Letters Home From Gold Rush Stampeders

Letters Home From Gold Rush Stampeders


St. Michael, June 28, 1899
"Well wife I will converse a while with you this morning. I dream of
you and the children last night. How I would like to take you all in
my arms if only for a moment. I don't think any man ever thought
more of his wife and children than I do. I am not as demonstrative
as some but my every thought always has been to furnish all the
conveniences to make home life pleasant but so far I have never
been able to come up to my expectations. I think I will strike it rich
yet and then I think I would enjoy spending money on myself as well
as on home comforts, but I am going to give it a hard tussle and then
if I fail I will come home and take things as they come."

Robert J. Young, from a letter home. "Letters to Lizzie,"
by Evey Ruskin, "The Alaska Journal," 1984.

For most Gold Rush stampeders, letters from home were too few
and came too far in-between. Thousands of miles from home, the
smallest notes and gifts from their families and friends could raise
their spirits tremendously. Letters home from the stampeders often
expressed their feeling of loneliness, life hardship, as well as their
hope and determination.

In a letter home to his wife, Robert Young, a Gold Rush stampeder,
besides expressing his feeling of loneliness, showed his love to his
wife and children, talked about his ambition, his skepticism as well as
his determination.

Loneliness

“Well wife I will converse a while with you this morning. I dream of
you and the children last night.”

Love

“How I would like to take you all in my arms if only for a moment.
I don't think any man ever thought more of his wife and children
than I do.”

Ambition

“my every thought always has been to furnish all the conveniences to
make home life pleasant ……,I think I will strike it rich yet and then I
think I would enjoy spending money on myself as well as on home
comforts”

Skepticism

“but so far I have never been able to come up to my expectations”

Determination

“but I am going to give it a hard tussle and then if I fail I will come
home and take things as they come."


Yeh Tze

Stampeders, Sourdoughs and Cheechakos

Stampeders, Sourdoughs and Cheechakos


Cheechakos 1896 (Dawson City Museum Yukon Canada)

During our recent tour to the Yukon Territory, we traveled through
the routes of “Klondike Gold Rush”, heard all kinds of “Gold Rush”
tales, and witnessed the old “Gold Rush” sites.

We also learned some words with their special unique meanings:

Stampede (Stampeders)

“to cause to run away in headlong panic”
“to cause (as a group of people) to act on sudden or rush impulse.”
"a sudden, confused headlong rush of a large group of people"
(stampeders)

Sourdough(s)

“old time prospectors of Alaska, or experienced miners”

Cheechacko(s)

“tenderfoot, new comers in a comparatively rough settle region.”
“inexperienced beginners”
“potential miners, new to Klondike”

Sam McGee, the poor man mentioned in the Robert Service poem,
“Cremation of Sam McGee", was one of the tens of thousands of
“Cheechakos”.


Yeh Tze

Taste of the Klondike Gold Rush

The Men that Don't Fit In

There's A race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy-I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it-
Came out with a fortune last fall-
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

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.


On August 16, 1896, George Carmack dreamt about gold. Carmack
dreamt of nugget eyes that gleamed from salmon in the Klondike
River 20 steps from his feet. The next morning the old prospector
pulled the first gold nuggets out of Rabbit Creek, in the Klondike
Valley of the Yukon Territories.

The Klondike Gold Rush drew 100,000 pilgrims to the gold fields
of Canada. Tens of thousands of would be prospectors rushed to
the gold fields, but they were mostly too late.

There were three routes to the Klondike. Most took the steamer
from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska near Juneau, then hiked 25 or
more miles over dangerous mountain passes to the river then rode
another 500 miles on boats before they reached the gold.



Miners and prospectors climb the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike
Gold Rush. (Canadian National Archives)



Miner's camp at the head of the Yukon River during the Klondike
Gold Rush. (Canadian National Archives)

An estimated 100,000 people participated in the gold rush and
about 30,000 made it to Dawson City in 1898. By 1901, when the
first census was taken, the population had declined to 9,000.


The population was 1,327 at the 2006 census

Many writers and entertainers found the subject of the Klondike
Gold Rush fascinating. Robert Service and many others reflect the
lingering history that colors the region.

Robert William Service (January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958)
was a poet and writer, sometimes referred to as "the Bard of the
Yukon". He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North,
including the poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", "The Law of
the Yukon", and "The Cremation of Sam McGee". His writing was
so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike
prospector, not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was.



Robert Service lived between 1909 and 1912 in this log cabin on 8th
Avenue in Dawson City, Yukon.

Our NTUMC68 classmates and their spouses, (total 14), recently
got a taste of the Gold Rush era. We were first on the cruise
from Vancouver to Juneau and Skagway, then took the land tour
through Whitehorse to Dawson City, the heart of Klondike Gold Rush.
We heard tales of “Gold Rush” and had a great golden experience at
the Yukon Territory. We also had the opportunity to visit the
Robert Service cabin in Dawson city. Some of our classmates even
attended the unique reading of Robert Service poetry. I purchased
one of Robert Service published books "Best Tales of the Yukon".

" ..........................
There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land -- oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back -- and I will.
............................."

The Spell of the Yukon


Yeh Tze