YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS Yukon Frontiers Historic Resource Study of the Proposed Yukon-Charley National River

The fur trapping and trading frontier of the Yukon River between 1867 and 1885 resembled that of the American West between 1807 and 1840. Similarities existed between the breed of men, the fierce competition, the transportation of supplies by steamboats, and the development of strategically located trading posts. Even the consequences were repeated: the traditional Native culture changed to accomodate that of the white man, new routes of travel were found in a hostile land, and enticing tales held promise to newcomers of economic opportunity. [1] In Alaska, however, there were no white trappers or mountain men. Shortly after the Alaska purchase, Congress turned control of the fur-bearing animals over to the Secretary of the Treasury who passed regulations prohibiting anyone but Natives from taking such animals.

Shortly after the purchase of Alaska and while the Alaska Commercial Company was organizing, a group of hardy adventurers comprised of former explorers for the defunct telegraph expedition and ex-Hudson's Bay traders, formed a loose trading association called the Pioneer Company. Although the company survived only a season, these traders did establish, at the junction of the Yukon and Tanana Rivers the first American post on the Yukon. [2] Their exploration of the Yukon River and experience with furs and Natives contributed to the eventual success of the Alaska Commercial Company, which soon absorbed the Pioneer Company.

Among the Pioneer adventurers who joined the Alaska Commercial Company was Francois Mercier, who was destined to dominate the Yukon trading frontier for the next seventeen years. As the Alaska Commercial Company's general agent for the Yukon, Tanana, and Kuskokwim Rivers, Mercier established trading posts, provided annual provisions and merchandise with only one small steamboat, won company loyalty from independent traders, competed with rival companies, and developed friendly relations with the Natives. He and his brother Moses descended from a line of rugged French-Canadians, or coureur de bois, that had extensively explored from the upper Mississippi to western Canada. Both men received their training and experience from the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1869, when Francois took charge of the company's operation based in St. Michael, Moses acquired the most remote yet the most profitable post, Fort Yukon. [3]

By 1871 Francois Mercier had the organization of the river trade well underway, but the impatient and restless American individualists found the leisurely tempo set by the Russian and British traders difficult to follow. [4] The Natives, on the other hand, had adopted and enjoyed spending several days of drinking tea, smoking, and eating meals at the traders' expense before settling down to barter their furs. Friction quickly developed between the two temperaments. Mercier left on the first steamboat to San Francisco in 1872 to discuss this problem with company managers. He sincerely believed that if the Natives got out of hand, the lives of his handful of traders would be in jeopardy. The company president, sympathetic and concerned, suggested a force of two hundred armed men to protect the traders, hopefully with government aid. Showing great foresight, Mercier counseled that Roman Catholic missionaries might be more effective. Father Isadore Clut, who had spent a number of years in the Canadian Athapaskan and Mackenzie regions, appeared the ideal choice. Father Clut, accompanied by Father Lecoire, returned with Mercier to St. Michael. But miracles did not happen. Both the traders and Natives had to learn to adjust to the life style of the other. [5]

While Mercier struggled to establish a Yukon River fur-trading empire, a group of prospectors, planning to visit the Yukon, wintered in Canada at the mouth of the Nelson River. Among the group three men stood out—Napoleon Leroy (Jack) McQuesten, Arthur Harper, and Alfred Mayo. McQuesten grew up on a farm in New Hampshire, but the California gold rush drew him west. A series of gold strikes on the Fraser and Finlay Rivers pulled him into Canada. For the next ten years the Hudson's Bay Company employed him in trapping and trading. Harper was born in the county of Antrim, Ireland, but arrived in New York as a boy. Like McQuesten attracted to California, he became a prospector and gravitated towards the Yukon through British Columbia. Alfred Mayo had been a circus acrobat but also sought the excitement of gold. When gold could not be found, he turned to trading. These men and their companions worked down the Mackenzie River, crossed to the Porcupine, and arrived at Fort Yukon in August 1873. [6]

After being royally received by Moses Mercier and obtaining what few supplies he could spare, Arthur Harper went prospecting up the Yukon but found no fur to trap, no Indians with whom to trade, and no gold to mine. Both groups met the following spring at Fort Yukon and floated down to St. Michael for supplies. At Nulato they met the ideal company trader, Michael Lebarge who had been an explorer for the telegraph expedition and was now "a good Indian trader and a great favorite with the Indians." [7] At St. Michael Francois Mercier offered the eight prospectors employment with the Alaska Commercial Company. Harper declined, preferring to prospect for gold near Tanana Station, where Mayo was assigned. Since Father Clut had known McQuesten well on the Mackenzie River and had recommended him as an honest man and a good trader, Mercier decided to establish a new post with McQuesten in charge. [8]

The Yukon left St. Michael in July 1874 with three barges in tow containing supplies and merchandise for the forts along the way. The crew spent six hours a day chopping wood to burn in the small steamer's boiler. After leaving Fort Yukon, the steamer was on an unfamiliar part of the river and frequently went aground. Eventually they chose a site on Canadian soil across from Nuklako, six miles below the Klondike River. They called this first post in Han territory Fort Reliance. Mercier established the post to accomodate the Han Indians, who travelled hundreds of miles from their hunting grounds to trade their furs. "This [post] was, then, to shorten, at least, a little of this long and painful journey which the Indians had made all the time." [9]

During the trading season of 1874 only thirty-two white men lived on Alaska's three major rivers—the Yukon, Kuskokwim and Tanana—a striking contrast with the hundreds that scoured the American West in search of beaver and Indian trade. [10] Isolation in both cases, however, forced a self-reliance and self-assurance typical of the frontier. The traders, recognizing that the Indian culture had already adapted successfully to the environment, adopted much of their lifestyle. The Indian, in like manner, acquired from the traders those aspects of western culture that made life easier if less secure and independent. Often the traders, like their earlier counterparts, completed the union between the two cultures by marrying Native women. McQuesten, Harper, and Mayo were not exceptions.

Since the traders carried only the basic staples of flour, tea, and sugar, time had to be allocated for hunting moose, bear, and caribou. Then the meat had to be dried and stored. Dogs, essential to winter travel, had to be fed. Thus salmon, the main dogfood, had to be caught and dried or bought from the Indians. Cords of firewood had to be chopped and stacked in anticipation of seventy-below-zero] temperatures. If any of these resources were in short demand, the winter would be even longer and harder.

When McQuesten, Mayo, and Harper met at St. Michael in the spring of 1875, they discovered that the Alaska Commercial Company had reorganized. Trading posts were now leased to independent traders working on commission. The Mercier brothers left the company at this time either in disagreement with the new policy or as a result of the reorganization. Since Harper had not found enough gold to live on and most of his companions had returned to San Francisco, he joined with Mayo to trade at Fort Reliance for the next three years. Meanwhile McQuesten went to Fort Yukon.

In 1877 unusually fierce competition excited the Natives and led to serious trouble. Another San Francisco firm, the Western Fur and Trading Company, appeared on the river. So strenuously did the two companies compete that they drove the price of fur higher than the market value in San Francisco. The Natives capitalized on the rivalry and played one company against the other. The traders soon began to have trouble with the Natives. Harper and Mayo caught some of them at Fort Reliance stealing the goods. Disgusted and discouraged, they abandoned the post, but not before leaving some arsenic mixed with grease to kill inquisitive mice—an act that was to have tragic consequences. Meanwhile Francois Mercier reappeared in the employ of the new firm. He opened a post near the mouth of the Tanana River and created such heavy competition that the Natives held the upper hand. In September 1878 James Bean, an independent trader who lived thirty-five miles up the Tanana River, alienated the Natives with high prices and threatening manners. Two Indians, attempting to kill Bean, instead shot his wife, the first white woman on the Yukon. Hers was the only violent death recorded on the middle Yukon during the period of the trader's frontier. [11]

Because of the severity of the competition in the firmly established posts, McQuesten planned to reopen Fort Reliance. Passing through Charley's Village, he learned that two old women and a blind girl had eaten the arsenic that Harper and Mayo had left behind and had died. Chief Charley tried to convince McQuesten to remain at his village, but McQuesten did not want to incur the expense and labor necessary for a new post. Consequently, when he arrived at Fort Reliance and the Natives greeted him with joy, he was immensely relieved. They paid for the goods previously stolen from Mayo, and he gave a dog in exchange for the young girl's death. Both parties acknowledged that the old women should have known better and were no loss to the village. A still closer bond was created when McQuesten fell and broke his ribs while prospecting. Every day a messenger came from one of the three bands of Indians inquiring of his recovery and stating that their shamans were making magic for him.

The following summer the Western Fur and Trading Company launched a second Yukon steamer, the St. Michael. In 1880 Francois Mercier, in charge of the steamer, travelled upriver with the Alaska Commercial Company's Yukon. Since the Yukon was "liable to break down any time", Mercier offered to tow it to Fort Reliance. The following spring McQuesten found that during break-up ice had smashed it. The company, however, had anticipated its eventual demise, and at St. Michael a new seventy-five-foot boat, also named the Yukon, was launched.

Meanwhile, in 1880, an agent for the United States Census Bureau, Ivan Petrov, interviewed traders and Indians and recorded that David's Village numbered 106, Charley's Village 48, and Fort Reliance 82 with 1 white. [12] At the same time Mercier, aware that David's Village was the largest village on the middle Yukon, proceeded to establish a trading post three-quarters of a mile from it. He left his steamer captain in charge and steamed back to St. Michael for the winter. [13] By spring the trader at David's Village had grown disgusted with the poor trading season and abandoned the post.

In 1882 Francois Mercier returned to the Alaska Commercial Company and reopened the post at David's Village that had been abandoned for a year. He called it Belle Isle Station, for a Canadian friend in San Francisco. [14] Cherosky, a Russian Creole from Nulato, and his wife, Erinia Pavaloff, served as his interpreters. [15] The Western Fur and Trading Company also decided to return to David's Village that year and competition between the two exceeded previous limits. "The Indians had a picnic that winter," quipped McQuesten, "as they both had quite a supply of flour and they were both out in the Spring." [16]

Although McQuesten, Harper, and Mayo spent time each fall and summer prospecting for gold, they found no claims worth staking. Nevertheless, they explored various tributaries of the Yukon—the Tanana, the Fortymile, the Sixtymile, the White, and the Stewart. These men acquired a general familiarity with the broad relief features, drainage, and gold-bearing gravels. Through letters to friends in the placer camps of British Columbia, they publicized the mineral potential of the Yukon. Furthermore, with their trading posts they offered prospective gold-seekers an assured source for provisions. [17]

Although there were rumors of earlier prospectors arriving from Juneau, the first of record arrived on the upper Yukon in 1880. [18] The slow trickle of information inspired others. Finally in 1882 a group consisting of Joseph Ladue, Howard Franklin, and ten others crossed Chilkoot Pass and arrived at Fort Reliance. They wintered there and at McQuesten's suggestion prospected the Fortymile and Stewart Rivers.

Also in 1882, but from the opposite direction, came Ed Schieffelin, who had discovered the rich silver deposits of Tombstone Arizona. He arrived equipped with a steamer, the New Racket, and the latest in mining equipment. Seemingly aware of Harper's early prospecting experiences on the Tanana River, Schieffelin and his crew set up their winter quarters there. By spring, when he had not found enough gold to warrant staying, he sold the New Racket to the newly organized firm of McQuesten, Harper & Mayo and left the country. His venture, though small, represented the first significant capital invested in Yukon mining.

In 1883 General Nelson A. Miles, commander of the Army's Department of the Columbia, ordered Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka to Alaska to determine the number, character, and disposition of all Natives, their weapons, and their attitude towards the whites. [19] Since Congress refused to appropriate any money for the exploration of Alaska, Miles' own command financed the expedition. Lieutenant Schwatka arrived on the Yukon via the Chilkoot Pass, which had already been explored by prospectors. At Lake Lindemann he built a large raft and floated down the river. Enroute, to the disgust of traders and geographers, he freely substituted his own names for those geographical landmarks already identified. [20] Arriving at Belle Isle, he assumed that it had been abandoned as unprofitable when Mercier had merely journeyed to St. Michael for supplies. [21] Although Schwatka described in some detail the culture of the Han, or Klat-ol-klin, as he called them, and estimated that Johnny's Village (David's Village) housed 75 to 100 people and Charley's Village 40 to 50, he made no great contribution to scientific knowledge. [22] He did, however, bring publicity to "Alaska's Great River", as he titled his book, when he published an account of his trip for the popular reader.

Meanwhile, at St. Michael, McQuesten and Mercier learned that the Alaska Commercial Company had bought out the Western Fur and Trading Company. The severe competition had ended. Now came the task of raising the price of trade goods and lowering the value of furs without angering the Natives. An unplanned incident relieved the problem. Returning to Fort Reliance in the fall of 1883, McQuesten's steamboat, the New Racket, broke a crank pin within only ten miles of Belle Isle. McQuesten left a few supplies with the Indians to help them hunt through the winter and returned to winter at Tanana. The hardship caused by this accident heightened the Indians' appreciation for even the higher priced goods in the spring. At the same time the prospectors of the upper Yukon who had hoped to find provisions at Fort Reliance now had to journey all the way to Tanana or St. Michael.

As more and more prospectors arrived on the Yukon, McQuesten recognized that the Alaska Commercial Company, which subsidized his firm, focused on fur trading and thus neglected the growing needs of the mining community. While Mayo went to Fort Reliance and Harper wintered at Belle Isle accompanied by Mercier's interpreters, the Cheroskys, [23] McQuesten went to San Francisco to urge a change of policy to the company's directors and hopefully to order mining supplies. In the summer of 1885, just as gold had been found in paying quantities on the Stewart River, he opportunely returned with fifty tons of mining supplies. At the same time, Francois Mercier left Alaska to return to Montreal. An era had passed.