Well-Known Alaskan 'Sourdough,' Big Game Hunter
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ANDREW MORRISON TAYLOR 17 October 1875 — 13 May 1945 “Well-known Alaskan ‘sourdough,’ big game hunter, guide and mountaineer.” His parents were born in Scotland (1839), and came to Canada about the time of the War between the States. He was the seventh of nine children, six boys and three girls. His family was socially prominent and financially well off. His father owned a fine resi dence, a farm, a business and a yacht, and was the Grand Master of the Free Masons of Canada. Andy, as a youth, was a restless soul and left Ottawa for the West in his early teens. He inherited his father’s fondness for the outdoors, particularly shooting, but because he did not wish to finish his schooling properly he drew his father’s disapproval. He went to work for an Ottawa firm on the Columbia River, and became an expert river man. He could paddle and pole a canoe as well as any New Brunswick guide. For a while in the early ’90’s he was on the upper Columbia and was “Captain” of the S. S. Pert, a small naphtha launch, by the time he was 20 years old. By 1897 he was pilot and engineer of the principal Stikine River steamer. About this time he was one of the crew hired to take a flat-bottomed, stern-paddle-wheeled steamer to Skagway. Caught in a storm, they were wrecked on “Bushy Island.” He and the rest of the survivors had a difficult time, for they lost a lot of their supplies. However, they managed to haul the boat out, whip-sawed planks, patched her up and made their way back to Wrangell. While they did this they lived mainly on young geese. At Wrangell they re-outfitted, as far as the goods they needed were obtainable, and went on to Skagway. For a while he engaged in packing outfits over the White Pass with horses. He arrived in Dawson in 1898, and this became more or less his headquarters until 1913, when he moved to McCarthy, Alaska. In 1898-99 he went down to Fort Yukon and from there to Point Barrow with supplies. He told me that it was on this trip that he learned from the Esquimaux about the handling of dog teams. What route he took, I do not know, but he told me once that he had crossed the Endicott Mountains in winter, and it may have been on this trip. A year or two later he started from Dawson in the early fall with a partner and the usual homemade barge loaded with grub, dogs, etc. They travelled up the Pelly River and probably the Macmillan River, following some branch of it to its head, and crossed the divide, going down the Twitya River and Keele River to the Mackenzie River. This would be about 460 miles from Dawson as the crow flies, and about 100 miles S. of the present Norman Wells. They spent the summer prospecting to the S. of the Keele and W. of the Mackenzie, and in late summer they moved back up the Keele taking a S. fork, crossed the divide S. of their former route, and kept going S. to the Pelly, which they descended to Dawson. Andy said he had not heard of this being done before nor since. Another fall and winter he travelled up the Big Salmon River and down the Nisutlin River to Teslin Lake, and thus back to Dawson via the Teslin River. But he soon discovered his favorite ground, the White River, and came to know it and its watershed thoroughly. Thus he be came valuable to the survey parties of the International Boundary Commission with which he spent several seasons as heliographer. He also handled their pack trains and supplied them with meat. In the White River region he had several claims, and two cabins on White River, one on Rabbitt Creek and another at Canyon City, where he worked the ground from time to time. He first went to Canyon City about 1900. In June 1913 Andy was on Bonanza Creek, a tributary of White River in what is known as the “Shushanna” country (spelled on the USGS maps “Chisana”). That year he was associated with William James, “North Pole” Nelson and a Mrs. Wales, who had come in the year before and built a cabin. Together they discovered important placer deposits and staked out claims. As they needed equipment, Andy and Nelson went out to Dawson during the summer, and word got out of this strike. A stampede ensued called the “Shushanna Rush.” It lasted until the summer of 1914, and several thousand went into that area. Andy returned from Dawson and worked his claim. As the gold field was developed, McCarthy in Alaska became the main base for supplies, so at that time Andy moved his residence to that town. Most of the supplies were freighted from McCarthy by way of Skolai Pass. During this period Andy undoubtedly made many trips over this route. An account of this mining activity in which Andy’s name is mentioned is in USGS Bulletin 630, by S. R. Capps, pp. 89-92. Andy is said to have made and thrown away three “fortunes.” He once came back to Dawson with a suit case full of gold dust and nuggets (about $150,000.00). The first thing he did was to visit the bar of the man who had grubstaked him. Paid his debts, bought more supplies, then celebrated for a couple of days and gave away, threw away and spent his share of the gold. For a while he was known humorously as “The Mayor of Canyon City,” but as far as I can make out this was after it had become a deserted mining camp. But he still kept a well stocked cabin there and brewed and bottled “very good beer.” On occa sion he visited the place with a hunting party which he had led, and coming in from the back country would treat the party to his own brew which he dug from a hidden cache, much to their delight after days of pent-up thirst in the wilderness. After moving to McCarthy he alternated between working at the Kennecott Mines, prospecting on his own, and taking out hunt ing trips on which in the ’20’s he usually was in partnership with Bob Boyden, who handled the horses and packs. Thus he came to know the Chitina and its drainage basin. His familiarity with this country made him the logical man to pilot the Mount Logan ex pedition on its approach to that mountain. For a number of winters he took the mail into Shushanna (Chisana) country by dog team. During his outfitting and hunting days he guided many men and women from “the outside” on successful trips after big game. Among them were lawyers, bankers, business men, doctors, biolo gists, scientists, engineers and mining men of note. That firm friendships with many of these were established, and lasted for years, is attested by his correspondence, and by the fact that after he left Alaska and came to live in Putnam County, N. Y., many came to visit him or invited him to their homes. Not less significant is the fact that his correspondence with his friends in Alaska was even more intimate and lasting. Mr. John Burnham, of New York, who himself had known the Yukon and the Klondike in the early days, and had had many ex citing adventures along that river, did not meet Andy until 1919 in the White River Country. As he states in his The Rim of Mystery (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1929), “The high opinion I then formed of his personal qualities and qualifications has been in no way diminished by after events. He is an expert hunter, horse man, dogman, and boatman, resourceful in wilderness emergencies, and withal a gentleman.” Because of this estimate of the man, he chose Taylor above all others for his companion on his expedition to the Chukotsk Peninsula of Siberia to try to find and identify the Big-horn of that region. The area was then under Bolshevist rule, and the trip was not without risk and great adventure. In his preface Burnham says, “Taylor was at any time ready to stake his life on a sporting proposition. All he required was that it appealed to his sense of good sportsmanship. Where a friend and comrade was involved the answer was easy. His was the fine honor that is the flower of manhood.” Later he and Taylor thoroughly covered the Mount McKinley Park region and to the E. beyond. During the years of residence in Putnam County he was always included in the select group of Burnham’s friends who made their annual trek to his home camp near Westport, N. Y., for a week’s camaraderie. In the Explorers Club, and then with the members of the Camp Fire Club of Amer ica, he was at home and among friends. In 1927 and 1928 he went out with Mr. F. H. Moffitt of the USGS, making geological investigations for the Government. The first year they travelled from McCarthy up the Chitistone River into the Skolai Basin and back down the Nizina Glacier; the second year, from McCarthy to Strelna over the old Nizina Trail. They were camped at the mouth of the W. fork of the Nizina when Skolai Lake broke out under the Nizina Glacier and flooded them out. Taylor’s first mountaineering experience at high altitude was with the Mount Logan Expedition.