote that “the miners are very jealous of what they consider their rights,” and “any enforcement of the different laws will have to be backed up with a strong force at least for a time.”166 He added that “the liquor traffic in the country,” which brought

Constantine and Brown to the Yukon in the first place, “is assuming large proportions and will have to be dealt with by a strong hand, and a sufficient force will be necessary to enforce the provisions of the law.”167 He wrote that the miners were open to the issuing of liquor licenses and a ban on the sale of liquor to indigenous people, but “prohibition would be very hard to enforce.”168

If the government decided to establish a permanent presence at Fortymile, Constantine suggested that “the force sent in, if any, should consist of two officers, one surgeon, three sergeants,… three corporals and thirty-five or forty constables.”169 He continued, “this may appear a large number of men at first sight, but from the country and the work they will have to do, is no more than sufficient.”170 Constantine suggested that the force could be brought in on a government or chartered steamer via the St. Michael route, with a “high power flat-bottomed

163 Ibid., 80-81. 164 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 81. 165 Morrison argues that “the central point of Constantine’s report was that the Yukon was quiet and peaceful enough that a fairly small force could be relied upon to so the job of policing.” Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 21. 166 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 81. 167 Ibid., 76. 168 Ibid., 76. 169 Ibid., 81. 170 Ibid., 81.

stern-wheeled steamer,” proper winter clothing, and reserve supplies of rations and ammunition.171 “The building of barracks and the necessary offices would consume the greater part of the open season after the arrival of the men,” he wrote.172 Constantine concluded his report by writing: “a copy of my diary is attached, also rough maps and a plan of Forty Mile and

Forty Cudahy together with a meteorological return for the years 1892 and 1893.”173

On 24 October 1894, White forwarded Constantine’s report to the President of the Privy

Council W.B. Ives, and to the Department of Customs and the Department of the Interior.174

“With regard to the Police,” White wrote to Ives, “Inspector Constantine is of the opinion that it would not be discreet to attempt to enforce the general laws of Canada and punish offenders unless the Magistrate is supported by a force strong enough to assert itself against a combination of several hundred miners who… might be disposed to resist authority and set up a form of government of their own.”175 White suggested that if the police were to be sent to the Yukon in the 1895 season, they should go by way of the St. Michael route, but he noted “if the

Government decide to open up and organize the District, efforts should be made to develop one of the four routes across country directly North from Juneau.”176 Of the four routes, White suggested that the Taku route was the most promising, and he recommended to the Minister of the Interior that a surveyor be sent to examine the route.177

171 Ibid., 81-82. 172 Ibid., 82. 173 Ibid., 85. 174 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to President of the Privy Council, 24 October 1894; White to T.J. Watters, 23 October 1894; White to John R. Hall, 23 October 1894. 175 White to President of the Privy Council, 24 October 1894. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid.

White also asked Constantine to come to Ottawa after he submitted his report.178

Constantine reported on 9 November that “I have the honour to inform you that I have had interviews with the Departments of Interior, Customs and Indian Affairs.”179 He also informed

White that he had arranged to meet J.J. Healy in Ottawa but “Mr. Healy has not turned up according to arrangements.”180 White wrote to Herchmer on 13 November that “the Minister of the Interior is sending Ogilvie to explore the Taku route which appears to be the most promising.”181 He noted that “if this route is found satisfactory, an easy way of getting into the country will be developed.”182 From there, all the Mounted Police could do was wait for the government to decide if Constantine should return to the Yukon in 1895. As White wrote to

Herchmer, “we can do nothing more until the other Departments move, particularly the Dept. of the Interior.”183

In the meantime, Staff Sergeant Brown sent Constantine a series of reports, dated 9

February 1895, outlining his experiences at Fortymile during the winter. Brown’s reports further detailed criminal activity at Fortymile and the workings of the miners’ meetings that governed the town - demonstrating again that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region and raising alarms with the Canadian government officials deciding if Constantine should return to the Yukon in 1895. Brown had spent the winter collecting customs duties at Fortymile,

178 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 15 October 1894. 179 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 9 November 1894. 180 Ibid. 181 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 13 November 1894. 182 Ibid. On the Taku route survey, Lewis Green notes that “Ogilvie was still furious over an abortive winter trip to the Taku River area he had been ordered to make as a result of the wonderous stories the citizens of Juneau fed to the gullible Constantine on the latter’s reconnaissance trip north in June 1894. The Taku trip had taken over three months, and when Ogilvie, half-starved, returned to Juneau on 1 March 1895 he was met with the news that his second son, sick when he left Ottawa, had died almost six weeks earlier.” Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 37. 183 Ibid.

Sixtymile, and Pelly River and he reported that the miners “have shown up in their true colours.”184 He noted that “there has been quite a lot of stealing going on, mostly food,” which men had left cached on trails to use later, and he had located thirty-five stills, which “have been running all winter” - although he noted that “there has not been so much drunkenness as I would have supposed among the whites.”185 The “whiskey gang” that Constantine had identified as running Fortymile, Brown reported “is, as far as I can make out, composed of O’Brien,

McQuestion [Jack McQuesten of the Alaska Commercial Company], Willet, English, Cooper, and Pecout, and this is the gang that run everything in the place.”186 He continued, “anything that they or their friends do is all right, but if anyone outside of this gang does anything he pays dearly for it.”187

Here Brown was referring to the conduct of the miners’ meetings, which he referred to as

“nothing but a farce, it is nothing more or less than mob law.”188 Brown reported that on 16

January he had attended a miners’ meeting to try NAT&TCo. Assistant Manager C.H. Hamilton for the wrongful dismissal of a servant girl, who had been “engaged by the month at $30 per month with passage to Alaska,” but dismissed without notice.189 Based on the girl’s testimony alone, the miners found in her favour and awarded her one year’s salary, first class passage to the south, and food and lodging for the rest of the winter. Brown reported to Constantine that “I could see as soon as I got there that the meeting was simply an excuse to get a knock at

Hamilton.”190 He suggested that “it was quite plain that almost every man at that meeting had

184 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Charles Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 1. 185 Ibid. Brown did report that “They would try to get me drunk and find out if I belonged to the Police or not, and what was keeping me in here.” 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 3. 189 Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 1. 190 Ibid.

been talked to and told what to say and do.”191 Fearing that if Hamilton refused to pay the girl, the miners would sack Fort Cudahy, Brown suggested that Hamilton give in to their demands,

“the amount of money and goods they demanded amounted to $569.53.”192

Brown also reported some problems collecting customs duties. He had collected duties from the NAT&TCo. ($5031.00), along with J.T. Tom ($11.20), P. Galvin ($270.19), W.F.

Cornell ($56.27), and Dinsmore & McPhee ($44.99).193 But he noted that McQuesten “is trying hard to get out of paying his duties, and I do not believe he will do so unless there are men here to enforce it.”194 Brown suggested that “he is simply holding back to gain time to see if any men are coming in to enforce the law, and in that case I think that in all probability he will go to Birch

Creek.” He continued, “I respectfully wish to state with reference to a force being send here, that if there is not at least 40 men sent in to keep the peace, law and order will be a dead letter.”195

What Brown was likely witnessing was a response by the Alaska Commercial Company and the miners to the imposition of the NAT&TCo. into their business. McQuesten and the other

ACC traders had been the only company trading at Fortymile since 1886, until the arrival of

Healy and the NAT&TCo. in 1893. In addition to new competition, local miners and traders thought that the NAT&TCo. had brought the Mounted Police to Fortymile and, in the words of

William R. Hunt, “they vehemently blamed Healy for bringing in the police and disliked him more than ever.”196 The case against Hamilton presented the perfect opportunity for the miners at

Fortymile and the ACC to get back at Healy and the NAT&TCo.

191 Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 3. 192 Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 1. 193 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 2. 194 Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 1. 195 Ibid. 196 Hunt, Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader, 149.

While the conduct of the miners’ meetings in early 1895 reinforces the fact that the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region, with its own system of government, the

Hamilton case also shows that, for the miners, the situation a Fortymile was changing. The miners’ meeting system worked well when the population of the region was limited to a small number of established miners and traders. By 1894, however, Constantine wrote in his report to the government that some miners had expressed concern that “a class of men who will not work for their living” would come to the region, referring “more particularly to gamblers and men of that stamp, who are so numerous in American mining districts.”197 In other words, established miners and traders feared that as more new, adventure seeking prospectors arrived in the region, they would undermine the authority of the miners’ meetings. Based on the Hamilton case, it seems that McQuesten and the more established segment of the Fortymile population viewed

Healy and the NAT&TCo. as part of this group of newcomers. On the other hand, newly arrived miners and traders like Healy, and indeed Brown, saw that more established groups were using the miners’ meetings to protect their own interests and looked to the Mounted Police to establish a less biased governing system.198

The Hamilton case is also another example of the Mounted Police fitting into the established borderlands system in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The actions taken against

Hamilton, a friend of the police, clearly upset the law and order sensibilities of Brown, but, with no other government officials in the Yukon to back up his authority, he had no choice but to accept the authority of the miners’ meeting. The incident also shows that working with the

NAT&TCo. was not without risk for the Mounted Police. To those at Fortymile, the close relationship between the police and the NAT&TCo., and the fact that Constantine and Brown

197 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 73. 198 Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902.

boarded at Fort Cudahy, suggested that the two groups were working together to disadvantage them. The relationship with the police also posed some risk to the NAT&TCo. and their challenge to the ACC monopoly. Not only had they angered their neighbours, the company had paid the Canadian government $5031.00 in customs duties, and McQuesten had not.

Brown suggested to Constantine that “the test [of the government’s position] will be when the [ACC steamer] Arctic arrives in the Spring. If McQuestion’s goods are held until duties are paid just one hint dropped by him to the miners and everything will be taken.”199 It was this threat of mob violence and refusal to pay customs duties that convinced the Canadian government to send Constantine back to the Yukon in 1895.

As this chapter has shown, Constantine and Brown arrived in an Alaska-Yukon borderlands that had developed as a borderless region. Since the Canadian government had no presence in the Yukon, the Mounted Police knew little about the region and Comptroller Fred

White, Constantine, and Brown spent much of the year gathering information on the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands. White spent the first six months of 1894 gathering information on the conditions at Fortymile, transportation routes, and the logistics of sending Constantine and

Brown to the Yukon. After traveling to Fortymile in the summer of 1894, Constantine reported the findings of his investigation to the government on October 1894. Brown, who remained at

Fortymile during the winter, reported his experiences to Constantine in February 1895. The reports of all three men confirmed that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region.

The location of the Alaska-Yukon border was unknown, the region was governed by the miners’ themselves, through the miners’ meeting system, and many of the transportation routes to the

199 Brown to Constantine, 9 February 1895 1.

region were under-developed. As they gathered information, the police also had to fit into the established borderlands system in the region, working with whatever information sources they could find, relying on the American North American Transportation and Trading Company for transportation and provisions, and contending with the decisions of the miners’ meetings. On the eve of the Klondike gold rush, the investigations of White, Constantine and Brown had revealed that substantial efforts would be needed to establish a permanent police presence in the Yukon and begin the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to bordered region.

In early 1895, the government was still undecided on sending Constantine back to the Yukon.

In the meantime, after consulting with the Customs Department, White wrote to Brown on 27 March 1895 that “the President of the Privy Council has consented to allow you to remain in the Yukon District for the present, to attend to Customs matters exclusively, you will therefore comply with such instructions as you may receive direct from the Hon. the Controller or the

Commissioner of Customs.”200 The decision to instruct Brown to remain in the Yukon and act exclusively for the Customs Department shows that in March 1895, the Mounted Police were not planning to return to the Yukon. White told Herchmer on 27 March that “nothing has been settled about sending Police to the Yukon, and I think we may safely assume that no action will be taken in that direction this year.”201 He continued “I don’t like Brown remaining there, but we cannot help ourselves. I shall do my best to get definite instructions for his return in time for the first boat.”202 White wrote to Constantine on the same day that “I think we may take it for

200 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Brown, 27 March 1895. 201 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 27 March 1895. 202 Ibid.

granted that no Police will go to the Yukon this year.”203 But then they received Brown’s reports from Fortymile.

203 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Constantine, 27 March 1895.

Chapter 2 The Mounted Police and the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands, 1895-1896

In late April 1895, the Canadian government decided to send Mounted Police Inspector

Charles Constantine back to the Yukon to establish a permanent police post at Fortymile.

Constantine and a detachment of twenty men left Seattle on 5 June. They arrived at Fortymile on

24 July and constructed Fort Constantine on the north side of the junction of the Yukon River and Fortymile Creek. The construction of Fort Constantine and the establishment of a permanent police presence in the Yukon has been presented as an important change for the Yukon. The standard historical narrative argues that Constantine’s arrival at Fortymile symbolized the end of

American-style frontier government on the Canadian side of the Alaska-Yukon border and the beginning of Canadian-style law and order - with Constantine usurping the authority of the miners’ meetings and collecting customs duties from miners on the Canadian side of the border.1

This telling of the story implies that the Mounted Police more or less arrived at Fortymile on the eve of the Klondike gold rush and took control of the Canadian side of the border. A close look at Mounted Police activities at Fortymile in 1895 and 1896, however, reveals that the process was much more drawn-out.

The construction of Fort Constantine, as Constantine had predicted in his 1894 report, took up much of the police energy and resources during the remaining months of 1895. With peaceful conditions at Fortymile, the police did little to expand their authority outside of Fort

Constantine and Fortymile. Constantine and Staff Sergeant Charles Brown continued to collect customs duties from merchants at Fortymile, but they were not able to collect duties anywhere else because they did not know where the 141st meridian was located and which mining districts

1 Examples include: Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon; Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon; Stone, “The Mounties as Vigilantes: Perceptions of Community and the Transformation of Law in the Yukon, 1885-1897”; Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902; Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon.

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fell on the Canadian side of the border. It was not until Dominion Land Surveyor William

Ogilvie surveyed the border between Fortymile Creek and Sixtymile Creek in the winter of

1895-1896 that the police were able to begin to enforce Canadian law outside of Fortymile. After determining that Miller and Glacier Creeks, tributaries of Sixtymile Creek, were in Canadian territory, Constantine used a dispute over miners’ wages on Glacier Creek in June 1896 to assert his authority over a miners’ meeting that attempted to settle the dispute.2 But with police authority confirmed at Fortymile and Glacier Creek, Constantine had hardly taken control of the

Canadian side of the Alaska-Yukon border.

The arrival of the Yukon detachment at Fortymile marked the beginning of the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to bordered region, with the

Mounted Police taking the first steps to establish government control in the Yukon and enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. This chapter examines these steps, tracing the decision to send Constantine back to the Yukon, the construction of Fort Constantine, Mounted Police activities at Fortymile in 1895 and 1896, and the dispute at Glacier Creek. While Constantine and the Yukon detachment had taken the first steps to bring the Yukon under Canadian government control, these developments show that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands largely remained a borderless region. Much of the focus of the police and the government continued to be on gathering information on the remote and distant Alaska-Yukon borderlands, before deciding the next steps to cement government control in the Yukon. On the eve of the Klondike gold rush, Mounted Police and Canadian government officials were still debating what those next steps should be.

2 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925; Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle.

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The Yukon Detachment

As late as March 1895, the Canadian government was still undecided on sending

Constantine back to the Yukon. The turning of the tide in favour of returning to the Yukon began on 4 April, when Constantine received Staff Sergeant Brown’s reports from Fortymile during the winter of 1894-1895.3 Brown’s reports, as discussed in Chapter 1, suggested that Fortymile was at risk of falling into lawlessness - with theft, liquor production, mob rule by the miners’ meetings, and merchants refusing to pay customs duties. While Constantine had reported in

October 1894 that the Yukon was peaceful and that he had little trouble collecting customs duties, Brown’s report suggested otherwise. On 10 April 1895, Mounted Police Comptroller Fred

White received Brown’s letters from Constantine and forwarded them to the Interior and

Customs Departments.4

On 15 April, Minister of the Interior T.H. Daly also received a letter from the North

American Transportation and Trading Company’s J.J. Healy that “late advices from the Yukon

Northwest report a very unsettled condition of affairs.”5 Healy, also angered by the treatment of

C.H. Hamilton, reported that a number of “bad men” had settled in Fortymile and suggested that the government should “send a sufficient force of police into the Yukon so that life and property may be protected.”6 He wrote, “it would be unfortunate now if the development of that country would be delayed for the want of a necessary force to protect men who are risking their time and means in the exploration and development of the Great Northwest,” reiterating that the

NAT&TC. could transport police and supplies to the Yukon and supply rations, lumber for

3 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 4 April 1895. 4 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to John R. Hall, 10 April 1895; White to Kilvert, 10 April 1895. 5 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Healy to Daly, 15 April 1895. News of the Hamilton case likely reached Healy on the same boat as Brown’s reports. 6 Ibid.

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buildings, and money for pay.7 Healy’s letter confirming Brown’s reports was enough to convince the government to act.

By 26 April 1895, the government had decided to send Constantine back to the Yukon.

White wrote to Mounted Police Commissioner L.W. Herchmer that he “would like Constantine

[to] come [to] Ottawa” to receive his orders.8 “Please ask him [Constantine] and telegraph me which route he advises,” he wrote to Herchmer the next day.9 Dominion Land Surveyor William

Ogilvie, who would also return to the Yukon in 1895, was “strongly in favour of going via

Juneau and across mountains sending heavy supplies around by Behring Sea and Yukon,” White wrote.10 White and Constantine, however, decided on the Yukon River route, and to continue working with the North American Transportation and Trading Company. In a series of telegrams on 7 May, White and Healy finalized arrangements for twenty-five Mounted Police and thirty tons of freight to sail from Seattle on 1 June. White had preferred for the police to board the

NAT&TCo. vessel at Vancouver or Victoria (a Canadian port), but Healy’s charter did not permit his company to land at a foreign port.11

White wrote to Herchmer on 11 May that the government had “decided to send a detachment of 20 Mounted Police to the Upper Yukon District.”12 The President of the Privy

Council had agreed to the selection of Constantine to command the detachment, and Inspector

D’Arcy E. Strickland and Assistant Surgeon A.E. Wills as officers. The remaining seventeen

Non-Commissioned Officers and Constables were to be selected by Herchmer, “but it is desirable that they should be all unmarried, and consent… to remain in the Yukon country at

7 Ibid. 8 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 26 April 1895. 9 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 27 April 1895. 10 Ibid. 11 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Healy, 7 May 1895 1, Healy to White, 7 May 1895 1, White to Healy, 7 May 1895 2, Healy to White, 7 May 1895 2. 12 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 11 May 1895.

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least two years.”13 A 29 April Circular Memorandum also asked that “applicants must be strong, hardy and handy, as well as intelligent and steady.”14 White wrote privately to Herchmer: “it is unfortunate that the decision to send Police to the Yukon was detained so long as to necessitate everything being done in a hurry, but failure to catch the first boat would mean arrival in the

Yukon some time in September, which would be too late to put up winter quarters.”15

As Commissioner, Herchmer was also responsible for organizing the final details of the expedition. White wrote that “I enclose, herewith, for your guidance, a memorandum covering various matters of details relating to the dispatch, equipment and general supplies for this expedition.”16 As in 1894, he explained, “the North American Transportation & Trading Co. will convey the party from Seattle or Victoria to Fort Cudahy for $100.00 per passenger, including meals, and freight at the rate of $90.00 per ton.”17 But while the NAT&TCo. was also “willing to furnish provisions at the rate of $1.00 per man per day,” White decided that “the Police ought to be independent of any local source of supply.”18 He instructed Herchmer to arrange to purchase rations for thirty men for one year and ship them to Fort Cudahy with the men – rations that would also supply Ogilvie’s party of seven men during the winter.19 White also asked Herchmer to “purchase and ship through a reasonable quantity of carpenters tools, hardware, &c., necessary for construction” of the post, as well as cooking and heating stoves, and warm clothing for the

13 Ibid. 14 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Circular Memorandum No. 111, 29 April 1895. 15 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 11 May 1895 3. Morrison writes that “the winter of 1894-1895 was spent in preparation for the expedition of the next summer”, although he admits that “the government apparently had some reservations and second thoughts.” Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 21. 16 White to Herchmer, 11 May 1895. 17 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White, “Memo for the Commissioner, re the detachment of Police to be dispatched to the Yukon District,” 10 May 1895. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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winter.20 “As the H.B. Company know exactly the character of supplies required by the Police,”

White wrote, “it will be well to buy direct from them in Winnipeg.”21 White asked Herchmer to meet Constantine in Winnipeg to purchase supplies and “arrange other details.”22

“With respect to arms and ammunition,” White suggested that each man should take a revolver and Winchester Carbine, and an additional twenty Lee-Metford rifles should be sent

“with a reasonable supply of ammunition… to be held in reserve for an emergency.”23 As a precaution, White noted that “as the Police will pass through a long stretch of U.S. territory, their

Carbines should be packed away and shipped as cargo.”24 In a 11 May 1895 private letter to

Herchmer, White also noted that “Constantine has asked for one of the Maxim Guns, and if they arrive in time the Premier [Prime Minister Charles Tupper] is disposed to let him have one.”25

Herchmer ordered Constantine in his official instructions that the detachment “should be at all times kept proficient in squad and arm drill, particular attention being given to proficiency in handling the Lee-Metford Carbine.”26 Herchmer also warned about the availability of rations at

Fortymile: “If you find towards the end of the season that there are not sufficient provisions in the District to feed the population, every effort should be made in time to induce sufficient people to leave, to guard against hardship later on.”27

In the meantime, Herchmer organized the final details of the trip. He reported to White on 15 May that “Constantine told me everything settled with Healy.”28 On 24 May he informed

20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Herchmer, 11 May 1895 2. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 White to Herchmer, 11 May 1895 3. 26 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer, “Instructions for Inspector Constantine, Officer in charge of Yukon District,” 30 May 1895. 27 Ibid. 28 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer to White, 15 May 1895.

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White that Healy would sail on 5 June and that police and supplies should be in Seattle on 4

June.29 Constantine and his detachment left for Seattle on 2 June.30 On 5 June, Constantine reported that “we leave at 5 P.M. to-day” on the steamer Excelsior.31 The party arrived at

Unalaska on 15 June and St. Michael on 4 July, where they met Staff Sergeant Brown, who had left Fort Cudahy on 20 June to meet Constantine. Brown brought with him $3963.11 in gold dust and currency in customs duties collected for the Customs Department and $20.00 in gold dust collected for the Department of the Interior for mining claims, which Constantine sent to White care of the NAT&TCo.32 Constantine and the detachment left St. Michael on 5 July on the steamer P.B. Weare and arrived at Fort Cudahy on 24 July at six in the morning.33

Fort Constantine and the Yukon Detachment

After arriving at Fort Cudahy, Constantine’s primary instructions, received from

Herchmer on 30 May 1895, were to build a post to house the police, and he lost no time in starting construction.34 Constantine selected a site on the north side of the junction of the Yukon

River and Fortymile Creek, in between Fortymile and Fort Cudahy - a site he described as “the highest ground which has not been… flooded in the memory of anyone here” and providing a commanding view of the surrounding area - and construction began on 29 July.35

Construction of the post, named Fort Constantine, took up most of the rest of the season.

As Constantine wrote to White on 23 August 1895, “the work is very heavy and hard.”36 Without

29 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer to White, 24 May 1895. 30 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Herchmer to White, 2 June 1895. 31 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to Herchmer, 5 June 1895. 32 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 15 June 1895; J.H. McIllree to White, 18 July 1895; Brown to Unknown, 20 June 1895; Constantine to White, 4 July 1895. 33 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to Officer Commanding Depot Division, 26 July 1895. 34 Herchmer, “Instructions for Inspector Constantine, Officer in charge of Yukon District,” 30 May 1895. 35 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 23 August 1895. 36 Ibid.

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machinery or even horses “all material has to be moved by hand most of the way.”37 The

NAT&TCo. extended its tramway to the site, which allowed the police to move logs on a small trolley to the Company’s saw mill, but everything else had to be moved by hand.38 On 26 July,

Inspector Strickland and eight men continued up river around forty miles to collect some 400 logs for the buildings in three weeks, because there was no suitable timber at Fortymile. A party also had to go up river “a couple of miles” to gather building moss to put between the logs.39

Before construction could begin, the site had to be cleared of the thick moss and dirt that covered the permafrost and drainage ditches had to be dug. Constantine described the labour- intensive process: “first, cut with axes into squares of about 3 feet, then torn off by men with mattocks, piled up to dry, and wheeled off, being dumped into the river.”40 The whole process took about three weeks. After an area of 150 ft. by 125 ft. was cleared, eight buildings, a men’s quarters (with mess and kitchen), store house (with office, stores, carpenter shop and wash house), guard room, hospital, two officers quarters, staff-sergeants quarters and assistant surgeon quarters, were laid out and construction began on 21 August. The front and rear of the buildings formed a stockade and two bastions were built to protect the fort.41 The construction of the roof also required a lot of labour. The roofs had to be covered with wood planks, then a layer of moss,

37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.; Government of Canada, Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1896), 8. 39 Constantine to White, 23 August 1895. 4351 “This number however was not sufficient, and owing to the lateness of the season I found that it was imperative I should buy logs to complete the post. Two hundred and fifty were required.” Government of Canada, Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895, 7-8. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.; Government of Canada, Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895, 8-10.

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followed by six to eight inches of earth, to keep them warm in the winter.42 “On Monday, 7th

October, 1895, the men moved into quarters, the officers about a week later.”43

Historian William R. Morrison writes that “as soon as they had established themselves in their new post, the police set about making their authority felt in the district.”44 Beyond the construction of Fort Constantine, however, Constantine’s instructions said little on his next steps.

Herchmer asked that “every opportunity should be taken to forward short reports, giving as much information as possible,” for the use of the police and the government.45 Constantine’s only other instructions were that “during the long winter months every effort should be made to employ the men.”46 Herchmer also warned that “trading for furs, except for personal use, or interfering in any way with trade in the Yukon by members of detachment, is strictly forbidden.”47

Constantine, of course, continued to act as land agent, collector of customs, and justice of the peace for the Yukon, as he had in 1894. “He was in fact,” Morrison writes, “to be for the present judge, jury, and executioner in these fields as well as in others.”48 But with so much energy going into building the post, and relative peace with the miners, the police did little to expand their authority.

As Constantine reported to White on 23 August, “up to the present everything has been very quiet and orderly.”49 He noted that “most of the ‘hard cases’ have left for… Circle City 200 miles below” and that “the feeling with regard to the Police has entirely changed” since Staff

42 Constantine to White, 23 August 1895. 4351 43 Government of Canada, Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895, 8. 44 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 22. 45 Herchmer, “Instructions for Inspector Constantine, Officer in charge of Yukon District,” 30 May 1895. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 22-23. 49 Constantine to White, 23 August 1895.

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Sergeant Brown’s February reports.50 Indeed, the Judicial Return of the Yukon Detachment from

1 August 1895 to 31 May 1896 shows only four cases brought to trial, two for “Bringing Stolen

Goods into Canada” and theft were dismissed, one man was fined $100 for “Selling liquor to

Indians,” and another received a suspended sentence for assault.51

Constantine and Brown continued to collect customs duties. On 4 September 1895,

Brown forwarded $2093.68 in gold dust and drafts for $5166.65 in customs duties with Eli E.

Weare, when the P.B. Weare return to Seattle for the season.52 The letters, received by White in

November 1895, were the first to reach Ottawa since the police had left for the Yukon and were greeted with some relief by White, who wrote to Ely E. Weare that “we were commencing to get a little anxious for news, as a rumour had been circulated to the effect that a couple of the Police had been shot.”53 White also took the opportunity to clarify Constantine and Brown’s position as customs collectors, suggesting to Acting Commissioner of Customs F.E. Kilvert that, “as the

[Yukon] District is so large, and the members of the Police Force must of necessity move about more or less from place to place,” Constantine and Brown should both continue to act as customs collectors.54 Kilvert replied on 16 November that he agreed with White’s suggestion, as long as

Constantine and Brown continued to split the ten-percent commission.55

While Constantine wrote glowingly of Brown in his 1894 report – describing him as “a good man in every way” - there appears to have been a falling out between the two during the

50 Ibid. 51 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 160, “Judicial Return of Yukon Detachment,” 27 August 1896. See also Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 25. 52 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Brown to White, 4 September 1895; Constantine to White, 4 September 1895. 53 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to Ely E. Weare, 6 November 1895. 54 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White to F.E. Kilvert, 9 November 1895. 55 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Kilvert to White, 16 November 1895.

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winter.56 White wrote to Ely E. Weare that Brown “appears to have had some misunderstanding with Insp. Constantine. I think that he made enemies by strictly carrying out his duties as

Collector of Customs.”57 Constantine wrote to Herchmer on 5 January 1896 that “he has made himself obnoxious to all he has had to do with in his official capacity as customs officer” and he accused Brown of making an arrangement with Staff Sergeant Hayne “to work into each other’s hands in the Customs work.”58 Constantine also reported that Brown had seized some weather instruments sent to Harper by the U.S. Meteorological station at San Francisco “to get even in a private matter,” an act which Constantine called “harsh tyrannical & unjustified.”59 Constantine noted that “Ogilvie is afraid it may work against us in the settlement of the Boundary dispute, as the Americans are very touchy about matters of this sort.”60 Brown took his discharge from the force when his term of service expired in December 1895 and Constantine supplied Brown with forty days rations on 20 January 1896, so he could leave the country via the Chilkoot Pass.61

The Mounted Police accounting drafts for 1895 and 1896 also suggest that police activities were mostly limited to Fort Constantine. Building expenses for the construction of Fort

Constantine make up a substantial part of monthly expenses from September to April, averaging

$289.30 per month, although Constantine wrote to White on 31 May 1896 that “the

Appropriation for each month being only $1500, I have had the Vouchers for buildings distributed through different months,” meaning that the exact date of building expenses is

56 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 160, White to Ely. E. Weare, 24 March 1896; Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894, 85. 57 White to Ely. E. Weare, 24 March 1896. 4564 58 Constantine to Herchmer, 5 January 1896, quoted in Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 25-26. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 White to Ely. E. Weare, 24 March 1896. 4564; LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 20 January 1896.

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unknown.62 The amount of working pay, a rate of fifty cents per day paid to all ranks for construction and repairs to the police barracks, between $261.50 and $211.50 per month for

August to November, shows that the detachment was primarily working on building Fort

Constantine during the fall of 1895.63 Working pay during the winter was much smaller, and likely for chopping wood. The only other regular expenses, subsistence, forage, fuel and light, and repairs and renewals, and the lack of transportation expenses, also suggest that police activities were largely limited to the post.64

The accounting drafts also show that the major expense for the Yukon detachment was pay. The regular Mounted Police salaries for work in the North-West Territories were supplemented with a daily special allowance because of the high cost of goods in the Yukon and, as White noted on 10 May 1895, “also to compensate them for the hardships and privations of life within the Arctic Circle.”65 As the Yukon detachment was required to supplement their rations with goods purchased in the Yukon, Constantine had to have a substantial amount of cash on hand to pay the men each month, a challenge in a remote territory with no banks and little money. J.J. Healy suggested in his 15 April 1895 letter to the Minister of the Interior that the

NAT&TCo. would be willing to “act as paymasters” for the police in the Yukon - and so the police again turned to the North American Transportation and Trading Company.66

The Mounted Police and the NAT&TCo.

After the relationship between the Mounted Police and the NAT&TCo. was established in 1894, Constantine had continued to correspond with J.J. Healy and other NAT&TCo. officials

62 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, Constantine to White, 31 May 1896. 63 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine, Local Order 2, 24 July 1895; Constantine to Herchmer, 14 November 1895. 64 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145. 65 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, White, Memo, 10 May 1895. 66 Healy to Daly, 15 April 1895.

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during the winter of 1894-1895, further cementing the relationship between the police and the company. On 7 December 1894, Healy wrote to inform Constantine that the NAT&TCo. boat would sail for St. Michael on 1 June 1895.67 Constantine suggested to Healy “the advisability of registering as a Canadian Company doing business in the Yukon District of the North West

Territories, + to apply for a Charter as a Navigation + Railroad Company on the Upper Yukon,” to better position the NAT&TCo. to receive Canadian government contracts.68 On 18 December,

Healy wrote that “our Company will send two boats to St. Michael’s next season + will sail from

San Francisco the first May 29th, and second June 25th.”69 Healy also asked Constantine for the names of “a few good houses” in Montreal where he could buy Canadian goods, again to appear more favourable as a government contractor.70 “In connection with this,” Constantine suggested that Healy contact Ontario businessman and Senator William Eli Sanford, “as I know the Senator is anxious to get a share of the Yukon trade.”71 The importance of such government patronage to

Canadian government policy in the Yukon is discussed in Chapter 3. Additionally, Constantine had NAT&TCo. President Eli E. Weare carry instructions to Brown to the Yukon in late March

1895 and he forwarded “an application from Mr. C.H. Hamilton for a Wholesale liquor license at

Forty Cudahy” to White on 4 April.72

After making arrangements to have the NAT&TCo. transport the Yukon detachment to

Fortymile, White wrote to Healy on 17 May 1895 “referring to the offer of your Company to afford Banking facilities to the Police who will be stationed in the Upper Yukon.”73 He explained that “Constantine… will require between $1000 and $1500 per month for his pay-list and other

67 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 7 December 1894. 68 Ibid. 69 LAC, RG18, Vol. 100, File 17, Constantine to White, 18 December 1894. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Constantine to White, 4 April 1895. 73 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, White to Healy, 17 May 1895.

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expenses. Can we rely upon your making advances on his certificate to this extent?”74 P.B.

Weare responded on 20 May that the NAT&TCo. could make advances up to $1500 per month,

“but would explain that we would probably have to pay in gold dust, as I do not know that there is currency enough in the Yukon territory now so that we could pay in anything but gold dust.”75

This arrangement was agreeable to White, but he did not like Weare’s suggestion that he pay for police vouchers sent through the NAT&TCo. White instead suggested that Constantine “give you a draft on the Comptroller of the North West Mounted Police… and on receipt of the draft here the amount can be placed to the credit of your Company through the Bank of Montreal either at Ottawa or Chicago.”76 As White wrote to Herchmer on 22 May, “I do not think it would be desirable to have all Police vouchers pass through the hands of a Mercantile Firm.”77

By the end of 1895, then, the relationship between the Mounted Police and the North

American Transportation and Trading Company had grown closer. With the Mounted Police established at Fortymile, they had relied on the NAT&TCo. to transport the Yukon detachment and their supplies, used their tramway and sawmill to construct Fort Constantine, and made an arrangement with the company to advance Constantine the money to pay for salaries and supplies. White had taken two small steps at distancing the police from the NAT&TCo., shipping enough rations to the Yukon to last the detachment one year and paying the company on draft.

But the Mounted Police were very much dependent on the NAT&TCo. to maintain their position in the Yukon.

The image of Fort Constantine, on the hill next to Fort Cudahy, connected by a boardwalk and tramway, would have done little to ease the concern of those at Fortymile who

74 Ibid. 75 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, P.B. Weare to White, 20 May 1895. 76 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, White to Healy, 22 May 1895. 77 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 145, White to Herchmer, 22 May 1895.

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saw the close relationship between the police and the NAT&TCo. as a disadvantage to other miners and traders. McQuesten and the Alaska Commercial Company, for their part, seem to have fallen in line and began paying customs duties once the Yukon detachment arrived. Healy’s plans to break the ACC’s monopoly by partnering with the police, then, do not seem to have been realized. By 1896, both companies had established posts at Circle City, on the American side of the border, and Healy appears to have fared better than his first year at Fortymile. As historian William R. Hunt writes, “Healy faced less resentment than he had earlier at Fortymile.

Clearly, he was ‘here to stay,’ and the majority of miners were recent arrivals to the interior” and unfamiliar with the ACC’s monopoly.78

Glacier Creek and the Alaska-Yukon Border

As in 1894, Constantine was limited from enforcing Canadian mining regulations in the gold fields beyond Fortymile because he did not know precisely where the Alaska-Yukon border was located. Indeed, for most of their first two years in the Yukon, the police paid little attention to the actual location of the border, beyond the knowledge that Fortymile was in Canadian territory. Not only did they not know where the border was located, they were far too busy with gathering information for the government and building Fort Constantine. Without being able to enforce Canadian law in the mining districts close to the border, Constantine seems to have had little to do in his role as land agent in 1895. In early September, he forwarded four applications for mining licenses to Ottawa, numbers 2, 3 ,4, and 5, suggesting that he had issued few licenses.79 Brown had collected $20.00 in gold dust for mining claims during the winter of 1894-

1895, which at $5 each was only four licenses.80 During the fall and winter of 1895-1896,

78 Hunt, Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader, 152. 79 LAC, RG18, Vol. 112, File 692, White to John R. Hall, 9 November 1895. 80 Constantine to White, 4 July 1895.

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however, Dominion Land Surveyor William Ogilvie marked the border along the 141st meridian in the gold-bearing districts, from five miles north of the Yukon River to Sixty Mile Creek - allowing Constantine to begin to extend his authority into the gold field.81

The Alaska-Yukon border had been originally set at the 141st meridian by the Anglo-

Russian Treaty of 1825, but the line was never surveyed.82 No one on the ground had a firm idea of the location of the 141st meridian, allowing the Hudson’s Bay Company to establish Fort

Youcon on the Russian side of the border with little interference. As discussed in Chapter 1, the first instance of the 141st meridian border being enforced was U.S. Army Captain Charles W.

Raymond’s 1869 expedition to determine if Fort Youcon was in American territory. Leaving San

Francisco on 6 April 1869, Raymond ascended the Yukon River to Fort Youcon and determined on 8 August that Fort Youcon was, in the words of historian Lewis Green “a considerable distance west of the 141st meridian.”83 The next day, Raymond expelled the Hudson’s Bay

Company from Fort Youcon, but, rather than proceeding up river to officially mark the 141st meridian, he simply returned to San Francisco.

The first person to officially survey the location of the 141st meridian was William

Ogilvie, as part of the Canadian government’s 1887-1889 Dawson Expedition. Led by George

M. Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada, the expedition was a response to the early mining activity in the upper Yukon and U.S. Army First Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka’s exploration of the Yukon River in 1883 (see Chapter 4). The Dawson Expedition consisted of three parties. Dawson’s party was to ascend the Stikine River and make its way to Fort Selkirk, at the junction of the Pelly and Yukon Rivers. A party led by the Geological Survey of Canada’s

81 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 160, William Ogilvie to E. Deville, 8 January 1896. 82 The most detailed history of the 141st meridian border up to the Klondike gold rush is: Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle. 83 Ibid., 11.

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R.G. McConnell ascended the Stikine River with Dawson, before crossing over to the Mackenzie

River and returning to the Yukon River the following spring via the Porcupine River. Ogilvie’s third party was instructed to ascend the Chilkoot Pass and follow the Yukon River to Fortymile, where they were to survey the location of the 141st meridian.84

Born in Canada West in 1846, William Ogilvie began his career as a Provincial Land

Surveyor in Ontario in 1869, before becoming a Dominion Land Surveyor in 1872. He began working for the Canadian government in 1875 and completed a number of surveys in the North-

West Territories before being assigned to the Dawson Expedition.85 The Ogilvie party arrived at the foot of the Chilkoot Pass on 24 May 1887 with six tons of supplies and two canoes. After crossing the pass, the party started downriver on 12 July, surveying as they went, arriving at

Fortymile on 7 September. Reaching the boundary area on 14 September, Ogilvie set up his equipment on a tree stump eighteen inches in diameter and five feet high, making a series of observations between September 1887 and February 1888 to determine the location of the 141st meridian.86 The party marked the boundary on the Yukon and Fortymile Rivers “by blazing trees on both sides of the river and marking a few with ‘A’ for Alaska on the west side and ‘C’ for

Canada on the east.”87 On the Fortymile River, historian Lewis Green notes “luckily, on the north bank, there was a natural marker in the form of a narrow, rocky spur about 150 feet high separating the channels of two tributary creeks” that could mark the border.88

The following year, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey sent a party north to verify Ogilvie’s survey of the 141st meridian on the Yukon River and make an additional survey

84 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 65-68. 85 Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, Annual Report of the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, 34 (1919): 128; Wright, Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon, 168. 86 Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 23. 87 Ibid., 24. 88 Ibid., 24.

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on the Porcupine River. A party led by J.E. McGrath arrived at Ogilvie’s camp in the boundary region in August 1889 and used his observatory to set up their equipment. McGrath spend the winters of 1889-1890 and 1890-1891 marking observations on the Yukon and Fortymile Rivers.

After the party returned to San Francisco in October 1891, the Coast and Geodetic Survey determined that Ogilvie’s survey was close enough to their own results that it could be declared the boundary until a more detailed survey could be completed.89

The Ogilvie/McGrath survey was enough to determine that the town of Fortymile was in

Canadian territory, allowing Constantine and Brown to assert Canadian sovereignty there by collecting customs duties in 1894 and 1895. But the actual line that Ogilvie had marked on the

Yukon and Fortymile Rivers was less enduring. Even just one year later in 1889, it had taken the

McGrath party almost a month to locate the trees marked with “A’s” and “C’s” by the Ogilvie party.90 By 1895, the line Ogilvie marked had disappeared, leaving miners and merchants with only a rough idea of the location of the 141st meridian. Ogilvie had only marked the boundary along the Yukon and Fortymile Rivers, meaning that miners working on other rivers and creeks in the boundary region had no idea where the 141st meridian was located.

When the Canadian government decided to send Constantine back to the Yukon in 1895,

Ogilvie was instructed to return to Fortymile and mark the 141st meridian between the Yukon

River and Sixtymile Creek, “a distance of about fifty-five miles,” Green notes.91 Ogilvie returned to his 1887-1888 camp and, “using the longitude determined in his 1887-88 work,” Green writes, he “ran a careful triangulation and traverse survey from his observatory to the boundary tine at

89 Ibid., 28-36. 90 Ibid., 34. 91 Ibid., 37.

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the Yukon River, a distance of about three miles.”92 From that point, the Ogilvie party spent the winter of 1895-1896 marking the line a distance of five miles north of the Yukon River and south to within two miles of Sixtymile Creek, covering all of the mining areas in the Fortymile district (see Figure 2). Ogilvie sent official notice that he had completed his survey of the 141st meridian to Constantine on 15 May 1896. According to Green, Ogilvie added “a qualification that the line as he had marked it was not binding on either Canada or the United States since it was approximate, made solely to enable Canada to exercise authority until such time as a joint commission should fix the final location.”93

The boundary survey determined with some degree of certainty which mining areas were in Constantine’s jurisdiction and which were not, and he lost little time extending his authority.

Constantine explained in his annual report for 1896, dated 20 November 1896, that “the running of the boundary line last winter determined the fact that gold-bearing creeks which hitherto were supposed to be in American territory are wholly, or in part, in Canada.”94 After receiving word that Ogilvie’s survey had been completed, Constantine sent notices to the miners on Miller Creek and Glacier Creek, tributaries of Sixtymile River, informing them that they “were in Canada and subject to her jurisdiction and laws.”95 He reported that “a few miners denied Canada’s jurisdiction and right to collect fees, on the ground that there was no joint survey and a possibility of error in the work.”96 At the end of May, Constantine and two constables traveled to

Miller and Glacier Creeks and explained Canadian mining laws and regulations to the miners,

92 Ibid., 38. 93 Ibid., 40. 94 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1896, (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1897), 234. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.

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made entry of their claims, and collected the $15 registration fee.97 Constantine wrote in his annual report that “all dues were paid without any trouble.”98 Constantine and his men returned to Fortymile, thinking the matter settled.

Just a few days after Constantine left, however, “on Glacier Creek, a number of the miners undertook to run matters in accordance with their ideas of justice and set themselves up as the law of the land.”99 Here Constantine was referring to an incident on Glacier Creek in June

1896 that marked the first instance of trouble with miners in the Yukon and a chance for

Constantine to more firmly establish police control of the area. On 29 August 1895, two miners,

Hestwood and Van Wagener, leased claim No. 19 on Glacier Creek to a third man, A.A. Gordon, who hired a number of men to work the claim. When Gordon failed to make enough money to pay his labourers, he left the country for Circle City. A miners’ meeting was called, and the committee ordered Hestwood and Van Wagener, as the owners of the claim, to pay the men $800 in wages. When they refused, the claim was sold to a Jerry Baker to pay Gordon’s debts.

Hestwood and Van Wagener appealed to Constantine.100

On 19 June 1896, Constantine wrote a letter to the miners’ committee informing them that “there is but one authority in this country and that is the Law as laid down by the Parliament of the Dominion of Canada” and that “any action taken by you as to selling the claim for wages due by Gordon is illegal.”101 When Hestwood and Van Wagener wrote to Constantine on 1 July that the miners had ignored his warning, “took possession of our property,” and turned it over to

97 Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 41. 98 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1896, 234. 99 Ibid. 100 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 23; LAC, RG18, Vol. 123, File 468, Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896; Constantine to Strickland, 4 July 1896. 101 LAC, RG18, Vol. 123, File 468, Constantine to the Committee appointed by certain Miners of Glacier and Miller Creeks, 19 June 1896.

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Baker, he sent Inspector Strickland and a party of eleven men armed with Lee Metford Carbines and revolvers to Glacier Creek to return the claim to its rightful owners.102

Figure 2 Map of Miller and Glacier Creeks, 1896. By the author.

102 LAC, RG18, Vol. 123, File 468, Hestwood and Van Wagener to Constantine, 1 July 1896; Local Order No 1, 4 July 1896; Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896.

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Strickland, his party, and “three Indian polers and packers” left Fort Constantine on 4

July at 9 pm, “proceeded up Forty Mile River to Moose Creek, a distance of 30 miles,” before traveling overland another 30 miles to Glacier Creek.103 Once there, Strickland ejected Baker from claim No. 19 and warned him and the miners’ committee to “attempt no further occupation of the place.”104 The miners backed down. Strickland remained at Glacier Creek for two days and, “receiving the assurance of the principal parties concerned that no further trouble would ensue,” he returned to Fort Constantine.105

The recent survey of the Alaska-Yukon border played a major role in Constantine’s assertion of power at Glacier Creek. Explaining his actions, Constantine wrote on 13 July 1896 that “there had been a good deal of talk as to what I would do in case of trouble on any of the

Creeks, many saying that there were not sufficient Police to do anything… I felt that this was the turning point, and should I give them their way, or recognize them in any manner, trouble would never cease.”106 Without knowing the exact location of the border, however, Constantine would not have been able to apply Canadian law and mining regulations with the same authority. When

Strickland and his party arrived at Glacier Creek, they acted with the knowledge that they were in Canadian territory and the miners accepted their authority.

While the boundary survey had made it possible for the police in enforce Canadian law in the mining districts, it also threatened to prevent them from crossing the border unnoticed if they needed to. Strickland reported to Constantine that, in order to reach Glacier Creek, his party had crossed “a strip of American territory about a mile in width” around Moose Creek.107 “A good

103 LAC, RG18, Vol. 123, File 468, Strickland to Constantine, 14 July 1896. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896. 107 Strickland to Constantine, 14 July 1896.

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many miners are talking already about our crossing the territory aforesaid with arms,” he wrote.108 Constantine also added that “it is quite probable that some of the miners will write all kinds of stuff to the American papers.”109 The Glacier Creek incident, then, revealed a reoccurring problem for the police as they began to enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border: how could they do their job in the Yukon without crossing the border, when the conditions of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, particularly the transportation system, in this case the trail to Glacier Creek, required them to cross it? As Strickland warned, “in the event of our being obliged at any time to bring prisoners from the Creeks to Fort Constantine trouble would be certain to ensue.”110 He recommended that “the Government cut a trail from Forty Mile along the ridges to Glacier Creek, which would not only do away with the necessity of entering

American territory, but would greatly shorten the distance between the two places.”111

Constantine concurred with Strickland’s assessment.112

William R. Morrison argued that the incident at Glacier Creek “marked, as nothing else could have done, the passing of the old free way of life in the Yukon and the replacement of the older system of justice by the new… the old order had passed in the Yukon, and American-style frontier democracy had been replaced by British paternalism.”113 But he may have overstated the case. By July 1896, Constantine had established a Canadian government presence at Fortymile and began to collect customs duties there, and a few other places like Pelly River. The boundary survey had allowed Constantine to enforce Canadian mining regulations in the mining districts

108 Ibid. 109 Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896. 110 Strickland to Constantine, 14 July 1896. 111 Ibid. 112 Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896. 113 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 23-24. He suggests that the image of the police “descended upon them carrying Lee-Metford rifles,” along with their desire for order over self-governance, explains the miners’ weak response to the action.

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along the border, and the Glacier Creek incident provided him with an opportunity to assert his authority over the miners’ meetings. But he had hardly taken control of the Yukon. As in 1894, the Mounted Police in the Yukon were still primarily occupied with gathering information on the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands and practical concerns like building Fort Constantine or reaching

Glacier Creek without crossing American territory. Unnerved by the whole incident, Constantine wrote that “this country requires a stronger detachment than I have at present,” a concern shared by those in Ottawa.114

As this chapter has shown, the decision to send Constantine back to the Yukon to establish a permanent police presence at Fortymile marked the beginning of the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands. While historians have argued that the arrival of the Yukon detachment symbolized the establishment of Canadian control in the Yukon, the construction of

Fort Constantine was just the first step in the government’s efforts to take control of the region.

With most of the police efforts directed at constructing the new post, the Mounted Police did little to extend their authority outside Fortymile. The survey of the Alaska-Yukon border from the Yukon River to Sixtymile Creek during the winter of 1895-1896 allowed Constantine to demonstrate his authority over Miller and Glacier Creeks, but the vast majority of Canadian territory in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands remained outside his control.

In April 1896, White and other government officials in Ottawa debated what to do with the Mounted Police in the Yukon during the 1896 season. George M. Dawson wrote to Deputy

Minister of Interior A.M. Burgess on 9 April that “in my opinion this is going to be a somewhat critical summer in the Yukon region, and I hope that steps will be taken in time to strengthen the

114 Constantine to Officer Commanding NWMP Regina, 13 July 1896.

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hands of the Police in every way possible.”115 He warned that “if once an organized opposition to the Police should gain power, everything will be undone, and only by sending in a large force will it be possible to recover the ground.”116 White agreed with Dawson that “the coming summer will be a critical one in the Yukon District,” noting that “if newspaper reports are correct, a great many adventurers have already started across the mountains from Juneau, numbers of whom have had no previous experience in mining” and would be in need of supervision.117

Constantine had suggested in his 1895 report, dated 20 January 1896, that a post should be established during the summer months at the junction of the “Teslin or Hootalinka River” and the Yukon to prevent the smuggling of goods, particularly liquor, coming into the country over the passes, without paying duties.118 He also noted that “a steam launch, or patrol boat, is much needed for the work to be done.”119 White suggested to Burgess on 14 April 1896 “we ought to establish an outpost somewhere near the mouth of the Teslin-Too (Hootalinka River), with a patrol by water between there and Cudahy, but this cannot be done unless the strength of the

Police is increased from 20 to 30.”120 He noted that “I had hoped that some definite system of government for this territory would have been agreed upon for the coming season, but there appears to be no prospect of the matter being seriously considered until after the General

Elections.”121 With Parliament to be dissolved on 24 April 1896, and a federal election between

Charles Tupper’s Conservative Party and Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal Party on 23 June 1896, the

115 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 160, Dawson to Burgess, 9 April 1896. 116 Ibid. 117 LAC, RG18, Vol. 119, File 160, White to Burgess, 14 April 1896. 118 Government of Canada, Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895, 13-14. 119 Ibid., 13. 120 White to Burgess, 14 April 1896. 121 Ibid.

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police could hardly change their Yukon policy without the approval of the new government. As government agents, the Mounted Police were intrinsically tied to the legislative process and the policy goals of the elected government, and would have to wait until after the election for a change in Yukon policy. In the meantime, White proposed to “instruct Constantine to do his best with the men at his disposal, taking care not to scatter them beyond his immediate control at

Cudahy”122 He continued, “of course this means the loss of one season, and of considerable

Customs revenue on goods which go via Juneau and across the mountains.”123 Burgess replied on 17 April that “what you propose to do is the only thing possible, and is as satisfactory as could be expected with the means at our command.”124

From 1894-1896, the Mounted Police in the Yukon were primarily concerned with gathering information on the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, developing a transportation system to deliver police and supplies to the region, and establishing a police presence at Fortymile by building Fort Constantine. At the same time, they slowly began to take steps to bring the Yukon under Canadian control, like collecting customs duties at Fortymile and enforcing mining regulations at Glacier Creek, but their ability to do so was limited by their knowledge of the region. Summarizing the first two years of Mounted Police service in the Yukon, Morrison argued that:

It is clear that the decision to extend the police service to the Yukon was not as well thought out as it might have been. Lack of real knowledge of conditions in the Yukon, Constantine’s report to the contrary notwithstanding, led the police hierarchy into some errors of judgement. The lines of demarcation as to who was going to do what, as far as civil service functions went, was never made clear, and when the growth of population

122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. 124 Burgess to White, 17 April 1896.

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exceeded everyone’s original expectations, the discrepancies between vague guidelines and harsh realities became glaringly apparent.125

The police and the Canadian government did lack real knowledge of the Yukon, but the only way to begin gathering information on the Yukon was to send Constantine to the Yukon in 1894 and 1895 to investigate local conditions and assess the needs of the region. It would only be after they had this information, that they could make clear the lines of demarcation of civil authority and assert fully Canadian control over the Yukon. In 1896, the police were still in the early stages of this process.

On the eve of the gold rush, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands were still a largely remote and unknown region. Chapters 1 and 2 have demonstrated that the Mounted Police had gathered enough information to establish a small police presence at Fortymile and had taken the first steps to bring the Yukon under Canadian control and define the Alaska-Yukon border. But the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands remained a borderless region. The police only controlled a small area of the

Yukon. They were depended on an American company, the North American Transportation and

Trading Company, to maintain their position at Fortymile, and reliant on a borderlands transportation network to reach the Yukon. Comptroller White and those in Ottawa were making plans to expand the police presence in the Yukon in the next year, but they were interrupted by the discovery of Klondike gold on Rabbit Creek in August 1896. With only a small presence in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, the police became as caught up in the beginning of the gold rush as any Klondiker.

125 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 21.

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Chapter 3 The Mounted Police and the Beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897

The discovery that began the rush to the Klondike was made on 16 August 1896.

American George Washington Carmack, his Tagish wife Kate Carmack, and her brothers

(Carmack’s partners) Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie discovered gold on Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River. As the party rushed to Fortymile to register their claims, they told all they encountered. By September, most miners in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had converged on the Klondike, staking claims on all of Rabbit Creek, renamed Bonanza Creek by

Carmack, and nearby Eldorado Creek. By the spring of 1897, 1500 people had gathered at the new town of Dawson City, named after George M. Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada, at the junction of the Klondike River and the Yukon River.1

According to the traditional narrative of the Klondike gold rush, the North-West Mounted

Police, having arrived at Fortymile in 1894, were well positioned to respond to the discovery.

With only a small force of twenty-three men stationed at Fortymile, however, the Mounted

Police were hardly in a position to respond to the coming rush of miners. Communication problems between Fortymile and the outside prevented Inspector Charles Constantine from even informing his superiors of the Klondike discovery, leaving him with little to do other than make plans to construct a post at Dawson during the winter of 1896-1897.

The Mounted Police in Ottawa ironically found out about the Klondike discovery in the same way as almost every prospector who would rush to the Yukon during the winter of 1897-

1898. On 14 July 1897, the Alaska Commercial Company steamer Excelsior arrived in San

Francisco carrying $500,000 in gold from the Klondike. News quickly spread, sparking the interest of every would-be miner in North America and Europe. The arrival of the steamer

1 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 79-85.

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Portland at Seattle three days later, with over a million dollars in gold, only confirmed that the rush to the Klondike was on. Almost immediately, thousands of people were heading to the

Yukon, either in search of gold, or to take advantage of those in search of gold.2 The Mounted

Police in Ottawa, and the Canadian government, both largely unaware of even the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, suddenly learned from wire-service newspaper reports that tens of thousands of people would be traveling to a remote corner of the country, controlled by only a small force of twenty-three Mounted Police.

This chapter examines the response of the Mounted Police and the Canadian government to the Klondike discovery during the remaining months of 1897.3 By 27 July, Mounted Police

Comptroller Fred White and Clifford Sifton, minister of the interior for the newly elected Wilfrid

Laurier government, had made a plan. Sifton wrote to the Governor General that “the marvelous discoveries of gold in the Upper Yukon, and the rush of miners and others to the District call for immediate action in the direction of providing for the preservation of law and order, and the opening up of a line of communication between the Pacific coast and the interior.”4 He recommended that “the Mounted Police in the Yukon District should be at once increased from

23 to 100” and that supplies for the reinforcements should be rushed to the Yukon.5 He also suggested that a transportation route should be opened up between the head of the Lynn Canal, over the Chilkoot and White passes, to Dawson City and Fortymile, allowing the police to

2 Ibid., 86. 3 This period is discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 28-34; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 85-95; Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902, 161-185; Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870-1914, 103-110. 4 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Sifton to Governor General, 27 July 1897. 5 Ibid.

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quickly send reinforcements and supplies to the Klondike in case of trouble and Constantine and the police in the Yukon to send timely reports to Ottawa on Yukon conditions.6

White and Sifton’s plan formed the next steps in bringing the Yukon under Canadian government control and remaking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The traditional narrative of the

Klondike gold rush has the Mounted Police firmly in place in the Yukon by the time gold was discovered on Rabbit Creek, controlling the rush of miners to the gold fields from the beginning, and the Chilkoot and White passes well established as transportation routes - with the police greeting miners at the summits.7 But in July 1897 there were no Mounted Police stationed anywhere near the passes and the Chilkoot and White passes were simply rough tracks with little infrastructure to handle large amounts of people or supplies. During the first months of the rush, the Mounted Police were primarily concerned with the practical and logistical considerations of rushing reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon, while developing the Chilkoot and White passes as reliable transportation routes. This process was not easy. As soon as the police arrived at Skagway and Dyea, they found both towns in the midst of chaotic and rapid expansion to meet the needs of thousands of miners enroute to the goldfields and the Chilkoot and White pass trails already overwhelmed with people. Almost continuous rain that summer had made the trails nearly impassible.

The police themselves, then, became as caught up in the rush to the Klondike as any miner. Like the thousands of prospectors who rushed to the Klondike, the Mounted Police began gathering information and organizing to send men and supplies to the Yukon in the aftermath of

6 Ibid. 7 See for example: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894- 1925; Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon; Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870-1914; Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902.

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the arrivals of the Excelsior and the Portland. Like the miners, the police had to purchase supplies in Vancouver and Victoria and ship them to Skagway and Dyea. Like the miners, the police often had to carry their own supplies over the passes, battling muddy trails and treacherous conditions for pack animals, and hiring indigenous packers and small packing companies to assist with the workload. The routes over the Chilkoot and White passes were barely broken trails with few transportation companies or packers available, leaving the police to rely largely on their own labour, while working with miners and transportation companies to make improvements to the trails. Overwhelmed with these activities and rushing reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon, the Mounted Police ignored the location of the still unsurveyed

Alaska-Yukon border between Skagway and Dyea and the interior. They instead worked to develop a borderlands transportation network across the Chilkoot and White passes. In other words, local conditions forced the Mounted Police to fit into the established borderlands system in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as they responded to the beginning of the Klondike gold rush.

While the Mounted Police were concerned with practical and logistical considerations,

Sifton and the Canadian government had a different set of priorities. In Ottawa, the government viewed the thousands of miners who rushed to the Klondike as mainly American, a fact that was deeply concerning. Such a perceived large American presence threatened Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon and demanded a strong response. To address political pressure to maintain

Canadian control of the Klondike, Sifton pushed the Mounted Police to send in reinforcements as quickly as possible, despite the increasing difficulties and delays faced by the police on the ground. Sifton was also influenced by political and patronage interests and a desire to ensure that

Canadian businesses benefited from the Klondike rush. He appointed the politically acceptable former Mounted Policeman James Morrow Walsh as Commissioner of the Yukon Territory and

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accompanied Walsh on a tour of the Chilkoot and White passes in October 1897, both of which resulted in significant extra work for the Mounted Police in the Yukon, but pleased Sifton’s political supporters.8 While the Mounted Police and the Canadian government in Ottawa began the gold rush on the same page, then, by the end of 1897, the two groups were beginning to develop different understandings of the situation in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The Mounted

Police had the experience of being on the ground in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and knew how hard it would be to rush supplies and reinforcements to Dawson. The Canadian government did not have such local knowledge, even though Sifton’s trip to Skagway and Dyea helped narrow the gap.

This chapter begins by examining Inspector Constantine’s response to the beginning of the gold rush at Fortymile and the communication barriers that prevented him from informing

Ottawa of the situation. The development of White and Sifton’s plan to respond to the coming rush will then be traced, followed by the initial organizing to send reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon, the purchasing of supplies in Vancouver and Victoria, and, finally, Assistant

Commissioner J.H. McIllree’s efforts to forward reinforcements and supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes between August and October 1897. Minister of the Interior Sifton’s response to the beginning of the gold rush will then be discussed, including the political pressure he faced in

Ottawa and his appointment of Commissioner Walsh. This chapter ends with Walsh’s arrival at

Skagway and Inspector Z.T. Wood’s efforts to forward men and supplies to the interior between

October and December 1897. By then, harsh winter condition on the Chilkoot and White passes

8 Sifton’s response to the Klondike discovery is discussed by: D.J. Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861- 1900 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981); David Morrison, The Politics of the Yukon Territory, 1898-1906 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968).

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ground everything to a halt. Ominously, with weather closing down their options, Wood began receiving reports of a food shortage at Dawson City during the winter of 1897-1898.

Fortymile

At Fortymile, Inspector Charles Constantine first reported the Klondike discovery to the

Canadian government in a semi-official letter to Mounted Police Commissioner L.W. Herchmer on 2 September 1896. “A new and rich discovery of placer gold fields has been made about 50 miles up the Yukon on the East, and the stampede for it was wild. Over 200 claims have been staked,” he wrote.9 Repeating his complaint from the previous summer that “there are not sufficient Police here,” Constantine suggested that “the country will have to be divided into mining districts, with an Agent for each district, who must be resident on the principal Creek in the District.” He recommended that “about 100 men will be required in this country next season.”10 He continued, “some more men must come in, I cannot undertake to be responsible for order and the carrying out of laws even mildly with my present strength.”11

Constantine wrote in his 1896 annual report to the government, dated 20 November 1896, that “in August of this year a rich discovery of coarse gold was made by one George Carmack on

Bonanza Creek.”12 He reported that “as usual such a prospect created a stampede for the new diggings. Men left their old claims and with a blanket, axe and a few hardtack prospected on the new creek, staked, and registered their claims.”13 Already, he wrote, “three hundred and thirty- eight claims have been registered to date and there still remain about 150 to be entered.”14

Constantine recommended that “a new post should be built in the spring at the mouth of the

9 LAC, RG18, Vol. 140, File 525, Constantine to Herchmer, 2 September 1896. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1896 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1897), 234. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

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Klondike River,” at Dawson.15 “I intend to erect at this place in the spring two buildings, one a barrack room, the other a lock-up,” he wrote, “the men will go up the river on the last ice about the end of April” to begin construction.16 Constantine also suggested that a second post should be built at Pelly River, “especially if the Dalton trail from there to tide-water be opened up,” to give the police access to the Lynn Canal routes.17 “In connection with the new posts which have to be built I would draw your attention to the small number of men on detachment here,” Constantine continued, this time asking that the strength of the Yukon detachment be increased to seventy- five.18

Constantine reiterated his request for more men on 6 December, reporting that “the

Klondike is turning out beyond all expectations.”19 He noted that the population of Dawson had reached 500. “Three months ago,” he wrote, “there was not, with the exception of a small fishing village of [Han or Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in] Indians, a person there. Now there are stores, a saw mill moved from 60 miles up the river, a saloon or two, as well as some other fancy things.”20

Constantine reported that he had set aside a government reserve of forty acres at Dawson for the new post, and he recommended that “accommodation for an officer and 30 men should be provided.”21 The post at Fortymile would also have to be maintained “for the protection of the

Miller, Glacier and other Creeks” in the area, and Constantine wrote that “the Pelly Post asked for is necessary for the quick transmission of letters, and in case of any trouble.”22 In anticipation

15 Ibid., 235-236. 16 Ibid., 236. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 LAC, RG18, Vol. 140, File 525, Constantine to Herchmer, 6 December 1896. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

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of the arrival of more men, Constantine had also sent out tenders to the trading companies in the

Yukon “called for supplies for the Police based on 80 men ‘more or less.’”23

Constantine’s pleas would not reach Ottawa for months. C.H. Hamilton, Secretary of the

North American Transportation and Trading Company, however, got word out. He wrote to C.H.

MacIntosh, Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories, on 30 April 1897 stressing “the urgent necessity of having more mounted police in the Yukon district.”24 Mounted Police

Comptroller Fred White wrote in a memo to Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton on 18 May reporting that “we now have 3 officers and 20 men in that District, and if reports from Inspector

Constantine indicate the necessity for more they can be dispatched later in the season.”25 He evidently had not yet received Constantine’s requests for more men. In fact, White only asked for authority to “increase the strength of the Police in the Yukon by 10 men should reports from that District indicate the urgent necessity for such being done.”26 This request seems to have been approved by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. A letter from Constantine to Herchmer dated

29 January 1897 had reached White in Ottawa by 20 March. But a summary of the letter only mentioned Constantine’s request that posts would have to be built at the Klondike and Pelly

River, and not that more men would be needed.27

The mail service between the Yukon and the south had been a problem since the police arrived in the region. Constantine was instructed during both his 1894 and 1895 expeditions to write regular reports to White, but sending letters from the interior had never been easy. In his

23 Ibid. 24 LAC, RG18, Vol. 137, File 360, Hamilton to C.H. MacIntosh, 30 April 1897. Hamilton suggested that between 3000 and 5000 people were heading to the Yukon in 1897 and that “it is very necessary that the law abiding citizens should have more protection than they have at the present time.” 25 LAC, RG18, Vol. 137, File 360, White, memo to Sifton, 18 May 1897. 26 Ibid. 27 LAC, RG18, Vol. 140, File 525, “Summary of unofficial letter from Inspector Constantine to Commissioner Herchmer, dated Yukon 29 January 1897.”

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1894 report, Constantine noted that there was only one reliable mail delivery a year at Fortymile, brought in by the Alaska Commercial Company steamer, and “any other letters that are brought in come by miners or others who may happen to think of them before leaving Juneau or Dia-

Yah.”28 Mail sent with miners coming in or out of the country was naturally unreliable. A bag of police mail carried over the passes by a miner in December 1895, for example, was lost and found by another miner in July 1896, buried under three-and-a-half feet of snow, and returned to

Fort Cudahy.29

In 1896, the government contracted William Moore, who had informed White of Yukon conditions in 1894, to make three mail deliveries between Juneau and Fort Cudahy during the summer months. On his final mail of the year, Moore left Fort Cudahy on 13 September 1896, carrying Constantine’s news of the Klondike discovery, intending to travel down river to St.

Michael, but he was forced to turn back when the river froze. Moore made it back to Fort

Cudahy by early December, with all the mail from 13 September, and left for Juneau, three months behind schedule.30 In the meantime, Constantine sent a “large mail” with a man named

Nash, at a cost of $50, which he hoped, “if all goes well,” would arrive by January 1897, but it was evidently delayed.31 As Constantine wrote to Herchmer on 17 January 1897, “it is always safe to repeat in letters from here what you say in former ones, as you cannot tell which letter, if any, may get out.”32

Summarizing the mail service during his time in the Yukon, Constantine noted to

Herchmer that “with the exception of 3 or 4 private letters from you, and a couple of official

28 Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1895), 77. 29 Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1896, 237. 30 Ibid.; Constantine to Herchmer, 6 December 1896. 31 Constantine to Herchmer, 6 December 1896. 32 LAC, RG18, Vol. 140, File 525, Constantine to Herchmer, 17 January 1897.

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ones, we have not heard from the outside for nearly two years. No general orders have been received.”33 It is not surprising, then, that White was not fully informed of the Klondike discovery or Constantine’s requests for additional men. The other possibility is that White received Constantine’s requests for more men but, not yet knowing the seriousness of the

Klondike discovery, chose to ignore them rather than commit to a costly increase in the number of police in the Yukon.34 Either way, there was a lack of communication between Constantine and Ottawa.

Even without knowing the seriousness of the Klondike discovery, the government did take some steps to improve the administration of the district. In April 1897, White sent a detachment of twenty men under Inspector H.W. Scarth over the Chilkoot Pass to Fort

Constantine, but only to relieve those who had completed their two years of Yukon service, leaving the total number of police in the Yukon at only twenty-three.35 At Constantine’s request, the government appointed Dominion Topographical Surveyor Thomas Fawcett as Land Agent and Gold Commissioner for the Yukon on 21 May 1897.36 Fawcett was also to “to act for the

Minister of the Interior in matters relating to the administration of the District.”37 He arrived in

Dawson on 15 June 1897 and relieved Constantine of his duties as land agent.38 William Ogilvie, having completed his survey of the Alaska-Yukon border near Fortymile, as discussed in Chapter

33 Ibid. 34 Morrison writes of Constantine’s request for a steam launch: “this undoubtedly set the police administration back somewhat, for it went far beyond their original expectations of expenditure, and they ignored Constantine’s suggestion.” Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 29. 35 Morrison mistakenly writes that the number of police in the Yukon was increased to 40 in May 1897, but this does not take into account those who returned to the south after completing their Yukon service. Morrison, 30. 36 LAC, Orders-in-Council Database, 1897-1190, “Appt Thos [Appointment of Thomas] Fawcett, as land agt [agent] and gold commr Provl Dist [commissioner of Provincial District of] Yukon and authority to E.D. Bolton and Jas [James] Gibbons to act in his place during absence - Min Int [Minister of the Int,” 21 May 1897, http://www.bac- lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/orders-council/Pages/orders-in-council.aspx. 37 Ibid. 38 Morrison, The Politics of the Yukon Territory, 1898-1906, 10.

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2, remained in the Yukon and traveled to Dawson City during the winter of 1896-1897 to survey the Dawson townsite, the forty-acre government reserve, and the mining claims staked on

Bonanza Creek.39 But with no official instructions from Ottawa, Constantine could only proceed with his plan to build a post at Dawson and make do with the men he had.

The Klondike Gold Rush

The arrival of the steamer Excelsior at San Francisco on 14 July 1897 and the steamer

Portland at Seattle on 17 July 1897 finally informed the Canadian government, and the rest of the world, of the Klondike discovery and the seriousness of the situation developing at Dawson

City. On board the steamer Portland was Mounted Police Inspector D’A.E. Strickland, returning from Fortymile with the police who had completed their two years’ service. Strickland told the

Seattle Post-Intelligencer upon his arrival that “when I left Dawson City a month ago there were about 800 claims staked out and there were between 2,000 and 3,000 people in there.”40 After traveling to Regina, Strickland reported more fully to Commissioner Herchmer on 24 July 1897, providing the Mounted Police in Ottawa and the Canadian government a first hand account of conditions in the Yukon.41 Strickland wrote that “on 12th August 1896 George Carmack discovered gold on Bonanza Creek. He made his discovery known, and a stampede took place to the new diggings.”42 At Dawson City “a flourishing camp soon sprang up, and business became very brisk.”43 Strickland reported that “Dawson, up to date, has been a very quiet and orderly camp, only one case of crime having occurred, viz: a stabbing affray. The new strike, however, is

39 Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 44. 40 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 July 1897, 1. 41 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Strickland to Herchmer, 24 July 1897. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid.

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attracting all the bad characters of the Pacific Coast, prostitutes, gamblers and sharpers of all kinds.”44 He warned that “trouble will occur sooner or later.”45

Strickland also reported on the available transportation routes to the Yukon. On the

Yukon River route, he wrote “the difficulty of travelling is very great. The river is very swift and

20 miles a day going up it is considered good travelling.”46 The only other routes that “are practicable at this time of the year,” he continued, were the Chilkat Pass and Dalton Trail route to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River and the Chilkoot Pass route to the headwaters of the Yukon, where rafts could be constructed to float down the Yukon River.47 Strickland wrote that “the hardships and dangers of keeping a route open on either trail will be great. The cold will be great and the snow is very deep. The long nights will also be a drawback & the difficulty of carrying books in over the summits will make time pass heavily. Both summits are very difficult to cross in winter time. There is almost constantly a blizzard blowing there. Parties have often to camp for six weeks at the foot of the summit before the wind will allow them to cross.”48 Herchmer forwarded Strickland’s report to White on 30 July. In the meantime, Comptroller White and

Minister of the Interior Sifton were busy formulating their plan to respond to the gold rush.

White’s first concern was the communication problems that failed to keep the government up to date on the conditions in the Yukon. He wrote to Sifton on 21 July stressing

“the desirability of immediate action being taken for the establishment of a line of winter communication between the Pacific coast and the Yukon gold fields.”49 He continued, “letters which were written in September and October 1896 did not reach Ottawa until February 1897,

44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White, memo to Sifton, 21 July 1897.

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and the last official information we have received from Cudahy was contained in letters written in March of this year.”50 White suggested sending “not less than 10 additional Police” to the

Yukon, “with instructions to erect shelter in the shape of rough huts, between the Summit at the head of Lynn Canal, and Cudahy, a total distance of about 650 miles.”51 A sled road linking the huts could then be maintained during the winter, allowing Constantine to send out letters year- round. “At least four of these stations would be necessary,” White thought.52

By 27 July 1897, White and Sifton had finalized their plans to increase the number of police in the Yukon from twenty-three to 100 and establish a transportation and mail route between the Lynn Canal and Dawson and Fortymile. White and the Mounted Police immediately began organizing to send reinforcements to the Yukon as soon as possible. Commissioner

Herchmer had already “called for volunteers” for Yukon service, in anticipation of the government’s decision.53 In a 29 July call for volunteers, Assistant Commissioner J.H. McIllree wrote that “70 men are required at once… send the applications here with as little delay as possible.”54 Herchmer informed White on 5 August that he had selected 47 non-commissioned officers and constables for the Yukon. Concerned that he did not have enough men suitable for the manual labour they would be expected to perform, he suggested that the police should carefully recruit fifty men accustomed to manual labour for the Yukon.55 As he wrote to White on 27 July, “fifty good men better than one hundred not all suitable.”56 The plan was to send the reinforcements in small detachments of twenty men, under the command of an officer, by

50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 27 July 1897. 54 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree, Circular No. 249, 29 July 1897. 55 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 5 August 1897. 5817 “I think that there can be no doubt that the services of a large number of men will be required there next spring.” 56 Herchmer to White, 27 July 1897.

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steamer to Dyea, where they would cross the Chilkoot Pass and build boats at the foot of Lake

Bennett. McIllree wrote to White on 31 July 1897 that he had made arrangements for the first group to sail from Victoria on the steamer Islander on 15 August.57

White elaborated on the Mounted Police and Canadian government plan for the Yukon in a 27 July 1897 draft memo titled “Arrangement regarding the Yukon Territory.”58 In addition to increasing the number of police in the Yukon from twenty-three to 100, White wrote that

“sufficient building for their accommodation to be erected and sufficient supplies procured” and sent to the Yukon.59 He also wrote that a post should be constructed “at the most convenient point north of the 60th parallel below Lake Tagish,” and “about twenty men” should be stationed there.60 The 60th parallel was the border between British Columbia and the North-West

Territories and a post there would give the police a base at the first point clearly in their jurisdiction. The remaining reinforcements were “to be stationed at points where it may hereafter be decided that there [sic] services will be effectual.”61 White also wrote that “a monthly mail route shall be established” by opening up a transportation route between the Lynn Canal and the interior. “Shelter shall be erected at a distance of fifty miles apart if necessary,” he wrote, “the necessary dogs and supplies to be purchased. The road to be chosen by the Surveyor General and the Controller [Comptroller?] of the North West Mounted Police, subject to the approval of the

Minister.”62

The Mounted Police plan for the Yukon in July 1897 was to open up the southern Yukon and establish a transportation or communication route to the upper Yukon River. The immediate

57 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to White, 31 July 1897. 58 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White, draft memo, 27 July 1897. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid.

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goal was to allow Constantine to send letters to Ottawa in a more reasonable amount of time, to ensure that the police could quickly respond to any trouble. Construction of a post at Lake

Tagish and way stations every fifty miles from the Lynn Canal to Dawson was the first step in developing the southern Yukon for police proposes and ultimately establishing Canadian government control of that part of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. White wrote in his 27 July draft memo that “estimates of the cost of construction of telegraph line; narrow gauge railway, and wagon road to be procured at once over the route from the head of Lynn Canal to the waters connected with the Yukon,” indicating that the Canadian government had larger plans for the

Yukon.63 The police could not have fully known, however, that thousands of prospectors were also making plans to cross the Chilkoot Pass in the fall of 1897. It did put the police in good position to control the rush to the Yukon.

The main practical concern at the beginning of August 1897 was sending in enough supplies to the Yukon to support the additional men. Herchmer warned White on 27 July that

“we cannot get supplies in for that number [seventy men] I fear even if I can select men.”64

White had made arrangements with the North American Transportation and Trading Company to continue to supply the police in the Yukon after the reinforcements arrived. He wrote to C.H.

Hamilton on 27 July 1897 that “Police in Yukon to be increased to One Hundred -- Can we rely on you for additional supplies.”65 Hamilton replied that the NAT&TCo. “can supply all you require,” with a fifteen percent discount on the “regular retail price” of Yukon goods, for

63 Ibid. This part of the plan is crossed out in the draft memo, along with White’s suggestions that provisions be made to register land titles in the Yukon, that “regulations regarding subaqueous mining, not to apply to rivers and streams in the Yukon territory,” and that “in all new mining locations every alternate claim to be reserved for public purposes.” 64 Herchmer to White, 27 July 1897. 65 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Hamilton, 27 July 1897.

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supplies over their original contract for 1897.66 White accepted the offer on 28 July.67 While

White had secured the continued services of the NAT&TCo. at Fortymile and Dawson, however, sending in reinforcements via the Chilkoot route meant that the police would still have to purchase and transport their own provisions for the actual journey to the Klondike. As Herchmer feared, the great difficulty would be transporting enough supplies over the passes to support the men at Tagish and on their way to Dawson. Herchmer wrote to White on 4 August that he had purchased twenty pack horses to go with the first party, “as we cannot get over the Pass without them.”68

But by 6 August, a new concern had emerged. A.R. Milne, Collector of Customs at

Victoria, informed Ottawa that “Rush unprecedented steamers continue crowded rough

American element going forward menacing regarding the payment of duties at Tagish advise mounted police be pushed forward.”69 Herchmer also reported to White that Assistant

Commissioner McIllree, now in Vancouver, reported that “passes crowded and great trouble” ahead.70

In response to Milne and McIllree’s warnings, Sifton instructed White to increase the number of men to be stationed at Lake Tagish. White wrote to Herchmer on 6 August 1897 that

“Minister directs that detachment leaving Victoria 15th instant be increased by fourteen, twenty going through to Dawson City, and the rest to remain at Lake Tagish.”71 He explained, “this step ordered in consequence of reported possibility of difficulty respecting collection of duty.”72

Herchmer, reiterating his concern for getting enough supplies over the passes and finding enough

66 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Hamilton to White, 27 July 1897. 67 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Hamilton, 28 July 1897 2. 68 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 4 August 1897. 69 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, A.R. Milne to Commissioner of Customs, 6 August 1897. 70 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 6 August 1897. 71 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 6 August 1897. 72 Ibid.

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good men, replied that he “cannot get more than thirty together for fifteenth and have so ordered even if I had them we cannot get food over pass.”73 He explained that there would be around forty tons of supplies to move over the passes. It would take five days for a pack train to cross the White Pass, with only 200lbs per horse, and three days to return to Skagway.74 With a pack train of twenty horses, it would require twenty trips or 160 days to move the supplies beyond the summit. As Herchmer noted, “they will have to do most of their own packing.”75 White, however, replied on 7 August that “you must endeavor to send the fourteen men on the fifteenth instant for Tagish Lake… Minister’s order imperative.”76

Herchmer wrote on 9 August that he had managed to arrange for thirty-four men to sail on 15 August, under the command of Inspector F. Harper, followed by Inspector D’A.E.

Strickland, who had recently returned from the Yukon, and a party of ten men. He reported the next day that McIllree had left Victoria for Skagway with an advanced party of seven men on 7

August.77

Vancouver

On 9 August, White instructed Herchmer to “go Victoria and see party off fifteenth.”78

Herchmer wrote to White on 23 August that “I saw Insp. Harper and 34 non-commissioned officers and constables off for Skagway.”79 Herchmer had purchased supplies for the reinforcements in Vancouver and Victoria and arranged to have everything shipped to Skagway.

“20 pack horses, and one train of dogs, the latter to accompany Insp. Harper in the event of his

73 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 6 August 1897. 74 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 6 August 1897 2. 75 Herchmer to White, 6 August 1897. 5805 76 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 7 August 1897. 77 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 9 August 1897; Herchmer to White, 10 August 1897. 78 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 9 August 1897. 79 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 23 August 1897.

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freezing, went on board in good shape,” he reported.80 “Six tons of hay and 100 bushels chopped oats accompanied the horses,” he continued, “and I arranged for 10 tons per month and 100 bushels of oats to follow, and have also arranged for 15 tons dried salmon and as much dog biscuit as I require to be forwarded to Skagway.”81 A further 3000 lbs of dog biscuits would be sent on later, “which I have instructed shall be sent if possible to Pelly to be there stored for use of dog trains, and I hope to send 4 or 5 tons of fish and dog biscuit to a post to be stabled at Lac

La Barge,” for the use of the mail service.82

Herchmer also wrote that “I have sent forward sufficient tarpaulins to cover the supplies I trust, and I bought enough groceries &c., to complete supplies for 50 men (including Harper’s 2 months) for 12 months.”83 He continued, “sufficient tents have also gone forward and I have arranged with T. Dunn & Co. to make more at short notice. I also sorted up the hardware and sent stoves required, and arranged for those wanted later.”84 He also made arrangements with the

Hudson’s Bay Company for seventy pairs of snowshoes, which “will be required for dog drivers later on.”85

Herchmer also spent much time in Vancouver and Victoria arranging to purchase the necessary supplies for the mail service. The government’s plan for the monthly mail service was to use dog trains in the winter to transport mail between the shelters to be constructed every fifty miles. In early August, Herchmer and White made arrangements with the post office in Victoria to send regular mail to Dyea, where it would be carried to the interior by the police. By 31

August, White had also arranged to have American mail sent to Dyea and carried over the passes

80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. Lac La Barge is a misspelling of Lake Laberge. During the gold rush it was misspelled a number of ways, including La Barge, LaBarge, Labarge. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid.

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by the police.86 White instructed Herchmer on 18 August that 100 dogs would be required in the

Yukon during the coming winter, despite the concerns of both men that it would be difficult to send in enough food.87 In addition to the dried salmon and dog biscuit he had purchased,

Herchmer wrote on 23 August that “I have 31 good trained dogs here now and Tend, the trader at

Edmonton has offered 40 more at $12, which I have accepted to be delivered at Edmonton on

Sept. 20th.”88 He continued, “I have bought 12 at Prince Albert, and have placed on order with the Hudson’s Bay for 40 more, but will have to pay more than the 31 lot, $13 each.”89 Herchmer wrote, “I really do not think we can feed over the pass more than 100 dogs, as there is no feed in the Yukon at all, and it is a [ten?] day trip to Dawson City.”90

“I am engaging a few good dog drivers at $30 per month, and $10.00 extra if they do well; they to supply their own clothes &c.,” Herchmer wrote, “I hope to get about 20 men for this work and propose that two constables shall accompany each mail.”91 He suggested that

“sufficient mitts, lined duck suits, jerseys &c., for all the men going in” should be sent.92 “I ordered 20 fox skin robes lined with drill for the men traveling with dogs, and shall order some more as soon as I hear about the number of dogs,” he wrote.93

With supplies purchased, “the whole trouble now centres at the Pass,” Herchmer wrote,

“if we can get the supplies over, it will be safe to say that matters are satisfactory, but reports on

Pass are very conflicting.”94 In late August 1897, Herchmer remained optimistic. “After careful

86 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 4 August 1897; White to E.H. Fletcher, 31 August 1897. 87 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 18 August 1897; White to Herchmer, 25 August 1897. 88 Herchmer to White, 23 August 1897. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid.

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calculation on data available, I am satisfied the Asst. Commissioner will overcome all obstacles, but at great expense,” he wrote.95

Skagway

Assistant Commissioner J.H. McIllree arrived in Skagway on 12 August. John Henry

McIllree was born in Jamaica in 1849 and was raised in Halifax. He was educated at Windsor

College in Halifax and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England before joining the

Mounted Police as a Constable at the inception of the force in 1873. Because of his education, he was quickly promoted to Sub-Inspector in 1874, and then Superintendent in 1882 and Assistant

Commissioner in 1892.96 R.C. Macleod writes that McIllree had “the distinction of having been the first Mounted Police officer promoted from the ranks” to the Commissioner’s Office.97 In

August 1897, McIllree had been instructed by Herchmer “to proceed to Victoria and purchase supplies for fifty men for… six months” and “to proceed to Dyea or Skagway using my own judgement as to which Pass I used.”98 In Skagway or Dyea, McIllree was to receive Inspector

Harper’s party, and “get this party over the Pass as quickly as possible and start them for Dawson giving his party two months supplies.” The rest of McIllree’s party, under Sergeant Service, was

“to proceed at once to Bennett” and begin building boats.99 Herchmer reported to White on 8

August that “McIllree has bought half supplies Victoria balance from Vancouver.”100

As he explained to Herchmer in a 17 November 1897 report, McIllree had met John

Henry Escolme, “who represented the English Company [the White Pass and Yukon Route

Railway] who were doing the development work in the White Pass,” in Victoria and learned that

95 Ibid. 96 LAC, RG18, Vol. 10037, File 6706, McIllree, John Henry Service Record. 97 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 94. 98 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 99 Ibid. 100 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 8 August 1897.

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“there was a good pack trail all the way and that pack trains were doing the round trip in four days.”101 Aware of the difficulty of packing on the Chilkoot just four months earlier, he wrote, “I decided to try the White Pass.”102

McIllree arrived at Skagway just two weeks after the first miners on their way to

Dawson. On the eve of the rush to the Klondike, Skagway was nothing more than William

Moore’s 160 acres, where he built a cabin and wharf. Within weeks of the arrivals of the

Excelsior and the Portland, hundreds of prospectors overwhelmed the shores of Skagway Bay.

The first miners arrived on 26 July 1897 and, as author Roy Minter writes, “in a matter of days,

Skagway had become a hodge-podge of tents. Piles of tarpaulin-covered freight sprawled across its muddy beach.”103 Hotels, stores, and saloons quickly followed.

As miners began arriving at Skagway and Dyea in August 1897, the Chilkoot and White

Pass routes were little more than rough trails, unprepared for the thousands of miners who would cross the passes during the coming winter. The Chilkoot trail began at Dyea, at the head of Taiya

Inlet, which at the beginning of the gold rush consisted of little more that the Healy and Wilson store. The trail followed the Taiya River, crossing the river several times, to Finnegan’s Point at five miles and Canyon City, at the mouth of the canyon, at eight miles. Heading overland, the trail passed around the canyon before reaching Camp Pleasant at eleven miles and Sheep Camp at thirteen miles, the last major camp before the summit. From Sheep Camp, the trail continued to climb to the Scales, a staging area at the foot of the Chilkoot’s famous final ascent to the summit at 16.5 miles from Skagway. From the summit, the trail passed Crater Lake, Long Lake,

101 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 66. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 73.

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Figure 3 Map of Chilkoot and White Pass Trails, Fall 1897. From “Skagway and Dyea: Gold Rush Boom Towns,” Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Washington, https://www.lib.washington.edu/special collections/collections/exhibits/klondike/case5/. 148

Deep Lake, and Lake Lindeman before reaching Lake Bennett at thirty-three miles and the headwaters of the Yukon River. On the White Pass, four miles of wagon road out of Skagway and a horse bridge had been constructed by William and Ben Moore. From the end of the wagon, the trail followed the Skagway River, along low ground susceptible to turning to mud with heavy rain, crossing the river in several places and passing a number of rough camps established by miners and packers. About twelve miles from Skagway, the Skagway River turns east and the trail carries on north, passing a camp that would become White Pass City before climbing to the

White Pass summit. From the summit, the trail passes Summit Lake, Middle Lake, and Shallow

Lake before reaching a camp at Log Cabin and turning northwest towards Lake Bennett, where the White Pass and Chilkoot Pass trails met. At Lake Bennett, miners constructed boats to float down the Yukon River to Dawson (see Figure 1).

Once in Skagway, McIllree “made enquiries about the [White Pass] trail and reports were very conflicting, people who had never been over a Mountain trail reported it to be very bad, while men who were used to such trails, said it was fair.”104 He also “went over to Dyea and saw

Mr. Heron, the Manager of Healy and Wilson’s business” to investigate conditions on the

Chilkoot. McIllree learned that Heron’s “pack horses were engaged ahead” and “there were a large number of people in the Pass and things were moving slowly.”105 With twenty of his own pack horses, he decided that the White Pass would be best suited to getting Harper’s party and their supplies to the interior. He wrote, “I considered I could easily get Inspr Harper and party over the Pass, and what other provisions etc., were necessary for the party at Tagish, to last them

104 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 105 Ibid.

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until I could get full supplies over the snow.”106 Almost from the beginning, however, McIllree encountered nothing but trouble.

Inspector Harper arrived in Skagway on 20 August with thirty-four men and twenty pack horses. McIllree wrote, “a considerable amount of freight was landed that day and hauled to camp.”107 He “decided to move all the freight up to the end of the waggon road… and make a camp.”108 From there, he “decided to make a camp 8 miles further on, and to move all Harper’s freight on that far.”109 One pack train left the four mile camp on 25 August, and returned that day. But by then, the trail conditions had deteriorated and “the next morning the trail was closed for repairs.”110 As McIllree wrote to Herchmer, “from the time I landed it had rained almost constantly, and an enormous number of people and horses had been landed, and the trail had become very much cut up with some almost impassable mud holes, and was crowed to an extreme degree.”111 McIllree reported to Herchmer on 27 August that it had been “raining hard five days” and the pass was “impassable and road closed for repairs.”112

The trail reopened on 30 August.113 McIllree described the scene to Herchmer: “that day some 3000 pack animals went over and there was a regular jam and hardly any forward movement. When one pony goes down, the whole line has to halt. Then it is almost impossible to pass in many places and if you get off the trail you may have to wait for the space of an hour.”114

An exasperated McIllree continued, “I don’t know when it is going to end. The trail gets more crowded every day and more and more impossible to move. People are struggling on without the

106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 7 September 1897. 113 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 114 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to Herchmer, 2 September 1897.

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slightest chance of getting over, but they will not give up, and block the road.”115 To make matters worse, McIllree dislocated his right ankle on 1 September, leaving him laid up in

Skagway for a month, to direct police activities from there.116

In addition to the twenty pack horses that Harper had brought to move police supplies from Skagway and Dyea to Lake Bennett, McIllree hired small groups of indigenous packers and individual packing companies to assist the police. As discussed in Chapter 1, when U.S. Navy

Captain L.A. Beardslee negotiated permission from the Tlingit for Euro-North Americans to cross the Chilkoot Pass in 1880, the Chilkat Tlingit agreed to work as packers for Beardslee’s exploratory party. As increasing numbers of miners began crossing the Chilkoot from 1880 and the Klondike discovery, the Chilkat continued to work as packers, adapting their traditional trading networks with Athapaskan groups in the interior to include carrying goods for miners.

When Inspector Constantine and Staff Sergeant Brown crossed the Chilkoot Pass on their way to

Fortymile in 1894, Constantine reported his frustration with the Tlingit packers he hired to transport their supplies. He wrote “the Indians here seem to be able to take in but one idea, and that is how much they can get out of you, and being at their mercy as to packing I had, as a rule, to submit to their extortion.”117 On the repeated crossing of the river on their way to the summit,

Constantine’s packers “always take care to exact 25 cents each for each crossing.”118

The first Euro-North American packers to work on the Chilkoot were J.J. Healy and

Edgar Wilson, who opened Healy & Wilson General Merchants, Carriers & Packers at Dyea in

115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1895), 70. 118 Ibid.

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1886 and soon began operating a pack train over the summit.119 When Assistant Commissioner

J.H. McIllree accompanied Inspector Scarth’s party of replacements for those whose two years of service at Fortymile had expired over the Chilkoot Pass in April 1897, he hired Healy and

Wilson’s pack train to move their five tons of supplies to “the mouth of the Canyon,” before carrying them by hand to Sheep Camp, where McIllree “decided to hire Indians to pack from here to Summit.”120

After July 1897, when Klondikers began rushing to Dyea and the newly founded

Skagway, indigenous packers could not keep up to the demand. Neither could Healy and

Wilson’s pack train. New packing operations began arriving at the head of the Lynn Canal.

McIllree had made arrangements in Victoria with one such packer, John Grant, a former mayor of Victoria, “who was taking up a pack train of about 52 animals” to pack for the police “as long as I required him,” McIllree wrote.121 He noted “the price I agreed to pay Grant was 30¢ per lb.”122 Grant’s operation was typical of the packers who arrived at Skagway and Dyea in the fall of 1897, an individual with enough money to purchase a number of horses and hire men to assist them in making a quick buck moving supplies over the passes. Many of these individual packers lacked the experience needed to move goods over the Chilkoot and White passes, and Grant was no exception.

Grant arrived in Skagway on the same day as Harper, 20 August, but, as McIllree noted to Herchmer, “mismanagement reigned from the beginning with this outfit of Grant’s, and he did

119 Tolton, Healy’s West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy, 182. 120 Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1897 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1898), 22. 121 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 122 Ibid.

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not make any attempt to move until the 30th August.”123 When Grant did begin packing, he was to take forty-two horses all the way to Lake Bennett. “Instead of doing this,” McIllree wrote, “he dumped all the freight at our eight mile camp, and got back to Skagway on the fourth day after leaving.”124 McIllree reported to Herchmer on 10 September that “Grant gets worse all the time.”125 He explained, “I block him from working for anyone else, but I cannot get him to send out half his horses. He promises day after day to have them out the next day, but they do not go.

He always has some excuse.”126 Grant had “brought up a lot of men who know nothing of packing and they have left him and he says he cannot get any packers.”127 Summarizing his experience with Grant on 17 November, McIllree wrote, “instead of taking my freight through, and being of great use to me, as he should have been, he was a constant source of annoyance and anxiety to me, and he really helped me but very little.”128 McIllree concluded, “I should have had twice the amount of freight over the Pass than I did get over.”129

By 3 September 1897, McIllree gave Harper his final orders and he began moving his supplies to a camp twelve miles from Skagway.130 McIllree reported to Herchmer on 13

September that Harper had reached the summit the previous day. “He reports the trail as being very bad again owing to so much rain,” McIllree wrote, “he hopes to get to Bennett about

Wednesday [15 September] with all the stuff that his pack horses are carrying.”131 Finally on 23

123 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 5967 124 Ibid. 125 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to Herchmer, 10 September 1897. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to Herchmer, 13 September 1897.

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September, a full month after arriving, “Inspr Harper left Lake Bennett on the 23rd Septr, in four boats, three 24’ and one 27’ long.”132

Inspector Strickland and his party had arrived in Skagway on 26 August, “I sent up to the four mile camp.”133 On 6 September, McIllree sent Strickland to Dyea to bring two men over the

Chilkoot to help build boats at Lake Bennett. “They took 2680 lbs of freight which was carried over by Indians,” McIllree reported.134 On 14 September, Strickland and four men brought 6822 lbs of freight to Dyea, 4000 lbs which was intended for Harper to take with him, but “they were delayed by rain and a wash-out in the Pass, and his Indians deserting him,… the freight did not get to Bennett until the 24th Septr.”135 McIllree ordered Strickland to carry on to Tagish to begin building the post there.

On 26 September, the police pack train returned to Skagway. “Nineteen animals were missing,” McIllree wrote “of which 18 had died and one had strayed and two more died within a few days of their return.”136 With twenty horses brought by Harper, six purchased by McIllree in

Skagway, and eight bought by Harper at the summit, thirteen horses remained. “The balance were totally unfit for work until they had had a long rest, nearly all having sore backs and several of them lame,” he noted.137 After paying Grant for the packing he had done, McIllree wrote, “I was virtually without funds.”138 Without a usable pack train or the money to hire more packers,

“I was unable to move any freight.”139 On 14 October Herchmer wrote to White suggesting that

132 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid.

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McIllree, “who is suffering from a bad ankle, and asthma, and who requires a change,” be recalled to Regina.140

On the White Pass trail, McIllree reported on 17 November that “from the time I began packing until I ceased by reason of the stock giving out, it rained almost continuously, with snow to a great extent on the higher summits.”141 He continued, “the Passes were crowded and everyone was working for himself, and endeavouring to get over the Passes, and there were few packers to be hired, except Indians in the Dyea Pass.”142 McIllree wrote on 13 September that

“there is no doubt that it is an awful trail.”143 “It would not be so bad,” he explained, “if there was a reasonable amount of traffic on it, but with the seething mass of men and animals ploughing over it all the time the soft spots get worked up in bottomless mud, and the rock gets smooth and slippery. The trail is dangerously narrow in numerous places and animals shove one another over the bank.”144 Indeed, he noted that “there have been an awful lot of horses and mules died and killed along the trail and the whole country is beginning to stink. We have lost two, one died and the other tore one of its front legs off.”145 He continued, “there are lots of people in both passes who are not going to get through and of course there are quite a crowd in this place who have given up the idea and have built or are building. Steamers keep coming in bringing more men and horses.”146

“What the future of this trail will be I cannot at present form an idea,” McIllree wrote,

“there is no doubt that by spending sufficient money a good wagon road could be built up this

140 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 14 October 1897. 141 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 McIllree to Herchmer, 13 September 1897. 146 Ibid.

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pass, or a railway.”147 He predicted that “I think the Winter trail will be a good one and people will be able to get over without much difficultly until the canyon breaks up. After that I do not think people can get over” - “I do not consider the present trail will be passable in Spring.”148 For his part, McIllree wrote on 17 November, “our pack train moved 9900 lbs. and Grant’s 7988--

[total] 17888 lbs. I sent 9460 lbs over the Dyea Pass. Total 27348 lbs.”149

Ottawa

Once McIllree and the rest of the Yukon-bound police left Vancouver for Skagway, they were out of telegram communication with Ottawa. Any reports had to be sent by ship to

Vancouver, where Herchmer or others could send telegrams to Ottawa and forward the letters and reports, which usually meant a delay of one to two weeks. There was little the government could do except wait to hear from them. During most of August 1897, White and Herchmer continued to make arrangements for the purchasing of supplies in Vancouver and Victoria, and

Sifton kept up the pressure to send more police to the Yukon. Already on 14 August, White wrote to Herchmer that Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton was “anxious [to] get another detachment of twenty (20) off soon as possible.”150 He also suggested that they “better arrange for an Inspector to be stationed Dyea in charge pack train and supplies crossing summit.”151

Herchmer replied, “have ordered 20 men and Moodie and Starnes to be ready at once” – “it will be all we can do to get supplies for men now en route over pass this fall will guarantee to meet all calls with present men.”152

147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 McIllree to Herchmer, 17 November 1897. 150 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 14 August 1897. 151 Ibid. 152 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 14 August 1897.

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Facing increasing pressure in Ottawa to adequately respond to the Klondike rush, Sifton remained concerned about having enough Mounted Police in the Yukon to meet the rush of miners. He wrote to White on 15 August: “Let me have as soon as possible details of arrangements for further detachments of Mounted Police and dates that they are expected to leave Victoria.”153 White told Herchmer on 19 August that Sifton had “decided remainder of

Police can go by Government boat Quadra leaving Victoria about twentieth September.”154

Born in Canada West in 1861, Clifford Sifton moved with his family to Manitoba in

1875. He was called to the Manitoba bar in 1882 and he began a law practice in Brandon,

Manitoba. After supporting his father’s campaigns for the Manitoba legislature in 1882 and

1886, Sifton was elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1888. He became Attorney General of

Manitoba and Provincial Lands Commissioner in 1891 and was named Minister of Education in

1892, where he played a key role in the settlement of the Manitoba Schools Question. Sifton was elected Member of Parliament for Brandon during the 1896 federal election and was named

Minister of the Interior and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs by new Prime Minister

Wilfred Laurier in November 1896.155 With the arrivals of the Excelsior and the Portland in July

1897, Sifton, as Minister of the Interior, became responsible for government policy in the

Yukon.156

Inside the Laurier cabinet, Sifton biographer D.J. Hall describes Sifton as “the strongest apostle of nationalism,” with committed “anti-American sentiments” and deep suspicions of

153 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Sifton to White, 15 August 1897. 154 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 19 August 1897. 155 D.J. Hall, “Sifton, Sir Clifford,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sifton_clifford_15E.html. 156 Although the administration of the Yukon fell under Sifton’s duties of minister of the interior, D.J. Hall notes that “the duty had fallen naturally to him as one of the few ministers in Ottawa during the critical summer of 1897.” Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 172.

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American intent in the Klondike.157 Sifton’s anti-Americanism was rooted not just in general

English-Canadian prejudice, but in the political and economic considerations of the gold rush.

Hall notes that “the rush for gold in the summer immediately brought about… an eruption of long pent-up anti-Americanism” among the political establishment in Canada.158 The perceived number of Americans rushing to the Klondike, fears that the American tradition of frontier self- government would take hold and threaten Canadian sovereignty, and concerns over the limited government presence in the Yukon led to numerous calls in Canadian newspapers for the government to take steps to maintain Canadian control of the Klondike. The Canadian political and business elite was also concerned that Canada should reap the economic benefits of the gold rush, rather than American miners and businessowners. Sifton himself, in Hall’s words,

“believed that the gold fields constituted a national resource, the benefits of which should accrue to the dominion as a whole.”159 One of his first steps to respond to the gold rush, in addition to making a plan with White to send in Mounted Police reinforcements, was to introduce a series of controversial mining regulations meant to profit the Canadian government, including imposing heavy royalties on all gold mined in the Yukon.160 Facing pressure in Ottawa to maintain

Canadian control of the Klondike and ensure that Canada benefited from the gold rush, Sifton kept the pressure on the Mounted Police to rush reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon as fast as possible. But he had little knowledge of the difficulties that McIllree was encountering on the

White Pass.

157 D.J. Hall, Clifford Sifton: A Lonely Eminence, 1901-1929 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985), 124. 158 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 163. 159 Ibid., 164. 160 Ibid., 164.

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By late August, however, Herchmer and White began receiving early reports from

McIllree on the trail conditions on White Pass. McIllree’s first report that the White Pass was “in a very bad state” was received by Herchmer on 24 August and telegrammed to White in Ottawa on 25 August.161 Herchmer forwarded another series of letters from McIllree to White on 5

September further describing “the enormous difficulties in getting supplies over the White Pass, and the impossibility of getting any quantity over the Chilkoot.”162 On 7 September, Herchmer wrote to White that “under date twenty seventh McIllree begs that no more men be sent this fall as he cannot get them over and provide for them [,] raining hard five days [,] passes impassable and road closed for repairs.”163

McIllree wrote on 2 September, as the White Pass trail reopened, forwarded by Herchmer on 12 September, that “Strickland tells me you were of the opinion that the quarters at Tagish would be completed and everything over by” early October.164 “If that is your opinion,” he continued, “you will be greatly mistaken. It is going to take all our time to get Harper through, if we succeed in that before the snow comes. There is snow on tops of mountains now. I am afraid of provisions spoiling. It is raining most of the time and everything is wet and slimy.”165

In response to McIllree’s reports of slow going, Herchmer initially made plans to ensure that there was enough forage at Skagway for the packers to continue to bring supplies over the summit. Herchmer reported to White on 5 September that “I have ordered Inspt. Starnes to take up five tons additional hay with him” and “have wired him to tell McIllree to try and let men

161 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 25 August 1897. 162 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 5 September 1897. 163 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 7 September 1897. 164 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, McIllree to Herchmer, 2 September 1897. For 12 September date see: LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 12 September 1897. 165 Ibid.

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who are short have forage, on condition that they make a trip for the Police to pay for it.”166

Cautious as always, Herchmer warned that “there is no doubt in my mind but that 40 Police in the Yukon is all that we can house this winter, even at close quarters, not including Tagish.”167

He noted that “everything is quiet at Tagish and I believe that 30 men at that point and the Pass are as many as we can erect quarters for, particularly as we are struggling to get a Post at Lac la

Barge. Thirty men fairly comfortable, are better than 100 with just cause for complaint.”168 If

White agreed to delay sending the full number of reinforcements during the winter, Herchmer suggested that “men could leave here in the latter end of March, get their supplies over the Pass on good[?] roads, and get to Klondyke in June before work commences, and if they remain at

Tagish all winter they can do no more, and I trust the Hon. the Minister, will consider these suggestions in the spirit I give them, as I am quite prepared to stand or fall by them.”169

Then on 9 September, White suggested to Sifton that they delay sending any more police to Skagway until conditions improved. He wrote, “reports from the White and Chilkoot Passes are most discouraging,” noting that “McIllree begs that no more Police may be sent until he can be sure of getting provisions for them over the summit.”170 He suggested that “under these circumstances, perhaps you would deem it advisable to delay the departure of the ‘Quadra’ for a few days until we obtain further information. Cold weather will put a surface over the muskegs and pools of water and make travelling much easier.”171 “I also understand that the Passes are in a most wretched condition from a sanitary point of view.”172 On 17 September, Herchmer reported to White that the Quadra “will not leave Vancouver for Skaguay before first October,”

166 Herchmer to White, 5 September 1897. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid. 170 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Sifton, 9 September 1897. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid.

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and he suggested that the number of police be reduced to ten.173 “Others can follow later,” he wrote.174 White replied on the same day that Sifton “has consented to reduce the number of men to go in by the ‘Quadra’ from 20 to 10.”175 By 22 September, White reported to the Deputy

Minister of the Interior that “there will be 1 Officer, 11 Constables, 9 native dog drivers, and between 75 and 80 dogs” going to Skagway on the Quadra, as well as “several tons of provisions, dog feed &c., which we propose to store at Dyea and pack over the Summit as opportunity presents itself.”176

On 23 September 1897, White wrote a memo to Sifton updating him on the situation in the Yukon and what had been done to that date. He reported that “there are now in the interior of the Yukon District, vis- between Dawson and Cudahy, 31 Police, and between the Coast and

Dawson, 49. One Officer, 11 Constables and 9 native dog drivers will go by the ‘Quadra’. The

Officer will return after he had handed over the men to Inspector Strickland.”177 He continued,

“the Minister will thus see that there will be in the Yukon District 81 Police and 9 dog drivers, or a total of 90.”178 He noted, “Between 75 and 80 dogs will go by the ‘Quadra’, and about 40 more will follow later on. Commissioner Herchmer had arranged for dog harness and sleds.”179

Walsh Party

Also going north on the Quadra was the newly appointed Commissioner of the Yukon

Territory, former Mounted Police Superintendent James Morrow Walsh, on his way to Dawson

City to take up his post. After Sifton and White decided to increase the number of police in the

Yukon in late July, Sifton prepared another memorandum for the Privy Council, dated 11 August

173 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White, 17 September 1897. 174 Ibid. 175 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 17 September 1897. 176 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to James A. Smart, 22 September 1897. 177 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White memo to Sifton, 23 September 1897. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid.

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1897, further outlining the Canadian government’s plan to respond to the Klondike rush. Sifton suggested that “for the proper enforcement of law and order, as well as for the successful management of the Government’s interests in the Yukon territory… it is necessary that an officer representing the Government of Canada should be appointed who shall be the chief executive officer of the Government in that district.”180 He recommended that James Morrow Walsh “of the Town of Brockville, Province of Ontario, be appointed Chief Executive Officer of the

Government in the Yukon territory, and that he shall be Known as the Commissioner of the

Yukon Territory.”181

Walsh was born in Upper Canada in 1840. After joining the militia in 1866, he served in the Red River Expedition in 1870 and joined the Mounted Police in 1873, where he rose to the rank of Superintendent. Between 1877-1881, Walsh was responsible for the government’s relationship with Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and his group of refugees who fled the United States into Canada following the Battle of the Little Big Horn. After Sitting Bull returned to the United

States in 1881, Walsh was made a scapegoat for the Canadian government’s embarrassment over the affair and forced to resign from the force in 1883.182 When his personal friend Clifford Sifton became Minister of the Interior in 1896, Walsh returned to the government’s favour. As

Commissioner, Walsh was to be given full authority over all government officials in the Yukon.

Sifton recommended “that he should also be placed in full command of the North West Mounted

180 LAC, Orders-in-Council Database, 1897-2468, “Appt. [Appointment] of John M. Walsh of Brockville as chief executive officer of the Govt. [Government] in the Yukon Territory to be known as the Commissioner of the Yukon Territory from and after 1897/08/15 saly. [salary] $5000 per an. [annum] authorit,” 17 August 1897, http://www.bac -lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics -government/orders-council/Pages/orders-in-council.aspx. Walsh’s name was misspelled “John M. Walsh” in the original Order-in-Council. 181 Ibid. 182 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 30-31; Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 191. The Canadian government’s embarrassment stemmed from the length of Sitting Bull’s stay in Canada, which was partly blamed on Walsh’s desire for publicity during the affair.

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Police Force, and the officers of the Force should receive their instructions from him and obey any orders that may be issued by him” and that he “should also have power to vary, alter or amend any mining regulations,… where such change may, in his opinion, be necessary in the public interest.”183 Walsh’s appointment was made official on 17 August.184

Part of the reason behind appointing a Commissioner of the Yukon Territory was to solve the communication problem. If the government could put all of its agents in the Yukon, including the Mounted Police, under the command of someone they could trust, then it would not matter how long it took for orders and reports to go between Ottawa and the Yukon. The

Commissioner could also react quickly to any situation, without having to directly ask Ottawa.

The other reasons were political. After facing pressure to protect Canadian interest in the

Klondike and criticism in Ottawa and the press for his response, Sifton took two weeks of vacation at Lake Champlain in late August and early September. Upon his return, Sifton attempted to recover some of his public image by announcing the appointment of Walsh as

Commissioner of the Yukon Territory. Walsh was considered a national hero for his handling of the Sitting Bull affair in 1877-1881, despite the embarrassment the affair caused the Canadian government. His public reputation, Sifton hoped, would help to calm public criticism of the government’s response to the beginning of the gold rush. The public was equally pleased with the appointment of Justice T.H. McGuire as judge of the Territorial Court of the Yukon

Territory.185

Sifton also made several other appointments for positions in the Yukon administration, including F.C. Wade, Crown Prosecutor, Registrar of Lands and Clerk of the Court, Captain H.

183 LAC, Orders-in-Council Database, 1897-2468, “Appt. [Appointment] of John M. Walsh.” 184 Ibid. 185 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 167.

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A. Blise, Accountant, Captain H. H. Norwood and J. D. McGregor, Inspectors of Mines, and T.

Dufferin Pattullo, Walsh’s Private Secretary, and a future British Columbia Premier.186 Sifton’s choice of appointments reveals another aspect of the Canadian government’s response to the

Klondike - patronage. All of Sifton’s appointments to the Yukon administration were either personal friends of Sifton or Liberal Party insiders. After leaving the Mounted Police, Walsh went into business in Brandon, Manitoba, where he became personal friends with Sifton. Wade and Norwood were also friends of Sifton, and Pattullo the son of a Liberal supporter in

Ontario.187 Appointing personal friends and insiders to roles in government was nothing out of the ordinary in the late nineteenth-century, and it allowed Sifton to choose people he could trust to carry out his wishes in the Yukon, and make sure they benefited from the gold rush.

To maximize the political benefits, Sifton intended to accompany Walsh and the other appointees on the Quadra personally. Hall noted that Sifton’s desire to undertake “a well- publicized trip” was “in part to offset the adverse publicity of the summer, in part to answer criticisms that he was unfamiliar with actual conditions and therefore incapable of devising adequate policies, and in part to investigate possible routes for a railway into the Yukon, and especially to discover if possible an ‘all-Canadian’ route.”188 Despite Sifton’s intentions to right public opinion of the government’s response to the Klondike, however, his trip to the Yukon,

Walsh’s appointment as Commissioner, and the government’s lack of knowledge of local conditions in the Yukon caused nothing but trouble for the Mounted Police.

186 Ibid., 168. J.M. Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” in Government of Canada, “Return to an Address of the Senate dated the 17th March, 1898, for copies of all letters and reports received by the Government or any department thereof, from Commissioner Walsh, while on his way to the Yukon District, or since his arrival there,” Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Eight Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1898, Volume 13 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), 8. 187 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 31; Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861- 1900, 168. 188 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 167.

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The immediate concerns for Comptroller White and the police were practical. On 16

August 1897, Deputy Minister of the Interior James A. Smart informed White that the Mounted

Police would be responsible for providing rations and transportation to the Yukon for Walsh,

“his Secretary, two Inspectors of Mines, two Detectives and a Stenographer.”189 Of course, the last thing the police needed as they struggled to send in their own reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon was to be responsible for transporting the Walsh party. Sifton’s own desire to accompany the party to Skagway also complicated the matter.

White replied on 27 August with instructions that their baggage “should be done up in bags or rolls not exceeding 50 lbs in weight, which can be carried on a man’s back, or a pack saddle.”190 He further instructed that “wooden cases with sharp corners and points should be avoided, unless they are small and light.”191 White also suggest that “it would be well for you to limit the weight which they will be allowed to take in the shape of personal effects.”192 In addition to the cost of bringing supplies over the summit, “in between 20 and 30 cents per pound,” and the “limited capacity of dog sledges which will have to be used between the Summit and… Dawson,” the time required to bring in large amounts of supplies would greatly slow the party.193 “I would suggest that you advise them to take only what they will require during the winter,” White wrote, “anything else can be sent around by water next Spring at a cost for the whole journey of not more than 4 or 5 cents per lb.”194

189 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Smart to White, 16 August 1897. 190 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Smart, 27 August 1897. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid.

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White also wrote to Herchmer on 3 September that “The Hon. the Minister desires that the Mounted Police shall furnish” the Walsh party with transportation between Dyea and

Dawson.195 “The Police will also be required to furnish rations, fuel, and light… on requisition of the Administrator,” White wrote.196 He also ordered that “careful record of these services must be kept and forwarded to Ottawa in order that repayment may be obtained from the Departments against which the amounts are chargeable.”197 White had also wrote to Herchmer on 31 August that “if you can get them to Victoria in time it will be well to send about twenty-five dogs by boat leaving there eleventh September, with instructions to Strickland to have them ready with sledges to move on from Tagish Lake on arrival of Administrator and party.”198

Smart had originally expected that the party would leave Ottawa in two or three weeks, but when this was delayed until early October, it presented a new problem.199 Herchmer wrote to

White on 5 September that Walsh “could not have selected a worse month to start in.”200 He explained that “Major Walsh cannot start out early in October with dogs, as the upper water does not freeze until Novr.,” meaning that the party would have to travel by boat until the winter set in, “and then wait until the ice is safe” to continue on with dogs.201 McIllree, upon learning of the plan, also expressed his displeasure to Herchmer on 10 September. “How I am going to get them over the pass, and provision them, I at present fail to see,” he wrote, explaining that since the police had yet to move most of their supplies to the interior, the party would have to “take four months provisions with them.”202 He also reiterated Herchmer’s concerns about their month of

195 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 3 September 1897 2. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid. 198 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 31 August 1897. 199 Smart to White, 16 August 1897. 200 Herchmer to White, 5 September 1897. 201 Ibid. 202 McIllree to Herchmer, 10 September 1897.

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travel. If the party reached the summit by 7 October, “which they will not do,” McIllree wrote, they would only get part of the way down the lakes before they had to stop and wait for the ice to form.203 “And when they strike the river below La Barge,” he continued, “they will likely have to cut their road all the way, as the ice freezes on edge and sticks up in every shape,” meaning that traveling by dog sled to Dawson would be no easy task.204 “Walsh used to be tough, but he is not as young as he used to be, and I cannot see how [the then aging] McGuire is going to stand such a trip,” McIllree remarked.205

White confirmed the difficulties the party would likely face in his 23 September memo to

Sifton “the Police now en route, and the Executive Staff of the District, will have to carry their own provisions for the trip, which, I am afraid, will be a very serious matter and make progress extremely show, as there are no depots of supplies for either man or dog between the Summit and Dawson.”206 But the trip could not be delayed.

The Walsh party left Ottawa by train on 23 September 1897. Walsh was joined by Sifton in Winnipeg on 27 September.207 In Regina, Commissioner Herchmer handed Sifton a report on what had been done in the Yukon so far. “I have the honour to inform you that on arrival of the

‘Quadra’ at Skagway Bay,” he wrote, “there will be eighty-seven members of the North-West

Mounted Police, and nine dog drivers, between the Ocean and Fort Cudahy.”208 He also wrote that “sufficient provisions are at Skagway and on the Pass to last 60 men for 4 months,” and that

203 Ibid. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid. 206 White memo to Sifton, 23 September 1897. 207 Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 8. 208 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to Sifton, 27 September 1897.

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he continued to make arrangements to send more supplies.209 On the Walsh party, Herchmer suggested that, on arrival in Skagway, Walsh and “his voyageurs and say two months supplies” should immediately embark on the journey over the passes “and pressing on down stream, going into camp when the ice catches him, and there waiting the arrival of the dog trains.”210 The rest of the party should wait at Skagway until there were enough provisions in the interior to support them. Herchmer also suggested that “it is probable that Major Walsh can get his own outfit across the Chilkoot Pass more easily at present than over the White Pass, and enquiry should be made before he disembarks.”211

From Regina, the party continued on to Vancouver, arriving on 1 October. After purchasing additional supplies, the party boarded the Quadra at 2:35 in the afternoon the following day left for a rainy voyage to Skagway.212 In addition to Walsh’s administration party, going all the way to Dawson, Sifton assembled a group to accompany him to Skagway and maximize the positive press from the trip, including William Ogilvie, Dominion Land Surveyor,

W.F. King, Chief Astronomer of the Department of the Interior, G. R. Maxwell, Member of

Parliament for Vancouver, Rev. R. M. Dickie, a Presbyterian Missionary, and A. J. Magurn,

Ottawa Correspondent of the Toronto Globe. Also on the Quadra were nine Mounted Police,

“nine experienced dog-drivers and six Fort William Mission Indians,” under the command of

Inspector Z.T. Wood, six months supplies for sixty men, as well as six weeks rations for the

Walsh party, seventy-eight dogs, twenty-five sleds, two Gatling guns, and “a full complement of

Winchester carbines and Enfield revolvers, with 5,000 rounds of ammunition.”213

209 Ibid. 210 Ibid. 211 Ibid. 212 Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 8. 213 Ibid., 8-9.

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The Quadra arrived in Skagway on Friday, 8 October at one o’clock in the afternoon.

Upon arrival, Walsh learned that McIllree had not been able to forward enough supplies over the passes for the party it begin their journey. It was decided that Walsh, Sifton, and Ogilvie should proceed to Dyea and personally examine the passes before Walsh continued on to Dawson.

Leaving on 10 October, Walsh, Sifton, Ogilvie, and a small party crossed the Chilkoot Pass on horseback to Lake Lindeman, and then followed Lake Bennett as far as Tagish, before returning to Skagway via the White Pass, arriving on 19 October. Sifton, according to Hall, was “shocked” by the conditions his party encountered on the White Pass, of which McIllree was all too familiar, “he told a reporter that he knew ‘no man of whom he thinks so little that he would send him over the White Pass’” - ironic, given that he had instructed the Mounted Police to do just that.214

In the meantime, Wood and J. D. McGregor remained behind to rush the Walsh Party’s supplies over the passes.215 Between 11 October and 15 October, Walsh reported that Wood and

McGregor moved 32,500 pounds of freight or 16.25 tons over both passes.216 When Walsh and

Sifton returned to Skagway, Walsh wrote in his report, “we found the work of packing our stores over the two passes, which had been entrusted to Inspector Wood and Mr. J.D. McGregor, had been carried out according to instructions, and very efficiently.”217 On 21 October, the first group of the Walsh party, including McGuire, Wade, Bonner and C.C. McGregor, and led by Inspector

Starnes, left Dyea for Dawson City “with pack trains carrying 4,883 pounds of supplies and

214 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 168. 215 Ibid.; Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 11-12. 216 Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 12. 217 Ibid., 13.

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baggage.”218 Three days later, on 24 October, Walsh, accompanied by Blise, Pattullo, and Philip

Walsh and led by Captain Bliss, left Skagway for Dyea and the Chilkoot.219

For Sifton, the Skagway trip appeared to be a success. Magurn, the correspondent for The

Globe, filed numerous stories describing Sifton’s mission, which, Hall noted, “became fodder for the Liberal press of the country.”220 Sifton left Skagway on 21 October to survey Taku Inlet and the Stikine River and investigate the possibility of building an all-Canadian railway to the Yukon

(discussed in Chapter 7). Summarizing Sifton’s trip, Hall wrote that the trip “served to inform him about conditions on the passes, some of the problems faced by Canadians passing through

American-controlled territory, and the possibilities of an all-Canadian transportation route.”221 If

Sifton’s new found knowledge of the conditions on the passes caused him to rethink what the

Walsh party and the Mounted Police could accomplish during the winter of 1897-1898, however, it was too late to reconsider.

Commissioner Walsh

In addition to having to forward the Walsh party and their supplies over the passes,

Walsh’s appointment as Commissioner of the Yukon presented additional problems for the

Mounted Police. Although the police always acted professionally and courteously towards

Walsh, there were plenty of reasons to be frustrated. Following the election of the Laurier government, Walsh had submitted a memorandum, likely at the invitation of his friend Clifford

Sifton, to Laurier in September 1896 that reflected Sifton and Laurier’s desire to reduce the

218 Ibid. 219 Ibid., 14; LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Z.T. Wood to White, 30 October 1897. 220 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 168. Magurn also presented himself as an authority on the Yukon situation in several public speaking events. For examples of his reports see: The Globe, 23 October 1897, 5; The Globe, 25 October 1897, 10; The Globe, 26 October 1897, 3; The Globe, 3 November 1897, 7; The Globe, 5 November 1897, 3; The Globe, 6 November 1897, 19. 221 Hall, 171.

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strength of the Mounted Police and eventually eliminate the force altogether.222 R.C. Macleod writes that “Walsh had waited thirteen years to repair his self-esteem by humbling the organization which had rejected him” following the Sitting Bull affair.223 In a scathing assessment, he called the Mounted Police “a waste of money,” “an injustice to the tax payers,” and “a political partisan machine which has to a great extent destroyed its usefulness,” before recommending that “the force should be reduced in number and reorganized.”224 The arrivals of the Portland and the Excelsior had quickly changed the attitudes of the Liberal government towards the Mounted Police, and now Walsh had been placed in charge of all police in the

Yukon.

As part of the Order-in-Council appointing Walsh to his position, he was given full command of all Mounted Police in the Yukon, meaning that his appointment circumvented the police command structure. Herchmer wrote to White on 21 September asking that

Superintendent Constantine should not be outranked by Walsh once he reached Dawson, because of Constantine’s over two years experience maintaining law and order in the Yukon.225

Herchmer was also concerned that conflict might arise between Walsh and McIllree at Skagway, to which White replied on 28 September: “I don’t think there is any danger of conflict of authority between him and the Assistant Commissioner, as the latter will return to Headquarters as soon as he has completed arrangements for pushing forward the supplies.”226 As Herchmer

222 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 31, 58-59. 223 Ibid., 58. 224 Quoted in Ibid., 58-59. 225 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Herchmer to White 2, 21 September 1897. 226 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 28 September 1897.

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noted on 14 October, McIllree, “who is suffering from a bad ankle, and asthma, and who requires a change,” was being recalled to Regina, and scheduled to leave on the Quadra.227

Before leaving Skagway, Walsh made arrangements for forwarding the remaining police supplies to the interior. He put Inspector Wood in command of “the district commencing at the international boundary on the south, to Fort Selkirk, at the junction of the Yukon and Pelly rivers on the north.”228 Wood was to report to both Walsh in the Interior and White in Ottawa.

Inspector Wood was originally intended to “accompany the Police and dogs” on the Quadra as far as Skagway, and then return to Vancouver or Victoria to purchase “any additional supplies which may be required” for the Yukon.229 But after Herchmer asked that McIllree be recalled, he suggested leaving Wood in Skagway, in charge of forwarding goods over the passes.230 Walsh also instructed McGregor to wait for the ice to set in, and then led “a train of ten horses and sleighs, and ten teams of dogs and sleighs, loaded with sixty days’ forage and 180 days’ rations for five men, and 5,000 pounds of provisions,” to meet Walsh’s party in the interior.231 Wood was then to follow in late November with a train of 20 horses and the remaining dogs at

Skagway, loaded with 12.5 tons of provisions, and take them to Selkirk. The remaining supplies at Skagway were to be left in charge of a non-commissioned officer and one constable, who would report to both Walsh and White on the conditions there.232 After giving these instructions, however, Walsh wrote to White informing him that because “the mail service between Skagway

227 Herchmer to White, 14 October 1897. 228 Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 4. See also LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Yukon District Orders, 24 October 1897. 229 White memo to Sifton, 23 September 1897. 230 Herchmer to White, 14 October 1897. 231 Ibid. 232 Ibid.

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and Selkirk is too uncertain,” Wood would have to continue to receive orders from White after

Walsh left for the interior.233

Walsh also made himself a nuisance for the police, complaining that the police did not look presentable while working on the passes, and asking that newspapers be forwarded to

Tagish. In a 13 October letter to White, Walsh wrote “I found the appearance of the police very disappointing, their costumes being as variegated as those of the packers on the Chilkoot Pass.

The people knew there was a police force in the country but could not distinguish them from any other person.”234 Walsh noted that “it is very important that the force along this route where so many people ninety five per cent of which are foreigners travelling,” and he instructed Wood to correct the problem.235 On 5 November, Wood wrote to White “I have been requested by members of Major Walsh’s expedition to apply to the Honourable The Minister, through you, for some Canadian Newspapers.”236 They requested papers from Ottawa, Montreal, Brockville,

Kingston, Woodstock, Winnipeg, and Brandon.237 Ultimately, Wood and the Mounted Police were not bothered by the extra work of Commissioner Walsh’s appointment and Sifton’s trip to

Skagway, but the Canadian government’s determination to move ahead with these plans show that those in Ottawa did not fully comprehend the difficulties faced by the police on the Lynn

Canal routes.

Inspector Wood

Following Walsh’s departure from Skagway, Inspector Z.T. Wood was left in charge of forwarding supplies to the interior and reporting to Comptroller White on his progress, and the

233 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Walsh to White, 31 October 1897 2; Walsh, “The Journey from Ottawa to Winter Quarters on the Yukon,” 5. 234 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Walsh to White, 31 October 1897. 235 Ibid. 236 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 5 November 1897. 237 Ibid.

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progress of the Walsh party. Born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1860, Zachary Taylor Wood was the great grandson of United States President Zachary Taylor and great grandnephew of

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Following the conclusion of the Civil War, Wood’s family moved to Halifax. He graduated from

Royal Military College in 1882 and fought in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, before being appointed as an inspector of the Mounted Police in August 1885. Wood served at a number of commands in the North-West Territories before being sent to the Yukon in October 1897.238

Wood wrote in his first report to White on 30 October 1897 that - “having been directed to report to you, for the information of the Hon. the Minister, any news concerning Major Walsh and his party” - Walsh had reached Sheep Camp on Monday, 25 October.239 After being delayed by a storm at the summit, the party crossed the Chilkoot Pass on 28 October, “and are by this time safely at Lake Bennett.”240

From Skagway, Wood began preparing to carry out Walsh’s orders to bring supplies to the interior. “I am now shipping dog feed, hay and oats for Mr. McGregors [sic] party and my own over this trail to Lake Bennett” at a cost of fifty cents per pound, he wrote on 30 October.241

“The cost is the same over the Dyea trail,” he noted, “but one must consider that it costs $1.00 a thousand to haul it from here to the boats, another $1.00 a thousand to ferry it to Dyea, and again

75 cents a thousand lbs to haul it from landing place to Wilson and Healy’s Store, where the store-house is.”242 Wood explained that “Mr. McGregor’s party, consisting of himself, 3

Policemen and 3 dog drivers, will be ready to start in a few days with 5000 lbs of rations, 12

238 William Beahen, “Wood, Zachary Taylor,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wood_zachary_taylor_14E.html. 239 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 30 October 1897. 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid.

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horses and 52 dogs.”243 As for the 12½ tons Wood was to bring to Selkirk, Wood reported on 5

November that he intended to bring the entire “25 tons brought up by Quadra through about the end of January for 25¢ a lb – just half we are paying now.”244 He continued, “about the same time I hope to leave for Tagish and Lake Bennett to have boats prepared to take the 25 tons down the river when the ice breaks. I will then continue on to Fort Selkirk as directed, unless the

Minister has other orders for me.”245

In the fall of 1897, Wood was confident that it would be an easy matter to ship supplies over the passes once winter set in. He wrote on 5 November that even though “a great rush [to the Klondike] is anticipated in the Spring… I anticipate a great reduction in the rates for packing” during the winter months.246 As such, Wood intended to keep all but the essential supplies at Skagway until the rates dropped. Although he reported that “I am sending through

1000 lbs bacon and the same quantity of flour to Bennett as per the orders of Major Walsh. A further quantity, about 2 tons, of each, is required but I am holding off for a fall in the freight rates.” Likewise, when the steamer Corona arrived in Skagway on 18 November, with 12½ tons of provisions, “2½ tons of oats, and 30 packages of hardware,” Wood reported that “I am keeping this shipment, and the balance which is to leave Victoria to-day, until the packing rates are lower, as per Major Walsh’s instructions.”247 Wood also suspected, as McIllree had reported, that once winter set in, the conditions on the White Pass would improve. “After due consideration and examination,” he wrote on 30 October, “I find this the better trail [White Pass] when winter sets in. I have been to the summit on both passes and find that when frost hardens

243 Ibid. 244 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 5 November 1897 3. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid. 247 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 25 November 1897.

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the mud holes this pass is the easier.”248 The police also predicted the McGregor would have an easier time transporting supplies by horse and sleigh once the Lakes had frozen over. As Wood wrote in his 30 October report, by early winter 1897 “everything is progressing favourably.”249

But in late November, he received some alarming news from Superintendent Constantine at

Dawson.

A letter from Constantine to Herchmer, dated 14 October, arrived at Skagway with reports that “the shortage of food in this country is such that in all probability many deaths will result from starvation and privation during the coming winter.”250 He explained, “there are somewhere between 5 and 6 thousand people in the country, centred around Dawson and the

Klondyke, a proportion of whom have neither food or money.”251 And even if they had money, he wrote, “they could not procure food, for the simple reason that it is not in the country.”252

The food shortage at Dawson was the result of two factors, the suddenness of the rush to the Klondike and the remoteness of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The thousands of would-be miners who started for the Yukon during the fall of 1897 knew little about the region and went with few provisions, expecting to buy all they needed once they reached Dawson. The transportation companies also failed to predict the number of people who would arrive in the

Klondike before winter and had not yet sent enough supplies to meet the increasing demands.253

The problem was confounded by low water conditions on the Yukon River during the fall of

1897, which prevented the transportation companies from delivering supplies upriver.

248 Ibid. 249 Wood to White, 30 October 1897. 250 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Constantine to Herchmer, 14 October 1897. 251 Ibid. 252 Ibid. 253 Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 130.

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Constantine reported, for example, that the North American Transportation and Trading

Company had been “unable to supply the provisions as required by” White’s contract “in bulk,” because of the high demand for provisions in the Klondike and the river conditions. The police,

Constantine wrote, could only procure supplies “in quantities sufficient to last for 20 or 30 days at a time.” 254 This problem was compounded by the arrival of “Insp. Harper and 20 N.C.Officers and men” on 10 October. Constantine suspected that the twenty-three police at Dawson could have survived the winter on reduced rations, but the arrival of the Harper party, with “no food of any kind to speak of,” and the anticipated arrival of the Walsh party during the winter, he noted

“will entail much dissatisfaction, some hardship, and will leave the men liable to serious illness in the Spring.”255 Already, “Mr. Fawcett, the Gold Commissioner & Dominion Land Surveyor, has been obliged to send seven of his party to Fort Yukon to winter,” and, Constantine wrote, “I am sending to-day to Fort Constantine, Insp. Scarth and 10 N.C.Officers and men,” to winter there, with the provisions the police had left in the spring.256

“It is absolutely necessary in order to ensure a supply of food, that arrangements be made outside of the Trading Companies, and food brought in from the south,” Constantine implored.257

He suggested that “efforts be made to get food through this winter, after the freezing up of the

Lakes, to the foot of Lac La Barge, so as it can be brought down as soon as the river breaks, which is from the 15th to 18th May.”258 In the meantime, he wrote, “we hope for and anxiously expect the arrival of another boat with flour and bacon.”259 He concluded “I hope to be able to

254 Constantine to Herchmer, 14 October 1897. 255 Ibid. 256 Ibid. 257 Ibid. 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid.

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report more favourably on the situation of affairs, which may be summed up in a few words, the arrival or non-arrival of a steamer.”260

Wood immediately sent Constantine’s report on to Ottawa - telegramming on 28

November through an intermediary that “according to reliable information from Dawson, between five and six thousand people will be without food there by January.”261 Even before news reached Ottawa, Wood had decided to act. “After talking matters over with Mr. Mcgregor

[sic],” Wood reported to White on 1 December, “I have decided to put the stores now here over to Bennett at once,” explaining that “we have on hand here now 25 tons of provisions, 8 tons of oats, 3 tons dog fish, and a little over 2 tons of hardware, tents, tarpaulins and shoes.”262 Wood explained that his reasons for doing so were threefold. First, despite his prediction that freight rates would fall, he wrote that, “freighting rates are still at the old figure, viz: 50 cents a lb, and I doubt very much if they are going to drop.”263 He explained that “when Major Walsh gave me orders to wait until prices dropped, he, like everyone else, thought people would wait until

March or April before crowding in here, but I can plainly foresee that if I wait here any longer I am going to be stuck in the crowd for want of transport, and have to pay higher prices.”264 Wood had been reporting since 5 November that “Already people are commencing to arrive both here and at Dyea.”265 He wrote on 1 December that “people are already commencing to come in, 330 having arrived during the last week. Every boat brings 100 or more. The great rush is expected

260 Ibid. 261 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Jas. Domville to White, 28 November 1897. 262 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 1 December 1897. 263 Ibid. 264 Ibid. 265 Wood to White, 5 November 1897 3.

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between the 1st and 15th of January, and everyone is striving to keep ahead of the crowd.”266

Finally, Wood wrote that “Mr. McGregor and I were further convinced of the necessity of moving at once when we heard of the distress at Dawson.”267

As soon as Wood decided to rush supplies to Dawson to respond to the food shortage, however, his prediction that the trail conditions would improve after winter set in also proved to be wrong. He wrote on 1 December that “as for the trails, now that the mud is frozen, ice has taken its place especially on the side-hills and this makes travelling very bad for men and horses.”268 He noted that “a meeting was called a day or two ago to appoint a committee to examine the river from here [Skagway] to the summit [of White Pass] to see if it were not possible to make a winter’s road on the ice. The committee only got 8 miles up when they found the ice had jammed and was standing on edge to a height of 8 or 9 feet. As they could see that the same state of affairs existed higher up, the idea of a river trail was abandoned.”269 Wood wrote to White on 18 December that “as for the trail over this pass, I can’t find words to express what it is like.”270 He explained, “the alternate heavy frosts and thaws have made it one glare of ice, which the snow covered to the depth of a foot or more.”271 At Dyea, Wood explained that “it is only on a very calm day that it can be approached from the sea” because of the build up of ice in the bay.272 “This is the first day during the past ten that a landing there could be effected,” he noted.273 “The trail from Dyea to Sheep Camp is good,” he continued, “from there to the foot of

266 Wood to White, 1 December 1897. 267 Ibid. 268 Ibid. 269 Ibid. 270 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 18 December 1897. 271 Ibid. 272 Wood to White, 1 December 1897. 273 Ibid.

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the summit very bad, and packers will not attempt to cross except on calm days.”274 On the

Dalton trail, Wood wrote, “it is said, even by Mr. Dalton himself, to be very unsafe at present on account of the continual blizzards.”275

The condition of the Lakes and Rivers was no better. On 1 December, McGregor was still at Skagway: “Mr. McGregor is still detained here awaiting the freezing up of Lake Bennett… this Lake is frozen over to a depth of 6 inches for 8 miles from the western end, but the rest of the lake is open… his instructions from Major Walsh were not to commence his journey until he heard the lake was frozen.”276 On 7 December, McGregor’s party left Skagway for Bennett but, as Wood reported, “he cannot get any further as… the Lake still open for some 6 miles, as is also

Cariboo Crossing.”277 Wood wrote to White on 10 December that “McGregor is [still] tied up at

Bennett, unable to move until the Lake freezes.”278 He explained that “the Hootalinqua River above the Big Salmon was quite open; no ice at all. Thirty Mile River was also quite free from ice. Lakes La Barge and Marsh were frozen over to a depth of 2½ ft. Tagish Lake had been frozen, but had now opened up again for two miles at the lower end. Bennett Lake is still open at the lower end for 8 or 10 miles, and Cariboo Crossing is free of ice.”279 “Of course,” Wood noted, “neither the Major nor any one else imagined Lakes and Rivers would be open at this time of year.”280 Finally, on 18 December Wood reported that “Mr. McGregor writes me under date of the 15th inst. that he is going to haul his stores down to the edge of the ice and float across the open water on rafts, but, as he says, even that will not help much, as he hears other lakes and

274 Ibid. 275 Ibid. 276 Ibid. 277 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 7 December 1897. 278 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 10 December 1897. 279 Ibid. 280 Ibid.

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rivers are open and by the time he builds rafts at each place, capable of carrying his horses, he will be too late to be of much assistance to the Major.”281

With icy and snowy conditions making the Chilkoot and White passes impassible and open water on Lake Bennett, it was impossible for Wood and McGregor to get supplies to the interior to relieve the reported food shortage. The Walsh and McGuire parties fared little better.

By 17 November, the Walsh party had been forced into camp for the winter twelve miles below the mouth of the Big Salmon River, with the McGuire party in camp a further twenty-four miles downriver.282 Wood reported to White on 10 December that both parties “were unable to move on account of the ice running in the river, which would grind a boat to kindling wood.”283 He wrote that the Walsh “party is well, but he had had to send Capt. Norwood and 7 men back to winter at the Hootalinqua and White Horse Detachments on account of his having lost two boats with provisions.”284 With the winter setting in, there was no way for Walsh and McGuire to reach Dawson and begin enforcing Sifton’s will before spring.

In the meantime, Wood continued to receive reports of the situation in Dawson. On 18

December, for example, Wood wrote that “since I last wrote, about fifteen men have arrived here from Dawson over the Skagway trail.”285 “As regards the situation at Dawson,” he continued,

“all agree that food is going to be very scare there before Spring; in fact many will starve unless a large number come out.”286 According to a man named Sinclair, “the people are starving even now, and that there is no food at Fort Yukon, as so many have stated. He claims that those who have said that the people at Dawson will not starve, made this statement to serve their own

281 Wood to White, 18 December 1897. 282 Wood to White, 7 December 1897; Wood to White, 10 December 1897. 283 Wood to White, 10 December 1897. 284 Ibid. 285 Wood to White, 18 December 1897. 286 Ibid.

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ends,” noting that some intended to bring in their own provisions to sell, and that the arrival of government relief would lower the prices they could charge.287 Wood ended his report by noting that “I am sorry to see that influential Canadian papers are copying and circulating the blood and thunder accounts that American papers print about life in Dawson City.”288 For the time being, there seemed to be nothing the police or government could do to rush supplies and reinforcements to Dawson.

The Beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush

This chapter has focused on the response of the Mounted Police and the Canadian government to the beginning of the Klondike gold rush. Within the context of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, Comptroller White and Minister of the Interior Sifton’s July

1897 plan to respond to the Klondike discovery - rushing reinforcements and supplies over the

Chilkoot and White passes and establishing a transportation route between the Lynn Canal and

Dawson City - was a follow up to Inspector Constantine’s efforts in 1895-1896 to bring

Fortymile under Canadian government control and begin the transformation of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands to a bordered region. The efforts of the Mounted Police during the remaining months of 1897 expanded this process to the Lynn Canal routes to the Yukon. After Assistant

Commissioner McIllree arrived at Skagway and Dyea, the police encountered the established borderlands system: miners carrying supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes, hiring indigenous packers or small packing companies to assist them, and building boats at Lake

Bennett to float their supplies along the lakes and rivers to Dawson. With no choice but to fit into this system, the police quickly learned that the practical considerations of sending reinforcements and supplies over rough and undeveloped trails would be their primary concern.

287 Ibid. 288 Ibid.

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Rather than merely keeping an eye on the miners who rushed to the Klondike, as the traditional narrative of the gold rush would suggest, during the first months of the rush in late

1897, the Mounted Police were active participants in the rush. Whether purchasing goods in

Vancouver and Victoria, hauling supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes or hiring packers to carry them, the police engaged in many of the same activities as the miners. By transporting their own supplies over the passes, while also establishing posts and mail stations on their way, the police did not just keep an eye on travelers rushing to the Klondike, or transport supplies over the passes, they played a key role in developing the transportation routes in the first place. While the primary concern of the police in 1897 was sending reinforcements and supplies to the interior, this task only incidentally put them in the position to supervise miners rushing to the

Klondike and assist other travelers in need. As Wood reported on 30 October, “a large number of people having become aware of my intention of going through to Fort Selkirk this winter are preparing to follow me, hoping that we will chop out the trail for them through the hummock ice on the river. If possible however I will lay over a day or so at Tagish and so force them to take the lead.”289 Wood also wrote on 18 December that “a good many” of those who traveled from

Dawson to Skagway in late 1897 “say that had it not been for the assistance received from the

Police detachments they could not have reached here, as their food supplies ran short on the road.”290

By the end of 1897, the number of Mounted Police in the Yukon had increased from twenty-three to eighty-five. Some sixty-eight tons of supplies had been landed at Skagway and

Dyea and were in the process of being moved to the interior. Inspector Strickland had arrived at

Tagish at the end of September and constructed a seventy by twenty-two feet barracks building,

289 Wood to White, 30 October 1897. 290 Wood to White, 18 December 1897.

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including a kitchen, mess, and sleeping room. Small detachments had been sent, with provisions for six months, to establish posts at White Horse Rapids and the Hootalinqua River.291 The police had also taken the first steps to establishing a monthly mail service between Dyea and

Skagway and Dawson. White wrote in a 14 December 1897 memorandum for Sifton that the first

Yukon mail, 274 lbs, left Dyea on 25 September with the Harper party, and reached Dawson by the middle of October. A second mail, 317 lbs, left Dyea on 22 October and a third left Skagway on 29 November.292 White reported that the first mail from Dawson City was scheduled to leave at the end of October, “or as soon as the ice on the rivers became strong enough for travelling.”293 He continued, “one train of dogs was in readiness at Dawson to bring this mail out, and probably 20 trains, of 4 dogs each, would be ready at different Posts along the route to pick it up and bring it on to Dyea.”294 It is unclear if this mail faced that same problems as Walsh and those in the interior as they made their way to Dyea.

As the Mounted Police worked to send reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon during the second half of 1897, they gave little thought to the Alaska-Yukon border between the Lynn

Canal and the interior. Although the police knew that there was a border between the Lynn Canal and the interior, it seems not to have entered Mounted Police thinking as they rushed reinforcements and supplies into the interior. The border had not been surveyed or marked on the ground, and its location remained disputed by the Canadian and American governments.

Overwhelmed with the demands of rushing reinforcements and supplies to the Klondike, the

Mounted Police were much more concerned with getting over the passes, and doing whatever was necessary to do so as quickly as possible, than contending with a border that did not even

291 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Strickland to Herchmer, 30 October 1897. 292 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White memorandum, 14 December 1897; Wood to White, 1 December 1897. 293 White memorandum, 14 December 1897. 294 Ibid.

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exist on the ground. As will be discussed in future chapters, it was Sifton and the Canadian government who were primarily concerned about the Alaska-Yukon border.

By the end of 1897, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government had begun to develop different understandings of the situation in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. While the police were largely concerned with rushing reinforcements and supplies over the passes, Sifton and the Canadian government in Ottawa had a different set of political priorities. Faced with intense pressure to adequately response to the gold rush, keep the Klondike Canadian, and make sure that Canadian businesses and his friends benefited, Sifton kept the pressure on the police to send reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon as fast as possible. Sifton’s appointment of

Commissioner Walsh and his visit to Skagway and Dyea in October 1897 caused extra work for the Mounted Police as they worked to forward reinforcements and supplies to the interior.

Largely unaware of the horrible trail conditions and great difficulties faced by the police on the

Chilkoot and White passes, Sifton and the Canadian government remained overly optimistic about what could be accomplished during the fall and winter of 1897, while the Mounted Police, only too aware of the local difficulties of transporting men and supplies into the interior, formed a more realistic understanding of the situation.

By December 1897, the efforts of both groups to remake the Alaska-Yukon borderlands ground to a halt, stalled by the harsh winter conditions preventing Inspector Wood from moving supplies over the passes and Walsh from reaching Dawson. In the meantime, on the other side of the Alaska-Yukon border, the United States Army was also making plans to respond to the

Klondike discovery in August 1897. Like the Mounted Police, they too became swept up by the influx of would-be miners who rushed to the Klondike and the food shortage at Dawson City.

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Chapter 4 The U.S. Army and the Beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897

Like the North-West Mounted Police in Ottawa and the Canadian government, the United

States Army and the American government learned of the Klondike discovery with the arrivals of the Excelsior and the Portland in July 1897. During the rush of excitement that followed, the

U.S. government began receiving conflicting reports of “actual or threatened lawlessness” in

Alaska gold fields.1 In response, on 4 August 1897 Secretary of War Russell A. Alger instructed

Captain P.H. Ray of the Eighth Infantry to travel to Alaska, “to which so many are flocking,” and “investigate and report, as fully and frequently as you can, the condition of affairs, and make such recommendations as you may deem best.”2 Ray and his assistant Lieutenant W.P.

Richardson traveled to Portland, where Brigadier General H.C. Merriam, commander of the

Army Department of the Columbia, made arrangements for the pair to travel to St. Michael with

4000 pounds of supplies, including enough food for ten months.3 After receiving Alger’s orders,

Ray and Richardson sailed for Alaska on 4 August.

Like Constantine and Brown’s expedition to Fortymile in 1894, Ray and Richardson’s reconnaissance was a fact-finding mission to assess the situation in the gold fields and determine if a stronger response was needed. Alger asked Ray to report on a number of points:

Are troops necessary there, and if so, for what purpose; where should they be located, how outfitted, and what facilities for communication with the coast settlements are practicable in winter? Are the civil authorities affording reasonable protection to life and property? Are the people disposed to be law abiding or otherwise? Where are the people locating, and in what numbers, and what is the probable degree of permanence of the different settlements?

1 P.H. Ray, “Relief of the Destitute in Gold Fields,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 497; United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, Senate Document No. 14, 55th Congress, 2nd Session (1897), 1. 2 R.A. Alger to Ray, 4 August 1897, in United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 1. 3 NARA, RG393, Part I, E706, Vol. 74, T.H. Barry to Ray, 2 August 1897; H.C. Merriam to W.W. Robinson, 1 August 1897; Merriam to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 2 August 1897.

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Is there food in the country for the population to winter there?4

As Alger’s instructions show, like the Mounted Police in 1894 and 1897, the U.S. Army knew very little about the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The army had not had a presence on the Yukon

River since a series of expeditions between 1883-1885 explored the Yukon, Tanana, and Copper

Rivers.5 The first step to establishing an army presence in the gold rush region was to gather as much information as possible on local conditions and the need for an army response. In addition to his list of questions, Alger instructed Ray to report on “all other subjects – military, civil, and commercial – that will be of use and interest,” indicating the limits of the War Department’s knowledge of the region.6

This chapter explores the response of the U.S. Army to the beginning of the Klondike gold during the fall and winter of 1897. As Ray and Richardson attempted to make their way to

Dawson City and investigate the situation, they too became caught up in the rush to the Klondike that followed the arrivals of the Excelsior and the Portland, and particularly the panic the resulted from the shortage of food at Dawson City.7 Ray and Richardson found the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands in transition. At St. Michael, where the pair arrived on 18 August 1897, the town was in the midst of rapid, chaotic expansion. After word of the Klondike discovery reached the outside, thousands of would-be miners started for the Yukon. Those who could afford to undertake the whole journey by boat headed for St. Michael, hoping to catch a steamer to

Dawson before winter set in. Like at the Lynn Canal, miners started arriving at St. Michael

4 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 1-2. 5 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 114-29. 6 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 2. 7 Ray and Richardson’s reconnaissance is discussed by: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 135-140; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 65-67; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 130-134; Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902, 198-207.

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within weeks, and the transportation companies soon became overwhelmed both with the number of people and the demands of shipping provisions upriver to meet the coming miners from all routes. Further up the Yukon River, the Alaska-Yukon border had been marked at the

141st meridian between the Yukon River and Sixtymile Creek during the winter of 1895-1896, but people continued to flow across it freely. As Ray and Richardson arrived at Fort Yukon and

Circle City, they met miners fleeing across the fledgling border to escape the food shortage at

Dawson and angrily demanding provisions to last the winter, using the miners’ meeting to express their grievances.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the U.S. Army’s activities in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands before the beginning of the Klondike gold rush. Ray and Richardson’s experiences at St. Michael in August 1897 will then be examined. Ray first reported that the situation at St.

Michael was stable, but just days later, the steamer Healy arrived bringing word of the food shortage at Dawson. The Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company, fearful that the food shortage would create unrest at St. Michael, begged

Ray to protect the companies’ interests. Proceeding upriver, Ray and Richardson continued to hear news of a reported crisis at Dawson due to the failure of the transportation companies to deliver supplies. At Circle City, Ray found a group of miners storming the Alaska Commercial

Company steamer Bella, attempting to seize supplies for the winter. After negotiating with the miners and the Alaska Commercial Company to sell goods to the miners, Ray continued on to

Fortymile. When he returned to Fort Yukon on 25 October, Ray found another group of miners threatening to raid an Alaska Commercial Company supply cache. Ray and Richardson faced down a group of seventy-five armed miners, before restoring order at Fort Yukon for the remainder of the winter.

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Like Constantine and Brown, Ray and Richardson had to fit into the established borderlands system as they made their way up the Yukon River, dealing with local transportation companies and unreliable transportation routes and negotiating with miners’ meetings to keep the peace. At the same time, they took the first steps to establish American government control in

Alaska by maintaining law and order during the food shortage. During his time in Alaska, Ray also made a detailed set of recommendations on how the American government should respond to the Klondike gold rush, based on his experiences during the fall of 1897. Ray’s plan to establish a military government in Alaska and open up new transportation routes to the region would become the basis for U.S. Army policy in Alaska during the remaking of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands.

The U.S. Army and the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands to 1897

The U.S. Army did have some experience in Alaska and the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

Between the Alaska Purchase in 1867 and 1877, the U.S. Army operated a military government in Alaska. Based at Sitka, the army’s activities in Alaska were largely limited to the panhandle region, and they had little presence in the Yukon River basin, beyond Captain Charles W.

Raymond’s survey of the location of Fort Youcon in 1869 (see Chapter 2). Shortly after the transfer of Alaska to the United States, the army clashed with the Kéex’ Kwáan Tlingit near

Sitka in the Kake War of 1869. Gun boats attacked three Kéex’ Kwáan villages to assert

Americans claims to the territory. In the aftermath, the American government eventually transferred the army’s Alaska duties to the Treasury Department in 1877 and later the United

States Navy in 1879.8 After 1877, the army’s presence in Alaska was limited to the weather

8 Zachary R. Jones, “‘Search For and Destroy:’ US Army Relations with Alaska’s Tlingit Indians and the Kake War of 1869,” Ethnohistory 60, no. 1 (2013): 1-26. On the U.S. Army’s role in Alaska from 1867-1877 see: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917;

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service. The first weather station in the Yukon River basin was established at St. Michael in

1874. During the 1880s, stations were built on various points on the Yukon River, including

Nulato, Fort Yukon, and Tanana, before the collection of meteorological data was transferred to the Department of Agriculture in 1890.9

Between 1881 and 1885, the army also carried out a series of exploring expeditions in

Alaska to increase the American government’s knowledge of the region.10 The first was the

1881-1883 International Polar Expedition, part of an international effort to study the meteorology of the Arctic, led by then 1st Lieutenant P.H. Ray himself.11 Patrick Henry Ray was born in Waukesha County, Wisconsin in 1842. He served in the Union Army during the

American Civil War, before receiving a commission in the regular army in 1867, where he took part in various Indian Wars in the West, including the Sioux and Apache campaigns of 1872-

1876.12 He was placed in charge of the Alaska section of the International Polar Expedition, which left San Francisco on 18 July 1881 and established a weather station at Point Barrow.

Ray’s party remained at Point Barrow for two years collecting metrological data and returned to

San Francisco in October 1883.13

A second expedition, led by 1st Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, 3rd Cavalry, crossed the

Chilkoot Pass in June 1883, built a raft, and floated down the Yukon River drainage to St.

Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987; Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897. 9 The Army Weather Service in Alaska is discussed by: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 97-104. 10 The final reports of all four expeditions discussed here can be found in: United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska. 11 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 111. 12 “Ray, Patrick Henry,” in Men and Women of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries (New York: L.R. Hamersly, 1910), 1374; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 130. 13 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 111-14.

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Michael. The Schwatka expedition was a personal project of Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, commanding general of the Department of the Colombia, who used a report of local Indian hostilities as an excuse to learn more about the region.14 Schwatka produced a detailed map of the Yukon River basin, from the Chilkoot to the mouth of the river, that renamed many of the features the expedition encountered. This map makes for an interesting contrast with the map produced by the Canadian George M. Dawson Expedition in 1887-1889, which included an entirely different set of names.15 Parks Canada historian David Neufeld notes that Schwatka’s map and imagination of the river would have also conflicted with those of his Indigenous guides, who viewed the river through their own cultural lens.16

In May 1884, 2nd Lieutenant William R. Abercrombie, 2nd Infantry, was ordered by Miles to undertake a supplementary expedition to Schwatka’s and explore the Copper River valley.

Abercrombie’s party left Portland on 1 June 1884 and explored the Copper River delta. The party attempted to make their way to the upper river, but found the route blocked by glaciers and impassible.17 Miles instructed 2nd Lieutenant Henry T. Allen, 2nd Cavalry, to undertake a third expedition to Alaska in January 1885. The Allen party reached the Copper River delta in late

March and successfully reached the upper river, following the Copper north to the Chistochina and Slana Rivers, before tracing the Little Tok and Tok Rivers to the Tanana River. Following

14 Ibid., 114-117; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 49- 50; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 104-106. For more on Miles’ views on indigenous peoples in Alaska see Chapter 8. 15 Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 65. Coates and Morrison note that Schwatka changed the name of the upper Yukon from Lewes River, as Hudson’s Bay Company traders called it, to Yukon River. The Canadian government later changed the name back to Lewes River, before reverting to Yukon River in the 1950s. 16 David Neufeld, “Learning to Drive the Yukon River: Western Cartography and Athapaskan Story Maps,” Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 4 (2011): 16-43. Neufeld writes that the purpose of Schwatka’s map was to convey information about the river and its potential, while the purpose of Athapaskan story maps of the river were to convey the experience of the journey. 17 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 117-119; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 50.

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the Tanana to the Yukon River, Allen explored the Koyukuk River before going overland to

Unalakleet and St. Michael.18 The Abercrombie and Allen expeditions will be further discussed in Chapter 8.

The army’s activities in Alaska from 1867 to 1890 fit into its role as a multipurpose force in the decades after the Civil War. Operating a military government when there were not enough people to justify civilian government, collecting metrological data, and exploring new regions were all roles that the army had fulfilled in the American West.19 The expeditions of 1883-1885 in particular had done much to increase the army’s knowledge of the Yukon, Copper, and

Tanana Rivers, but, like the Canadian government and the Dawson expedition, the American government did nothing to continue the work. By the beginning of the Klondike gold rush, much of the army’s knowledge of Alaska was out of date or forgotten. When Secretary of War Alger decided to send an expedition to Alaska in 1897 to investigate the gold fields, he naturally chose the U.S. Army to continue its work and selected Captain P.H. Ray to return to Alaska and lead the expedition. Ray’s assistant 1st Lieutenant Wilds Preston Richardson was born in 1861 in

Hunt County, Texas. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in

1884 and served at several western posts before being appointed as an instructor in tactics at

West Point in 1892.20 Five years later, he was instructed to join Ray on his reconnaissance, marking the beginning of a long career in Alaska. On 18 August 1897, Ray and Richardson arrived at St. Michael to begin their investigation.21

18 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 120-129; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 50-51; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 106-110. 19 Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898, 26-28, 99-102, 105. 20 Brian Hart, “Richardson, Wilds Preston,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online /articles/fri12; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 131. 21 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 25 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 519.

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St. Michael

Once in Alaska, Captain Ray had been instructed to send regular reports of their progress to the Adjutant General in Washington. The Adjutant General of the U.S. Army was responsible for army record keeping and for communicating orders, instructions, and regulations from the

War Department. After Alger decided to send Ray and Richardson to Alaska, it fell to the

Adjutant General’s Office to organize the expedition, communicate orders to those involved, and send regular reports to the Secretary of War’s office. Brigadier General George D. Ruggles was

Adjutant General from 1893 until his retirement on 11 September 1897, when he was replaced by Brigadier General Samuel Breck.22 As Ray seems to have been unaware of this change, the position will only be referred to as Adjutant General in this chapter, as Ray addressed all of his reports.

Ray sent his first report from St. Michael to the Adjutant General on 25 August 1897, seven days after their arrival. Ray reported that the Alaska Commercial Company and the North

American Transportation and Trading Company were hard at work responding to the Klondike rush. Already they reported transporting 302 passengers up river and there were 405 at St.

Michael “awaiting transportation.”23 A further 113 “came on chartered vessels who are attempting to go by small tugs and barges.”24 The rush to the Klondike also meant that the

ACCo. and the NAT&TCo. had to transport more and more supplies up river to meet the growing number of miners at Dawson. Ray learned from the agents of both companies that

“since the opening of navigation this year they have forwarded to Circle City and above 2,490 tons of freight, which does not include that carried by passengers, three-fifths of which was

22 Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), 38. 23 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 25 August 1897, 519. 24 Ibid.

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provisions, the balance clothing, machinery, hardware, and liquor.”25 The companies also expected “to land at Dawson City and above at least 500 tons of provisions before navigation closes, and will have at Andrafsky, 200 miles up the Yukon, 2,000 tons ready to be sent up the river as soon as the ice goes out in the river.”26

In order to meet increased demand, both companies also had to expand their operations at

St. Michael and on the Yukon River. Ray noted that “the storage capacity here is at present inadequate to accommodate the suddenly increased volume of trade, but both companies are putting up new buildings, and by another season will be able to meet all demands.”27 The Alaska

Commercial Company had “three river steamers, 200 tons each [and] three river barges, 300 tons each.” He noted that “they expect to build this coming winter one steamer, 200 tons, and three barges, 300 tons each.”28 The North American Transportation and Trading Company had “three steamers, 200 tons each; one river barge, 200 tons,” and they expected “to build this coming winter two river steamers, 200 tons each, and three river barges, 300 tons each.”29

As to his investigation, Ray reported that “I am unable to obtain here any reliable information as to the number of people now in the United States territory on the Upper Yukon or the amount of food supply.”30 Of the people gathered at St. Michael, he noted, “so far as I am able to ascertain, but very few of the people now entering by this route intend to remain or locate in the United States territory unless some new discoveries of gold should attract them.”31 Ray learned from Canadian Dominion Land Surveyor William Ogilvie, who had left Dawson on 15

July, that “there was at Dawson City and vicinity at the time they left about 3,000 people; that

25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 520. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 519. 31 Ibid., 520.

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there was no scarcity of provisions, and the stores all had sufficient supply to meet all demands unless the number coming via Chilcoot [sic] should increase to 5,000 or over, in which case there would be, undoubtedly, a shortage.”32 As to reports of lawlessness, he noted that the lack of law enforcement on the American side of the gold fields “is greatly deplored by all the better class of people entering it,” but, “up to the present time I have heard no complaints of lawlessness.”33

Ray concluded that “I will report more fully upon this subject when I ascertain more fully the conditions existing in the interior and the number and character of the citizens.”34

Ray’s optimistic appraisal of the situation was challenged almost as soon as he finished writing his first report. On 25 August, the steamer Healy arrived in St. Michael, “nine days out from Dawson City,” carrying news of “a very serious condition of affairs in the Klondike district.”35 The Healy’s forty-five passengers reported that, even now, the stores in Dawson

“refused to sell in large quantities” because they lacked sufficient stock, and even with the recent arrival of three steamers, “the fact still remains that there is not sufficient food supply in the country (even when augmented by all that can be sent forward from this point) to feed the people now there until the opening of navigation next spring.”36 Ray noted that “the condition is being aggravated by large numbers of people arriving daily via the pass.”37 The passengers reported that there was “but a very small supply” at Circle City, but, Ray learned, “I am reliably informed that 80 miles from that point, in the Birch Creek district, there is a sufficient supply of food to last 2,000 men one year - left there when the rush for the Klondike occurred.”38

32 Ibid., 519. 33 Ibid., 520. 34 Ibid. 35 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 27 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 520. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 521.

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The ACCo. and the NAT&TCo. were alarmed by the news. Ray reported that “I have consulted with the agents of both transportation companies, and they freely admit that the situation is extremely critical; that a famine is unavoidable unless a part of the people leave the country.”39 The companies were preparing to send three boats up river with provisions, and to bring back as many people as possible, in the hope of alleviating the situation in the interior until spring. But, as Ray noted, “the number will not be sufficient to affect the general result unless a large number go by the pass.”40 The agents also expressed to Ray their fears that “the people now stranded here, augmented by those to arrive by river and sea, would prove a serious menace to life and property.”41 In the absence of any government control, hundreds of starving miners at St.

Michael, or any other town on the Yukon River, would be susceptible to mob rule. The

NAT&TCo. in particular had learned in 1895 that miners’ meetings could rule against the transportation companies for no other reason than anger, as discussed in Chapter 1. If the miners did not like the way that the companies were rationing supplies, or increasing prices, there would be nothing to stop them from taking supplies by force. “From what I have seen and heard here,”

Ray wrote, “I think their fears are fully justified.”42

At Fortymile, the NAT&TCo. had decided that a close relationship with the Mounted

Police and the Canadian government was a good strategy to both protect their business and take advantage of the arrival of government forces. At St. Michael, the ACCo. and the NAT&TCo. decided that a similar strategy could work with the American government. Before Ray and

Richardson left St. Michael, James M. Wilson, Superintendent of the ACCo. and S.B. Sheppard, manager of the NAT&TCo., sent a request to Ray “for a detachment of soldiers to come to this

39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

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place for the winter.”43 The pair explained that the large number of people forced to winter at St.

Michael “will jeopardize large property interests, and owing to the absence of civil authority here, we request that a suitable guard be sent for the protection of life and property at once.”44

Ray forwarded their request to the Adjutant General on 26 August, recommending that “2 officers and 20 men be sent to St. Michael by return steamer.”45 As Richardson wrote to T.H.

Barry, “the Alaska Commercial Company has a building for them here, and will furnish them supplies and furs.”46 Ray wrote to Barry on 29 August, “I do not think it necessary to keep a guard here after navigation opens, provided the transportation companies fully realize and keep this place from being congested with a mob next year.”47 Ray and the companies’ request reached San Francisco on 15 September and was telegrammed to the Adjutant General.48

Washington

In Washington, Secretary of War R.A. Alger received a second letter from P.B. Weare, manager of the NAT&TCo. in Chicago, on 14 September, written to Secretary of the Treasury

L.J. Gage.49 Weare wrote that “a large number of men are going to be ordered out of the

Klondike country” because of the food shortage, “and they will go to the mouth of the Yukon

River to winter.”50 He continued, “as large numbers of these men are lawless and have no means it is going to be dangerous for our property” at St. Michael, where “we must have $500,000

43 W.P. Richardson to T.H. Barry, 28 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 522. 44 James M. Wilson and S.B. Sheppard to Ray, 26 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 524. 45 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 524. 46 W.P. Richardson to T.H. Barry, 28 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 522. 47 Ray to Barry, 29 August 1897, 523. 48 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 August 1897, 524. 49 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, L.J. Gage to Alger, 14 September 1897. 50 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, P.B. Weare to Gage, 11 September 1897.

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worth of goods.”51 Weare asked that “the President and Secretary of War… send a small force to that point” to keep the peace.52 Hoping to twist the government’s arm, Weare noted that “it seems strange to us that our Government cannot take as prompt action as the Canadian people.

We asked them for fifty men and they gave us one hundred. I have no fears about the law not being enforced at Dawson. The bad men will be driven out and they will go down to St.

Michael’s Island and there is where the trouble is going to be.”53

On 21 September, Alger ordered Lieutenant Colonel G.M. Randall of the 8th Infantry to proceed to St. Michael, “in the interest of good order, and the safety of the persons and property there and in that vicinity.”54 He instructed Randall that “your force should be used with kindness and consideration and with the measure of the strict necessity of the occasions as they may arise.”55 He continued, “should you find there destitute persons unable to obtain food otherwise, you are authorized to feed them,… as long as may be absolutely necessary.”56 Randell and a detachment of twenty-five men arrived at St. Michael on 8 October and quickly established Fort

St. Michael.57 On 20 October, the army created a military reservation on St. Michael Island, encompassing “all contiguous land and islands within 100 miles of the location of the flagstaff of the present garrison on that island.”58 The detachment would remain at St. Michael for the remainder of the gold rush.

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Alger to G.M. Randall, 21 September 1897. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 140. The reason for declaring a 100 mile radius was because it would force anyone who wanted to build in the region to ask permission from the army. 58 Quoted in Ibid., 140.

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Fort Yukon

In the meantime, Ray and Richardson left St. Michael on the steamer Healy on 29

August, on their way to Fort Yukon. On 6 September, Ray reported from “100 miles below

Lewannah River” that they had met the steamer John J. Healy, which had left Fort Yukon two days earlier.59 “They report the water too low at that point to cross the bar; that her cargo was landed at Fort Yukon, and she is now on her return to St. Michael.”60 He explained, “this means there will be no more supplies landed in the Klondike country this fall by this route.”61

Ray and Richardson arrived at Fort Yukon on the evening of 12 September 1897.

Richardson wrote to Barry the next day that “the river is so low that it is very doubtful if our boat can proceed farther.”62 He explained that the river at Fort Yukon “widens out to several miles, passing through many channels over what are know as the Yukon flats,” making the water level particularly low for that time of year.63 “Our captain has been searching all morning for a channel, but so far without success,” he continued, “if no channel is found she [the Healy] will unload her supplies here and return to St. Michael, Ray and I will put our stuff ashore and go into camp for the present and wait for the river to freeze… we can then proceed with dog teams up to

Circle City.”64 As Richardson explained, the low water level meant that “other boats… on the river coming up with supplies… will all have to discharge here.”65 He warned, “this means a very serious condition of affairs up at Dawson City; in fact, nothing less than starvation.”66

59 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 September 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 523. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Richardson to Barry, 13 September 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 523. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid.

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Richardson noted that small parties were already arriving from Dawson looking for supplies, and he suspected that number would increase before the river froze. “I doubt if there is enough food on the river, even if it could all be distributed, to feed the people.”67 Ray confirmed in a 15

September letter to the Adjutant General that the Healy had been unable to proceed up river, and that he and Richardson were stuck at Fort Yukon.68

On 16 September, Ray reported that the NAT&TCo. steamer Weare had arrived at Fort

Yukon, carrying 200 tons of provisions. Unable to proceed further up river, the Weare unloaded her cargo, leaving, according to Ray, “about 600 tons of provisions” at Fort Yukon.69 “The captain reports that she is probably the last boat of that company for this season,” he wrote, “the

Alaska Commercial Company expects one more.”70 Fortunately for Ray, the ACCo. steamer

Bella arrived at Fort Yukon within a week and was able to proceed upriver. He reported that the

Bella “carries a cargo of 200 tons of staple provisions and the Captain intends to go to Dawson

City if possible.”71 Leaving Richardson behind, Ray reached Circle City on 25 September.72

Circle City

Almost immediately after his arrival at Circle, Ray’s fears that the food shortage would lead to unrest were confirmed. He wrote to the Adjutant General on 6 October that, “I was informed that a committee of miners had taken charge of the boat and were about to commence

67 Ibid. 68 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 September 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 525. 69 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 16 September 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 528. Ray later confirmed his assessment of Circle after he returned from Fortymile, see: Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 530; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897. 70 Ibid. 71 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 25 September 1897. 72 Ibid.

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discharging her cargo.”73 He hurried on board and “found the lower deck crowded with people, saw one man armed with a shotgun apparently on guard at the gangway.”74 Moving to the back of the boat, Ray noted, “I found a party at work” passing goods out of the main hatch. “I asked them to stop for a few moments, as I wished to know what they were doing,” he continued.75 The chairman of the miners’ meeting informed Ray that the committee “proposed to take so much of the cargo of provisions as they needed to supply their immediate wants.”76 The chairman explained that the transportation companies had failed to land enough provisions at Circle City during the past season, and that “there was little or nothing in the storehouses,” and “no prospect of another steamer arriving this fall,” leaving them with no choice but to take supplies from the

Bella, “not only to enable them to work their mines, but to save themselves from starvation.”77

When Ray “called their attention to the unlawfulness of their acts,” the committee replied “there is no law or any person in authority to whom we can appeal.”78 They also explained that “two days before the steamer Weare was held up here and about 30 tons of provisions landed from her.”79 Ray “spoke to them of the desperate condition of affairs existing at Dawson; urged them to take no more than was necessary and let the balance go on,” which the committee agreed to do.80 The ACCo. agent then agreed to allow the miners to store the supplies in the company storehouse, where the committee agreed that they could sell the goods “at the company’s own

73 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897 2, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 530; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 531. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid.

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price.”81 Ray also had the committee submit a “sworn statement of the stores taken,” which included 49,775 pounds of supplies.82

Ray arrived at Circle just as concern over the food supply at Dawson City was beginning to pick up. At Dawson, Mounted Police Inspector Constantine wrote in his annual report for

1897, dated 18 January 1898, that “there was great excitement here about the end of September as to the food supply for the coming year.”83 He reported that “at one time matters looked serious, and threats were made of taking possession of the stores and dividing the food.”84

Constantine “looked over the supplies and issued a notice stating the facts, and advised all those who had not sufficient food to see them through the winter to leave for Circle City and Fort

Yukon, where it was estimated that sufficient food was stored to last until the arrival of boats this coming summer.”85 Constantine wrote to Commissioner L.W. Herchmer on 14 October that

“matters came to such a pass among the people that I took possession of the Str. ‘Bella,’ with consent of the A.C.Co., and sent out on her 150 people to Fort Yukon, who were out of food for the winter.”86 Constantine noted that “I have also been daily sending parties away, down there, in small boats.”87 The situation was so dire that even “prisoners who under ordinary circumstances would be sentenced to terms of imprisonment, I have released on suspended sentence and fired down river.”88

81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 531-532. 83 Constantine, “Annual Report of Superintendent C. Constantine, Commanding Yukon District, 1897,” in Government of Canada, Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1897 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1898), 309. 84 Ibid., 309-310. 85 Ibid., 310. 86 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Constantine to Herchmer, 14 October 1897. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid.

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Inspector Z.T. Wood at Skagway also learned that Gold Commissioner Thomas Fawcett

“posted notices on October 1st notifying people that from 3000 to 3500 would have to leave the place at once in order that the rest might live through the winter.”89 Wood interviewed two men who reported that “between the 1st and 20th October the Police Officers and other Government officials held meetings of the people and implored all those who had not sufficient food to last them during the winter to move out, as no supplies could be purchased.”90 Wood also reported to

Comptroller White that the captain of the NAT&TCo. steamer Weare “addressed the people and advised them to go to Fort Yukon where there were lots of provisions, three of the Company’s steamers having been frozen in there.”91

Encouraged by Constantine, Fawcett, and ACCo and NAT&TCo officials, and their own concerns about the food supply, an estimated 900 people left Dawson for Fort Yukon during the fall of 1897, based on numbers reported by Constantine and Wood. As Ray and Richardson made their way upriver, they met many of these miners, desperate to secure food for winter and willing to make trouble.

Having settled the matter at Circle, Ray proceed up river on the Bella, twenty-five tons lighter, “to look over the country between this point and the boundary, intending to go to

Dawson City, Northwest Territory, if possible.”92 He reported that the country between Circle and the boundary “is practically a canyon… the mountains rising abruptly from the river” and ill

89 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 7 December 1897. 90 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 10 December 1897. 91 Wood to White, 7 December 1897. 92 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 3 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 529; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 3 October 1897.

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suited to building a post.93 The only site “I consider would make a suitable site for a post,” he wrote, was “at the mouth of Mission Creek… 20 miles below the boundary.”94 “Should the

Department decide to establish a post on the upper river I recommend this site, as it is near the boundary, will be a most suitable point for the location of a custom-house.”95 He noted that “I am reliably informed that smuggling is extensively carried on at the present time.”96

Ray arrived at Fortymile, just on the other side of the Alaska-Yukon border, on 29

September, and he found that the Fortymile River had already frozen over. “As the ice had commenced to run in the Yukon and the weather being clear and cold, knowing from experience how quickly rivers in this latitude close under such conditions,” Ray decided to turn around.97

Leaving the Bella to continue upriver and be commandeered by Inspector Constantine, he wrote on 3 October, “I decided to get back to my base of supplies at Fort Yukon, if possible.”98 Ray boarded the steamer Weare on 1 October for the journey to Fort Yukon.

Unfortunately, the next morning, the Weare became frozen in the river, leaving Ray stranded at Circle, much to the anger of the other 107 passengers onboard.99 Ray reported to the

Adjutant General on 3 October that “the question of force here is a very serious one and the action of the N. A. T. and T. Co.” to refuse to proceed down the river “is causing much friction.”100 On 6 October, Ray reported that “during the afternoon of the 1st instant and the morning of the 2d, I heard great dissatisfaction expressed on all sides at the failure of the master

93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., 529. 100 Ibid.

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of the Weare to proceed on the voyage to Fort Yukon.”101 Fifty people on board “had come down as a volunteer crew,” under the impression that they would go down to Fort Yukon, pick up provisions, and then return to Dawson for the winter.102 “In their anxiety to get back they soon became aggressive in their demands, and a meeting was called,” Ray wrote.103 At the meeting, he reported seeing “several very much under the influence of liquor, heard much wild talk about taking possession of the boat, looting stores, etc.”104 Expecting unrest, Ray gathered together “a number of people in town not in sympathy with violence” and “secured all the arms and ammunition I could and quietly prepared to defend the stores.”105 The next day, the committee was expelled from the Weare “without food or shelter,” and they appealed to Ray.106 “I took them before the agent of the company, who,” Ray wrote, “after hearing their case, admitted that the company was responsible,” and agreed to provide them with food and shelter until they could travel to Fort Yukon, calming matters for the time being.107 Ray concluded his report of the incident by complaining that “while here I am constantly being appealed to [sic] act where I have no authority. I can only act as an arbitrator or mediator in the cause of peace.”108 He noted, “I am only surprised that matters are not worse.”109 They would only get worse.

101 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897 2, 531. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid., 532. 109 Ibid.

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In the following days, Ray continued to be “called upon to act as mediator between the crew of the Weare” and the NAT&TCo.110 “As supplies were getting very short at Circle City,”

Ray wrote to the Adjutant General on 26 October, many of the fifty men wanted to go to Fort

Yukon as soon as possible and “several meetings were held with a view to coercing the master of the Weare to proceed to Fort Yukon, should the river become clear of ice.”111 On 10 October, the captain of the Weare told the crew that if they could cut the steamer out of the ice, that he would bring them to Fort Yukon. “One hundred men set to work at once to cut her out,” Ray wrote,

“and by night she was practically free,” but the captain refused to leave.112 “The crowd became angry and a movement was placed on foot to seize the steamer, put a volunteer master and crew on board of her, and proceed to Fort Yukon,” Ray continued.113 The agents of the NAT&TCo. and the ACCo. appealed to Ray to “use my influence to save property and loss of life.”114 Ray called the crew together and told them that “I would not tolerate violence or any attempt to seize the steamer.”115 He suggested that the crew could safely travel down river in small boats if they wished to reach Fort Yukon, and that the NAT&TCo. would supply them with boats and provisions for the journey. The crew “all agreed to it without dissent,” Ray wrote.116

After seeing the crew off at 8:00 a.m. on 12 October, Ray decided that, “knowing the bitter feeling existing against the company, and fearing that the caches at Fort Yukon might be plundered, as I learned that quite a number of lawless characters from Dawson had passed down

110 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 535; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 October 1897. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid.

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the river,” he should return to Fort Yukon as soon as possible.117 Two hours later, he “embarked in a boat which had just arrived, containing 8 miners on their way to Fort Yukon.”118 The party

“intended to run all night, which should bring us to our destination the next morning,” but by

8:30 that night, their boat became frozen in the ice. Ray discovered the next morning that their party joined at least 150 people stranded “about 65 miles from Fort Yukon and 25 from Circle

City,” including the crew of the Weare.119 He sent “the Indian Paul” to Fort Yukon with a note ordering Richardson to “send up dogs as soon as the river is passable for sleds,” and suggested that those stranded make their way to Fort Yukon on foot before they ran out of food.120 Ray remained behind to assist those caught in the ice and send them on to Fort Yukon.

Richardson received Ray’s orders on 16 October and sent a party of three to meet him.121

They reached Ray’s position on 21 October, and together they made their way on foot, arriving at Fort Yukon at 1:00 p.m. on 25 October.122 Richardson reported to Ray on 25 October that the crew of the Weare had arrived at Fort Yukon on 19 October. “Their condition upon arrival, after tramping through the snow for six days, the last three almost certainly without food, packing their scanty bedding,” he wrote, “was such as to arouse my keenest sympathy.”123 Richardson supplied the crew with three tents and two stoves for temporary shelter and asked the

NAT&TCo. agent “if he was willing to supply them for five days,” which he agreed to do.124

By 21 October, others who had gathered at Fort Yukon began demanding provisions, and threatened to take them by force. Richardson responded by making arrangements to supply food

117 Ibid., 536. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Richardson to Ray, 25 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 534; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Richardson to Ray, 25 October 1897. 122 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 October 1897, 535. 123 Richardson to Ray, 25 October 1897, 535. 124 Ibid.

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to the destitute “to relieve the hunger and prevent attacks upon the stores.”125 He reported to Ray that the agents of both companies refused to “make sales on credit,” but “I found a majority of the needy ones willing to go to work provided a month’s supply of provisions could be given them to start with.”126 The companies agreed to take cord wood in exchange for supplies, and

Richardson arranged for the men to receive provisions for the first month in advance. When Ray arrived at Fort Yukon on 25 October, he and Richardson finalized their plan to address the food shortage during the winter. Ray reported to the Adjutant General the next day that “those willing to work were to be allowed to cut wood for the companies at $5 per cord, and when they had earned sufficient money they should pay for their supplies.”127 He continued, “The sick and indigent should be fed without charge, and the bills for such issues to come to me,” and submitted to Congress for reimbursement.128

Ray also reported that the agents of both companies “have verbally asked me to take charge of the caches, which I have refused to do.”129 The agents’ thinking was that the miners would be less likely to attempt to seize the caches if they were controlled by the U.S. Army. Ray explained that “I shall not force an issue, but shall defend the caches from all violence and pillage, as they contain the only provisions this side of Dawson, upon which many hundred people are dependent for existence for the next seven months.”130 Ray also noted that “I have gone over the stock and manifests of both companies and find that both have exaggerated the amount on hand here.”131 Both companies were reportedly telling miners at Dawson that there were “over 1,000 tons of provisions” at Fort Yukon, whereas Ray only found “less than 300

125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 26 October 1897, 537. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

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tons.”132 Expecting trouble, Ray wrote “I may be placed in a position where I may be compelled to take possession of the caches to save them from pillage and to insure an equitable distribution.”133

It only took three days for the situation to boil over. On 29 October, H.W. Davis, the

ACCo. agent, sent a note to Ray informing him that a miners’ meeting was being held for the purpose of seizing an ACCo. cache of 200 tons of supplies four miles up river from Fort

Yukon.134 Ray and Richardson immediately went to the meeting. The committee “demanded they be furnished on credit with an ‘outfit of provisions and clothing for nine months,’” which

Davis refused to do.135 Ray explained again that he would make sure that the destitute received food, and that those able to work could trade cord wood for provisions, or purchase supplies if they had money. “I came away without getting any definite answer out of them,” he wrote to the

Adjutant General on 1 November.136 Unsure of the situation, Ray left Richardson “at the cache for the night.”137

In Ray’s absence, Richardson wrote that evening, he explained again “the concession made on the subject of woodcutting” to a meeting of about seventy-five miners.138 The committee “agreed that in view of the approaching cold, short days, and probable distance they

132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 This might be the note: H.W. Davis to Ray 30 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 541; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, H.W. Davis to Ray 30 October 1897. He wrote, “being unable to protect the interests of the Alaska Commercial Company with what few men I have at my disposal, I now ask you, as a representative of the United States Government, for protection.” 135 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 542; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 Richardson to Ray, 29 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 538; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Richardson to Ray, 29 October 1897.

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might have to go before finding suitable wood for cutting, a somewhat more liberal allowance of supplies for the first issue” should be made.139 Richardson left to discuss the matter with Ray, but

Ray was gone from their quarters, and Richardson returned to the meeting. “They passed a resolution in my presence to the effect that the committee should submit by 10 o’clock to- morrow morning a list of what was needed to outfit each man till the 1st of next June; that the list should be presented to the agent here and a demand made upon him to furnish it, and, in case of refusal on his part, to take the necessary steps for procuring this supply by forcible means.”140

According to Ray, “I received a note from him [Richardson] saying he believed they intended to attack the cache at 10 a.m. the next day.”141 Ray decided to take possession of the cache and sent a notice to Richardson to post on the door of the storehouse (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Ray’s Notice. From NARA, RG107, E81, File 1.

139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 141 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2.

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A similar notice was also posted on the NAT&TCo. storehouse at Fort Yukon.

Richardson received the proclamation at 12:00 a.m. that night and posted it “in a conspicuous place” early the following morning.142 At 7 a.m., a man named Noblett arrived at the cache and told Richardson the committee wished to see him. “I told him I had no farther [sic] business with them or terms to make,” he wrote to Ray that evening.143 Noblett stated that “the men wished to take charge of me for my protection; that they intended to seize the cache and no force could stop them, but they did not wish to do me injury if it could be avoided.”144

Richardson stated that “they could come and get me,” and sent Noblett on his way.145 He immediately attempted to send a messenger to Fort Yukon to warn Ray, but the messenger was arrested by the miners and prevented from leaving. Richardson, the four ACCo. employees at the cache, and “about half a dozen other men, most of the latter without arms,” then prepared to defend the cache in the event of an attack.146 He explained to Ray that “the intention evidently was to get possession of me and then seize the place; or failing in that, to secure you, if possible, before you reached me, and then demand my surrender.”147

At Fort Yukon, Ray gathered a force of twenty-five volunteers, armed with only a few pistols, and started for the cache early in the morning. On their way, Ray learned that the miners had passed a resolution to arrest him if he attempted to go to the cache. Half a mile from the cache, the party met Noblett “who stated the miners wished to have me come to their camp to talk over the situation,” which Ray refused to do.148 “He then came out in his true colors, and

142 Richardson to Ray, 30 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 538. 143 Ibid., 539. 23; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Richardson to Ray, 30 October 1897. 144 Ibid. 145 Ibid. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2.

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said they had determined to prevent my going forward by force, and at a signal from him 22 men armed with rifles came out of the timber and covered the party.”149 Noblett claimed that the miners already had possession of the cache, but, Ray wrote, “as Lieutenant Richardson was there and I had not heard any firing, I knew his statement was false,” so Ray stated he was determined to continue on.150 Noblett then said that, since Ray had taken possession of the stores, the conditions had changed, “and they were loath to disturb Government property.”151 Ray told him that his offer to feed the destitute and allow the others to cut wood for provisions still stood if the miners backed down. Noblett left to consult with the rest of the miners, and “they accepted the terms.”152 Ray and his party continued on to the cache, where, he wrote, “I found between thirty and forty men who said they had nothing, and I caused all to be fed.”153

In the aftermath of the incident, Richardson wrote that, based on all he had seen and heard at the cache, “this movement was no more nor less than a deliberately planned attempt to rob the store for booty, as many of the men had money, but refused to buy food, and all refused to work.”154 Ray described the movement as “premeditated robbery, and had they been able to get possession of either Lieutenant Richardson or myself the cache would have been lost.”155 He explained that “a number of very desperate and lawless characters have been forced out of

149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 154 Richardson to Ray, 30 October 1897. 155 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2.

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Dawson,” and “quite a number” had made camp near the cache.156 “I learn to-day that they have been quietly securing arms ever since their arrival here and mean mischief,” he wrote.157

While there certainly were miners at Fort Yukon and Circle City looking only to cause trouble, Ray and Richardson were also witnessing a shift in the role of the miners’ meeting in governing the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, with the American and Canadian governments taking steps to control the region. Anthropologist Thomas Stone writes that “the open, popular forum of the miners’ meeting had become a means of expressing, rather than adjudicating, grievances, and a mechanism for the crystallization of ad hoc, self-help coalitions acting (potentially violently) in opposition to other segments of the community.”158 The events during the fall of 1897 appear to fall in a transition period, with miners coming together to decide how best to respond to the food shortage at Dawson, while also demanding action from higher authorities, the transportation companies and Ray and Richardson themselves. As Ray explained in his 6 October report, “a large majority of the people now here are peaceable and law abiding, but in the absence of any person in authority to appeal to for the settlement of the many differences that are constantly arising, they are compelled to act outside of the law.”159 He again warned that “great injury will result to the commercial interests along this great highway if some radical steps are not taken to protect all persons from such interference with their legitimate business.”160

Clearly alarmed by what had happened, Ray wrote to the Adjutant General in his 1

November report that “I am securing all the arms and ammunition I can. Shall move with

156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 158 Stone, Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902, 160. 159 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 6 October 1897 2, 531. 160 Ibid.

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caution, and get matters in such shape as to hold the balance of power.”161 He also wrote to J.J.

Healy at Dawson City, explaining what had happened and imploring him to “take immediate steps to check the exodus down the river as far as possible.”162 Ray explained that “there seems to be some misunderstanding in regard to the amount of subsistence stores in the two caches” at

Fort Yukon.163 Perhaps to chastise Healy, he wrote that “miners state that they were informed by

Captain Hanson and yourself that the two companies had over 1,000 tons” at Fort Yukon, but “I find in fact that there is less than 300 tons.”164 While 300 tons was enough to feed 1000 people for the winter, Ray wanted to discourage people in Dawson from coming to Fort Yukon, or he would risk more miners’ action. He suggested to Healy that “if you wish to preserve your property, use your influence to have the necessary legislation so troops, when they arrive next spring, can act promptly and unhampered.”165 Then he begged “I urge immediate action through your friends in the States.”166

Ray then wrote to the Adjutant General on 2 November “to recommend that the

Government take steps to effectually check emigration to this region of all people who do not come prepared with sufficient provisions to last them two years.”167 He explained that most of the people in the region had come with little money or supplies and little hope of earning

“enough to sustain life in this country,” only to face starvation when winter arrived.168 “From all

I can learn,” he wrote, “the rush to this country will be very great next year, and any step that

161 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 1 November 1897 2. 162 Ray to J.J. Healy, 30 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 540-541; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to J.J. Healy, 30 October 1897. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid. 165 Ibid. 166 Ibid. 167 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 2 November 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 543; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 2 November 1897. 168 Ibid.

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will prevent people from coming here in their ignorance will be an act of charity.”169 The following day Ray also suggested that the government place “on the river a small light-draft steamer with high power, armed and used to patrol the river and place detachments as the movements of the people demand,” so the government could quickly respond to any repeat of the

Fort Yukon situation.170

Ray also wrote to the Adjutant General on 3 November that, “as arrangements for a regular mail can not [sic] be depended upon,” he had arranged for a special courier to bring news of the food shortage to Juneau, “as I believe the conditions here should be known to the

Department and the President.”171 Like the problems faced by the Mounted Police and the

Canadian government, the biggest problem the American government faced in responding to the gold rush was the lack of reliable mail service. Ray’s letter to Healy, for example, did not reach

Dawson until mid-December. At Dawson, Healy arranged for a E.H. Wells to bring Ray’s letter, and one of his own, to Seattle to inform the government of the situation. Healy and Ely E. Weare wrote to the Adjutant-General on 18 December that “in [sic] behalf of the American miners on the American side of the Yukon Valley we appeal to the Government to send us the strong arm of the military for protection,” warning that, if the government failed to act, “the merchants and transportation companies will be obliged to confine their business to the Canadian side of the

169 Ibid., 544. 170 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 3 November 1897 2, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 544. 171 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 3 November 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 544.

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Yukon Valley, as the Northwest mounted police offer protection to life and property.”172 Wells would not reach Seattle until 3 February 1898.173

Ray’s Plan for Alaska

During his time in Alaska, Captain Ray made a detailed set of recommendations for an

American government response to the Klondike gold rush. Ray’s plan to establish a military government in Alaska and develop an all-American route to the upper Yukon River - informed by his experience responding to the food shortage at Dawson and his reconnaissance of the

Yukon River valley - would eventually become the basis for the U.S. Army’s response to the gold rush and the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Even before dealing with the unrest at Circle City and Fort Yukon, he had called for a permanent military force to be sent to

Alaska. As early as 27 August, before even leaving St. Michael, Ray suggested that “so long as the present chaotic conditions [on the Yukon River] exist some semimilitary form of government would most readily meet the emergency.”174 By 15 September, Ray wrote that “I deem it very necessary that the military force should be permanently located at a central point in the interior, not only for the moral effect, but to support the civil authorities in the execution of the law.”175

He explained that “up to the present time the laws in this country have not been enforced, nor does there exist any means of enforcing them.”176 “All questions in dispute, criminal or civil, including rights of property,” he wrote, “have been and are now settled by miners’ meetings,” of

172 Ely E. Weare and John J. Healy to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 18 December 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 539-540; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Weare and Healy to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 18 December 1897. 173 E.H. Wells to H.C. Merriam, 3 February 1898, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 556-557. 174 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 27 August 1897, 521. 175 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 September 1897, 525. 176 Ibid., 527.

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which Ray had much experience during the fall of 1897.177 He reported that the “practice has proven satisfactory under old conditions of simple disputes between honest men, but is ill suited to present conditions and those which will arise and must be met within the next twelve months.”178 Nor did Ray believe that establishing a civilian government was possible in the short term. “I do not believe it would be possible to obtain civil officers who will remain in one place long enough to be of any service, and the performance of their duties will be secondary to their interests in mines; and where discoveries are being made on both sides of the border the civil government is liable to migrate to a foreign soil at any time a new discovery is made there.”179

“In view of such facts and the anxious inquiry, ‘Is the Government going to give us any form of law or protection of life and property?’ made by people who have large interests at stake,” Ray suggested that a form of semi-military government should be established in the

Yukon River valley.180 He recommended that the northern portion of Alaska, or the Yukon River basin, be separated from the Territory of Alaska, governed by the civilian government at Sitka, and that the President appoint army officers to serve as governor and secretary, “with an enlisted police force 20 strong, sufficiently well paid to secure reliable men” to keep law and order.181 He suggested that “the officers of the Army be detailed as inspectors and subinspectors, with powers of a magistrate; that at least two district judges be appointed and a superior court be established at the capital of the Territory, and non-commissioned officers and privates of the regular force be made eligible for detail on the police force in cases of emergency.”182 Ray suggested that “a post should be located on the north back of the Yukon River opposite and a little below the mouth of

177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid. 182 Ibid.

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the Tanana” River.183 He explained that this “position is central, both geographically and commercially” and that, because all of the settlements in the area were on the Yukon River, a single post would be sufficient to control the region.184

Ray called the Yukon River the “great highway” of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands in his

15 September report.185 He explained that “the Yukon and its tributaries are the great routes of travel, and must be for some time to come the highways for the transportation of supplies of the people in our territory and British North America.”186 While people could come into the territory from various routes, he continued, “once in the Territory, [they] will be compelled to follow the waterways, owing to the absence of all animal transportation except dogs in the winter.”187

Despite the importance of the Yukon River for transportation, however, Ray reported on

7 October that “judging by the promises made to passengers by transportation companies operating here, the results of the past season appear to have been, to say the least, disastrous.”188

Ray reported that of 848 people who had landed at St. Michael with the intention of going to

Circle City or beyond before he left, only forty-two had reached their destinations. Less than

2,000 tons in freight had been delivered to the upper Yukon and the transportation companies had been forced to land 500 tons of goods at Fort Yukon because they could not continue upriver. Ray blamed this failure on the fact that “the boats now in the service of both companies are without exception unsuited for the work on the upper river” because they drew too much water to pass over the Yukon flats.189 Ray and Richardson had seen this problem during the fall

183 Ibid., 525. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid., 525. 186 Ibid., 526. 187 Ibid. 188 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 7 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 533; NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 7 October 1897. 189 Ibid., 534.

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of 1897 specifically, when the Yukon River was particularly low, and the demand for supplies up river particularly high. The Alaska Commercial Company, operating on the Yukon River since

1868, was in a better position to address the demands of river transportation. Nonetheless, Ray wrote that the “failure on the part of the transportation companies to put into the mining districts a sufficient supply of food has not only given a serious check to the mining interest and caused great suffering, but had destroyed all confidence among the people here in their ability to supply the demand by this route.”190

Ray also explained on 15 September that “the only lines of communication are by the waters of the Yukon and its tributaries, which are open from the last days of May until from the

1st to the 15th of October,” meaning that there was no regular mail service between mining camps or Circle City and St. Michael during the winter.191 Ray had his own difficulty sending reports to

Washington and communicating that the food shortage was causing unrest in the interior. The issue of communication, then, was viewed as a serious commercial and military matter.

Given the fact that so much of the Alaska/Yukon transportation system had, until that point, relied on the Yukon River, he suggested that the government should open up another transportation route to Alaska. “I am reliably informed,” he wrote, that there were practical routes from Cook’s Inlet and the Copper River valley to the Tanana and Yukon Rivers that could provide a reliable alternative to the Yukon River route.192 “At the request of the citizens here,” he wrote on 7 October, “I most respectfully recommend that the Government make a preliminary

190 Ibid, 533. 191 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 September 1897, 527. 192 Ibid.

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survey of the route[s] named. Should I remain in the territory I will give my best endeavors to promote the work.”193

Interestingly, Ray’s plan for Alaska is remarkably similar to the Mounted Police and

Canadian government plan for the Yukon. The idea of having the U.S. Army serve as a police force for the new district, and to provide support to district judges in enforcing law and order, and for army officers to serve as magistrates and inspectors, mirrors how the Canadian government intended to use the Mounted Police in the Yukon. Ray had written on 27 August that he learned from William Ogilvie that “on the Dominion side the enlisted force of police has not exceeded 25 men, but they are now increasing it to 75 to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing population.”194 He wrote that “from the people returning I learn that their system has proven most satisfactory, and that the system of enforcement of law is much superior to that existing on our side of the line.”195 Ray seems to have been intrigued by the model of the

Mounted Police. He wrote to Major T.H. Barry on 29 August, “look up the Dominion mounted police. I shall recommend something on that line, to use selected non-commissioned officers and privates of the Army, who can act as constables, with extra pay for civil service, and lieutenants for inspectors and subinspectors.”196 On 15 September, he recommended just that.

Ray’s assessment of the Yukon transportation system is also similar to that of the

Mounted Police. Both groups arrived in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands reliant on the Yukon

River for transportation. Both had learned during the fall of 1897 that they could not rely on the

193 Ibid. 194 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 27 August 1897, 521. 195 Ibid. 196 Ray to T.H. Barry, 29 August 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 523.

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Yukon River to deliver supplies when water conditions were low and the demand for supplies high. Both groups were interested in opening up new transportation routes that favoured their national interests, with the Mounted Police developing a transportation network along the Lynn

Canal routes and Ray suggesting the Copper River and Cook’s Inlet routes, as will be discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. The similarities in the approaches of the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police show that they were dealing with similar problems - a lack of information on the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, reliance on the Yukon River transportation system, dealing with unruly miners’ meetings, and becoming caught up in the rush to the Klondike. The American and Canadian governments both viewed their respective agents as multipurpose forces, who had performed similar duties in the West, and were capable of responding to the situation in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

This chapter has shown that the U.S. Army responded to the rush to the Klondike by sending Ray and Richardson to assess the situation. Like the Constantine and Brown expedition in 1894, their reconnaissance of the Yukon River valley was a fact-finding mission to gather information on the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and assess the need for a government response to the gold rush. Like the Mounted Police in 1897, the pair became caught in the gold rush and the aftermath of the food shortage at Dawson City, forcing them to negotiate with transportation companies and miners’ meetings at St. Michael, Fort Yukon, and Circle City to keep the peace.

In the process, they began to establish American government control of the Alaska side of the

Alaska-Yukon border. Ray’s plan to establish a military government in Alaska and open a new transportation route to the upper Yukon was based on these experiences. The U.S. Army would begin to implement Ray’s recommendations during the 1898 season.

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Fortunately for Ray and Richardson, the events at Fort Yukon were the last serious threat to law and order they would face during the winter of 1897-1898. On 15 November, Ray reported, and continued to report for the duration of the winter, that “affairs here remain unchanged since the affair of the 30th ultimo, upon which I have reported.”197 He explained that

“Ostensibly I am in charge of the caches, but in fact the business of the companies is unchanged and they are conducting their own affairs.”198 Both companies continued to allow able-bodied men to cut wood for $5 per cord and sold them provisions from the caches. “In feeding the destitute,” Ray wrote, “I have each case carefully investigated, and where they are without money or provisions I give assistance in orders for provisions on the stores.”199

On the food shortage, Ray had written to the Adjutant General on 3 October that “while I consider the situation critical, I do not believe there will be any great loss of life beyond that incident to a climate so rigorous as this.”200 He admitted “that there will be much suffering along the river and trail owing to the rashness and ignorance of people unaccustomed to this climate no well-informed person here will deny.”201 But, he assured the Adjutant General, “there is nothing that should cause undue anxiety or alarm among people in the States who have friends in this country.”202 By 20 December, he wrote that “I have the honor to report that the migration of people from Northwest Territory has about ceased. From parties direct from Dawson I learn that those who are without provisions to last them until the opening of navigation are going out by the way of Juneau. Supplies are being shipped up from here to Circle City to meet the shortage

197 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 November 1897 2, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 546. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 200 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 3 October 1897, 530. 201 Ibid. 202 Ibid.

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there.”203 “From my own knowledge of the conditions existing there and reliable information from Dawson City,” he concluded, “I do not believe that there will be any loss of life from starvation among the whites.”204 Unfortunately, due to the delay in Ray’s reports reaching

Washington, this information would not arrive in time to stop a costly government response.

203 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 20 December 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 549. 204 Ibid.

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Chapter 5 The Alaska Relief Expedition, 1897-1898

News of the food shortage at Dawson City began trickling out of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands in September 1897. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer first reported conditions at

Dawson on 11 September, in an article titled “Death Lurks in the Yellow Stream of Klondike

Gold, Steamer Cleveland Brings Down a Precious Cargo, Gold Galore, But No Food.”1 In

Victoria, the Daily Colonist reported on 16 September that “Hunger Faces Dawson, Another

Report That The Gold-Seekers Will Have Difficulty in securing Provisions.”2 On 3 October

1897, the New York Times wrote “Miners Leaving the Fields, Provisions Already Scarce in

Dawson City.”3 By 30 October, the Post-Intelligencer was calling for government action to send relief to starving miners at Dawson - a task that the American and Canadian governments, in appearance at least, eagerly took up.4 This chapter examines the American and Canadian government response to the food shortage during the winter of 1897-1898. In the United States, the Senate passed a resolution on 9 December 1897 that Secretary of War Russell A. Alger “be directed to report to the Senate such information as he has respecting the lack of sufficient food supplies among the American citizens who have gone into the mining districts of the Yukon

River.”5 Alger’s report, submitted to the Senate on 13 December, led Congress to direct the U.S.

Army to organize the Alaska Relief Expedition to send food and supplies to Dawson as soon as possible. In Canada, Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton, concerned that the food shortage could lead to unrest in the Klondike, decided to double down on the Mounted Police and

1 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11 September 1897. 2 Daily Colonist, 16 September 1897. 3 New York Times, 3 October 1897. 4 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 30 October 1897. 5 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, Senate Document No. 14, 55th Congress, 2nd Session (1897), 1.

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Canadian government plan to send reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon to keep control of the situation.6

After the Alaska Relief Expedition was authorized on 18 December 1897, it fell to

Adjutant General of the U.S. Army Samuel Breck and Brigadier General H.C. Merriam, commanding general of the Department of the Columbia, headquartered at Vancouver Barracks,

Washington, to organize the expedition. Like Captain P.H. Ray and Lieutenant W.P. Richardson, who arrived in the Alaska the previous August, Breck and Merriam knew very little about the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands or how they were going to get the relief supplies to Dawson. The army had no presence at the head of the Lynn Canal and knew little about the winter routes to the

Yukon. Much of the organizing of the Alaska Relief Expedition, then, involved gathering information on the conditions at Dawson, available transportation routes, and the practical concerns of transporting a large amount of supplies during the winter. Forced to rely on whatever information he could find, Merriam often had to deal with information sources with their own interests, who tended to overstate the seriousness of the food shortage and understate the difficulties of transporting supplies in winter conditions.

Since transporting supplies to Dawson City involved traveling through Canadian territory, the Alaska Relief Expedition required coordination with the Canadian government. On

29 December 1897, Assistant Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn met with Canadian Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton in Washington to discuss the relief expedition.7 Their conversation, and the negotiations between the two governments, reveal a transition period in the remaking of

6 The American government response to the food shortage and the Alaska Relief Expedition is discussed by: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867- 1917, 141-146; Michael Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives (Madeira Park, British Columbia: Harbour Publishing, 2012), 124-134. The Canadian response is discussed by: Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 173-175. 7 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, G.D. Meiklejohn to Alger, 30 December 1897.

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the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The American government continued to conceptualize the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a borderless region, organizing a relief expedition that would pass through Canadian territory and deliver assistance to miners in Canadian territory. Sifton and the

Canadian government, concerned with the sovereignty implications of the American government providing relief in Canadian territory, were beginning to see the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a bordered region and arranged for the American expedition to have a Mounted Police escort through Canadian territory. While the American government seems to have been motivated by a genuine desire to provide relief to miners in need, in the face of political pressure, the “Canadian

Relief Expedition,” as Meiklejohn called it, was more concerned with increasing the number of

Mounted Police in the Yukon to deal with potential unrest by starving miners.8

By early January 1898, arrangements for the Alaska Relief Expedition were nearly complete. Brigadier General Merriam was finalizing plans to transport 150 tons of relief supplies to Skagway and Dyea, over the Chilkoot and White passes to Lake Bennett, and down the frozen lakes and river to Dawson. The War Department had obtained permission for the expedition to cross through Canadian territory. At the same time, however, Merriam began receiving reports from Major L.H. Rucker, Forth Cavalry, who he had sent to do a reconnaissance of Skagway and

Dyea. Rucker reported that the food shortage was not as serious as initially thought and that it would impossible to forward relief supplies to Dawson City before steamers on the Yukon River route reached Dawson in the spring - an opinion shared by Mounted Police Inspector Z.T. Wood at Skagway. By 5 March 1898, the Alaska Relief Expedition was cancelled.

The failure of the Alaska Relief Expedition to get off the ground demonstrates just how little the American and Canadian governments knew about the Alaska-Yukon borderlands,

8 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Meiklejohn to Alger, 31 December 1897.

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reinforcing the different understandings that developed between the American and Canadian governments in Washington and Ottawa and their respective agents on the ground. Able to gather local information and personally observe and assess local conditions, Major Rucker,

Inspector Wood, and others simply had a much clearer understanding of the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

Alger’s Report

Russell Alexander Alger was born in Lafayette Township, Ohio in 1836. He worked as a farmer, teacher, and lawyer before moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1859 and entering the lumber business. During the American Civil War, he served in the Union Army, rising to the rank of major general, United States Volunteers. He served as Governor of Michigan from 1885-

1887 and was appointed Secretary of War by President William McKinley on 5 March 1897.9

Alger complied with the Senate’s request for information on 13 December, submitting sixteen pages of documents on the situation in Alaska. He wrote that, after receiving conflicting reports from Alaska, the War Department had already “decided to send an officer of the Army to ascertain the real conditions and report at the earliest possible date the fact.”10 As discussed in

Chapter 4, Ray and Richardson had arrived at St. Michael on 18 August, and Alger included

Ray’s reports up to 16 September, “the last being the latest information the Department has received from him.”11 Although Alger had only received a fraction of Ray’s reports and little word of the unrest that Ray and Richardson were dealing with, he was prepared to argue that

“from these reports it will be seen that… Captain Ray was in receipt of information to the effect

9 “ALGER, Russell Alexander,” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.go v/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=A000107. 10 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 1. 11 Ibid., 2.

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that unless some relief expedition was sent to the mining district starvation, or at least great privation, would be inevitable.”12

Alger also included the reports of several other sources, which “the Department believes to be thoroughly reliable” and confirmed Ray’s assessment. The Tacoma Citizen Committee wrote to Alger in a 13 September 1897 telegram that “reports here indicate food famine Dawson

City.”13 Chicago businessmen T.P. Bishop, George T. Glover, and Edward I. Rosenfeld “all have reports from people whom they believe to be entirely reliable, including Jack Dalton, who was the discoverer of the Dalton Trail,… that unless supplies are gotten into that country by the 1st of

March the starvation of a great many people will surely be the result.”14 And John W. Braned, who had returned from Alaska in early December, on “a round trip carrying the United States mail Juneau to Circle City,” reported that “the assertion is often made that the gravity of the situation at Dawson is overdrawn. This I do not believe to be possible, as at least one-half of the miners were very short on provisions.”15

The Secretary of War also reported that he had “learned from three independent sources that the population of Dawson and vicinity in October of this year was estimated to be not less than 5,000, and probably was much in excess of this number, and… a large number of American citizens are reported to have insufficient food to last them through the winter, and that many are absolutely destitute.”16 According to Braned, “on September 28 at Dawson City Captain Hanson, who had charge of the Alaska Commercial Company’s store, called the miners together and told them that the company could not furnish them with provisions, and that he would advise all those

12 Ibid., 2. 13 Tacoma Citizen Committee to Russell A. Alger, 13 September 1897, in United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 12. 14 Ibid., 3. 15 United States Senate, The Situation in Alaska, Senate Document No. 15, 55th Congress, 2nd Session (1897), 1. 16 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 2.

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who did not have their winter outfit to go where the provisions were – the nearest point was Fort

Yukon, 390 miles below Dawson – or to get out of the country, and that they had no time to lose.”17 Since that time, Alger wrote, “seven or eight hundred people are reported to have gone

400 miles down the river in boats to Fort Yukon,… where it is estimated there are about 700 tons of provisions cached.”18

Alger wrote that “although there are many tons of supplies at Fort St. Michaels, about

1,770 miles from Dawson City down the Yukon, it will be impossible to get any food from that point before next summer.”19 He continued, “the only possible routes by which supplies can be transported into the mining district at the present season would be either by the Chilkoot or

White Pass through Lakes Linderman and Bennett, and down the Lewis and Yukon rivers over the ice, or through the Chilkat Pass and over Dalton’s Trail.”20

On 18 December 1897, Congress passed an Act authorizing the Secretary of War to spend a sum of $200,000 “for the purchase of subsistence stores, supplies, and materials for the relief of people who are in the Yukon River country, or other mining regions of Alaska, and to purchase transportation and provide means for the distribution of such stores and supplies.”21

The Act also provided “that the said subsistence stores, supplies, and materials may be sold in said country at such prices as shall be fixed by the Secretary of War, or donated, where he finds people in need and unable to pay for the same.”22 And so the Alaska Relief Expedition was born.

17 United States Senate, The Situation in Alaska, 1. 18 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 2. 19 Ibid., 3. 20 Ibid., 3. The misspelling of Lake Lindeman as “Linderman” is common in police and army records. 21 United States House of Representatives, Relief of People in the Yukon River Country, House Document No. 244, 55th Congress, 3rd Session (1899), 3. The Act was officially titled “An Act Authorizing the Secretary of War, in his discretion to purchase subsistence stores, supplies, and materials for the relief of people who are in the Yukon River country, to provide means for their transportation and distribution, and making an appropriation therefor.” 22 Ibid.

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The American government’s decision to send relief to starving miners at Dawson City, even with limited information, reflects the rising influence of the progressive movement in

American politics at the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Alaska historian Stephen W.

Haycox argues that “much congressional legislation for Alaska in this period can be explained by the national development of Progressive politics.”23 The progressive movement in American politics emerged in response to the perceived abuses of large industrial corporations, particularly railways, that had amassed enormous wealth and destabilized the American economy. Americans began to view government as a tool to implement reforms that would bring large scale capitalism under control. Haycox writes that “during the Progressive period government at all levels adopted an impressive array of reform means, including antitrust and antimonopoly legislation, banking restriction, industrial safety mandates, pure food and drug regulations, child labor laws, maximum-hour and minimum-wage legislation, interstate commerce regulation, and others.”24

While many of these industrial reforms had little impact in Alaska, and would not be implemented until the early twentieth century, the idea that the American government had a role to play in protecting American citizens and making their lives better greatly influenced the

American response to the gold rush. Even before Alger reported to the Senate, President William

McKinley had stated in a message to Congress on 6 December that:

The Territory of Alaska requires the prompt and early attention of Congress. The conditions now existing demand material changes in the laws relating to the Territory. The great influx of population during the past summer and fall, and the prospect of a still larger immigration in the spring, will not permit us to longer neglect the extension of civil authority within the Territory or postpone the establishment of a more thorough government.25

23 Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 219. 24 Ibid., 220. 25 United States House of Representatives, Additional Military Posts in Alaska, House Document No. 285, 55th Congress, 2nd Session (1898), 1.

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McKinley’s motives were rooted more in the federal government’s tradition of extending government to U.S. territories as their populations increased than the progressive movement, but approval of the Alaska Relief Expedition was the first step in a process that would led to greater government involvement in Alaska.

The decision to use the U.S. Army to provide relief to miners at Dawson City, like the decision to send Ray and Richardson to Alaska in 1897, was rooted in the army’s multipurpose role in the settlement of the American West. One of the many roles performed by the U.S. Army in the American West was providing relief to American citizens during times of crisis. U.S.

Army historian Michael L. Tate provides a long list of disasters that the army responded to across the West:

The Chicago fire in 1871; the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis and Shreveport in 1873; the Mississippi River floods in 1874; a yellow fever epidemic in the South in 1878; the Missouri River floods in 1884; the Johnstown flood in 1889; the Seattle fire in 1889, the Indian Territory drought in 1890; Minnesota forest fires in 1894; Saint Louis tornadoes in 1896; Mississippi River and Rio Grande floods in 1897; and the Galveston hurricane of 1900.26

Like many of the multipurpose tasks performed by the U.S. Army after the Civil War, the army was often the only government entity available to provide relief during times of crisis. It was natural, then, that the Senate would turn to the War Department and the U.S. Army to organize the Alaska Relief Expedition, particularly since Ray and Richardson had already established an army presence in the region.

Vancouver Barracks

Even before the Alaska Relief Act was passed, Brigadier General H.C. Merriam at

Vancouver Barracks had received instructions from the Adjutant General’s office on 16

December that “in anticipation of the authority of Congress to send food and relief to the miners

26 Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898, 106.

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in Alaska,” he should “ascertain where supplies can be purchased, where transportation by water can be obtained, where trained cattle for hauling sleds or wagons can be procured and what numbers.”27 He was also instructed to “obtain all information necessary for supplying and equipping an expedition from Dyea along the Dawson Trail, and other up the Copper River route to Belle Isle of Circle City, and be prepared to organize and equip such expeditions as speedily as possible when funds and authority are granted.”28 Adjutant General Samuel Breck also wrote to Merriam on the same day that “preliminary to sending supplies to the Yukon via Dyea or the

Copper River or both you are directed by the Secretary of War to send two or three competent officers to Dyea and vicinity to make a reconnaissance and report at the earliest possible day what in their judgment will be the best route in.”29 He continued, “it is not expected that these officers shall go over the passes but that they will obtain such information as they consider reliable.”30

Merriam and Breck were both career military men with decades of service in the U.S.

Army. Henry Clay Merriam was born in Maine in 1837. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1862. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was placed in command of the 3rd Louisiana Native Guard, an all-African American unit, in

1863, where he served until the end of the war and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Merriam rejoined the army in 1866 as a major and served at various western posts in

Kansas, Texas, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and Colorado, before being promoted to brigadier

27 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, J.C. Gilmore to Merriam, 16 December 1897. 28 Ibid. 29 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Samuel Breck to Merriam, 16 December 1897. 30 Ibid.

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general and appointed commander of the Department of the Columbia on 30 June 1897.31

Samuel Breck was born in Massachusetts in 1834. He graduated from the United States Military

Academy at West Point in 1855 and served at various posts along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from 1856-1860. During the Civil War, he served as an assistant adjutant general in the Army of the Potomac, the 1st Army Corps, the Department of the Rappahannock and the Adjutant

General’s Office in Washington. Following the War, Breck served as assistant adjutant general and adjutant general in various army departments across the country. He was appointed Adjutant

General of the U.S. Army on 11 September 1897.32

Merriam replied to Breck on 17 December, “referring to relief expedition to Yukon everything so far points to the Chilkot [sic] pass as most available route and sledges and snow shoes as the only means promptly available. Deemed impossible to take cattle over any train for want of forage.”33 On 18 December, Merriam informed Breck that he had instructed Major L.H.

Rucker of the Forth Cavalry and one officer to leave for “Dyea and vicinity” on 23 December to carry out a reconnaissance and start planning for the relief expedition to go through.34 He also wrote that “I will also send an officer to Victoria, British Columbia, to obtain information from

Hudson Bay Co. officials relative to the procuring of dogs & their utility as auxiliaries in relief expedition.”35 Also on 18 December, after Congress approved the relief expedition, Alger instructed Merriam to “select fifty strong men with two officers of your command; clothe and equip them for escort duty for supplies through to the Yukon.”36

31 Jack Stokes Ballard, Commander and Builder of Western Forts: The Life and Times of Major General Henry C. Merriam, 1862-1901 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012). 32 United States War Department, “Samuel Breck,” United States Army Recruiting News 17, no. 2 (1935): 2. 33 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Merriam to Breck, 17 December 1897. 34 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Merriam to Breck, 18 December 1897. 35 Ibid. 36 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Alger to Merriam, 18 December 1897. Also includes General Order 196.

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One of the more interesting, through perhaps unsurprising, aspects of the Alaska Relief

Expedition is that almost all the people that the government relied on for information on the food shortage and routes to Dawson City had a financial interest in seeing relief supplies sent north.

Even before Congress passed the Alaska Relief Act, the Tacoma Citizen Committee, who wrote to Alger on 13 September 1897 to report the food shortage, asked that the government “send representative citizen [to St. Michael] and form relief bureau at Tacoma at once,” both to address that food shortage and benefit Tacoma.37 Likewise, the Portland Chamber of Commerce dramatically wrote to President McKinley on 29 November that “overwhelming evidence testifying to the grave danger which confronts the American miners on the Yukon and its tributaries, with the dreaded horrors of starvation…, demands of us, as humane people blessed with abundance, that everything in our power shall be done to relieve the distress.”38 The group’s

President and Secretary, W.S. Mason and D.D. Oliphant, assured McKinley that “the people of the United States,” and, more importantly, the people of Portland, “will supply all the food products which the Government will undertake to transport to the beleaguered miners.”39 The

Klondike Relief Committee of the Portland Chamber of Commerce also wrote to Alger on 2

December 1897, noting that Portland was “at the terminus of one of the great Alaskan lines of steamers,” and as such the perfect place to organize a relief expedition.40

E.C. Wallace, President of the Chilkoot Railroad and Transport Company, wrote to

President McKinley on 2 December that “this company is building a railroad from Dyea to Dyea

Canyon and an aerial tramway from Dyea Canyon over Chilkoot Pass to headwater of Yukon.

37 Tacoma Citizen Committee to Alger, 13 September 1897, 12. 38 W.S. Mason and D.D. Oliphant to William McKinley, 29 November 1897, in United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 12. 39 Ibid., 13. 40 H.R. Lewis and E.C. Masten to Alger, 2 December 1897, in United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 13.

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Both of these will be completed by middle of January. This will overcome chief obstacle to getting supplies to Dawson.”41 He continued “this company will be glad to cooperate with

Government in transporting from tide water to Lake Lindeman sufficient provisions to avert threatened famine.”42 After word of the relief expedition was first reported in the newspapers,

John P. Hartman, lawyer for the Brackett wagon road and what would become the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway, wrote to Assistant Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn on 17

December suggesting that the wagon road on the White Pass was “the shortest and quickest route.”43 “We will be very glad to give the use of this road to the government for the transportation of its supplies free of all charge,” he wrote.44

For the transportation companies, most of them newly formed, and the cities on the

American and Canadian west coasts that all wanted to take advantage of the rush to the

Klondike, a contract for the relief expedition would not only bring a large government contract, but also boost the reputation of whatever company or city was awarded a contract. A west coast city could argue that it was the gateway to the Klondike if the government organized their relief expedition there. A trading and transportation company could boast that the government trusted its enterprise above others. Unfortunately for the War Department, while these sources could provide valuable information, those with a financial interest often provided an overly optimistic assessment of the actual difficulty of transporting supplies to the interior during the winter.

Once Merriam began organizing the relief expedition in late 1897, much of information he gathered was also wrapped in financial interest. In addition to sending men to Dyea, Merriam

41 E.C. Wallace to McKinley, 2 December 1897, in United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 14. 42 Ibid. 43 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, John P. Hartman to G.D. Meiklejohn, 17 December 1897. 44 Ibid.

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had Captain W.W. Robinson, Assistant Quartermaster of the Department of the Columbia, gather what information he could on Alaska conditions and routes to Dawson in Seattle. Robinson wrote to Thomas H. Barry, Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Columbia, and

Merriam’s assistant, on 21 December that he had met with E.A. Cumings of the Skagway and

Yukon Transportation and Improvement Company, a company owned by businessman George

Brackett that was constructing a wagon road on White Pass (see Chapter 7). “Mr. Cumings assured me that the difficulties attending transit have been much exaggerated and that a new trail is being rapidly worked through over the summit,” Robinson wrote.45 According to Cumings,

“two-thirds of the distance, beginning at Skagway, will be ready for traffic by January 1st next, and that the entire trail will be completed to Lake Bennet [sic] by the 15th of next February.”46

Although Robinson had not been able to confirm Cuming’s report, he noted that “Mr. Cumings himself is an old government contractor, and was engaged at one time in carrying mail between

Fargo and Bismarck.”47 Robinson concluded, “If his statements are correct, there will be no difficulty in landing the stores at the head of Lake Bennet [sic] as has been anticipated.”48

Robinson also spoke to a Mr. Waechter of the cattle dealing firm Waechter, Stuber, and

Co, who “informs me that he has 70000 lbs of beef, killed and oaked in ice, at Lake Bennet, and about ten to twenty thousand pounds of corn which he is willing to sell to the government, but wants $1.00 per pound for the beef.”49 Waechter told Robinson that there was a crowd of 200-

300 people at Bennett, and around 100-150 tons of supplies “which perhaps might be obtainable

45 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, W.W. Robinson to Barry, 21 December 1897. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.

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in haste by the government if required.”50 Robinson also reported that Waechter had “from 20 to

30 horses at Lake Bennet [sic]… and that his intention has been to build sledges of suitable length, about 18 inches in width, which would carry about 1000 lbs of freight,” and could be used by the relief expedition.51 “Mr. Waechter also informs me that with short notice he can put a pack train of such size as circumstances will warrant on the Skagway trail,” he wrote.52

Robinson learned from M. Brauer (possibly misspelling John W. Braned who wrote to

Alger in December), “who brought out the last mail from Circle City” and had made three trips into the interior since 1894, that the Dalton Trail would be unsuitable for transporting freight during the winter, although he “especially recommends it as a trail for cattle during Summer months, as he states that there is plenty of bunch grass and quite good grazing all along the trail.”53

Robinson wrote to Barry the next day, 22 December, that he had met with Jack Dalton, who confirmed that the Dalton Trail was not suitable for transporting supplies in the winter,

“stating that the other trail, either by Skagway or Dyea, is already open on the ice, and much more practicable for rapid transportation during the winter.”54 “I regard Mr. Dalton as possessing the best practical knowledge of the various trails to Dawson City of any man I have yet met,”

Robinson wrote, “he has, he informs me, experience of about nine years in Alaska. He is a Texan and an old Government freighter and contractor.”55 According to Dalton, “only a comparatively small amount of work is necessary to put the Skagway trail in proper condition for sledding over the pass,” although “he does not discriminate in favor of, or against either the Dyea or the

50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Robinson to Barry, 22 December 1897. 55 Ibid.

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Skagway trails.”56 Robinson also learned that Dalton “is familiar with the country between the upper Copper River and Dawson City, and that it would be entirely impracticable to open the trail by that route in the Winter.”57 Robinson suggested that “however desirable it may be to open an all-american [sic] trail to the placer gold regions, I have not yet obtained any evidence of its being a route suitable for the immediate supplying of needs at Dawson.”58

Robinson also reported to Barry what he had learned on the “immediate necessity of furnishing relief to miners at Dawson.”59 He wrote that “there is a diversity of opinions here upon the subject I find.”60 According to the Editor of the Seattle Times, “as shown by editorials… as well as in private interview with me,” Robinson noted, “no real need exists in the matter of supplies.”61 All of the miners left for Dawson “fully prepared to winter in that region,” and had several weeks’ notice of the food shortage before the closing of navigation, more than enough time to travel to Fort Yukon or get out of the country.62 In either case, Robinson wrote that “much interest is manifested here in both the matter of furnishing the supplies needed and the transporting the same.”63

Merriam forwarded Robinson’s reports to Breck on 24 December, noting that “these reports contain the results of diligent inquiry by that Officer among returned miners, packers and traders in that vicinity, at my request, since the receipt of your telegram dated the 16th.”64 He

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Merriam to Breck, 24 December 1897.

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also wrote that the reports “confirm opinions on relative merits of trails as expressed in my telegram of the 17th,” that the Skagway and Dyea routes were the most practical.”65

Two other individuals with an interest in working with the U.S. Army on the relief expedition were Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson, the government’s General Agent of

Education in Alaska, and Chicago businessman Edward I. Rosenfeld. Jackson was the source of one of the more comical aspects of the Alaska Relief Expedition, the decision to import some

500 reindeer from Norway to serve as transportation. Jackson first traveled to Alaska in 1877, and soon became an advocate for building churches and schools in Alaska and “civilizing” the territory’s indigenous population. The 1884 Organic Act, which extended some aspect of territorial government to Alaska, made Jackson the General Agent of Education in Alaska, a position he would hold until 1906. During a trip to the Siberian coast in 1890, Jackson noticed that villagers used reindeer as a food source. He decided that importing reindeer to Alaska, and

Laplanders to train indigenous people to herd them, could be the key to self-sufficiency for

Alaska’s indigenous population. Jackson believed that encouraging reindeer herding in Alaska would help indigenous people abandon what he saw as their nomadic, communal lifestyle in favour of a more settled, “civilized” herding culture. He received a small congressional grant for the project in 1893.66

After the rush to the Klondike began, Jackson traveled up the Yukon River to Dawson, promoting the use of reindeer for transporting freight to the gold fields, and he seems to have spoken to Captain P.H. Ray. He then returned to Washington on 2 November, just in time to

65 Ibid. 66 Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 184-85, 193-94; Victor William Henningsen, “Reading, Writing and Reindeer: The Development of Federal Education in Alaska, 1877-1920” (PhD Diss., Harvard University, 1987), 169-171.

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lobby the War Department to use reindeer for the relief expedition.67 Secretary of War Alger seems to have bought into the idea. He wrote in his 13 December report to the Senate that “from the best information that can be obtained it is believed that the use of reindeer will be the means by which these supplies can be gotten through, if at all.”68 The Alaska Relief Act gave Alger permission to “in his discretion, purchase and import reindeer and employ and bring into the country reindeer drivers or herders” to transport supplies to the Yukon.69

After the Alaska Relief Expedition was approved, Alger instructed Jackson on 23

December 1897 to travel to Norway “to purchase 500 reindeer broken to harness, together with full outfit for hauling or carrying supplies to the Yukon Valley.”70 Alger also asked Jackson “to provide such means as may be necessary for shipment to this country as soon as purchased, remembering that it is essential that they be landed here at the furthest by the 15th of

February.”71 He continued, “these instructions are also to cover the employment and bringing to this country of reindeer drivers.”72 Jackson wrote to Alger from Bossekop, Norway on 20

January 1898 that he had secured “500 head of choice reindeer trained to harness, 500 sleds and harness, a few heading dogs, and fifty drivers, some of whom had families.”73

By 5 February, Assistant Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn wrote to Merriam that 530 reindeer and eighty-seven Laplanders, along with “sleds, harness, baggage, etc.,” had sailed for

New York and that arrangements had been made to ship them by train to Seattle via the

Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, and the

67 Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives, 128-30. 68 United States Senate, Alaska Gold Fields, 3. 69 United States House of Representatives, Relief of People in the Yukon River Country, 3. 70 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Alger to Sheldon Jackson, 23 December 1897. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Jackson to Alger, 20 January 1898.

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Great Northern Railroad.74 The reindeer, Laplanders, and their supplies arrived in New York on

28 February 1898, where they were transported to Jersey City, New Jersey and loaded onto train cars, leaving for Seattle on 1 March.75 The reindeer train arrived at Seattle on 8 March and sailed for Haines Mission, on the Lynn Canal, on 16 March 1898.76

Edward I. Rosenfeld and his Chicago business partners T.P. Bishop and George T.

Glover met, not coincidentally, with Alger on 13 December 1897 to discuss the seriousness of the food shortage at Dawson. The three men were owners of the Snow and Ice Transportation

Company, a transportation company that proposed using steam-powered snow locomotives for the relief expedition. The snow locomotives, or snow “engines,” an invention of Glover, were two-ton, steam-powered machines used to haul logs in Michigan during the winter, and reportedly could “haul payloads of up to forty thousand feet of logs” loaded onto train-like cars,

“at a speed of twelve miles per hour.”77 Glover proposed that his machines would be well suited to quickly hauling relief supplies to the Yukon. He suggested that locomotives could simply use their built-in windlasses to pull the machines over the passes, and could be put to work hauling provisions to Dawson City within forty-eight hours of their arrival at Skagway and Dyea. Alger apparently had some experience using the machines to haul logs on his property in Michigan, and was intrigued by the idea.78

After the Alaska Relief Expedition was approved, Alger arranged for Rosenfeld to meet with Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn to discuss using snow locomotives for the expedition. On 29 December, after meeting with Meiklejohn, Rosenfeld wrote to Alger that “in

74 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Meiklejohn to Merriam, 5 February 1898. 75 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, A.S. Kimball to Quartermaster General, Washington D.C., 28 February 1898; Kimball to Quartermaster General, Washington D.C., 1 March 1898. 76 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, John H. Grace to James Gilliss, 8 March 1898; A.W. Gumaer to War Department, Washington D.C., 15 March 1898. 77 Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives, 126. 78 Ibid., 125-26.

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view of the fact that it is not practicable owing to the law in the premises for the War Department to make any advances, I beg to suggest the following as a solution of the situation and a business-like way of arranging it.”79 He suggested that “the Department make a contract with me to take 150 tons, more or less, of freight from a point to be determined upon later at the head of

Lynn Canal to Dawson City. The consideration in this contract to include the free transportation to and from Dawson City of Captain Brainard [then to lead the relief expedition], staff and men, not exceeding fifty all told, together with their arms and accoutrements.”80 Rosenfeld wrote a second letter to Alger on 29 December, explaining the plan that he and Brainard had developed for the expedition, including the use of “engines…”81 He also wrote that “I have personally had fifteen years experience in the organizing and handling of large bodies of men under similar circumstances, and I have been compelled to meet and overcome almost every character of obstacle incident to moving men and freight through the worst passes in the Rocky

Mountains.”82

Seemingly pleased with the arrangement, the War Department signed a contract with

Rosenfeld the next day, 30 December 1897, without bothering to openly call for bids.83 As

Rosenfeld had suggested, the contract stipulated that he transport approximately 150 tons of freight from the Lynn Canal to Dawson “without delay and at the earliest practicable time, and not more than seventy days from date of landing said goods, on or about February 1, 1898.”84

The government agreed to pay a rate of $500 per ton, provided that Rosenfeld agreed “to transport the men in the relief expedition, not exceeding fifty, their supplies, arms and

79 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Edward I. Rosenfeld to Alger, 29 December 1897. 80 Ibid. 81 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Rosenfeld to Alger, 29 December 1897 2. 82 Ibid. 83 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Agreement between Edward I. Rosenfeld and George D. Meiklejohn, 30 December 1897. 84 Ibid.

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equipments, from the said point on Lynn Canal to Dawson City and return free of charge.”85

Meiklejohn forwarded the Rosenfeld contract to Brainard on 7 January 1898, writing that “you will note from the provisions of the contract that it is only auxiliary to your relief expedition, and leaves the transportation of supplies entirely under your direction.”86 By early January 1898, the

Snow and Ice Transportation Company publicly announced its contract with the U.S. Army to provide snow locomotives and thirty-five cars for the Alaska-Relief Expedition and began taking reservations to offer their services to the public once the machines returned from Dawson.87

In the meantime, rather than sending an officer to Victoria, Merriam wrote to Abraham E.

Smith, U.S. Consul in Victoria, on 19 December, asking him to “call upon the chief agent of the

Hudson’s Bay Company at Victoria and procure such answers to the following questions as he may be able to give from the great experience of that famous company in” Alaska.88 In particular, Merriam was interested in the use of dogs during winter expeditions, whether or not indigenous packers could be hired for the work, and the organization as a large expedition to

Dawson from Skagway or Dyea. Smith reported on 24 December that, according to the Manager of the HBC, “in all winter expeditions to snow covered countries, dogs are necessary.”89 On the use of indigenous packers, the Manager noted that “no trouble so far to get all the Indians wanted. They expect $2.50 per day and board.”90 He continued, “the average Indian is better than

85 Ibid. 86 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Meiklejohn to D.L. Brainard, 7 January 1898. 87 Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives, 126-27. 88 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Merriam to Abraham E. Smith, 19 December 1897. 89 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Abraham E. Smith to Merriam, 24 December 1897. 90 Ibid.

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the average white man for this work. But the best help is half-breed Indians or trained white men.

The average white man is no good.”91

On the organization of the expedition, Smith wrote, “the manager declined to take responsibility of giving outline of organization necessary to transport provisions from Dyea or

Skagway to Dawson City. He thinks it is impractical at this season, and strongly advises that it be not attempted,” explaining that they would never get over the passes with dogs during the winter.92 The Manager recommended that “if any expedition start now, it be sent from Fort

Wrangel and go by way of the Stickeen river,” which was “comparatively level” and “the most practicable way” to reach the interior during winter.93 He concluded, “an expedition of the kind you propose he says, has never been carried out in winter, and he does not deem it practicable before Spring.”94

At Vancouver Barracks, Merriam himself interviewed W.S. Gardner, who had recently traveled from Dawson to Dyea, and Jack Dalton on 26 December.95 According to Barry’s notes of the meeting, Gardner “is of the opinion that horses are the best and only animals suitable for transportation purposes over the Dyea or Skagway trails.”96 He “reports the road as good from head of Lake Bennett to foot of Lake LaBarge and says there is plenty timber along the entire trail.”97 According to Gardner, at Dawson “many people there have more than sufficient food to last till navigation opens on the Yukon next summer and that many have not enough.”98 Gardner also noted that “it was the expectation at Dawson when he left that food would be freighted up

91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, T.H. Barry, “Synopsis of interview between Department Commander and Messrs Gardner and Dalton,” 26 December 1897. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. Underlined in original

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the river from Fort Yukon to Dawson by dog teams as soon as the river froze over.”99 He suggested that “bacon, flour, beans, sugar and coffee are the articles of food to be shipped in.”100

Dalton confirmed that the Dalton Trail “is not suitable for winter” and that he “prefers the

Yukon River and Lake route for winter and his trail for summer.”101 He noted that “horses can be used over either route from Dyea or Skagway.”102 Dalton, Barry recorded, “left Dawson Oct. 27th and came out for the purpose of freighting in food as a business venture, owing to the shortage of provisions.”103 He noted that “in his opinion there are not to exceed 4000 people in Dawson and that 100,000 rations or 300,000 lbs. food supplies will be sufficient to supply any deficiency in food in Dawson that may exist.”104 Merriam also asked Dalton to submit a bid to transport 150 tons of supplies to Dawson for the government. “This I asked him to submit thinking it a good way to express his views in concentrated form,” Merriam wrote to Breck on 28 December.105

According to the bid, Dalton would agree to transport 150 tons to Dawson by 25 April 1898, at a rate of $1.30 per pound, “provided it is delivered to me at Skagway, Dyea, or Pyramid Harbour not later than January 15th, 1898.”106

On 28 December, Merriam forwarded his correspondence with the U.S. Consul in

Victoria and Barry’s report on the interview with Dalton and Gardner to Breck.107 He noted that

“all of these papers show the magnitude of the proposition and its many difficulties, from whatever standpoint.”108 He continued, “Major Rucker and Lieutenant Fields, after some delay

99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Merriam to Breck, 28 December 1897. 106 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, John Dalton to J.W. Jacobs, 25 December 1897. 107 Merriam to Breck, 28 December 1897. 108 Ibid.

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of steamer, are now en route to Dyea and Skagway, and will submit plans for organization of expedition, based on actual conditions of the two passes.”109

Having completed gathering information on the relief expedition, Merriam sent an

“Outline Plan for Alaska Relief Expedition” to Breck and the War Department on 5 January

1898, based on the self-serving and optimistic information he had collected, “subject to minor changes after report from Major Rucker,” he wrote.110 Merriam’s plan recommended that the relief supplies be shipped to Dawson in three steps. First, land the relief supplies at Skagway and

Dyea and, “using tandem teams, sleds, and Aerial Railway,” if the Chilkoot Railroad and

Transport Company’s was completed as promised, transport the supplies over the Chilkoot and

White passes to a second depot at Lake Bennett.111 Second, transport the supplies to a third depot

“at or below the foot of the lakes,” here Merriam likely refers to the bottom of Marsh Lake, or possibly Lake Lebarge, “using snow locomotives if practicable…, otherwise continue to use tandems and sleds and go as far as the animals [pack horses or reindeer] can be foraged.”112 He estimated the supplies would reach this third depot by 15 February, where they would be transported from the third depot to Dawson City, using snow locomotives or sleds. “By the above plan,” Merriam wrote, “I should expect each sledge to arrive at Dawson with about 400 lbs. of food about April 10th – or about 160 lbs. for sale or issue after deducting rations due the men.”113 He concluded that “I realize the difficulties of application of this or any plan owing to a want of prompt and certain means of communication, by which valuable time may be consumed;

109 Ibid. 110 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 5 January 1898. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid.

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yet… this seems to afford a reasonable hope of success, through some or all of the methods suggested.”114 All that remained for Merriam was to wait for the report of Major Rucker from

Dyea to finalize his plan.

Negotiating with Canada

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of a U.S. Army relief expedition to Dawson City is that it was meant to provide relief to American miners in Canadian territory. To address this fact, the

Alaska Relief Act gave Secretary of War Alger permission to give relief to miners in Canadian territory, provided that “the consent of the Canadian Government [was] first obtained.”115 At first glance, it would appear that a large contingent of American troops crossing through Canadian territory to provide relief to Americans in a Canadian mining town was the last thing that the

Canadian government would want or approve. Canadian Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton and the Canadian political establishment deeply feared that a rush of thousands of American miners to the Klondike would threaten Canadian sovereignty and interests, as discussed in

Chapter 3, and the Alaska Relief Expedition would seem to confirm these fears.

Surprisingly, however, obtaining Canadian permission appears to have been a simple matter. On or around 21 December, Secretary of State John Sherman asked Julian Pauncefote,

British Ambassador to the United States, to forward a request to the Canadian Governor General.

Pauncefote informed Sherman on 27 December that “the Dominion Government had decided to permit the entry to the Yukon district, free of duty, of convoys of provisions for gratuitous distribution to distressed persons.”116 The Canadian government also agreed “that convoys may be accompanied by such reasonable escort as the United States Government may desire to

114 Ibid. 115 United States House of Representatives, Relief of People in the Yukon River Country, 3. 116 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Julian Pauncefote to John Sherman, 27 December 1897.

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provide for them, and each convoy shall be likewise accompanied by a Canadian Officer, the expenses of such Canadian Officers being borne by the Dominion Government.”117 Assistant

Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee forwarded Pauncefote’s response to Alger on 29 December.118

Sifton even agreed to meet with Assistant Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn in Washington, at

Secretary Alger’s request, on 30 December 1897 to discuss the relief expedition.119

Sifton and the Canadian government first learned of the food shortage at Dawson when

Inspector Charles Constantine’s 14 October 1897 report on the crisis arrived in Ottawa in early

December 1897 (see Chapter 3).120 Mounted Police Comptroller Fred White, the first government official to hear the news, wrote to Commissioner L.W. Herchmer on 7 December that “undoubtedly it will be necessary to send in provisions.”121 Constantine had suggested that if the police could move supplies from Skagway and Dyea to the foot of Lake Laberge during the winter, they could be quickly brought to Dawson by boat as soon as the ice on the river broke.

White suggested that “if we can get them in as far as Selkirk, the miners ought to meet them there and haul them down themselves.”122

After discussions with Sifton, however, White informed Herchmer that the government had decided to double down on rushing Mounted Police reinforcements and supplies to the

Yukon. He wrote on 17 December that “you may expect within the next few days to receive orders to select sufficient men to bring up the total strength of the Force in the Yukon to 250

117 Ibid. 118 NARA, RG107, E81, File 1, Alvey A. Adee to Alger, 29 December 1897. 119 Meiklejohn to Alger, 30 December 1897. 120 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Constantine to Herchmer, 14 October 1897. 121 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 7 December 1897. 122 Ibid.

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officers and men.”123 He explained, “the most moderate estimate of transportation Companies is that there will be at least 150,000 people en route to the Yukon by the end of April, and Mr.

Sifton wishes to get the Police on the different trails in advance of the rush.”124 Already on 15

December, White had asked Herchmer to prepare a party of thirty men to go to the Yukon.125 He also instructed Herchmer to have an officer stationed at Vancouver or Victoria “for next two or three months,” to organize the flow of men and supplies north.126

Sifton’s decision to focus on sending Mounted Police reinforcements to the Yukon rather than relief supplies was rooted in the Canadian government’s concern over the perceived number of American miners in the Klondike. If reports of the conditions at Dawson were accurate, Sifton feared, the food shortage could lead to unrest among American miners that would threaten

Canadian sovereignty. Ensuring that a large number of fully supplied Mounted Police were stationed in the Yukon would be the best way to prevent unrest and protect Canadian interests.

Sifton biographer D.J. Hall also suggests that Sifton knew that the food shortage at Dawson was not as serious as had been reported. He notes that in December 1897 Sifton “was privately informing Canadian correspondents that the [American] expedition was probably unnecessary.”127 It seems unlikely, based on the information available in Ottawa, that Sifton could have concluded that there were enough supplies at Dawson City to last the winter. He may have wanted to assure his correspondents in the Canadian political establishment that he had the situation under control. In any case, Sifton had Comptroller White instruct Inspector Wood on 17

123 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 17 December 1897. 124 Ibid. 125 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 15 December 1897. 126 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Herchmer, 16 December 1897. 127 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 174.

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December to “forward supplies now at Skagway to Bennett soon as possible.”128 White expanded in a letter the next day, “the Hon. The Minister of the Interior is most anxious that those supplies should be pushed forward to the other side of the summit without delay.”129

The American request that the Alaska Relief Expedition be allowed to proceed through

Canadian territory, then, received a mixed response from Sifton and the Canadian government.

On one hand, the simple fact that the American government had asked permission from the

Canadian government was an acknowledgement of Canada’s sovereignty of the Klondike. The relief expedition would also deliver supplies to Dawson City and ensure that there was enough food in the region to last the winter, reducing the possibility of unrest that Sifton feared. On the other hand, the American government providing relief to miners in Canadian territory was an acknowledgment that the Canadian government had failed to prevent a food shortage at Dawson, potentially embarrassing the government. A large number of American troops in Canadian territory could also threaten Canadian sovereignty as much as American miners. But perhaps most importantly, the only thing worse than the American government providing relief to miners in Canadian territory with the Canadian government’s permission, was the American government providing relief to miners in Canadian territory without Canada’s permission.

Sifton also had other intentions for his trip to Washington. By late 1897, American customs regulations required miners carrying Canadian goods from Skagway and Dyea to the

Klondike to pay customs duties or allow a customs officer to escort them to the edge of

American claimed territory, at a cost of $6 per day plus $3 for expenses. Both options caused great anger among Canadian miners (further discussed in Chapter 6). Sifton planned to use his

128 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Wood, 17 December 1897. 129 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, White to Wood, 18 December 1897.

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trip to Washington to plead the Canadian case for a more favourable customs and trade arrangement directly to President William McKinley and American Secretary of the Treasury

Lyman J. Gage. Striking a surprisingly conciliatory tone in a letter to a colleague on 5 January

1898, Sifton explained that the Americans “have always been liberal in their treatment of us.”130

They opened Skagway and Dyea as sub-ports of entry “upon a telegram at our request” and allowed the Mounted Police to transport supplies “over American territory during the season without even the formality of asking for permission and no objection has been raised.”131 He continued, “in view of this fact,” if Canada refused to allow the Alaska Relief Expedition to pass through Canadian territory, “we would have placed ourselves in a ridiculous position.”132 Sifton further explained, “you can imagine the position I would be in had I gone to Washington and, after discussing the matter with the Secretary of War, declared that we would not allow them to send relief to their own people who are in our territory, and then called upon the Secretary of the

Treasury and asked him to meet me in a liberal spirt in making bonding arrangements.”133 For his part, then, Sifton was eager to participate in the Alaska Relief Expedition, or at least to appear eager, in anticipation of later reaching a customs agreement with Secretary Gage.

On 30 December 1897, Sifton met with Assistant Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn in

Washington to discuss the expedition with a plan - appear as conciliatory and helpful as possible towards the expedition, while at the same time impressing upon Meiklejohn that the Canadian government had the situation in the Yukon under control. George de Rue Meiklejohn was born in

Weyauwega, Waupaca County, Wisconsin in 1857. He worked as a high school principal in

Wisconsin and Iowa before studying law at Michigan University at Ann Arbor. He was admitted

130 Quoted in Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 174. 131 Ibid., 174. 132 Ibid. 174-175. 133 Ibid. 175.

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to the bar in 1880 and opened a practice in Fullerton, Nebraska. Meiklejohn served as a Nebraska

State Senator from 1884-1888, Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska from 1889-1891, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1893-1897. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of War in President William McKinley’s Cabinet on 14 April 1897.134 In late December 1897, illness prevented Secretary of War Alger from meeting with Sifton himself. Meiklejohn met with the

Minister of the Interior in his absence.135

According to Meiklejohn’s report of the meeting, Sifton began by noting that “before his departure from Ottawa, he had directed the issuance of orders relating to the passage of stores and supplies of the relief expedition of this Government through British territory without payment of duty there on.”136 Attempting to be as conciliatory as possible, he informed

Meiklejohn that “should the Secretary of War desire any modification of the order, advices to that effect, by telegram, will have his immediate attention.”137 Sifton then gave Meiklejohn his personal assessment of the routes to the Yukon, based his experience crossing both passes in

October 1897. He noted, “the only practicable route during the winter season from the headwaters of Lynn Canal to Dawson City is the Skagway, White Pass and Lake Bennett route.”138 This route, Sifton explained, “is more practicable than any other route is because the

White Pass is less mountainous than the Chilkoot Pass or the Chilkat Pass, and that if following the water level of the lakes and headwaters of the Yukon River.”139

He suggested that “in his judgement that it is an impossible feat to transport stores for relief beyond Fort Selkirk, as it will be impracticable to carry more forage for the animals than

134 “MEIKLEJOHN, George de Rue,” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congr ess.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000634. 135 Meiklejohn to Alger, 30 December 1897. 136 Meiklejohn to Alger, 31 December 1897. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid.

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will sustain them from Skagway to Fort Selkirk and return.”140 He noted that stores could easily be transported from Selkirk to Dawson by dog trains. Sifton warned that both governments should expect that the shortage of supplies at Dawson would force miners to start for Skagway during the winter with few provisions, “and that, in his judgment, more relief will be granted by the expeditions to the miners which they find enroute from Dawson to Skagway than to those who remain at Dawson City.”141 Meiklejohn also noted that “he is of the opinion that the pack train of the War Department of 100 mules and 50 men, in addition to the necessary forage for the animals and sustenance for the men, cannot transport more than 25 tons.”142

Sifton also impressed upon Meiklejohn the size of the Mounted Police force along the

Lynn Canal route, both to show that the police would be of assistance to the relief expedition and to demonstrate that Canada had a large presence in the Yukon. He noted that there were eight- five Mounted Police stationed between Skagway and Dawson, with “50 additional men [that] will arrive at Skagway on or before January 15th, equipped with 50 horses for the transportation of 20 tons of supplies now stored at Skagway, with an additional 10 tons of which will be transported from Vancouver to Skagway with the troops and horses.”143 Meiklejohn also wrote that “the Canadian Government intend introducing into the territory an additional 100 men, with mounts, within the next 30 days, making their entire relief force in the Yukon River country 250 men.144 The Canadian government had along the White Pass route, twelve men “at the southern end of Lake Bennett,” twenty men at Tagish, a post at the White Horse Rapids, a cache “at the

140 Ibid. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid.

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northern end of Lake Le Barge,” and a trading post at Fort Selkirk, “which is 200 miles from

Dawson City.”145

Sifton informed Meiklejohn that the Canadian relief expedition “will comprise… 50 men,

50 horses and 75 trained dogs, and hopes to have it in readiness for departure from Skagway not later than the 20th of January.”146 It is unclear if Sifton himself referred to his plan to send

Mounted Police reinforcements to the Yukon to prevent unrest as a “relief expedition,” but it appears that Sifton desired to impress upon Meiklejohn that the Canadian and American governments were working towards the same goal. “If necessary,” Sifton told Meiklejohn, “he will hold his expedition in order to cooperate with the War Department expedition, and have the expeditions move across the country simultaneously.”147 Or, Meiklejohn wrote, “should it be impracticable to consummate a cooperation of the two expeditions, the Canadian Government will be pleased to send an escort with the War Department expedition, and tenders to you their posts and caches along the… route.”148

By proposing a joint relief expedition, with the Canadian government providing a

Mounted Police escort for the American expedition, Sifton could solve many of the Canadian government’s concerns over the Alaska Relief Expedition traveling through Canadian territory.

With a Mounted Police escort, it would appear that Canada was actively participating in the expedition to provide relief to starving miners, and it would serve as an important symbol of

Canadian sovereignty over the territory crossed by the expedition, both of which would play well in the Canadian and American press. The proposal would also put Sifton in a good position to negotiate a customs agreement with the American government. Meiklejohn, for his part, was

145 Ibid. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid.

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amenable to Sifton’s proposal, and the two agreed to continue to work closely on the relief expedition. Meiklejohn concluded his report of the meeting by noting that “the Minister desired me to say to you that he would keep you fully advised by telegram of the movements of the

Canadian relief expedition, and that he would be pleased to have advices from you relating to the movement of the expedition of our Government.”149

In January 1898, a second round of negotiations with the Canadian government took place over two issues. The first was simple to resolve. On 19 January, Merriam wrote to Breck that Pauncefote’s 27 December letter granting permission for the relief expedition to go through

Canadian territory “permits entry of supplies for gratuitous issue only and does not permit sales as provided for by the Act of Congress.”150 Meiklejohn wrote to Sifton for clarification on 21

January.151 Sifton replied in a 24 January telegram that “it is intended to charge no duty upon provisions sent in charge of your Department for purposes of relief.”152

The second issue was more complicated, and began when Sifton wrote to Meiklejohn on

12 January to inform him that “I have given instructions that a sufficient number of men be sent forward to Skagway” to provide an escort for the relief expedition, and that “I have no doubt they will be awaiting the arrival of your people on or before the first February.”153 Merriam asked Breck in his 19 January letter that if the Canadian escort is meeting the expedition at

Skagway, “does this exclude use of United States escorts from that point?”154 Then after

Meiklejohn wrote to Sifton on 27 January to inform him that the relief expedition “is expected to

149 Ibid. 150 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 19 January 1898. Underlined in original. 151 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Meiklejohn to Sifton, 21 January 1898. 152 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Sifton to Meiklejohn, 24 January 1898. 153 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 17 January 1898 2; Merriam to Breck, 19 January 1898. 154 Merriam to Breck, 19 January 1898.

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sail from Portland about February first to Lynn Canal.”155 Sifton replied that “I take it for granted that the fifty-five enlisted men mentioned in your telegraph are not intended to go beyond our boundary line.”156 He explained that it was his understanding that Alger and Meiklejohn had agreed that the U.S. Army escort of the relief expedition would stop at the border, and the

Canadian escort would take over.157

Meiklejohn replied on 31 January that “my understanding was that the entire escort designated by our Government for the Relief Expedition should accompany it to its destination.”158 He explained that “enlisted men instead of civilians were selected as more available, more amenable to discipline, and costing less as they are under pay.”159 He assured

Sifton that “this escort is not understood as constituting a military expedition. While on Canadian soil its service will be of a civil nature.”160 Despite Meiklejohn’s assurances that the relief expedition was of civil nature, however, the U.S. Army refused to allow troops to be sent through Canadian territory without their arms, a possible compromise with the Canadian government. Breck wrote to Merriam on 9 February 1898 that “objection has recently been raised by the Canadian authorities to the passage through Canadian territory of United States armed troops with the relief expedition.”161 Breck ordered that “the troops are not to be sent without their arms.”162 He added on 12 February that “the relief supplies… will not be sent over the passes without the troops.”163

155 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Meiklejohn to Sifton, 27 January 1898. 156 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Sifton to Meiklejohn, 27 January 1898. 157 Ibid. 158 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Meiklejohn to Sifton, 31 January 1898. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 161 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 9 February 1898. 162 Ibid. 163 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Breck to Merriam, 12 February 1898 2.

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By 17 February, a compromise had been reached between the two governments. Second

Assistant Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee wrote to Alger that he had been informed by

Pauncefote that “the Dominion Government will permit United States troops which are destined for places in Alaska beyond the 141st meridian and are considered necessary for the protection of the relief expedition while in United States territory, to pass through Canadian territory under the same regulation which govern the passage of Canadian Mounted Police through United States territory,” that their arms and ammunition be packed away as baggage while in Canadian territory.164 Adee also confirmed that the Canadian government intended to provide an escort of

Mounted Police for the expedition. Pauncefote wrote in his letter to Secretary of State Sherman that “the Dominion Government… desires to make clear that they fully appreciate the wish of the United States Government to afford relief, and have forwarded instructions to the local officials to facilitate the expedition in every possible way.”165

The negotiations between the American and Canadian governments over the Alaska

Relief Expedition reveal that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was in transition. The American

War Department was more than happy to organize a relief expedition that delivered supplies to miners on the Canadian side of the Alaska-Yukon border, and continued to treat the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands as a borderless region. Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government, on the other hand, were alarmed by the sovereignty implications of allowing the American government to provide relief to miners in Canadian territory, and desired to begin to enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. Concerns over the optics of refusing to allow the U.S. Army to provide relief to starving miners and Sifton’s plan to reach a customs agreement with the

American government gave the Canadian government no choice but to participate in the relief

164 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Alvey A. Adee to Alger, 17 February 1898. 165 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Julian Pauncefote to John Sherman, 17 February 1898.

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expedition. Both governments had to compromise on the issue of the U.S. Army and Mounted

Police escort for the relief expedition, with the Canadian government agreeing to allow U.S. troops to bring their arms, and the American government consenting to and Mounted Police escort and packing their arms as baggage. While the Alaska-Yukon border is only mentioned once in the correspondence between Meiklejohn and Sifton - with Sifton noting in a 27 January letter that “our boundary line… is provisionally at the summit of the mountains about the middle of the pass,” in reference to the temporary border established by the Canadian government at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes (see Chapter 6) - the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had progressed to the point where the American and Canadian governments had to contend with the implications of establishing a bordered region in the Yukon and Alaska.166

Vancouver Barracks

With Canadian permission secured, planning for the relief expedition continued at

Vancouver Barracks and in Washington. Adjutant General Breck informed Commanding

General Merriam on 11 January that “you will take entire charge of the outfitting, transportation, time of starting and location of stations of the Alaska Relief Expedition, and generally of all matter connected with it.”167 On 15 January. Breck sent Merriam a detailed list of instructions for the relief expedition. “In cases of sales under that act,” he wrote, “the charge made will be the original cost of the articles to the U.S. Government, with the cost of transportation added.”168

And those destitute persons who could not afford to pay for stores, “they will be issued to them without charge.”169 He added that the expedition should only make sales to those who were actually in need of provisions, and that “in no case will food be supplies to any one for resale or

166 Sifton to Meiklejohn, 27 January 1898. 167 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 11 January 1898. 168 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 15 January 1898. 169 Ibid.

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barter.”170 Breck also instructed that, since “it is presumed that there is little or no United States currency, either of coin or notes, in Alaska,” the expedition should be prepared to accept payment in gold.171 He concluded, “further details of these arrangements to accomplish the objects designed are left to your discretion.”172 The arrival of the first reports of Major L.H.

Rucker, however, derailed Merriam and Breck’s plans. As soon as Rucker arrived at Skagway and Dyea, it became clear that it would be almost impossible for the Alaska Relief Expedition to reach Dawson before spring, and that the expedition might not even be necessary.

Rucker sent his first report, addressed to Assistant Adjutant General Berry, on 4 January

1898. Since his arrival, Rucker reported interviewing some thirty men who had just arrived in

Dyea from Dawson. “From what I can learn,” he wrote, “it will be almost a physical impossibility to get stores beyond the lower end of Lake Labarge before the middle of May next, owing to the fact that Thirty Mile River is not frozen over.”173 He continued, “these people came through with dog teams traveling comparatively light and report that at different places on the river the ice is packed from ten to thirty feet high.”174 Rucker also spoke with “Capts. Norwood and Strickland” of the Mounted Police, who had just “arrived from the Big Salmon,” and both confirmed “the impracticability of getting supplies beyond Lake Labarge before the ice begins to move in May.”175 “All persons interviewed were of the opinion that transportation by reindeer was out of the question.”176 Rucker recommended that “if it should be deemed necessary it will

170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, L.H. Rucker to Berry, 4 January 1898. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid.

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be practicable to get stores to Lake Lebarge by sled, then boats will have to be built to transport the stores from that point to Dawson – when the ice goes out about the middle of May.”177

More interestingly, Rucker wrote that “I have questioned these men particularly about the food supply at Dawson and all express the opinion that there is not the slightest danger of any one starving there.”178 A W.H. Welbon of Seattle told him that “there is not any danger of starvation. If the supply did run short it would not occur until about June – the usual time stores were delivered there” by steamer.179 W.C. Duncan and A. McKinley “both of Portland,” also

“corroborated Mr. Welbon’s statements.”180 In light of these reports and the reported difficultly of moving supplies before spring, Rucker concluded that “I am of the opinion that it would be for the best interests of all concerned not to have the stores delivered before the trail and river are in such condition as to permit of the rapid transportation of stores to their destination.”181 Merriam received this letter on 14 January and forwarded it to Breck.182

When Rucker next reported to Merriam from Skagway on 9 January, he noted that “I have seen both trails, that is the trail to Chilcoot [sic] Pass and from here to White Pass.”183 “In my opinion,” he wrote, “the Dyea route is the most feasible one for the relief expedition to take.”184 He explained that, while Skagway “has the best dock facilities,” the trail was almost impassable on account of deep snow and blizzards.185 “From all the information I can gather,”

Rucker wrote, “the sending through of a large expedition is going to be a very difficult

177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid. 182 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 14 January 1898. 183 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Merriam, 9 January 1898. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid.

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undertaking.”186 He repeated that “I have interviewed about forty people from Dawson and they all agree on two points – that there is no danger of starvation at Dawson and the impracticability of getting below Lake Labarge before the ice breaks up in May.”187 He also explained that “I estimate that there is about thirty five miles of packed ice that would have to be chopped out” just to make it past Lake Lebarge, an impossible undertaking.188 “To sum up the situation as it appears to me,” Rucker concluded, “I believe that the intended relief is unnecessary and that the authorities would be justified in dropping the matter entirely.”189 This letter did not make it to

Merriam’s desk until 26 January.

At Vancouver Barracks, Merriam also began receiving reports that the food shortage had been overstated. He wrote to Breck on 8 January that thirty-seven people from Dawson had arrived in Seattle on the steamer Corona (presumably the same people Rucker had interviewed), as well as “still more passengers” from Dawson on the steamer City of Seattle.190 “According to press reports,” Merriam wrote, “they all confirm statements heretofore made and reported to the effect that there is no danger of starvation in the Klondike.”191 On 12 January, Merriam reported to Breck that U.S. Commissioner Jones reported to him that he had left Dawson on 9 December and there was “no danger of starvation there.”192 Breck forwarded Merriam an excerpt from a letter from Sifton on 17 January. Sifton wrote that “my reports indicate no immediate danger of starvation at Dawson but great necessity for provisions being distributed between Fort Selkirk and Skagway at various points. Believe ice formed all the way through now. Our provisions

186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 Ibid. 189 Ibid. 190 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 8 January 1898. 191 Ibid. 192 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 12 January 1898.

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being pushed down by horses and dogs. Intend to keep supplies moving until water opens in spring to avoid possibility of disaster.”193

Rucker also reported on 12 January that he had interviewed ten people who had left

Dawson on 16 December, and “they all tell the same story – that there is not any danger of starvation at Dawson, and that it will be impracticable to get a large outfit through until the ice breaks up in May.”194 He reported on 17 January that several outfits who left Dawson on 20

December had arrived at Dyea. “All report that there is not any danger of starvation, and that

Thirty Mile River has not frozen over,” he wrote.195 On 18 January, Rucker noted that Omer

Maris, correspondent for the Chicago Record, had interviewed J.J. Healy on 15 December, and he “expressed the opinion that there were enough provisions on hand to last until supplies could be received in the spring.”196 Rucker repeated again on 25 January that “there is not the slightest danger of starvation” at Dawson City.197 And he wrote on 1 February that two men who left

Dawson on 12 January had arrived, reporting that “there is not the slightest danger of starvation” and “that Thirty Mile River was not frozen over when they came through.”198

Merriam dutifully forwarded each of Rucker’s reports to Breck and the War Department, before concluding himself that the relief expedition should be canceled.199 He wrote to Breck on

12 February that “reports from Major Rucker bring Dawson dates to January 12 with emphatic statements of all arrivals that food supplies are sufficient in the Klondike and prices constantly being reduced.”200 He recommended that the relief expedition be abandoned “in order to avoid

193 Breck to Merriam, 17 January 1898 2. 194 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Berry, 12 January 1898. 195 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Barry, 17 January 1898. 196 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Barry, 18 January 1898. 197 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Barry, 25 January 1898. 198 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Barry, 1 February 1898. 199 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Merriam to Breck, 26 January 1898; Merriam to Breck, 2 February 1898 3. 200 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Merriam to Breck, 12 February 1898.

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further needless expense.”201 For a time, the War Department was determined to continue. Breck replied that “the judgement of the Acting Secretary of War on all the information obtainable is that the relief by the proposed expedition is necessary and he therefore directs that existing plans be carried out.”202 The members of the escort sailed to Dyea. Rucker was given orders to lead the expedition on 25 February.203 By the end of February, however, the expedition still had yet to depart Dyea, and it looked less and less likely that any provisions would get through to Dawson before spring. Finally, on 5 March, Secretary of War Alger wrote to Merriam that “expedition for relief from the head of Lynn Canal down the Yukon to Dawson is abandoned.”204

The failure of the Alaska Relief Expedition to get off the ground reveals just how little the U.S. Army and the War Department knew about the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Without regular communication with Ray and Richardson in Alaska, they had to rely on merchants and transportation companies with their own interests and often flawed understandings of local conditions for information. Merriam, Breck, and other American officials could not accurately judge the feasibility of the relief expedition. Canadian Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton, having supervised, from afar, the Mounted Police efforts to get supplies to the Yukon during the fall of 1897, and visited the passes himself in October 1897, knew more about the conditions in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and provided that information to the War Department. But like the other information sources the American government relied on, Sifton had his own interests in appeasing the needs of the relief expedition - protecting Canadian sovereignty and securing a

201 Ibid. 202 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Breck to Merriam, 12 February 1898. 203 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 142; NARA, RG393, Part III, E311, File 2, Instructions to Major L.H. Rucker, 25 February 1898. 204 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Alger to Merriam, 5 March 1898.

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deal on customs and trade. As discussed in Chapter 3, Sifton himself had no idea of the true difficulties the Mounted Police were encountering working on the passes, and he appears to have made little effort to coordinate with the police before talking to the War Department. It was only those on the ground - Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner J.H. McIllree and Inspector Z.T.

Wood during the fall of 1897 or Major Rucker after he arrived in Dyea in January 1898 - who really knew what it would take to get relief supplies to Dawson during the winter.

When Inspector Wood learned of the relief expedition, “to be accompanied by 50 U.S.

Troops, and 40 Mounted Police as escorts,” from American newspaper reports on 12 January

1898, he wrote to Superintendent A.B. Perry, the Mounted Police forwarding agent in

Vancouver, that “I sincerely hope this is not true.”205 He wrote that, of those arriving daily from

Dawson, “one and all ridicule the idea of any relief expedition being sent in,” that the expedition would never make it to Dawson during the winter, and that they would move so slowly that they would have to use all the supplies before they ever reached Dawson.206 He continued, “people in

Dawson they say, are certainly short of food, but there will be no starvation before the middle of

June,” just as the Yukon River opened for navigation and supplies could be brought in.207 Wood also explained that “should the expedition go over this pass it will greatly interfere with our own supplies going over and will delay, if not block them altogether.”208 He noted that “it is very hard and slow work to get stores over now even though we have the trail virtually to ourselves and every pack train employed.”209 He also noted that he would have to use provisions intended for the police posts in the Yukon to supply the relief expedition escort, which would put the supply

205 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 89, Wood to A.B. Perry, 12 January 1898. 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid. 209 Ibid.

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levels of the police already in the Yukon in danger. Wood wrote again to Perry on 17 January, asking him to “strongly impress upon the government that an escort of Mounted Police for the

United States Relief Expedition, will be entirely unnecessary.”210

It was not until Rucker arrived in the Lynn Canal that the army learned what the Mounted

Police already knew. After consulting with miners returning from Dawson and the police at

Dyea, Rucker immediately reported on 4 January that “it will be almost a physical impossibility to get stores beyond the lower end of Lake Labarge before the middle of May next.”211 By 11

January, Rucker sent to Berry what he considered the only feasible plan for sending relief supplies to the interior, based on what he had learned in Skagway and Dyea - a plan similar to the approach the Mounted Police employed to transport their own supplies. He proposed employing 115 mules and 130 sleds to transport 200 tons of provisions and supplies from Dyea, over the Chilkoot Pass to Lake Bennett, and then to a supply depot at the foot of Lake

Laberge.212 From there, Rucker suggested constructing “twenty scows 40 feet in length 12 feet beam with a draft of 12 inches” to transport the supplies to Dawson in the spring.213 He suggested that, if the first shipment arrived at Dyea by 15 February, the full 200 tons could be at

Lake Laberge by the middle of May, “the time when the ice generally begins to break up.”214

Rucker explained that “this scheme is based on favorable weather conditions but on the other hand is based on the most conservative estimate of the condition of the route and the capacity of the pack animals.”215

210 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 89, Wood to Perry, 17 January 1898. 211 Rucker to Berry, 4 January 1898. 212 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Rucker to Berry, 11 January 1898. 213 Ibid. 214 Ibid. 215 Ibid.

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If the experiences of the Mounted Police transporting supplies over the passes show anything, Rucker’s “most conservative estimate” would have been way off.216 While Rucker’s plan was the most realistic of the War Department’s schemes, it seems likely that the expedition would have been lucky to get their supplies to Lake Bennett by the middle of May. Wood’s experience during the winter of 1897-1898 showed that the only way to transport large amounts of supplies over the passes was to forward them in small amounts whenever the weather on the passes was clear enough and then cache the supplies until spring when they could be brought to

Dawson by boat. Even if there had been a real food shortage at Dawson during the winter of

1897-1898, it would have been impossible to transport relief supplies to the interior in any great quantity. Unfortunately for the War Department, only those with experience dealing with local conditions could have accurately judged the feasibility of the Alaska Relief Expedition. As

Rucker wrote to General Merriam on 9 January 1898, “one not on the ground can hardly form an idea of the obstacles to be overcome.”217

Following the cancellation of the Alaska Relief Expedition, Sheldon Jackson’s reindeer arrived at Haines Mission, at the head of the Lynn Canal, on 27 March 1898 in poor condition.218

Jackson explained in a 7 April letter to Merriam that “on account of the scarcity of moss” available at Seattle, the reindeer “were placed upon green grass which did not agree with them, and as a result four died there and eight died afterwards from the same cause on the steamer.”219

Once they arrived at Haines Mission, Jackson wrote, “an unusually early thaw set in,” preventing the reindeer from being moved to moss pastures in the interior. The reindeer were kept “at camp

216 Ibid. 217 Rucker to Merriam, 9 January 1898. 218 Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives, 131. 219 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Jackson to Merriam, 7 April 1898.

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with nothing to eat but baled alfalfa, which had physicked them until they are so weak that from

3 to 4 are dropping dead daily.”220 While the army and the Interior Department intended to split the reindeer between them to transport supplies on a number of exploring expeditions planned for 1898 (see Chapter 8), Jackson wrote that “neither the Army reindeer or those of the Interior

Dept. are in a condition to work again this summer.”221 He erroneously concluded that “the present situation has been brought about by a combination of circumstances that no one could have foreseen or guarded against.”222 By 15 April 1898, the army had turned its remaining reindeer over to the Interior Department, who herded the animals along the Dalton Trail in search of moss. By mid-May, only 164 out of 530 reindeer remained alive. The party reached Dawson

City on 27 January 1899, before finally arriving at their destination, Circle City, a month later, with only 114 reindeer.223

The War Department’s contract with the Snow and Ice Transportation Company to provide snow locomotives for the relief expedition also turned out poorly. Yukon historian

Michael Gates writes that the scheme “appeared to be a fraud.”224 Inspector Z.T. Wood wrote in his annual report for 1898 that “the arrival of one of the snow locomotives afforded endless amusement to the people of Skagway and Dyea. It could not make any progress on the level streets of these places, much less ascend the slightest elevation.”225 That did not stop Edward I.

Rosenfeld from filing a claim against the War Department for failing to follow through with their contract. After the relief expedition was cancelled, Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn wrote to Rosenfeld on 7 March 1898 that “you are hereby notified that the contract entered into by you

220 Ibid. 221 Ibid. 222 Ibid. 223 Gates, Dalton’s Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives, 133-34. 224 Gates, 127. 225 Z.T. Wood, “Annual Report of Superintendent Z.T. Wood,” in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 48.

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with the Acting Secretary of War… is canceled and annulled.”226 Rosenfeld responded by filing a $16,685.84 claim against the government of the United States “for damages… sustained by reason of the cancellation and annulment” of the contract and for expenses already paid by the

Snow and Ice Transportation Company.227 After much legal haranguing, the government agreed to pay the sum in May 1899.228

This chapter has demonstrated that the response of the American and Canadian governments to the food shortage at Dawson City occurred at a time when knowledge of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands and how to transport large amounts of supplies into the region was limited. The results of the reindeer and snow locomotive schemes and the planning for the

Alaska Relief Expedition make clear that the merchants and transportation companies who provided information to the U.S. Army, in addition to understating the difficulties of transporting supplies and overstating the seriousness of the food shortage, simply did not have the knowledge or experience to accurately assess the amount of supplies that could be transported during the winter of 1897-1898. The American and Canadian governments in Washington and Ottawa certainly lacked this kind of practical knowledge. Only the Mounted Police and U.S. Army officers on the ground, with the experience of organizing and transporting supplies over the

Chilkoot and White passes during the winter season, could comprehend the difficulties the relief expedition would encounter - furthering the different understandings of the situation in the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands that developed between the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army and

226 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 29, File 1, Meiklejohn to Rosenfeld, 7 March 1898. 227 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 29, File 1, Charles Strauss to Meiklejohn, 15 September 1898. 228 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 29, File 1, Dudley & Michener to Meiklejohn, 11 May 1899. The Rosenfeld settlement was not the only claim made against the War Department as a result of the relief expedition. A Max Janson of London claimed that the department made a contract with him to purchase reindeer for the expedition in Norway, only to refuse delivery after Jackson arrived. The results of the claim are unknown. NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Emanuel, Round & Nathan to Alger, 21 February 1898.

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their respective governments. It was only after transportation companies, merchants, and governments gathered sufficient information that they could begin to develop a reliable transportation system in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, a topic that will be discussed in Chapters

7 and 8. But first, the transition in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands revealed by the negotiations between the American and Canadian governments - with the American government eager to deliver relief supplies to miners in Canadian territory and the Canadian government concerned with protecting Canadian sovereignty and enforcing the Alaska-Yukon border - made clear that some steps would have to be taken to clarify the location of the border in the Lynn

Canal region. With increasing numbers of miners crossing the Chilkoot and White passes during the first months of 1898, it was the Canadian government and the Mounted Police who took the first steps.

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Chapter 6 The Lynn Canal Border, 1898

By the beginning of 1898, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government efforts to establish government control of the Yukon and transform the Alaska-Yukon borderlands into a bordered region were well underway. Inspector Charles Constantine had taken control of

Fortymile and begun to enforce the location of the Alaska-Yukon border at Miller and Glacier

Creeks in 1895 and 1896 - along the more easily surveyed 141st meridian. The police had spent the second half of 1897 sending reinforcements and supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes and developing a police transportation route between the Lynn Canal and the Klondike. As discussed in Chapter 3, the police largely ignored the Alaska-Yukon border as they rushed reinforcements and supplies over the passes. With thousands of miners arriving at Skagway and

Dyea during the winter of 1897-1898 and the American government planning to send the Alaska

Relief Expedition through Canadian territory, the next step in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was to establish the location of the Alaska-Yukon border in the Lynn Canal region - the subject of this chapter.

As late as early December 1897, the Mounted Police still had yet to establish a clear understanding of the location of the border between Skagway and the interior. Neither had the

American customs officials at Dyea and Skagway or the U.S. Army, who did not have a presence in the Lynn Canal until February 1898. At the international level, the location of the Lynn Canal border had not been clearly specified by the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825. The American government continued to claim that the border was ten marine leagues from the coast, while

Canada claimed that the line should follow the mountains next to the sea, leaving the Lynn Canal as wholly Canadian territory. On the ground, however, neither line had any meaning, as the region remained largely unsurveyed, leaving it up to local officials to determine the location of

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the border, temporarily at least. Of the three groups, it was the Mounted Police who first attempted to address the location of the border. In January 1898, the Canadian government and the Mounted Police decided to establish a temporary border at the summits of the Chilkoot and

White passes, in response to threats of unrest from the collection of customs duties in the disputed territory, as both sides referred to the territory between the Canadian and American border claims. Inspector D’A.E. Strickland and Inspector R. Belcher were ordered to establish police posts at the summits of the passes and they began enforcing the location of the temporary border and collecting customs duties on 26 and 27 February 1898.1

The Canadian move to establish the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes led to a round of local borderlands negotiations between the Mounted Police, angry American miners, the U.S. Army, and American and Canadian customs officials.

American miners and merchants greeted the move with anger, complaining to local and west coast newspapers that the Mounted Police had encroached on American territory and threatening to force their way over the summits to avoid paying customs duties. They appealed to the U.S.

Army at Dyea to intervene on their behalf and stop the police from collecting duties in the disputed territory. Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, who had just arrived at Dyea when the police began collecting customs at the summits, appealed to the Mounted Police and his superiors, but was not inclined to act without clear instructions.2 American customs officials at Skagway and

Dyea, overwhelmed with the rush of miners crossing the Chilkoot and White passes, were likewise not in a position to oppose the Canadian move, and could only appeal to their superiors

1 On the move to establish a temporary border see: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 32, 36-37; Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 70-71; Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 173-76, 180-181. 2 Anderson’s response to the temporary border is discussed by: Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 71-74.

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for instructions. With the U.S. Army and American customs officials offering no protest to the

Canadian move to establish the Alaska-Yukon border, the miners quickly adjusted to the new situation, although much animosity towards the police as customs collectors remained.

While it appeared that the Mounted Police had succeeded in establishing the border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, the idea of the Alaska-Yukon border remained in flux. During the next several months, a new borderlands reality developed across the passes as local negotiations continued. The Mounted Police remained stationed at the Chilkoot and White pass summits, collecting customs duties and enforcing the border, but American customs officials continued to be allowed across the line until May 1898, when they received instructions to respect the temporary border. At the summits, the police battled bad weather, unruly customs officials, and swarms of miners headed to the interior until July 1898, when they retreated to Log

Cabin and Lake Lindeman for the coming winter, leaving only small detachments stationed at the summit of each pass. At Dyea and Skagway, the U.S. Army continued to refuse to intervene in the border question and sought to avoid involvement in local affairs. This chapter, then, focuses on an important turning point in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, as the decision to establish a temporary Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the passes began a period of local negotiation, accommodation and adjustment that would last until the end of the

1898 season and beyond - and resulted in the development of a functional Alaska-Yukon border.

The Lynn Canal Border - Background

The Lynn Canal border was originally set by the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825, which stipulated that the boundary line in the Alaska panhandle should “follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast, as far as the point of intersection of the 141st degree of

West longitude,” provided that the line did not exceed a “distance of more than ten marine

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leagues from the Ocean.”3 As the treaty negotiators did not specify which mountains parallel to the coast they referred to, and neither side was willing to pay for an expensive survey of the region, the border remained ambiguous. Following the signing of the treaty, the Russians, angered by the British insistence that the line be limited by the summit of the mountains parallel to the coast, published two maps, one in Russian in 1826 and one in French in 1827, with a boundary line approximately ten marine leagues from the coast, regardless of the location of the mountains. These two maps, never challenged by the British, became the basis for the American claim that the Lynn Canal border should be ten marine leagues from the coast.4

The Canadian claim that the border should follow the mountains next to the sea had its origins in the George M. Dawson expedition of 1887-1889. Following Dawson’s return to

Ottawa at the end of 1887, the Department of the Interior published a map of the Alaska panhandle showing the findings of the expedition during its first year. In February 1888, Dawson met with William H. Dall of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey for informal discussions on the panhandle border. While the discussions failed to reach a consensus, Dawson appears to have hand drawn a line on the 1887 map showing where he thought the mountains parallel to the coast were located. This line, which closely followed the coast and cut off the heads of the Lynn Canal and other large inlets, became the basis for the Canadian claim that the border should follow the mountains next to the sea.5

Following Dawson’s meeting with Dall, the American government suggested that the two nations complete a joint survey of the panhandle in 1889, but the Canadian government refused.

3 Quoted in Penlington, The Alaska Boundary Dispute: A Critical Reappraisal, 11-12. 4 Ibid., 12-14. 5 United States Senate, The Argument of the United States, Senate Document No. 162, Volume 5, 58th Congress, 2nd Session, (1903), 163-165; Green, The Boundary Hunters: Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle, 49-51.

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Four years later, in 1892, however, the Canadian government agreed to a three-year joint survey of the Alaska panhandle region. During the 1893-1895 season, American and Canadian surveyors crisscrossed the boundary region and produced a set of maps to be used to determine the location of the border. The commission submitted its final report in late 1895, but the

Canadian and American governments did not follow up on the results.6 At the beginning of the

Klondike gold rush, then, the Lynn Canal border remained unmarked and in dispute.

The North-West Mounted Police understanding of the Lynn Canal border was slow to evolve. By the summer of 1896, they had begun to take steps to enforce the Alaska-Yukon border in the mining districts near Fortymile, but paid no attention to the border in the Lynn

Canal area. In 1894, Constantine and Brown crossed the Chilkoot Pass on their way to Fortymile, but Constantine made no mention of crossing the border in his report to the government.7 In his

1895 annual report, dated 20 January 1896, Inspector Charles Constantine only suggested that a police post should be established during the summer months at the junction of the “Teslin or

Hootalinka River” and the Yukon to collect customs duties from miners traveling over the mountains from the Lynn Canal.8

After returning from escorting Inspector Scarth’s party to the summit of Chilkoot Pass in

April 1897, Assistant Commissioner J.H. McIllree wrote to Commissioner L.W. Herchmer on 27

May 1897 that “I would beg to report that there are large quantities of goods going over the

Chilkoot Pass on which, I think, duty is never collected.”9 McIllree suggested that the police should establish a customs post at Lake Bennett to “deal with each party as they reached that

6 Green, 51, 54-63. 7 Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1894 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1895), 71. 8 Supplementary Report of the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police Force, 1895 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1896), 13-14. 9 LAC, RG18, Vol. 137, File 372, McIllree to Herchmer, 27 May 1897.

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point.”10 When the police rushed reinforcements and supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes beginning in August 1897, a customs official was located at the police post at Tagish.

American customs officials also arrived at Dyea and Skagway in the fall of 1897 to begin collecting American customs duties. In late November 1897, Inspector Strickland and the

Customs Collector, John Godson, traveled to Bennett to collect customs duties from those camped around Lake Bennett, and that was where the customs disputes began.11

Customs Disputes

On 25 December 1897, Inspector Z.T. Wood wrote to Mounted Police Comptroller Fred

White from Skagway, informing him “that complications are arising here as to the location of the boundary between the disputed territory and British Columbia.”12 He explained to White that

Godson had recently attempted to collect customs duties from three men near Lake Bennett who

“had killed a large number of steers for beef.”13 Two of the men complied, but the third, a Mr.

Thorpe, refused to pay “claiming that the head of Lake Bennett… is in disputed territory.”14

Wood reported that Thorpe was “armed with documents from U.S. Officials at Sitka” that maintained that the head of Lake Bennett was 28.09 miles from Dyea, and the American government claimed that the border was thirty miles inland, meaning that “Mr. Godson had no right to collect duty there.”15 “Mr. Godson’s contention,” Wood wrote, “is… that the boundary is at the summit of the passes, and as he is liable to call upon the Police at Bennett to assist him in

10 Ibid. 11 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, Wood to White, 1 December 1897. For John Godson see LAC, RG18, Vol. 153, File 358, A.R. Milne to John McDougald, 8 June 1898. 12 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, Wood to White, 25 December 1897. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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the collection of duty from Thorpe and others, I have warned them not to act until sure of their ground.”16

On 2 January 1898, Corporal A.L. Holmes reported to Wood from Bennett that Godson had indeed asked him to attempt to collect duties from those who had refused to pay, and “in case of refusal to pay on demand,” Godson had written in a note to Holmes, “please take one or two men and secure goods to cover expenses and advise me.”17 Holmes explained that “I have not taken any steps in the matter and will not do so until instructed by you.”18 Godson also asked

Wood to attempt to collect duty from Thorpe in Skagway.19 In response to a formal letter from

Wood, Thorpe wrote on 12 January that he would not pay the $16.00 per head in duties “because

I am an American Citizen and have killed the cattle you refer to in the Territory firmly claimed by the United States and the cattle are to be used or disposed of at my place of business there, and are not to be used or sold within your Territory by me.”20 And even if the territory was found to be Canadian, he wrote, $16.00 per head was “in excess of the legal duties” because “the duties should be levied if at all on live cattle and not on dressed meats.”21 Thorpe asked that

Wood give him “time to lay this matter before my Government that no misunderstanding shall result.”22

Wood sent Thorpe’s letter and the report from Holmes to White on 12 January, noting that “trouble was likely to arise unless the Canadian and U.S. Governments came to some understanding on the Boundary question.”23 He explained again that “the U.S. Authorities here

16 Ibid. 17 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, A.L. Holmes to Wood, 2 January 1898. 18 Ibid. 19 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, Wood to White, 12 January 1898. 20 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, Willis Thorpe to Wood, 12 January 1898. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Wood to White, 12 January 1898.

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[Skagway], at Juneau, and at Sitka claim that our Post at Bennett, and for a distance of 3 miles beyond, is United States Territory.”24 He assured White that “I am not taking any decisive action as it would only lead to trouble, though many have asked me to do so, simply to bring the matter to a climax.”25

Figure 5 Map of the Disputed Territory. From Seattle Post Intelligencer, 6 February 1898, Copy in LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reported on 23 January that Thorp forwarded his letter to

Wood to Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage and “he will ask Congressman Lewis to make

24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

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a protest against the encroachments which, he alleges, Canadian officials are making on

American territory.”26 The Post Intelligencer continued, “Thorp claims that according to the survey of Dominion Land Surveyor William Ogilvie, Lake Bennett is clearly within American territory; that the Canadian government so understood it,” and then changed its mind.27 “The

Canadian customs officials first asserted their right to collect duties on American goods at Lakes

Bennett and Linderman a few weeks ago,” the Post Intelligencer explained, “when Collector of

Customs Godson, of Tagish, made a tour of the upper lakes and levied duties whenever he found

American goods.”28 The Post Intelligencer also reported that “Herman Waechter, a Spokane cattle man, who also has a lot of dressed meat at Lake Bennett, has been served with notice similar to that on Thorp. He, too, has declined to be ‘held up,’ as he expresses it, ‘in American territory by Canadian customs officials.’”29 As seen in Chapter 5, the same Mr. Waechter spoke to Captain W.W. Robinson in December 1897.

On 3 February, the Post Intelligencer reported that more merchants were considering refusing to pay Canadian duty around Lake Bennett.30 Arthur C. Van Dorn, who intended to bring “a large stock of general merchandise, aggregating probably $30,000 or $40,000,” to the area between Lake Lindeman and Lake Bennett, where four Canadian customs officials had been stationed, wrote to the Seattle Chamber of Commerce from Dyea on 21 January, asking “whether you think it advisable to resist the payment of duty.”31 Van Dorn also asked the Chamber of

26 Seattle Post Intelligencer, 23 January 1898. Copy in LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Seattle Post Intelligencer, 3 February 1898. Copy in LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78. 31 Ibid.

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Commerce “to take the matter up with Secretary Gage.”32 The Chamber of Commerce, the Post

Intelligencer reported, established a committee to look into the matter.

Superintendent A.B. Perry, the Mounted Police forwarding agent in Vancouver, also reported to White on 25 January that a miners’ meeting was held at Bennett on 9 or 10 January and a letter from the U.S. Commissioner at Dyea was read aloud, explaining that Bennett was in disputed territory and no one should pay duty to Canadian customs there, while the

Commissioner submitted the question to his government.33 Wood also wrote to Perry on “the

Boundary Line, or rather want of a Boundary” on 12 January, explaining that “U.S. Officials at

Juneau, Sitka, and here [Skagway] advise Americans not to pay at Bennett, nor for three miles beyond” and “those that have paid duty there are now demanding its return.”34 Wood warned that

“some even proposed the Police should proceed to seize, and the Americans forcibly resist so as to force the governments to act.”35

At the same time as American merchants and miners were angry at the actions of

Canadian customs officials at Lake Bennett, Canadian miners became angry with the actions of

American customs officials at Skagway. Wood wrote to White on 8 December 1897 that “the

U.S. Customs Officials here are causing trouble to all persons, on their way to the interior, who have purchased their supplies in Canada.”36 Since the majority of goods shipped through

Skagway were destined for Canadian territory, United States Customs allowed miners to ship goods purchased in Canadian territory from Skagway to the border without paying customs

32 Ibid. 33 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, Perry to White, 25 January 1898. 34 LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, Wood to Perry, 12 January 1898. 35 Ibid. 36 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 8 December 1897.

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duties.37 The process required shippers to put their goods “in bond” while they were passing through American territory, so called because customs officials sometimes required shippers to make a deposit or bond for the value of the customs duties until they reached the border. To ensure that goods being transported in bond were not consumed before they reached the border,

U.S. Customs required all bonded goods to be accompanied by a customs official until they reached Canadian territory. Wood wrote that “the Customs Officers give them the option of paying duty, or of having a U.S. Customs Officer accompany their goods to Bennett, for which the importer has to pay $6.00 a day to the Officer, and lodge and feed him.”38

According to a 7 December newspaper report, for example, three men, W.H. Harrison,

B.H. Ryan, and Frank Turner, who had purchased their outfit in Victoria were told by an

American customs official “that their goods would be passed through to the international boundary under customs supervision, as provided by the treasury department, but Harrison, Ryan and Turner chose to pay duty rather than pay a customs official $6 per day to watch the goods while in transtu [sic].”39

Wood wrote again on 31 December that “I have been asked by several people to again draw the attention of the Canadian Government to the action of the U.S. Customs Officers here.”40 The previous day, ten Canadians and Australians “were given the option of paying duty on their goods, although they were in bond, or of having a U.S. Customs Officer accompany them through to Bennett at a cost of $6.00 a day and board and lodging for the trip each way.”41

“You can quite imagine what an expense this would be when perhaps the summit could not be

37 And Canada allowed Americans to ship goods purchased in American territory and destined for Alaska without paying customs duties. 38 Ibid. 39 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, unattributed newspaper clip. 40 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 31 December 1897. 41 Ibid.

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crossed for days,” Wood remarked.42 He also cautioned that everyone at Skagway was now writing to their friends intending to go north and warning them against buying their supplies in

Canada, and American newspapers were using the issue to promote buying goods in the United

States. “I need hardly add that no one has as yet accepted the escort of a U.S. Customs Officer as far as Bennett, but have paid duty as the easiest and cheapest way of settling the matter,” Wood concluded.43

After receiving Wood’s 8 December report, White decided to send Superintendent Perry north to investigate the matter. On 29 December, he instructed Perry to travel to Skagway and

Dyea and “make full inquires respecting the manner in which U.S. Customs Officers are acting with regard to Canadian supplies… and report immediately on your return to Victoria.”44 He also wrote to Surveyor General E. Deville asking for clarification on the location of the border and forwarded Wood’s letters to the Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton.45

Aylesworth Bowen Perry was born in Ontario in 1860. He was educated at Royal

Military College, Kingston, before serving in the Royal Engineers and the Geological Survey of

Canada. In 1882, he joined the North-West Mounted Police as an inspector, rising to the rank of superintendent in 1886, following his service in the North-West Rebellion. Perry commanded the

Mounted Police detachments at Macleod, Calgary, Prince Albert, and Regina, before he was sent to Vancouver to serve as the police forwarding agent for the Yukon.46 It was in this capacity that he was sent to Skagway and Dyea to investigate the convoy system. He reported his findings to

White on 7 January 1898. Perry confirmed that “all foreign goods now entered in bond at

42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, White to Perry, 29 December 1897. 45 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, White to E. Deville, Surveyor General, 23 December 1897; Deville to White, 5 January 1898; LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78, White to Secretary, Department of the Interior, 18 January 1898. 46 LAC, RG18, Vol. 10037, File 6738, “Biographical Sketch of Major-General Aylesworth Bowen Perry.”

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Skagway and Dyea for transport by either the Chilkoot or Dyea Passes into Canada must be accompanied by a special officer of the U.S. Customs as far as the Canadian Border,” at a cost of

$6.00 per day and $3.00 per day in expenses.47 “The quickest possible time which can be made to the Canadian boundary and return to Skagway is 6 days,” he wrote, “making a total cost of

$54.00. But storms are very common at the summits of both Passes, and crossings cannot be made for days at a time.”48 Perry explained that groups of miners could join together and employ only one customs official, “but owing to impossibility of obtaining sufficient transport, and the limited number which can travel over the trail together, there is practically no relief.”49

Perry reported that “the American Customs Officers say that they are acting on instructions received from Washington,” and responding to the fact that “last autumn many people who brought in goods in bond disposed of them at Dyea and Skagway without paying any duty, and that liquor had been brought into Alaska.”50 The problem for customs officials was that, without an escort, miners could claim that they were taking Canadian goods across the border, so they did not have to pay US duties, but then sell or use the goods before they reached the border. But Perry suspected that “the real reason for the action taken by the American

Government is the pressure brought on them by the cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Juneau and other

U.S. Coast cities” to cancel the order that made Dyea a sub-port of entry, and allowed Canadian goods to enter Alaska.51

Here Perry is referring to American Secretary of the Treasury L.J. Gage’s decision to allow Canadian vessels to land at Dyea. Shortly after the arrival of the Excelsior and the

47 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Perry to White, 7 January 1898 2. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid.

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Portland in July 1897, Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government became concerned that if the United States decided to fully enforce its customs laws at the head of the Lynn Canal, they could prevent British ships from even unloading cargo at Skagway or

Dyea, shutting Canada out of the Yukon trade. Sifton sent a request to Gage to make Dyea an official sub-port of entry, which would allow British ships to operate between the Canadian west coast and Dyea, though they could not operate between the American west coast and Dyea.52 At the same time, the Treasury Department had been receiving requests from their customs collectors in Alaska asking how foreign goods destined for the Klondike should be admitted to pass through American territory.53 In response to such enquiries, and the likely increase in traffic at Dyea after the arrivals of the Excelsior and Portland, the Treasury Department decided to make Dyea a sub-port of entry on 23 July 1897.54

The move was not well received by American businessowners at Skagway and Dyea or the American west coast. Even before Gage issued his order, Secretary of War R.A. Alger received a letter from two Seattle merchants complaining that making Dyea a sub-port of entry

“favors British and Canadian merchants and transportation Companies at expense and great detriment to Washington, California and Oregon and shipping interests of the coast.”55 Allowing passengers and freight to travel to Dyea or Skagway on Canadian boats meant that Canadian shippers could taken advantage of the rush to the Klondike and miners could outfit with

Canadian merchants in Vancouver or Victoria - business that would have gone to American shippers and merchants. By August 1897, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce was petitioning the

52 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 170; Campbell Jr., Anglo-American Understanding, 1898- 1903, 70-71. Skagway was eventually made part of the sub-port of Dyea. 53 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 9, T.C. Hammond to Benjamin P. Moore, 17 June 1897; Hammond to Moore, 17 June 1897 2. 54 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 9, C.D. Coleman to J.W. Ivey, 7 August 1897. 55 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 29, File 9474, A.F. Burleigh and S.H. Piles to R.A. Alger, 22 July 1897.

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American government to revoke the order in response to Canadian efforts to collect customs duties from American miners.56 A 28 August 1897 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer titled

“Uncle Sam the Loser: Dyea Sub-Port Proves Expensive to Americans,” complained that

American merchants had already lost out on $500,000 in trade to Canadian merchants.57 Despite complaints from the American west coast, however, it does not appear that the Treasury

Department ever considered cancelling the order. In any case, Perry concluded his report to

White, “if the regulation as it now stands is maintained, great injury will be inflicted on Canadian trade; and if Dyea is closed as a sub-Port, Canadian supplies will be practically shut out of the

Yukon District” until the spring.58

Ironically, the origins of the convoy system, as the Canadians called it, or customs supervision, as the U.S. customs service called it, actually lay in a request by Sifton that the

Americans allow Canadian goods to cross the Chilkoot and White passes in bond. Determined to keep Canadian goods flowing to the Klondike, and apparently unaware of the problems the convoy system would cause, Canadian Secretary of State R.W. Scott wrote to Prime Minister

Laurier on 23 July 1897 that Canada would agree “to pay the cost of sending an American officer with every transport until they reach a point that is undisputed Canadian territory.”59

After issuing the order to make Dyea a sub-port, Secretary Gage sent instructions to the

Acting Deputy Collector of Customs at Juneau to appoint a Deputy Collector for Dyea.60

Assistant Secretary of the Treasury W.B. Howell sent further instructions explaining how the

56 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 August 1897. 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 August 1897. 58 Perry to White, 7 January 1898 2. 59 Quoted in Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 170. 60 Coleman to Ivey, 7 August 1897.

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sub-port of entry would operate. He wrote that the “Deputy Collector at Dyea authorized to enter and clear vessels, receive duties, fees and other monies and… many enter and clear foreign vessels but such vessels must not take on or discharge cargo or passenger from one American place for another,” meaning that a foreign vessel could not, for example, operate between Seattle and Dyea without stopping in Vancouver or Victoria.61 Howell also explained that foreign “cargo landing at Dyea may be transported under bond to frontier accompanied by customs officers at expense of owner without examination.”62 Howell later added on 20 August, after Skagway had been established as a major port in the Lynn Canal, that the Deputy Collector at Dyea should

“allow Canadian vessels to land cargo at Skagway.”63 Acting Deputy Collector at Juneau C.D.

Coleman wrote to the new Collector of Customs at Sitka Joseph W. Ivey on 7 August that he had appointed a Deputy Collector for Dyea “and instructed him as to his duties.”64

Establishing Dyea as a sub-port of entry and appointing a Deputy Collector relatively early after the beginning of the rush to the Klondike, however, did not mean that the Customs

Service was in a position to begin collecting duties when the miners started arriving. On 11

August, A.I. Jones, the new Deputy Collector for Dyea, wrote to Ivey that “it is impossible to collect duties under the present conditions,” explaining that “freight is being discharged all along the shore and it will require a number of officers to cope with the present situation.”65 The first months of the U.S. customs presence at Dyea, then, seem to have been spent establishing the

61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 9, Coleman to Ivey, 31 August 1897. 64 Coleman to Ivey, 7 August 1897. Joseph W. Ivey was born into a Cornish mining family in England. He immigrated to the United States and was appointed Collector of Customs at Sitka on 23 June 1897. Ivey would go on to have a political career in Alaska after the gold rush, pushing for Alaska to have a territorial delegate in the U.S. Congress. “Finding Aid,” Joseph W. Ivey Family Papers, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks; United States Customs Service, A Biographical Directory of the United States Customs Service, 1771-1989 (Washington: Department of the Treasury, 1985). 65 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, A.I. Jones to Ivey, 11 August 1897.

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customs office. Three times in September Jones’ replacement Joseph E. Floyd wrote to Ivey asking for more office supplies.66 On 23 September, Floyd reported that he was “moving in new quarters today, think it will be of great advantage to the service.”67 Floyd also reported seizing a case marked eggs from the Steamer Rustler containing one layer of eggs, and bottles of alcohol underneath.68 Despite such successes, however, it appears that the customs service continued to struggle to collect customs duties.

Joseph E. Floyd was born in Cornwall, England in 1851. He immigrated to New York

City in 1870 and worked in the plumbing business, before moving to Portland, Oregon in 1882, where he served as city plumbing inspector for two years. He moved to Alaska in June 1897 to take up his customs position and was quickly overwhelmed by the situation at Dyea and

Skagway.69 Floyd explained in a 10 January 1898 report to Ivey that “I beg to impress the fact of the great confusion existing at this port last summer and fall.”70 He wrote that “there were no wharves of any kind – simply the wild and barren beach,” forcing steamers to, in some cases,

“discharge at a distance of a halfmile from shore,” or use small boats to bring cargo and passengers to shore.71 “Many of these small boats put off directly north with their loads for Dyea without any attention to the customs officers,” he continued.72 This problem was compounded by the fact that the customs office had no boat to approach the steamers themselves before they could discharge any cargo. In one example, Floyd explained that “the steamers sometimes disposed of a cargo of horses by simply dumping them into the water and letting them swim

66 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, J.E. Floyd to Ivey, 18 September 1897; Floyd to Ivey, 23 September 1897; Floyd to Ivey, 28 September 1897. 67 Floyd to Ivey, 23 September 1897. 68 Ibid. 69 “Floyd, Joseph E.,” in United States Customs Service, A Biographical Directory of the United States Customs Service, 1771-1989 (Washington: Department of the Treasury, 1985). 70 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, Floyd to Ivey, 10 January 1898. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid.

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hither + thither.”73 In such cases, he wrote, the customs officers would patrol the shore, “cowboy like,” trying to grab a horse “by the mane and by a halter” and collect duty on them.74 “It would be just as easy,” Floyd wrote, “for the office at Sitka to lasso these horses at Skagway + collect the duties as for us to do so.”75 Once cargo made it to shore, it was no easier for the customs officers to collect duty. “Goods were piled along the shore in every state of confusion,” Floyd wrote, “and it was not unusual for the tide to carry away hundreds of tons of both foreign and domestic freight – to the utter loss of the owner, and consequent loss of duty.”76

The result of such conditions was that, although the regulations for customs supervision had been in place since the beginning of the rush to the Klondike, they were largely unenforced.

It was not until late November that Floyd was able to fully turn his attention to collecting customs duties. And once the customs service started enforcing the policy of requiring escorts for all foreign goods, the complaints of Canadian miners dramatically increased.

The Temporary Border

By early January 1898, then, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government were facing the threat of unrest posed by both American miners angry at paying duties at Bennett and

Canadian miners angry at the American government for requiring a customs escort. As

Superintendent Perry warned, the convoy system also threatened Canadian business interests in the Yukon, as it encouraged miners to buy their supplies in the United States. Sifton raised the issue of bonding privileges and the convoy system with President William McKinley and

Secretary Gage during his visit to Washington to discuss the Alaska Relief Expedition in late

December 1897 (see Chapter 5). The Americans “agreed to eliminate their inspection fees for

73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid.

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goods travelling in bond” and give Canadian miners the option of paying for a customs escort or making a bond or cash deposit for their customs duties. The bond would then be cancelled or refunded when they reached Canadian territory and proved that their goods had not been opened.77 It would take until 2 February 1898 for the Americans to revise their customs regulations. In the meantime, Sifton and the Canadian government remained concerned that unrest in the disputed territory could threaten Canadian sovereignty and made plans to act on the border question.

Surveyor General E. Deville replied to White’s request for information on the location of the border on 5 January. He sent White a copy of a map showing the line claimed by the United

States, which, he remarked, “is of course preposterous.”78 “No official stand has, so far as I am aware, been taken by Canada in this matter [the location of the border],” Deville wrote, “but I believe the intention is to claim a line crossing Lynn Canal, Dyea and Skagway being in

Canada.”79 Given the problems that the customs issue was causing at the head of the Lynn Canal, however, the government decided that a more firm location for the Alaska-Yukon border was needed to maintain control during the height of the gold rush.

On 8 January, Perry suggested that a temporary border be established at the foot of Lake

Lindeman.80 “Insp. Wood had a tacit understanding with the U.S. Marshal that the boundary I have suggested is to be accepted by them,” he wrote.81 But by 15 January 1898, Sifton and White had decided that the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes should be the border, temporarily at least. “No doubt about summit being the boundary,” White wrote to Perry, “instruct Inspector

77 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 175. 78 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, Deville to White, 5 January 1898. 79 Ibid. 80 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, Perry to White, 8 January 1898. 81 Ibid.

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Wood to erect shelter and station two or three Police on Canadian side of summit White pass.”82

Following instructions on the location of the White Pass post from Deville, White also wrote that

“he must be sure that from the place where he establishes post the water runs to summit Lake and the Yukon and not to Lynn Canal.”83 These instructions seem to be based on the government’s understanding of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825. Deville interpreted the treaty’s clause

“mountains next to the coast” to mean that any rivers that flowed towards the coast were in

American territory and any rivers that flowed towards the interior must be in Canadian territory.

The government’s argument that the border should cut off the heads of the bays and inlets in the

Alaska panhandle meant that Skagway and Dyea could be ruled as Canadian territory, but, as he explained in his 5 January letter to White, “the utmost they [the Americans] can claim is the summit of the pass.”84

In response to these instructions, Perry wrote to White on 15 January 1898 “with many misgivings” about the summit as the location of the boundary.85 “You are certain to hear a great deal about it,” he wrote.86 “Already violent articles have been published in Juneau papers re action of our Collector,” he wrote, warning that the U.S. Commissioner at Skagway “wants a pretext, probably prompted by Alaskan Govt, to exercise some right of possession in the disputed territory,” and could use Canada establishing the border at the summits as an excuse for action.87

Perry concluded that his suggestion of the foot of Lake Lindeman “was the one safe way in this matter.”88 White replied on 27 January that “my instructions are that the summit is the boundary

82 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, White to Perry, 15 January 1898. 83 Ibid.; LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, Deville to White, 15 January 1898. 84 Deville to White, 5 January 1898. 85 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, Perry to White, 15 January 1898. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid.

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line that must be observed for the present, although Canada claims Dyea and Skagway.”89 He instructed that “small posts are to be located immediately on Canadian side of summit on

Chilkoot and White passes. Also the Stikine and, as soon as travel permits, on Dalton trail.”90 He also told Perry to ask the customs office in Victoria “to furnish you with Customs Officers when required for each of these positions to accompany Police detachments or appoint senior member of the Police party Customs Officer temporarily.”91 “Say nothing about your instructions or what you are doing,” White concluded, “except to those actually concerned and then in confidence.”92

As White’s note that Canada continued to claim Skagway and Dyea suggests, the decision to create a temporary border at the summits was not just based on where the Canadian government thought the border was located. From both a customs and a law and order perspective, the summits made an ideal location for the border because they were the only way to reach the interior from Skagway or Dyea. Anyone who wanted to go to the Klondike would have to stop at the summits to pay customs duties before they could go forward and the police could block undesirable characters from entering the Yukon. As William Morrison notes, a border or customs point at Lake Lindeman or Lake Bennett “would have been unsuitable from a police point because of the difficulty of exercising control there.”93 It would be easier for miners to go around police and customs posts and more difficult for the police to enforce customs laws without a detailed survey of the border marked on the ground. The summits of the Chilkoot and

White passes were ideal pinch-points for the police in the Lynn Canal region.

89 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, White to Perry, 27 January 1898. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 62.

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While the police were getting ready to take control of the summits, tensions in the disputed territory remained. Wood wrote to White on 2 February that the Victoria Daily Colonist reported in a 15 January article, titled “The Rival Flags,” that the Mounted Police at Bennett had ordered an American flag to be taken down and “that the Stars and Stripes were hauled down and an apology tendered to the Police.”94 Wood wrote that “there is not a word of truth in the story.”95 Not yet aware of White’s orders to establish the border at the summits, he warned that

“there is going to be trouble at Bennett if the two Governments do not come to an understanding of the boundary question, and make that understanding known to their subjects.”96 Desperate to avoid such unrest, the police were moving quickly to implement White’s orders. On 9 February,

Perry ordered Inspector D.A.E. Strickland, who had just returned to Skagway after a month’s leave, and twenty non-commissioned officers to the summit of White Pass to establish a customs post. Perry also instructed Inspector R. Belcher, who had just arrived from the North-West

Territories, to establish a customs post on the summit of the Chilkoot Pass. Both men were appointed as sub-collectors of customs for their respective posts.97

Inspector Strickland arrived at the summit of White Pass on 13 February and immediately started construction of a small post. As “blizzards rages on the Summit for nearly ten days,”

Strickland and his men cut logs from a source twelve miles away and hauled them to the summit.98 “In spite of all our difficulties,” Strickland wrote in his annual report on 1 November

1898, “the little house was ready on the 27th of February, and at reveille on that date I hoisted the

94 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 70, Wood to White, 2 February 1898. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Government of Canada. Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 82, 88. 98 Ibid., 82.

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Union Jack on the summit of the White Pass and began the collection of customs duties there.”99

Inspector Belcher left Skagway on 9 February with two men, Corporal Pringle and Constable

Boyd, purchased “a small quantity of lumber at Dyea,” and proceeded to the summit of Chilkoot

Pass.100 On 12 February, construction began on a small 12’ by 12’ building for a post at the summit. Four walls “were built of one inch green planks, which, in the absence of dry lumber, we were obliged to use,” Belcher wrote on 30 November.101 By 14 February, the roof was completed “by stretching a tarpaulin over it.”102 Belcher received orders to begin collecting customs duties and enforcing the temporary Alaska-Yukon border on 25 February. The following day, he wrote, “the Union Jack was hoisted and the collection of customs duties began.”103

The move to establish the Alaska-Yukon border was predictably greeted with anger by

Americans at Skagway and Dyea. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reported on 6 March that “this encroachment on American soil is regarded with indignation by the people of Skagway and

Dyea.”104 E.W. Pollock, the Post Intelligencer’s special correspondent in Dyea, reported that

“much excitement had been caused here and at Skagway.”105 He noted that “the move is regarded as an outrageous one here, and it is predicted freely that the police will come still further into American territory soon.”106 James D. Esary, who the Associated Press reported had been “examining the two passes in the interest of some men who shortly expect to go to the

99 Ibid., 82. 100 Ibid., 88. 101 Ibid., 89. 102 Ibid., 89. 103 Ibid., 89. 104 Seattle Post Intelligencer, 6 March 1898. Copy in LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid.

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interior,” told the Post Intelligencer that “while at the summit of Chilkoot pass… I interviewed

Inspector Belcher, of the Canadian mounted police, who is stationed there with twenty men. I asked him if he had been sent there, and he replied that he was acting under orders and had nothing to say upon the subject.”107 According to Esary, the Canadian government was charging

$10 per cabin for logs, $20 per stump for wood cut in Canadian territory, 20% the value of all horses and pack animals, and $25 per dog, “regardless of age or value,” all of which, the Post

Intelligencer claimed “are excessive and unreasonable in the extreme.”108 Esary also reported that “the excitement of the invasion of the Canadian officials over the boundary line was intense among the miners in and around” Sheep Camp and Bennett.109 Many plans had been made to cross the summits in large numbers and force their way into the interior. Esary reported that

“there is much talk among the men at Sheep Camp of getting together and going over the pass regardless of the mounted police or other Canadian officials, but the cooler heads of the party prevailed, and this plan was given up.”110 Other plans, Esary noted, “resulted in nothing being done.”111

The move to begin enforcing the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes also coincided with the arrival of the U.S. Army at the head of the Lynn Canal.

Following Major L.H. Rucker’s reconnaissance of Skagway and Dyea during the planning for the Alaska Relief Expedition in early January 1898 (see Chapter 5), Acting Secretary of War

G.D. Meiklejohn suggested that “an officer of the rank of colonel” should be sent to Dyea or

107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid.

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Skagway “to supervise the arrangements necessary for the starting and support of the relief expedition to the Klondike region.”112 On 6 February, the Secretary of War instructed Brigadier

General H.C. Merriam to send two companies of the 14th Infantry to Dyea, and two companies to

Skagway, under the command of Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, “prepared to stay at least through the end of the coming summer season.”113 In a 13 February letter, Merriam requested approval to establish an army district of Lynn Canal “covering all landings and trails to the boundary line” under the command of Anderson “to insure uniformity and efficiency of administration” at the head of the Lynn Canal.114 Breck approved Merriam’s request on 15

February.115

Thomas McArthur Anderson was born in Ohio in 1836. After attending Cincinnati Law

School, he was admitted to the bar in 1858 and began practicing law in Cincinnati. At the start of the Civil War, he joined 6th Ohio Volunteers as a private, before being commissioned in the

Regular Army as a 2nd Lieutenant. Following the war, he remained in the army, serving at Fort

Ringgold, Texas for fourteen years, before rising to the rank of Colonel in command of the 14th

U.S. Infantry in 1886.116 Anderson and four companies of the 14th Infantry arrived at Skagway on 25 February 1898, the same day that Strickland and Belcher were ordered to begin collecting customs duties at the summits.117 Almost immediately, Anderson was flooded with complaints from Americans at Skagway that the Canadian government was collecting duties in the disputed

112 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 20 January 1898. 113 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 8 February 1898. 114 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Merriam to Breck, 13 February 1898. 115 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Breck to Merriam, 15 February 1898. 116 “Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers Inventory,” Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, https://www.lib.washington.edu/static/public/specialcollections/findingaids/197 3-003.pdf; “Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers, 1822-1973,” Archives West, http://archiveswes t.orbiscascade.org/ ark:/80444/xv69815. 117 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 144.

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territory. He reported to Major Thomas H. Barry, Assistant Adjutant General of the Department of the Columbia, on 4 March that “upon my arrival here I am met with a report that the

Dominion Custom House Authorities have established themselves on the two passes above Dyea and Skagway and are demanding customs duties on all dutiable articles passing those points.”118

At the summit of each pass, he continued, “there are eighteen Dominion police fully armed as I hear with Winchester rifles or some weapon resembling it.”119 Anderson wrote that “I report this because it is a manifest use of authority in the disputed territory, as it is generally understood that the ten marine league line crosses Lake Bennett four miles down.”120 He continued, “this action has caused great irritation here, not because it matters much where the duties are paid, but because it is looked on as an opertion[?] of right over our territory. It has practical applications.

It stops our people from making boats on the lake without paying duty on the material.”121

Anderson promised to “make a thorough investigation before taking any action or making any suggestions.”122

The next day, Anderson again wrote to Barry asking “does our government concede that the boundary line is on the summit of the two passes, the White and Chilkoot, they being on the water shed of what the Dominion people here claim as the coast range?”123 He explained that

“our people claim that the American boundary survey placed their boundary monument four miles down the shores of Lake Bennett, and that consequently the territory between that point and the passes is disputed territory over which neither nation should assume control or both

118 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, T.M. Anderson to T.H. Barry, 4 March 1898. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 5 March 1898.

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should do so jointly.”124 Anderson admitted that “it seems to me that the water shed line seems to give the Canadians a feasible claim, yet the question is so seriously affecting our people that it should be promptly settled.”125 He warned that “while it is unsettled there is danger of misunderstandings and trouble.”126

On 9 March, Anderson wrote to an inspector of the Mounted Police, presumably Z.T.

Wood or S.B. Steele, that “I am informed that detachments of your forces have occupied the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes in this vicinity,” and also collecting customs duties and performing other civil functions.127 “If I have been correctly informed as to these matters,” he wrote, “I would respectfully ask you to inform me why these acts of military and civil authority have been exercised in disputed territory. To avoid misunderstanding and to assure the continuance of pleasant relations.”128 Anderson wrote again on 15 March that “I have received more specific information as to the exercise of authority by your officials on what has heretofore been deemed disputed territory.”129 Specifically, he wrote that he had received a copy of a notice, signed by Collector of Customs Godson, that “all goods on which duties are not paid will be seized and sold with the next 14 days.”130 Anderson again asked that “with all respect I must renew my request that you will explain why you find it necessary to exercise civil and military authority over American Territory, or in Territory at least in question.”131 “I respectfully ask a

124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Inspector of the Mounted Police, 9 March 1898. 128 Ibid. 129 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Inspector of the Mounted Police, 15 March 1898. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

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suspension of extreme measures until this boundary question has been definitely settled,” he concluded.132

Superintendent S.B. Steele wrote to Anderson on 16 March that he had forwarded

Anderson’s letter to Commissioner of the Yukon J.M. Walsh.133 Walsh wrote to Anderson from

Bennett on 17 March that “the disputed territory commences at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass and extends some distance south of Skagway,” meaning that the territory between Lake Bennett and the summits was not in dispute, as many Americans claimed, and Canada had every right to control it.134 Walsh wrote that the police had not asserted any authority on the Skagway side of the summits. He concluded by noting that he had forwarded Anderson’s letters to Minister of the

Interior Clifford Sifton.135

Anderson forwarded Walsh’s reply to Barry on 20 March. “From the time of my assumption of command here,” he noted, “I received almost daily complaints of persons turned back from the passes, that they could not proceed because the restrictions placed upon them by the Dominion authorities were to them prohibitive.”136 In one example, Anderson explained, “a number of American citizens have settled between the passes and Lake Bennett, under the assumption that it was within our boundaries or at least on disputed territory. A few of them have laid out a town site at Linderman. As heretofore stated they and all others beyond the passes have received notice that they are subject to British control.”137

Despite the complaints of American citizens at Skagway, however, Anderson was not prepared to do anything to address the issue. He wrote to Barry on 16 March that “I have

132 Ibid. 133 NARA, RG393, Part III, E311, File 4, S.B. Steele to Anderson, 16 March 1898. 134 NARA, RG393, Part III, E311, File 11, J.M. Walsh to Anderson, 17 March 1898. 135 Ibid. 136 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 20 March 1898. 137 Ibid.

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evidence which satisfies me that the Dominion authorities are determined to exercise full authority over the disputed territory.”138 But, he continued, “I am not inclined to press this question unless directed to do so.”139 One of Anderson’s reasons for maintaining the status quo was “on account of the great number of American citizens going into the Dominion.”140 If the

U.S. Army attempted to push the Mounted Police back to Lake Bennett, he suspected, the

Canadian government might take some action to prevent Americans from going to the Klondike.

And, as Anderson admitted in his earlier reports, it did not really matter where in the disputed territory the Mounted Police collected duties, and he viewed the summits as a feasible claim for the location of the border. Anderson’s superiors in Vancouver Barracks and Washington, it seems, agreed with his assessment, as he received no response to his enquires on the location of the border. As long as the situation at the summits remained stable and did not lead to violence, the army was inclined to wait for negotiations to take place.141

The reaction of the U.S. customs service at Skagway and Dyea to the move to establish the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits, interestingly, was equally subdued. In early 1898, the customs office at Dyea was still in the midst of establishing a customs presence at the head of the

Lynn Canal. Once Deputy Collector of Customs at Dyea Joseph E. Floyd began fully enforcing

American customs laws at the head of the Lynn Canal in late 1897, he expressed considerable confusion on the entry of foreign goods and the customs supervision process. “By ‘customs

138 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 16 March 1898. 139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 141 Other accounts suggest that Anderson confronted the Mounted Police at the summits and was prepared to use force to push the police back, but it seems unlikely the such an incident could have taken place without being reported by Anderson or the Mounted Police in Skagway. Seattle Post Intelligencer, 7 March 1898, copy in LAC, RG18, Vol. 146, File 78; L.S. Sorley, History of the 14th U.S. Infantry from January 1890 to December 1908 (Chicago: R. H. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1909), 9. See also: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 144-45.

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supervision,’” he wrote on 30 November 1897, “I have understood that I should send an inspector with these outfits through to the British boundary at expense of outfitters. Is this the right procedure?”142 On 14 December, Floyd sent Ivey several more questions on the customs supervision process, he asked “please tell in writing just what it means – its full procedure – we have not had any written instructions and if inspectors for that purpose are appointed – what are they paid, $3 or $6 a day? how paid, and is any evidence required that they have performed the work and how, if so? By certificate of Inspector showing his inspection as far as the boundary?”143 Floyd added on 2 January 1898 that “when men go under customs supervision

(our question as to which had not been answered) we have been charging duty upon what will be opened or used” while the miners are passing through American territory, “namely, provisions, tents, stoves, sleds, +c – Is this proper?”144

In addition to concerns over procedure, part of Floyd’s confusion over customs supervision centered on the uncertainty of the Alaska-Yukon border. In his 14 December report,

Floyd asked if Canadian goods could even be “bonded through this port through to British

Territory.”145 He explained that “the rules in the 1892 Regulations are wholly inapplicable to the conditions here.”146 Floyd had no customs officers stationed at the border “to tell of these goods have gone through untouched and unbroken,” and if the customs service didn’t even know where the boundary with British territory was, how could they escort Canadian freight as far as the border.147 Floyd also asked on 10 January “can liquors bonded through our territory to Canadian

142 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, Floyd to Ivey, 30 November 1897. 1897. 143 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, Floyd to Ivey, 14 December 1897. 144 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, Floyd to Ivey, 2 January 1898. 145 Floyd to Ivey, 14 December 1897. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid.

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line?”148 He explained that “there is no customs officer at or near the boundary and the small force is occupied with watching the freight coming from seaward,” meaning that there was no one at the other end to ensure that Canadian liquor actually made it across the border.149

At Sitka, patiently but sternly answering Floyd’s inquiries was Deputy Collector of

Customs C.L Andrews. Born in Ohio in 1862, Clarence L. Andrews’s family moved to Oregon in 1864. He was educated at Philomath College and worked as a clerk, school teacher, and a deputy in the office of the auditor in King Country, Washington, before joining the Customs

Service in Alaska in 1898.150 “In answer to your inquiries regarding what customs supervision consists of,” Andrews wrote to Floyd in an undated letter, “our only special instructions received from the department to date are contained in” the telegram instructions received from Assistant

Secretary of the Treasury W.B. Howell on 23 July 1897.151 On customs supervision, Andrews reminded, Howell wrote “cargo landed at Dyea may be transported under bond to frontier accompanied by customs officer at expense of owners without examination.”152 On 7 January

1898, Acting Collector of Customs W.P McBride added that “you are advised to enforce the directions of the telegram of July 23d, strictly, until further instructions,” meaning that Floyd should continue to enforce the customs supervision process.153 McBride reminded Floyd that

“you are acting to protect the interests of the government, not to accommodate foreigners.”154 He continued, “enforce the requirements strictly, and in case of doubt always take the safe side and

148 Floyd to Ivey, 10 January 1898. 149 Ibid. 150 “Andrews, Clarence L.,” in United States Customs Service, A Biographical Directory of the United States Customs Service, 1771-1989 (Washington: Department of the Treasury, 1985). 151 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 65, Vol. 3, C.L. Andrews to Floyd, no date. 152 Ibid. 153 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 65, Vol. 3, W.P McBride to Floyd, 7 January 1898. 154 Ibid.

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notify them of their right to file a written protest in ten days.”155 In the absence of a clearly defined border or instructions from Sitka, the customs officers at Skagway and Dyea seem to have treated Lake Bennett as the point where British territory began and where escorts could turn around. With increasing numbers of miners arriving daily, however, this arrangement proved inadequate.

Floyd wrote to Ivey on 14 December that “the expected rush of miners has begun,” noting that the steamer Elder had just arrived with 500 tons of freight and 150 passengers.156 By

2 January 1898, Floyd reported that “the business has increased considerably over that of

November.”157 He informed Ivey that his office had collected $836.94 in customs duties during the month of December.158 That number increased to $1408.71 during the month of January.159

Floyd noted on 31 January that “the shipping both Coastwise and foreign has increased greatly, and there is every reason to expect a yet greater increase during the following months.”160

Floyd wrote as early as 14 December that the expected rush of miners would mean that he would require more men. By 10 January, he wrote to Ivey that “I must call your attention to our need of additional help – both in office and on shore + wharf.”161 He explained that “nearly all the foreign freight is shipped to this place and Dyea, and as they [the customs officers] are expected to watch this freight until properly entered, and are also expected to prevent liquor smuggling” they were overwhelmed by the ever increasing amount of freight.162 “I deem it sufficient to call your attention to our great necessities,” Floyd begged “Please send us at your

155 Ibid. 156 Floyd to Ivey, 14 December 1897. 157 Floyd to Ivey, 2 January 1898. 158 Ibid. 159 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 11, Floyd to Ivey, 31 January 1898. 160 Ibid. 161 Floyd to Ivey, 10 January 1898. 162 Ibid.

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earliest convenience competent men for clerical work – and for outside work.”163 By 10 March,

Floyd reported that he had been able to hire four men, but it made little difference.164 “The number of boats arriving here is so great that it is impossible to keep a strict watch on them,” he complained, “four or five inspectors spread out over three wharves, keeping watch on from two to four boats at each wharf… cannot be as efficient as the authorities expect, [?] that these inspectors must occasionally sleep, and are supposed to keep account of all foreign goods.”165

For his own part, Floyd wrote on 31 January that “during the last few weeks I have been in the office nearly every evening till half-past ten, and several times past twelve.”166 With the increasing number of miners going to the interior, Floyd and his officers must also have been constantly hounded by Canadians angered by the customs supervision process, which no doubt led to his numerous inquiries to Sitka.

When the Mounted Police started enforcing the location of the Alaska-Yukon border and collecting customs at the summits in late February 1898, then, Floyd and the U.S. customs officials at Skagway and Dyea were simply too busy to react. Floyd was struggling with receiving foreign freight as it arrived at Skagway and Dyea, amid the rush of miners that poured into the Lynn Canal ports, without a clear understanding how customs regulations should be enforced or the manpower to do so. At Sitka, Deputy Collector C.L Andrews wrote in response to Floyd’s inquiries “I would have made answer before, but the questions are as hard for us to answer as for you.”167 The situation at the head of the Lynn canal, for Floyd and Andrews, was simply unprecedented. With thousands of miners heading to the interior through ports that had

163 Ibid. 164 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 11, Floyd to Ivey, 10 March 1898. 165 Ibid. 166 Floyd to Ivey, 31 January 1898. 167 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 65, Vol. 3, Andrews to Floyd, 1 February 1898.

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only been founded a few months before and crossing an undefined Alaska-Yukon border that had not been officially established, even the officials in Ivey’s office were unsure how to react without clear instructions from Washington. Floyd’s lone question on 25 December 1897 “where does the department hold the Boundary line to be when goods go under inspectors supervision?” went unanswered.168

Borderlands Negotiation

With the U.S. Army and American customs officials at Dyea and Skagway tacitly allowing the Mounted Police to establish a temporary Alaska-Yukon border at the summits, a transition period followed where local groups adapted to the new borderlands reality. In the first months after the temporary border was established, it appears that the Mounted Police continued to allow U.S. customs officers to accompany goods are far as Lake Bennett, as there was no immediate move to station an American customs official at the summits. On 19 March, Deputy

Collector Floyd reportedly approached the police at the Chilkoot summit about stationing an

American customs officer at Lake Bennett to cancel bonds, but the police refused.169 By 20

April, Floyd complained that some customs brokers, companies authorized by U.S. Customs to handle bonded goods at Skagway and Dyea, began instructing their convoys and customers “to go to the summit only and their convoys always return from the summit, going no farther.”170

With no customs officer stationed at the summits and no new instructions on bonding regulations, Floyd had no choice but to insist that convoys go as far as Lake Bennett.

Minster of the Interior Sifton’s late December 1897 agreement with President McKinley and Secretary Gage to allow Canadian bonded goods to travel through American territory

168 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 31, Vol. 10, Floyd to Ivey, 25 December 1897. 169 Anderson to Barry, 20 March 1898. 170 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 65, Vol. 3, Floyd to Ivey, 20 April 1898.

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without an escort was supposed to be brought into effect on 2 February 1898, when the

Americans published their revised customs regulations.171 As of 16 February 1898, however, just before the police opened their posts at the summits, Superintendent Perry reported “no change in

Customs regulations” at Skagway and Dyea.172 He noted that “persons with Canadian Goods complaining bitterly,” but “American Customs officers say they have no instructions yet re new bonding regulations.”173

Part of the reason for the delay in implementing new bonding regulations, D.J. Hall notes, was the United States Congress’ efforts to pass an extension of the Homestead Act to Alaska - necessary to allow Americans to gain title to federal lands in Alaska and transportation companies to acquire charters to construct roads, railways, and other infrastructure (see Chapter

7). It appears that some efforts were also made in Congress to use the Act as leverage to gain concessions from Canada regarding the rights of Americans in the Yukon. In March 1898,

Canada negotiated an amendment to the Act that would, in Hall’s words, “provide for reciprocal bonding and transshipment privileges and reciprocal mining rights for Canadian and American citizens in Alaska and the Yukon.”174 The extension of the Homestead Act was finally passed on

14 May 1898 and American customs official at Dyea and Skagway fully implemented the customs regulations changes. On 25 May 1898, Superintendent S.B. Steele reported to White that “U.S. Customs have abolished the Convoy system + there is now an official stationed at the

Summit - whose duty is to certify that bonded goods have arrived in Canadian Territory.”175

171 For a copy of the regulations see: LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 69, United States Treasury Department Memorandum, 2 February 1898. 172 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Perry to White, 16 February 1898. 173 Ibid. 174 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 186. 175 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Steele to White, 25 May 1898.

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Superintendent Samuel Benfield Steele had been ordered to the Yukon by Comptroller

White on 28 January 1898, with instructions to take command of the Chilkoot and White passes and Lake Bennett.176 Described by William R. Morrison as “the most famous Mounted

Policeman of his day,” Steele was born in Upper Canada in 1849. He served in both the 1866

Fenian Raids and the 1870 Red River Expedition before joining the North-West Mounted Police when it was formed in 1873.177 He gained fame during the construction of the Canadian Pacific

Railway, helping to protect construction crews and keep the peace with indigenous groups, and was present for the driving of the last spike in 1885.178 By 1898, Steele was one of the most competent administrators in the Mounted Police and White hoped that he was the best person to supervise the police stationed at the temporary border.

Inspector Belcher, Inspector Cartwright, and the rest of the police stationed at the

Chilkoot and White Pass summits faced tough conditions during the winter and spring of 1898.

From the moment the Mounted Police arrived at the temporary border in early February, they faced a constant battle with the harsh winter conditions. On the Chilkoot summit, Belcher wrote that “the weather was one continual storm with a few intervals of moderate or fine days.”179 By the last week of March, he wrote, “the heavy fall of snow and drift completely buried our cabin as well as all the tents and caches on the Summit.”180 On the White Pass summit, Inspector F.L.

Cartwright reported similar conditions. “The weather was as a general rule blustery during the months of February, March and April,” he wrote, “the snow drifting in places to a depth of from

176 BPSC, SSSC, Box 104, File 31, Herchmer to Steele, 28 January 1898. 177 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 34. 178 Ibid., 34-35; Charlotte Gray, “Faded Hero: How Canada Forgot – and Then Rediscovered – Sir Sam Steele,” The Walrus, October 12, 2010. 179 R. Belcher, “Annual Report of Inspector Belcher,” 30 November 1898, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 93. 180 Ibid., 90.

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15 to 20 feet on the immediate Summit.”181 As a consequence of the bad weather at the summits,

Belcher wrote, “it was almost impossible to thoroughly examine outfits for the reason that if people were delayed on the Summit serious results would have followed and probably some deaths occurred.”182

Both Belcher and Cartwright reported that the largest numbers of miners crossed the summit during March and April. Belcher estimated that between 26 February and 30 June 1898

“about 25,000 to 30,000 people crossed the Summit.”183 Cartwright wrote that “the customs work necessitated the constant employment of one non-commissioned officer and three constables, in addition to… a regular guard,” and took up much of Cartwright’s own time.184

During the busiest times, Cartwright continued “the men on customs work had exceptionally hard work and long hours, going on at 7 a.m. and staying till 7 p.m., the men employed in office often working till 12 midnight, and sometimes till 2 a.m.”185 Cartwright also noted that “the traffic was so great at times that it was necessary for us to interfere in order to prevent a jam.”186

As Belcher explained, “at the busiest times during March and April I found it necessary to have men on duty to regulate the traffic and keep the trails open on the Summit,…besides the men regularly detailed to assist the customs outside.”187

Belcher also reported that, in addition to customs work and police duties, the police stationed at the summits were almost constantly besieged by miners seeking information or help with any variety of subject. Many of the would-be miners, for example, arrived at the foot of the

181 F.L. Cartwright, “Annual Report of Inspector F.L. Cartwright,” 1898, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 114. 182 Belcher, “Annual Report of Inspector Belcher,” 94. 183 Ibid., 91. 184 Cartwright, “Annual Report of Inspector F.L. Cartwright,” 111. 185 Ibid., 114. 186 Ibid., 112. 187 Belcher, “Annual Report of Inspector Belcher,” 91.

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trail in partnerships of two or more men, but once they started over the summit, Belcher noted,

“the heavy work soon began to tell on their tempers, causing frequent disagreements between the members of parties.”188 The result was that many partners wanted to split up, but, he wrote, “this could never be done without an appeal to us.”189 “In most cases,” he explained, “I pointed out to them that… they should endeavour to keep as cheerful and as good tempered as possible, assist one another, look over little defects which did not show up when things were running smoothly, and they would reach the promised land as good friends as when they started.”190 He continued,

“this generally effected a reconciliation, and I noticed that in many cases that the parties were on very good terms when they left the Summit for good,” although he noted “in some cases other means had to be employed.”191 Belcher concluded that “between these cases, and the almost continual inquiry for information upon every possible and impossible subject with which we had to deal, besides the collection of customs and other ordinary duties, our time was fully occupied.”192

Customs work at the Chilkoot and White Pass summits also brought the police into conflict with Canadian customs officials.193 One such official was John Godson, who had been appointed sub-collector of customs at Tagish in the fall of 1897. Once the police were ordered to establish customs posts at the summits, the post at Tagish was closed. Godson was demoted and ordered to report to Inspector Belcher at the Chilkoot summit. On 26 March, however,

Superintendent Perry reported that he had learned from A.R. Milne, Collector of Customs at

Victoria, in charge of all customs officers in the Yukon, that “Godson has failed to carry out

188 Ibid., 91. 189 Ibid., 91. 190 Ibid., 91. 191 Ibid., 91. 192 Ibid., 91. 193 For more on Mounted Police views on customs work see: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 54-55.

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instructions sent to him” and refused to leave Lake Bennett and report to Belcher.194 Apparently angry with his demotion, Perry wrote on 4 May, “Mr. Godson has written several letters to Mr.

Milne” in which “he casts some reflections upon the manner in which the customs work is being done” by the police, including an accusation that Inspector Strickland had bribed a customs broker, A.F. Englehardt, to leave the summit of White Pass.195 The police also clashed with another Canadian customs officials, John E. Whiteside, who had been instructed by Milne in

April to “proceed to White Pass & there report yourself for duty as Clerk of Customs.”196 Once on the White Pass summit, Whiteside wrote to Commissioner Walsh, “I noticed the very lax way

Customs work was carried on,” and confidentially wrote to Milne to express his concerns, accusing the police of poor bookkeeping and altering cash books to cover up incorrect information.197

The accusations by Godson and Whiteside were met with anger by Superintendent Steele.

He wrote to Comptroller White on 28 June 1898 that “the Customs Officers previously sent to this country from Victoria made a point from the date of their arrival to endeavor to ruin the reputations of the officers of the N.W.M.Police stationed on the Summits.”198 Whiteside, Steele wrote, “was sent up from Skagway for what purpose I know not, unless it was to obtain private information on the merest hearsay,” suggesting that Milne had sent Whiteside to spy on the police at the summits.199 “He wrote some of the most atrocious letters that I ever read, false, vile, officious emanations from his own disordered brain,” he continued.200 Milne “appears to have placed no credence in these false reports” and Steele reported that “I have looked into every

194 BPSC, SSSC, Box 104, File 34, Perry to Steele, 26 March 1898. 195 LAC, RG18, Vol. 153, File 358, Perry to White, 4 May 1898; Steele to Milne, 21 May 1898 2. 196 LAC, RG18, Vol. 153, File 358, Milne to Whiteside, 14 April 1898. 197 LAC, RG18, Vol. 153, File 358, Whiteside to J.M. Walsh, 28 June 1898. 198 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 69, Steele to White, 28 June 1898. 199 Ibid. 200 Ibid.

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accusation which has been made, and find out that there is not an atom of truth in any of the charges.”201

Fortunately for Steele and the police at the summits, by June 1898 the Customs

Department had sent an official collector of customs to the summits to take over customs duties from the Mounted Police. Inspector J.W.Y. Clute arrived at Lake Bennett on 20 June and sent sub-collectors to the summits to relieve Belcher and Cartwright of their customs duties.202

Belcher moved his detachment to Lake Lindeman on 30 June, leaving “a corporal and two constables, who remained for duty on the Summit, as well as to assist the customs officials.”203

Inspector Cartwright likewise left the White Pass summit on 7 July 1898 to begin construction of winter quarters at Log Cabin.204

The move to replace Belcher and Cartwright with official sub-collectors caused some confusion for the U.S. customs officers stationed at the summits. Following the extension of the

Homestead Act to Alaska on 14 May 1898, U.S. Customs sent two deputy collectors of customs to the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes to cancel bonds. Deputy Collector Wm. Zimmer arrived at the Chilkoot Summit on 25 May, initially bunking with the agent for the Chilkoot

Railroad and Transport Company.205 By 18 June, he reported that there was still some confusion over where the Alaska-Yukon border was located. “Is there any foundation to the rumor that the boundary line between the U.S. and B.C. is established at Bennett,”206 he wrote to Ivey. “If there is no truth in it please to give me authority to go ahead and fix up some sort of quarters to do

201 Ibid. 202 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 69, Steele to White, 2 July 1898. 203 Belcher, “Annual Report of Inspector Belcher,” 92. 204 Cartwright, “Annual Report of Inspector F.L. Cartwright,” 112. 205 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 12, Wm. Zimmer to Ivey, 26 May 1898. 206 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 12, Zimmer to Ivey, 18 June 1898.

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business and sleep in. Am still using my hat for an office and my knee for a desk. What shall I do if my hat should blow away and my legs freeze off,” he remarked.207 After Inspector Belcher left the Chilkoot summit on 30 June, Zimmer informed Ivey that “the mounted police [sic] are breaking camp here and moving to Lake Lindeman.”208 “Am I expected to follow?” he asked,

“looks to me that I should as I am expected to turn all bonded goods over to Canadian Customs officers upon their arrival.”209 Then on 16 July, Zimmer reported that “the Canadian Customs officials have left the Summit and moved to Linderman.” He continued, “the Canadian Custom office has also moved on the White Pass back from the summit to a point called Log Cabin. The mounted police [sic] have also gone to Linderman from here, all but three men who still fly their flag here. I shall stay here until ordered otherwise. My opinion is that I ought to be at

Linderman.”210

The decision for the Mounted Police and Canadian customs officials to retreat from the

Chilkoot and White passes for customs purposes was rooted in a number of factors. By July

1898, the main rush over the Chilkoot and White passes during the winter of 1897-1898 had ended. The police at the summits had also spent the previous winter battling tough conditions at the summits that made it difficult to collect customs duties on goods crossing the temporary border. The decision was made, then, to move the Canadian customs offices on the Chilkoot and

White passes to Lake Lindeman and Log Cabin, so that customs duties could be collected in more pleasant conditions during the winter months, leaving a small number of Mounted Police at the summits to continue to enforce the temporary border. On 3 August 1898, Deputy Collector

Floyd wrote to Ivey that “Mr. Payne who was placed on the White Pass frontier” in May 1898

207 Ibid. 208 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 12, Zimmer to Ivey, 1 July 1898. 209 Ibid. 210 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 12, Zimmer to Ivey, 16 July 1898.

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“has stationed himself at ‘Log Cabin’ a place occupied by the Canadian Customs officials on that pass, and situated about 8 miles from Bennett, and 18 miles the other side of the Summit.”211

Floyd continued, “he informs me that objection is no longer made as heretofore, to an officers

[sic] of ours being on the other side of the Summit.”212 Zimmer wrote on 4 August that “I am still on the summit as I cannot go to Linderman as I have no quarters to go to.”213 By 12 November, the Mounted Police at the Chilkoot and White pass summits were also ordered to retreat to

Lindeman and Log Cabin for the winter, “leaving the flag flying” to mark the temporary border.214 As of 16 February 1899, a lonely Zimmer was still stationed at the Chilkoot summit.215

At Skagway and Dyea, Colonel Anderson continued to take a hands-off approach to maintaining law and order during the spring and summer of 1898. He refused to become involved in the disputes between U.S. customs officials and the Mounted Police over the convoy system and the temporary Alaska-Yukon border. On 20 March, Anderson reported that Ivey

“came to me today stating that they had been to the Chilkoot pass yesterday and had been told by the Dominion officer there that Mr. Ivey would not be permitted to place a deputy at Lake

Bennett. Being asked if I would give military assistance, I declined to do so.”216 Anderson also reported on 20 April that Deputy Collector Floyd requested help from the army to enforce customs regulations at Skagway and Dyea. “I have declined to intervene unless there is such a breach of the peace as may justify it, or for the protection of government property, e.g. the

211 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 13, Floyd to Ivey, 3 August 1898 212 Ibid. 213 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 32, Vol. 13, Zimmer to McBride, 4 August 1898. 214 Cartwright, “Annual Report of Inspector F.L. Cartwright,” 113. 215 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 33, Vol. 16, Zimmer to Ivey, 16 February 1899. 216 Anderson to Barry, 20 March 1898.

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customs house, bonded ware house or property in transit unlawfully attacked,” he wrote.217

Likewise, Anderson’s replacement Captain R.J. Yeatman reported that he provided no assistant to the civilian authorities during the events that led to the famous shooting of gangster Soapy

Smith in July 1898, because the U.S. Marshal in Skagway had the situation under control.218

When Anderson and Yeatman did become involved in affairs at Skagway and Dyea, it was in areas directly under the control of the federal government. In March 1898, for example,

Anderson responded to reports that George Brackett’s wagon road on White Pass had been attacked by a mob by inquiring as to whether Brackett had a federal charter to construct the road

- which, of course, he did not because the extension of the Homestead Act had not yet been passed.219 Anderson reported on 1 April that “there has been no mob or riotous violence except in the technical sense, that a number of people have forced their way through the toll gate, or made their way around it.”220 He explained that many of the packers on White Pass claimed that they had constructed parts of the road claimed by Brackett and that Brackett had no right to collect a toll (see Chapter 7). While Brackett did not have a federal charter to collect a toll on his road, Anderson did not force the issue, although he did instruct his men at Skagway that “it is not expected that you should lend any assistance in the collection of tolls.”221 In another example,

Captain Yeatman and twelve enlisted men traveled to Chilkat on 25 July 1898 to investigate reports “that the lives of white people were in imminent danger” of attack from the local indigenous population - reports that Yeatman found to be untrue.222

217 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 20 April 1898. 218 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, R.J. Yeatman to Barry, 9 July 1898. 219 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Henry P. McClain to Commanding Officer, Skagway, 25 March 1898; McClain to George Brackett, 26 March 1898. 220 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 1 April 1898, 221 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, McClain to Commanding Officer, Skagway, 29 March 1898. 222 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Yeatman to Barry, 4 July 1898.

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Both Anderson and Yeatman were reluctant to become involved in civilian affairs at

Skagway and Dyea, unless there was a direct threat of violence or mob rule. Anderson reported on 17 April that, “since my assumption of command in this District, there have been no mobs or riotous assemblies, and no lawlessness and violence and but for violation of criminal law more serious than misdemeanors. In no case that I am aware of had there been any resistance of the civil authorities and the military has in no instances been asked for assistance.”223 He even suggested on 1 May that his detachment at Dyea could be replaced by a company local volunteers.224 Yeatman added on 14 May that “there had not been since the arrival of the troops at this point (March 8th 1898) any organized opposition to the law or even any threat or indications of mob violence.”225 He wrote on 9 July that “I have carefully avoided any interference with matters here as civil authorities have been able to attend to them.”226

While most of the American population at the head of the Lynn Canal quickly, if begrudgingly, adapted to the move to establish a temporary border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, in Ottawa Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government remained concerned that the reaction to the efforts of the Mounted Police might threaten Canadian sovereignty. Sifton biographer D.J. Hall writes that Sifton was particularly alarmed by the arrival of Colonel

Anderson and the 14th Infantry at Skagway and Dyea, coincidently on the same day that the

Mounted Police began collecting customs duties at the Chilkoot and White passes. Believing that the U.S. Army was there to back up American border claims, he continued to increase the number of Mounted Police reinforcements to the Yukon. By late March, Hall writes, “Canada

223 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Barry, 17 April 1898. 224 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Anderson to Corbin, 1 May 1898. 225 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Yeatman to Barry, 14 May 1898. 226 Yeatman to Barry, 9 July 1898.

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felt constrained to send some two hundred troops of the permanent militia force to strengthen the hand of the NWMP in maintaining order and to counterbalance the presence of several companies of American regulars in the district.”227 The decision to send in the Yukon Field

Force, as the militia group was known, was also linked to Sifton’s desire to construct an all-

Canadian railway along the Stikine River route to the Yukon (discussed in Chapter 7), and the force traveled to the Yukon along this route, in part to avoid a continuous crossing of the

Chilkoot or White passes and in part to prove the Stikine route’s viability.

The decision to establish the temporary border also appears to have caused some friction between Sifton and Commissioner of the Yukon Territory J.M. Walsh. Sifton’s first biographer

J.W. Dafoe claimed that Walsh became angry that Sifton ordered the Mounted Police to take control of the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes without consulting him.228 As discussed in Chapter 3, Walsh’s administrative party had been forced into camp near the month of the Big

Salmon River in November 1897, on their way to Dawson City, because of winter ice. When

Walsh learned of the organization of the Alaska Relief Expedition, he wrote to Sifton that he considered it his duty to return to Skagway and investigate. Leaving his winter quarters on 14

February 1898, Walsh returned to the coast, where he likely learned that the relief expedition had been canceled and that the Mounted Police had been ordered to the summits of the Chilkoot and

White passes.229 It seems then that Walsh tried to resign his position and return to the south, despite agreeing to serve as commissioner until the end of the summer. Sifton was able to

227 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 181. On the Yukon Field Force see also: Brereton Greenhous, Guarding the Goldfields: The Story of the Yukon Field Force (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1987). 228 Quoted in Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 34. 229 J.M. Walsh, “Report of Major J.M. Walsh,” in Government of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of the Interior, 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), 318-320.

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convince him to travel to Dawson and remain in his position until his replacement, Dominion

Land Surveyor William Ogilvie, arrived.230

In addition to increasing the number of Mounted Police and Canadian militia in the

Yukon and maintaining stability in the Commissioner’s office, the government passed the Yukon

Territory Act on 13 June 1898, which officially separated the Yukon Territory from the North-

West Territories and implemented a separate government that could be directly controlled by

Sifton. The new territory was governed by the Commissioner of the Yukon Territory and an appointed council, who both reported directly to the minister of the interior. The appointed council consisted of judges, Mounted Police officers, and Canadian government officials, all of whom could be counted on to enforce government policy and keep the Yukon government out of the hands of the large American population in the region.231 While the Canadian government remained concerned about Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon, the local negotiations that followed the arrival of the Mounted Police at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes suggest that the government’s efforts were largely unnecessary.

As this chapter has discussed, the move by the Mounted Police and the Canadian government to establish the temporary Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and

White passes - in light of the customs disputes - led to a round of local, borderlands negotiations between the Mounted Police, the U.S. Army, American and Canadian customs officials, and miners. This type of negotiation - characteristic of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - did not necessarily involve direct negotiations between parties. After the Mounted

Police began enforcing the temporary border, Colonel Anderson did send inquires to the police,

230 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 192. 231 Ibid., 190–191.

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but ultimately decided on his own not to press the issue, while the U.S. customs officials at

Skagway and Dyea were simply too busy to react. Without direct instructions from their superiors, the U.S. Army and American customs officials came to an informal understanding with the police that they would be allowed to enforce the location of the temporary border until the rush subsided and the border question could be answered. All three groups remained busy dealing with weather conditions, collecting customs duties, investigating threats of unrest, and answering the inquiries of thousands of miners on their way to the Klondike. While American miners in the region remained angry with the efforts of the Mounted Police to enforce the temporary border and collect customs duties, they begrudgingly accepted the new borderlands reality. Over the course of the 1898 season, the Mounted Police and U.S. customs officials in particular continued to adjust to changing conditions at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, with both groups moving back to Lake Lindeman and Log Cabin when the main rush to the Klondike subsided and the winter of 1898-1899 approached.

Outside of the Lynn Canal region, the Canadian government played a cursory role in these local negotiations, and remained concerned about protecting Canadian sovereignty in the

Yukon - emphasizing the different understandings of the situation in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands between federal governments and their agents on the ground as the Alaska-Yukon border developed. Internationally, Canada, Britain and the United States agreed to submit the boundary question to the Joint High Commission, where a permanent location of the Alaska-

Yukon border could be set (see Conclusion). While those negotiations were taking place, the

U.S. Army, the Mounted Police, customs officials, and other local groups continued to work to create a functional Lynn Canal border that respected national territories and allowed people and goods to flow across the border. Indeed, despite their efforts to enforce the location of the

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temporary Alaska-Yukon border, the Mounted Police spent much of 1898 working to develop a borderlands transportation system that allowed them to bring their own supplies across the border, as will be seen in the next chapter.

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Chapter 7 The Mounted Police and the Yukon Transportation System, 1898

During the fall of 1897, the Mounted Police carried most of their own supplies over the

Chilkoot and White passes, with some assistance from small packing operations, in large part because the Lynn Canal routes were simply not well developed. There were few transportation companies or infrastructure in place to move large amounts of freight. But as increasing numbers of miners went over the passes during the fall and winter, peaking in March and April 1898, they were followed by enterprising men looking to take advantage of the rush of miners and develop a profitable transportation system. Throughout the fall and early winter, when increasing numbers of pack horses were brought to Skagway and Dyea, these men started making improvements to the Chilkoot and White passes, building trails, bridges, camps, and, eventually, wagon roads, aerial tramways, and railways. More transportation companies began offering packing services over the Chilkoot and White passes and steamer service on the Yukon River.1

At the same time, the Mounted Police began looking for ways to improve their own transportation system for bringing provisions and supplies to the Yukon. They hoped to reduce the amount of work that had to be done by the police themselves and create a more reliable system.2 As the Yukon transportation routes became more developed, the police made contracts and partnerships with many of the newly formed transportation companies operating in the

Yukon. This chapter breaks the developing Mounted Police-Yukon transportation system into its component parts. The system began at the Vancouver Office, established in 1898 to oversee forwarding men and supplies to the Yukon, and ended at Dawson City, the destination for the

1 Transportation routes to the Yukon are a popular topic for Klondike historians, but the development of the Yukon transportation system is specifically analyzed by: Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History”; Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush. For a non-academic history see: Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike. 2 Mounted Police transportation and supply problems in the Yukon are discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 43.

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majority of police freight. In between, supplies moved from Skagway, over the Chilkoot and

White pass trails, to Lake Bennett, along the river and lake journey to Dawson City, and down the Yukon River or St. Michael route. In all components of the transportation system, the police began 1898 largely continuing to pack supplies themselves or relying on small contracts with packing companies to supply their posts. But as the transportation routes continued to develop over the course of the year, the police increasingly took advantage of new, larger transportation companies and better transportation infrastructure to make the job of provisioning easier. By the end of 1898, the Mounted Police had emerged from the chaos of the height of the gold rush with a more established and reliable borderlands transportation system on all routes, but not a perfect system.

As discussed in Chapter 6, Mounted Police efforts to establish the location of a temporary

Alaska-Yukon border at the summit of the Chilkoot and White passes during the first months of

1898 did much to transform the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to bordered region.

But establishing the location of the border was only one part of the remaking of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands. Incorporating the Yukon into the North American industrial economy was another, a process that began with establishing a reliable and stable transportation system in the region.3 During the first months of the rush to the Klondike, the Mounted Police, small scale packing operations, and individual miners had started this process on the Chilkoot and White

Pass routes to the Klondike, at the same time as transportation companies failed to deliver supplies to Dawson on the Yukon River route. During the 1898 season, efforts to link the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands to the North American transportation network began in earnest. The

Mounted Police and the transportation companies they partnered with worked to develop a

3 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush.

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borderlands transportation network to bring supplies to the Yukon, despite police efforts to establish the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes.

At the same time as the Mounted Police were developing a borderlands transportation system, however, the Canadian government in Ottawa was pushing for the development of an all-Canadian route to the Yukon. Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton in particular was concerned that both the Yukon River route to the Yukon and the Chilkoot and White passes required passing through American territory, meaning that the Canadian government - and

Canadian business interests - had to go through another country to reach their own territory.4

During his October 1897 visit to Skagway and Dyea (see Chapter 3), Sifton personally inspected

Taku Inlet and the Stikine River, where Canada had navigation rights to bypass American territory, in search of a practical route to the Klondike. By January 1898, Sifton had decided to build an all-Canadian railway from Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, at the head of navigation on the Stikine River, to Teslin Lake and the headwaters of the Yukon River. The government signed a contract with William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, old Manitoba friends of Sifton, on

26 January 1898 to complete the railway by 1 September 1898. In exchange, the government agreed to transfer 25,000 acres of land per mile of railway to Mackenzie and Mann, including land bordering 960 miles of creeks in the Klondike, where they would only be charged 1% royalties for gold removed instead of the 10% charged to miners. The bill approving the contract was passed in the House of Commons, but it stalled in the Senate amid anger at the estimated

3.75 million acres of public land granted to Mackenzie and Mann and the generous tax agreement. Much to the anger of the Liberal government, the Conservative Senate defeated the

4 For a good discussion of the problem see: Campbell Jr., Anglo-American Understanding, 1898-1903, 66, 70-74, 102-103.

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bill on 27 March 1898.5 By the end of the 1898 season, however, the efforts of the Mounted

Police to establish a borderlands transportation system in the Yukon had made an all-Canadian route irrelevant.

Vancouver Office

In late December 1897, Mounted Police Comptroller Fred White instructed

Superintendent A.B. Perry to establish an office at Vancouver or Victoria to oversee the shipment of police supplies to the Yukon and make the role filled by Commissioner Herchmer during the fall of 1897 (see chapter 3) an official position. White wrote to Perry on 20 December

1897 that Minister of the Interior Sifton “has decided to station an officer of the Mounted Police, temporarily, at Victoria, B.C., to act as a medium between the Department and the Yukon

District in the purchasing and forwarding of supplies.”6 Perry arrived in Vancouver in early

January 1898 and established his office in that city.

Perry’s primary responsibilities were to order police supplies in Vancouver and Victoria and arrange for their transport to the Yukon. Once it had been decided what supplies were needed, either by White, officers stationed in the Yukon (primarily Z.T. Wood or S.B. Steele), or

Perry himself, Perry would select a Vancouver or Victoria firm to purchase the supplies and make arrangements with transportation companies, either under contract or on ad-hoc basis, to ship the supplies to Skagway or Dawson. The process for purchasing supplies could take several forms. When purchasing an order of hardware in June 1898, Perry wrote to White that “I forwarded copies of the Schedule to all the leading hardware houses in Victoria, Vancouver and

5 Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 168, 171, 179-180, 182-188; Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History,” 27–28; Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 99-101, 150-153. The failure of the all-Canadian railway project is discussed by: Peyton, “Moving through the Margins: The ‘All-Canadian’ Route to the Klondike and the Strange Experience of the Teslin Trail.” 6 LAC, RG18, Vol. 194, File 640, White to Perry, 20 December 1897.

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New Westminster. I received nine tenders and I allotted the different articles to the lowest tenderer in every case with one or two exceptions.”7 In other cases, particularly when time was short, Perry simply selected a wholesaler and sent a request for the required goods. On 19 July

1898, for example, Perry wrote to the Vancouver Hardware Company: “please ship by S.S. City of Seattle Sailing to-morrow night (20th. inst.), the supplies in enclosed list.”8 And sometimes

Perry requested goods to police specifications. For example, on 18 June he wrote to J. Piercy &

Co. of Victoria asking the company to have six 6x10 tents made and shipped to Steele at Lake

Bennett via Skagway.9 On occasion, Perry also ordered supplies from outside of Vancouver and

Victoria. On 7 June 1898, for example, he received 125 cases canned meat, 29 cases vegetables,

165 boxes biscuits, 5 boxes tea tablets, and 3 demijohns vinegar from Lockerby & Co. in

Montreal.10

Once supplies had been ordered, delivered, and shipped, Perry communicated with White and the officers in the Yukon that the supplies were on the way, and kept track of the shipments to ensure they arrived. On 16 June 1898, for example, he wrote to White that “I hereby certify that Messrs. Wilson Bros. of Victoria have delivered 400 boxes, 10,000 lbs., Prunes, which were shipped to Dawson, via St. Michaels, per S.S. Portland.”11 Perry’s communication to the officers in the Yukon was often simply “I enclose herewith lists of articles forwarded this day per S.S.

Athenian to Lake Bennett,” as he wrote to Steele on 16 June.12 If goods were being shipped to

Skagway, Perry always coordinated with Sergeant Green at Skagway, so he could make arrangements to have the goods taken over the passes. Once the police freight arrived in the

7 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to White, 15 June 1898. 8 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to Vancouver Hardware Company, 19 July 1898. 9 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to J. Piercy & Co., 18 June 1898. 10 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 7 June 1898. 11 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to White, 16 June 1898. 12 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to Steele, 16 June 1898.

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Yukon, the receiving officers would write to Perry that the goods had arrived, and Perry would inform White in Ottawa.

After supplies had been received and shipped north, Perry was then responsible for forwarding what the police called “vouchers” for all goods purchased and all transportation costs, to Ottawa, where payments could be processed.13 Once the vouchers reached Ottawa and the payments were confirmed, White would send cheques for each vender to Perry. In a 10 June

1898 example, White wrote to Perry that “I enclose herewith the cheque of Messrs. R.P. Rithit &

Co., Victoria, for $2043.33 endorsed back to their order.”14 Once the cheques arrived in

Vancouver, Perry was responsible for sending them to each vendor. Perry wrote to the Hudson’s

Bay Company on 24 June that “I have the honour to enclose herewith official cheque No. 2523 in your favour for $494.10. Please sign and return the enclosed receipts without delay.”15 The

Vancouver Office repeated this process of purchasing supplies, shipping them to the Yukon, and arranging for the vendor to be paid over and over during the 1898 season.

In addition to the purchasing and forwarding of supplies, the Vancouver Office also served as an essential go-between for Ottawa and the police in the Yukon. During the height of the gold rush, Vancouver was the last point within telegraph communication with Ottawa, meaning that the fastest way for White to send orders to the Yukon was to telegraph them to

Perry in Vancouver, where Perry could send them north on the next available steamer. The fastest way for Wood, Steele, or the other officers in the Yukon to communicate with White was to send their letters and reports to Perry by boat, and Perry would telegram any urgent matters

13 On 2 May, for example, Perry sent White $4059.13 in vouchers, including $1827.92 to McMillan & Hamilton of Vancouver, $61.60 to Evans, Coleman & Evans of Vancouver, $730.00 to the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company, and $597.91 to W.S. Fraser & Co. of Victoria. Other popular wholesalers in Vancouver and Victoria included Thomas Dunn and Company, Fred Allen, Wilson Bros and the Hudson’s Bay Company. LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, Perry to White, 2 May 1898; J.H. McIllree to White, 28 March 1898. 14 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, White to Perry, 10 June 1898. 15 LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to Hudson’s Bay Company, 24 June 1898.

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immediately to White and forward the letters to Ottawa by regular mail. Perry was also instructed in his 20 December orders to assist in “the collecting and reporting to Ottawa of such information as will keep the Government fully informed of the occurrences on the Pacific Coast relating to the Yukon country.”16 With much of the Klondike traffic passing through Vancouver and Victoria, Perry was in a good position to gather any information from the Yukon, whether stories, rumours, or concrete knowledge, and keep Ottawa informed, as he organized the purchasing and transportation of Mounted Police supplies to Lake Bennett and Dawson City.

Skagway to Lake Bennett

When White ordered Superintendent Perry to establish the Vancouver Office on 20

December 1898, he also suggested that “it is very desirable that you should make a trip north to familiarize yourself with the locations of Skagway and Dyea and the approaches to the passes; also the facilities for discharging and handling stores.”17 He continued, “you will also obtain from Insp. [Z.T.] Wood [then the Mounted Police agent at Skagway] full particulars of the stores which have been sent forward, the points to which they had advanced by last reports received by him, the quantities at Skagway waiting shipment, and an estimate of any further supplies which may be required.”18 Perry left Vancouver on 29 December on the American steamer City of

Seattle and arrived at Skagway on the morning of 2 January, where he spent the day meeting with Inspector Wood, before returning to Victoria.19

At Skagway, Perry found that the Chilkoot and White passes were undergoing considerable development, as increasing numbers of miners were going into the interior. Parks

16 White to Perry, 20 December 1897. 17 LAC, RG18, Vol. 194, File 640, White to Perry, 20 December 1897 3. 18 White to Perry, 20 December 1897. 19 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, Perry to White, 7 January 1898. Perry also investigated the convoy system at Skagway and Dyea during this trip, as discussed in Chapter 6.

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Canada historian Gordon Bennett writes that “horses that had been slated for the glue factory only days before found themselves relegated” to the Chilkoot and White passes, as increasing numbers of horses were shipped to Skagway and Dyea and packing operations expanded.20 On the Chilkoot Pass, Bennett identifies a number of improvement projects completed during the fall of 1897. A toll bridge was constructed over the Taiya River a half-mile from Dyea, a wagon road was built as far as Finnegan’s Point, six miles from Dyea, and once winter set in, one enterprising group cut 150 steps into the ice between the Scales and the Summit, and charged a toll for its use (see Figure 3). Horses were better suited to the lower gradients of the White Pass, but, as discussed in Chapter 3, the low, boggy nature of the first miles of the trail led to its nickname “Dead Horse Trail.” After the trail had to be closed in late August 1897 during a particularly rainy period, packers began making improvements to the trail. Eventually George

Brackett constructed a wagon road as far as White Pass City, ten miles from Skagway. As discussed in Chapter 6, Brackett attempted to collect a $20 per ton toll for use of the road, which caused considerable controversy in Skagway.21 As a consequence of expanding packing operations on the passes, indigenous packers increasingly found themselves forced out.22

In addition to the packer’s improvements to the Chilkoot and White pass trails, by the time of Perry’s visit, many newly formed transportation companies had arrived at Skagway and

Dyea with plans for large scale transportation projects. On the Chilkoot, many enterprising companies began constructing aerial tramways to deliver freight to the summit.23 The first

20 Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History,” 34. 21 Bennett, 30, 34-35. 22 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 69-70. 23 On the Chilkoot tramways see: Ibid.; Frank Norris, “Chilkoot Tramways,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/series.htm?id=2424B70B-1DD8- B71B-0B5EA3ABD486C1B7.

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Figure 6 Map of the Skagway to Lake Bennett and Lake Bennett to Dawson City Routes, 1898. By the author. 326

mechanical hauling operations appeared on the Chilkoot just before the main rush. Juneau ferry operator P.H. Peterson had constructed a simple gravity powered hoist on the Chilkoot in 1896, and on 17 February 1898, he leased it to an J.F. Hielscher of Dyea, who operated the hoist during the height of the gold rush. In the spring of 1897, Archie Burns, a veteran of the Fortymile and

Circle City rushes, began operating a horse powered hoist from the Scales to the false summit, consisting of a simple sled and pully.24 By early 1898, Burns had partnered with the C. W.

Young Freighting and Trading Company and was operating a steam powered hoist from the

Scales to the summit. In late February, the Burns tramway was handling five tons of goods a day.

In April 1898, the steam powered hoist was upgraded to a gasoline engine, which is still on the

Chilkoot pass today.25

The first enterprise to begin constructing an aerial tramway to the Chilkoot summit was the Dyea-Klondike Transportation Company. A steam boiler was brought to Canyon City to generate electricity for the tramway, and during the winter of 1897-1898 the company constructed small towers between the Scales and the Summit to run the cable. The tramway opened for business on 14 March 1898.26 A second aerial tramway built by the Alaska Railroad and Transportation Company, an arm of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, began operating sometime in April 1898.27 This gasoline powered tramway was about 6,000 feet long and

24 Frank Norris, “Chilkoot Tramways and the Peterson Hoist,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/chilkoot-tramways.htm. 25 Frank Norris, “Archie Burns’ Chilkoot Tramway,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/archie-burns-tramway.htm. 26 Frank Norris, “The Dyea-Klondike Transportation Company Tramway,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/dkt-tramway.htm. 27 According to Frank Norris, “Of the three aerial cable operations, the AR&T tram was the center tram in the “Golden Stairs” area; it was east of the CR&T tram, and west of the DKT route.” Frank Norris, “Alaska Railroad and Transportation Company Tramway,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/art-tramway.htm.

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terminated just north of the Chilkoot summit.28 The third and most ambitious aerial tramway constructed in the spring of 1898 was built by the Chilkoot Railroad and Transport Company.

The line stretched from Canyon City to Stone Crib, near Crater Lake, with towers built every

3,000 to 6,000 feet to maintain the tension in the line, and became operational in May 1898.29 By

June 1898, the three aerial tramway on the Chilkoot merged under the Chilkoot Railroad and

Transport Company.30

On the White Pass, the major improvement companies were George Brackett’s Skagway

& Yukon Transportation & Improvement Company and the White Pass and Yukon Route railway. George A. Brackett, Joseph H. Acklen (a Nashville lawyer and former congressman), and Norman R. Smith (a local civil engineer and surveyor), founded the Skagway & Yukon

Transportation & Improvement Company on 13 October 1897 and immediately began construction of a wagon road from Skagway to the White Pass summit. Brackett, an experienced railway supplier and contractor who had worked on the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and

Canadian Pacific railways and a former alderman and mayor of Minneapolis, was in charge of construction. By mid-November 1897, he had seventy-five men working on the road. Eight miles of road was complete by mid-December. Despite the speed of construction, however, the

Brackett wagon road faced numerous problems. As discussed in Chapter 6, since the Homestead

Act had not yet been extended to Alaska, the company was not able to apply for a government charter for the wagon road. Both Brackett and Acklen spent considerable time lobbying

Washington officials to quickly extend the Act. Brackett also lobbied Canadian officials to grant the company a charter to build the road beyond the summit of White Pass. Brackett’s efforts to

28 Ibid. 29 Frank Norris, “The Chilkoot Railroad and Transportation Company Tramway,” ed. Karl Gurcke, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/crt-tramway.htm. 30 Norris, “The Dyea-Klondike Transportation Company Tramway.”

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collect a toll for use of the road also caused friction with packers on the White Pass trail. The packers accepted that Brackett had constructed the road between Skagway and White Pass City and had to right to collect a toll. But they argued that they had done the majority of the work to improve the trail between White Pass City and the summit. Brackett eventually built a toll gate and fence north of White Pass City to force travelers to pay the toll, much to the anger of the packers. The project was also chronically underfunded. By the end of June 1898, Brackett had sold the wagon road to the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, for use constructing their line.31

The origins of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway lay in the meeting between

William Moore and the British Columbia Development Association’s Ernest Edward

Billinghurst and Charles Herbert Wilkinson in late 1895 (see Chapter1). Moore convinced

Wilkinson that a railway could be built over White Pass. By June 1897, Wilkinson had incorporated three railway companies in the United States, British Columbia, and Canada, one for each jurisdiction a White Pass railway could pass through, but he was unable to secure government funding for the project. In March 1898, one of Wilkinson’s financial backers,

William Close of Close Brothers & Company, a London financial house, exercised a clause in their contract and took over the project. On 23 March 1898, Close Brothers incorporated the

White Pass and Yukon Railway Company, a British holding corporation, to hold all the assets of the White Pass Railway and sell shares to investors. The day after the Homestead Act was extended to Alaska on 14 May 1898, construction of a railway from Skagway to the summit of

White Pass began. The White and Yukon Route railway began operating in a limited fashion in

31 The Brackett Road is discussed extensively by: Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 88-89, 103- 106, 111-26, 198-199. See also: Edwin C. Bearss and Bruce M. White, “George Brackett’s Wagon Road,” Minnesota History 45 (1976): 42-57; YA, MSS 172 81/91, George Brackett Fonds.

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August 1898, but it would take until the winter of 1898-1899 for the railway to become a major factor in the Yukon transportation system.32

With increasing numbers of transportation companies operating on the Chilkoot and

White passes, and the Mounted Police continuing to ship large amounts of supplies to the interior, the transportation companies began reaching out to the police for government contracts.

Scott, McFarlane and Harris of Vancouver and Kingston, Ontario, for example, wrote to White on 12 January 1898 offering their services to transport police freight between Skagway and Dyea and Lakes Lindeman and Bennett.33 White replied on 20 January that, because arrangements had already been made to transport the goods now at Skagway, “at the present moment it would be impossible to make any arrangement with you, but I shall communicate promptly if your services should be required later on.”34

On 24 January, F. Cleveland, President of the Chilkoot Railway and Transportation

Company, wrote to Superintendent Perry in Victoria that “within three or four days” the company would “begin to make contracts for transporting freight from Dyea to Lake Linderman” and “we should like very much to handle the freight of the Northwest Mounted Police.”35 For the packers and larger transportation companies, particularly operations like the Chilkoot tramway, it made sense to seek government contracts. They would benefit from stable revenue from large contracts and gain the reputation as a trusted government contractor. On the police side, White and Perry wanted police freight to be delivered in a timely manner, not to get caught in the backlog of miners and supplies heading to the interior. To address the needs of both parties,

32 The origins of the White Pass Railway are discussed in: Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike; Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History.” Minter’s 1987 popular history of the construction of the railway is the best history of the White Pass Railway, but unfortunately the book is poorly footnoted. 33 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 66, Scott, McFarlane and Harris to White, 12 January 1898. 34 LAC, RG18, Vol. 145, File 66, White to T.S. Scott, 20 January 1898. 35 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, F. Cleveland to Perry, 24 January 1898.

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Cleveland proposed that “you to make a contract which will have precedence over all others at all times,” meaning that Mounted Police freight would have priority over all other freight shipped by the company, ensuring a quick delivery.36 Perry telegrammed White on 31 January that he had made a contract with the Chilkoot Company to transport twenty-five tons of police provisions, hardware, general stores, and forage at a rate of 15 cents per pound between Dyea and Lake Lindeman, with an option to transport an additional twenty-five tons at the same rate.37

Despite the Chilkoot Company’s promise that “our cable over Chilkoot pass will be completed by the 4th or 5th of February and we shall then be in a condition to transport freight safely and expeditiously,” it seems that the Chilkoot tramway was not fully operational until sometime in May 1898.38 But, like most of the other tramway companies on the Chilkoot, the

Chilkoot company was both a tramway and a packing company. When the tramway was finally operational, the company collected freight at a large warehouse in Dyea, before transporting goods on a wagon road that the company claimed as a railway right-of-way to Canyon City.

There it was loaded onto the tramway for the journey over the pass.39 In the period before the tramway was fully operational, the Chilkoot Company could simply pack police supplies over the passes, or as far as the tramway was completed, which allowed them to start making contracts before their tramway was fully constructed. Revenues from government contracts, then, became the means for the company to develop its transportation system.

While the contract was welcomed in Ottawa, it was Inspector Wood who wrote to White on 1 February to express his concerns. “I must inform the department that it will add greatly to

36 Ibid. 37 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 31 January 1898; Perry to White, 1 February 1898. 38 Cleveland to Perry, 24 January 1898. 39 Norris, “The Chilkoot Railroad and Transportation Company Tramway.”

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our expenses and work here” at Skagway, Wood wrote of the contract.40 He explained, “a detachment will have to be placed at Dyea to hand over the stores to the Transpt. Co. and at

Linderman to receive the stores from the Company.”41 A warehouse would also have to be built at Lindeman to store the freight as it arrived and, Wood warned, “a contract will have to be let to move the stores from Linderman to Bennett; the present rate is five cents per pound between these places.”42 Additionally, the police would have to supervise shipping any freight delivered at Skagway to Dyea so it could be handed over to the Company.

This problem was solved by 26 March, when Perry informed White that the Chilkoot

Company had been given permission to transport bonded goods from Dyea to Canadian territory, meaning that the company could now ship goods from Vancouver to Lindeman.43 All Perry had to do was have goods delivered to the Chilkoot Company at Vancouver, and the company would ship them north, store them in their warehouse at Dyea, and transport them over the pass to Lake

Lindeman, all without any police intervention. By 25 July, the Chilkoot Company had also begun transporting freight all the way to Lake Bennett, negating the need for the police to receive goods at Lindeman.44

Between March and August 1898, Perry continued to make contracts with the Chilkoot

Company. He wrote to White on 5 March that fifteen tons of the first contract had been delivered and “I made another contract for supplies of the post at the Summit at ten cents per pound.”45 On

25 July, Perry made a contract to transport twenty-five tons of freight from Dyea to Lake Bennett

40 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Wood to White, 1 February 1898. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 26 March 1898. 44 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 25 July 1898. 45 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 5 March 1898. For the 15 tons number see: LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 25 July 1898 2.

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at a rate of nine cents per pound.46 By late July, however, both Wood and Superintendent S.B.

Steele had expressed dissatisfaction with the Chilkoot Company’s services.47

Steele’s main problem with the company was that their tramway could not be relied upon to deliver freight in a timely manner. He wrote to Perry on 19 July that “this last accident which occurred to the running gear of the tramway belonging to this Company goes to prove the uncertainty of their being capable of forwarding goods on time.”48 He warned, “a similar interruption might occur at any moment.”49 Steele also complained that “serious fires” along the

Chilkoot trail had “resulted in the destruction of some of the towers in connection with the tramway,” forcing the company to cache sixty tons of freight along the trail.50 Although the company expected to repair the damage in two or three days, Steele wrote, “it is quite possible that it will be three or four weeks before this shipment arrives here.”51 Steele complained again on 22 August that “the consignments of supplies &c. are being sent via the Chilcoot [sic]

Tramway and are on the road, but… they are not being pushed through as quickly as they should be.”52 He wrote that “I have written to the Manager of the Company that all supplies (N.W.M.P.) handed over to him to be freighted here must be delivered at Lake Bennett by the first

September.”53

The central problem faced by the Mounted Police, the Chilkoot Company, and everyone else shipping goods over the passes during the 1898 season, was that, although the passes had been developed substantially since the fall of 1897, much work remained to turn the passes into a

46 Perry to White, 25 July 1898 2. 47 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 24 December 1898. 48 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Steele to Perry, 19 July 1898 2. 49 Ibid. 50 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Steele to Perry, 19 July 1898 3. 51 Ibid. 52 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Steele to Perry, 22 August 1898. 53 Ibid.

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reliable transportation route. In addition to delayed construction, equipment failure, and fires,

Steele wrote on 19 July that “at present there have been heavy downfalls of rain on the Chilcoot

[sic] Trail whilst on the White Pass Trail very little has fallen.”54 These factors ensured that the police continued to face significant problems shipping supplies to the interior.

Steele’s solution to the problem was to stop making contracts with the Chilkoot

Company, or any company at Vancouver, and instead ship all good to Skagway, where arrangements could be made with individual companies, depending on the conditions of the trails, “so that economy and regularity in the forwarding of supplies could be observed.”55

Following the recommendation, Perry made his last contract with the Chilkoot Company “early in August at 9 cents per pound,” he wrote on 24 December.56 Between August and November, the Chilkoot Company delivered the rest of the police supplies under contract. In total for the

1898 season, the Mounted Police paid the Chilkoot Company $34.087.11 to transport approximately 147 tons of freight from Skagway and Vancouver to Lakes Lindeman and Bennett

(Figure 1).57

Figure 7 Payments to Chilkoot Company, 1898

54 Steele to Perry, 19 July 1898 2. 55 Steele to Perry, 19 July 1898 2. 56 Perry to White, 24 December 1898. 57 LAC, RG18, Vol. 168, File 229, Perry to White, 7 September 1898; White to Perry, 23 November 1898; White to Perry, 7 December 1898; White to Perry, 21 December 1898; White to Perry, 26 July 1899.

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Despite problems with the Chilkoot Company, the contracts greatly reduced the amount of work required for the police to ship supplies over the passes. During the 1898 season, the police combined their contracts with the Chilkoot Company with contacts with other packers and transportation companies to successfully ship their supplies to the interior, but they continued to seek a more streamlined way to ship freight over the Chilkoot and White passes.

Lake Bennett to Dawson City

Once police supplies were delivered to Lake Bennett, they joined the provisions of thousands of miners who also crossed the passes during the winter of 1897-1898. After dragging their supplies over the passes, the miners gathered at Lindeman and Bennett for the remainder of the winter, building all manner of boats and awaiting spring breakup, when they could float down the Yukon River to Dawson City, where their fortunes awaited. Superintendent Steele joined the miners at Bennett on 28 March 1898, where he established his headquarters, “as I deemed it to be the most convenient point to command the police in the Upper Yukon and to superintend the movement of the immense numbers of people entering the territory,” he wrote in his annual report for 1898.58 According to the traditional narrative of the gold rush, Steele famously worked from dawn to past dusk answering miners’ questions, settling disputes between partners, supervising the construction of boats, and requiring every boat to be registered with the police.59 But Steele was also at Lake Bennett to oversee the forwarding of police supplies to the interior.

58 S.B. Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele, Commanding North-West Mounted Police in the Yukon Territory,” 11 January 1899, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 5. 59 A good summary of the traditional narrative of Yukon transportation is: Coates and Morrison, Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon, 87-99. See also: Berton, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899, 265-78.

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At Lakes Lindeman and Bennett, miners stripped the surrounding region of its timber, building sawmills to whipsaw lumber and construct some 7000 boats during the winter of 1897-

1898.60 When the Mounted Police first started pushing supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes in August 1897, they built their own boats to ship their supplies downriver. But as the

Chilkoot Company and other packers delivered police freight to Bennett during the winter of

1898, with thousands of boat builders there, Steele was able to hire someone to build boats.

Shortly after his arrival in late March, Steele issued a call for bids to build five boats capable of holding four tons of police freight. He received quotes from several individuals and companies, including Bartlett Brothers Packers and Forwarders and the Victoria-Yukon Trading Company, ranging from $1925 to $2250 for five boats.61 On 2 April, Steele made a contract with John B.

Kearney to construct five boats at a cost of $310 per boat, or $1550.62

Steele also made a contract with Bartlett Bros to transport police freight from Bennett to the foot of Lake Laberge.63 Transporting freight as far as Laberge had been part of the plan to forward the rest of the supplies brought in with the reinforcements sent in the fall of 1897 and also to respond to the food shortage at Dawson (see Chapter 5). In January 1898, Commissioner

Walsh instructed Inspector Cortlandt Starnes to establish a post at the foot of Lake Laberge “to receive provisions which were to be shipped from Bennett with horses, build boats and come down the river in the spring to Dawson,” Starnes wrote in his annual report for 1898.64 By 1

May, eight four-ton boats for transporting provisions and six small boats for the detachments had

60 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 51. For pictures of the scene see: “Bennett and Lindeman: Tent Cities on the Lakes,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, https://postalmuseum.si.edu/gold/bennett.html. 61 BPSC, SSSC, Box 104, File 35, Victoria-Yukon Trading Company to Steele, 2 April 1898; Hume and Merkley to A.J. Joyce, 2 April 1898; Bartlett Bros to Steele, 1 April 1898. 62 BPSC, SSSC, Box 104, File 36, John B. Kearney Contract, 2 April 1898. 63 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 4. 64 Cortlandt Starnes, “Annual Report of Inspector C. Starnes,” 1 December 1898, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 65.

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been constructed and, Starnes wrote, “before the roads got too bad on the lakes, forty-five thousand pounds of provisions in good condition had been stored at Lake LaBarge, ready to be loaded for Dawson.”65 He noted that “the freighting from Bennett was done partly by Messrs.

Bartlett Bros. and partly by our own train of horses under Corporal Wilson.”66

In another famous scene of the gold rush, the opening of the Yukon River in May 1898 set loose some 7000 boats floating downriver to Dawson City. The river first opened at Laberge on 9 May. Starnes left Laberge with his flotilla and arrived, “without accident,” at Dawson on 17

May.67 Picking up provisions left during the winter at Hootalinqua and Little Salmon, he had

50,000 pounds in tow.68 At Lake Bennett, Steele began preparing for the opening of the Lakes in mid-May, issuing orders for Inspector D.A.E. Strickland at Tagish post and Customs Officer

John Godson at Bennett to begin registering all boats at Tagish and Bennett, so the police could keep track of them as the miners made their way downriver.69 Lake Bennett finally opened on 30

May. Steele wrote in his diary: “Weather fine. Many hundreds of boats in full sail down the lake.

Think they are too early.”70 Strickland wrote in his 1898 annual report that “the thousands of people who had been camped along the lakes, building boats and waiting for navigation to open, began to swarm down to Tagish.”71 He also noted that “I had received orders from Colonel

Steele to examine all boats passing the post to see that no intoxicants were being smuggled into the country. Colonel Steele had also instructed me to number all the boats and take and register

65 Ibid., Part III, 65. 66 Ibid., Part III, 65. 67 Starnes, “Annual Report of Inspector C. Starnes,” Part III, 65. 68 Ibid., Part III, 65. 69 BPSC, SSSC, 2008.1.1.2.19, Steele, Pocket Diary, Personal, 1898, 17 May 1898; 18 May 1898; 21 May 1898. Steele noted on 18 May that “in taking the names and numbers of the boats a great thing has been done for B.C. first has given Capt Rant a chance to ask each to produce his license for cutting logs to build a boat in B.C.” 70 Ibid., 30 May 1898. 71 D.A.E. Strickland, “Annual Report of Inspector D’A.E. Strickland,” 1 November 1898, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 82.

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the names and addresses of all people passing into the Yukon Territory.”72 During the spring of

1898, Strickland wrote, “I registered the names of about 28,000 people.”73

As the armada of miners and their supplies, and the Mounted Police and their supplies, made their way from Lindeman, Bennett, Tagish, and Laberge to Dawson,74 the first major obstacle they faced was the rapids between Lakes Lindeman and Bennett. On 1 June, Steele surveyed the scene and “saw boats smashed” as they tried to run the rapids.75 The next day, he

“arranged that a Non Com officer would be stationed at this cañon to regulate the running of boats.”76 The next pinch point was Miles Canyon and the White Horse rapids, just upriver from the town of Whitehorse. Steele visited Miles Canyon on 10 June, after traveling from Bennett on the steamer R.J. Goddard.77 He wrote in his annual report that “I found that accidents were of almost daily occurrence. This was in great measure occasioned by inexperienced men running boats through the Rapids and Canon, in the capacity of pilot, many taking through women and even children.”78 Steele reported that “this I immediately stopped and gave orders that, in future, only really qualified ‘swift water’ men were to be allowed to act as pilots. Since then no lives have been lost, and only a small quantity of general goods.”79 He also noted that “Constable

Dixon has been of invaluable assistance to the public in running the White Horse Rapids. He is one of the best pilots on the river, and with one exception has brought through safely every boat he has handled.”80

72 Ibid., Part III, 82. 73 Ibid., Part III, 82. 74 For pictures of the scene see: “Running the Rapids,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, https://postalmuseum. si.edu/gold/rapids.html. 75 Steele, Pocket Diary, Personal, 1898, 1 June 1898. 76 Ibid., 2 June 1898. 10 77 Ibid., 9 June 1898; 10 June 1898. 78 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 18. 79 Ibid., Part III, 18. 80 Ibid., Part III, 18.

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Constable Dixon was not the only river pilot who travelers depended on as they made their way downriver. As Kathryn Morse writes, the Yukon River and its tributaries “provided no clear path or channel, but rather a seemingly endless sea of sloughs, islands, and channels, and thus countless opportunities to end up in a dead-end inlet or aground on a shallow bar.”81 Pilots with detailed knowledge of the river were required to successfully navigate the journey. Early on, it was indigenous pilots who, with long-held local knowledge of the river, provided this service. But like the indigenous packers on the Chilkoot and White passes, as the gold rush progressed, non-indigenous pilots gained experience on the river and began to push indigenous pilots out. A similar process occurred with indigenous woodcutters, who provided river steamers with an endless supply of timber as they made their way upriver. As more non-indigenous labour arrived in the region, indigenous woodcutters were increasingly displaced.82

Like on the Chilkoot and White passes, even before the Lakes opened, enterprising men were planning to make improvements to the transportation route between Bennett and Dawson.

Already on 1 December 1897, a Joseph I. Jones of Seattle wrote to Inspector Wood at Skagway to “make application for a grant or privilege for building a tramway across the portage between

Lakes Linderman and Bennett or to improve the waterway between said Lakes.”83 On 6

December 1897, Charles C. Mordt & Co. wrote to Wood requesting permission to build a steam- powered tram road around the White Horse Rapids.84 Wood wrote in his letter forwarding the application to White that “there are already two tramways in course of erection” at the White

81 Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 80. 82Ibid., 80-87. On local indigenous knowledge of the Yukon River see: Neufeld, “Learning to Drive the Yukon River: Western Cartography and Athapaskan Story Maps.” 83 LAC, RG18, Vol. 141, File 644, Joseph I. Jones to Wood, 1 December 1897. 84 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 168, Charles C. Mordt & Co. to Wood, 6 December 1897.

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Horse Rapids.85 Victoria businessman Norman Macaulay’s Miles Canyon and White Horse

Rapids Tramway Company constructed a five-mile long, horse-powered tramway around the rapids during the spring of 1898. John Hepburn of Victoria built a rival tramway on the opposite west side of the river. Both companies charged 3 cents per pound for freight and $25 per boat.86

Once completed, the two tramways allowed miners to avoid the risk of running the rapids, as long as they were willing to pay.

While in May 1898 miners travelled down the Yukon River in all manner of boats, scows, and rafts, other enterprising men naturally tried to develop the upper Yukon for steamer traffic. “The past season has proved conclusively,” Steele wrote in January 1899, “that the Upper

Yukon can be navigated by steamers capable of carrying a considerable number of passengers, and cargoes of a moderate size.”87 The first steamer on Lake Bennett, the Upper Yukon

Company’s R.J. Goddard, left Bennett on the day the lake opened, with Steel himself on board, for a trial run.88 Steele reported that “the first steamer ‘Bellingham’ left Bennett for Dawson about the 1st June.”89 By 9 June, Steele traveled on the Goddard on his trip to Tagish and Miles

Canyon.90

The major interruption to steamer traffic on the Yukon River was Miles Canyon and the

White Horse rapids. Because steamers could not pass the rapids, transportation companies could only operate between Bennett and Miles Canyon and St. Michael and Whitehorse. The

85 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 168, Wood to White, 7 December 1897. 86 “Miles Canyon & White Horse Rapids Trams,” Whitehorse Waterfront Trolley Museum, Whitehorse, Yukon. Steele reported in his 1898 annual report that “a good tramway was built, over the portage 5 miles in length, last spring and was operated by Mr. Norman McCaulay.” Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 17. 87 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 17; Murray Lundberg, “Steamboat Companies in Alaska and the Yukon Territory,” Explore North, http://www.explorenorth.com/library/ships/steamboat_companies-alaska- yukon.html. 88 Steele, Pocket Diary, Personal, 1898, 30 May 1898. 89 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 18. 1011 Steele’s diary puts the date as 5 June. Steele, Pocket Diary, Personal, 1898, 5 June 1898. 90 Steele, Pocket Diary, Personal, 1898, 9 June 1898; 10 June 1898.

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completion of the Macaulay and Hepburn tramways allowed steamers to land their cargo at

Canyon City, where it could be brought to the other side of the rapids and loaded on a steamer running between Whitehorse and St. Michael. Steele reported that by the end of the 1898 season, at least six steamers regularly operated on the Bennett to Canyon City side - the Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation Company’s Ora, constructed at Bennett using local lumber and machinery brought over the passes, the Canadian Development Company’s Joseph Closet

(Closset), Columbia, Canadian and Anglian, and the Willie Irving Company’s Willie Irving.91

Steele reported that “the last boat to take passengers to the White Horse left Dawson, on the 20th

October.”92

Once transportation companies began operating steamers on the upper Yukon, the

Mounted Police quickly stopped transporting supplies on their own boats and made contracts with them. By early November, for example, Wood asked Perry to pay the Miles Canyon and

White Horse Rapids Tramway Company $2339.92 for use of the Miles Canyon tramway, for approximately 39 tons of freight, and $10812.99 to the Upper Yukon Steamship Company for transportation between Bennett and Canyon City.93 The Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation

Company billed Perry for $7889.26 for transpiration charges at Bennett and Tagish on 22

November, and they expected to ask for an additional sum of over $15,000 when their accounts were complete.94 So while the Mounted Police had to build their own boats to transport their supplies to Dawson with the miners in the spring of 1898, by the end of the 1898 season, they could simply load them onto one of the steamers operating between Bennett and Dawson, and

91 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 17; Lundberg, “Steamboat Companies in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.” 92 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 18. 93 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, Wood to Perry, 12 November 1898; Wood to Perry, 29 October 1898. 94 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation Company to Perry, 22 November 1898.

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pick them up when they arrived. Their contracts provided revenue to the fledgling transportation companies and helped foster the development of a borderlands transportation system in the

Yukon.

The Yukon River Route

In addition to continuing to send supplies over the passes and down the Yukon, the

Mounted Police also made arrangements to send a large shipment of supplies to Dawson via the

Yukon River route in the spring of 1898. The police had a contract with the North American

Transportation and Trading Company to supply the police in the Yukon during the 1897 season, but in the chaos of the first months of the gold rush and the low river conditions that contributed to the food shortage at Dawson, the NAT&TCo failed to deliver much of the contract. The

Yukon River route, however, remained the best way for the police to send supplies to Dawson.

All they had to do was deliver the supplies to port in Vancouver or Victoria and then take delivery of them at Dawson. Making arrangements with a transportation company before the beginning of the 1898 season would ensure that the supplies were delivered sometime during the navigation season and supplement the supplies being shipped over the passes.

Like the Lynn Canal routes, the fall and winter of 1897 and 1898 saw an explosion of transportation companies seeking to take advantage of the Yukon River route - transportation companies actively seeking to carry police freight. On 31 January 1898, the Seattle-Yukon

Transportation Company telegrammed Canadian Secretary of State R.W. Scott asking to be considered for a contract to ship police freight to Dawson City at a rate of $200 per ton.95 Scott forwarded the company’s request to Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton, who forwarded it to

95 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company to R.W. Scott, 31 January 1898.

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White.96 The Comptroller replied on 3 February that “plans for coming season not sufficiently advanced to permit the making of a contract at present.”97 A representative of the Alaska

Exploration Company of San Francisco wrote to Sifton on 8 March that “we would be pleased to make arrangements with the Government” to ship police supplies to the Yukon.98 And in

Vancouver, Superintendent Perry received numerous requests to ship police supplies via the

Yukon River route during the spring of 1898.

In February, White decided that the police would ship 300 tons of freight to Dawson via the Yukon River route. He decided to request bids only from the North American Transportation and Trading Company and the Alaska Commercial Company. White wrote to both companies on

22 February, asking them to “inform me whether your Company is prepared to quote a through rate per ton for carrying three hundred tons of Canadian Government supplies, principally provisions, from Vancouver or Victoria B.C., to Dawson…, to leave St. Michael not later than

10th, of July next.”99 White explained to Sifton on 4 June “in arranging for the transportation of the 300 tons of Police supplies it was deemed better to limit the competition to the two old established Companies, who have their boats on the river, fuel provided at regular intervals, established places for transshipment at St. Michael’s, and experienced pilots for the navigation of the Yukon River.”100

William W. Weare of the NAT&TCo replied to White on 26 February that “we will quote you a through rate from Seattle to Dawson at $400 per ton, goods to be delivered at our dock

96 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Scott to Sifton, 1 February 1898. 97 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company, 3 February 1898. 98 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Louis A. Phillips to Sifton, 8 March 1898. 99 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to North American Transportation and Trading Company, 22 February 1898; White to Alaska Commercial Company, 22 February 1898. 100 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Sifton, 4 June 1898.

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between May 15th and June 1st, 1898.101 The General Agent for the ACC, Rudolph Neumann, wrote to White on 2 March “proposing to transport 300 tons of Canadian Government supplies from Victoria to Dawson at $250.00 per ton; 100 tons to be shipped on or before July 10th and the remaining 200 tons, between that date and August 20th.”102 White decided to go with the cheaper quote, writing to Neumann on 3 March that the government had accepted the ACC offer.

“Be good enough to advise me of the date on which you would wish to have the supplies to your order at Victoria,” White wrote, “every effort will be made to arrange this shipment as far as possible to meet your convenience, the great object being to get the provisions to Dawson during the season of high water.”103

While in March 1898 White seems to have only intended to make one contract for the

Yukon River route, by late May the police had decided to split their freight among several boats.

White explained to Perry on 28 May that “the Militia Dept. made a contract with the Boston

Alaska Co., for 200 tons from Vancouver through to Selkirk. When they came to figure up they found they had 50 tons to spare, and orders were given me a few days ago to make up a 50 ton shipment and send it by the Boston Alaska Co.”104 Perry had also suggested to White on 24 May that the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company “will contract to deliver two hundred and fifty tons Dawson at two hundred dollars per ton.”105 White wrote on 28 May that “I think we shall be able to give the Can.Pac.Nav.Co., a few tons.”106 He continued, “you will have your hands full in

101 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, William W. Weare to White, 26 February 1898. 102 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Rudolph Neumann to White 2 March 1898. 103 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Neumann, 3 March 1898. 104 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Perry, 28 May 1898. 105 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 24 May 1898. 106 White to Perry, 28 May 1898.

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looking after shipments by two boats, one leaving Victoria and the other Vancouver, but I am sure you will be equal to the occasion.”107

After the ACC confirmed to White that the steamer Portland would arrived at Victoria on

5 June, and the Boston Alaska Company’s steamer Brixham was confirmed for a similar date, it fell to Superintendent Perry in Vancouver to arrange the shipments.108 Perry made arrangements with wholesalers in Vancouver and Victoria to purchase the supplies required for each shipment and to have them delivered to each company. On 11 June, Perry sent White a schedule of the goods shipped on the Portland and Brixham. In addition to the foodstuffs highlighted in Figure

2, the 50 tons shipped on the Brixham included 2 Mower Powers (Power Mowers?), 2 Rake

Frames, 4 Wheels, and 1 Bale Tarpaulins. The 300 tons shipped on the Portland included a similar mix of foodstuffs, hardware, and tools: 1 Bundle of Saws, 2 Crates of campstoves, 2

Bundles Wash Boards, 125 cases canned Meats, and 5 packages Groceries.109 “I am sending direct to the Officers commanding at Selkirk and Dawson copies of the invoices of goods shipped by Alaska Commercial Co. and Boston & Alaska Transportation Co.,” Perry wrote.110

On 28 June, Perry informed White that the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company’s steamer

Danube had left Vancouver on 20 June with 173 cases Bacon, 2 Steele Ranges, 2 crates Stoves, 2 boxes Copper Tanks, 1 bundle Stove Pipe, 3 box Stoves, and 3 crtd. Stoves.111

All three boats made their way north to St. Michaels without incident, where the goods were loaded onto river steamers for the journey to Dawson. Inspector Cortlandt Starnes reported that the ACC river steamers Susie and Louise arrived at Dawson on 16 August with 257 tons of

107 White to Perry, 28 May 1898. 108 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Alaska Commercial Company to White, 22 May 1898. 109 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 11 June 1898. 110 Ibid. 111 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 28 June 1898.

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police freight.112 Perry reported to White on 21 September that the goods shipped by the

Canadian Pacific Navigation Company had reached Dawson.113 The goods shipped on the

Brixham arrived at Dawson sometime after 13 September.114

Figure 8 Goods Purchased for the Portland and Brixham. From: LAC, RG18, Vol. 2979, Perry to White, 16 June 1898. Dawson City

After police provision and supplies arrived in Dawson City or on the other side of the

Chilkoot and White passes, they were distributed to the various police posts that had been established since the beginning of the rush. During the 1898 season, the Mounted Police continued to rush reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon, increasing the number of police in the Yukon, the number of posts, and the amount of supplies that needed to be sent north. By 30

112 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Cortlandt Starnes to Unknown, 31 August 1898. 113 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 21 September 1898. 114 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 8 October 1898.

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November 1898, there were 285 Mounted Police in the Yukon, spread among some 31 posts.115

Superintendent Steele wrote in his annual report for 1898 that 265 tons of supplies had been delivered to posts in Dawson and Tagish districts, not including the hundreds of tons of hardware and building materials that had been sent north.116 With the number of Mounted Police in the

Yukon and police posts increasing, Steele reported that some sixty-six buildings had been constructed during the 1898 season at twenty-six posts, including a barracks, store and guard room, and officer’s quarters at Lindeman, a barracks a White Horse Rapids, a cabin at the

Chilkoot summit, and a commanding officer’s quarters, officer’s quarters, hospital, sergeant’s quarters, guard room, and quartermaster’s store at Fort Herchmer, Dawson.117

With so much activity at the police posts in the Yukon, even with the improvements made to the Yukon transportation system during the year, it was impossible to supply all of the police in the Yukon and all of the posts under construction from the outside. Throughout the year, Steele and the other police in the Yukon purchased large amounts of goods and supplies from both individuals and merchants in the Yukon to supplement the police transportation system. Steele reported in his annual report for 1898 making two contracts with a Mr. Fearon to purchase 30,000 pounds of beef for 60 cents per pound and 12,000 pounds at 38 cents per pound.118 He also purchased 75,000 feet of lumber from the Klondyke, Yukon and Stewart River

Pioneer Company at Cariboo Crossing to constructed the posts at “White Pass, Lindeman,

Bennett, Tagish, Miles Cañon and other detachments, to the Little Salmon.”119 Steele also hired local labour to help construct buildings at police posts. At Dawson, he wrote, “the hospital, jail,

115 “Distribution of the Force by Divisions on 30th November, 1898,” in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part IV, 7. 116 Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 8. 117 Ibid., Part III, 16-17. 118 Ibid., Part III, 8. 119 Ibid., Part III, 14.

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commanding officer’s quarters, quarters for the Yukon Field Force and court-house were built by contract, tenders being asked for and the lowest accepted.”120

On 14 April 1899, Steele sent White a complete list of expenditures at Dawson from approximately July 1898 to March 1899.121 Steele’s list (Figure 3), divided into twenty-two

“departments,” shows a total of $189,855.56 in expenses on everything from transportation, travel, and buildings to clothing, furniture, and provisions. A closer look at the list reveals a number of local expenses that supplemented the larger Mounted Police transportation system that brought supplies in from the outside.

First, the cost of transporting goods from Vancouver to Skagway and Dawson, over the

Chilkoot and White passes, and down the Yukon River were not all of the transportation expenditures incurred by the police in the Yukon. Steele’s list includes $5,133.80 in additional payments to transportation companies like the Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation Company,

Bartlett Bros., and the steamer Willie Irving, for transportation goods between posts. The police also paid $897.71 to individual packers for transporting goods between posts and $1,907.00 in payments for unloading goods from boats and moving goods between steamers and posts.

Another set of local transportation costs were classified by Steele as traveling and billeting expenses, incurred by individual Mounted Policemen traveling as part of their Yukon duties, traveling between posts and traveling to the Klondike mining districts on patrols. These costs included payments to businesses like Nelson & Smith and the Regina Club Hotel, but the majority of payments were reimbursements to policemen who incurred the expense, for a total of

$1,854.70 between June 1898 and April 1899.

120 Ibid., Part III, 15. 121 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, Steele to White, 14 April 1899.

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Statement of Division of Expenditures, 14 April 1899 Victoria Order of Nurses $ 16.00 No. 1 Department of the Interior $ 185.00 " 2 Hardware and Tools $ 232.45 " 3 Transporting freight $ 8,011.51 " 4 Travelling and billeting $ 1,854.70 " 5 Telephone $ 280.50 " 6 Drugs and Hospital Service $ 1,733.03 " 7 Buildings, Town Station $ 4,395.58 " 8 Contingency Fund $ 512.35 " 9 Clothing and kit $ 1,447.95 " 10 Barrack Furniture and Equipment $ 33.50 " 11 Horses, dogs, harness etc $ 1,147.40 " 12 Fuel and Light $ 14,781.37 " 13 [Department of] Militia $ 17,886.19 " 14 Stationery $ 527.50 " 15 Repairs and renewals $ 823.98 " 16 Pay $ 36,480.30 " 17 Post Office [Department] $ 2,315.22 " 18 Forage $ 12,622.57 " 19 Subsistence $ 24,260.23 " 20 Department of Justice [Buildings] $ 17,177.94 " 21 Department of Justice $ 6,287.80 " 21 Buildings $ 36,842.49 " 22 $ 189,855.56

Figure 9 Statement of Division of Expenditures, 14 April 1899. From: LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, Steele to White, 14 April 1899.

Second, as much as the Mounted Police tried to forward food, hardware, forage, and other necessities to the Yukon, Steele’s list shows that it was impossible to forward everything needed. He spent considerable money purchasing additional supplies. Steele reported spending

$24,260.23 on subsistence goods, which largely consisted of food supplies that couldn’t be brought in from the outside, fresh beef, eggs, potatoes, and fresh vegetables. The police in

Dawson also spent $12,622.57 on forage for police horses and dogs, and consisted mostly of purchases of hay and oats for horses and dog feed, salmon and other dried meats. In both cases, the police purchased some goods from merchant companies like the NAT&TCo., McCaulay

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Bros., and the B.A. Company, the majority of food and forage purchases were from individuals bringing things like cattle for fresh beef, dried salmon, or fresh vegetables to the Yukon and hoping to make a quick buck selling them.

Third, the police spent considerable sums to purchase lumber for the construction of police posts and buildings and to hire local carpenters to assist police labour to build them. Steele spent $4,395.58 constructing a jail and officers quarters at Fort Constantine (Town Station),

Fortymile, including $1,309.82 to seventeen hired carpenters and $2,865.06 to the Yukon Saw

Mill Company for lumber.122 He also reported spending $36,842.49 on buildings at ten other posts, including Sixty Mile, Stewart, and Selwyn. This number included a further $3,777.06 on lumber from the Yukon Saw Mill Company, Kerry Mill Company, Canadian Yukon Lumber

Company, and others, $3,273.35 for hiring individual carpenters, and a $26,797.90 contract with a W.H. Rourke for erecting buildings. Along similar lines, the police spent $17,177.94 constructing the Court House at Dawson City for the Department of Justice. Finally, Steele’s list covers the types of regular expenses that could not be brought in from the outside: $280.50 for telephone services at Dawson, $1733.03 for drugs and hospital services, $14781.37 for fuel and light, mainly for purchasing cordwood from a number of individuals during the winter, and

$823.98 for repairs and renewals of police equipment, split evenly between individuals and the

NAT&TCo. and ACCo.

As Steele’s list shows, despite the improvements made to the Mounted Police and Yukon transportation systems, the police in the Yukon still had to rely on the many businesses that were established in 1898 to purchase supplies that could not be delivered fast enough. At the same time, the police took advantage of the fact that improvements to the transportation system meant

122 List of buildings constructed a Town Station from Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele,” Part III, 16.

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that merchant companies and enterprising individuals could transport more goods to the Yukon, and the police could purchase them after they arrived, rather than arranging their own transportation. In either case, whether transporting goods themselves or purchasing them in the interior, the police faced extremely high costs. Steele’s list also shows that Superintendent Perry was not the only Mounted Police officer responsible for sending vouchers and accounting for police expenses in the Yukon.

Accounting for the Gold Rush

For the Mounted Police, making arrangements to transport police supplies to the Yukon, whether on the backs of policemen and police horses or on board the steamers of the Alaska

Commercial Company or the Chilkoot tramway, was only half the battle. The usual way of paying for Mounted Police expenses was by bank draft. Comptroller White would make arrangements with the Canadian Bank of Commerce to make cash available to Perry in

Vancouver, where Perry could either pay vendors himself or forward cash to Wood and Steele in the Yukon. A second system of pay was also developed as the police started relying more on large contracts with transportation companies. After the police contract with the ACC had been fulfilled, for example, the secretary of the ACC sent White vouchers for the transaction and requested that two payments of $64,350.00 and $28,239.00 be made to the ACC in San

Francisco.123 In both cases, the Mounted Police officer who made the payment or the arrangements with the company was responsible for sending vouchers for each payment or shipment to Ottawa, where White and the Auditor General’s office would check each voucher before approving payment to the bank or company.

123 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Secretary, Alaska Commercial Company to White, 28 September 1898.

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On top of all the other activities that the police were responsible for during the height of the gold rush, then, accounting for police expenses simply added to the chaos of the rush for

White, Perry, Wood, and Steele. As the Canadian government worked within a fiscal year of 1

July to 30 June, it was not until the spring of 1898 that accounting first became an issue in the leadup to the end of the 1897-1898 fiscal year. Wood wrote to White on 6 April 1898 that “Supt.

Steele has directed me to write to you concerning your complaint that I have only forwarded vouchers for one half the money expended by me.”124 Wood explained that all of the clerks and non-commissioned officers at Skagway had been sent to the summits to perform customs duties, leaving him with no men to assist him in preparing vouchers. “I have now a Constable at work making out vouchers,” he continued, but “I myself can do nothing as the office is crowded all day long with persons wanting information on different subjects.”125 “I am doing the best I can with the means at my disposal,” Wood concluded.126

White replied on 19 April that “I fully appreciate all the difficulties you have had to contend with, and my desire would be to encourage you rather than complain.”127 He explained that “what I am most anxious to get, even in advance of the vouchers themselves, is a statement showing the sources from which you received the various sums… and a schedule, in a general way of the expenditure to date. The Auditor General requires evidence of some kind before issuing additional credits, and the Minister of Finance is pressing for our Supplementary

Estimates.”128 By 11 June, White wrote to Steele that Wood had reported receiving $267,219.47 in funds from various sources and submitted vouchers for $225,095.82 in expenses, “leaving a

124 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, Wood to White, 6 April 1898. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, White to Wood, 19 April 1898. 128 Ibid.

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balance of cash on hand of $42,123.89.”129 White explained that he had only received

$204,271.52 in vouchers from Wood, “leaving a discrepancy of $20,824.06” that White seems to have solved by 13 June.130

With the vouchers and expense statements for 1897-1898 finished, everyone seems to have forgotten about accounting until February 1899. White wrote to Steele in Dawson on 13

February that “we have not received any vouchers or returns since June last.”131 He explained that the Canadian Bank of Commerce was asking to be repaid for $107,546.05 in bank drafts drawn by Steele, but “in the absence of vouchers in support payment cannot be made.”132 White complained to Steele in a private letter on 20 February “the worst part of all is in connection with the expenditure. I am supposed to be responsible, and yet I am unable to explain a single dollar spent at Dawson since June last.”133 “Do for heaven’s sake give us some returns,” he concluded.134 In what White described to Steele as “a rather savage”135 official letter on 21

February, he reminded Steele that “the Bank had not been paid and threatens to refuse any more of your drafts.”136 “Had you sent even a schedule giving the names, nature of service, and amounts of the various accounts, I could have obtained authority for payment… I must request you to give the matters herein referred to your immediate attention.”137 By 2 March, White wrote that “since the organization of the Force, 25 years ago, I have not been placed in so awkward a position as I am at present in connection with expenditure.”138

129 LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, White to Steele, 11 June 1898. 130 Ibid.; LAC, RG18, Vol. 149, File 187, White to Steele, 13 June 1898. 131 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Steele, 13 February 1899. 132 Ibid. 133 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Steele, 20 February 1899. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Steele, 21 February 1899. 137 Ibid. 138 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Steele, 2 March 1899.

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In the meantime, Steele wrote to White on 14 February that he had forwarded the vouchers for July to November 1898 to Ottawa.139 “I regret that the returns and vouchers have been delayed so long,” he wrote, “but circumstances were such that it was impossible to avoid it.”140 He explained that “after the departure of Supt. Constantine, Inspector Starnes and Insp.

Harper were the only two officers left at Dawson, and all their time was taken up with judicial work” and dealing with “the enormous influx of people” to Dawson.141 “After my arrival here, the same state of things continued until a Court House was built, and the Police office could be used for our own work,” he continued.142

During the next two months, Steele continued to send returns and vouchers to White as his office dealt with them. In Ottawa, White collected the vouchers and forwarded them to

Auditor General John L. McDougall for review. After reviewing the expenditures at Dawson for

September to December 1898, McDougall sent White a long list of questions, asking for explanations of inconsistencies and mistakes in Steele’s numbers and justifications of large expenses, particularly for constructing buildings for other departments.143 By September 1899,

Superintendent Perry, who replaced Steele as commanding officer at Dawson, had to send

Inspector Starnes to Ottawa to “explain discrepancies &c., respecting accounts and paylists” from Dawson.144 Correspondence between Ottawa and Dawson sorting out Steele’s expenses for the 1898-1899 fiscal year continued until December 1900, before they were finally settled.145

Throughout much of 1898, the police continued to be caught up in the rush to the

Klondike, moving their supplies alongside the miners, making contracts with new transportation

139 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, Steele to White, 14 February 1899. 140 Ibid. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, J.L. McDougall to White, 24 April 1899. 144 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Perry, 31 September 1899. 145 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, White to Wood, 13 December 1900.

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companies attempting to take advantage of the rush, while also trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the miners and do enough to allow the Canadian government to maintain control of the situation. Sending vouchers and accounting for expenses was just one more element of the fragmented communication and transportation system the Mounted Police had to deal with. As

Steele wrote to White, “owing to the general organization to be established and the enormous amount of work; delays have occurred in the sending of accounts and returns.”146 By 14 February

1899, Steele was convinced that “having more men and more officers has allowed me to organize things in a better way and establish a system, which in future can be kept up regularly and accurately.”147 But there remained much to be done as the police entered the 1899 season.

The Yukon Transportation System and the Alaska-Yukon Border

While the Mounted Police spent much of 1898 establishing the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, forcing miners to pay Canadian customs duties at the line and follow Canadian law, the border had little relevance to the flow of police supplies into the Yukon. Of the hundreds of pages of police correspondence on the transporting of supplies to the Yukon, the fact the supplies continued to pass through American territory is almost never mentioned. For the police, the Yukon River route and the Lynn Canal routes were the only practical routes to the Yukon. Since the Mounted Police had to get their supplies to the

Yukon to perform their duties, they had no choice but to continue shipping supplies through

American territory. As was the case in the fall of 1897, it was Minister of the Interior Sifton and the Canadian government in Ottawa who were concerned about location of the border. The failure of the Mackenzie and Mann railway had greatly frustrated Sifton’s efforts to establish an all-Canadian route to the Yukon that could bypass the Alaska-Yukon border. But at the same

146 LAC, RG18, Vol. 177, File 32, Steele to White, 13 April 1899. 147 Steele to White, 14 February 1899.

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time, the relationship between the Mounted Police and the growing number of transportation companies in the Yukon transportation system reinforced the development of a borderlands transportation system to the Yukon. By the end of the 1898 season, the Mounted Police had done much to establish a borderlands system that allowed supplies to follow across the border, although there remained work to be done. There was no need to develop an all-Canadian route.

The only time that the border became a topic of discussion during the 1898 season was in the aftermath of White’s contract with the Alaska Commercial Company on the Yukon River route. The ACCo. and the Boston Alaska Company, with which the Militia Department had signed a contract, were both American transportation companies. From when the Mounted Police first went to the Yukon in 1894 to the first months of the gold rush in the fall of 1897, they could justify making contracts with American companies because there were few other options. By early 1898, however, the Canadian government’s use of American companies to send their agents to the Yukon started attracting attention. In a 12 January Vancouver Daily News-

Advertiser letter to the editor, for example, a “Canadian” complained that “the North West

Mounted Police were taken North by an American steamer, the City of Seattle, instead of by a

Canadian vessel.”148 The editor of the News-Advertiser accused a Vancouver Member of

Parliament of playing “the part of a traitor to British Columbia’s shipping interests by having taken any part in an arrangement whereby it appears to the outside world that the Canadian

Government is dependent on American transportation companies for carrying the Mounted

Police to the North.”149

When the owners of the City of Seattle, the Washington and Alaska Steamship Company, wrote to White asking to transport more police freight, White replied on 18 January that “in these

148 Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser, 12 January 1898, clipping in LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442. 149 Ibid.

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days of keen competition any preference in selection should be given to boats owned by

Canadian Companies.”150 White wrote privately to Perry that “you know what hot water we got into by arranging to send Police by this line before the dates on which the C.P. Navigation Co’s boats were to commence running and I should not like to send anything by any other line without direct orders.”151 John Irving, the manager of the Victoria based Canadian Pacific Navigation

Company, wrote to Sifton on 20 December 1897 asking to transport police freight, and it appeared that Sifton ordered White to send at least some supplies by his boats.152 Aware of the political considerations, White instructed Perry to send any additional supplies with Irving’s company. Perry wrote to White on 4 June that “the Danube of the C. P. N. Co. will sail about the

14th. There will be 20 tons of bacon to go upon her and probably a considerable amount of oats.”153

On 11 June, White also wrote to Perry that “my intention was to ship anything further by the boats of the Can.Pac.Nav.Company’s Line, but someone is now telegraphing on behalf of the

‘Reindeer,’” owned by the Nova Scotia based company Pickford & Black, “which is to sail from

Victoria towards the end of the month, and I expect we shall get instructions to give her a part of whatever we may have.”154 White wrote to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier himself on 11 June that “we shall have a few tons more freight for the Yukon, and I would suggest that you allow me to divide it between the boats of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company, the first of which will leave Victoria about the 15th instant, and the ‘Reindeer’ referred to in the enclosed,

150 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 104, White to Johnson and Burnett, 18 January 1898. 151 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 104, White to Perry, 25 January 1898. 152 LAC, RG18, Vol. 139, File 442, John Irving to Sifton, 20 December 1897. 153 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Perry to White, 4 June 1898. 154 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Perry, 11 June 1898.

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provided their charge does not exceed $200.00 per ton to Dawson.”155 And indeed, on 20 June the Deputy Minister of the Interior wrote to White that “the Minister has expressed a desire to put anything in the way of this boat that can be given to it.”156

Despite the concerns of Sifton and Laurier, the use of Canadian companies to transport police goods to the Yukon was only a minor concern for the Mounted Police. White and Perry always kept in mind the appearance of using Canadian companies, but they did not let that get in the way of making the best contracts with the best companies. As will be discussed in Chapter 9, during the 1899 season the Mounted Police formed a close relationship with the White Pass and

Yukon Route railway, a British-American run company, because it offered the best chance to solidify the police transportation network, regardless of national origins or the patronage concerns of elected officials.

As this chapter has discussed, during the 1898 season the Mounted Police transportation system developed from the police carrying their own supplies or working with small groups of packers to relying on contracts with transportation companies to carry their supply over the

Chilkoot and White passes and up and down the Yukon River. At the same time, the component parts of the Yukon transportation system were transformed as enterprising men and newly formed transportation companies made improvements to the transportation routes and developed the upper Yukon for steamer traffic. By the end of the season, the Mounted Police had developed a transportation system that saved time and effort, but they still faced many obstacles. On the

Chilkoot and White passes, the Brackett Road and Chilkoot Tramways had greatly improved the transportation infrastructure on the passes, but they were far from reliable. On the upper Yukon,

155 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, White to Wilfrid Laurier, 11 June 1898. 156 LAC, RG18, Vol. 147, File 105, Smart to White, 20 June 1898.

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the development of steamer routes between Bennett and Dawson eliminated the need to build boats or transport freight on the ice, but the White Horse Rapids remained an obstacle. The

Mounted Police also found themselves making contracts with transportation companies on every part of the route, one company to transport goods from Vancouver to Skagway, then another to go over the passes, and another on the lakes, each requiring separate administrative and accounting activities. In 1899, the competition of the White Pass Railway was the catalysis of a solution to these transportation problems and another round of negotiations on the Alaska-Yukon border. But first, the U.S. Army spent much of the 1898 attempting to develop new transportation routes that bypassed the Yukon River all together.

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Chapter 8 The U.S. Army and the 1898 Expeditions

On 5 March 1898, the same day that the Alaska Relief Expedition was cancelled,

Adjutant General H.C. Corbin wrote to Brigadier General H.C. Merriam, commanding general of the Department of the Columbia, that the relief expedition was to be replaced by three exploring expeditions.1 Expedition 1, Corbin wrote, was “to proceed from Skagway, or Dyea, along the

Dalton trail, or down the valley of the Yukon to Dawson” and then “establish a military camp” on the American side of the Alaska-Yukon border.2 Expedition 2 was to “explore the valley of the Copper river and tributaries from its mouth to the Tanana river.”3 Expedition 3 was to “start from some point on Cook’s inlet, or the waters emptying into Cook’s inlet, and endeavor to discover the most direct and practical route” from Cook’s Inlet to the Tanana.4

This chapter examines the three exploring expeditions within the context of the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands into a bordered region. The expeditions were part of Captain P.H. Ray’s plan to respond to the Klondike gold rush and foster the commercial development of the upper Yukon River valley. Each expedition was a fact-finding mission to gather information on potential transportation routes before implementing Ray’s plan to develop an all-American route to the Yukon.5 The decision to look for new, all-American routes to the upper Yukon was a response to the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands and the push to establish the location of the Alaska-Yukon border along the 141st meridian and in the Lynn

Canal region. With the North-West Mounted Police establishing a temporary border at the

1 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Alger to Merriam, 5 March 1898; Corbin to Merriam, 5 March 1898. 2 Corbin to Merriam, 5 March 1898. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 The 1898 expeditions are discussed by: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 151-168; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 145-148; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 74-75.

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summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, American miners and the U.S. Army could no longer travel through Canadian territory without dealing with the police or Canadian customs officials.

Many disgruntled miners began looking for ways to reach the gold fields without having to deal

Figure 10 Map of the Region Explored by Expeditions 2 and 3. From Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 March 1898.

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with Canadian officials and regulations, at least until they reached the Klondike. In March 1898, the U.S. Army decided to join them.

Beginning with Ray’s recommendations to explore Cook’s Inlet and the Copper River valley, this chapter traces the War Department’s decision to organize the three exploring expeditions and the activities of each expedition. Expedition 1 was cancelled before leaving the

Lynn Canal. Expeditions 2 and 3 made extensive explorations of the Copper, Sushitna (Susitna), and Matanuska Rivers and sent small parties to descend the Tanana River to the Yukon.6 In the

Copper River valley, Expedition 2 found several hundred miners searching for an alternative route to the Klondike, and often provided relief to destitute miners. Both expeditions faced numerous transportation problems, owing to a lack of suitable pack animals. Together, the 1898 expeditions identified a number of possible all-American routes to the Yukon and took the first steps to establish American government control in the area. But these routes were little more that rough tracks that would have to be further developed to establish a reliable alternative to the borderlands transportation system in the Lynn Canal region.

The decision to expand the Alaska Relief Expedition into three exploring expeditions stemmed from Captain Ray’s reports from the Yukon River during the fall of 1897 (see Chapter

4). Ray blamed the food shortage during the winter of 1897-1898 on the failure of the Yukon

River route to the Yukon. Low water conditions prevented transportation companies from delivering enough supplies to last the winter and led directly to the unrest that confronted Ray and Richardson at Fort Yukon and Circle City. As Ray wrote on 15 November 1897, “the experience of the past summer has fully convinced me that the Yukon River route, as now

6 Note the modern spelling of the Susitna River. Where modern spellings differ, the spelling from the original documents is used in most cases.

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managed, will be unable to supply the people now along the upper river.”7 The fact that the

Yukon River was the main transportation route to the Alaskan interior also meant that there was no regular winter mail service to the upper Yukon. Ray himself was unable to report the unrest he encountered or ask for reinforcements. These factors convinced Ray that the U.S. Army should explore other transportation routes to Alaska.

He wrote in a 15 September report that “I am reliably informed by Mr. Prevost, the

Episcopal minister at the month of the Tanana, and others that there is a practicable route from the Tanana across the divide to the head of Cook Inlet via the head of Copper River.”8 In theory, this route began either at Cook’s Inlet, or Port Valdez on Prince William Sound, crossing over to the Copper River valley, following the river to its headwaters, and then crossing over the mountains to the Tanana River, where travelers could make their way down the Tanana to the

Yukon, or cross over to Fortymile Creek and to the Yukon. Ray suggested that “if this information proves correct, I believe pack animals or wheeled transportation could be placed on this route in the summer and a better and shorter route opened to the mines in our own territory.”9 He added on 15 November that he learned from “reliable prospectors” of another

“practicable route from the head of Cook Inlet up the Sushitna” River to the Tanana.10 This route began at Cook’s Inlet, following the Sushitna River to its headwaters, and then crossing over to the Tanana, and down the Tanana to the Yukon River. Ray recommended that “an officer of the

Engineer Corps be detailed to make a preliminary survey” of both routes.11

7 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 November 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 544-545. 8 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 September 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 527. 9 Ibid. 10 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 November 1897, 544-545. 11 Ibid., 545.

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In exploring new routes to Alaska, Ray had more in mind than just a summer trail or wagon road. He put forward a framework for the future of the whole territory of Alaska. If a practical route for railway construction could be discovered along the Copper or Sushitna Rivers,

“one that can be operated throughout the year, so as to give stability and permanency to all enterprises looking to the development of the interior of the Territory,” he wrote on 15

November, then “the whole future of the Territory” would be secured.12 Building a railway from

Cook’s Inlet or Prince William Sound to the junction of the Tanana and the Yukon would allow

Americans to transport supplies as far as the point where river steamers could take over, provide an alternative to the Yukon River route, and, he wrote on 15 September, “the commerce of the whole Yukon Valley could be controlled by routes lying wholly in our own territory.”13

Ray’s concerns about the Copper River or Cook’s Inlet routes acting “as a check to the

Canadian route [the Lynn Canal route],” had their roots in the concerns of miners at Fort Yukon.

Ray wrote in a 7 October report on the Yukon transportation system that “the people here are now afraid that the failure of the river route for freight will cause the construction of a railroad through British North America to the Yukon River above the boundary, and that the mining districts of Alaska will be dependent for supplies on a route through a foreign country with all this means in the way of discrimination in favor of the British merchants.”14 At stake was the future industrial development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. If the Lynn Canal route became the primary gateway to the region, then the economic benefits would be shared with Canada.

Even though it was clear by the fall of 1897 that the Klondike was in Canadian territory, the development of an “all-American” route to the upper Yukon River would ensure that only

12 Ibid., 545. 13 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 15 September 1897, 527. 14 Ray to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, 7 October 1897, in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 533.

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Americans profited from new discoveries on the American side of the 141st meridian.

Increasingly, the exploration of such routes became a concern for both the American government and American miners.

The first person in Washington to endorse Ray’s suggestions was Major General Nelson

A. Miles, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army, who had sent two expeditions to explore the Copper River valley in 1884 and 1885, as discussed in Chapter 4. By January 1898, the War

Department had received numerous reports that there was no food shortage in Dawson City and that the Alaska Relief Expedition was no longer necessary. Miles wrote to Secretary of War

Alger on 20 January 1898 that “it now appears from reports of Major Rucker and the Department

Commander [Merriam], together with a number of other reports received from various sources, that the necessity for supplies is not as urgent as was reported at one time.”15 He suggested that the relief expedition be replaced with “a small expedition [Expedition 1], carrying some supplies, with a liberal quantity of medical supplies… to afford relief to the suffering in that remote country,” and the majority of the relief expedition be sent to survey the Copper River.16 The War

Department quickly adopted Miles’ suggestions, sending a memorandum to Brigadier General

Merriam the next day authorizing him “to send… a small relief and exploring expedition up the

Copper River to Forty-mile creek, or that vicinity.”17 By 1 February, Adjutant General Breck wrote to Merriam that “an exploring expedition to Alaska, over Copper River route, is approved” by the Secretary of War.18

15 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Nelson A. Miles to Alger, 20 January 1898. 16 Ibid. 17 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Memorandum to Merriam, 21 January 1898. 18 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Breck to Merriam, 1 February 1898.

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In deciding to expand the Alaska Relief Expedition to the Copper River, the War

Department had several considerations in mind. Miles wrote in a 26 January memorandum to

Merriam that sending two expeditions to Alaska “would fulfil the design of the government in sending relief to the people who are in the Yukon River country or other mining regions of

Alaska, and at the same time accomplish other results, namely: the obtaining of a more thorough knowledge of that country.”19 By late January, the planning for the relief expedition had revealed just how little the U.S. Army knew about the upper Yukon and how to get there (see Chapter 5).

It was also clear just how difficult it was to transport relief supplies from the Lynn Canal to the

Yukon during the winter months. If a less difficult route could be discovered, it would be much easier to send relief supplies in the future and to assert government control in the region. The planning for the relief expedition also showed that it was difficult to assess the viability of transportation routes in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands without agents on the ground. Expanding the relief expedition in the Copper River Valley would add to the government’s first-hand knowledge of the region, before the War Department decided on implementing Ray’s plan.

Along these lines, Breck wrote to Merriam on 24 February that the “Secretary of War enjoins special care in collecting information bearing on practicability of development and occupation of the country traversed, topography, routes for travel and railroads, sites for military posts, resources in mineral, timber, and other products, food for animals, etcetera. As much territory as possible should be covered, especially between the Yukon, Tanana, and Copper rivers.”20

Following Captain Ray’s reports from Alaska, Miles and Breck also stressed the importance of opening up another all-American route to the upper Yukon. Miles wrote that “if a practical route can be discovered through our own territory on that line, it is believed that it

19 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Memorandum for Merriam, 26 January 1898. 20 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Breck to Merriam, 24 February 1898.

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would be much shorter and of very great assistance to people going or coming from the coast to the mining district.21 Breck wrote to Merriam on 1 February that the expedition had been approved “for the purpose of ascertaining if a practicable summer or winter route, wholly within territory of United States, for mail and stores, or mail alone, can be found to a post, if one should be established, in the mining regions in the valley of the Yukon between Forty Mile Creek and

Circle City.”22

Initially, the government’s plans for the Alaska Relief Expedition remained unchanged.

The War Department decided to send a small expedition to explore the Copper River as a compliment to the relief expedition, but still intended to send a large quantity of supplies from

Skagway to Dawson, along with an escort of fifty troops. By 24 February, a second exploring expedition starting from Cook’s Inlet had been approved, and Breck began referring to “the three

Alaska Expeditions, from Lynn Canal, the Copper River, and from Cooks [sic] Inlet.”23 Finally on 5 March 1898, the Alaska Relief Expedition was officially abandoned and replaced with the three exploring expeditions. The War Department intended for the expeditions to use the reindeer shipped to Haines Mission for the relief expedition for transportation. Secretary of War Alger wrote to Merriam on 5 March that “you are authorized to have such of the reindeer and attendants accompany expeditions number two and three as in your judgment can be utilized, the remainder to… accompany expedition number one.”24

Another reason for the army to send an expedition to the Copper River valley was the increasing number of American miners attempting to reach the Klondike by that route. As

21 Memorandum for Merriam, 26 January 1898. 22 Breck to Merriam, 1 February 1898. 23 Breck to Merriam, 24 February 1898. 24 Alger to Merriam, 5 March 1898.

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Captain W.R. Abercrombie, the commander of Expedition 2, explained in his report for the 1898 season, the Canadian government’s decision to begin collecting customs duties at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes led many Americans to look for an “all-American” route to the

Klondike. Abercrombie wrote that “the first obstacle” encountered by American miners on their way to the Klondike “was the rules and regulations provided by the mounted police of the

Northwest Territory of Canada for the collection of duties, etc.”25 He continued, “written accounts were sent back containing garbled accounts of these regulations, so that the friends at home considered the prospectors were being gulled by dishonest officials in a foreign country.”26

“As a matter of fact,” he remarked, “a finer body of men never graced a uniform than these same mounted police.”27 Such reports in the fall of 1897 were quickly followed by rumours of “an ‘all-

American route,’ over which a citizen of the United States could travel without paying tribute to a foreign nation.”28 Guidebooks confirmed that the Copper River route as the best way for

Americans to reach the Yukon.29 “These were purchased, read, and their statements accepted as facts by those wishing to evade the payment of duties through a foreign country,” Abercrombie wrote.30 “The natural result was a stampede of prospectors for the Copper River Valley route,” he concluded.31 “As to whether there was a Copper River route or not,” those who rushed to

Valdez did not seem to care.32

25 W.R. Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 585. 26 Ibid., 585-586. 27 Ibid., 586. 28 Ibid., 586. 29 See for example: “Richardson’s Map of the Cook Inlet and Copper River Gold Fields, Alaska,” 1898, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rare Maps Collection, UAF-G4371 H2 1898 R53, Alaska’s Digital Archives, https://vilda.alaska.edu/digital/collection/cdmg11/id/13473. 30 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 586. 31 Ibid., 586. 32 Ibid., 586.

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Lyman L. Woodman argues in his history of the U.S. Army in Alaska that there was also

“great public demand in 1897 for maps of central Alaska and for information about its gold and other resources.”33 Congress responded by funding a number of exploring expeditions in Alaska.

The U.S. Army’s three expeditions formed one arm of a three-pronged approach to expanding the American government’s knowledge of Alaska. The other two arms, the U.S. Coast and

Geodetic Survey, tasked with exploring Alaska’s coastline and the mouth of the Yukon River, and the U.S. Geological Survey, which sent out four expeditions of its own in 1898, worked closely with the War Department.34

In a letter to Secretary of the Interior C.N. Bliss, Director of the Geological Survey C.D.

Walcott explained that Congress had appropriated $25,000 for the Geological Survey to send four survey parties to Alaska during the 1898 season. One party to “begin detailed topographical and geological surveys along the eastern boundary south of the Yukon, and in the vicinity of

Forty Mile Creek, the second to “explore the White and Tanana river basins, and bring back topographical and geological reconnaissance maps,” and the third and fourth parties to begin at

Cook’s Inlet and “conduct topographical and geological reconnaissance” of the Sushitna and

Kuskokwim Rivers.35 Bliss wrote to Secretary of War Alger on 8 March asking that the army’s exploring expeditions assist the Geological Survey parties “should occasion arise,” and promising to instruct the Geological Survey parties to “cooperate with and assist any officers from the War Department in Alaska, as far as the same may be practicable.”36 The War

33 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 151. 34 Ibid., 151; Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 210-14. 35 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, C.D. Walcott to C.N. Bliss, 8 March 1898. 36 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Bliss to Alger, 8 March 1898.

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Department appears to have cooperated less with the Coast and Geodetic Survey. On 10 March,

Alger requested the use of a Coast and Geodetic Survey boat for Expeditions 2 and 3, but Henry

S. Pritchett, Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, replied on 12 March that no boats were available.37 Pritchett did write that “I would be glad to be informed of any special harbor surveys desired by the War Department, with the object of furnishing the information desired at the earliest practicable moment.”38

Expedition 1

Formed out of what remained of the Alaska Relief Expedition, Expedition 1, commanded by Captain Bogardus Eldridge, was ordered to leave Haines Mission, on the Lynn Canal, by 24

March with 384 reindeer and proceed to the Yukon River via the Dalton Trail. The expedition’s primary mission was to escort the reindeer not needed for Expeditions 2 and 3 to the American side of the 141st meridian. Adjutant General Corbin also ordered that the expedition be

“furnished with sufficient supplies for their own use and a small amount for distribution, and a liberal quantity of medical stores, to afford relief to any citizens that may be found in a totally destitute condition.”39 Once on the American side of the Alaska-Yukon border, the expedition was instructed to “establish a military camp” and explore the Forty Mile River, in search of a

“practical route” to the Tanana River valley.40

While the War Department had secured the permission of the Canadian government to send the Alaska Relief Expedition through Canadian territory, that permission did not extend to

Expedition 1. Alger wrote to the Secretary of State John Sherman on 1 April 1898 asking “that due application be made for the consent of the Dominion Government that this party be

37 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Alger to Henry S. Pritchett, 10 March 1898; Pritchett to Alger, 12 March 1898. 38 Pritchett to Alger, 12 March 1898. 39 Corbin to Merriam, 5 March 1898. 40 Ibid.

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permitted to pass through its territory.”41 Alger explained that Expedition 1 had to cross through

Canadian territory because “this party will be provided with a number of reindeer for transportation purposes, and it is especially desired to send it over the Dalton route which is reported to be the only one practicable for reindeer at this season.”42 Sherman replied on 7 April that he had send a request to the British Ambassador in Washington, to be passed on to the

Canadian government.43

On April 29, 1898, however, Merriam was informed that the “Assistant Secretary War directs that Exploring Expedition Number One, be recalled.”44 By that time, as discussed in

Chapter 5, it was clear that the reindeer were in no condition to travel and totally unsuited to work as pack animals. The army turned the remaining reindeer over to the Interior Department and there was no need for Expedition 2 to escort them. Lyman L. Woodman also notes that “a report from Captain Ray” suggested that the routes that the expedition had been instructed to explore “were already opened as far south as crossings of the Tanana.”45 Unfortunately, the failure of the reindeer plan was realized too late for the War Department to arrange other transportation for Expeditions 2 and 3.

Expedition 2

Expedition 2, commanded by Captain W.R. Abercrombie of the 2nd Infantry, left Puget

Sound on 8 April 1898.46 William R. Abercrombie was born in Long Island, New York in 1857.

He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1877 and served in the Nez Perce

War and a number of other Indian Wars. In 1884, he was sent by then Brigadier General Miles,

41 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Alger to John Sherman, 1 April 1898. 42 Ibid. 43 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Sherman to Alger, 7 April 1898. 44 NARA, RG107, E81, File 3, Carter to Merriam, 29 April 1898. 45 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 146. 46 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 563.

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commanding general of the Department of the Colombia, to explore the Copper River valley (see

Chapter 4). Abercrombie’s party traversed twenty-seven miles of the Copper River delta, but their way upriver was blocked by the formidable Miles Glacier, forcing the party to turn around.47 The next year, 2nd Lieutenant Henry T. Allen was able to pass Miles Glacier, and made his way up the Copper River to the Tanana and Yukon Rivers. 48 In 1898, Abercrombie was ordered to travel to Port Valdez, on Prince William Sound, and find a route across the coast mountains to the Copper River, avoiding potential problems with Miles Glacier. The expedition was then to retrace the steps of Allen in 1885, following the Copper River to the Tanana, and then crossing the mountains to Circle City or Belle Isle on the Yukon River.

After a brief stop at Haines Mission, Abercrombie and his party - consisting of 4 officers,

1st Lieutenant Guy H. Preston, 9th Cavalry, 1st Lieutenant Percival G. Lowe, 18th Infantry, and 2nd

Lieutenant Robert M. Brookfield, 2nd Infantry, fifteen enlisted men from the 14th Infantry, “an acting hospital steward and two hospital corpsmen privates, two civilian guides, and a geologist”

- arrived at Port Valdez on 18 April at 6 p.m.49 Over the next three days, the expedition unloaded their supplies in, as Abercrombie wrote in his final report for the expedition, “6 to 7 feet of snow” and established a base camp near Valdez.50 Camp No. 1 was located on “a broad plateau, some 6 or 8 miles broad and 3 miles deep,” high enough to provide “an unobstructed view of 5 or 6 miles of trail,” a site that Abercrombie would later complain was subject to summer flooding by glacial streams.51

47 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 117-119. 48 Woodman, 120-129. 49 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 563-564. Quote from: Woodman, 146. 50 Ibid., 564. 51 Ibid., 584.

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Expedition 2 found Valdez bustling with miners and prospectors. Following the reports of an all-American route through the Copper River Valley, the Pacific Steam Whaling Company began offering service to Port Valdez in early 1898. Abercrombie reported that the first voyage of the company’s steamer Valencia brought some 600 passengers to Valdez in February 1898.

When Expedition 2 arrived aboard the Valencia in April, Abercrombie wrote, “I found a heterogeneous mass of people that were willing to put up with any inconvenience and pay almost any price to secure passage for themselves and freight space for their outfit” to Valdez.52 2nd

Lieutenant Brookfield reported that “during the months of February, March, and April, it was estimated that 3,000 people had landed at Port Valdez, Alaska.”53 From Valdez, the miners,

“strung out along the trail from the landing to the foot of Valdez Glacier,” Abercrombie wrote, set about making their way to the interior in search of their fortunes.54

With Camp No. 1 established at Valdez, Expedition 2’s first task was to locate a route through the coastal mountains to the Copper River valley. On Saturday, 23 April 1898, 1st

Lieutenant Lowe, a topographical officer, and a guide were dispatched west to explore the Lowe

River “and locate the old Russian trail into the Copper River Valley.”55 This route followed the

Lowe River, through Keystone Canyon, or Keystone Pass as the expedition called it, and then over Thompson Pass to the Tsina (also called Kotsena or Chena) River or Marshall Pass to the

Tasnuna River. Lowe’s party only made it as far as Keystone Canyon, and could not obtain any

52 Ibid., 586. 53 R.M. Brookfield, “Across Valdez Glacier,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 595. 54 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 586. 55 Ibid., 564.

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Figure 11 Map of Cook’s Inlet and Copper River, 1898. By the author. information about “the country beyond.”56 Two parties consisting of 1st Lieutenant Preston and a scout and 2nd Lieutenant Brookfield and F.C. Schrader, the geologist of the expedition, left

56 Quote from John W. Cleave, “My Trip from Valdez toward Copper River,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900).

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Valdez on 26 April to explore Valdez Glacier – the most popular route taken by the miners gathered at Valdez. Preston and Brookfield were both forced to turn around on 30 April because of snow storms, before starting out again on 2 May. By 13 May, both parties had reached the summit of the glacier and returned to Valdez.57 A third party, led by J.J. Rafferty, one of the expedition’s guides, and consisting of a party of five men, left Valdez on 3 May. After reaching the summit of the glacier on 6 May, the Rafferty party descended to the headwaters of the

Klutena (Klutina) River, where they received orders from Abercrombie to continue on to the

Copper River. With the help of two California prospectors, the party constructed a boat and started down the Klutena on 27 May, crossing Lake Abercrombie, today’s Klutina Lake, and following the Klutena to its junction with the Copper.58

With the Rafferty party so far into the interior, Abercrombie ran into his first major problem. Expedition 2 had no pack animals, forcing the exploratory parties to transport their supplies over Valdez Glacier by hand. Relying on manpower for transportation not only slowed the expedition down - Lieutenant Preston complained of the “the miserable humiliation of being passed by civilians with their outfits, having in use horses, mules, burros, dogs, and even goats” - it also meant that it was impossible to get enough supplies over the glacier to keep the Rafferty party exploring beyond the junction the Klutena and the Copper.59

Initially, the expedition was to take with them “50 reindeer and sledges and drivers” to use for transportation.60 Abercrombie arrived at Haines Mission on 12 April 1898, only to

57 Guy H. Preston, “Across Valdez Glacier with Sleds Drawn By Hand,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 599-601. 58 J.J. Rafferty, “From Port Valdez to Copper River, Down that River, Thence to Prince William Sound,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 612-615. 59 Preston, “Across Valdez Glacier with Sleds Drawn By Hand,” 600. 60 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 146.

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discover that the reindeer were in no condition to serve as pack animals. His request to Anderson for pack mules for the expedition was denied, forcing Abercrombie to leave for Port Valdez with no pack train.61 By early May, Abercrombie wrote that “the work incident to climbing the

Valdez Glacier with sleds loaded with 100 to 150 pounds per man was now beginning to have a visible effect upon the members of the expedition.”62 Lieutenant Brookfield “was found on the glacier, snow-blind, and a man was detailed to lead him back to camp,” while a Private Tully suffered from typhoid fever at the summit.63 “As the men were beginning to fag out,”

Abercrombie wrote, “ I considered that I had taken every justifiable means to penetrate the Coast

Range by man power.”64

On 24 May, the steamer Valencia arrived at Valdez and, as Abercrombie wrote, “she was at once boarded to ascertain if any stock had been shipped up from headquarters Department of the Columbia for the use of the expedition.”65 “Finding no stock on board, nor any mail indicating that stock would be sent,” Abercrombie decided to personally go to Seattle and secure pack animals for the expedition.66 Presumably leaving Valdez on the Valencia, Abercrombie was in Seattle by 2 June. He explained in a telegram to Assistant Adjutant General Barry at

Vancouver Barracks explaining that he had “placed two parties from my expedition about 60 miles into interior of Alaska, but had to withdraw them as I had no transportation to pack in supplies.”67 He requested “authority to purchase in open market twenty five range ponies” for the expedition.68 “Without this transportation,” he warned, “the expedition will be a failure.”69

61 Ibid., 565151. 62 “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 565. 63 Ibid., 565. 64 Ibid., 565. 65 Ibid., 565. 66 Ibid., 565. 67 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 173, File 2130, Abercrombie to Barry, 2 June 1898. 68 Ibid.

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Abercrombie’s request and his arrival in Seattle was greeted with anger by Merriam, who wrote to Secretary of War Alger on 3 June that “Captain Abercrombie has abandoned his Copper

River Expedition and is now in Seattle asking authority to buy horses.”70 Merriam explained that

“pack mules were sent to him about Seventeenth May and must have reached his camp soon after his departure.”71 He tartly concluded: “explanation has been called for, but it seems no justification is possible.”72

In his defence, Abercrombie wrote that the five pack mules and one packer that were sent to Valdez were completely insufficient for the expedition’s needs. He explained that “I have in my command four officers, fourteen enlisted men and five civilian employees, in all twenty-three persons.”73 Each man required three pounds per day of food, “or sixty-nine pounds per day for the entire outfit,” and forty-five pounds per man in “bedding, clothing and cooking outfit,” for a total of 7,345 pounds “of absolute necessities” for three months travel.74 “Now to pack this outfit

I am given one packer and five pack mules,” he mockingly wrote.75 “The mule does not live that can pack fourteen hundred and sixty-nine pounds (1469), or one-fifth of the seven thousand three hundred forty-five pounds (7345) the net weight.”76 Abercrombie warned that “unless the necessary transportation and saddle animals are provided, I cannot carry out the instructions of the Hon. Sec’y of War.”77 He also wrote that “at the present writing there are over three thousand

69 Ibid. 70 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 173, File 2181, Merriam to Alger, 3 June 1898. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 173, File 2208, Abercrombie to Barry, 2 June 1898. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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(3000) people practically stranded in the Copper River Valley, to whom this expedition with its five tons of relief stores is expected to” assist.78

Despite his reservations, Merriam gave Abercrombie permission “to purchase the necessary stock and ship them north.”79 By late June, Abercrombie wrote in his 1898 report, “40 head of stock were shipped to Port Valdez.”80 Merriam also wrote to Abercrombie on 10 June that “arrangements have been made to ship supplies to your expedition to extend from June 30th to October 31st.”81 Abercrombie returned to Valdez in early July with orders from Merriam to push Expedition 2 through to the headwaters of the Copper River.82

After his return, Abercrombie set about reorganizing the expedition. Lieutenant’s Preston and Brookfield, who were both ill-suited to exploration work, were relieved of duty and sent home. Lieutenant Lowe - described by Abercrombie as “a man to be killed but not conquered” -

“was directed to organize a party, consisting of himself and 3 men, with 10 head of stock,” and lead an advance party to the headwaters of the Copper, over Mentasta Pass, to the Fortymile

River, “with a view to locating an all-American route from Valdez to the Yukon.”83 Abercrombie himself would lead a second expedition to thoroughly explore the Copper River and its tributaries.

With a plan in place, Abercrombie wrote, “I then looked over the ground with a view to deciding how I would cross the Coast Range of mountains.”84 Expedition 2’s explorations in the spring of 1898 suggested two possible routes, following the Lowe River to Keystone Pass, and

78 Ibid. 79 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 565. 80 Ibid., 565. 81 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 173, File 2258, Merriam to Abercrombie, 10 June 1898. 82 Ibid. Merriam’s revised orders stated that the expedition only had to get to the Tanana River, because Ray’s reports confirmed that the routes over the mountains to the Yukon were practical, but Merriam had no objection to the expedition going farther. 83 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 565. 84 Ibid., 565.

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then down to the Copper River, or over Valdez Glacier and Bates Pass. Of the two routes, Valdez

Glacier was by far the most dangerous, crossing some thirty miles of glacier to the headwaters of the Klutena River, but Keystone Pass “was reported to be impassable for pack animals,” and after “the constant rain of some ten days” many of the glacial streams that flowed into the Lowe

River were “now a raging mountain torrent,” and too difficult to cross.85 Abercrombie himself would later almost drown trying to cross one such stream.86 After consulting with Lowe, “it was decided that the course of duty lay over the glacier, even if all the stock and some of the men were lost in making the attempt.”87

Valdez Glacier, the route that most of the 3,000 prospectors at Port Valdez used to reach the interior during the spring and summer of 1898, was the most harrowing part of the Copper

River route. According to Lowe, whose party left Valdez on 13 July, “the glacier is a fairly gradual ascent, except in one short, steep place near the summit, and its general direction is north and south… The south slope of the glacier [Valdez Glacier] is 20 miles long, and the north slope

[Klutina Glacier] 9 miles from the summit.”88 Despite its gradual slopes, Abercrombie reported that the majority of the miners were wholly unprepared for the hardships of the journey. “They were soon so galled by the excessive labor required to draw their goods over the trail,” he wrote,

“that it was with the utmost pain they continued their labors.”89 Lieutenant Brookfield reported after his first journey over the glacier in May 1898 that a camp of some 400 miners had been

85 Ibid., 565-566. 86 Ibid., 566. 87 Ibid., 566. 88 P.G. Lowe, “From Valdez Inlet to Belle Isle, on the Yukon,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 591. For July 13 date see: NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 174, File 2600, Abercrombie to Barry, 13 July 1898. 89 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 587.

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established at the foot of the summit.90 “At this point,” Lieutenant Preston wrote, “I found many people disheartened and turning back. Tons of provisions lying in the cache were buried and lost by the last great fall of snow.”91

Abercrombie began making preparations to follow Lowe over the glacier with the remaining members of Expedition 2 on 19 July. Since the trail conditions on the glacier were subject to change at any moment, the first step to crossing it with pack animals and supplies required spending time observing the glacier and learning the ins and outs of glacial travel.

Abercrombie and two men left Valdez on 19 July and “began laying off a trail through the crevasses between the terminal moraine at the foot of the glacier and the top of the third bench.”92 Private Bence, who “was found to be particularly adapted to this work,” was instructed to cut and maintain the trail, “building small stone monuments and noting from day to day the changes in the crevasses and snow arches.”93

Bence’s work was complete by 27 July, but bad weather on the glacier forced the

Abercrombie party to delay for nine days. On 5 August, “notwithstanding the foggy, rainy weather,” Abercrombie wrote, “the expedition was ordered to proceed at once for the interior.”94

The party was divided into groups with five horses, “each horse being led by a man, and there was also an extra man and extra rope to each section.”95 Each group was instructed to “proceed over the glacier at given intervals as a unit, and whenever a horse broke through a snow arch over a crevasse they were all to join at once in roping and pulling him out without unpacking.”96

90 Brookfield, “Across Valdez Glacier,” 598. 91 Preston, “Across Valdez Glacier with Sleds Drawn By Hand,” 600. 92 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 566. 93 Ibid., 566-567. 94 Ibid., 567. 5 95 Ibid., 567. 5 96 Ibid., 567. 5

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Abercrombie followed behind, “leading my horse, on which I had packed a 5-gallon keg of whisky, to use as a stimulant during the night and the following day.”97

From the foot of the glacier, the party made their way along Bence’s trail. “Now and then a horse would lose his footing and go down to the bottom with a rush,” Abercrombie wrote, “but as the trail was constructed so that all the attendants and packers were on the upper side of the horses nothing worse than bruises and cuts to the animals was the result of their falls.” He remarked, “never once did one of them refuse to climb out of an ice gulch when called upon.”98

At the top of the first bench of the glacier, “the fog was so dense that it was impossible to see more than five of six animals of a train at any one time.”99

After covering twelve miles of the glacier, the party stopped to camp for the night, “as it was becoming so dark that one could not see to go farther in the rain that had been falling in torrents the greater part of the day.”100 The rain continued throughout the night. The party was tormented by the threat of avalanche as “the mighty glacier would crack” followed by “a deafening roar as some thousands of tons of ice was detached from one of the hundreds of glaciers that fringed the mountain sides.”101 Abercrombie remarked that “during my twenty-two years of service on the frontier I never experienced a more desolate and miserable night.”102

The following morning, the party resumed climbing the glacier. After traveling “four or five miles,” Abercrombie wrote, “a section of the glacier was encountered that was so bisected with crevasses of such width that for a while it was a question of getting through.”103 Working slowly, “not more than a quarter of a mile an hour for the next three or four hours,” the party

97 Ibid., 567. 98 Ibid., 567. 99 Ibid., 567. 100 Ibid., 568. 101 Ibid., 568. 102 Ibid., 568. 103 Ibid., 568.

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made their way across the fourth and fifth benches, before reaching the steep final ascent to the summit.104 “The wind was blowing a hurricane through the pass into the interior,” Abercrombie wrote, “accompanied by gusts of sleet and snow, which freezing as fast as they struck, coated men and beasts with an armor of ice.”105 After struggling to the summit, the party carried on

“some five or six hours’ travel in the howling storm,” until suddenly, Abercrombie wrote, “two yards after passing behind the shelter of this rocky cliff,” they entered “a perfect haven of rest and sunshine.”106 After a short rest, the party continued “down the glacier to the timber line” in perfect weather.107 Describing their experience on the glacier, Abercrombie wrote “I have now successfully crossed the Valdez Glacier at a season of the year when it was universally conceded to be impassable for man, making the journey in twenty-nine consecutive hours of practically continuous work, without sleep, rest, or shelter.”108

For the prospectors who traveled over the Copper River route in 1898, one such journey over the glacier was only the start of their struggles. Much like on the Chilkoot and White passes, Lieutenant Brookfield wrote “we found that prospectors as a rule carried with them an outfit averaging 1,500 pounds per man.”109 As the average man carried only 150 pounds at one time, “an outfit of 1,500 pounds would necessitate ten trips, loaded, over the same ground.”110

He continued, “the average a good worker could make the 23 miles from the bench [beach?] to the summit with 1,500 pounds in eighteen days, provided he had good working weather.”111 Also like on the Chilkoot and White passes, Abercrombie wrote that partnerships and groups of

104 Ibid., 568. 105 Ibid., 568-569. 106 Ibid., 569. 107 Ibid., 569. 108 Ibid., 569. 109 Brookfield, “Across Valdez Glacier,” 597. 110 Ibid., 597. 111 Ibid., 597.

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miners often split up under the stress of getting their supplies over the glacier. “It was no uncommon sight to see an organization stopping on the trail to dissolve partnership,” he wrote.112

“Out of hundreds of cooperative companies that left Seattle,” he noted, “I think less than a dozen reached the interior of Alaska as an organization.”113

After successfully crossing Valdez Glacier, Abercrombie divided his party into three groups. On the morning of 8 August, Corporal Robert Heiden and three men returned to Valdez over the glacier with orders to “cut and grade the trail up Lowe River and over Keystone

Pass.”114 Abercrombie and three men proceeded down the Klutena River, along the shores of

Lake Abercrombie (today’s Klutina Lake), following the river to Copper Centre, where they arrived on 18 August.115 A third group, consisting of geologist Schrader, topographical assistant

Emil Mahlo, Corporal Robert Koehler, and a number of enlisted men and packers remained to explore the Klutena Valley.116

Abercrombie’s party left Copper Centre on 23 August. Traveling along the mountains west of the Copper, the party made their way north, following the Copper River as far as the

Slahna (Slana) River, which they ascended to Lake Mentasta. Crossing over Mentasta Pass, the party explored the headwaters of the east branch of the Tok River, where Abercrombie spotted

“three low divides” leading through the mountains to the Tanana watershed.117 Running short of provisions, Abercrombie decided to turn around, travelling down the Slahna and Copper Rivers, on foot and boat, all the way to the Copper River delta, before returning to Valdez by sea. “On

112 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 587. 113 Ibid., 587. 114 Ibid., 566. 115 Ibid., 569-570. 116 Robert Koehler, “A Trip to Copper River,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 607. 117 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 571.

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October 16 the expedition arrived at the camp at Port Valdez,” Abercrombie wrote, “having covered a little more than 800 miles afoot, on horseback, and by raft and boat since August 5.”118

Schrader, Mahlo, and Koehler slowly made their way down the Klutena River, surveying as they went, reaching the junction of the Klutena and the Copper on 30 August. The party turned south on 31 August, following the western bank of the Copper River. They reached the mouth of the Tonsena (Tonsina) River on 10 September. The party spent four days trying to cross the Tonsena, resulting in the death of Private Archer and the loss of most of the party’s provisions. By 17 September, the party was traveling south again. They reached a cache of provisions left by the Rafferty party on 21 September, before crossing the Kotsena River

(today’s Tiekel River), and reaching the Tasnuna River on 1 October. At Tasnuna, Schrader led a party up the Tasnuna, while Koehler led the remaining men down the Copper River by boat and back to Valdez by sea, arriving on 17 October. Schrader’s party ascended the Tasnuna River, crossed over Marshall Pass, and followed Keystone Canyon and the Lowe River to Valdez, arriving on 23 October.119

The Heiden party, consisting of Corporal Heiden and three privates, who returned over the Valdez Glacier, left Valdez on 2 September and started cutting trail up the Lowe River. The party explored both sides of Keystone Canyon, finding a practical route through the canyon, before going over Thompson Pass to the headwaters of the Kotsena River (today’s Tsina River), and determining that it was suitable for pack trains.120 After spending several days looking for

118 Ibid., 572. 119 Robert Koehler, “A Trip to Copper River,” 607-612. For the 17 October and 23 October dates see: Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 573. These detailed descriptions are indicative of how the U.S. Army experienced the landscapes they explored. Without the aid of detailed maps and guides, the army communicated and described the routes they crossed by stringing together lists of rivers, crossing, passes, and other information that, when read with the incomplete maps that the expeditions produced, could inform travelers and government officials of the routes they explored. For examples see Figures 12 and 20. 120 The party seems to have mistakenly assumed that today’s Tiekel and Tsina rivers were the same river.

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Marshall Pass and a way to meet up with Schrader, Heiden decided to turn around on 13

October, returning to Valdez on 20 October.121

Between Valdez and Lake Mentasta, Expedition 2 encountered many of the estimated

3000 miners attempting to reach the interior via the Copper River. The first stop for miners after crossing Valdez Glacier was Twelve Mile Camp or Sawmill Camp, where, Lieutenant Preston wrote, “the whole procession of gold seekers stopped in timber to assay the building of boats” to float down the Klutena to the Copper.122 After reaching the foot of Lake Abercrombie, the miners encountered a series of rapids on the Klutena River. Abercrombie wrote that “I noticed, while traveling the trail along the river bank, parts of boats, all kinds of provisions, clothing, etc. that had been washed down and lodged there from wrecks” as miners attempted to run the rapids.123

After passing the rapids, miners reached the junction of the Klutena River and the Copper

River and Copper Center, a town that by 26 October consisted of forty to fifty cabins and around

200 people. From Copper Center, those miners without pack animals continued up the Copper by boat. Those miners traveling on foot could choose from “two trails, or routes, indistinct, and at places not marked at all except by small sticks used by the Indians to indicate a general direction,” one following the western bank of the Copper River north, and the other, the Millard trail, following the east bank before heading over the high ground, cutting across the big bend of the Copper River.124 Both trails, Abercrombie wrote, “lead to Mentasta Pass, which is the

121 Robert Heiden, “Up Lowe River, Across Divide, To Copper River,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 605-606. 122 Preston, “Across Valdez Glacier with Sleds Drawn By Hand,” 601. 123 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 587. 124 Ibid., 587.

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objective point for the Yukon, Tanana, and Forty-Mile districts.”125 There were three small settlements north of Copper Center, one 8.5 miles from Copper Center at the junction of the

Copper and Tazlena Rivers, one 36.5 miles from Copper Center at the mouth of the Sanford

River, and one seventy-seven miles from Copper Center at the mouth of the Slahna River. “The last of the series of cabins built by the prospectors who entered the Copper River Valley during the season of 1898” were built at Lake Mentasta.126

Unlike the Mounted Police in the Yukon, Abercrombie was not particularly concerned with providing assistance and advice to miners or delivering mail to the region. He wrote that

“the most frequent complaint met with by the expedition was that of individuals who had failed to get their mail, which they had expected the ‘Government outfit’ to bring in.”127 As part of

Expedition 2’s instructions to provide relief, as mandated by the Alaska Relief Act, Abercrombie did provide assistance to destitute miners at Valdez. He reported as early as 5 July that there were some two hundred destitute miners at Valdez, and he had fed about five hundred people.128

“Unless some means are devised to care for those who are unable to leave the Country,” he wrote, “many must starve, as the Transportation Companies will not carry them South without compensation.”129 According to the expedition’s Quartermaster Agent Charles Brown, who remained at Valdez for the duration of the season to supervise the expedition’s provisions, during the months of August, September, and October, he had issued rations to 306 people.130 “Of this number,” Brown wrote, “121 were carried south… by the steamers of the Pacific Steam Whaling

Company” free of charge, under an arrangement made between Abercrombie and the

125 Ibid., 587. 126 Ibid., 588. 127 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 588. 128 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 174, File 2542, Abercrombie to Barry, 5 July 1898. 129 Ibid. 130 Charles Brown, “Relief Features of the Expedition,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 621.

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company.131 Brown also noted that “fifty-four men have been treated by me for trivial ailments, such as colds, sore feet, lame back, etc., generally induced through unusual exposure and hardships.”132

In the meantime, Lieutenant Lowe and his party had left Valdez on 13 July, reaching the other side of the glacier by 17 July, before following the Klutena River to Copper Center, where they arrived on 31 July. From Copper Center, the party followed the Millard Trail across the

Copper River bend, reaching the Slahna River by 21 August. Going over Mentasta Pass, the party continued over Meiklejohn Pass on 26 August, before descending the Tetling (Tetlin) River to the Tanana, which they reached by the end of August. From the Tanana, Lowe headed north, picking up the Dennisons Fork of the Fortymile River, following its east fork, before crossing over a divide to the Sixty Mile River. Now in Canadian territory, the party ascended Millar

Creek, and then, retracing the route of Constantine in 1896, followed Moose Creek to the

Fortymile River. Purchasing a boat, the party floated downriver to Fortymile on 21 September, where they reached the Yukon River. Having successfully crossed the all-American route to the

Yukon, the party boarded a steamer heading upriver to Fort Selkirk. They reached Dawson on 26

September, and crossed the White Pass on 18 October, before returning to Vancouver Barracks from Skagway.133

At Valdez, Abercrombie wrote that, with the return of the Heiden party on 20 October, “I now considered the field work of 1898 about over.”134 Leaving Quartermaster Agent Charles

Brown at Valdez to look after the expedition’s supplies and pack animals, Abercrombie and the

131 Quote from Ibid., 621; NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 175, File 3281, Abercrombie to Barry, 10 October 1898. 132 Charles Brown, “Relief Features of the Expedition,” 622. 133 Lowe, “From Valdez Inlet to Belle Isle, on the Yukon,” 591-593. 134 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 573.

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rest of the expedition arrived in Seattle on 10 November 1898.135 Despite Abercrombie’s difficulties acquiring transportation, Expedition 2 had explored a large amount of territory during the 1898 season, covering a number of routes from Valdez, exploring much of the Copper River valley, and succeeding in finding an all-American route to the Yukon through Mentasta Pass and the Tanana River. The expedition also traced many of the routes used by miners entering the region, witnessing their struggles and providing relief to the destitute at Valdez. At Cook’s Inlet,

Expedition 3 had similar success and ran into similar problems.

Expedition 3

Expedition 3 was commanded by Captain Edwin F. Glenn of the 25th Infantry. Edwin

Forbes Glenn was born in North Carolina in 1857. He graduated from the United States Military

Academy at West Point in 1877 and served in the American West from 1877-1888. He taught military science and tactics and mathematics at the University of Minnesota and received a law degree there in 1890. He served as judge advocate for the Departments of the Dakota and the

Columbia before being selected for Alaska duty in 1898.136 Glenn was instructed to explore the region north of Cook’s Inlet and search for a practical route to the Tanana River, and then over the mountains to the Yukon River between Fortymile Creek and Circle City. The personnel of the expedition included Glenn, “First Lieut. Henry G. Learnard and nineteen enlisted men,

Fourteenth Infantry; Second Lieut. J.C. Castner, Fourth Infantry; First Lieut. John S. Kulp, assistant surgeon; Acting Hospital Steward Arthur Neville, and 2 privates of the Hospital Corps;

135 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 175, File 3491, Abercrombie to Barry, 19 November 1898; File 3420, Abercrombie to Barry, 10 November 1898. 136 K.S. Melvin, “Glenn, Edwin Forbis [sic],” in Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 2, ed. William S. Powell (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 306-307.

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George H. Howe, guide and interpreter; Luther S. Kelly, guide, and 1 geologist.”137 The expedition left Vancouver Barracks on 6 April 1898 and proceeded to Haines Mission on the same steamer as Expedition 2.

Like Abercrombie, Glenn was supposed to collect fifty reindeer at Haines Mission to use as transportation for Expedition 3. Together, the pair discovered that the reindeer were in poor condition and would be useless to their expeditions. Their request for pack animals from the

District of Lynn Canal was denied. Before leaving Haines, Glenn wrote to Assistant Adjutant

General of the Department of the Columbia Barry, requesting “that I be furnished for each expedition (Nos 2 &3) at least fifteen packmules [sic] with pack saddles complete and five riding animals for each.”138 Expeditions 2 and 3 left Haines on 16 April.139 At Valdez, according to

Abercrombie, “considerable time was spent… in sorting the stores belonging to expeditions 2 and 3,” which “had been indiscriminately stowed in the hold” of the Valencia.140 By 20 April,

Expedition 3’s provisions had been transferred to the steamer Salmo.141

Before proceeding to Cook’s Inlet, Glenn had been ordered to explore Portage Bay

(today’s Passage Canal) and Port Wells and determine if any there were any practical routes to the interior on the west side of Prince William Sound. After the expedition’s supplies had been loaded on the Salmo, Glenn ordered Lieutenant Castner and fourteen men to proceed to Portage

Bay and, he wrote in his report of the expedition, “select a suitable camping ground and unload the freight and pitch camp.”142 On 21 April, Glenn and the rest of the expedition sailed to

137 E.F. Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 629. 138 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 172, File 1537, Glenn to Barry, 14 April 1898. 139 Ibid., 629-630. 140 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 564. 141 Ibid., 564. 142 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 631.

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Orca,143 where they met the Salmo and proceeded north to “explore Port Wells and the adjacent inlets.”144 The party arrived at the head of Port Wells on 25 April, where they were met by two large glaciers. Glenn wrote that “all of our party, excepting myself and the boat crew, made a trip up on the right-hand glacier for a distance of about 12 miles,” before concluding that no easy route to the interior existed.145 On 3 May, Glenn led a similar exploration of Unaquig Inlet, to the east of Port Wells. “The rain and fog prevented us from seeing very far into the mountains,” he wrote, “but far enough for us to determine that no outlet exists at or near the head of this bay.”146

Portage Bay, Glenn wrote, “is inclosed [sic] by immense glaciers and snow-capped mountains” and “is about 10 miles long.”147 At the head of the bay, the expedition found a winter trail leading over the glacier to the Turnagain Arm of Cook’s Inlet, a distance of about 12 miles.

The Portage Glacier “is not very high and is a perfectly safe and feasible route for traveling during the winter months,” Glenn noted, “but, like all other glaciers, during the summer months when the snow has melted crevasses appear and render travel over them both difficult and dangerous.”148 On 27 April, Glenn ordered Lieutenant Learnard and ten men to cross the glacier and “ascend Twenty-Mile River, to find, if practicable, a route from Portage Bay to the Knik

Arm.”149 While crossing the glacier, Learnard became snow-blind and “had to be led back to camp by one of the men.”150 Leaving again on 7 May, Learnard, this time “accompanied by the geologist and five enlisted men,” successfully crossed the glacier and learned that “it was

143 Orca, 2.5 miles NE of Cordova, 60°39’50”N, 145°43’00” W. Named for a fishing vessel of the Pacific Steam Whaling Co., which opened a cannery there at the end of the 19th century.” Donald J. Orth, “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names,” Geological Survey Professional Paper 567 (1967): 727. 144 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 631. 145 Ibid., 632. 146 Ibid., 633. 147 Ibid., 631. 148 Ibid., 631. 149 Ibid., 632. 150 Ibid., 633.

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impossible to ascend the Twenty-Mile River at this time, on account of the ice gorge near its mouth.”151

On 10 May, Glenn ordered Lieutenant Castner and a civilian to proceed over the glacier to Turnagain Arm, and then make their way to Cook’s Inlet. Castner arrived at Sunrise City, on the southern coast of Turnagain Arm, on 13 May. Sunrise was the site of a small gold rush in

1895-1896, which brought some 2,000 people to the area.152 Castner found a town of 800 people, with a further 400 miners at Quartz Camp in the interior. There Castner met a Mr. Hicks, “the only white man who have ever been to the head of the Matanuska River,” he wrote.153 Hiring

Hicks as a guide, Castner led his party across Cook’s Inlet to Tyoonok on 22 May, where they established Expedition 3’s main camp on the inlet at Ladds Station, a few miles to the north.154

On 30 May, Glenn also sent Learnard and two men to Resurrection Bay, on the southern end of the Kenai Peninsula, to explore the route between the bay and Sunrise. Learnard make his way north, along the shore of Lake Kenai, and then down Quartz Creek, arriving at Sunrise on 6 May.

Two days later, Learnard also traveled to Castner’s camp at Ladds Station.155

In the meantime, at Resurrection Bay Glenn learned that the pack animals he had requested failed to arrive at Valdez. In frustration, Glenn wrote to Assistant Adjutant General

Barry on 25 May that “if either of these expeditions are expected to accomplish the work assigned to them it is absolutely essential that transportation of some kind be furnished.”156

151 Ibid., 633. 152 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 160. 153 J.C. Castner, “A Story of Hardship and Suffering in Alaska,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 687. 154 Ibid., 687. 155 H.G. Learnard, “A Trip from Portage Bay to Turnagain Arm and up the Sushitna,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 650-653. 156 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 173, File 2195, Glenn to Barry, 25 May 1898.

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Glenn also reported that he was sending Captain J.D. Kulp to Vancouver Barracks to repeat his request in person. He concluded that “I beg to state that unless the pack packers [sic] and outfit can be forwarded and that promptly I earnestly recommend that the work to be performed by my command be postponed until some subsequent period.”157

When Glenn reached Tyoonok a week later, he was met with one packer and five pack animals sent from Seattle, but additional pack animals never arrived.158 On 13 July, Glenn, like

Abercrombie, was called upon to defend his decision to send a man to Seattle in search of pack animals. It seems that Merriam was particularly annoyed by Glenn’s instructions to Kulp to report straight to Adjutant General Corbin, rather than Merriam himself.159 In his defence, Glenn wrote to Barry that “the Department Commander disagrees with me in regard to the needs of my command as to pack animals. He seems to have arrived at this conclusion largely from a conversation with Captain Ray who I believe has never been into Cook’s Inlet and who certainly has never been up either the Suschitna or the Madanuska [sic].” - again highlighting the divide been the U.S. Army commanders and their officers on the ground.160

From Ladds Station, the members of Expedition 3 set out on their main tasks for the

1898 season, reaching the Tanana River. On 7 June, Castner, Hicks, and eight men traveled by boat to the head of Knik Arm with orders to ascend the Matanuska River and then make their way north towards the Tanana.161 Lieutenant Learnard left Ladds Station on 20 June, with orders to explore the Sushitna River, and search for a practical route to the Tanana to the north of

157 Ibid. 158 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 174, File 2586, Glenn to Barry, 1 June 1898. 159 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 174, File 2625, Glenn to Barry, 13 July 1898. 160 Ibid. 161 Castner, “A Story of Hardship and Suffering in Alaska,” 687.

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Cook’s Inlet.162 Captain Glenn and the remaining members of Expedition 3 left Ladds Station on

17 July and sailed for Sunrise City. There Glenn finally decided to purchase twenty-five head of horses and mules to serve as transportation for the expedition. The party then proceeded to the head of Knik Inlet, reaching the Matanuska River on 27 July, with the intention of following

Castner’s party into the interior.163

The Glenn party reached the Chicaloon (Chickaloon) River on 31 July, where Glenn divided the party in two, with Sergeant Mathys leading a group up the Chicaloon to explore the

Talkeetno (Talkeetna) River, and Glenn continuing to the head of the Matanuska. Glenn’s party ascended Hicks Creek, crossed over the mountains, and descended today’s Caribou Creek and

Squaw Creek, before reaching the Bubb River, today’s Little Nelchina River, on 7 August.164

Following the Bubb, the party continued northeast, travelling south of Lake Louise and passing

Crosswind Lake and Ewan Lake, before reaching the Gulkana River, which Glenn mistook as the

Chestochena (Christochina) River. The party followed the Gulkana River, before turning northwest up the Middle Fork of the Gulkana, then following the Tangle Lakes north to the headwaters of the Delta River, a tributary of the Tanana. On 25 August, they caught up with

Castner’s party near the junction of the Delta and Wilder Creek (today’s Rainy Creek).165

Together, the Glenn and Castner parties followed the Delta River for two more days, until

27 August, when Glenn decided that Castner “should take the two smallest mules with such rations as could be spared and proceed to Circle City,” while Glenn returned south with the remaining men.166 After making the necessary arrangements, the parties left each other on 30

162 Learnard, “A Trip from Portage Bay to Turnagain Arm and up the Sushitna,” 653. 163 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 633. 164 For the name Little Nelchina River see: Orth, “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names,” 586. 165 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 634-635. For Rainy Creek see: Orth, 791. 166 Ibid., 636.

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Figure 12 Route of Glenn and Castner, 1898. From: Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rare Maps Collection, UAF-G4371 R1 1898 U5 Sheet 6.

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August.167 Castner and Privates Blitch and McGregor traveled north following the Delta River to the Tanana, which they reached on 1 September. The party then ascended the Volkmar River or possibly the Goodpaster River, in search of a route over the mountains to Circle City. By 15

September, the party reached the mountains at the head of the Volkmar.168 Castner wrote,

“whether we looked north, east, south, or west, all we could see were mountains… there was no sign of a divide or tributaries.”169 Running low on rations, Castner decided to turn around and float down the Tanana to the Yukon River. The party stopped on 18 September to construct a raft, and continued their journey back down the Volkmar. “Each morning found us weaker,”

Castner wrote, “our clothes more torn and burned, and our sores more painful.”170 By 26

September, the party reached the Tanana River. They arrived at the junction of the Tanana and the Yukon River on 11 October. Travelling by sled to Rampart City, Castner left Blitch and

McGregor to winter and continued up the Yukon by dog sled. Reaching Fort Yukon on 28

December, Dawson City on 22 January, and Skagway on 25 February, Castner was back at

Vancouver Barracks on 1 March 1899 to report on his journey.171

In the meantime, Lieutenant Learnard’s party left Ladds Station on 20 June 1898 in a

Columbia River sail boat for the mouth of the Sushitna River. Ascending the river by sail and oars, the party reached the Alaska Commercial Company store twenty-three miles from the mouth of the river on 22 June. By the next day, the party required the use of a towline to continue their journey upriver. The party reached Croto Creek (today’s Kroto Creek) on 24 June and stopped to build a boat more suited to towing. A flat-bottomed boat, 35 feet long and 5 feet

167 Castner puts the date as 29 August. 168 Castner, “A Story of Hardship and Suffering in Alaska,” 689-690. 169 Ibid., 690. 170 Ibid., 691. 171 Ibid., 691-696.

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wide, and drawing only 7-10 inches was constructed by Johnson and his partner. The party continued upriver on 7 July.172 Learnard described the process in his report on the expedition:

“We ascended the river occasionally by rowing or sailing, but at least nine-tenths of the way it was necessary to use the tow line, and usually with all the men in the line, except one to steer the boat and another to assist him in case the boat should get away from the men on the tow line.”173

The party battled mosquitoes the whole way, to the point that “whenever possible,… camps were always made on sand bars in the center of the river, as it was found that there were not so many mosquitoes away from the timber.”174

By 17 July, the party reached the junction of the Sushitna and the Talkeetna River.

Ascending the Talkeetna, they reached the mouth of the Chinaldna (Chunilna) River on 19 July and established a permanent base camp to explore the surrounding area. On 22 July, Learnard sent Yanert and Private Gamble to explore the Chinaldna, while Learnard led a party to the headwaters of the Talkeetna. Learnard ascended the river as far as a Midnooski village, and returned to camp in early August. Sergeant Yanert’s party only made it as far as the forks of the

Chinaldna because of high water. Upon his return to camp, Learnard received additional orders from Glenn and instructed Yanert and Private Jones to try and reach the Tanana River.175 Yanert,

Jones, and Bate, their Skittig guide, left camp on 11 August, ascending the Chinaldna River, then crossed over the mountains to the Sushitna River, following Indian Creek to the Chulitna River, which they followed as far as today’s Broad Pass and the headwaters of Cantwell Creek, a

172 Learnard, “A Trip from Portage Bay to Turnagain Arm and up the Sushitna,” 653-656. 173 Ibid., 656. 174 Ibid., 655-656. 175 Ibid., 656-660.

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tributary of the Tanana, before turning around because their guide would go no further on 4

September.176

Learnard and Private Gamble left camp on 13 August and again ascended the Talkeetna

River to try and reach Sergeant Mathys’ party. The pair made it to within twenty miles of

Mathys, before deciding to turn around on 24 August. They returned to camp on 27 August. On

14 September, Yanert and Jones returned to camp, and Learnard ordered the whole expedition to start down the Sushitna. Leaving the following morning, the party made quick time floating down the river, reaching Ladds Station and then Expedition 3’s new camp at Tyoonok by 17

September.177

In the meantime, Glenn’s party left the Delta River on 20 August, and returned the way they came, reaching to the Bubb River by 12 September, before retracing their steps up Caribou

Creek and down Hicks Creek, arriving at Cook’s Inlet on 27 September.178 “The total distance traveled into and returning to the interior was 672 miles, of which 347 miles were made in the advance,” Glenn wrote.179 The party traveled by steamer to Tyoonok on 28 September, ending

Expedition 3’s explorations for the 1898 season. Glenn visited Homer on 10 October and Kenai on 15 October, both on the Kenai Peninsula, before returning to Tyoonok on 17 October for the expedition’s journey back to Vancouver Barracks. They arrived on 10 November.180

“Obtaining of a more thorough knowledge”181

Once Expeditions 2 and 3 arrived in Seattle, Major General Merriam issued orders on 11

November that the members of both expeditions should remain at Vancouver Barracks until they

176 William Yanert, “A Trip to the Tanana River,” in United States Senate, Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, Senate Report No. 1023, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 677. 177 Learnard, “A Trip from Portage Bay to Turnagain Arm and up the Sushitna,” 656-664. 178 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 636. 179 Ibid., 636. 180 Ibid., 636-637. 181 Memorandum for Merriam, 26 January 1898.

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had thoroughly reported on their finding.182 Both expeditions had covered vast distances of territory that were considered unexplored by the War Department. Although the region had been well known and occupied by local indigenous people and neither expedition crossed territory that had not been visited by Euro-American traders and prospectors, the territory was not well known to the American government and had not been systematically mapped and surveyed. Following their orders to gather as much information about the areas they visited as possible, the expedition reports of Abercrombie and Glenn, and the sub-reports of Castner, Learnard, and others, were filled with general information on the topographical and geology of the Copper, Sushitna, and

Matanuska Rivers and their tributaries, the mineral resources of the region, timber resources, plants and animals, and information on the region’s indigenous population, climate, and agricultural potential.183

The inclusion of information on the indigenous populations encountered by Expeditions 2 and 3 is of particular interest, given the general absence of indigenous peoples from the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. During the planning for the 1898 expeditions, Major General

Nelson A. Miles, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army, suggested that sending

Expeditions 2 and 3 to Alaska could be useful for “conciliating the natives of that Territory.”184

In the American West, the U.S. Army had fought several decades of Indian wars during the

1870s and 1880s. As a leading figure in the Indian wars, Miles took an interest in Alaska’s indigenous people as early as 1883, when he sent three expeditions to Alaska to explore the

Yukon and Copper river valleys after receiving reports of Indian hostilities in the region, as

182 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 175, File 3422, Merriam to Barry, 11 November 1898. 183 See reports cited above. 184 NARA, RG107, E81, File 2, Memorandum for Merriam, 26 January 1898.

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discussed in Chapter 4.185 Given that one of the primary tasks performed by the U.S. Army in the

American West was subduing the region’s indigenous population in advance of white settlement, it was only natural to expect to be confronted with the same task in Alaska. The reports from

Expeditions 2 and 3, however, found the local indigenous population to be peaceful.

Abercrombie, for example, wrote that “it will be found to be the universal verdict of all who have come in contact with the Copper River Indians that they are honest, inclined to be friendly, and temperate.”186 With no reason to fear resistance from local indigenous people, the U.S. Army was content to report on the number or appearance of those they encountered, but found little reason to consider indigenous people in their plans for the region. The Mounted Police, who were also responsible for subduing the indigenous population in the Canadian West, found a similar situation in the Yukon.187

On the expeditions’ primary objective, finding a practical all-American route to the upper

Yukon, both parties reported success. Expedition 2 had explored all of the available routes from

Port Valdez to the Copper River valley and confirmed the viability of the Mentasta Pass route to the Tanana River drainage. Expedition 3 had determined that the Matanuska River was a practical route between Cook’s Inlet and the Copper River drainage and explored the Delta River route to the Tanana, while also confirming that a third practical route to the Tanana existed through the Sushitna River valley and Broad Pass. Of the three routes, Abercrombie found that the Copper River/Mentasta Pass route was the most developed. With some 3000 prospectors arriving at Valdez during the 1898 season, he reported finding “a continuous line of habitations

185 Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898. For more on Miles’ role see: Robert Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). 186 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 579. 187 Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905; Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973.

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from the coast on Prince William Sound to the Forty-Mile district in the interior.”188 He estimated “the expenditure of time and money by the people of the United States in the Copper

River district in attempting to establish an ‘all-American route’ in the unexplored sections of the interior of Alaska” at $3.7 million.189 These voluntary efforts, Abercrombie noted, had resulted in a “located and imperfectly marked” trail, “with the exception of an interval of some 35 miles,” from Valdez to the Tanana River.190

The Cook’s Inlet routes were much less developed. Glenn, Castner, and Learnard only encountered a few scattered parties of miners between Cook’s Inlet and the interior, and only the rough trails used by local indigenous people to travel to and from the interior. Glenn nonetheless reported that there were “no obstacles that are insurmountable, or even extremely difficult” to construct a trail from the Matanuska River to the Tanana.191 “No very great amount of labor will be necessary to construct a perfectly practicable trail for pack animals or wagons from Cook

Inlet to the place where my expedition turned back,” he wrote.192 Both Glenn and Learnard were less certain about the viability of the Sushitna route. Learnard reported that “a pack-train trail could be constructed up the Sushitna River; but, as the valley is very heavily timbered and there is so much low ground covered with thick moss,” it would hardly be worth the effort.193 He did suggest that “a flat-bottomed steamer of not over 2 feet draft when loaded could be constructed to ascend the river as far as Indian Creek,… about 40 miles above the mouth.”194 But Glenn was less sure. “Several attempts were made during the past summer to navigate this river with steam

188 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 588. 189 Ibid., 589. 190 Ibid., 589. 191 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 640. 192 Ibid., 641. 193 Learnard, “A Trip from Portage Bay to Turnagain Arm and up the Sushitna,” 665. 194 Ibid., 664.

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launches,” he noted, “but with indifferent success.”195 Glenn recommended that “it is apparent that this route should be further examined during the coming season.”196

Glenn and Abercrombie both reported finding routes that would be suitable for railway construction. Abercrombie wrote that “the gradient into the interior for railroad construction is practically nominal.”197 He suggested that the possible routes from Valdez “are confined to the

Keystone Pass at starting for passage through the Coast Range of mountains.”198 From there, the line could follow the Tasnuna or Kotsena river valleys to the Copper. “Having reached the

Copper River Valley,” Abercrombie wrote, “it is possible to proceed in any direction.”199 Glenn reported that both the Matanuska and Sushitna routes would be feasible for railway construction, but he noted that “the greatest obstacle for operating a railroad in any portion of Alaska, will be found to arise from the excessive snow falls on the coast and through the mountain ranges.”200

Glenn and Abercrombie also discussed the role of the development of the Alaska-Yukon border in their search for an all-American route to the Yukon. Both reiterated that there were currently two main routes to the Alaskan interior, the Lynn Canal route and the Yukon River route. “The objection to” the Lynn Canal, Glenn wrote, is “in the fact that as soon as one reaches the summit of the mountains back of Dyea or Skagway he passes out of American into English or Canadian territory.”201 He continued, “in passing into foreign territory one is forced to pay duty on everything in his outfit which to the average prospector, is a serious burden.”202 On the

Yukon River route, Glenn explained, “the only serious objection… is that the Yukon River

195 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 641. 196 Ibid., 642. 197 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 583. 198 Ibid., 584. 199 Ibid., 584. 200 Glenn, “A Trip to the Region of the Tanana,” 642-643. 201 Ibid., 639. 202 Ibid., 639.

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freezes over for nearly nine months of the year.”203 With the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes becoming more developed, Glenn and Abercrombie reminded the government, the development of an all-American route to the interior had become in the interest of the government and the American miners who rushed to the Yukon.

But while Expeditions 2 and 3 had identified a number of feasible routes from Cook’s

Inlet and Prince William Sound to the Yukon River, they had hardly established an all-American route to the Klondike. Both Castner and Lowe, and their men, had barely survived the trip, stumbling into Fortymile and Tanana Station with no provisions and few surviving pack animals.

For anyone who wanted to reach the Yukon with any amount of supplies or freight, or for the

U.S. government if another relief expedition had to be organized, the expedition had not found any viable alternatives to the Lynn Canal routes or the Yukon River. Much work would be required if the Copper River or Cook’s Inlet routes were to become practical routes to the interior. Despite this fact, all three all-American routes identified by Glenn and Abercrombie would eventually be developed, with the Alaska Railroad and Parks Highway (AK-3) on the

Sushitna route, the Richardson Highway (AK-4) following the Delta River, and the Glenn

Highway (AK-1) tracing the Copper River route and the path of the Trans-Alaska Military Road, on which construction would begin in 1899.

By the end of the 1898 season, the U.S. Army had completed its reconnaissance of

Cook’s Inlet and the Copper River valley - identified by Captain P.H. Ray as possible all-

American routes to the Yukon. While the efforts to organize the Alaska Relief Expedition had failed because the army did not have accurate information on local conditions in the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands, the 1898 exploring expeditions ensured that the War Department had

203 Ibid., 639.

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enough information to assess the feasibility of Ray’s plan - although the divide between Glenn and Abercrombie and their commanders on transportation shows that those on the ground still had a better understanding of the situation. By March 1899, the War Department decided to move forward with implementing Ray’s plan by establishing an all-American route to the Yukon via the Copper River route.

It was Abercrombie who suggested that the U.S. Army further develop the Copper River route in the coming season. First, Abercrombie suggested that the army complete “the construction of a trail through the Keystone Pass of the Coast range of mountains, from the head of Port Valdez, Prince William Sound, to Thomson Pass, at the head of the Tonsena Valley, a distance of about 35 miles.”204 This trail had been started by the miners in February 1898 and “I only echo the united sentiment of these people that Congress ought to assist them,” he wrote.205

In a second and more ambitious recommendation, Abercrombie suggested that a military trail be constructed “from Port Valdez, on Prince William Sound, through the Copper River Valley and into the heart of the mining section at the head of the Tanana River.”206 Such a trail “would give the prospector who owns two or three head of ponies an avenue by which he could reach that section of Alaska which we believe to be mineral bearing” and it would also insure the food supply of the interior of Alaska by providing an alternative to the Yukon River route.207 But while the U.S. Army was interested in establishing an all-American route to the Yukon during the 1899 season, the next chapter focuses on the efforts of the Mounted Police and the Canadian government to maintain a borderlands transportation system.

204 Abercrombie, “A Military Reconnaissance of the Copper River Valley,” 589. 205 Ibid., 589. 206 Ibid., 589. 207 Ibid., 589-590.

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Chapter 9 The Mounted Police and the White Pass and Yukon Route, 1899

After spending the chaotic 1898 season forwarding Mounted Police supplies to the

Yukon along a developing borderlands transportation network, Comptroller Fred White and the

Mounted Police hoped to come to a more stable arrangement for the upcoming year. Despite the improvements made during the 1898 season - the shift from pack trains and manual labour to transportation companies operating tramways, railways, and steamers - the Mounted Police still faced several problems going into 1899. As discussed in Chapter 7, the Yukon transportation system was far from reliable. The Yukon River route via St. Michael had been well established during the 1898 season, as long as low river conditions could be avoided. But on the Lynn Canal route, the Chilkoot Tramways were susceptible to breakdown, the Brackett Road could be blocked by snow, and the White Pass Railway was incomplete, all of which limited the reliability of the route for police supplies. The Yukon transportation system also remained split into component parts - Vancouver to Skagway, Skagway to Lake Bennett, Bennett to the Whitehorse

Rapids, Whitehorse to Dawson. Each part required the police to coordinate with a separate transportation company - an ocean-going steamer to Skagway, a combination of the Chilkoot

Tramway and packers over the Chilkoot and White passes, a steamer on Lake Bennett and the

Yukon River. If the police could simply deliver supplies to a shipper in Vancouver and then pick them up at their destination, it would save substantial effort required to make arrangements with several companies and transfer freight between them.

This chapter explores the solution to these transportation problems - the completion of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, first to the summit of White Pass, and then as far as

Lake Bennett by July 1899. Construction of the railway, as discussed in Chapter 7, began in May

1898. The WPYR reached the summit for the first time on 19 February 1899. After a small

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ceremony, the railway officially opened for business transporting freight from Skagway to the summit.1 The railway faced tough winter conditions and fierce competition with packers and the

Chilkoot Tramway during the first months of 1899, but soon emerged as the most reliable transportation route to the interior. During the summer of 1899, the White Pass Railway made partnerships with transportation companies operating on the Vancouver to Skagway and Lake

Bennett to Dawson routes to offer a through-route from Vancouver to any point in the Yukon. In

May 1899, the Mounted Police made a contract with the Canadian Development Company, soon to become the river-steamer arm of the White Pass Railway, to deliver police supplies from

Vancouver to all their posts in the Yukon. By the end of 1899, the railway had established its dominance over the Lynn Canal route to the Yukon and the Mounted Police had solidified their relationship with the White Pass Railway to transport supplies to the interior.2

The completion of the White Pass Railway to the White Pass summit also prompted another round of local negotiations on the Alaska-Yukon border. By the end of the 1898 season, with the main rush to the Klondike ending, the Mounted Police had moved from the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes to Lake Lindeman and Log Cabin to collect customs duties during the winter. The completion of the railway to the summit, however, left hundreds of tons of freight to be transported from the summit to Log Cabin before it could be checked by customs officials. Fearing that goods transported under bond would be opened before reaching the customs point, U.S. customs reinstated the convoy system and eventually closed the border to all bonded goods moving to the summit. The Mounted Police and the White Pass Railway both

1 Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 266. 2 Historians have discussed the construction of the White Pass Railway and the competition among transportation companies on the Chilkoot and White passes, but the actual operation of the railway and the Yukon transportation system has not been discussed. See: Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike; Bennett, “Yukon Transportation: A History.”

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worked to convince U.S. customs to reopen the flow of bonded goods.3 By the end of 1899, the

White Pass Railway was completed to Lake Bennett and the majority of goods headed for the interior were being transported by the railway, allowing the police and customs officials to collect customs duties at railway stations.

This chapter, then, traces the completion of two key processes in the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The establishment of the traffic agreement system and the growing relationship between the Mounted Police and the White Pass Railway fostered the development of a true borderlands transportation system - linking the Yukon to the North American industrial economy and allowing the police to efficiently transport supplies to the region. The completion of the White Pass Railway and the negotiations with U.S. customs finalized the development of a functional Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes. By the end of the 1899 season, the Lynn Canal region had been transformed from a borderless to a bordered region that allowed the Mounted Police and U.S. customs officials to enforce national sovereignty and goods to flow across the border.

The White Pass Railway

On the Chilkoot and White passes, much of the chaos of the 1898 season continued during the winter of 1898-1899. After the Mounted Police stopped shipping goods on the

Chilkoot Tramway in August 1898, Superintendent A.B. Perry arranged to ship the majority of police freight with the O’Brien and Hinkle packing company. On 30 January 1899,

Superintendent Z.T. Wood forwarded vouchers for $30,497.26 owed to O’Brien and Hinkle for packing 131 tons of freight.4 Transportation companies also continued to contact the police

3 These developments are briefly discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 36, 54. 4 LAC, RG18, Vol. 166, File 208, Wood to Perry, 30 January 1899; White to Wood, 20 February 1899.

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offering to ship police freight over the Chilkoot and White passes. In December and January alone, the police received offers from the Chilkoot Railway, the British American Corporation, and the Bryce, Heaney and Bannerman Company.5

The Mounted Police had also begun sending small amounts of freight on the White Pass

Railway after it opened for limited business before reaching the summit in August 1898. Two weeks before the White Pass Railway reached the summit, the police made their first contract with the railway. Captain F.L. Cartwright, Mounted Police commander at Lake Bennett, came to a twelve-month agreement with L.H. Gray, General Traffic Manager for the White Pass Railway, on 6 February 1899 to ship Mounted Police freight between Skagway and Bennett City, at a rate of $2.00 per 100 lbs. between Skagway and White Pass and $6.50 per 100 lbs. between Skagway and Bennett. While the police were looking for a more substantial transportation arrangement for the 1899 season, White recommended accepting the offer in a 1 March memorandum as “we cannot do better at present.”6

The White Pass Railway began 1899 with great hopes. When the railway reached the summit in February 1899, the company was ready to expand its business. Gray sent White Pass

Railway President S.H. Graves and General Manager E.C. Hawkins a statement of prospective and secured business from Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver up to 31 January 1899 that was some ten pages long.7 To transport freight from the summit to Log Cabin or Bennett, where a fleet of boats would be ready to take goods down the Yukon River in the spring, the White Pass Railway

5 LAC, RG18, Vol. 157, File 6, F.B. Wallace to Perry, 10 December 1898; LAC, RG18, Vol. 166, File 196, British American Corporation to White, 10 February 1899; LAC, RG18, Vol. 163, File 159, Perry to A.M. Bannerman, 31 January 1899. After hearing of the offer from the Chilkoot Railway, Superintendent S.B. Steele repeated his concerns to White that the company was unreliable. LAC, RG18, Vol. 157, File 6, Steele to White, 6 March 1899. 6 LAC, RG18, Vol. 160, File 56, White to Unknown (probably Sifton), 1 March 1899. 8996 7 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Graves and Hawkins, 8 February 1899.

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Figure 13 Map of White Pass Railway, 1899. From YA, WPYR, PAM 1899-057C-3. 408

contracted the Red Line Transportation Company, a company created by the railway’s contractor

Michael J. Heney, to transport freight from the summit to Log Cabin and Bennett on a sled road constructed by packers and the railway. Goods were now transported by train to the summit, where it was stored in a large warehouse tent until the Red Line Transportation Company could move it by sled to Log Cabin and Bennett.8 An optimistic Gray wrote to his agents on 27 March

1899 that “our line is now being successfully operated between Skaguay and the Summit of

White Pass, and we can handle all rail between these two points, any amount of freight.”9

Despite Gray’s optimism, however, during the remaining winter months “tons of freight had accumulated at the summit,” waiting to be transported to Bennett by the Red Line

Company.10 Gray wrote to White Pass Railway President S.H. Graves on March 31, 1899 that

“this Winter was a terror all over the United States, British Columbia, and Alaska.”11 Winter storms not only delayed the railway from reaching the summit, he noted that “the worst storm of the season set in a few days after we reached the Summit, and blocked our road between Glacier and Summit.”12 When winter storms blocked the line, the railway had no choice but to return to transferring freight to the tramway at Heney Station and sending it forward with packers. “We were obliged to send our freight forward via Heney by sled so often this season,” Gray noted,

“that, naturally, our revenue showing was cut in two, as the packers got their proportion for hauling it from Heney to Summit and beyond.”13

Winter storms, of course, also slowed the progress of the Red Line Company moving goods from the summit to Log Cabin and Bennett. It was not until May 15, 1899 that Gray wrote

8 Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 274-275. 9 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Fred P. Meyers et al., 27 March 1899. 10 Minter, The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike, 275. 11 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to S.H. Graves, 31 March 1899. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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to Hawkins and the White Pass Railway agents that “M.J. Heney, of the Red Line Transportation

Company advises me that he will clean up all freight now at the Summit and Log Cabin in two to three days.”14 Interestingly, however, Gray wrote to Heney two days later that “I am advised the

Red Line Transportation Company have only averaged eight tons of freight per day into Bennett during the last fourteen days… at this rate it will take forty-three days to move the freight now delayed at Log Cabin.”15 Whatever the case, it seems clear that the White Pass Railway faced great difficult moving freight during the winter of 1899. The railway also faced numerous complaints from shippers. Gray wrote to Graves on June 1, 1899 that “I have been bullyragged, threatened and generally abused by dissatisfied shippers on account of our Company not being able to control the elements and deliver their freight from Skaguay to Bennett more promptly.”16

Such complaints no doubt cost the railway business and hurt its efforts to attract more freight.

During the winter and spring of 1899, the White Pass Railway also faced serious competition from the Chilkoot Tramway and packers operating on the Brackett Wagon Road, the

White Pass Trail, and the Chilkoot trail. The construction of the White Pass Railway posed a threat to all other transportation companies and packers operating on the Lynn Canal route. With the Chilkoot Tramway plagued by breakdowns and reliability issues and operating at a limited capacity, packers remained indispensable. The completion of a reliable railway on the White

Pass was a threat to their business prospects. The packers who operated on the Chilkoot and

White passes faced an even more serious threat from the railway. Reliable rail service from

Skagway to the interior, or a reliable tramway on the Chilkoot, threatened to take away all of

14 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Hawkins et al., 15 May 1899. 15 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Heney et al., 17 May 1899. 16 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Graves, 1 June 1899.

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their business. The packers were also angry with the way the railway operated the Brackett wagon road as a toll road, a trail that the packers insisted they had built themselves.

Gray explained to Graves that part of the problem was rooted in the Atlin gold rush the previous August. Freighting outfits and packers, in anticipation of a sustained rush, had purchased tons of hay and grain, most on credit, but the British Columbia government’s Alien

Exclusion Act, which banned Americans from making mining claims in the Atlin District, cut their business from underneath them. In response, the packers “started cutting rates to ruinous figures, being satisfied to make horse feed, and many cases have come to our notice where the men were willing to work for their board.”17 He noted that “the packers have transported about

300 tons mdse. from Skagway to points into the interior, at less rates than we could take it for.”18

On 4 March 1899, Gray reported to John Hislop, WPYR Assistant Chief Engineer, that

“Packers are quoting 1-1/2¢ [per pound] Skaguay to Summit, 2¢ Skagway to Log Cabin, and 2-

1/2¢ Skaguay to Lake Bennett.”19 He also noted that “Dyea Tramway are securing their first large shipment of the season” at a rate of “2-1/2¢ per pound Skaguay to Lake Bennett via

Dyea.”20 By contrast, the WPYR charged 1¢ per pound from Skagway to Heney, 2¢ from

Skagway to Summit, 2.5¢ from Skagway to Log Cabin, and 3¢ from Skagway to Bennett.21 The

WPYR did get some return on goods carried by packers, as they were forced to pay the toll on the Brackett wagon road. As Gray noted on 31 March, however, “Another drawback to our

17 Gray to Graves, 31 March 1899. 18 Ibid. 19 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to John Hislop, 4 March 1899. 20 Ibid. 21 Gray to Graves, 31 March 1899.

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securing freight was owing to the packers refusing to pay tolls on the Brackett Wagon Road when they were able to use the river bed for a trail to the Ford.”22

Gray also reported to Hislop that “Packers are circulating all kinds of reports against us that we cannot move business any faster than they do.”23 The Victoria Colonist reported, for example, that many travelers were displeased with the work of the Red Line Company. A Mr.

McCandless noted that “they advertise to take your baggage in with you the same day, but they don’t, and instead of having the customs officer at the railway terminus, he is stationed at Log

Cabin… This necessitates passengers waiting over at Log Cabin until the express company brings along the baggage next day.”24 Gray wrote to Graves on 1 June 1899 that “we are working under great disadvantages, such as being continually confronted with lying and malicious statements of disgruntled competitors, and, consider the fact that Dyea Tramway make it a special point to keep themselves posted regarding our published tariff rates. They invariable cut under use[sic] from 1/4 to 1¢ per lb. and circulate the most libelous reports regarding the condition of our road.”25

The completion of the railway line between the summit and Bennett on 6 July 1899 was largely the end of the WPYR’s competition with the packers and the Chilkoot Tramway. Gray wrote to his agents on 4 July 1899 asking them to “secure all freight that is possible, and advice shippers that in a few days we will be a Railroad instead of a pack-train and Railroad combined.”26 By 13 July, he wrote to Graves that “I feel that from this date the White Pass &

Yukon Route is a ‘winner,’” informing him that the Railway had 600 tons of freight awaiting

22 Gray to Graves, 31 March 1899. 23 Gray to Hislop, 4 March 1899. 24 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, “Complaints from Atlin,” Victoria Colonist, 20 June 1899. 25 Gray to Graves, 1 June 1899. 26 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Weeks et al., 4 July 1899.

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transport at Skagway.27 “The people are tumbling over one another to give us business now,” he noted.28 Once the railway was complete to Bennett, the WPYR bought out the Chilkoot

Tramway and shut it down, ending any competition from Chilkoot Pass. By July 1899, the

WPYR had established its dominance on the Lynn Canal route.

Despite these problems with winter conditions and competition, the WPYR continued to transport Mounted Police freight from Skagway to Log Cabin and Bennett during the winter and spring of 1899. The Mounted Police records of their WPYR accounts are incomplete for 1899, but they appear to show an increase in shipments over the course of the year - eight bills for transporting men and supplies by March 1899, fifty-five bills by May, and fifty-one in June.29

The Mounted Police Plan

In the meantime, the Mounted Police spent the remaining winter of 1899 formalizing their transportation plans for the 1899 season. White hoped in particular to solve the problem of transferring freight between lines. Superintendent Wood and Superintendent S.B. Steele both suggested that the police could do more of their own transportation. Wood wrote on 23

December 1898 that if the White Pass Railway could deliver freight to the summit at a reasonable rate, “I would suggest that our numerous horses be employed in freighting from that point to Log Cabin, Bennett and Tagish.”30 Steele suggested in his 11 January 1899 annual report that “supplies to come by the passes should be at Bennett before the 1st July” where “they can be shipped for Dawson and the detachments, on scows which can be sent down in charge of

27 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 13, Gray to Graves, 13 July 1899. 28 Ibid. 29 LAC, RG18, Vol. 160, File 56. 30 LAC, RG18, Vol. 160, File 56, Wood to Perry, 23 December 1898.

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members of the North-west Mounted Police intended to re-inforce [sic] the different posts.”31

“The more bulky articles for Dawson can be sent round by St. Michael,” he continued.32 But neither of these suggestions solved the problem of police labour. White wrote to Wood on 3

March 1899 that “if we can get a through rate which will enable us to deliver the goods to the shippers at Vancouver and have no responsibility until they reach Tagish or Bennett, it will be much more satisfactory and will save the Police a great deal of trouble and extra labour.”33 He elaborated to Perry that a through rate “will be much more satisfactory to us than making a separate arrangement and having to look after the freight ourselves at Skagway.”34

By February, White had decided on a two-pronged approach. First, the police would send one large shipment of supplies to Dawson City via the St. Michael route on a steamer leaving

Victoria at the beginning of June. The Yukon River route had been well-established during the

1898 season and, since the police had little trouble sending supplies to Dawson the previous year, White believed that the route provided the simplest option for shipping supplies to the

Yukon on a through route. To avoid the problems caused by the low water conditions that led to the food shortage in 1897, White requested that the large shipment “leave Victoria not later than the 3rd June, and… be delivered at Dawson not later than 1st August,”35 which, he explained to

Perry on 15 March, would “insure [sic] the Police stores being forwarded by the first boat of the season, instead of leaving it optional with the Transportation Company to ship by the second trip,” and would arrive well before the end of navigation.36 Second, the police would send

31 S.B. Steele, “Report of Superintendent S.B. Steele, Commanding North-West Mounted Police in the Yukon Territory,” 11 January 1899, in Government of Canada, Report of the North-West Mounted Police 1898 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1899), Part III, 7-8. 32 Ibid. 33 LAC, RG18, Vol. 160, File 56, White to Wood, 3 March 1899. 34 LAC, RG18, Vol. 160, File 56, White to Perry, 3 March 1899. 35 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White, Call for Tenders, 16 February 1899. 36 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White to Perry, 15 March 1899.

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supplemental shipments of goods via the Lynn Canal route on a more as needed basis throughout the 1899 season. Since the season of navigation on the Yukon River route was so short, White could only hope to send one large shipment a year to Dawson, so the police would naturally have to send additional supplies to the Yukon throughout the year to deal with sudden demands and unexpected needs. White wrote to Perry on 3 March that “I have been led to believe that several

Companies will be in a position to quote through rates” from Vancouver to Bennett or Tagish during the 1899 season, which would do much to simplify the process of shipping goods via the

Lynn Canal route.37

On 21 February 1899, White asked Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton to approve two calls for tenders to transport approximately 250 tons of police freight from Victoria to Dawson via the St. Michael route and approximately 200 tons from Vancouver to Tagish via the Lynn

Canal route “in broken quantities during the season of 1899.”38 The call asked “tenders to quote the rate per ton from Vancouver to Tagish, including wharfage and other charges (Customs excepted) at Skagway or elsewhere, (a) by weight, (b) by measurement, (c) by weight or measurement, ship’s option.”39 White forwarded the approved call for tenders to Perry for distribution on 1 March 1899.40 He also noted that “the Queen’s Printer has been requested to authorize four insertions in the Times and Province of Victoria and the Daily World of

Vancouver.”41

By the deadline of 5 April 1899, White had received tenders from six companies for the

St. Michael route and five companies on the Vancouver to Tagish route. The tenders for the

37 White to Perry, 3 March 1899. 38 White, Call for Tenders, 16 February 1899; LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White to Sifton, 21 February 1899. 39 White, Call for Tenders, 16 February 1899. 40 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White to Perry, 1 March 1899. 41 Ibid.

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Yukon River route were straightforward. White recommended accepting the lowest offer from the Alaska Commercial Company at $90.00 per ton. “This Company performed our transportation last year in the most satisfactory manner,” was all he noted.42 The tenders for the

Lynn Canal route were more complicated. Out of the five tenders received, White wrote in a 16 May memorandum that “the actual competition was between those of the Canadian Pacific Navigation

Company and the Canadian Development

Company.”43

The decision to limit the competition to the

Canadian Pacific Navigation Company and the

Canadian Development Company was driven by a desire to select a Canadian company. White wrote to

Perry on 9 March that Victoria MP W.W.B McInnes had written to the Minister of Militia to complain that Figure 14 Call for Tenders, 16 February 1899. From: LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226. the Mounted Police tender for the St. Michael route “is causing dissatisfaction at Victoria.”44 McInnes argued that “the present plan cuts out Canadian

Companies and plays into the hands of big American rivals.”45 Sifton replied to McInnes on 9

March that police advertisement called for tenders for both the St. Michael and Lynn Canal

42 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White, Memorandum, 6 April 1899. 43 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White, Memorandum, 16 May 1899. 44 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, White to Perry, 9 March 1899. 45 Ibid.

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routes.46 With the contract for the Yukon River route awarded to the American Alaska

Commercial Company, political posturing meant that the police had to give the contract for the

Figure 15 Mounted Police Call for Tenders, 1899 Lynn Canal route to a Canadian company. As the Yukon arm of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company was well positioned for a government patronage contract. Perhaps recognizing the position the Mounted police were in, Irving wrote in an 8

March 1899 letter to White that Canadian Pacific Navigation Company’s service “is the nearest to an all Canadian route that exists at present, and that will give the trade to Canadian steamers and Transportation Companies exclusively.”47 As the cheapest bid among the remaining tenders from Canadian companies, the Canadian Development Company became the second company seriously considered by the police.

With the Chilkoot Tramway operating at a limited capacity and the White Pass Railway running only as far as the summit of White Pass, but projected to completed to Bennett by July

46 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, Sifton to W.W.B McInnes, 9 March 1899. 47 LAC, RG18, Vol. 167, File 226, Irving to White, 8 March 1899.

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1899, transportation companies also had to work this factor into their bids. While the Canadian

Pacific Navigation Company’s offer of $127.50 per ton was the third highest quote, White noted that the bid was accompanied by a letter from the company’s Manager John Irving explaining that “the rate depended principally on the cost of getting freight from Dyea or Skagway to

Bennett,” and that White should interpret their bid as “not exceeding” $127.50 per ton, “with the understanding that the freight would be carried for as much less as it might be possible to do, depending on the rate for portaging between Skagway or Dyea and Bennett.”48 The Canadian

Development Company’s quote of $61.00 per ton was contingent on the White Pass Railway’s completion to Bennett. Before that, the offer included “an additional charge of not exceeding

$3.00 per ton per mile for packing from the end of the track to Lake Bennett.”49 With the end of the White Pass Railway track twenty-two miles from Bennett, White calculated that at $3.00 per ton per mile, that made the Canadian Development Company’s bid $127.00 per ton.

On 5 April, as the tenders were being opened, however, White received a telegram from

Irving amending the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company’s bid to “not exceeding $87.00 to

Tagish at present, and when the Railway reaches Bennett the rate to be reduced at least $10.00 per ton, or more if possible.”50 By 22 April, the Canadian Development Company had written to

White explaining that “they had effected an arrangement with the White Pass Railway which would enable them to withdraw the conditional clause of their tender,” and ship freight from

Vancouver to Tagish at a rate of $61.00 per ton.51 Both companies had made traffic agreements with the White Pass Railway that allowed them to reduce their quoted rates.

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid.

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Traffic Agreements

Like the Mounted Police, the White Pass Railway was well aware of the problems presented by transferring freight between transportation companies. With the railway operating only between Skagway and Lake Bennett, customers had to ship their goods from a west coast port to Skagway on an ocean-going vessel, then transfer their freight to the WPYR for the journey to Bennett, where goods would once again have to be transferred to a steamer for the journey down the Yukon River or to Atlin. If the White Pass Railway could only guarantee the timely shipment of freight on their part of the journey, from Skagway and Bennett, the St.

Michael shippers, who could guarantee shipment to Dawson, would continue to hold an advantage. The WPYR could not make contracts to ship freight from Seattle or Vancouver to

Bennett, Dawson, or other points in the interior without transferring the freight to a steamer company.

The solution for the railway was to make traffic agreements with other transportation companies to issue joint bills of lading that would allow the companies to transfer the freight themselves and sell tickets for the whole route. In early 1899, the White Pass Railway began making traffic agreements with ocean steamer companies who operated between the west coast and Skagway to bring goods to the head of the railway, where they could be shipped to Bennett.

The WPYR entered into its first traffic agreement with the Union Steamship Company in

Vancouver on 1 January 1899 to transport freight between Skagway and the west coast.52 The railway soon came to a similar agreement with the Alaska Steamship Company and the Canadian

Pacific Navigation Company.53 By March and April 1899, with construction of the railway to

Lake Bennett continuing and the opening of navigation on the upper Yukon approaching, the

52 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 14, Gray to Hawkins, 8 June 1899. 53 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 14, Gray to Hawkins, 9 June 1899.

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WPYR began negotiating traffic agreements with steamer companies operating on Lake Bennett and the upper Yukon River. The WPYR entered into an agreement with the Canadian

Development Company on 27 April 1899,54 the Bennett Lake & Klondike Navigation Company on 16 June 1899, and the John Irving Navigation Company on 28 July 1899. As Gray wrote on

28 March 1899, “we have entered into Traffic arrangements with reliable Ocean Steamers plying between Puget Sound, British Columbia Ports and Skaguay, and responsible Steamboats on Lake

Bennett, Lake Atlin and Upper Yukon to interchange Traffic during the season of Navigation,

1899.”55

The traffic agreement with the Bennett Lake & Klondike Navigation Company, signed on

16 June 1899 by Gray and General Manager MacDonald Potts, effective when the Railway reached Bennett, explains that both partner companies agreed to protect their local passenger and freight rates during the 1899 season, $60 per ton for the WPYR portion of the route.56 Freight shipments in either direction were to be paid for by “authorized Agents of each Company” at the point of transfer between lines, meaning that if the Bennett Lake & Klondike Navigation

Company shipped one ton of goods from Skagway to Bennett on the railway, they would pay the

WPYR $60 in Bennett before transferring the freight to one of their own boats.57 Both companies would sell through passenger tickets (tickets to travel by rail to Bennett and then by steamer to a point down river) on their own and report to each other no later than the 20th of each month so that each company could be paid for their portion of the journey. Both companies also agreed to

54 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 6, Gray to H. Maitland Kersey, 9 August 1899. 55 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 16, Gray to John Irving, 28 March 1899. 56 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 15, Memorandum of Agreement, 16 June 1899. For $60 per ton number see: Gray to John Irving, 28 March 1899. 57 Ibid.

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be responsible for lost or damaged goods on their respective lines.58 A traffic agreement with the

John Irving Navigation Company signed on 28 July 1899 followed the same text.59 Gray noted in a letter to John Irving that “the lowest freight rates from Puget Sound and British Columbia Ports to Dawson that are being quoted via Skagway on the opening Navigation is $162.00 per Ton.”60

With the WPYR portion of the route set at $60 per ton, that left $102 to be split by the ocean shipper and the upper river steamers. “This does not include wharfage at Skaguay,” Gray noted.61

Traffic agreements helped to solve two problems for the White Pass Railway. First, the agreements helped the Railway attract business by bringing the traffic from the other Yukon transportation companies to the WPYR and they helped the Railway itself to extend its transportation network further into the interior and beyond the end of the line in Bennett. For the

Canadian Pacific Navigation Company and the Canadian Development Company, the traffic agreements allowed them to lower their quoted rates for a contract with the Mounted Police because they had a guaranteed rate for the WPYR portion of the journey. The WPYR, of course, stood to benefit from all the bids to the Mounted Police for a contract on the Lynn Canal route.

Whether the contract went to the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company, Canadian Development

Company, or the railway’s own bid, traffic agreements ensured that the WPYR would ship police supplies from Skagway to Bennett no matter who was awarded the contract.

For the Mounted Police, the WPYR traffic agreements allowed them to finally get a through rate for transporting police supplies to the Yukon. With the Canadian Pacific Navigation

58 Ibid. 59 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 16, Memorandum of Agreement, 28 July 1899. 60 Gray to John Irving, 28 March 1899. 61 Ibid.

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Company offering a revised bid of $87.00 per ton and the Canadian Development Company dropping the conditions from their tender, White concluded his 16 May memorandum for Sifton that “the most definite and satisfactory offer from our point of view is undoubtedly that of the

Canadian Development Company at a straight figure of $61.00 per ton.”62 On 25 May 1899,

White wrote to the company’s Managing Director H. Maitland Kersey that “I am directed to inform you that your tender for the transportation, in broken quantities during the season of

1899, of (approximately) 200 tons of stores from Vancouver, B.C. to the Mounted Police Post at

Tagish, Yukon Territory, at $61.00 per ton, weight or measurement, ship’s option, including wharfage and all other charges, Customs expected, at Skagway or elsewhere, has been accepted.”63 The next day, White wrote to Perry, who remained at the Vancouver Office to arrange the purchase of supplies and their delivery to port during the 1899 season, instructing him to “place yourself in communication with the Agent of the [Canadian Development]

Company at Vancouver, and arrange for the shipment of the stores accordingly.”64

The Canadian Development Company’s transportation arrangement for the 1899 season included a traffic agreement with the Alaska Steamship Company, responsible for bringing freight from Vancouver and Victoria to Skagway, the White Pass & Yukon Route, and the Miles

Canyon & Lewes River Tramway Company, responsible for transferring freight from CDCo. steamers on the Lake Bennett to White Horse Rapids route to steamers on the White Horse

Rapids to Dawson route.65 Perry reported to White on 3 June that “I have seen the local agent of the Company and he informs me that shipment will be made to Skaguay by the S.S. Rosalie and

62 Ibid. 63 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, White to Kersey, 25 May 1899. 64 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, White to Perry, 26 May 1899. 65 YA, WPYR, COR 871, File 30, “Canadian Development Company, Limited, Special Joint Through Freight Tariff,” 1899.

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Dirigo [sic] as the Canadian Development Co. have special arrangements with these ships.”66

Perry continued, “he requests that the shipments be held back as far as possible until after the first of July when it is expected that the White Pass Railway will be completed to Bennett.”67

Perry also informed White on 5 June that he had spoken to L.H. Gray, General Traffic Manager of the WPYR, about the contract. “Mr. Gray informs me that they will have no objection to receiving under our contract with the Canadian Development Co. small quantities of goods,”

Perry wrote.68 “I assured him,” he continued, “that the bulk of our supplies would go forward in large quantities but that we often had small shipments to make and it would be of considerable advantage if we could send them forward under the contract. This he consented to.”69

The Canadian Development Company’s “Special Joint Through Freight Tariff” for the

1899 season listed joint rates from the west coast to Dawson ranging from $165.00 per ton for shipments in ½ ton or over lots, $155.00 for shipments over ten tons, and $136.00 per ton for shipments of “special commodities” over ten tons.70 The Mounted Police rate of $61.00 per ton from Vancouver to Tagish worked out to $91.00 per ton from Vancouver to Dawson, making a

$45-$74 per ton discount on police freight.71 This rate seems to be the result of some hard bargaining with the White Pass Railway on Managing Director Kersey’s part. He wrote to

Hawkins on 31 March proposing that “if you would reduce your rates from 60 to 40 dollars per ton on shipments of over 10 tons we would reduce our rate 20 dollars and the [White Horse

Rapids] tramway rate 10 dollars.”72 When Gray replied that “Mr. Hawkins does not see his way

66 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to White, 3 June 1899. 67 Ibid. 68 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to White, 5 June 1899. 69 Ibid. 70 “Canadian Development Company, Limited, Special Joint Through Freight Tariff,” 1899. 71 The CDCo.’s rate on Mounted Police supplies on the Bennett to Tagish portion of the route was $10 per ton and $40 per ton from Bennett all the way to Dawson, making an additional charge of $30 per ton to Dawson. 72 YA, WPYR, COR 871, File 30, Kersey to Hawkins, 31 March 1899.

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to reduce the rate lower than” $62 per ton, Kersey wrote that the offer “places my Company – who controls the shipment of some 500 tons of freight, and has already given you about 125 tons

– on the same basis as any” other shipper.73 “This does not appear to me to be a very great encouragement to the steamboat lines who are endeavouring to form a through connection with the Ry [Railway],” he remarked.74 When the WPYR agreed to reduce their rate to $30 per ton on shipments of Mounted Police supplies, Kersey pressed his advantage to convince the railway to including freighting from the end of track to Bennett. “As it stands to-day,” he wrote, “with your railway completed as far as it is, you are not in a position to quote a through rate to Dawson or anywhere else, nor are you in a position, apparently, to enable me to do so; while I can go to the representatives of the Dyea Tramway and get a firm rate now or in the summer from the ocean at

Dyea to my boats at Bennett.”75 With a rate between Skagway and Bennett of $30 per ton secured, that left Kersey with $31 per ton to ship the police supplies from Vancouver to Skagway and on his boats from Bennett to Tagish.

The first shipments under the contract began shortly after Perry spoke with the CDCo. agent and increased in July 1899 after the completion of the railway to Bennett - with the majority of supplies shipped between July and the middle of October. A close look at one pack of Mounted Police transportation requisitions shipped by the Canadian Development Company during the 1899 season shows police supplies crisscrossing the Bennett to Dawson steamer routes. The majority of supplies were shipped between Bennett and Tagish, as per to CDCo. contract, on the steamers Australian and Bailey, including 21 tons of police stores, at a rate of

$10 per ton, 15,364 feet of lumber, at a rate of $15 per 1000 feet, and transportation for 57

73 YA, WPYR, COR 871, File 30, Kersey to Gray, 3 April 1899 2. 74 Ibid. 75 YA, WPYR, COR 871, File 30, Kersey to Gray, 3 April 1899.

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officers and constables, at a rate of $5 per person. The transportation requisitions also show less frequent shipments of police stores, lumber, and men between Bennett and the police posts at

Big Salmon, Little Salmon, Hootalingna, Caribou, Tranlatus, Dawson, Selkirk, Upper Laberge,

Lower Laberge, and Five Finger, as well as shipments between individual posts, Big Salmon to

Tagish, or Tagish to Hootalingna, for example. The requisitions rarely describe the contents of police stores, but some examples include groceries, books, windows, and other hardware. A shipment between Tagish and Hootalingna on 10 August included 2 sacks prunes, 2 sacks beans,

1 sack rice, 16 sacks flour, 1 box oatmeal, 1 box sundries, 1 box yeast cakes, 9 box sugar, 2 box corned beef, 1 box onions, 8 box bacon, 1 box ham, 4 box butter, and 5 box tobacco.76

The Mounted Police seem to have been generally pleased with their arrangement with the

Canadian Development Company during the 1899 season. Perry confirmed on 3 June that the company “will accept transport requisitions for the freight,” meaning that the police could use the normal accounting procedures they had employed during the 1898 season to track shipments.77 As discussed in Chapter 7, accounting procedures took up considerable time during the chaotic 1898 season and very much became a nuisance for the police. The following year, improvements were made, not so much because the process became easier, but because the police became accustomed to the demands of accounting, and the process became more regular and streamlined. When freight transported on CDCo. steamers reached its destination, the

Mounted Police officer receiving the shipment completed a “Requisition for Transport” form or

“voucher” detailing the amount of goods the cost of transportation. The vouchers were then collected and sent to Ottawa for Comptroller White to compile and audit, before payment could

76 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, “Requisitions received from the Bank of British North American Dec 7/99 Part I.” 77 Perry to White, 3 June 1899.

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be authorized – a process that often took several years.78 White was still dealing with CDCo. accounts from the 1899 season in April 1902, when he wrote to the Whitehorse office that “I enclose herewith copies of Bills of Lading for freight carried from Vancouver to Bennett and

Tagish in 1899, the accounts for which are still unpaid, and which I am sure you have heard me swearing about on several occasions.”79

There was some tension between the police and the CDCo. over the close of navigation at the end of the 1899 season. In early September, Perry attempted to arrange to ship eighty tons of supplies to Dawson and Tagish, but the CDCo. agent in Vancouver refused to issue a through bill of lading for the supplies going to Dawson because they could not guarantee the supplies would reach Dawson by the end of the season.80 Perry complained to the agent on 8 September that

“under the terms of the contract your company agreed to accept all freight during the season of navigation. I have no information which would justify your refusal. The season of navigation has not yet closed.”81 CDCo. Secretary R.T. Elliott explained to Perry on 11 September that the refusal was the result of a misunderstanding of the Company’s telegraphic instructions to its agents.82 In late August, the White Pass Railway had announced that it would stop issuing joint bills of lading for goods going beyond Lake Bennett on 1 September because the railway couldn’t guarantee delivery before the close of navigation.83 It seems that the Canadian

Development Company responded by instructing its agents to stop issuing bills of lading for goods destined for Dawson. According to Elliott, these instructions did not explain that Mounted

Police supplies were exempt. Elliott assured Perry that “we will protect our contract to the fullest

78 For examples see: LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708. 79 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, White to E.F. Drake, 3 April 1902. 80 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to White, 8 September 1899. 81 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to A.H.B. Macgowan, 8 September 1899. 82 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, R.T. Elliott to Perry, 11 September 1899. 83 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 6, Gray to R.T. Elliott, 25 August 1899.

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extent.”84 On 20 September, Perry traveled to Skagway and received similar assurances from

Managing Director H. Maitland Kersey that “our freight will have the preference over all other freight going down the river,” he wrote to White.85 Perry reported the next day that “I have just succeeded in arranging with the railway company to place sufficient cars at our disposal to forward all supplies which are now here,” ensuring that police supplies would make it to their destination by the end of the season.86

The contract between the Mounted Police and the Canadian Development Company, enabled by the traffic agreements between the CDCo., the Alaska Steamship Company, and the

White Pass & Yukon Route, allowed the police to achieve the reliable through rate that White had been searching for. The police simply had to deliver their supplies to port in Vancouver and

Victoria, and the Alaska Steamship Company would ship them to Skagway, the WPYR from

Skagway to Bennett, and the CDCo. could deliver the supplies to the police posts on the Yukon

River. The police, naturally, were not the only groups to benefit from these improvements to the

Yukon transportation system. Gray wrote to Hawkins on 5 August 1899, that “the records in my office show that through the joint efforts of the Alaska Steamship Company and our Company we have turned over to Canadian Development Company at Bennett since our through traffic arrangements were effected with them and up to and including July 31st, 1315 tons of freight.”87

He continued, “the above does not include Canadian Development Company lumber shipments from Victoria,” which amounted to around 22.5 tons, “neither does the above figures include the shipments originating at Skagway, which you are aware will probably amount to several hundred

84 Elliott to Perry, 11 September 1899. 85 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to White, 20 September 1899. 86 LAC, RG18, Vol. 196, File 708, Perry to White, 21 September 1899. 87 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 6, Gray to Hawkins, 5 August 1899.

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tons.”88 Gray predicted on 9 August that “present indications point that we will give them 1000 tons during August unless you instruct otherwise.”89

While the Mounted Police contract was with the Canadian Development Company, the police correspondence with the WPYR about their contract with the CDCo. shows that it was the

White Pass Railway that took the lead role in developing the Yukon transportation system. It was the White Pass Railway that negotiated traffic agreements with the other Yukon transportation companies and the railway that continued to make sure the system worked for the rest of the season. The Mounted Police seem to have been pleased with this arrangement. Perry wrote to

White on 21 September that “the railway company have treated me exceeding well and have done everything they could to meet our wishes.”90 After the close of navigation and the end of the police contract with the CDCo., the Mounted Police increasingly sent shipments to the interior with the White Pass Railway itself during the winter of 1899-1900. In the coming year, the police and the WPYR would only grow closer. Before then, the police and the railway both played an important role in the development of the Lynn Canal border during the 1899 season.

The WPYR and the Lynn Canal Border

The arrival of the WPYR at the summit of White Pass disrupted the uneasy peace between the Mounted Police and U.S. customs officials at summits of the Chilkoot and White passes. At the end of the 1898 season, the Canadian customs officers at the summits, and the small detachments of Mounted Police who were assisting them, moved to the police posts at

Lindeman and Log Cabin to collect customs duties during the winter. U.S. customs officials followed them, both under the assumption that chaos of the height of the gold rush had passed

88 Ibid.; YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 6, Gray to Hawkins, 4 August 1899. 89 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 6, Gray to Hawkins, 9 August 1899. 90 Perry to White, 21 September 1899.

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and customs duties could be collected away from the provisional border for the harsh winter months (see Chapter 6). The Mounted Police were confident enough that the threat of unrest had passed that they considered withdrawing the majority of the police detachments stationed in

British Columbia territory in January 1899. White explained to the Canadian Commissioner of

Customs John McDougald on 1 February that “the British Columbia Government had raised objection to the Mounted Police being retained in that Province” and he had received instructions from Sifton to “withdraw all except those necessary for the protection of the Customs

Officials.”91 As the WPYR approached the White Pass summit, however, the situation between the end of the track and Log Cabin was anything but calm.

During the winter of 1899, the WPYR was trying to move as much freight as possible from Skagway to the summit and then to Log Cabin and Bennett. Whether on railway cars and

Red Line Transportation Company sleds or on the backs of packers between Heney Station and the summit, hundreds of tons of goods were being transported between the summit border and the customs posts at Log Cabin. Without a Canadian Customs post at the summit, U.S. Customs officials could not ensure that goods shipped in bond would not be consumed in American territory before they reached Log Cabin. The constant delays that prevented the Red Line

Company from moving freight from the summit also meant that bonded goods could sit at the summit for weeks without being checked by a customs officer. At Log Cabin, Wood complained that Inspector Cartwright’s detachment was so busy assisting with customs work that it was impossible to keep up “unless all Police duty is abandoned.”92 Wood explained to White that “a camp of 350 Railway labourers are now at the Log Cabin, patrols have to be kept going between

91 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, White to John McDougald, 1 February 1899. 92 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, Wood to White, 4 January 1899.

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Log Cabin and the Summit, Railway camps have to be visited and on several occasions our men have been called out to hunt for supposed missing and frozen men.”93

U.S. customs officials responded to this uncertainty by reinstating the convoy system,

Figure 16 Map of the Lynn Canal Border, 1899. By the author. again requiring Canadian bonded goods to be escorted by a U.S. customs official from Skagway to the Canadian customs office at Log Cabin, at a cost of $6.00 per day plus expenses – a practice, as discussed in Chapter 6, the Canadian government had negotiated an end to in May

1898. On 28 January 1899, just three weeks before the White Pass Railway reached the White

Pass summit, Wood reported to Perry that “Insp. Cartwright reports that the United States

Customs Officials at Skaguay have again started the Convoy System and… they are going

93 Ibid.

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through to [the?] White Pass and Chilcoot Detachments instead of turning back at the

Summits.”94 Cartwright also forwarded a letter from Percy R. Peele, Canadian Acting Sub-

Collector of Customs at Log Cabin, to Wood on 28 February, reporting that “the U.S. Customs

Officer at Log Cabin, B.C. is collecting duties on Canadian bonded goods that are consumed between the Summit and Log Cabin,” on the Canadian side of the temporary border.95 As

Cartwright explained to Wood, “of course we have no Customs Officer at the Summit, and the

U.S. Officials are using that as a plea that it is necessary to have all U.S. goods carried as far as the Log Cabin.”96 “Would you kindly instruct me whether or not this is to be tolerated,” he concluded.97

While Wood and Cartwright’s reports implied that U.S. Customs required a convoy for all bonded goods, L.H. Gray and WPYR Customs Agent D.D. Jones reported to the WPYR management on 6 February that “U.S. Customs authorities insist on ‘Convoy going along with all shipments of liquors at shippers expense,’ which runs Six Dollar a day and expenses,” but that

“no convoy is necessary for general merchandise,” which seems to be the actual case.98 U.S.

Customs officers likely were collecting duty on goods consumed between the summit and Log

Cabin, because they would have no way of knowing if the goods were consumed on the

American or Canadian side of the summit. In any case, the move to reestablish the convoy system led to another round of local, borderlands negotiation over the location of the Alaska-

Yukon border. During the next several months the Mounted Police, the White Pass Railway,

94 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to Perry, 28 January 1899. 95 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, P. R. Peele to Cartwright, 27 February 1899. 96 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Cartwright to Wood, 28 February 1899. 97 Ibid. 98 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 12, Gray and D.D. Jones to S.H. Graves et al., 6 February 1899.

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American and Canadian customs officials, Americans in Skagway, and U.S. Army officers worked to stabilize the situation and reach a local understanding on the customs issue.

On 4 February 1899, C.L. Andrews, U.S. Deputy Collector of Customs at Skagway, reported to J.W. Ivey, U.S. Collector of Customs at Sitka, that Cartwright had arrested an

American convoy escorting liquor to Log Cabin on 31 January on grounds that they had no right to go further than the summit of White Pass.99 According to Andrews, the convoy was released after 24 hours “with warning that other convoys would also be arrested if they came to the Log

Cabin and that if we persisted in convoying liquors to the Log Cabin the Mounted Police would proceed to the summit and turn back all convoys at summit of White Pass.”100 After the convoy returned to Skagway, Andrews sent a letter of protest to Peele at Log Cabin and ordered a hold on all liquor shipments destined for Canadian territory from leaving Skagway. “In view of the urgent necessity for action in the matter,” he wrote to Ivey, “I ask for immediate and explicit instructions.”101 Later that day, however, Andrews received a report from J.N. Wheeler, the

American Customs official at Log Cabin, that “Mr. Peele told me this A.M. that convoys could come here for the present and there would be no further trouble.”102 Andrews wrote to Ivey that

“this obviates any further action in regard to the case at present and I trust the boundary question will be settled so that the frontier post may be located during the summer at a permanent place.”103

99 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 33, Vol. 15, Andrews to Ivey, 4 February 1899. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 33, Vol. 15, Andrews to Ivey, 4 February 1899. 103 Ibid.

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“Another point which may require to be settled soon,” Andrews also wrote to Ivey on 4

February, “is whether our officers can remain at the Log Cabin.”104 He explained that, according to Cartwright, U.S. Customs officers were stationed at Log Cabin “merely by curtesy [sic] of the

Canadian Government, which might imply that they as the next step would compel the U.S.

Officials to retire from that post.”105 He continued, “In case the Canadians by force compel the

U.S. Officers to vacate Log Cabin post what course shall I pursue regarding bonding goods and securing proper certificates for canceling bonds?”106 Andrews explained that customs officers would not be able to live at the summit of White Pass during the winter, and so would not be able to make sure that bonded goods reached Canadian territory. He implied that the only response to being evicted from Log Cabin would be to close the ports at Skagway and Dyea.

“Any early instructions from you as to proper action under the circumstances is urgently requested,” he concluded.107

In the meantime, it appears that WPYR Customs Agent Jones sent a letter of protest to

A.R. Milne, Canadian Collector of Customs at Victoria, fearing that a customs dispute would prevent the WPYR from shipping liquor to the interior.108 Milne instructed Peele in a 23

February letter not to interfere with American customs convoys going between Skagway and

Log Cabin. “You will permit the liquors and goods, arriving at the end of the track of the White

Pass and Yukon Railway to be taken to Log Cabin under American Convoy, there to be handed over to you, where a complete check will be made, and certificate obtained from the American

Officer to enable the Railway to have their bond cancelled or deposit returned at Skaguay,” he

104 Andrews to Ivey, 4 February 1899. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, A.R. Milne to Peele, 23 February 1899.

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wrote.109 Milne also instructed Peele to “inform the Railway Officials accordingly, that no goods intended for our Territory are to be put off or diverted before reaching Log Cabin.”110

At Log Cabin, Inspector Cartwright forwarded Milne’s letter to Wood on 5 March, adding that “Mr. Peele further states that he cannot send a Customs Officer to the Summit until he hears from Mr. Milne and I take it from Mr. Milne’s letter that as far as the Customs are concerned they do not care whether a Convoy comes through or not.”111 Cartwright also spoke with “Mr. Payne, the American Customs Officer” at Log Cabin, who “states that if the Canadian

Customs Officer were at the Summit, he would be there too, but that he had to collect on goods that are bonded from Skaguay to Log Cabin and do not arrive intact.”112 Cartwright concluded that “in view of Mr. Milne’s letter attached, I do not think there is any call for us to put our men on the Summit.”113 Wood, who had written on 2 March that “I have directed Insp. Cartwright to put two men in our shack at the Summit again, and requested Mr. Peel also to send a Customs

House Officer there to cancel Bonds,” wrote to Wood on 9 March that, in light of Milne’s letter,

“I have decided to leave the matter in abeyance until I hear from you.”114

In Ottawa, the resumption of the convoy system was viewed as a possible attempt to push back the Alaska-Yukon border from the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes. On 24

February 1899, Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton, always fearful of American intentions, informed White that “it had been decided to” send the Mounted Police back to the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes.115 White sent instructions to Wood to order ten police to the

109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Cartwright to Wood, 5 March 1899. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 2 March 1899; Wood to White, 9 March 1899. 115 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, Sifton to White, 24 February 1899.

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summit of White Pass and two or three men to the Chilkoot Pass.116 On 21 March, Wood informed White that “we have established Detachments at the Summits,” and that “orders have been given them to prevent American Convoys from proceeding any further.”117 Inspector

Cartwright reported on 26 March 1899 that the police at the White Pass summit had turned back an American convoy, “in charge of a consignment of liquor,” on 22 March - and the whole affair exploded in controversy.118

As U.S. Deputy Collector Andrews reported to Ivey “on Mar 21 a convoy was appointed to accompany goods of one T.J. Donohor to the boundary.”119 At the White Pass summit, he explained, the escort “was met by the Canadian Police and ordered to turn back, the liquor was forcibly taken from his charge and was sent on by the police without guard or convoy and the

U.S Officer was refused permission to even proceed to report to the proper officer at the Log

Cabin.”120 Andrews complained that the Mounted Police and Canadian customs officials “have arrested U.S. Officers, have insulted them and taken their goods, which were intrusted [sic] to them from their charge and this on ground which is in dispute between the U.S. and Canada and on which U.S. officers have equal rights with the Canadians.”121 He requested that “prompt action be taken in this matter and if no other action can be taken that I be given authority as a retaliatory measure to refuse the bonding privilege at this port to all British goods + also Dyea port be closed to bonding.”122 In the meantime, “until orders are issued to the contrary,” he wrote, “I shall refuse the privilege of Canadian liquors passing through by this port as I am not

116 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, White to Perry 24 February 1899; LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 2 March 1899. 117 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 21 March 1899. 118 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Cartwright to Wood, 26 March 1899. 119 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 33, Vol. 16, Andrews to Ivey, 22 March 1899. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid.

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going to have the officers insulted and compelled to abandon their duty without completing it.”123

According to a 26 March report from Cartwright, Andrews had initially ordered a stop to all bonded freight leaving Skagway.124 This move alarmed E.C. Hawkins, General Manager of the White Pass Railway. A ban on bonded goods going over the White Pass would be disastrous for the railway, dramatically reducing the amount of freight they could move to the interior.

Hawkins immediately met with Andrews and convinced him “to let the railway move this bonded freight all but liquors which he positively refused to let go through unless he is permitted to send his convoys to… Log Cabin,” Cartwright wrote.125 Cartwright also met with Andrews and “gave him to distinctly understand that convoys would not be allowed to pass the summit.”126 Superintendent Wood forwarded Cartwright’s report to Ottawa on 28 March

1899.127 He noted that “Inspector Cartwright reports great indignation in Skaguay and that the press are trying to stir the people up to organizing and driving us off the Summits.”128

Stirring up passions was a 24 March report in the Skagway Daily Alaskan referring to the incident as a “Hold Up at the Summit.”129 A second article called it “Another Outrageous Action on the Part of the Canadians.”130 Americans in Skagway viewed the incident as an aggressive and arbitrary action by the Mounted Police, highlighting “the gradual encroachment on

American territory that has characterized the action of the greedy Canadian officials for the last

123 Ibid. 124 Cartwright to Wood, 26 March 1899. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to Perry, 28 March 1899. 128 Ibid. 129 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Daily Alaskan, 24 March 1899. 130 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, “Summit Barred to Convoys,” 23 March 1899.

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year,” the Daily Alaskan wrote.131 But the reaction to the incident also reveals that Americans in

Skagway were as concerned with stability as they were angry. The Daily Alaskan demanded that

“prompt steps must be taken” by the American government “to police the American side of the border of Alaska in a manner somewhat similar to the Canadian mounted police system.”132 With strong police forces on either side of the temporary border, Americans in Skagway hoped that the law would be applied fairly and consistently on both sides, allowing goods to freely flow over the summit - goals that were not dissimilar to those of the Mounted Police, the WPYR, and customs officials. The threat that “a self-organized body of Americans goes to the summit and cleans out the Canadians” kept up the pressure to find a solution.133

By 8 April, however, Hawkins wrote to Cartwright that fifty tons of liquor were still being held at Skagway. The delay, he wrote, was causing “great injury to shippers and [the] railway,” requesting that the police allow American “convoys to go to Log Cabin.”134 In response to a similar letter from L.H. Gray, Cartwright wrote that “Andrews has no right to send a convoy passed [sic] the summit, which he knows perfectly well.”135 By late April, a still angry

Andrews seems to have been planning to force his way past the White Pass summit. U.S. Army

Captain R.J. Yeatman, commanding officer of the District of Lynn Canal at Dyea, wrote to

Andrews on 24 April that “I have heard rumor that you contemplated sending a large party to convoy liquor with view to make is [sic] so strong as to prevent danger of arrest by N.W.M.P if attempted.”136 He continued, “this I believe to be an error for I am sure you recognize the fact that such action would be not only of a irational [sic] nature but tend to disturb the peaceful

131 Daily Alaskan, 24 March 1899. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, E.C. Hawkins to Cartwright, 8 April 1899. 135 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, L.H. Gray to Cartwright, 8 April 1899; Cartwright to Gray, No Date. 136 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Yeatman to Andrews, 24 April 1899.

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conditions existing between two nations.”137 He warned, “force is a matter of last resort and only to be used after failure of other means.”138

The incident was enough for Yeatman to write to Adjutant General H.C. Corbin on 24

April to “request that some definite instructions may if practicable be given me as to what shall be recognized as boundary line in this vicinity.”139 He explain that the location of the border “is wholly unknown here and I fear that serious condition of affairs may arise if nothing is done.”140

Corbin replied in a 27 May letter to the Commanding General, Department of the Columbia, that

“the State Department is trying to arrange a modus vivendi with the British Government, on the

Alaska frontier, and that the Commanding Officer at Dyea should be instructed that until further orders it will be best for him not to occupy any position north of the White and Chilkoot passes.”141

Once White received word of the situation in Ottawa on 6 April, however, he immediately ordered Perry to “advise Superintendent Wood that United States Convoys should be allowed to accompany goods bonded to Log Cabin so long as Canadian Customs Officers area stationed there.”142 White explained to Wood on 28 April that “you appear to have misunderstood the instructions to re-establish detachments at the summits. It was not intended that any change should be made in the Customs arrangements until so ordered by the Customs

137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Yeatman to Corbin, 24 April 1899. 140 Ibid. 141 NARA, RG393, Part III, E311, Corbin to Commanding General, Department of the Columbia, 27 May 1899. Underlined in original. 142 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, White to Perry, 6 April 1899.

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Dept.”143 Wood had written to White on 21 April that “I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letters re American Convoys, Liquor and Breweries, and have issued instruction accordingly.”144

Once the police began allowing American convoys to continue on to Log Cabin, the situation stabilized. The Mounted Police remained stationed at the summits of the Chilkoot and

White passes, but the Canadian customs office remained at Log Cabin and American customs officials continued to escort liquor shipments across the border. On 24 August 1899, White suggested to Sifton that since the railway was now complete to Bennett, the police were no longer required to be stationed at the White Pass Summit. Instead he suggested that “it will be sufficient if instructions are sent to see that the flags are kept flying at the summits and frequently visited by a Police patrol.”145 But it was decided to keep a police detachment at the summit. It was not until 16 October 1899 that the Canadian Customs office was moved from Log

Cabin to the Summit.146 By that time, the competition of the White Pass Railway to Bennett had done much to foster the borderlands transportation system on the Lynn Canal route.

Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands

The completion of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway to the White Pass summit in

February 1899 and Lake Bennett in July 1899 marked an important step in the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The traffic agreement system initiated by the railway not only allowed the Mounted Police to establish a through route to transport supplies from Vancouver to their posts in the Yukon, it greatly improved the Yukon transportation system as a whole.

Miners, merchants, government officials, and anyone shipping freight to the Yukon could now ship goods with any transportation company in the traffic agreement system, and they could be

143 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, White to Wood, 28 April 1899. 144 LAC, RG18, Vol. 164, File 176, Wood to White, 21 April 1899. 145 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, White, Memorandum, 24 August 1899. 146 LAC, RG18, Vol. 161, File 93, McDougald to White, 16 October 1899.

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delivered to Skagway, Bennett, or any point on the Yukon River serviced by steamer with little effort. While the traffic agreement system solved many transportation problems, the customs dispute over escorting liquor shipments to Log Cabin had threatened to derail the borderlands transportation system that had been developing since the fall of 1897. After another round of border negotiations between the Mounted Police, American customs officials, the White Pass

Railway, the Canadian government, and other groups, however, an agreement was reached that allowed the Mounted Police to enforce the Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, American customs officials to escort liquor to Log Cabin, and goods to flow smoothly across the border. The development of a stable borderlands transportation system also freed the Mounted Police to focus on other duties, including maintaining law and order and administering the Yukon Territory.

The construction of the White Pass Railway also changed the way that customs operations were carried out on the Lynn Canal route. As discussed in Chapter 6, Deputy

Collector of Customs Joseph E. Floyd and the customs inspectors at the head of the Lynn Canal faced chaotic conditions during the winter of 1897-1898 - chasing horses across the beach, escorting Canadian goods to the frontier, and working from dawn to well past dusk dealing with the thousands of miners who passed through Skagway and Dyea. As the White Pass Railway began transporting more freight into the Yukon, however, U.S. customs officials begin to deal more with the WPYR and less with individual miners and packers. The amount of time and paperwork required to inspect goods moving across the border, whether they were transported in bond or not, remained high. To ease delays caused by missing or incorrect paperwork and the complicated bonding process, the White Pass Railway operated its own customs office in

Skagway to deal specifically with White Pass Railway freight. As the WPYR Auditor A.L.

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Berdoe explained to Comptroller White in December 1900, “we maintain our own Customs

Office here in order to facilitate the movement of freight, and provide the services of a competent Customs Agent to the public at a reasonable charge.”147 The service appears to have been popular with White Pass Railway customers and successful at moving freight through customs at a faster rate. By 9 August 1899, Gray reported that the customs office “is now keeping three men busy from 8 a.m. until almost midnight every day on customs papers.”148

With the White Pass Railway operating its own customs office, U.S. customs officials no longer had to deal with miners filling in paperwork. They could simply coordinate with railway officials.

With the majority of freight moving from Skagway to the interior on WPYR trains, most of the work done by U.S. customs officials was now conducted at WPYR stations. Rather than being released back to owners or transportation companies, bonded freight was moved to the railway’s bonded warehouse, where it was supervised by U.S. customs officials. Goods were then loaded onto train cars and locked with a car seal until the train reached the border. A customs official then verified that the seal was unbroken, indicating that the bonded goods had not been opened in American territory, before releasing the goods for the rest of the journey to the interior.

The issue of car seals is a good example of the new kind of customs work carried out by

U.S. customs officials. Deputy Collector Andrews wrote to Collector of Customs Ivey on 10

May 1899 that the White Pass Railway “will soon be running cars from this point to the frontier post,” likely referring to the customs post at Log Cabin.149 “As soon as this is done,” he

147 Quoted in LAC, RG18, Vol. 195, File 707, White to McDougall, 28 December 1900. 148 Gray to Hawkins, 9 August 1899. 149 NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 33, Vol. 17, Andrews to Ivey, 10 May 1899.

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continued, “there is necessity for car seals in order that the foreign freight may be placed in sealed car for Transportation and Exportation.”150 He requested 5000 car seals “and the necessary presses or other appliances for affixing same.”151 Once customs officials began using car seals, they were required to supervise bonded freight anytime it was not under seal, including when it was being loaded onto cars. On 18 August, for example, Railway Division

Superintendent F.H. Whiting requested that Andrews make a customs official available to supervise the loading of trains at night, during a particularly busy period for the railway.152

Andrews also explained that “regarding breaking seals of the car we cannot reseal and certify that the car is the same unless it remains under customs charge, I do not think the car can be properly forwarded under seal after remaining open a night unless a customs officer remains in charge of it continuously until it is resealed.”153

Andrews and Whiting also had to negotiate the issue of inspecting passengers’ personal baggage. As Whiting explained to E.C. Hawkins on 7 September, when trains arrived in

Skagway, passenger baggage had to be inspected by a customs official before it could be released, which often required customs officials to work “until 9, 10, and even 11 o’clock” in the evening, “in order to accommodate passengers.”154 By 28 September, Whiting and Andrews agreed to inspect passenger baggage at the White Pass summit, to avoid a delay when the train arrived at Skagway. “We would much rather have the train held ten or fifteen minutes at White

Pass, than to have the delay here,” Whiting wrote.155

150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 YA, WPYR, COR 872, File 1, F.H. Whiting to Andrews, 18 August 1899. 153 YA, WPYR, COR 872, File 1, Andrews to WPYR, no date. 154 YA, WPYR, COR 872, File 1, Whiting to Hawkins, 7 September 1899. 155 YA, WPYR, COR 872, File 1, Whiting to Andrews, 28 September 1899.

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The completion of the White Pass Railway also helped to stabilize the development of a functional Alaska-Yukon border in the Lynn Canal region. With the vast majority of people and goods going to the interior via the railway, freight and passengers could only get off the train at specific points along the line and only cross the border at the summit of White Pass. The railway was careful to build stations with rooms available for customs officials and the Mounted Police to enforce customs laws and keep a watchful eye on the transportation system and the border. By

September 1900, the U.S. customs office at the White Pass summit was located in the WPYR yard.156 The railway also made arrangements to supply two rooms for the Mounted Police at the summit for use as an office and quarters, although as of January 1900, the rooms had not been provided.157 May 1900 plans to construct a passenger depot at Whitehorse included two rooms for the Mounted Police, “in accordance with promise made [to] Major [Z.T.] Wood,” and rooms for customs inspectors.158

By the end of 1899, the local borderlands negotiations between the Mounted Police, the

White Pass Railway, and U.S. customs officials had finalized the development of a functional

Alaska-Yukon border. The Mounted Police and customs officials were able to enforce customs regulations and the location of the border at WPYR stations, while goods, including Mounted

Police supplies, flowed across the border on WPYR trains - and to the interior by other transportation companies operating with White Pass Railway traffic agreements. This process was largely complete by the end of the 1899 season.

By the time the White Pass Railway was finished from Skagway to Whitehorse in July

1900, the partnership between the Mounted Police and the White Pass Railway had developed

156 YA, WPYR, COR 862, File 314, Hawkins to J.P. Rogers, 3 September 1900. 157 LAC, RG18, Vol. 185, File 249, Perry to White, 23 September 1899; Wood to C.C. Dawson, 8 January 1900. 158 YA, WPYR, COR 868, File 4-525, Hawkins to Rogers, 12 May 1900.

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Figure 17 WPYR System, 1902. From YA, WPYR, PAM 1902-016C

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further. While the police had taken a two-pronged approach during the 1899 season, sending supplies via the White Pass route with the Canadian Development Company and the Yukon

River route with the Alaska Commercial Company, Superintendent Perry suggested in January

1900 that “I think it would be to our advantage if all our shipments came in via the White

Pass.”159 He explained that “it may cost us a little more but it would throw all the business into the hands of Canadian companies.”160 And while the police had made a contract with the

Canadian Development Company in 1899, they worked closely with the WPYR to facilitate the contract and to keep goods flowing across the Alaska-Yukon border. In 1900, the Mounted

Police simply made a contract with the White Pass Railway. Comptroller White instructed Perry to accept the WPYR offer to ship police supplies at a rate of $80 per ton between Skagway and

Whitehorse and $120 between Skagway and Dawson on 15 June 1900.161 Perry and WPYR

Traffic Manager S.M. Irwin reached an agreement on 16 July 1900, with the railway promising

“that all shipments of the North-West Mounted Police, or in fact any shipments for the Canadian

Government, no matter what Department, shall receive our best attention.”162

The completion of the railway from Skagway to Whitehorse also simplified the WPYR’s traffic agreement system, cutting out the steamer route between Lake Bennett and Dawson City, the crossing of the White Horse rapids, and the need to transfer freight to the Miles Canyon &

Lewes River tramway. The WPYR continued to work closely with the Canadian Development

Company, who operated between Bennett and Cariboo Crossing until the railway was complete and then moved their steamers to the other side of the rapids to operate between Whitehorse and

159 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 104, Perry to White, 10 January 1900. 160 Ibid. 161 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 104, White to Perry, 15 June 1900; S.M. Irwin to Perry, 9 May 1900. 162 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 104, S.M. Irwin to Perry, 16 July 1900.

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Dawson.163 Perry reported on 5 June 1900 that the “White Pass Railway acquired C.D.Co. boats and make all shipments by them.”164 On 20 March 1901, the railway officially purchased the

Canadian Development Company and established the British Yukon Navigation Company, the steamer arm of the White Pass and Yukon Railway Company, consolidating control of the

Yukon transportation system.165

By that time, the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands in the Lynn Canal region had been completed. As this chapter has shown, during the 1899 season, the development of the traffic agreement system, the negotiations over customs regulations and the location of the border, and the partnership between the Mounted Police and the White Pass Railway solidified the development of a borderlands transportation system in the Yukon and a functional Alaska-

Yukon border. By 1901, the Mounted Police relied entirely on the White Pass Railway to bring their supplies to the Yukon. On the other side of the Alaska-Yukon border, however, the U.S.

Army rejected the idea of a borderlands transportation system in favour of developing an all-

American route to the Yukon via the Copper River valley - a topic discussed in the next chapter.

163 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 104, W.W. Routland[?] to White, 7 June 1900. 164 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 104, Perry to White, June 1900. 165 YA, WPYR, COR 865, File 1424, Hawkins, memorandum, 19 March 1901.

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Chapter 10 The U.S. Army and the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands, 1899

After spending the previous year exploring the Copper, Matanuska, and Sushitna River valleys with Expeditions 2 and 3, during the 1899 season the War Department decided to fully implement Captain P.H. Ray’s plan for the U.S. Army’s role in Alaska. On 20 March 1899,

Acting Secretary of War G.D. Meiklejohn and Adjutant General H.C. Corbin ordered Captain

William R. Abercrombie to establish the Copper River Exploring Expedition and begin construction of an all-American route to the Yukon via the Copper River. Abercrombie was instructed to proceed to Valdez, Alaska and “open up a military road to Copper Center, and from the last-named point by the most direct and practicable route to Eagle City.”1 The Trans-Alaskan

Military Road, as Abercrombie’s project would soon be known, “will be carefully surveyed, triangulated, noting elevations, depressions, and other features, and should be definitely located and properly marked on either side as far as practicable, in order that it may be known and used as a route of travel by the public.”2 By the same order, Meiklejohn and Corbin instructed Captain

Edwin F. Glenn to organize the Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition. Glenn was to establish a permanent camp at Tyoonok, Alaska and carry on his work from the previous season, exploring

“the country to the northward via the Matanuska, Sushitna, Yedno, and Kuskokvim rivers for the most direct and practicable route from tide water to the crossings of the Tanana River; and from these crossings northward to the military posts established on the Yukon River.”3

In moving ahead with an all-American route to the Yukon, the U.S. Army rejected the borderlands transportation network that the Mounted Police were establishing with the White

Pass Railway. Ray’s recommendations from the fall and winter of 1897 called for the army to

1 “General Order No. 51,” in United States Senate, Copper River Exploring Expedition, Senate Document No. 306, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 9. 2 Ibid. 3 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Copy of General Order No. 51, 20 March 1899.

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open up an additional route to the upper Yukon in case the Yukon River route failed, as it had in the lead up to the Dawson food shortage (see Chapter 4). Ray also forwarded complaints from

Alaska miners and businessmen that the construction of a railway on the Lynn Canal route would put them at a disadvantage because the route passed through Canadian territory (see Chapter 8).

As Abercrombie reported in 1898, many American miners bitterly resented having to follow

Canadian customs regulations on the journey over the Chilkoot and White passes. The construction of an all-American route to the American side of the 141st meridian would consolidate American political and commercial interests in the upper Yukon and ensure that

Americans would benefit from linking the North American industrial economy to the region.

From a military perspective, relying on a borderlands transportation route also meant that the army would need permission from the Canadian government to move troops to Alaska if the

Yukon River route was ever blocked. Finally, as Abercrombie reported, some 3,000 miners had attempted to use the Copper River route to reach the Klondike or to find gold in the Copper valley in 1898. The construction of a military road in the region would serve these miners and allow the army to prevent starvation or destitution on the route. While the Cook’s Inlet Exploring

Expedition was limited to exploration, Glenn’s instructions also included the clause: “the routes traversed by this expedition should be definitely located and properly marked in order that they may be known and used as routes of travel by the public.”4 Both orders also contained the similar instructions to continue gathering as much information as possible on the territories covered by both expeditions.

By May 1899, the War Department decided to move ahead with the second part of Ray’s plan - establishing a military government in the upper Yukon. On 10 May, the army issued

4 Ibid.

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orders creating the military District of North Alaska. Now Major Ray was given command of the new district and ordered to proceed to Alaska and take command of the district’s headquarters at

Eagle.5 Ray’s plan for a military government in North Alaska stemmed from his experiences during the fall of 1897, facing unrest as a result of the food shortage at Dawson. He recommended that a military government be established on the American side of the 141st meridian to enforce law and order and provide assistance to civilian authorities, particularly in the event of another food shortage. Given the nature of the mining communities in North Alaska,

Ray did not believe that establishing a civilian government was possible. He suggested establishing some form of semi-military government, similar to the system employed by the

North-West Mounted Police in the Yukon. During the 1899 season, the War Department decided to follow Ray’s plan. On 25 June, Ray and three companies of the 7th Infantry sailed for Alaska with orders to establish U.S. Army posts at Eagle, Circle, Rampart, and the crossing of the

Tanana and Yukon Rivers.6

As this chapter discusses, the decision to forge ahead with an all-American route to the

Yukon and a military government in North Alaska served to harden the developing Alaska-

Yukon border. Before the 1899 season, the U.S. Army and American miners had to rely on the

Lynn Canal routes to reach the upper Yukon and needed permission to pass through Canadian territory. American miners had to follow Canadian laws and customs and mining regulations.

The construction of a reliable route to the American side of the upper Yukon River through the

Copper River valley, along with the St. Michael/Yukon River route, would mean that the U.S.

Army, and Americans in general, could avoid crossing through Canadian territory all together.

5 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 184. 6 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 177, File 1515, Ray to Adjutant General, Dept. of California, 25 June 1899.

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The creation of the army District of North Alaska brought both sides of the 141st meridian under direct government control. With the U.S. Army’s presence in North Alaska, and the Mounted

Police in the Yukon, the location of the Alaska-Yukon border could be fully enforced, even though the situation on the ground did not dramatically change. With both sides of the Alaska-

Yukon border firmly in control of the American and Canadian governments, and an all-American route to the Yukon under construction, the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region was complete.

This chapter begins by examining Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn’s efforts to organize the Copper River and Cook’s Inlet expeditions from Washington in early 1899, before tracing the activities of both expeditions. Abercrombie’s Copper River Exploring Expedition spent most of the 1899 season providing relief to destitute miners at Valdez, building some 93 miles of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road, and exploring large areas of the Copper River drainage. The Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition explored a large area of territory, including the

Yentna and Kuskokwim river valleys, the Sushitna River route to the Tanana, and the southern foothills of the Alaska Mountain range. Major Ray and the 7th Infantry arrived at St. Michael in time to deal with the beginning of the Nome gold rush, before proceeding up the Yukon River to establish the District of North Alaska.7 This chapter ends by exploring the nature of military government in North Alaska and the development of the Alaska-Yukon border. From his post at

Fort Egbert, just six miles from the border, Ray reflected on the transformation of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands and its future as a bordered region.

7 U.S. Army activities in Alaska during the 1899 season are discussed by: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 175-190; Webb, The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska, 148-154; Nielson, Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987, 68-70, 75-76.

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Washington

The decision to send Glenn and Abercrombie back to Cook’s Inlet and Valdez appears to have been made by the War Department in early 1899. Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn was tasked with organizing the two expeditions. In early February, he asked 1st Lieutenant P.G.

Lowe, 18th Infantry, who led part of Expedition 2 from Valdez to Fortymile the previous year, and Abercrombie to submit their recommendations for establishing an all-American route to the

Yukon from Valdez. Lowe wrote on 10 February that an expedition “consisting of twenty enlisted men and ten packers, should, if possible, leave Seattle not later than March 1st” and establish a series of stations “manned by two enlisted men” between Valdez and the Tanana

River.8 Each station “should be supplied with provisions for one year and two horses” and would be responsible for providing assistance to miners and travelers and directing them “from station to station.”9 Lowe wrote that “the Northwest [sic] Mounted Police have just such a plan in operation on the Yukon and if this be introduced on the route between Valdes [sic] and the

Yukon, it will be of great benefit to people entering the country and will be the means of opening it up.”10 He also recommended that the expedition be equipped to continue to explore and gather information on “what promises to be a very rich country.”11

Abercrombie, who sent his reply to Meiklejohn on 27 February, also recommended the establishment of “relay stations” at “given distances” between Valdez and Mentasta Pass to provide assistance to prospectors and travelers.12 “This system of relay stations appears to be recommended as a whole, not only by the officers in the regular army of the United States, but

8 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, P.G. Lowe to Meiklejohn, 10 February 1899. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Abercrombie to Meiklejohn, 27 February 1899.

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by those of her Majesty’s service, serving with the Mounted Police of the Northwest Territory of

Canada,” he wrote.13 Like in his report on Expedition 2, Abercrombie recommended

“constructing a military trail, through Central Alaska,… over which the American citizen can enter and leave the District of Alaska in safety.”14 He suggested that “the personnel required to continue the work of last season” should include two non-commissioned officers, eight enlisted men, eight packers, fifteen axmen, two surveyors, and four rock-workers “for blasting trail.”15

Meiklejohn’s office issued General Order No. 51 on 17 March 1899, authorizing the creation of the Copper River and Cook’s Inlet exploring expeditions. Meiklejohn spent much of that day and 22-23 March organizing supplies and personnel. He wrote to the Chief of Engineers, the Chief Signal Officer, the Chief of Ordnance, and the Commissary General of Subsistence to arrange supplies for both parties and sent numerous orders instructing men to report to Glenn or

Abercrombie and appointing civilians to work with the expeditions.16 He also sent Glenn, who had forwarded his recommendations for Cook’s Inlet on 9 March, and Abercrombie a set of further instructions for their expeditions.17 Both men were authorized “to employ the necessary

Indians, natives of Alaska, as guides for the different detachments of your command.”18 Both were asked to “report any insufficiency in supplies or equipment” as soon as they arrived at

Tyoonok and Valdez.19 And both were instructed to “make a careful examination of the fish industry in that country, and report everything nearing upon this subject that will be of value.”20

To facilitate the construction of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road, Abercrombie was given

13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88. 17 Glenn recommended that his expedition be divided into four parts and continue exploring routes from Cook’s Inlet to the Tanana River. NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Glenn to Meiklejohn, 9 March 1899. 18 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Meiklejohn to Glenn, 17 March 1899; Meiklejohn to Abercrombie, 17 March 1899. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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additional instructions to “establish a small detachment at each of the military reservations which you may declare [for relay stations], and provided for them such permanent quarters as you may find it practicable to erect under the circumstances.”21 Meiklejohn also wrote that “at Copper

Centre a full and complete examination will be made to the Copper River, with the view to locating the most practicable crossing. A similar examination will be made for the purpose of locating the best crossing of the upper waters of the Copper River; and also the most desirable passage of the Tanana.”22

With orders in hand, Abercrombie left Washington DC on 22 March and, after a brief stop at Yellowstone National Park to look over pack animals for the expedition, proceeded to

Seattle, “where upon arrival I reported to the Department and began the organization of my expedition,” he wrote in his final report on the 1899 season.23 The Copper River Exploring

Expedition left Seattle on 15 April on the Pacific Steam Whaling Company steamer Excelsior and arrived at Valdez on 21 April 1899 at 6:00 p.m.24 Glenn and the Cook’s Inlet Exploring

Expedition left Seattle in early May and arrived at Tyoonok on 14 May 1899.25

Copper River Exploring Expedition

Upon arrival at Port Valdez, Abercrombie wrote, “the scene that followed… was one that

I shall not soon forget.”26 A crowd of “the argonauts of last season’s rush into the Copper River

Valley” gathered at the shore.27 “Many of these people I had met and known the year before,” he wrote, “were so changed in their appearance, with long hair hanging down their shoulders and

21 Meiklejohn to Abercrombie, 17 March 1899. 22 Ibid. 23 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” in Copper River Exploring Expedition, 11-13, quote from 13. 24 Ibid., 14. 25 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Glenn to Meiklejohn, 30 April 1899; Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 713. 26 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 14. 27 Ibid., 14.

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beards covering their entire face, that I do not think I recognized one of them.”28 From several of these men, Abercrombie noted, “I was led to believe that hundreds were dying of starvation and scurvy beyond the Coast Range in the Copper River Valley.”29 Quartermaster’s Agent Charles

Brown, who had spent the winter at Valdez and provided Abercrombie with the first “intelligent account of the condition of things,” supposedly greeted his commanding officer with “My God,

Captain, it has been clear hell!”30

Despite Abercrombie’s rhetoric, however, his arrival at Port Valdez was not the first time he learned of the suffering on the Copper River route during the winter of 1898-1899. Brown had reported to him in February 1899 that “many parties have of late been crossing the glacier; coming into Valdes [sic] from the interior for a change of food, etc. They report a condition of affairs there as being terrible, scurvy being the chief affliction - with many cases of frozen hands and feet.”31 He continued, “it is reported that fully seventy-five cases still exist between the glacier and Copper Centre, many of whom will never recover.”32 At Valdez, Brown also reported supplying relief rations to fifty starving miners between October 1898 and February 1899.33 On 1

April, Abercrombie had forwarded Brown’s reports to Meiklejohn, noting that “I think it would be well, upon arrival of the expedition at Port Valdez, to at once send relief into the interior, as far as Copper Centre, to care for the people stricken with scurvy and those suffering from frozen limbs.”34

By the time Abercrombie arrival at Valdez, Brown was housing sick and destitute miners in small cabins, where “on the floor of the cabin at night they would spread their blankets and lie

28 Ibid., 15. 29 Ibid., 15. 30 Ibid., 15. 31 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Brown to Abercrombie, February 1899. 32 Ibid. 33 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Brown, “List of Persons Rationed at Port Valdez, Alaska,” no date. 34 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Abercrombie to Meiklejohn, 1 April 1899.

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down, packed like sardines in a box.”35 Under the provisions of the 1897 Alaska Relief Act,

Abercrombie directed Brown, whom he described as “an old Government employee of some forty years standing,” to rent or build cabins to house a hospital, bunk house, and mess house “to care for the sick and destitute in his charge.”36 Abercrombie also sent relief parties “over the

Valdez Glacier into the Copper River Valley, equipped with the dog teams and supplies, to bring out to the coast those whose enfeebled condition rendered them helpless.”37 He also directed his clerk John F. Rice “to proceed into the Copper River Valley and establish relief stations at the mouth of Grayling Creek, the head of the Klutena River, and at Copper Center.”38 At each relief station, Abercrombie wrote, “I detailed enlisted men of the expedition to extend relief and encouragement to the demoralized and destitute prospectors.”39

In order to provide extra relief to destitute miners, Abercrombie also instructed Brown to employ able-bodied men to run the hospital, bunk house, mess house, and relief stations. “These men were regularly employed at a compensation of $1 per day and a ration,” he wrote.40

Additionally, he received permission from Meiklejohn “to employ the services of miners, prospectors and others needing employment, on work in connection with the location of the ‘All

American Route’ upon which you are engaged.”41 The goal was to provide destitute miners with enough work to pay for a return trip to Seattle, but the employment of the destitute at Valdez presented a problem. “After the first payment to the destitute miners employed at Valdez on

April 31, under the $1 a day rating,” Abercrombie explained in his final report, “Quartermaster

35 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 15. 36 Ibid., 17. 37 Ibid., 18. 38 Ibid., 19. 39 Ibid., 19. 40 Ibid., 18. 41 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Meiklejohn to Abercrombie, 5 June 1899.

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Figure 18 Map of Cook’s Inlet and Copper River, 1899. By the author. Agent Brown informed me that unless I took some steps to prevent these men from squandering their earnings in gambling and drinking that we would be unable to get rid of them.”42

42 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 20.

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Abercrombie soon learned that the problem was with the local agent of the Pacific Steam

Whaling Company, who was “in direct violation of the law, carrying on a liquor and gambling traffic.”43 While Abercrombie noted that “twenty years experience on the frontier had taught me that the army officer who interfered with the liquor traffic has trouble before him,” with 80-100 destitute miners in his care, he decided to put a stop to the liquor and gambling traffic at

Valdez.44 “I notified the local agent referred to that if he did not close his establishment, I would do so and place a guard over it, and prevent any further illegal traffic in whisky,” he wrote.45

Abercrombie also requested that a deputy U.S. Marshal and a U.S. Commissioner be appointed at Valdez to enforce liquor and gambling laws and he stopped issuing payments to destitute miners in cash, and instead provided them with food and lodging until a steamer arrived.

Abercrombie’s actions led the Manager of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company to complain to

Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn that “Captain Abercrombie’s open antagonistic acts and verbal remarks against this company… are a disgrace to the U.S. Army” - forcing Abercrombie to submit a lengthy report in his defence.46

Construction of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road began on 25 April, when Abercrombie sent a party led by Oscar Palmer, one of the expedition’s topographers, to the mouth of Keystone

Canyon to select a site for a construction camp and begin surveying the route. Abercrombie also organized a second party to survey the route between Valdez and Keystone Canyon and

43 Ibid., 20. 44 Ibid., 20. 45 Ibid., 20. 46 NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Edwin L. Griffith to Meiklejohn, 14 November 1899; Abercrombie, “The history of my relation with the Pacific Steam Whaling Company,” no date.

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determine the best location for the terminus of the trail.47 He explained in his final report that

“the reason for commencing work at the mouth of the Keystone Canyon, instead of starting from

Valdez, was that the first fifteen miles of the trail passed over the flood plain of the Lowe River

Valley,” and a detailed survey would be needed to select a route that would not flood in July and

August.48 The next day, Abercrombie ordered 1st Lieutenant Walter C. Babcock, 8th U.S.

Cavalry, in charge of the actual construction of the road, to take command of the construction camp, which was called Station No. 2, and supervise the construction of a storehouse to hold the expedition’s supplies.49

Walter C. Babcock was born in Massachusetts in 1872. He graduated from the United

States Military Academy at West Point in 1889 and served there as an instructor for several years before joining the Copper River expedition.50 By 9 May, work on the storehouse was largely complete, and Babcock’s construction crew began pushing the road through Keystone Canyon.

Climbing through “many switchbacks and turns in order to maintain a suitable grade,” Babcock reported that the road followed the west side of Keystone Canyon, rising some 300 to 450 feet in height to a natural bench that followed the rim of the Canyon.51 “It is along this bench that the road is built,” Babcock wrote.52 Abercrombie noted that the Canyon road was “cut through almost solid rock” in places, “following the meanderings of the canyon to its head.”53

47 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 21; NARA, RG107, E80, Box 88, Abercrombie to Meiklejohn, 8 May 1899. 48 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 21-22. 49 Ibid., 21; Walter C. Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock, Eighth U.S. Cavalry, from April 26, 1899, to October 9, 1899,” in Copper River Exploring Expedition, 58. 50 Walter C. Babcock Obituary, New York Times, 10 August 1937, 19. 51 Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 60. 52 Ibid., 60. 53 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 22.

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“By the end of May,” Babcock reported, “work had settled down to a regular routine.”54

“Far in advance of the construction party,” one or more men were sent forward “to look up the general route ahead and report on the grades, state of the glacier streams, nature of the ground, etc.”55 Babcock himself was responsible for determining the route the road would follow. “Just in advance of the workmen,” a crew of one or two men were sent forward to mark “the actual line through the timber and thick brush.56 The construction party that followed consisted of four groups. First, the axmen cleared the right-of-way of “all brush, trees, and fallen timber.”57 Then

“a second party, with picks, crowbars, and shovels… graded the trail, often cutting deep into the side hill to gain the necessary width for the road, and removing all obstructions but the heavier bowlders and the solid rock.”58 This party was followed by the rock workers, who blasted and removed any remaining rock and boulders. “Lastly,” Babcock continued, “came two or three men with sledge hammers, who broke up fragments of rock left after blasting and scattered it along the road as ballast.”59 When the road had to cross a mountain stream or river, the construction crew often had to build retaining walls, “filled up with loose rock through which the stream could pass.”60 To cross larger streams and rivers, wooden bridges had to be constructed.

In the first four miles of the road, Babcock reported crossing fifteen streams, of which eleven were crossed with retaining walls and one by a bridge.61 From May to the end of September, the construction crew made their way towards the interior in a similar fashion.

54 Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 60. 55 Ibid., 60. 56 Ibid., 61. 57 Ibid., 61. 58 Ibid., 61. 59 Ibid., 61. 60 Ibid., 62. 61 Ibid., 62.

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From the head of Keystone Canyon, the road crossed Dutch Flat, an old glacier moraine covered in “heavy growth of cottonwood timber,” before crossing a number of glacial streams and ascending, in “an imperceptible grade,” to the summit of Thompson Pass.62 Crossing over the divide to the Chena (today’s Tsina) Valley, the trail followed Ptarmigan Creek and the Chena

River. Ten miles from Thompson Pass, Station No. 3 was built, consisting of “a log storehouse with a shingle roof, for the preservation of supplies, and a smaller cabin, with a shingle roof, for the station keepers.”63 From there, the road crossed the Chena River, following the west side of the river downstream to the crossing with the Kanata River (today’s Tiekel River), and then upstream to the divide between the Kanata and south branch of the Tonsena (Little Tonsina)

Rivers, the farthest point reached by the construction crews during the 1899 season. Ten miles from Station No. 3, a log relief cabin was located, and “a log stable and a small cabin” were built at the Klutena Divide, a further twenty-five miles.64 At the government stable and cabin,

Abercrombie also established a military reservation on a nearby hay meadow and cut and stacked some forty tons of hay to provide forage to passing pack trains, as part of a plan to establish hay meadows ever thirty to forty miles along the road.65

In the meantime, Babcock wrote, “I found it necessary to personally determine the route for the road far in advance of the working party.”66 On 27 July, the day that the road was completed to the summit of Thompson Pass, he set off with a small party to “determine the route for the road” from Thompson Pass to the Copper River valley.67 “My instructions,” he wrote,

62 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 23. 63 Ibid., 23. 64 Ibid., 24. 65 Ibid., 33. 66 Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 65. 67 Ibid., 65.

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Figure 19 Route of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road and Territory Explored by Babcock, 1899. From: United States Senate, Copper River Exploring Expedition. 461

“were to prepare a topographic map of the country traversed, locate the route for the road, making careful measurements of distance, and continue the photographic work along the route selected for the road.”68 Through August and September, Babcock explored a large area of the

Chena, Kanata, Klutena, and Tonsina river valleys, as shown on the top half of Figure 19. On 1

October, with the end of the season approaching, Babcock decided to return to Valdez, collecting the members of the construction crews as he went. The growing party made their way along the completed sections of the road, reaching Valdez on 10 October.69

In addition to Babcock’s explorations, Abercrombie sent out a number of parties to continue the exploring and mapping work of Expedition 2. On 1 June, Abercrombie instructed

Quartermaster’s Clerk John F. Rice to accompany Post-office Inspector C.L. Wayland, who had been instructed by his department to establish “a postal route from Valdez via Copper Center,

Slahna River, Mentasta Pass, Tanana River, Forty-Mile River, to Eagle City.”70 Leaving Valdez on 16 June, Rice, Wayland, three men, five pack horses, and two saddle horses followed the completed section of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road as far as the head of Keystone Canyon, before crossing Thompson Pass and following the Tiekell (Tiekel) River, then crossing over to

Tonsena Lake and following Grayling Creek (today’s Manker Creek) to the Klutena River.71 The party reached Copper Center after 14 days travel, before retracing Abercrombie’s route from the previous season, following the Copper to the Slahna River and then crossing Mentasta Pass.

Following the Big Tok River, the party crossed the Tanana River on 16 July and proceeded to

Lake Mansfield and followed Mosquito Creek, Franklin Gulch, Fortymile River, Steele Creek,

68 Ibid., 65. 69 Ibid., 79-82. 70 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 26. 71 For Manker Creek see: Orth, “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names,” 619.

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O’Brien Creek, and Boundary Creek, reaching Eagle City on 28 July, after traveling 425 miles.

After 11 days at Eagle, where Rice met with Richardson and Ray, the party retraced their steps, leaving Eagle on 9 August. The party reached Copper Center on 2 September and returned to

Valdez on 11 September.72 The Rice party succeeded in establishing a mail route to Eagle and proved that, when traveling with only supplies, a party could easily travel from Valdez to Eagle and back in a single season.

On 15 June, Abercrombie instructed Topographer Oscar Rohn to explore the Chettyna

(Chitina) River valley, and “if possible, cross over from this valley to the head waters of the

Copper River, thence down the Copper River to the mouth of the Klutena.”73 He also directed

Rohn to “gather all useful information bearing on the geological, agricultural, and forestry resources and to determine, if possible, the alleged existence of geysers among the foothills of

Mount Wrangell.”74 Rohn, two packers, and one dog driver left Station No. 2, at the foot of

Keystone Canyon, on 19 June, and joined the Rice party for the journey over Thompson Pass, up the Tiekell River, and over the Quartz Creek divide to Tonsena Lake. Following the Tonsena

River to its mouth, the party crossed the Copper River and proceeded to the Chettyna.75

Camping at McCarthy’s cache, three miles from the mouth of the Chettyna, the party traveled upriver a further 8 miles before picking up an “old Indian trail” that took them to the banks of the Sterlina River (Strelna Creek), up the Kuskulana River, and along the foothills of the Wrangell Mountains.76 They crossed the Kuskulana about a mile from its head, then, Rohn wrote, “the Indian trial turned into a narrow gap in the mountains on the easterly side of the

72 John F. Rice, “Report of John F. Rice,” in Copper River Exploring Expedition, 95-102. 73 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 27. 74 Ibid., 27. 75 Oscar Rohn, “Report of Oscar Rohn on Exploration in Wrangele Mountain District,” in Copper River Exploring Expedition, 112-115. 76 Ibid., 116.

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river.”77 Following a steep grade over a divide, the party emerged into broad valley (Chokosna

River). Traveling east for some five or six miles, the trail “turned abruptly across a spur of the mountains” and came to what their Indigenous guide called the Lachena (Lakina) River.78 After spending several days exploring the Lachena valley, the party retuned to McCarthy’s cache to pick up more supplies and move them to a cache on the Lachena, before continuing their journey east. They “managed with much difficulty, but without any serious accident” to move around the foot of “the glacier” (presumably Kennicott and Root Glaciers), before exploring McCarthy

Creek.79 After determining that no pass existed at the head of the McCarthy, the party followed

Nicolai (Nikolai) Creek and crossed over a divide to the Nezena (Nizina) River valley.

On 26 August, the party split up, with Rohn and one man set out north over the Nezena

Glacier, in search of the headwaters of the Copper River, and the remaining packers returning to

Valdez. Rohn slowly made his way over today’s Chisana Pass, reaching the headwaters of the

Chisana River, a tributary of the Tanana, by 18 September. From there, the party ascended today’s Notch Creek, crossing Cooper Pass to the Nabesna River, another tributary of the

Tanana. On the Nabesna, Rohn camped with a group of Indigenous hunters who agreed to lead them on a good trail west to the village of Batzulnetas, on the Copper River. The party then walked to the mouth of the Slahna River, where they purchased a boat for the journey to Copper

Center. Rohn left Copper Center on 18 October with a mail contractor, travelling by pack train to the Tonsena River, and following the Trans-Alaskan Military Road to Valdez.80 Rohn’s explorations and difficult journey over the glacier showed that there were no practical routes through the Wrangell Mountains.

77 Ibid., 116. 78 Ibid., 117. 79 Ibid., 118. 80 Ibid., 119-130.

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On 27 July, Abercrombie instructed A.M. Powell, “one of my guides who had accompanied me during the exploration of the previous season,” to explore the headwaters of the

Gakona and Chestochena (Christochina) Rivers and search for a shorter route to Lake

Mentasta.81 Powell left Station No. 3 on 21 August. At the Quartz Creek Divide, he employed an

Indiana miner who was “familiar with some of the country I was to explore,” Powell wrote.82

Following the route of the Rice party to Tonsena Lake, over the Grayling Creek Divide, and down the Klutena River, the pair arrived at Copper Center on 31 August. From there, the party followed the west bank of the Copper River, crossing the mouths of the Gulkana and Gakona

Rivers, before turning north towards the headwaters of the Gakona. After four days travel, they camped “on the foothills of the divide between the Copper and the Shushitna,” before turning east towards the headwaters of the Chestochena River.83 The pair reached the Chestochena after two days travel and ascended Chesna Creek on 16 September. From the top of a nearby mountain, Powell wrote, “a level pass was plainly seen, leading from the middle fork of the

Chestochena to near the head waters of the Slahna,” proving that a practical route from the

Chestochena to Lake Mentasta did indeed exist.84 With their assignment complete, the party turned around on 29 September, descending the Chestochena to the Copper River, reaching

Copper Center on 9 October, and retracing their steps to Valdez, where they arrived on 22

October.85

81 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 27. 82 Addison M. Powell, “Report of Addison M. Powell, Guide with Copper River Exploring Expedition,” in Copper River Exploring Expedition, 131. 83 Ibid., 133. 84 Ibid., 134. 85 Ibid., 134-136.

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With all construction and exploration parties back at Valdez, Abercrombie declared an end to the season on 31 October 1899.86 By that time, Babcock reported that ninety-three miles of road had been completed for pack horses, a further thirty-five miles was in excavation, sixty- seven miles had been cleared and grubbed, and twelve miles had been cleared only. The construction crew had built twenty-six bridges, “with a total length of 856 feet,” the roadbed averaged five to ten feet in width, “the narrowest part being in Keystone Canyon,” and the total clearing for the road “varies from 6 feet to 35 feet, and averages about 25 feet.”87 By July,

Babcock wrote, “many prospectors were constantly coming and going over the road, and all expressed their satisfaction and relief at having a road to travel that avoided the dangerous

Valdez Glacier, and shortened the journey from the interior by several days.”88 The Copper River

Exploring Expedition had also provided relief with struggling and destitute miners at Valdez throughout the season. By October, Abercrombie wrote, “the number of persons to whom relief was extended, exclusive of those employed on trail construction and otherwise, were about 480, and represented all nationalities, professions, and classes.”89 The exploration work of Rice,

Rohn, and Powell had extended the expedition’s knowledge of the Copper River drainage and confirmed the viability of the Copper River route to the Tanana River and the Yukon. Both

Abercrombie and Babcock recommended that, if the government decided to send them back, road construction and exploration begin as soon as possible the following season.90 Abercrombie wrote that work on bridges crossing the Klutena and Tazlena rivers should begin early in the season, “as it is imperative that this work should be done at low water, when a solid foundation

86 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 34. 87 Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 82. 88 Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 64. 89 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 19. 90 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 35; Babcock, “Report of First Lieut. Walter C. Babcock,” 84.

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can be made on which the cribs or abutments of the bridge may rest.”91 Abercrombie suggested that “the locating and construction parties… should leave the cantonment at Valdez not later than

March 10.”92 In the meantime, the Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition had a number of exploration parties in the field.

Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition

After leaving Seattle in early May, Captain Glenn and the Cook’s Inlet Exploring

Expedition arrived at Tyoonok on 14 May with orders to continue the work of Expedition 3, exploring the Matanuska, Sushitna, Yedno, and Kuskokvim rivers. On the way, Second

Lieutenant Joseph S. Herron and a small detachment had been left at Portage Bay, on Prince

William Sound, with instructions to “explore, survey, establish, and mark the trail from that point to… the head of Knik Arm.”93 The Herron party traveled north from Portage Bay, crossing over a 3,000 foot mountain, then following a narrow canyon to Lake Glenn (Carmen Lake). From there, they followed Twenty-Mile River, before turning west, crossing a divide to the Glacier

Creek valley, and crossing another divide to Yukla Creek (Eagle River). The party then followed the Yukla to Knik Arm, meeting Glenn at Fire Island on 30 May.94 Herron described the route as difficult. “Progress in the canyons and valleys was slow,” he wrote in his final report on the expedition, “due to many fordings and wriggling through the almost impenetrable brush, or wallowing through swamps, sinking from 1 to 3 feet in mud and water to the frozen ground

91 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 35. 92 Ibid., 35. 93 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 713. 94 Joseph S. Herron, “Explorations in Alaska, 1899, for an All-American Overland Route from Cook Inlet, Pacific Ocean, to the Yukon,” Senate Document No. 689, 60th Congress, 2nd Session (1901), 12-13.

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below.”95 He concluded that “I reported adversely on the route, having seen enough of it to find that it is not feasible.”96

The Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition regrouped at their main camp at Tyoonok, before dividing into several exploration parties for the rest of the season. Topographer C.E. Griffiths left

Knik Station on 9 June with a party of “1 hospital steward, 1 private soldier, 3 packers, and 1

Indian guide and 17 pack animals” with instructions to proceed to Eagle City.97 The party ascended the Matanuska River before turning north to follow the Chicaloon River and crossing over the divide to the Talkeetno (Talkeetna) River. Following what Griffiths identified as the north fork of the Talkeetno, he described going over a steep pass and descending to the Sushitna

River, which they reached on 4 July. From there, the party traveled east, picking up Captain

Glenn’s trail from the previous season, to the headwaters of the Delta River. Following orders to search for a practical pass to the east of the Delta, they continued to make their way along the foothills of the Alaska Mountains, crossing the Gakona and Chestochena Rivers, before picking up the Slahna River, crossing Mentasta Pass, and following the Tok River to the Tanana, which they crossed on 2 August. From there, they reached Lake Mansfield, crossing the country between Ketchumstock Creek and Gold Creek, before following Franklin Gulch, Fortymile

River, Dome Creek, and O’Brien Creek, reaching Eagle City on 15 August. The party then traveled by steamer to St. Michael, which they reached on 4 September, and returned to Cook’s

Inlet by 23 October.98

In the meantime, Glenn, Herron, and the rest of the expedition made their way to

Sushitna Station, an Alaska Commercial Company post at the mouth of the Sushitna River. On

95 Ibid., 14. 96 Ibid., 12. 97 C.E. Griffiths, “From Knik Station to Eagle City,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 724. 98 Ibid., 724-728.

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27 June, they traveled by steamer up the Yentna River and three miles up the Keechatno

(Kichatna) River. Herron and five men disembarked with instructions to cross the mountains at the head of the Keechatno and follow the Kuskokwim River to the Tanana.99 Glenn and the rest of his party descended the Yentna, before following Sushitna to the mouth of the Talkeetno

River, where two more parties set off on their own expeditions.100A party led by Dr. George B.

Thomas and Private George W. Vanschoonhoven followed the middle fork of the Sushitna

River, following Indian Creek and crossing Broad Pass to the Cantwell River, which they followed to the Tanana. The party proceeded north along the Tanana for 25 miles, before deciding that the swampy country was impenetrable and turning back.101 A party led by Sergt.

William Yanert and Sergt. Frederick Mathys followed the middle fork of the Sushitna River, passed Gold Creek, before following Prairie Creek to the Talkeetno River. The party then crossed over the divide to the Chicaloon River, which they followed to the Matanuska River and

Cook’s Inlet.102 Glenn himself left Talkeetno on 18 July, traveling by boat down the Sushitna, returning to Tyoonok on 2 August.103

Lieutenant Herron’s party ascended the Keechatno River, crossed Simpson Pass on 22

July, before descending the Tateno (Tatina) River and following the Echeatnu (South Fork

Kuskokwim River) Valley.104 On 28 July, the expedition’s Indigenous guides Slinkta and Stepan

99 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 713, 717; Herron, “Explorations in Alaska, 1899,” 20-21. 100 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 714. 101 George B. Thomas, “From Middle Fork of Sushitna River to Indian Creek,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 733; George W. Vanschoonhoven, “A Quest for the Tanana,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 736-737. 102 William Yanert, “From Middle Fork of Sushitna to the Talkeetno,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 736; Frederick Mathys, “A Story Quickly Told,” in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska, 737. 103 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 715. 104 Herron, “Explorations in Alaska, 1899,” 29-35

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“slipped out of camp, deserted, and went back to the coast,” Herron wrote.105 With no guides, the party slowly made their way northeast, looking for a route to the Tanana and quickly running out of provisions. After two months, the party met an Indigenous hunter named Shesoie, who they persuaded to be their guide. Shesoie led the expedition to his village, Telida, on the Tatlathno

River, where they went into camp “to wait until conditions were favorable for snowshoe travel.”106 Leaving camp on 25 November, the party began the final 171 mile walk to the mouth of the Tanana River, going overland to the headwaters of the Kuskokwim River, crossing over a divide to the Cosna River, before following the Tanana to its mouth and Fort Gibbon, which they reached on 11 December.107

Like the explorations of the previous season, the Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition covered a large area of territory not previously explored by the U.S. Army. The reports of Glenn,

Herron, and others were filled with detailed information on topographic features, routes of travel, routes for railway construction, mineral resources, timber, fish, game, fuel, agricultural potential, and information on the region’s indigenous population.108 The Griffiths party had shown that the

Sushitna and Copper River routes were connected and that no other practical routes through the

Alaska Range existed. Despite the difficulties encountered by the Herron party, he reported favourably on the Keechatno, Simpson Pass, Kuskokwim route. “It touched navigable points and winter trails on the most important river systems of Alaska, namely the Suchitna, Kushokwim,

Tanana, and Yukon,” he wrote in his final report.109 But unlike the previous season’s work, they

105 Ibid., 35. 106 Ibid., 42. 107 Ibid., 42-44. 108 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 715-724; Herron, “Explorations in Alaska, 1899,” 45-77; Griffiths, “From Knik Station to Eagle City,” 728-733; Thomas, “From Middle Fork of Sushitna River to Indian Creek,” 734-735. 109 Herron, “Explorations in Alaska, 1899,” 50.

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Figure 20 Route of Lieutenant Herron’s party, 1899. From: Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rare Maps Collection, UAF-G4370 1899 W3.

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explored no new routes that would be developed in the future. Glenn maintained that the

Sushitna River route from Cook’s Inlet to the Tanana “is the best trail, considered from every standpoint, between tide water and Circle City.”110 He continued, “there is no doubt that a railroad could be readily constructed from Tyoonok up the Sushitna River Valley and thence… to the Tanana.” Indeed, the Alaska Railway would eventually be constructed on this very route.

Meanwhile, at the same time the Cook’s Inlet Exploring Expedition arrived at Tyoonok, Major

Ray was preparing to establish a military government in the District of North Alaska.

District of North Alaska

After General Order No. 93 created the army District of North Alaska on 10 May 1899,

Major P.H. Ray began making arrangements to travel to St. Michael and take up his command.

On 25 June, he sailed from San Francisco on the Alaska Commercial Company steamer St. Paul with Companies E, F, and L of the 7th Infantry, thirty-four civilian employees, and a large amount of supplies.111 They arrived at St. Michael on 8 July 1899.112 After taking command of the new district at St. Michael, Ray’s instructions were to proceed up the Yukon River, stationing men at the mouth of the Tanana River to construct a new post, Fort Gibbon, and leaving reinforcements at Rampart City and Circle City, before taking command of Fort Egbert at Eagle

City and completing construction of the post there. Before leaving St. Michael, however, Ray was called upon to deal with a new gold rush.

In September 1898, John Byrnson, Erik Lindblom, and Jafet Lindeberg, known as the

“Three Lucky Swedes,” discovered gold on a tributary of the Anvil River, on the Siberian coast north of St. Michael. Despite their efforts to “keep the find secret,” by May 1899 250 people had

110 Glenn, “Explorations in and about Cook’s Inlet,” 718. 111 Ray to Adjutant General, Dept. of California, 25 June 1899. 112 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 185.

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made their way from the Yukon River to the Nome district.113 By the time Ray arrived, he found

St. Michael in the midst of another gold rush. He wrote in a 16 July report that “every steamer arriving from Dawson comes crowded to her fullest capacity.”114 He continued, “I think that it can be safely estimated that six thousand (6000) people will be here and at Anvil City before the season closes.”115

Captain E.S. Walker, commanding officer at St. Michael before Ray’s arrival, first responded to the rush to Nome in February 1899, after receiving reports of “considerable wrangling and disorder… owing to claim jumping, &c.” and “threats of lynching.”116 On 23

February, Walker instructed 2nd Lieutenant O.L. Spaulding and a small detachment to proceed to

Cape Nome and asked the U.S. Commissioner at St. Michael to hold a session of court at Nome to settle any disputes. “After the adjournment of court,” Walker explained to Corbin on 2 May,

“Lieut. Spaulding found it necessary to arrest” two men “for illegal claim jumping.”117 He continued, “the excitement had been so considerable and the action of the men seemed such an open defiance of law and order that the arrest was a necessity.”118 The arrests were enough to stabilize the situation, and Spaulding and his men returned to St. Michael on 27 March.119 But,

Walker warned, new miners “from the Yukon River are flocking to the new discoveries and in all probability there will be trouble in the spring.”120

113 Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony, 206-207; Hunt, North of 53: The Wild Days of the Alaska-Yukon Mining Frontier, 1870-1914, 97. 114 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 1890, Ray to Barry, 16 July 1899. 115 Ibid. 116 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 179, File 2989, E.S. Walker to Corbin, 2 May 1899. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid.; NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 179, File 2989, O.L. Spaulding to Adjutant, Fort St. Michael, 13 April 1899. 120 Walker to Corbin, 2 May 1899.

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On 28 June, Walker ordered Spaulding and a detachment of ten enlisted men to return to

Cape Nome with instructions “to preserve law and order,” prohibit miners from carrying firearms, prevent the sale of liquor without a license, and to discourage “all inflammatory meetings and speeches” that could lead to violence.121 On the evening of 10 June, Spaulding attended a miners’ meeting at the Northern Saloon, “at which were present five or six hundred men,” Walker later reported to Ray.122 “A resolution was introduced, which at once disclosed the real purpose of the assemblage,” Walker continued, “that the entire mining district should be thrown open, all previous locations declared of no value, and the district subject to re- location.”123 Alarmed that the passage of a resolution declaring all mining claims in the district null and void would lead to widespread violence, Spaulding insisted that the resolution be withdrawn. When the miners refused to do so, Spaulding ordered the crowd to disperse, “his men thereupon forced the crowd out at the point of the bayonet,” Walker wrote.124

Upon his arrival at St. Michael, Ray ordered Captain Walker and twenty-three men to

Cape Nome to investigate the situation.125 Walker posted public notices that “all disputed title, whether to mining claims or town lots, should be at once brought before the civil courts for settlement,” and that the army would tolerate no mob action or violence to settle disputes.126

Before proceeding upriver, Ray decided to establish a military post at Anvil City and station a detachment of twenty men there to maintain order. He instructed Walker to remain at Cape

Nome “so as to have an experienced officer present in the event of any difficulty; and for arranging for the construction of barracks for the protection of the detachment there during the

121 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 1890, Walker, Special Order No. 28, 28 June 1899; Walker to Spaulding, 7 July 1899. 122 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 1890, Walker to Ray, 13 July 1899. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 1890, Walker, 13 July 1899 Notice.

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coming winter.”127 Ray wrote to Corbin, “had I the force to spare, I should station a full company in that district, and I think it should be done as soon as possible.”128 He also suggested that “the

Interior Department be called upon to establish a Land Office at Anvil City with the least possible delay, and that the Department of Justice be called upon to authorize the appointment of a sufficient number of deputy marshals to protect life and property at Anvil City.”129

After dealing with the Nome rush, Ray finalized the preparations for proceeding up river to station his troops. He purchased the sixty-ton river steamer Argo for $2,500 to use to transport supplies on the upper Yukon. He explained, “I first attempted to make a charter with one of the transportation companies to do this work, and found that with a smaller steamer it would cost the

Government for one month’s service more than five (5) times what this boat cost.”130 The majority of Ray’s men and supplies left St. Michael on 15 July aboard two steamers and one barge. Ray planned to leave on 17 July with another load of supplies and meet them. He wrote to

Barry: “I shall proceed up the river to Fort Egbert, placing the troops in camp and getting the work of construction started. I will return here about the last days of August.”131

Ray’s party reached the mouth of the Tanana River on 26 July, where two companies of the 7th Infantry disembarked. Ray located a site for the construction of Fort Gibbon, before continuing up river. At Rampart City, Lieut. Tillman and a detachment of ten men were left, and

127 Ray to Barry, 16 July 1899. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

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Lieut. William C. Rogers and ten men were stationed at Circle City on 29 July. Ray reached

Eagle City and Fort Egbert on 31 July at 5:30 p.m.132

At Fort Egbert, Ray found Captain W.P. Richardson - who had spent the winter at Circle

City and had been instructed in late March to proceed to Eagle City “to prepare necessary buildings for sixty men and two officers, including necessary storehouse and other accessory buildings” - hard at work.133 “Capt. Richardson has the work of construction well started,” Ray reported to Barry, “having nearly all the material on the ground and the walls of the barrack partly up.”134 By 20 September, Ray wrote that “the work here had been pushed vigorously, and the whole command will be comfortably housed before the severe weather sets in.”135

Ray reported facing some supply problems in the District of North Alaska. His departure from San Francisco had caused some confusion for the army’s supply chain. Since Ray was departing from San Francisco, he requisitioned his supplies from the Department of California, even though the District of North Alaska was under the Department of the Columbia, leading to

“confusion and duplication of stores.”136 Major General W.R. Shafter, who replaced H.C.

Merriam as commanding general of the Department of the Columbia in January 1899, wrote on

21 August that “there were too many people giving orders in regard to the supplies for the Yukon posts, among whom was Major Ray himself.”137 He instructed that “as a matter of course, Major

Ray’s requisitions in future will go to the Chief Commissary of the Department of Columbia, in which Major Ray’s command is now serving.”138 At Fort Egbert, Ray complained on 6 August that “the failure of the Quartermaster Department to place the necessary funds to Capt.

132 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2292, Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 133 Ibid.; NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 176, File 583, W.H. Carter to W.R. Shafter, 18 March 1899. 134 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 135 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 180, File 3502, Ray to Corbin, 20 September 1899. 136 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2094, W.R. Shafter Endorsement, 21 August 1899. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid.

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Richardson’s credit to enable him to meet his obligations in the purchase of material and the hire of labor is causing me much anxiety and annoyance.”139 Quartermaster General M.I. Ludington explained on 19 October that “the failure… to place funds to Captain Richardson’s credit was owing simply to the fact that this office had no information as to his needs.”140 Ludington wrote that Ray’s complaints “would appear to be uncalled for.”141

In the meantime, Ray left Fort Egbert on 20 August to tour the posts under his command.

He reported to Corbin that “the detachment at Circle and Rampart I found in good condition, well housed, and their supplies for the year all delivered.”142 At Fort Gibbon, Ray found that construction of the post had been delayed, “owing to the lack of experience on the part of the officers, and a failure to grasp the situation and not pushing the work with energy during the open season.”143 On his return trip to Eagle in September, however, he reported that “I found one barrack, 200 feet long, 2 stories, well under way, which can easily be completed before cold weather.”144 From Fort Gibbon, Ray continued to St. Michael, inspecting the detachment there, before traveling to Anvil City on 30 August. He reported that “the buildings at Anvil City are excellent,” although he found the site Captain Walker had selected for the post to be lacking - “a lot less than 150 feet square in the limit of the town, and nearly one half mile from water, without frontage on the sea for a landing.”145 Before leaving Cape Nome on 31 August, Ray expanded Walker’s military reserve to the sea. He returned to Fort Egbert on 16 September. Ray reported to Corbin on 20 September that “the troops in the District will all be safely housed

139 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 140 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 179, File 3027, M.I. Ludington to Corbin, 19 October 1899. 141 Ibid. 142 Ray to Corbin, 20 September 1899. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 Ibid.

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before severe weather sets in.”146 He concluded, “the health of the troops in the District is excellent, and the outlook for the future could not be much better.”147

With troops stationed along the Yukon River and posts nearly constructed, Ray could turn to establishing military government in North Alaska. In theory, military government was meant to symbolize taking control of the region for the U.S. government. In practice, the army’s role was limited to being the government’s eyes and ears in the region, continuing to gather information and report on local conditions. Martial law was never declared, leaving Ray and his men with little authority to override civilian government and enforce law and order - when compared to the Mounted Police in the Yukon at least. Ray’s instructions to Captain E.S. Walker before he traveled to Nome reveal the limits of the army’s power in the district. Ray explained to

Corbin:

I am using my best endeavors to preserve the peace, having instructed the officer in command that he is in no manner to interfere with the civil authorities in the performance of his duties; that he is to give them his moral support; that in the absence of any civil authority he is to preserve the peace at all hazards, protect all persons in possession of claims, and to let the questions of the legality of ownership be settled by the courts; and to take such preventive measures as will ensure peace and good order and not to tolerate lawless assemblages – be it a miners’ meeting or a mob.148

As Ray summarized to Eleua McNaught, a woman in Dawson, on 9 January 1900, “I have no power to act in questions of title or equity, which belong only to the civil courts. I can only protect from mob action and violence until such time as the courts can act.”149 In other words,

146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ray to Barry, 16 July 1899. 149 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to Eleua McNaught, 9 January 1900. See also: NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to Rolland C. Nichole, 22 January 1900.

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the U.S. Army was in Alaska to prevent mob violence and back up civil authorities - not to interfere with local law enforcement except in an emergency.

With his powers limited, Ray found that he and his men had little to do at the newly established posts on the Yukon River. By the time Ray arrived in the upper Yukon, the majority of miners had already rushed to Nome, taking the threat of mob action and violence with them.

“I have had no case for troops except in the affairs at Cape Nome,” Ray wrote to Corbin on 2

February 1900 - and conditions at Nome had greatly improved since the summer.150 He explained, “they have a full municipal government well established supported by local taxation which has fully met the situation in maintaining law and order without any appeal to the military.”151 He suggested that an additional company of infantry stationed at Anvil City would be enough to handle any trouble that might arise. Ray reported to Corbin on 13 February that conditions at Fort Egbert and Fort Gibbon were “quiet.”152 He noted that “the civil government seems fully competent to handle the situation,” and there was no need to station a large number of troops on the upper river.153 Indeed, at Fort Egbert, Ray’s correspondence shows that the majority of his time was spent dealing with requests to occupy lots on the military reserve, which included the whole townsite of Eagle, rather than protecting law and order.154

The establishment of the District of North Alaska did symbolize one of the final steps in the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region. Ray wrote to Corbin on 6 August that “the Canadian authorities have established a police station on

150 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to Corbin, 2 February 1900. 151 Ibid. 152 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to Corbin, 13 February 1900. 153 Ibid. 154 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533; NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 181, File 133, Ray to Corbin, 9 December 1899; File 347, Ray to Corbin, 16 December 1899.

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the boundary at the point where the 141st Meridian crosses the Yukon according to the Canadian

Survey,” giving the Mounted Police control of the Canadian side of the border.155 With Fort

Egbert just six miles from the Alaska-Yukon border, Ray was able to establish control of the

American side. Ray established a 25,000 acre military reservation around Fort Egbert that encompassed “the land along the boundary on both sides of the [Yukon] river,” giving the U.S.

Army direct control of a five mile stretch of land adjacent to the border.156

Ray’s letter to Corbin suggested that there was some debate over the location of the 141st meridian. He wrote that “there is a difference of 650 feet between the Canadian and the United

States survey.”157 Ray suggested that “the 141st Meridian crosses Jack’s Creek at a point where rich discoveries have been recently made, and this may account for the energy so suddenly displayed by the police.”158 But the idea that the Mounted Police were attempting to push the border further east was based on on-going rumours that had been circulating since early 1898. In

March 1898, for example, Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, commander of the Skagway and Dyea detachment, informed Corbin that he had received a report that “a monument marking the dividing line between our Alaskan territory and British Columbia formally placed where the

141st of Longitude West of Greenwich crossed Forty Mile Creek had been moved by the

Dominion officials from three and one-half to three and three fourths miles west of its former position.”159 Ray wrote in August 1899 that “I shall visit the boundary at an early date and learn the facts and will report later,” but it is unclear if he ever did.160

155 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 156 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 181, File 43, Ray to Corbin, 24 November 1899. 157 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 158 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 159 NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, T.M. Anderson to Corbin, 31 March 1898. 160 Ibid.

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While direct government control of the region adjacent to both sides the border was an important symbol of the transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, on the ground, the change did not mark a dramatic shift in the way the border was enforced. American border posts and customs stations were not established at the border, as they were on the Chilkoot and White passes, and, despite the Mounted Police station on the Canadian side of the 141st meridian, neither side attempted to control who crossed the border. But the change did allow the U.S.

Army and the Mounted Police to more closely coordinate their law enforcement efforts. When a

Mounted Police officer at Dawson wrote to Ray with a description of a criminal who had crossed the border, Ray responded on 27 September that “I will always be pleased to cooperate with you in the arrest of fugitives from justice fleeing across the border, and if in the pursuit of any criminal your officers will report to me here I will give them every assistance in my power.”161

On November 7, Ray likewise sent a description of two wanted men who had escaped custody at

Fort Egbert to the Mounted Police at Fortymile, in the event they fled across the border.162 When a Mounted Policeman traveled to Fort Egbert in January 1900 to pursue a suspect, Ray wrote to

Superintendent A.B. Perry at Dawson that “I advised your policeman not to pursue further,” and that Ray had written to the post commanders at St. Michael and Nome to apprehend the suspect if he arrived.163

Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands

Ray’s return to Alaska did allow him to reassess his plan for the development of the region and reflect on the future of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. “The business outlook along

161 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to J.J. Wilson, 27 September 1899. 162 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to Commanding Officer, NWMP, Fortymile, 7 November 1899. 163 NARA, RG393, Part III, E533, Ray to A.B. Perry, 1 February 1900.

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the upper Yukon is poor,” he wrote to Adjutant General Corbin on 6 August 1899.164 As Ray predicted in 1897, “the river commerce begins to feel the effects of the railroad competition via

Skagway.”165 With a reliable railway route over White Pass completed, and a system of river steamers on the Lakes and the upper Yukon, the White Pass and Yukon Route was emerging as the most practical transportation route to the Yukon, to the detriment of the Alaska Commercial

Company and other transportation companies who operated on the longer Yukon River route from St. Michael.166 Ray also noted that “the strike at Cape Nome has drawn a large number of people from the upper river, principally from Yukon Territory,” providing brief excitement, but also reducing the overall population of the upper Yukon.167 “That migration has now practically ceased,” he wrote, “there are but few people coming into Alaska by either route.”168

Ray did not view these developments as wholly negative, however. With the rush to the

Klondike and the upper Yukon drawing to a close, he wrote, “I have strong hopes that the period of inflation has passed and the work of true development has commenced.”169 Ray viewed the actions of those who rushed to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands as a temporary feature in the development of the region. They might bring news of resource potential and spark business and government involvement, but it was the larger scale mining operations that followed individual prospectors that would ultimately lead to the development of the district. He noted that “the reports from Forty Mile, American, Mission, Birch and Manook creeks are all favorable,” and with the gold rush drawing to a close “there is plenty of food in the country and prices are

164 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 165 Ibid. 166 “The Alaska Commercial Co., The North American T + T Co., The Empire Co. and six or seven lower mini companies are represented in Dawson. They are plainly preparing for a struggle in order to retain the trade formerly coming by the mouth of the river.” YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 1, Samuel E. Adair to E.C. Hawkins, 16 July 1899. 167 Ray to Corbin, 6 August 1899. 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid.

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reasonable,” leaving the upper Yukon open for development.170 “What the country now needs”

Ray wrote, “is land transportation other than by dogs and the opening of roads so supplies can be transported inland at all seasons of the year at reasonable prices.”171 He continued, “the work of cutting roads and trails through the forest is too much to expect from prospectors,” so the task of opening up new transportation routes must fall to the government - a cause that Ray enthusiastically took up.172

“I cannot too strongly urge the importance of pushing the development of the route from the head of Prince William Sound,” Ray wrote of the work on the Trans-Alaskan Military

Road.173 Upon his arrival at Fort Egbert, Ray took a keen interest in the work of the Copper

River and Cook’s Inlet exploring expeditions. He informed Corbin on 6 August that the Rice party had arrived at Fort Egbert on 31 July. “He was sent out by Capt. Abercrombie, and reported that the Captain is building a road inland from that place and doing excellent work,”

Ray wrote.174 He continued, “Mr. Rice reports the route he came over as excellent and favorable for a wagon road, with plenty of wood, water and grass.”175 Ray sent Rice back to Valdez with instructions to shorten the route between the Tanana River and Fort Egbert. “I shall commence locating the route from here as soon as my command is safely housed,” he wrote to Corbin.176

Ray greeted the arrival of the Griffith party from Cook’s Inlet with less enthusiasm.

Clearly unaware of Griffith’s instructions to explore the foothills of the Alaska Range before going to Fort Egbert, he wrote to Adjutant General, Department of the Columbia, Barry on 20

August that “Mr. Griffith’s report on the trail is not favorable. His itinerary shows a journey of

170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid.

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over 500 miles, lengthened by devious windings which I am now of the opinion is owing to the lack of experience.”177 From Griffith’s reports, Ray concluded that “I am fully satisfied that the

Cook’s Inlet route is impracticable, owing principally to the high tides and the condition of the ice during the winter at the head of the Inlet, making navigation dangerous and at time impossible.”178 He recommended that “the party at the head of Cook’s Inlet be withdrawn at once and the personnel and material be sent to Port Valdez” to assist Abercrombie with road construction.179

Convinced of the practicality of the Rice party’s route and Abercrombie’s work on the

Trans-Alaskan Military Road, Ray wrote to Corbin on 10 August suggesting that the post at Port

Valdez be made permanent. “By making it a permanent station,” he explained, “the work in the spring can be pushed with vigor with the opening of the season, and the work and expense of outfitting and transportation will be avoided.”180 Ray requested that “Captain Abercrombie be directed to communicate with me as early as possible next spring.”181 He continued, “I am now arranging to open a wagon road from here to Forty Mile and hope to meet Capt. Abercrombie at or near the crossing of the Tanana.”182 Abercrombie confirmed the plan in his final report on the

1899 season: “To carry out the recommendations of Maj. P.H. Ray, Eighth U.S. Infantry, commanding the District of North Alaska, looking to the completion of the trans-Alaskan military road from Port Valdez to some common point on the Tanana River, to where he would

177 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2242, Ray to Barry, 20 August 1899. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2291, Ray to Corbin, 10 August 1899. 181 Ibid. 182 Ibid.

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complete a wagon road from Forty-Mile, thus giving a continuous route from tide water on the

Pacific to the headquarters of the district, Fort Egbert, Alaska.”183

Ray’s enthusiastic recommendations and the success of Abercrombie’s work during the

1899 season were enough to ensure that construction of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road would continue during the 1900 season, reinforcing the U.S. Army’s rejection of a borderlands transportation network in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Ironically, given that the Canadian government feared relying on a railway that crossed American territory to supply the Yukon, the army and many Americans in Alaska viewed the White Pass Railway as Canadian, or at least passing through Canadian customs jurisdiction, and they could not rely on it. The efforts of the previous two years to develop the Alaska-Yukon border had succeeded in dividing the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands, and the U.S. Army was determined to open an all-American route to Alaska from Prince William Sound to bypass the White Pass Railway.

Ray’s hopes that the rush to Nome symbolized the transition from individual prospecting to large-scale mining operations in the upper Yukon was also shared by those on the Canadian side of the border. Samuel E. Adair, an advisor to the White Pass Railway, wrote to General

Manager E.C. Hawkins on 16 July 1899 that “everything in the nature of methods of mining is now undergoing change and the Klondyke [sic] section is practically in its infancy.”184 He explained that “many corporation companies are already owners of strings of claims and the general drift is in that direction. The result is, the character of supplies that will be called for in the future is quite different from that of former days.”185 Adair predicted that “binders, engines, pumps, thawing machines, pipe for hydraulic mining supplies for drift mining, together with feed

183 Abercrombie, “Report of Captain W.R. Abercrombie,” 34. 184 YA, WPYR, COR 869, File 1, Samuel E. Adair to E.C. Hawkins, 16 July 1899. 185 Ibid.

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for horses will constitute a large part of future freight,” with the White Pass Railway in the perfect position to capitalize on the new demand.186 Ray hoped that the construction of the

Trans-Alaskan Military Road, and eventually a railway, would also allow Americans to take advantage.

Development on both sides of the Alaska-Yukon border, then, was taking a similar turn, but the changes to the Alaska-Yukon borderlands over the previous two years meant that these developments would be separate. By the end of 1899, the transformation of the upper Yukon into a bordered region was complete. One last round of negotiations between the U.S. Army and the

Mounted Police over the Lynn Canal border would symbolize the completion of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, just as international negotiations took up the border question for the first time.

186 Ibid.

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Conclusion

On 5 August 1899, Captain H.W. Hovey, commanding officer of the U.S. Army at

Skagway, wrote to Adjutant General H.C. Corbin that “I have the honor to request instructions with reference to the wearing of uniforms by members of the Northwest [sic] Mounted Police this side of the summit.”1 He explained that “I find that one of the members, whom I am informed is stationed here for civil purposes only, is in the habit of wearing his uniform constantly, and other members come and go from here wearing the undress uniform, and sometimes the red coat or full dress.”2 As Hovey noted, American citizens at Skagway were often angered by the Canadian government’s efforts to enforce Canadian customs and mining regulations in the Yukon. “The wearing of uniforms by members of the Police here seems to be very objectionable to the inhabitants, adding fuel to the flame” he wrote, “I am satisfied that some day, not far distant, when conditions favor it, they will be attacked and serious results follow.”3

The issue of the Mounted Police wearing uniforms in Skagway is evidence of how far the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had come since the police first arrived at the head of the Lynn Canal two years earlier. At that time, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was largely a borderless region. Skagway and Dyea was considered disputed territory and the police openly wore their uniforms. The efforts of the Mounted Police to enforce the location of a temporary

Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes in early 1898 and the local negotiations that followed created a functional Alaska-Yukon border that made Skagway

1 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2140, Hovey to Corbin, 5 August 1899. Copy in NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Hovey to Corbin, 5 August 1899. The issue of Mounted Police wearing uniforms in Skagway is discussed by: Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 63. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

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increasingly American - and the Alaska-Yukon borderlands a bordered region. By August 1899, this process had advanced enough that Americans in Skagway now questioned the very right of the Mounted Police to appear in uniform. Despite raising the issue with his superiors, however,

Hovey’s concern was not with the police.

Henry Walter Hovey was born in Maine in 1852. He served in the New York National

Guard from 1869-1880, before being appointed as a 2nd lieutenant in the 24th U.S. Infantry, rising to the rank of 1st lieutenant in 1888. Hovey taught military science and tactics at Norwich

University from 1895-1899. He rejoined his regiment in March 1899, before being ordered to

Alaska in June 1899 to take command of the District of Lynn Canal.4 In August 1899, Hovey wrote that “there seems to be no reason whatever why any member of the force stationed here for civil purposes only should wear a uniform; but it seems that custom has permitted it,” noting that the Mounted Police had always worn their uniforms in Skagway.5 He did note that “the Canadian authorities objected to the relief expedition passing the line except in plain clothes” and that he had “issued strict orders that none” of his men “should pass beyond the summit in uniform.” But his concern over the police wearing uniforms was really related to the threat of unrest among

Americans in Skagway.6 He concluded that “without entering into the merits of the matter of uniforms being worn on foreign soil, I would earnestly urge upon the Department the suggestion that a decision be made as to the propriety of the Police wearing their uniforms this side of the summit, as I believe such a decision would remove a constant source of irritation.”7

4 William Arba Ellis, Norwich University 1819-1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor, vol 3 (Montpelier: The Capital City Press, 1911), 81. Hovey’s Company L of the 24th Infantry was composed of 112 African American “Buffalo Soldiers,” see: “Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/historyculture/buffalo-soldiers.htm. 5 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178, File 2009, Hovey to Barry, 25 August 1899. Copy in NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Hovey to Barry, 25 August 1899. 6 Hovey to Corbin, 5 August 1899. 7 Ibid.

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The issue caused a small diplomatic incident between Canada and the United States, with the Canadian government in Ottawa eventually agreeing to have a civilian customs official perform the Mounted Police duties in Skagway.8 But locally, the matter was quickly and informally resolved. Mounted Police Superintendent Z.T. Wood wrote to Comptroller Fred

White on 15 August 1899 that, upon hearing of the issue, he had immediately contacted Hovey.

He explained to White that “our men are constantly obliged to go to Skagway in uniform” to conduct official business - forwarding police supplies and mail to the interior and providing assistance to British subjects in Skagway.9 “In view of the trouble, however, I will have Const.

D’Amour [the member who constantly wore his uniform] appear in mufti [off-duty clothing] and will have any men going there wear mufti also, in future, if possible.”10 Wood concluded that “I have to-day received from Capt. Hovey, a letter thanking me for my telegram.”11 By 18

December 1899, Hovey reported that “no member of the force has appeared in Skagway for some time in uniform.”12 He explained that “it is understood between the officials on the other side and myself that no uniforms shall be worn, except while passing through this strip, which must be crossed to enable them to reach or leave their own territory.”13 He continued, “there is no formal understanding between us, but we have conferred upon the subject and I do not think there will be any cause for friction in the future.”14 Indeed, Hovey wrote “an informal

8 Relevant documents on the incident can be found in: NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 178-180; NARA, RG393, Part III, E311; LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 80. 9 LAC, RG18, Vol. 179, File 80, Wood to White, 15 August 1899. 10 Ibid. Wood further explained that “of course you will understand that very few have civilian clothes and it is hardly fair to call upon them to purchase them because they happen to be stationed in Skagway or have to for there on duty.” A position that Hovey called “not unreasonable.” See: NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 180, File 3462, Hovey to Barry, 18 December 1899. Copy in NARA, RG393, Part III, E309, Hovey to Barry, 18 December 1899. 11 Wood to White, 15 August 1899. 12 Hovey to Barry, 18 December 1899. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

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understanding has been rendered easy of settlement here without reference to diplomatic representation.”15

While the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had created an informal understanding on the location and meaning of the Alaska-Yukon border for those on the ground, international negotiations on the issue were only just beginning. Canada, Britain and the United

States met to discuss the border question for the first time from 23 August 1899 to 20 February

1899 at the Anglo-American Joint High Commission. The United States offered Canada a fifty- year lease of Pyramid Harbor, on the Lynn Canal, and a strip of territory to the boundary, with equal treatment of British and American ships, in exchange for Canada dropping its claim to

Skagway and Dyea. This agreement was acceptable to the Canadians, but the Americans were forced to withdraw their offer when news of the proposed deal angered American business interests on the west coast. The Joint High Commission ended in failure. But on 20 October

1899, both sides agreed to a modus vivendi, creating an official temporary border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White Passes and fifteen marine miles from Pyramid Harbor on the Chilkat

Pass until an international agreement could be reached.16 During the following months, news of the modus vivendi was circulated to the U.S. Army, the Mounted Police, and American customs officials in Alaska and the Yukon, but it had little impact locally.17 For those on the ground, the modus vivendi only confirmed the functional Alaska-Yukon border they had spent the last three years negotiating and developing among themselves.

15 Ibid. 16 On the 1898 Joint High Commission and modus vivendi see: Campbell Jr., Anglo-American Understanding, 1898- 1903, 108-110, 147-149; Penlington, The Alaska Boundary Dispute: A Critical Reappraisal, 38-41; Hall, Clifford Sifton: The Young Napoleon, 1861-1900, 198-208. 17 NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 179, File 3052, John H. Johnston to W.R. Shafter, 30 October 1899; NARA, RG393, Part I, E715, Box 179, File 3053, Johnston to Shafter, 1 November 1899; LAC, RG18, Vol. 218, File 786; NARA, RG36, Microfilm Publication T1189, Reel 23, Vol. 18, Acting Secretary of the Treasury to J.W. Ivey, 31 October 1899.

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Remaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands

The traditional narrative of the Klondike gold rush - with the Alaska-Yukon border serving as a dividing line between American lawlessness and Canadian order - is inadequate to describe the complexities of the transformation of the region from a borderless to a bordered region. Both popular and academic historians have often positioned the Yukon and Alaska as neatly divided regions, with the location of the Alaska-Yukon border firmly decided from the beginning of the gold rush. In 1894, however, Comptroller White’s investigation on the possibility of sending the Mounted Police to the Yukon and Constantine and Brown’s experiences at Fortymile showed that the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was a borderless region.

The following year, Constantine and a detachment of Mounted Police returned to Fortymile to establish Canadian government control over the small mining community and, by the summer of

1896, enforce the location of a small portion of the Alaska-Yukon border along the 141st meridian. But when news of the Klondike discovery reached Ottawa in July 1897, the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands was still largely a borderless region. During the fall of 1897, the Mounted

Police were too busy rushing reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon to be concerned about the location of the border in the Lynn Canal region. When the U.S. Army first arrived on the upper Yukon River in the fall of 1897, Ray and Richardson likewise found miners crossing the border without interference during the food shortage at Dawson, even though the 141st meridian had been located.

It was not until the planning for the Alaska Relief Expedition in late 1897 and early 1898 that conceptions of the Alaska-Yukon border began to change. The American government remained content to ignore the Alaska-Yukon border and send relief supplies through Canadian territory to Dawson. But the Canadian government became concerned about the implications of

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an American relief expedition on Canadian sovereignty. In early 1898, the customs disputes in the Lynn Canal region led the Canadian government to order the Mounted Police to establish a temporary Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes. The borderlands negotiations between the police, American customs officials, and U.S. Army, and

American miners that followed created local acceptance of the temporary border. The development of the Yukon River transportation system during the 1898 and 1899 seasons and the construction of the White Pass Railway continued to foster the development of a functional

Alaska-Yukon border in the Lynn Canal region that allowed American and Canadian officials to enforce national sovereignty and goods to flow across the border.

The development of transportation routes also played a key role in the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The twin processes of establishing government control in Alaska and the Yukon and linking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands to the North American industrial economy both required the development of reliable transportation routes - and both governments wanted to ensure that their respective industrial economies benefited. In the fall of 1897, the Mounted

Police had to carry their own supplies over the Chilkoot and White passes, or work with small packing companies or indigenous packers, to rush reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon. But over the course of the 1898 and 1899 seasons, the arrival of enterprising individuals and transportation companies, including the White Pass Railway, greatly improved the transportation infrastructure on both the Lynn Canal and Yukon River routes - allowing the Mounted Police to use a borderlands transportation system to transport supplies across a functional Alaska-Yukon border and Canadian companies to access the Yukon trade.

The development of a borderlands transportation system in the Yukon was not greeted with the same enthusiasm by the U.S. Army and the American government. As early as October

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1897, Captain P.H. Ray reported that Americans in the region were uneasy about relying on transportation that passed through Canadian territory to reach the upper Yukon. Ray recommended that the U.S. Army develop an all-American route to the Yukon to avoid Canadian territory altogether. During the 1898 season, Expeditions 2 and 3 explored the Copper River and

Cook’s Inlet and identified a number of possible all-American routes to the Yukon. The next year, Captain W.R. Abercrombie’s Copper River Exploring Expedition began construction of the

Trans-Alaskan Military Road along the Copper River route to the Tanana and Yukon rivers - rejecting the Mounted Police borderlands transportation system in favour of an all-American route that would favour American miners and west coast commercial interests.

By the end of 1899, the process of establishing government control in Alaska and the

Yukon, developing transportation routes that linked the Alaska-Yukon borderlands to the North

American industrial economy, and clarifying the location of a functional Alaska-Yukon border had created two separate but connected territories in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The

Mounted Police and the Canadian government had established Canadian sovereignty over the

Yukon and developed a borderlands transportation system to supply the territory. The U.S. Army and the American government had established sovereignty over the American side of the Alaska-

Yukon border and began developing an all-American transportation system to reach the newly- established District of North Alaska. In between, they had negotiated a functional Alaska-Yukon border that allowed people and supplies to move across the border and the police and the army to control their respective territories.

The Klondike gold rush brought together a wide range of groups with their own interests in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army,

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miners, merchants, transportation companies, west coast commercial interests, customs officers, and the distant American and Canadian governments. This mix of local, national, and international actors fits in with the broad approach developed by historians in recent borderlands studies. Kornel S. Chang, for example, examines Asian immigration to the Canada-U.S. borderlands of Washington and British Columbia within the context of American, Canadian,

British, and Japanese imperialism and western expansion into Pacific markets. He makes connections between larger national/imperial policies, global economic expansion, and the actions of individual immigrants, merchants, and labour suppliers in a borderlands region.18 In the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, a similar mix of groups negotiated, cooperated, and worked, sometimes together and sometimes in opposition, to transform the region from a borderless to a bordered region.

In particular, this process required substantial cooperation and negotiation among local groups on the ground. Local borderlands negotiation took on two forms. First, negotiation with the established borderlands system that had made the Alaska-Yukon borderlands a borderless region before 1894. The Mounted Police and the U.S. Army both had to contend with the established system when they arrived in the region, working with local transportation companies, dealing with the miners’ meetings that governed the region, and gathering information from often unreliable sources. The other form of borderlands negotiation is most evident in the establishment of the temporary Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes, and the development of a functional border that followed. The move by the Mounted

Police to begin enforcing the temporary border in February 1898 was greeted with anger by local

18 Chang, Pacific Connections: The Making of the US-Canadian Borderlands. See also: Johnson, “Problems and Prospects in North American Borderlands History”; Sterling Evans, Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880-1950 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007).

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American miners, who bitterly complained to the U.S. Army and American customs officials at

Skagway and Dyea, who then appealed to their superiors and the police to resolve the situation.

With no instructions from Washington, both groups accepted the temporary border without taking their own action, while American miners quickly adjusted to the new reality to preserve stability, or left in search of all-American routes to the Yukon. The construction of the White

Pass Railway led to another round of negotiations during the 1899 season. After the Mounted

Police prevented a liquor convoy from crossing the temporary border in March 1899 and angry

American customs officials closed the border to bonded goods, White Pass Railway and the police worked together to reopen the border, until the completion of the railway fostered the development of a stable, functional Alaska-Yukon border.

The role of the U.S. Army and the Mounted Police in the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, in addition to cooperation and negotiation, reveals substantial similarities between their experiences in the region. Both groups became caught up in the beginning of the Klondike gold rush in the fall of 1898, with the Mounted Police struggling to send reinforcements and supplies to the Yukon and Ray and Richardson dealing with the aftermath of the food shortage at

Dawson City. The Mounted Police worked to develop a borderlands transportation system to bring police supplies to the Yukon, while the U.S. Army established all-American routes to the

Yukon River from Cook’s Inlet and the Copper River valley. Both groups spent much time gathering information about changing conditions in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Gaining more local knowledge, they developed different understanding of the situation from their respective governments. American historian Robert Utley writes that, in the nineteenth century

American West, “the United States Army was not so much a little army as a big police force.”19

19 Quoted in Tate, The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898, 3.

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The Mounted Police in the Yukon, often viewed as a big police force, were also a little army - enforcing Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon and protecting law and order in mining towns like

Dawson.

Importantly, the Mounted Police and U.S. Army officers who were most successful during the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands were those committed to following orders and enforcing government policy, but willing to make constructive suggestions to improve their government’s position in the region and make their jobs easier. The most telling example is the comparison between Mounted Police Commissioner L.W. Herchmer and Inspector Z.T. Wood during the fall of 1897 (see Chapter 3). As the Canadian government responded to the beginning of the gold rush, the ever cautious Herchmer questioned the feasibility of government’s plan at almost every turn. Wood, on the other hand, remained committed to sending supplies to the

Yukon as fast as possible, even as winter conditions increasingly made that impossible. The result was that Commissioner Herchmer was removed from the Yukon chain of command, with

Yukon orders coming directly from Ottawa. Wood was promoted to Superintendent and continued to play an important role in the development of the borderlands transportation system.20 The most famous Mounted Policeman of the Klondike, Superintendent S.B. Steele, plays a less prominent role in the story of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands.

Steele’s competent handling of the temporary border and the Yukon transportation system in early 1898 was enough to have him promoted to commanding officer of the Mounted Police at

Dawson, but by 1899, his reputation as the “Lion of the Klondike” and his political ambitions led to his replacement by Superintendent A.B. Perry, who would replace Herchmer as Commissioner

20 Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 33.

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in 1900, and later Z.T. Wood, who would be named Assistant Commissioner of the Yukon

Territory in 1902.21

On the American side of the border, the U.S. Army most valued officers who were willing to take the initiative in the development of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands: Captain/Major

P.H. Ray, whose plan for Alaska became the basis for the army’s approach to the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands; Captain W.R. Abercrombie, who remained committed to the search for all-American routes in the Copper River valley and the construction of the Trans-

Alaskan Military Road, despite transportation problems and other obstacles. By contrast, others, like Colonel Thomas M. Anderson at Dyea, unenthusiastically carried out their orders and did not have lasting careers in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. In a region where the American and

Canadian governments lacked so much information, the need for reliable officers on the ground who could apply local knowledge to government policy was essential - particularly as governments in Ottawa and Washington and their agents in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands developed different understandings of the local situation.

The U.S. Army and the Mounted Police developed different perspectives of the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands than their respective governments during the fall and winter of 1897-1898.

The Mounted Police were largely concerned with rushing reinforcements and supplies to the

Yukon during the fall of 1897, while Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government were concerned with the potential threat American miners posed to Canadian sovereignty. During the planning for the Alaska Relief Expedition, the War Department and the U.S. Army put in substantial effort to organize a relief expedition to Dawson, but as soon as an army officer

21 Gray, “Faded Hero: How Canada Forgot – and Then Rediscovered – Sir Sam Steele”; Morrison, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925, 31; Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905, 63-64; Scott Dumonceaux, “The Conspiracy: The Canadian Response to the Order of the Midnight Sun and the Alaska Boundary Dispute” (MA Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2013), 77-83.

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arrived at Skagway and Dyea, it became clear that such an expedition would be impossible. For much of the 1898 season, the Canadian government pushed to develop an all-Canadian route to the Yukon via the Stikine River, while the Mounted Police were working to establish a borderlands transportation system over the Chilkoot and White passes. The driving factor behind these different understandings was information. The Mounted Police and U.S. Army on the ground simply had a better understanding of the situation in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, and what was possible and what was not. The American and Canadian governments were also largely concerned with policy and outcomes, while agents on the ground were concerned with the practical logistics of carrying out government policy. By the 1899 season, the different understandings between the police and the army and their governments narrowed. The Canadian government accepted that a borderlands transportation system was the best way to transport government supplies to the Yukon, and the War Department and the U.S. Army were united behind the construction of the Trans-Alaska Military Road.

The main difference between Canadian and American government policy in the Alaska-

Yukon borderlands was Clifford Sifton and the Canadian government’s concern with protecting

Canadian sovereignty in the Yukon. Sifton’s interest in preventing unrest among American miners led him to order the Mounted Police to establish a temporary border at the summits of the

Chilkoot and White passes. The Canadian government’s desire to protect sovereignty and ensure that Canadian businesses benefited from the Klondike rush was also a key factor in the push to build the Mackenzie and Mann railway during the 1898 season. Ironically, the Canadian government’s push for an all-Canadian route to the Yukon was shared by the American government, whose own push for an all-American route to the District of North Alaska was driven by a desire to avoid passing through Canadian territory to reach the upper Yukon River.

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The two governments, then, had more in common during the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands than Canadian officials assumed.

In addition to these processes, a number of ongoing themes are revealed by the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. First, the previously established borderlands system persisted.

Before the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army arrived in the region, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had developed as a borderless region, with local miners, traders, and transportation companies largely ignoring the border and the miners’ meeting system governing local communities. While the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands transformed the region, the established borderlands system heavily influenced the entire process. The transportation routes and transportation companies that were in place at the beginning of the gold rush continued to be used by the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army as they arrived in the region. Miners’ meetings shifted from a governing role to a means of expressing regional grievances. The transportation routes that ignored the Alaska-Yukon border continued to be used, and the development of a functional border at the summit of the Chilkoot and White passes allowed the region to continue to function as a borderless region, even though national borders were now enforced.

The second persistent theme is the importance of continuously gathering information about changing conditions in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. Throughout the remaking of the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands the U.S. Army, the Mounted Police, transportation companies, and other groups expended considerable effort gathering information about local conditions as they worked to develop transportation routes, establish government control, and clarify the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. As the planning of the Alaska Relief Expedition, and other government policies, made clear, accurate information about local conditions was essential to the

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success of the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The importance of local information also led to the development of local knowledge and understandings by the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army that sometimes clashed with the opinions of officials in Washington and Ottawa.

Finally, the undermining of the role of indigenous people in the borderlands system is evident throughout the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands. While historians have identified significant impacts of the Klondike gold rush and the establishment of the Alaska-

Yukon border on local indigenous people, this story is not reflected in the records of the

Mounted Police, the U.S. Army, and other groups analyzed here.22 The police and the army refer to “Indian packers” or “Indian guides,” or provide almost travelogue descriptions of indigenous groups encountered in the region. But they do not appear to have significantly influenced the development of government policy or been a major concern for both groups. The U.S. Army did have some interest in indigenous people in Alaska, as discussed in Chapter 8, but this interest waned when they learned that these groups posed no threat to government policy. The remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands also undermined the roles of indigenous people as packers, river pilots, and guides, as their jobs were increasing done by newly formed transportation companies and newcomers who gained enough local knowledge to do the jobs themselves. The lack of government interest in indigenous people in the Alaska-Yukon borderlands is surprising when the importance of indigenous relations in the American and Canadian Wests is considered.

The U.S. Army and the Mounted Police did not view indigenous groups as a major threat to the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, as reflected by the almost complete erasure of indigenous people from their correspondence.

22 Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination; Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973.

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The two most recent studies of the Klondike, Charlene Porsild’s social history of Dawson

City and Kathryn Morse’s environmental history, show that the gold rush marked a fundamental transformation of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands - with miners, merchants, and traders going over the Chilkoot and White passes, transforming the environment, displacing indigenous people, and developing a regional and international community at Dawson City.23 The remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands adds borderlands transformation to the changes the gold rush brought to the region. At the same time as Klondikers transformed the northern environment and built regional communities, the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army, along with transportation companies, customs officials, miners, and merchants, remade the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region - developing a functional Alaska-Yukon border that allowed national sovereignty to be enforced and people, goods, and supplies to enter the region.

As stated in the Introduction, the term borderless to bordered region is derived from

Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron’s controversial 1999 article “From Borderlands to Borders.”

Adelman and Aron are correct that the imposition of political borders is an important turning point in the history borderlands regions. The establishment of the Alaska-Yukon border marked a fundamental change for the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, with a borderless region becoming the separate territories of Alaska and the Yukon. But while Adelman and Aron argue that the

Alaska-Yukon borderlands should have ceased to be a “borderland” and become two distinct

“frontiers,” the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands did not stop the region from functioning as a borderland. Rather, in order to create a bordered region, the U.S. Army and the

Mounted Police had to adapt to the established borderlands system that had created a borderless

23 Porsild, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike; Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush.

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region in the first place - resulting in two separate territories, the Yukon and Alaska, that remained connected as a borderlands region.24

The Mounted Police and the U.S. Army remade the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region, but in the following years, the region continued to be a borderland. Alaska and the Yukon continued to be linked by transportation and commercial networks that stretched across the border. Miners, merchants, government officials, indigenous people, and other groups continued to crisscross the region, forming government and business connections in both territories. From 1900-1905 and beyond, the Mounted Police relied almost entirely on the White Pass Railway and the borderlands transportation system they had developed over the Chilkoot and White passes to transport supplies to the Yukon. The police records show that the transportation process fell into a routine, with a simple file for each year to audit WPYR bills of lading and arrange payments.25 On the American side of the border, the

U.S. Army continued to work on the construction of the Trans-Alaskan Military Road. By June

1902, Captain Abercrombie had completed construction of the road from Valdez to the Tanana

River, and 80 miles of pack trail had been constructed south from Fort Egbert, but it was hardly a road.26 Abercrombie reported that, in Lyman L. Woodman’s words, “putting the road in permanent condition was an impossibility mainly because of Nature’s proclivity to erode it annually in her destructive rush of waters.”27 Alaskans would have to wait until 1914 and the completion of the Alaska Railway for an all-American route to the interior, along the Cook’s

Inlet route, and even longer for a true road along the Copper River route, the Glenn Highway

24 Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History.” 25 LAC, RG18, Vol. 195, File 707; Vol. 228, File 134; Vol. 248, File 120; Vol. 264, File 59; Vol. 284, File 9. 26 Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917, 224. 27Ibid., 224.

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(AK-1). In January 1905, the War Department doubled down on its road building strategy, creating the Alaska Road Commission, under the command of Major W.P. Richardson, to

“locate, lay out, construct, and maintain wagon roads and pack trails” in Alaska.28 The majority of Americans in Alaska, however, continued to rely on a borderlands route to reach the District of North Alaska, crossing through Canadian territory on the White Pass Railway and upper

Yukon River steamers. Between 1900 and 1905, the U.S. Army in Alaska and the Canadian

Department of Public Works also constructed a joint telegraph line across the Alaska-Yukon border, connecting St. Michael, Fort Gibbon, Fort Egbert, Valdez, Dawson City, Whitehorse, and

Skagway with each other and with Vancouver and Seattle.29

While the Alaska-Yukon borderlands continued to function as a borderland, that did not mean that the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was necessarily permanent or that local groups stopped negotiating the meaning of the Alaska-Yukon border in a region that remained connected. In late 1901, a group of Americans calling themselves the Order of the

Midnight Sun plotted to take over the Yukon and cede it to the United States. The incident led to a massive response by the Mounted Police and the Canadian government and threatened to blow up the remade Alaska-Yukon borderlands. The threat convinced Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier to make concessions that led to the 1903 Alaska boundary tribunal, which permanently set the

Alaska-Yukon border at the summits of the Chilkoot and White passes.30 Like with the 1899 modus vivendi, the Alaska boundary settlement had little impact on the ground, as the Mounted

28 Woodman, 251. 29 David Eric Jessup, “Connecting Alaska: The Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 6, no. 4 (2007): 384-408; Bill Miller, Wires in the Wilderness: The Story of the Yukon Telegraph (Surrey: Heritage House, 2004). Also discussed in: Woodman, Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917. 30 See my own: Scott Dumonceaux, “‘All Occurrences Within or Without the District:’ The North-West Mounted Police, the Canadian Government, and the Order of the Midnight Sun’s Plot to Take Over the Yukon,” Northern Review 43 (2016): 191-217; Dumonceaux, “The Conspiracy: The Canadian Response to the Order of the Midnight Sun and the Alaska Boundary Dispute.”

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Police, the U.S. Army, and the other groups discussed in this dissertation had already created a functional Alaska-Yukon border.31 During the Second World War, the construction of the Alaska

Highway brought thousands of U.S. Army soldiers into Canadian territory and threatened again to remake the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, before the Canadian government took over the

Canadian side of the project in 1946.32

Today, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands very much continues to function as a borderland.

Cruise ships carry passengers to Anchorage, where they can hop on a bus, drive across the

Alaska-Yukon border to Dawson City, then cross back into American territory on White Pass

Railway trains, returning to a ship in Skagway. White Pass Railway passengers can travel from

Skagway to Carcross, British Columbia and back with only showing their passports to a customs official in the train car.33 Indeed, the enduring legacy of this borderlands transportation network, and perhaps even the traditional narrative of the Klondike itself, is a reflection of the success of the remaking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region - and the efforts of the Mounted Police and U.S. Army during the chaotic years of the gold rush.

31 See for example: LAC, RG18, Vol. 299, File 448. 32 Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The U.S. Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). 33 For discussions of the modern Alaska-Yukon border see: Elizabeth Hames, “Passport Stipulation to be Phased in Gradually,” Whitehorse Daily Star, 1 June 2009, https://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/passport-stipulation-to-be-p hased-in-gradually; Nicholas Köhler, “Canadian Customs Demand Passports from Alaskan Dog Sled Racers,” The Guardian, 13 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/canadian-customs-demand-passports -from-alaskan-dog-sled-racers.

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McManus, Sheila. “Border/Lands - A Historiographical Survey.” In The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States, edited by Jerald Podair and Darren Dochuk, 292-301. New York: Routledge, 2018. ---. The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta-Montana Borderlands. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2005. Miller, Bill. Wires in the Wilderness: The Story of the Yukon Telegraph. Surrey: Heritage House, 2004. Miller, Darlis A. Soldiers and Settlers: Military Supply in the Southwest, 1861-1885. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Minter, Roy. The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1987. Mora-Torres, Juan. The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo Leon, 1848-1910. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Morrison, David. The Politics of the Yukon Territory, 1898-1906. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968. Morrison, William R. “Eagle Over the Arctic: Americans in the Canadian North, 1867-1985.” In Interpreting Canada’s North: Selected Readings, edited by Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, 169-184. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1989. ---. Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985. Morse, Kathryn. The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Morton, Desmond. “Cavalry or Police: Keeping the Peace on Two Adjacent Frontiers, 1870- 1900.” Journal of Canadian Studies 12, no. 1 (1977): 27–37. Mouat, Jeremy. “After California: Later Gold Rushes of the Pacific Basin.” In Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World, edited by Kenneth N. Owens, 264-95. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. ---. “The Forty-Ninth Parallel: Defining Moments and Changing Meanings.” In The Great Northwest: The Search for Regional Identity, edited by William G. Robbins, 121-44. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001. Munro, John A. The Alaska Boundary Dispute. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970. Naske, Claus-M., and Herman E. Slotnick. Alaska: A History of the 49th State. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. Neufeld, David. “Learning to Drive the Yukon River: Western Cartography and Athapaskan Story Maps.” Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 4 (2011): 16-43. Nichols, Jeannette Paddock. Alaska: A History of Its Administration, Exploitation, and Industrial Development during Its First Half Century under the Rule of the United States. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1924. Nicol, Heather N., and Julian Minghi. “The Continuing Relevance of Borders in Contemporary Contexts.” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (2005): 680-687. Nielson, Jonathan M. Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier: The Military in Alaska’s History, 1867-1987. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Orth, Donald J. “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names.” Geological Survey Professional Paper 567 (1967). Owens, Kenneth N., ed. Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

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Penlington, Norman. The Alaska Boundary Dispute: A Critical Reappraisal. Toronto: McGraw- Hill Ryerson, 1972. Peyton, Jonathan. “Moving through the Margins: The ‘All-Canadian’ Route to the Klondike and the Strange Experience of the Teslin Trail.” In Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, edited by Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin, 35-62. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017. Piper, Liza. The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009. Pomeroy, Earl. “Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41, no. 4 (1955): 579-600. Porsild, Charlene. Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998. Postel, Charles. The Populist Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 2. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Prucha, Francis Paul. Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815-1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953. ---. The Sword and the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Sabin, Paul. “Home and Abroad: The Two ‘Wests’ of Twentieth-Century United States History.” Pacific Historical Review 66, no. 3 (1997): 305-35. Scott, Elva. Northern Army: Army Activities in the Upper Yukon. Eagle: Eagle Historical Society, 1986. Shinn, Charles Howard. Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885. Spude, Catherine Holder. “That Fiend in Hell:” Soapy Smith in Legend. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. Stone, Thomas. Miners’ Justice: Migration, Law, and Order on the Alaska-Yukon Frontier, 1873-1902. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. ---. “The Mounties as Vigilantes: Perceptions of Community and the Transformation of Law in the Yukon, 1885-1897.” Law & Society Review 14, no. 1 (1979): 83-114. Tate, Michael L. The American Army in Transition, 1865-1898. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007. ---. The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Thacker, Robert, and C.L. Higham, eds. One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004. ---, eds. One West, Two Myths II: Essays on Comparison. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006. Tolton, Gordon E. Healy’s West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy. Calgary: Heritage House, 2014. Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Truett, Samuel, and Elliott Young. “Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands.” In Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, edited by Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, 1-32. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

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Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays by Frederick Jackson Turner, 59-91. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. United States Customs Service. A Biographical Directory of the United States Customs Service, 1771-1989. Washington: Department of the Treasury, 1985. Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1890. New York: Macmillan, 1974. ---. Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1861. New York: Macmillan, 1967. Webb, Melody. The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998. White, Richard. It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. ---. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011. ---. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. Woodman, Lyman L. Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987, Volume One, 1867-1917. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1996. Wooster, Robert. Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Wright, Allen A. Prelude to Bonanza: The Discovery and Exploration of the Yukon. Sidney: Gray’s Publishing, 1976. Zaslow, Morris. The Opening of the Canadian North: 1870-1914. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. ---. “The Yukon: Northern Development in a Canadian-American Context.” In Interpreting Canada’s North: Selected Readings, edited by Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison, 133-48. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1989.

Museums

“Miles Canyon & White Horse Rapids Trams.” Whitehorse Waterfront Trolley Museum, Whitehorse, Yukon.

Websites

“ALGER, Russell Alexander.” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, http://bio guide.congress.go v/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=A000107. Beahen, William. “Wood, Zachary Taylor.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wood_zac hary_taylor_14E.html. “Bennett and Lindeman: Tent Cities on the Lakes.” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, https:/ /postalmuseum.si.edu/gold/bennett.html.

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“Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway.” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/historycu lture/buffalo-soldiers.htm. Hall, D.J. “Sifton, Sir Clifford.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sifton_clifford_15E.htm l. Hames, Elizabeth. “Passport Stipulation to be Phased in Gradually.” Whitehorse Daily Star, 1 June 2009, https://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/passport-stipulation-to-be-phased-in-g radually. Hart, Brian. “Richardson, Wilds Preston.” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org /handbook/online /articles/fri12. “Heritage Minutes: Sam Steele.” Historica Canada, https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/herit age-minutes/sam-steele. Köhler, Nicholas. “Canadian Customs Demand Passports from Alaskan Dog Sled Racers.” The Guardian, 13 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/canadian- customs-demand-passports-from-alaskan-dog-sled-racers. Lundberg, Murray. “Steamboat Companies in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.” Explore North, http://www.explorenorth.com/library/ships/steamboat_companies-alaska-yukon.html. “MEIKLEJOHN, George de Rue.” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, http:/ /bioguide.congr ess.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000634. Norris, Frank. “Alaska Railroad and Transportation Company Tramway.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://ww w.nps.gov/articles/art-tramway.htm. ---. “Archie Burns’ Chilkoot Tramway.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/archie-burn s- tramway.htm. ---. “Chilkoot Tramways.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/series.htm?id=2424 B70B-1DD8- B71B-0B5EA3ABD486C1B7. ---. “Chilkoot Tramways and the Peterson Hoist.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/ chilkoot- tramways.htm. ---. “The Chilkoot Railroad and Transportation Company Tramway.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://ww w.nps.gov/articles/crt-tramway.htm. ---. “The Dyea-Klondike Transportation Company Tramway.” Edited by Karl Gurcke. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.go v/articles/dkt-tramway.htm. “Running the Rapids.” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, https://postalmuseum.si.edu/gold/r apids.html. “Skagway and Dyea: Gold Rush Boom Towns.” Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Washington, https://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcollections/collections/ exhibits/klondike/case5/. “Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers, 1822-1973.” Archives West, http://archiveswest.orbiscasca de.org/ ark:/80444/xv69815.

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“Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers Inventory.” Thomas McArthur Anderson Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, https://www.lib.washington.edu/static/p ublic/specialcollections/findingaids/197 3-003.pdf. Wright, Glenn. “Constantine, Charles.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/constantine_charles_1 4E.html.

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