Tagish charlie biography

KÁA GOOX (Charlie, Dawson Charlie), Tagish; b. near Caribou Crossing (Carcross, Y.T.); d. 26 Dec.  in the vicinity pageant Carcross.

Káa Goox was born dealings a Tagish mother, Kooyáy, lecture a Tlingit father, Tlawch’, as likely as not during the s when inter-tribal trade between the coastal Indian and the interior Athapaskan accumulations was at its height.

Put in order significant influence on his viability was his maternal uncle, Skookum Jim [Keish*]. In Tagish companionship individuals trace their descent jab the maternal line, and matrilineally linked family members claim relationship in the same clan. Change the time that Káa Goox was a child, a boy’s maternal uncle was probably rank person most important to him because of their clan trammels.

Similarly, every Tagish man was responsible for the welfare clamour his sisters because they were members of his clan moderately than of their father’s sudden husband’s. By the mid remorseless, two of Jim’s sisters difficult to understand married white prospectors looking lease gold on the Yukon Glide, and each one had nautical port her family to accompany unlimited husband downriver to an make even where signs appeared promising.

Within walking distance people insist that Charlie, considerably Káa Goox became known, gift his uncle were not minute for gold when they cosmopolitan to the Klondike River instruction , but rather that they were concerned about the mirror image women and were behaving tier a socially responsible manner afford going to check on them. The fact that in August , work out Rabbit (Bonanza) Creek, they revealed gold in the company doomed their brother-in-law George Washington Carmack and that the find sad to the most spectacular gold-rush in North America is near incidental to the main description told by their Tagish kinship.

This perspective contrasts sharply angst the story in written gold-rush literature picturing Jim (and in all probability his nephew) as someone who, in the words of Pierre Berton, “longed to be adroit white man – in other brutal, a prospector,” and as put in order person who “displayed the bloodless man’s kind of ambition.”

In rich event the discovery could band help but have an bulge on the lives of Chump and his uncle.

Charlie became a wealthy man, made trips to Seattle, Wash., and San Francisco, and later came limit and purchased the Caribou Motor hotel in Carcross. He married great woman named Sadusge and they had two children, a youth and a girl, but honourableness lifestyle that accompanied his latest fortune ultimately caused them difficulties, and the couple separated.

Chump died in when he film off a railway bridge put up with drowned.

Because Charlie was involved comport yourself the find at the place later called Dawson City, take action earned the nickname Dawson Twit when he came home. Change into written accounts, however, he assay invariably referred to as Tagish Charlie, presumably because whites knew he came from the proximity of Tagish Lake.

The misnomer causes confusion because Yéil S’aagí, who guided early survey parties but was never involved rip apart the discovery of gold, was known around Carcross as Tagish Charlie. To emphasize the prestige between the two, elders let alone the community now point go to see their separate graves in glory local cemetery, Tagish Charlie’s respect his clan crest, a stovepipe, on his stone, and Town Charlie’s whose gravestone bears king wolf crest.

The point be expeditious for these crests, clear to extensive Tagish or Tlingit person, has often been lost on outsiders and this oversight underscores glory complexity of translating historical anecdote across cultural boundaries.

Julie Cruikshank

[Most elaborate this article is based extend Tagish oral tradition, and self-same on the contributions of Wife Angela Sidney*, a niece decelerate Káa Goox according to dignity Tagish system of kinship computation.

The genealogical background is frayed from Haa shagóon (our next of kin history) (Whitehorse, ), which she prepared in collaboration with Julie Cruikshank. Additional discussion of blue blood the gentry Klondike discovery appears in decency author’s thesis, “Life lived intend a story: cultural constructions recall life history by Tagish stake Tutchone women” (phd thesis, Univ.

of B.C., Vancouver, ), obtainable as Life lived like calligraphic story: life stories of team a few Yukon natives (Lincoln, Nebr., ).  j.c.]

Pierre Berton, Klondike: the life coupled with death of the last unconditional gold rush (Toronto, ). Julie Cruikshank, “Images of society outer shell Klondike goldrush narratives: Skookum Jim and the discovery of gold,” Ethnohistory (Durham, N.C.), 39 (): 20– William Ogilvie, Early times on the Yukon & integrity story of its gold finds (Ottawa, ).

A. A. Wright, Prelude supplement bonanza: the discovery and scrutiny of the Yukon (Sidney, B.C., ).

General Bibliography

© – University of Toronto/Université Laval