Journal of Occurrences at the Forks of the Lewes and Pelly Rivers May 1848 to September 1852
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Heritage Branch Government of the Yukon Occasional Papers in Yukon History No. 2 JOURNAL OF OCCURRENCES AT THE FORKS OF THE LEWES AND PELLY RIVERS MAY 1848 TO SEPTEMBER 1852 The Daily Journal Kept at the Hudson’s Bay Company Trading Post Known as Fort Selkirk at the Confluence of the Yukon and Pelly Rivers, Yukon Territory by Robert Campbell (Clerk of the Company) and James G. Stewart (Asst. Clerk) Transcribed and edited with notes by Llewellyn R. Johnson and Dominique Legros Yukon Tourism Heritage Branch Sue Edelman, Minister 2000 i ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface...................................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... viii Authorship of the Post Journal ...................................................................................................... viii Provenance .................................................................................................................................…... x Robert Campbell and James Green Stewart: A Brief Look at Their Lives ......................…… xiii Editor’s Notes on Changes to Original Manuscript ...........................................................…… xiv Journal of Occurrences at the Forks of the Lewes and Pelly Rivers Outfit Vol. 1 ..................... 1 1848 ........................................................................................................................................ 2 January 1 to October 18, 1849 .................................................................................….… 24 In Continuation of Journal of Occurrences at Forks of Pelly and Lewis [sic] Vol. 2 ................. 52 October 19 to December 31, 1849 ...........................................................................…… 53 1850 ...............................................................................................................................…… 60 1851 ...............................................................................................................................…… 90 1852 ..............................................................................................................................…… 127 Account Records …………………………………………………………………………... 146 Endnotes ……………………………………………..……………………………….….... 147 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Mouth of the Pelly River ................................................................................................ xvii Figure 2: An Indian Grave Near Fort Selkirk ............................................................................. 89 Figure 3: Indians in their Birch Bark Canoes at the site of Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River ca. 1883 .................................................................................................................... 114 Figure 4: The Remains of Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River, visible until the 1890s ............ 145 LIST OF MAPS Map 1: Diffusion of Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian American Company Trade in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Northwestern North America ................................... xvi Map 2: Confluence of the Pelly and Lewes River ....................................................................... xviii Map 3: Site of Fort Selkirk on the Pelly River ............................................................................ xix Map 4: Fort Selkirk and the Region of the Yukon and Lower Pelly Rivers based on Campbell’s Mid-19th Century Maps ............................................................................................... 23 Map 5: West Branch Supply Line ................................................................................................... 65 Map 6: 1852 Chilkat Route to Fort Selkirk after the Kohklux map in Davidson (1901) ...... 141 iv PREFACE For almost a score of years, voyageur and factor, Indian chief and clansmen have been shadows along the mossy trails that I walk in the tall timber that lead from my home to the first home of Hudson's Bay Company servants and engagés in the upper reaches of the magnificent Yukon River. Here, where the Pelly and Yukon rivers come together there was established, we know now, a rough hewn, log village of six or seven buildings - the first village of Euro-Americans in the Yukon. Men, women and children laboured, danced, married, welcomed babies and died here. English, Canadian French, Tutchone, Han, Tlingit, and Kaska, a babel of language spoken here. They left us virtually nothing to show us how much they loved or hated their lives at the forks of the rivers. At the water's edge, with the site of the old fort behind me and also probably in front of me - the river makes a mockery of men who choose to build permanently within her wide bounds - I have often looked up and down the river to see what Mr. Campbell and Mr. Stewart may have been seeing when they wrote in their post's journal. Today we can only see dimly what those two may have seen and we hear not at all what they heard. The great rivers have made and unmade so much of the land. Civilizations have come and gone since Mr. Campbell and Mr. Stewart stood at the water's edge. I know the land well and I can conjure and reconstruct, searching out the ciphers of those first recorders of local history. It is a lonely land today, even more lonely than it was back then when the Hudson's Bay Company red ensign was fluttering on a rough, spruce pole before the trading store. Communications and transportation, the bane of Campbell and Stewart, tied as they were to technology little changed since the pyramid builders of old Egypt, allow loneliness today to be a choice and not an inviolate rule of the wilderness. Campbell and Stewart, though culturally lonely, happily were surrounded by human beings with a purpose who needed the land even as they harvested from the land. Those kinds of people and indeed, no people are here any longer. I admire Mr. Campbell and Mr. Stewart. Who, today, would even begin to live as they did so successfully with only their wits and skills to keep themselves alive? Who, today, can walk as they did 1100 miles to get needed supplies, burdened with heavy packs at that, and neither perish nor give up. With our social entitlements and personal rights who today would ever work like Mr. Campbell and Mr. Stewart did so faithfully for the "company"? I respect the Indian headmen, those local and those from afar, and their clansmen who accepted foreigners in their midst, guided them, supported them and then in their own caballed methodology negotiated the foreigners out of their land. The post journal volumes provide us with the first threads of a Yukon history, the threads that continue to sew together the tattered, soiled and frail bits and pieces of human life that make up history of the people here and everywhere. Llewellyn R. Johnson Stepping Stone on the Pelly River v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The transcription of the journal manuscript and the extensive research required to explain them editorially has taken well over four years. It has been a project, one of basic Yukon history, that has been very much a combined Yukon effort, encouraged and sustained by Jeff Hunston, Director, Heritage Branch, Yukon government; Linda Johnson, Director, Libraries and Archives Branch; and Norman Easton, Director, Northern Research Institute, Yukon College. Without the personal attention given this project by Jeff, Linda and Norm it is doubtful that it could have proceeded at this time. We are especially grateful to Helen Voogd, Editor, Northern Research Institute whose energetic and timely efforts have kept this work on stream. Helen was responsible for all word processing. She patiently and professionally reworked for us the four drafts we rendered for the journal, overcoming the challenges presented each time by our myriad changes and obscure handwriting. My constant companion and fellow worker has been my wife, Carol, who rightfully can be considered co- editor here. She assisted in the research, typed the first drafts of all editorial features of the journal and generally acted as critic and guide for the work. We were fortunate to have able assistance from the valuable archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg, Manitoba, particularly Maureen Dolyniuk and of the National Archives of Canada, whose Larry McNally provided us source material for the provenance of the manuscript while we were in Ottawa. A special debt of gratitude goes to Dr. Ruth Gotthardt, Yukon archaeologist, who gave guidance on maps, name spellings and First Nation peoples plus considerable support at all times. Along with the maps prepared by Dr. Gotthardt for us, there were also maps prepared by Tim Sellers, Geographer, and Glen Lamerton, CLS, whose expertise produced a most valuable rendition of the Pelly and Yukon rivers confluence as it probably existed circa 1850s. For some of the original work on the maps, the late Dr. Hugh Bostock of the Geological Survey of Canada, in retirement, generously provided us with information on river changes and his personal observations of the site of the first Fort Selkirk in the 1930's. Without the professional help of Clara Rutherford and Bruce Binder, both of the Yukon Archives, the photographs used here would have been