The Klondike...

[St. George]

Noted poet Robert Service says this about his times, in his poem, 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' :

'A bunch of the boys were whooping it up, in the Malamute Saloon...'

There's a tendency to think that era of 'the Frontier West' happened exclusively in the Southwest, and was confined to Trail Drives, Cattle Towns, the Indian Wars and so on and so forth, and that it was pretty much over and done with by 1899.

Not so...

There was a lot going on during those waning years that involved the same players, with the same exciting activities happening all around them.

The Klondike Gold Rush is one of those chapters that are relatively little-known, but that should be explored in order to better understand the times.

In Midsummer of 1897, the steamer 'Excelsior' docked in San Francisco with a mysterious cargo and the news that deep in the Canadian Yukon - thousands of miles from anywhere - prospectors found an incredibly rich lode on the tributary of the Klondike River.

Thanks to the vastly increased communications network then in place and growing, that news flashed across strike and depression ridden America, offering instant riches to all who could contrive to get there.

Within weeks, over 100,000 men and women were headed to the Far North - to the boom town of Dawson City, on the flats where the Klondike and Yukon rivers meet - to make their way to Skagway and Dyea, to the passes of the Chilcoot and up Dead Horse Trail.

For the gamblers and schoolteachers, the missionaries and the dance hall girls struggling side-by-side to Dawson City and Nome - it was the 'Last Grand Adventure...

In that light - there are a couple of excellent references available, though some searching may be required:

'Days of Adventure, Dreams of Gold' - a television documentary by William Bronson

'The Last Grand Adventure (the Story of the Klondike Gold Rush and the Opening of Alaska)' - by the William Bronson and Richard Reinhardt, but printed after Bronson's untimely death. (ISBN 0-07-008014-3)

Printed in 1977, the book has over 500 photographs, covering people, sites, steamers, bad men and bad women, and is a great addition to your library.

The era of Old West didn't die off by 1899 - not when there was the Klondike Gold Rush, the Spanish-American War and the soon to follow Mexican Revolution to beckon an adventurous spirit.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Trailrider]

'Minds me of Montana on a Minuteman missile site back in '67 or '68 or so.  Coldern' the north end of a southbound maintenance officer's @$$, and that was WITH insulated flight pants and an N3B parka!  Down to Judith Gap one night, we was trying to plow out so we could work on the "bird", and it was so blasted cold, we couldn't keep the diesels on the front end loaders lit!   

Got to a spot where we could get in outa the cold and as we opened the door and stomped the snow offn' our boots, that line from the poem was the only thing I could think of.  (Rest of my brain was froze!) 

Nossir! The Klondike don't hold no facination for me...well, except maybe for the gold part!

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

The 1899 Courthouse in Atlin BC is still the courthouse, when its not a klondike museum.  I prosecuted in that court house a few years back.  Yes I did wear my Parka.

The court clerks table is kidney shaped; - because it was from one of the old saloons.

[St. George]

It's an interesting area and an interesting tale of monumental greed and lawlessness and casual cruelty run rampant.

Today, many of the artifacts they threw away are still in place where they dropped or were pushed, and it'll astound you with what's left, and what they carried along.

'Ill-prepared' seemed to be the watchword for far too many of the gold seekers, but 'tough' was another, since the conditions they faced were formidable, and the trail got worse with traffic and the weather.

Still and all, it was a helluva event, and further study's warranted, since they pulled an awful lot of gold from the region.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Buffalo Creek Law Dog]

The lawlessness was on the American side (read Alaska).  The Canadian side (read Yukon) had the North West Mounted Police in place at the time.  Commanded by none other than the famous Sam Steele.  The Yukon Field Force was also in place at that time.

Miners entering Canada from the Alaska side had to have a minimum amount of provisions before the NWMPolice would let them continue.  The Mounties were stationed at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass.  If you didn't have the required provisions, you were turned back.

Remember Sgt Preston of the Yukon?  I have about ten episodes.

[St. George]

'The Last Great Adventure' details quite a bit on the NWMP's activities - with some good photos.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

The Klondike also saw another run of cattle drives to profit from the rush.  One of the ranchers from BC, Norman Lee, kept a diary, and a book eventually arose.

He wrote up his tale from the watersoaked original notes about the turn of the century.  It was discovered and published in 1960, and reprinted at least 4 more times since..

KLONDIKE CATTLE DRIVE, The Journal of Norman Lee, prepared by Gordon Elliott, Vancouver, Mitchell Press, 1960

BC was in a depression at the time, and the Chilcotin cattle country suffered as well.  Lee saw the goldrush as a last chance to keep his ranch going.  His plan was to depart in May 1898, and follow the old Telegraph Trail, built by Sanford Fleming in the 1860's.  He started thr trip with 200 head of cattle and a full trail drive set up.  That didn't last as the horses starved, but the cattle did well.  They completed the 1500 miles to Teslin Lake on foot, carrying what they absolutely needed, and had yet to lose a single cow.  Norman had arranged for a barge at Teslin Lake, to transport the butchered cattle to the gold field.

10 miles down the lake a squall blew up and they were wrecked.

Lee managed to scavenge up 10 saleable carcasses which sold for enough to pay their passage by steamer from Alaska to Seattle.

[Frenchie]

My sister was going through some old stuff from Mom's estate and gave me an illustrated copy of one of her favorite poems, Robert Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'taint being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows—O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
Then I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked;" . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

—From Later Collected Verse; by Robert Service;
Dodd, Mead & Company; New York; 1970; pages 33-36.

[RattlesnakeJack]

Aahhh .....  when I was in about Grade Six (as we Canucks say, rather than Sixth Grade) we were required to memoriize The Cremation of Sam McGee in its entirety.  To this day, I can still recite entire stanzas by rote, though not the whole poem any more .....

Frenchie - I was posting about my attendance at GAF Muster on the British Militaria Forums, and the Moderator asked if you had been there .....  His forum name is "MicahelNH" (real surname McComas, IIRC.)  I advised that we have been "acquainted" for some time, but only on the internet and not in person, unfortunately.  It will be grand if we are both able to attend Muster in 2009, and finally meet face to face!

Here's another of my Robert W. Service favorites ... not so well-known, but amusing, nonetheless:

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body
Of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever
The manner of death he die --
Whether he die in the light o' day
Or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive,
Mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak,
By glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom,
By avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth,
By pestilence, hooch or lead --
I swore on the Book I would follow and look
Till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss,
And his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass
In a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died,
It didn't matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills
And a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price
In good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very night
Down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine:
"Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall
And I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day
Came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps
'Way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide,
And a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self,
And I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him,
And I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate
He'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch",
And I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs
And was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild
When it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads
Through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns
In the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks
Under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off,
And the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel
Burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball,
And the frost-fiend stalks to kill --
Well, it was just like that that day when I
Set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush
Me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find
Through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild,
With its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life
That only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed;
River and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose
And I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak --
And who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed
At the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst,
Shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word
And the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat,
Built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor,
Frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet,
Sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed,
Ice gleaming over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest,
Glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart,
Ice in his glassy stare;
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog,
With his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him,
And I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke;
But still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates
In the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut
In the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three
And a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse
That looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day,
But you'll never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind,
But I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff
And studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs
That were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove,
And I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days,
But it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs,
As if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use --
He's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight,
So I guess I got to -- saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs,
And I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself,
With the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear
As I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh,
And I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was
In a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up,
When the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate
In the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was,
The awful things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks,
Expounding of the Law,
I often think of poor old Bill --
And how hard he was to saw.

[Dr. Bob]

A great big THANKS!! RJR. 

[St. George]

To continue along these lines - you need to read a few more lines...

I recommend Robert W. Service's - 'Spell of the Yukon' and 'Ballads of a Cheechako' - both contained in a later compilation - 'Best Tales of the Yukon' - ISBN 0-89471-201-2, thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the read.

If you like Kipling - you're going to like Service.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Frenchie]

Aahhh .....  when I was in about Grade Six (as we Canucks say, rather than Sixth Grade) we were required to memorize The Cremation of Sam McGee in its entirety.  To this day, I can still recite entire stanzas by rote, though not the whole poem any more .....

My mother was born in Newfoundland in 1932 and became a US citizen in 1952. She also had to memorize the poem and tried to get her lazy American brats to do so, alas without success. 

Frenchie - I was posting about my attendance at GAF Muster on the British Militaria Forums, and the Moderator asked if you had been there .....  His forum name is "MicahelNH" (real surname McComas, IIRC.)  I advised that we have been "acquainted" for some time, but only on the internet and not in person, unfortunately.  It will be grand if we are both able to attend Muster in 2009, and finally meet face to face!

The names McComas and MichaelNH ring a faint bell. I'll check some other fora and see if I can track him down.

I ought to start planning for the 2009 Muster now if I hope to make it. Planning that far in advance would be breaking new ground for me 

[Forty Rod]

My dad had a bullet hole in his knee because of Dan McGrew...well sorta.     Long story.   

[Frenchie]

Oh, come on, Forty, you can't leave us hanging like that! Out with it!

Don't make us bring in... the Comfy Chair!

[Forty Rod]

Okay, then. 

Lions Club dinner with wives...along about 1954 or '55, this was...and part of the evening's entertainment was a reading of dangerous Dan McGrew by a friend of Dad's. 

When the lights went out and a shot was fired,this friend fired an old .45 Colt at the floor.  He'd pulled the slug and replaced it with a tight wad of Sears catalog to make a "blank".

He also wasn't paying attention to Dad who was sitting on his right with his legs stretched out under the table.

That wad blew a hole in Dad's knee as big around as a silver dollar and busted his kneecap, but didn't pentrate any futher.  The muzzle blast set his pants to smoldering and he screamed bloody murder and jumped up. 

Everybody but Dad and his friend thought it was part of the skit until the old man started splashing blood all over the banquet room.  Another friend, a doctor, was sitting a couple of seats away and took Dad down with a full body tackle and got a few others to help. Dad wasn't very big, but he was tough, fast, and flailing around.  Doc Gates said he learned a dozen new words and phrases that night.

The wound had to be imobilized and left open to drain for a month or more for it to heal up to where he could get around.  The first weekly meeting he was able to attend after that they awarded him a 12" x 12" Purple Heart, and gave the shooter a similar sized Sharpshooter's badge.

For years Dad would periodically get lunch for free just by mentioning the "John, you shot me, you know!"  He showed up at a golf tournament years later. He was playing with John, Doc, and another friend, and  he wore the Purple heart.  He walked away with the game because every time anyone looked at him they'd crack up.

[Frenchie]

OMG, Forty Rod, what a great story! And a great reminder of the rule to always know where the muzzle is pointed!