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2 Historical Background Klondike mining operation at Gold Run Creek in 1900 (YukonArchivesl Miners work in cramped underground quarters on Bonanza Construction of the Alaska Highway by U.S. soldiers, 1942 Creek, 1898(YukonArchives) (YukonArchives) Paddlewheelers docked at Whitehorse, June 1913 (Yukon Archives) The Whitehorse rapids took their toll of boats and possessions as thousands of prospectors rushed down the Yukon River in search o1 gold (Yukon Archives) The Land Three distinct cultural groups became established in the Yukon: the Inuit, the Athapaskans, and the Tlingit. Figure 4 depicts the linguistic divisions in the region. The Yukon takes its name from the great river that The Athapaskans are one of the most extensive dominates the geography of the territory. The Yukon Indian-language groups in Canada, extending River flows on across the whole expanse of Alaska, but traditionally from the Alaska border to Hudson's Bay. its upper drainage branches throughout the interior The northern Athapaskans were subsistence hunters plateau of the southern Yukon, an area surrounded on who traditionally lived in small bands or extended three sides by mountains. This plateau is slashed by family groups and spent most of the year on the move. long valleys, separated by low mountains that are The Yukon Tlingit are an inland branch of a North always present above the horizon. The valleys and the Pacific coastal group who live along the Alaska rivers that flow through them, are well defined Panhandle and in northwestern British Columbia. geographical units. North of the Yukon River drainage Trading patterns were well-established among these and the Ogilvie Mountains are Eagle Plain, Bonnet tribes before they had any contact with White traders. Plume Plain, and Crow Flats. The northern Yukon is The Kutchin of the northern Yukon exchanged copper drained by the Porcupine River, which flows west to and other goods with the Inuit on the Arctic coast. join the Yukon River in Alaska, and the Peel River, There was also a precontact tradition of the tribes on which flows east to join the Mackenzie in the the Pacific coast trading with the inland people. Certain Northwest Territories. North of the British Mountains of these aboriginal trading patterns were re-inforced by lies a narrow slope that drains into the Beaufort Sea. A European contact. small part of the southeastern Yukon drains into the Liard River, which swings south through British Columbia before joining the Mackenzie River at Fort Simpson. In the southwestern Yukon the Alsek River The Fur Trade flows through Kluane National Park and into the Pacific through British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle. Each river system flows out of the The fur trade on the North Pacific coast initially Yukon into a neighbouring jurisdiction. Many of the focussed on the sea otter. After the depletion of that valleys, trenches and plateaus of the Yukon offer species, the coastal Tlingit began trading with interior natural corridors between Canada and the United indians for other furs, thereby initiating an energetic States. expansion of a trade in which they were the prosperous middlemen. The Tlingit traders were determined to Parts of the western Yukon were not disturbed by monopolize face-to-face dealings with the foreign Pleistocene glaciation. If the Dawson area had been traders, and stories are still told of battles fought scoured by ice, the gold-bearing sediments of the between the Tlingit and some Athapaskan groups Klondike would have been carried away, and the gold who tried to establish direct relations with the traders rush would never have happened, on the coast. Nowhere else in northern Canada is the fauna and flora The fur trade entered the Yukon from two directions: so diversified as in the Yukon, where 22 distinct ecological regions have been defined. Because much of initially from the west with the Russians and other the Yukon is still wilderness, it claims some of North traders along the coast and, secondly, and more decisively, from the east with the Hudson's Bay America's largest populations of barren-ground Company. The Hudson's Bay Company sent Robert caribou, grizzly bears, Dall sheep, peregrine falcons, Campbell to find a large river, known by Indian reports and snow geese, to flow westward. In 1842, he established Fort Frances the first Hudson's Bay Company post in the Yukon, and in 1848 he built Fort Selkirk The Indian People near the junction of the Pelly and Yukon rivers. Fort Selkirk was captured and razed in 1852 by a party of The indian peoples of North America crossed from Asia Chilkat indians determined to protect their trading by a land bridge that once existed in the region of monopoly. Bering Strait. Most of these migrants probably travelled through the Yukon to,_,ard the interior of the About the same time, John Bell travelled from the continent. Archaeological research has found evidence Mackenzie Delta to the Porcupine River and down it to of indian land use at Old Crow 30,000 years ago, at the Yukon River. In 1847, Alexander Murray Kluane Lake 10,000 years ago, and on the Pelly River established Fort Yukon, a post that had to be moved over 8,000 years ago. because its location was well to the west of the 141st 11 FIGURE 4 ..._ INDIANLINGUISTICDIVISIONS i i":!iii INYUKON -_ ' i "'. 1, KUTCHI N 2, HAN i!ili_,i 3, NABESNA 4, TUTCHONE " "" :"''" 5, KASKA 6, SOUTHERN __ ], INLAND TUTCHONE '::' J TLINGIT 8, TAGISH '.to: 9,CHILKAT i0,EYAK _/_ 1 1 -""• ..: _ _ s__! •from THEIR OWN INUITYUKON, 1975 Da._,. "" "L".', ". '. 0 50 100 150 _:.i;i i "" ....: / l _ . L I I ,I ml .i.: (' ..:. ,. , 0l 100I 2100km lifo ." . •.. 10 7 _ _,_:.i - . "..., '.!!'..5,.. • .... :'" •. _l \ 12 meridian, which was established by treaty as the Highways and Pipelines Yukon-Alaska border. Only in 1851 did Campbell discover the true course of the Yukon River. Before that date, its upper and lower stretches had been In the early 1940s, with a suddenness reminiscent of thought to belong to different rivers, the gold rush, construction began on the Alaska Highway, the airstrips of the North West Staging Route, The fur trade in the Yukon, as in the rest of northern the Canol Road, and the Canol Pipeline. These projects Canada, changed the position of Indian groups. They were part of the war effort; there was no time for became integrated into an externally controlled lengthy debates or weighing of alternatives. Between economy that supplied them with valuable new 1942 and 1944, the Alaska Highway from Dawson technology in exchange for furs. While their Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska, a relationship to the land did not fundamentally change, distance of 1,532 miles, and an oil pipeline from the independence of their economy was ended. The fur Norman Wells, on the Mackenzie River, to Whitehorse trade became the basis of economic life for the and Fairbanks, were built by a large civilian and northern Indians, one which did not separate them military labour force from the United States. from their land but reinforced their reliance upon it. The trappers had, by all accounts, a viable - even, at Whitehorse was one of the main distribution centres of times, a prosperous - economy that continued until the manpower and materials, and its population rose 1940s. almost overnight from about 700 to 40,000. For a time, the city was virtually a military camp, and one needed a permit to enter or leave. At first, the right-of-way of the highway was under military control, and only military The Gold Rush vehicles could use it. Once again, the Yukon had experienced a massive, but temporary, invasion of southerners. The Klondike gold rush is the best known event in Yukon history. At its height, Dawson was the largest During the period of construction, many Yukoners Canadian city west of Winnipeg. Its glory was second modified their seasonal pattern of activity and only to San Francisco's. movement. Many trappers gave up their trap lines and the network of cabins they had maintained to run these The boom was sudden and suddenly over. Dawson had lines, and they moved with their families to live in or had, for a short time, a population of almost 30,000, near the construction camps. A large part of the Yukon more than the present population of the Yukon. The population moved to new locations at crossroads and Indian people were involved in the initial discovery and, highway intersections, such as Stewart Crossing, to some extent, in the life of Dawson, but the gold rush Johnsons Crossing, and Haines Junction. The old and gold mining were extremely localized phenomena, pattern of settlement had followed the principal and had little impact on the Indian land-based waterways of the region, for they had formerly been the economy of the Yukon as a whole, main arteries of transportation, but the new pattern of settlement followed the easier and cheaper means of The trail of '98 came up from Skagway, following some transportation offered by all-weather roads. of the old Indian trading routes across the mountain passes. The gold rush led to the construction of the The north-west south-east river transportation route White Pass & Yukon Railway in 1900 from Skagway to used during the gold rush now took second place to Whitehorse. From there, transportation followed a a roughly east-west corridor through the southern water route down to Dawson. Yukon. The road had many effects. It opened the Kluane region and, because of overhunting during the By 1910, the gold rush population was gone.