Images of Society in Klondike Gold Rush Narratives

Skookum Jim and the Discovery of Gold

Bibliographic Data

ID7767970
AuthorsJulie Cruikshank (corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume39
Issue1
Pages20
Publication date1992-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnohistory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1801 • E-ISSN: 1527-5477
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/482563
OpenAlexW2328012314
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited1

In August 1896 the discovery of gold on a tributary of the Yukon River triggered the Klondike gold rush. Focusing on the initial this article compares written accounts from official gold rush literature with oral accounts passed on by Tagish participants. Instead of assessing the veracity of the different versions, it evaluates the narrative genres shaping both written and oral accounts. The contrast sharply because they reflect conflicting ideas about social organization in late nineteenth-century northern frontier society. In northern Canada, it is frequently possible to hear contrasting accounts about an incident from the past, one found in the written record, the other in the daily conversation of elderly native men and women (see Slobodin 1963; McClellan 1963, I97oa; Arima 1976; McClellan et al. I987). The possibility of incorporating oral accounts into ethnohistorical analysis seems to give oral history rather elastic promise, particularly when so much northern scholarship appears to rest exclusively on written documents (Zaslow 1971; Wright 1976; Coates and Morrison 1988). Ethnohistorians, though, draw attention to the pitfalls of a reified definition of oral tradition. More important than the search for a body of oral texts deemed accurate within a restricted Western discourse, they say, is the question of how indigenous historical consciousness is constructed in societies where essential knowledge has always been passed on by word of mouth (see, for example, Rosaldo 1980; Cohen 1989: 9). The problem of treating oral accounts about the past as though they could be equated with Western notions of history has long been recognized in anthropology.1 As ethnohistorians look more closely at oral testimonies, they are becoming increasingly attentive to ideological, symbolic, Ethnohistory 39:1 (Winter I992). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-I801/9z/$I.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.192 on Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:00:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Klondike Gold Rush Narratives and metaphorical meanings in them. Combined with a sensitivity to ethnocentric bias in Western writings, awareness of the spoken word has also led to more cautious handling of written sources. Yet Steinhart (I989: 5), in a recent comparison of trends in African and American oral history, concludes that conventional archaeological, documentary, and ethnographic sources continue to be used as the standards against which oral accounts are judged to establish the 'factual' truth of cultural history. Increasingly, consideration is given to similar processes that may govern both oral and written traditions.2 My own attempts to combine oral and written accounts from the Yukon Territory suggest that both kinds of narrative may have in common problems not always addressed in ethnohistory. A critical handling of the symbolic and mythical elements in written, as well as in oral, accounts may direct us back to the social process in which both are embedded, raising questions about the privileged status of documentary evidence as a reference point for establishing truth, falsehood, or factuality. This article examines accounts about the circumstances surrounding the discovery of gold that triggered the Klondike gold rush in I896. The term discovery is somewhat problematic in this context, because it implies a discrete, bounded incident. Yet the knowledge that gold had been found in this area was far from new in I896. Robert Campbell, a trader with the Hudson's Bay Company, recognized gold in the gravel near his trading post at the junction of the Yukon and Pelly rivers in the early I85os; ten years later, Robert McDonald, a Church of England missionary, reported significant amounts of gold in Birch Creek, a tributary of the Yukon (Ogilvie 1913: 84-87). Prospectors had worked their way north from the California goldfields, following strikes on the Fraser River and in the Cariboo district, confident that the Cordilleran would yield more. In 1887, geologist George Dawson (I898: 133) named several prospectors who were making a reasonable living panning gold on the Pelly River. The idea of a major discovery, though, signals the definition of an event that dominates the written record. In this context, Fogelson's (I989: I43) notion of the epitomizing event-commemorated in narratives that condense, encapsulate, and dramatize longer term historical processes-may be instructive. While Fogelson developed this concept with reference to Native American (specifically Cherokee) traditions, in the case of Klondike gold rush traditions it more accurately characterizes Western accounts than those reported by indigenous observers and their descendants. Discovery Day, 17 August, is enshrined as a statutory holiday in the Yukon Territory. In contrast, told by native elders focus less on an event than on a process. zI This content downloaded from 157.55.39.192 on Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:00:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Gold rush · Literature · Narrative · Canadian Identity and History · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology

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