Prologue
The Start of Something Big

Klondike
Late summer of 1896

Snap! A dry branch broke as the foot stepped on it.

Jim turned quickly in the direction of the sound. Raising his rifle, he searched through the natural camouflage provided by the trees and willows. There! He took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. The moose was dead before the sound of the shot reached its ears, collapsing as the "craaack" of the rifle shot bounced up and down canyon walls.

Jim smiled. He took great pride in being able to kill such a big animal with only one bullet, aside from the reality that bullets in the far north were expensive. Advancing to the kill, Skookum Jim sat on a rock looking at it. "Hmmm, two-year cow. She be good, tender."

Knowing that the sound of the shot would bring Carmack and Tagish Charley to him, Jim waited. Looking into the stream, he thought he saw some "color." It didn't really sparkle, which was good. If there were sparkle, then it was just "Fool's Gold" – iron pyrite. Real gold didn't reflect much light because it was so soft; but it did have a luster that was unmistakable. Like this.

Jim reached into the water, found the pebble that had caught his interest, lifted it out and looked at the small, beautiful gold nugget. Smiling again, he removed a gold-pan from his pack and scooped into the creek as far as the pan would go, scraping gravel from the bottom. Crouching low, he filled the pan with water, reaching in and mixing it thoroughly with the gravel and dirt. Then he started agitating the contents.

Gravel, dirt and water swirled over the edge and back into the stream. Jim added more water, continued mixing and swirling, and after a few minutes stopped, stood up and examined the contents of the pan. His smile was joined by a loud shriek, "EEYOW!"

There in his pan were a few rocks of no value, so he plucked them out and threw them aside. There were also three small gold nuggets, lots of gold flakes, and some black sand; there was at least ten dollars worth of gold in the pan! Jim stood, waiting for his partners, who arrived several minutes later.

The white man spoke first, "See you got a good moose, Jim. Knew you would, and it's about time; we've been out of fresh meat for several days now." George Carmack stopped, looking at Skookum Jim, who still had a huge smile plastered to his face.

The big Indian spoke, "Look, George; look what I find;" and he handed the gold pan to Carmack. Tagish Charley came over and the three of them gazed in wonder at the sight.

George was the first to speak. And all he said was one word, “Wow!”

The three men had been constant companions practically from the time George Carmack had taken an Indian woman, Kate, to be his "squaw." As an added bonus, Carmack inherited a brother-in-law – Skookum Jim, and Jim’s nephew, Tagish Charley. They made an interesting group. Jim and Charley were easy-going Indians who wanted to be white-men, whereas George Carmack was a white man who was doing his best to be an Indian.

They weren't really prospectors, or trappers, or fishermen. They just moved freely from one activity to another, doing enough work to get by, doing some fishing and hunting to get food. Theirs was a life that included a lot of sitting down on fallen logs, and enjoying the simple pleasures of each other's company. Although they were happy with their roles, they got little respect from sourdough prospectors. Few white men respected Indians for any reason. So, for Carmack, marrying one and spending all his time with two others, it caused other whites to look upon him with disdain. They called him "Squawman," an insulting term to them, but a term that pleased Carmack.

With their discovery of gold on Rabbit Creek, all that would quickly change.

After whooping it up and grinning so much their faces hurt, the three men settled down to the serious business at hand. They had to decide where to stake their claims, so they tested up and down the stream from the spot Jim had found gold, and then decided where they thought the best, most gold-producing areas would be. There were equal parts skill and luck in the process, because a spot can test well but not produce, and vice-versa. The three tested as carefully as they could.

The first to discover gold on a creek could stake two claims, and the others one each along the stream. After some discussion, it was decided that Carmack would claim to be the discoverer, to avoid any possible problems that might later arise if Jim, a Siwash Indian, were to make that claim.

Jim protested mildly, but gave in because that was probably the truth. He had no reason to mistrust George – either then or later; it was just that he wanted the glory of being recognized as discoverer. The three were friends and partners and, as it turned out, they each ended up with more gold than they could spend, even though they tried hard.

George would suddenly stop trying to be an Indian, and later would take his fortune down to Seattle, marry a white woman, and live out his life in comfort – popular and in great demand as the "Discoverer" of gold in the Klondike.

Skookum Jim continued even more strenuously to "become" a white man, but he never succeeded – much to his confusion. After harvesting his fortune from the creek gravels, Jim spent his remaining years prospecting in the vastness of the north, eventually wearing his great strength down to nothing.

Tagish Charley – later called “Dawson Charley” – wandered some and ended up in a new town on the edge of Lake Bennett – the town of Carcross – where he got drunk one night and fell off the railroad bridge and drowned.

After staking the stream carefully, the three men went back to the Yukon River and paddled their canoe downstream to Forty-Mile Trading Post to register the claims. As they occasionally passed other men moving up or down the river, they shared with them the news of their big discovery. The word began to spread.

Arriving at the trading post at Forty-Mile, the three registered their claims. It was suggested that the stream be changed from Rabbit to something a bit more fitting to the occasion. "Bonanza" seemed to be fitting enough, so the discovery was registered on Bonanza Creek.

Because George Carmack was known in the region as Squawman, his mentioning the discovery, later at the trading post, didn't impress many people at first. Certainly not the hardened sourdoughs in Forty-Mile. But then he took out some samples of the gold dust, and the prospectors looked at it. A well-known fact among gold miners is that the gold from every creek is different than the gold from every other creek.

One good look told them that the gold Squawman Carmack held in his hands had come from no creek any of them had known to be gold bearing.

It was unique.

That meant the Squawman hadn't "salted" it to try to fool anybody. That meant he might be telling the truth. And if he were telling the truth, then the sourdoughs silently asked themselves, "Why are we all standing here?"

Slowly at first, and then more rapidly, Forty-Mile lost its visitors. Then its few residents. By morning it was practically deserted.

It was autumn, 1896. The rush for gold had begun!

That is to say, the first gold rush had started.

As the word spread along the creeks, hundreds of men left what were mostly mediocre prospects and headed for the streams of the Klondike. If this were the big mother lode that they all suspected was somewhere in the north, well, they weren't going to be left out. Men converged on the tiny tributaries of the Klondike River. Within a few weeks all of Bonanza Creek was staked from top to bottom, as well as the equally rich El Dorado, which flowed into it.

Newcomers spread out to adjacent creeks, the thoroughness of their testing indicating that there were other creeks rich with gold. More and more men made their way to the Klondike, gradually sucking much of the population of prospectors, miners and trading post operators from the other gold creeks in the far north. They spread throughout the Klondike region.

But as winter descended hastily upon them and the streams froze or dried up, the latecomers were unable to do much testing of the gold-bearing potential of the creeks. Water was necessary to separate the gold from all the other rocks and dirt, and at 10 below, 20 below, or 30 below, there was no water except the snow and ice that men heated for their drinking and cooking purposes.

The newcomers staked claims, and registered them in the brand-new town of Dawson City, which was located at the junction of the Klondike River with the Yukon River. None of the men would know until spring came – and they were able to wash their paydirt – whether they had gold or just a bunch of dirt. A rich gold stream had more places along its length that had little if any gold than it had places that were rich with gold. The men knew that. But they didn't know where the rich places were, and with the onslaught of winter, they had no way of finding out. Not until seven months later!

So they labored through winter, thawing the frozen muck with small fires, and digging down. Thawing, digging, all the way to solid bedrock, where they tunneled around, just above bedrock, spending hour after hour under the frozen ground. They collected paydirt and hauled it to the surface, in the hope that come spring, they'd be rich men.

Thus the winter of 1896/97 progressed in the Klondike.

The temperatures in the tunnels were below freezing, but the temperatures above ground were even colder.

Food in the trading posts was in short supply, and wild game was hard to find.

Half-starved, half-frozen, they struggled with their labors in the frigid ground.

No one left the north that winter; how could they? They might have a million dollars worth of gold mixed into that frozen goo. They simply couldn’t leave.

Thus the world knew nothing of their efforts; it knew nothing of the "mountain of gold" that might exist.

But the world was having struggles of its own. It was in the midst of a serious depression, with unemployment at fearsome levels. People were concerned not only with their future; they were also concerned with their very survival.

For most, the "Gay Nineties" were no fun. No fun at all.

Finally, winter in the north loosened its grip; the ice melted; creeks flowed, and the gold miners washed out their paydirt.

Most of the men had some gold by the time they were finished with "cleanup." Some gold, but not enough. Many sold their claims if they could, and moved on to other prospects, or back to the "States."

Some claims had, however, provided their owners with quantities of gold that were beyond imagining. After almost a year of digging in the frozen muck, men found that they had become overnight millionaires.

Many squandered their fortunes in a tenth the time it had taken them to wash out their paydirt. Some were, however, smarter, and possessed of more discipline. They sold their claims, packed up all their gold, and headed home, their fortunes intact.

As they arrived in the big cities of the west coast – Seattle, Portland and San Francisco – the newspaper headlines, preceding them by a few hours at the most, announced the results of their yearlong efforts. "A TON OF GOLD!"

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