George Carmack Discovers Gold (from Carmack of the Klondike)

One June night in 1896, while George Carmack was sleeping in his tent at Fortymile, he experienced a dream so real, so vivid and so exciting that further sleep was impossible. He dreamed he was sitting on the bank of a small stream looking at a school of grayling surfacing in a pool of blue-green water. Suddenly the sail-like dorsal fins of the grayling disappeared and two large king salmon swam into the pool. Their scales were made of shiny flakes of gold, and gold pieces covered their eyes. When he reached down to grab a golden salmon, Carmack awoke to find himself clutching his right ear.

The golden scales and eyes suggested to Carmack that somewhere, in close association with salmon in a stream with blue-green water, there was gold, big chunks of gold, waiting for him. Where could such a stream be found? The brownish Yukon was heavy with silt, and many of its tributaries were milky or muddy. However, emptying into the Yukon 55 miles upstream from Fortymile was a well-known salmon stream whose clear waters turned blue-green under summer skies. Prospectors called it the Klondike, an Anglicized version of the Indian name used by natives of the Yukon valley. Responding to a powerful intuitive impulse, Carmack decided to start for the Klondike River, where he would fish for salmon and search for gold.

Before leaving Fortymile, Carmack bought some net twine at Jack McQuesten’s trading post, and Kate helped him make a long gill-net suitable for catching king salmon. On July first, the couple loaded their boat and started up stream, accompanied by a prospector friend, Lou Cooper, who had staked a hard-rock claim on the Yukon opposite the mouth of the Klondike. Three-year-old Graphie sat on a pile of netting while the adults took turns poling the boat upstream.

At the mouth of the Klondike River, Carmack pitched his tent on the beach and made camp. The Klondike was low and clear, with a delicate blue-green tint, just the way he had seen it in his dream. Several families of Yukon Indians had fish camps in the vicinity. Awaiting the annual run of king salmon, Carmack built an Indian-style fish weir of willow poles in the Klondike, and set out his long gill-net in the Yukon.

The usual heavy summer runs of king salmon failed to appear that year, and Carmack’s nests remained empty most of the time. Some of the Indians blamed the lack of fish on the steamboats downriver, saying the paddlewheels churning the water made the salmon turn back.

After three weeks of unproductive work, Carmack realized that he would not be able to put up enough dried fish to feed his family during the coming winter. Even the weather turned against him. Heavy rains fell during the last week of July, followed by a spell of cold weather that froze the heavy morning dew into droplets of ice.

Late in July, as Carmack was picking a salmon out of his gill-net, he saw a small boat manned by his old friends, sturdy, broad-backed Skookum Jim and wiry Tagish Charley, now sporting a wispy mustache.

Not until he shook hands did Carmack recognize the third member of the group. Ten years before, while winterizing at Tagish, he had taught a few words of English to Kulsin, Tagish Charley’s youngest brother. The boy wanted a white man’s name, so Carmack had given him one: Patsy Henderson. Now, at 17, Patsy was taller than his older brother.

Kate Carmack, happy to see her brother Jim again, proudly showed off her daughter, Graphie. Jim announced that he had married a Chilkoot Indian girl and that a daughter, Daisy, had been born to them the previous summer. His wife and daughter were at the Tagish village, awaiting his return. In spurts of loud and rapid Tagish, Kate asked Him for news of her relatives and learned that shortly after she had left home, her sister followed Kate’s example and went off with a prospector named Wilson. Their daughter Mary was now five years old. Tagish Charley had also married and had a daughter named Susy.

The campfire burned late that night as the three men recounted their respective experiences since they had gone their separate ways. Jim rolled up his sleeves and pointed to the scars on his arms, the result of a face-to-face encounter with a big brown bear. Spotting the brownie on the beach near Dyea, he had gone after him. The bear spotted Jim, growled and charged. Jim fired his rifle. The bear kept coming. Jim emptied his rifle, then shoved the barrel down the bear’s throat. After making several swipes at Jim, the wounded bear suddenly collapsed and rolled over on its back. Jim had hoisted a rock the size of a water bucket, and dropped it on the bear’s head, ending the fight.

Although Jim and Charley had occasionally prospected for gold after Carmack left them, they found nothing more than a rare flash of colors in the pan. Their fall hunts for caribou were disappointing and even catches from the winter traplines had fallen off. Bad luck seemed to have followed them ever since Carmack’s departure, so they consulted the shaman at Tagish. He advised them to rejoin their old prospecting companion if they wished to be rid of the evil spirits.

When Carmack told his friends about his dream of golden salmon swimming in blue-green water, they were easily persuaded to join him on a prospecting trip up the Klondike valley. Jim wanted to start out the next morning.

“I’m anxious to start up the Klondike,” Carmack said. “That’s why I came here. But first, I want to lay in a good supply of salmon for the winter. After the salmon come, then we’ll go prospecting.”

“Maybe salmon no come. You got chickamin [gold] buy grub?”

“I got no chickamin,” Carmack said, shaking his head. “If the fish don’t come, we’ll do something to get chickamin. Listen. On your way down here, did you see Joe Ladue’s sawmill at Ogilvie?”

“Yes.”

“There’s another sawmill at Fortymile. They buy logs. We’ll cut down some big trees, raft the logs down to Fortymile. We sell logs, buy grub, go prospecting.”

“No big trees this place.”

“Listen. Lou Cooper has a quartz claim over there,” Carmack said, pointing to the opposite side of the Yukon. “Lou says there are lots of big spruce trees up the Klondike. That’s where we’ll get logs and that’s where we’ll start prospecting.”

“When do we get logs?”

“After the salmon run is over.”

A few evenings later, just after Carmack and his companions had finished their supper, a small, heavily loaded boat with a single occupant pulled up to the beach. Carmack recognized the tall, slender man with the half-moon mustache as Bob Henderson, a prospector. They had met at Carmack’s trading post in 1894, when Henderson boated down the Yukon for the first time. When Carmack walked down the beach to meet the visitor, Jim and Charley followed.

“Hello, Bob,” Carmack said, speaking in his usual slow, deliberate manner. “I heard at Fortymile that you were working for Billy Redford up on Quartz Creek. You still there?”

“No, George. I left Redford a long time ago. Went over the divide to a little creek on the other side of the Dome. I’ve got a good prospect going there-named the creek Gold Bottom.”

“Where you headed for now?”

“Back to Gold Bottom. I’ve been up to Joe Ladue’s trading post at Ogilvie. Came down from Gold Bottom by way of the Indian River, but the water there is so low I can’t go back that way. I’ll have to take the long way around, to where Gold Bottom empties into the Klondike.”

“Is your prospect any good?”

Henderson shrugged. “I’ve got three fellows working with me and when we get down to bedrock I’ll know just how good it is.”

“Any chance for us to stake up there?” asked Carmack.

Henderson looked at Jim and Charley before replying.

“There is for you, George. But I don’t want any damn Siwashes staking on Gold Bottom.”

“Carmack’s blue eyes widened in disbelief at the callousness of Henderson’s remark. Jim’s dark face flushed. He clenched his hands as he glared at Henderson. Charley curled his lip and kicked at the beach sand. After a long tense silence, Henderson pushed his boat into the water and started up the Klondike. In the days ahead he would have reason to regret his bigotry.

“What’s matta dat white man?” asked Jim as the three men walked back to their camp. “Him killet Inchen moose, Inchen caribou, ketchet gold Inchen country, no liket Inchen stake claim, what for, no good.”

“Never mind,” Carmack said. “We’ll find a creek of our own, and we’ll all stake on it, you and me and Charley. Listen. I think the salmon run is about over. Let’s go up the Klondike tomorrow and start looking around for big trees.”

Leaving Kate behind to take care of Graphie and the gillnet, Jim, Charley, Patsy and Carmack started up the Klondike valley. About five miles upstream they found the first of several stands of spruce trees big enough for saw logs.

On their first day of logging, the four men felled and trimmed five trees, then struggled to roll the heavy logs through tangled underbrush to the water. Carmack realized how impossible his logging venture would have been without the help of his Tagish friends. By the second day they were cutting down only trees within a tree-length of the river, and the work went faster. Ten days later, Carmack took out his measuring tape and scaled 50 logs they had cut. At $25 per thousand board feet, the wood would sell for about $200, enough to pay for a sizable supply of food for the winter.

“Now we prospect?”

“Tomorrow,” Carmack said, smiling at Jim’s impatience. “We’ll prospect every creek we run across.” What he did not tell Jim was that he planned to strike out for the Dome, the highest mountain in the area, and look for Henderson’s camp.

After an early breakfast, Carmack peeked at his sleeping daughter, and leaned over to kiss her. One of the first words Graphie had learned to way was “Pot,” a word that soon became her father’s pet name for her.

“Don’t let little Pot play near the river,” he told Kate. “We’ll be back in a week or so. Then we’ll take the logs downriver and get some grub.”

Carmack, Jim and Charley loaded their prospecting equipment and supplies into their boat and began poling the boat up the Klondike. Patsy remained at the fish camp with Kate to look after the gill-net.

The prospectors had traveled upstream only a few miles when they came to a quiet backwater slough, where they pulled the boat out of the water. With Carmack in the lead, they set off through the woods, each man carrying a light pack, Jim armed with the same rifle he had used in his battle with the big brownie. After thrashing around in the dew-laden underbrush for an hour, they came out of the timber to a small creek.

Directly in front of them was a gravel bar sprinkled with tiny pieces of white quartz. Carmack slipped off his pack and reached for his gold pan. He filled the pan with fine gravel and sand taken from the upper part of the bar. Swishing water back and forth, he panned down to a fistful of sand.

Charley rushed over to look.

“What for you talket dat cultus [worthless] wawa [words]? I no seeum gold.”

“Charley, I’m making Boston man’s medicine. Spit in the pan for good luck; you too, Jim.”

Both men complied. Carmack continued panning until only a spoonful of black sand remained in the pan. He scooped up a little more water, gently swirling it around until a streak of bright yellow gold appeared. The gold dust was fine but heavy, easy to save in the pan. Carmack wondered what kind of showing he would get if he could find exposed bedrock farther up the creek.

Once again the three men hoisted their packs and continued their hike up the creek valley. After traveling for more than an hour, they sat down to rest on top of a steep bank. Digging into the bank near its base, Carmack uncovered a pocket of soft, crumbling rock. He tossed a shovelful into his pan and quickly panned it down. In the residue, he found a good showing of fine gold and two pieces of coarse gold about the size of grains of rice.

“Hey, looky here,” Carmack said. “Coarse gold.”

“Now we stake,” declared Jim.

Carmack shook his head.

“We don’t know what’s upstream yet. Let’s keep going and looking for bedrock in the creek. If we don’t find anything better, we can always come back here.”

Jim and Charley agreed and they tramped on for another hour or so before making camp.

The next morning Carmack and his partners continued working their way up the creek, panning here and there, getting a little flour gold in nearly every pan, but no coarse gold. Coming to a fork in the creek, they paused briefly before deciding to follow the larger branch. The stream they passed over, later named Eldorado Creek, would turn out to be the richest gold-bearing creek in the Yukon.

A little farther upstream, they came to a pile of rotting, half-burned logs, the remains of an old campfire. Although Carmack was not aware of it at the time, Joe Ladue had camped on this spot while hunting moose many years before.

Following the dim trails made by wandering game, the three prospectors followed the creek to its source, then climbed to the top of a ridge to look around. Carmack pointed to a bald, round-topped mountain known as the Dome. They headed toward it, pushing their way through heavy underbrush and thickets of thorny devil’s club that stabbed them as they brushed by. While going through a patch of huckleberries, Jim spotted a small black bear sitting on his haunches. Leveling his Winchester .44 over Carmack’s shoulder, he fired, killing the bear instantly. The men skinned it out, cut up the meat, cached it in a birch tree and continued their climb to the top.

It was worth the hike. A rocky promontory offered a panoramic view of broad valleys below, bathed in brilliant sunshine. The blended colors of crimson and purple and emerald green along the creek valleys reminded Carmack of a fancy tapestry he had seen in a San Francisco store many years ago. A fringe of huckleberry and salmonberry bushes marked the timberline on the ridges that fingered out from the Dome in many directions. To the north, a wispy column of blue smoke drifted upward from a small canyon.

“Henderson’s camp. Let’s go see what he’s got,” Carmack said.

“No liket,” said Jim. “What for tellet that cultus white man we ketchet gold” dis man no liket Inchen staket claim. We no go.”

“Aw, come on Jim. Maybe his prospect is better than ours.”

After a little more coaxing, Jim agreed to go. The three men descended the brushy canyon leading to Henderson’s camp.

“Hello, George,” Henderson said. “You found us, eh?”

“Well, yes, although it was accidental. We found a good prospect on a creek over on the other side of the Dome. Saw your camp from the Dome, so we decided to come down here and tell you about it.”

Henderson took Carmack to the open cut where Frank Swanson, Al Dalton and Charley Monson, Henderson’s partners, were digging down to bedrock. Carmack asked for permission to try a few pans; Henderson assented. Panning samples taken from both the open cut and along the edge of Gold Bottom Creek, Carmack found only a modest showing of colors in the pan. At Henderson’s insistence, Carmack staked a claim downstream from Henderson’s, but he declined to stay and work it.

“Bob, take a look at what I found on that creek of ours,” Carmack said, displaying the two bits of gold he was carrying in an empty cartridge. “You better come have a look.”

Henderson shook his head.

“I’m staying here until we get down to bedrock.”

“Suit yourself. You recorded yet?”

“Hell, no. That can wait.”

Carmack and his two partners were almost out of tobacco. Noticing that Henderson had an ample supply, Jim tried to buy some, but Henderson curtly refused him. When Jim began mumbling in Tagish, Carmack put an end to further conversation.

“Well, we’d better start back. We got a long ways to go.”

According to Carmack’s estimate, Henderson’s camp was about 15 miles from the spot where the trio had found gold-30 miles above their fish camp at the mouth of the Klondike.

Camping overnight as they went, the Carmack party followed Gold Bottom Creek up to its head on the Dome, then took a shortcut that passed though a swampy area. Mosquitoes and gnats pestered them, and mud sucked at their heels as they struggled to keep their footing in the swamp. After reaching the ridges again, following their previous trail, they found their bear-meat cache without difficulty. Then they followed the ridge-top route until they caught sight of their creek, the one where they had found the bits of coarse gold. They followed the creek down to the fork they had bypassed earlier.

Carmack walked up Eldorado Creek and tried a few pans. He found ruby and black sand in the pan, nothing more. The three worked their way downstream from the fork, staying close to the creek and panning frequently. Now, fine gold was showing up in every pan. About half a mile below the fork, the creek made a sharp turn to the north, and the men climbed the steep bank ahead of them. Carmack looked down at the creek, 50 feet away. A long, narrow strip of black bedrock showed along its bed.

“Bedrock,” he shouted. “If this creek is any good at all, we’ll find gold down there.”

Carmack slipped off his pack and scrambled down the bank to the creek. There was something shiny in the shallow water lowing over the rim of the bedrock. He reached down and picked up a gold nugget the size and shape of a wrinkled dime. Placing the nugget between his teeth, he bit it. The nugget bent, and stayed bent. Gold! Carmack held the nugget high in the air and shouted to his companions on the bank.

“Hiyu gold! Bring pan and shovel. Hurry!”

Charley grabbed the pan and shovel, sliding down the bank so fast that he tripped and fell. Carmack caught him before he rolled into the water. Turning over a flat piece of rock with the shovel, Carmack saw flakes of gold lodged in the crevice. He scooped up a shovelful of crumbling bedrock and tossed it into the pan. Quickly he washed it down. It produced at least a quarter of an ounce of flaky coarse gold.

“A five-dollar pan,” yelled Carmack. “We’ve hit it-the golden paystreak!”

Jim stared at the gold. He scooped it up in his hand, then let it dribble through his fingers back into the pan. Charley stared too, slack-jawed with wonder. Carmack felt the blood pounding through his temples. Elation surged through him, overwhelming him. He threw the pan to the ground and leaped high in the air. Then he began dancing around the pan, a dance remotely related to a Scottish hornpipe, an Irish jig, and an Indian version of the hula-hula. Jim and Charley joined him, doing their own interpretations of a Tagish ceremonial dance.

Later, after Carmack washed out a few more pans and obtained enough gold to half-fill a spent shotgun shell in which he had carried matches, the happy prospectors crossed the creek and set up camp in a grove of birch trees. For several days, they had been traveling through the tangled underbrush, getting very little rest. Now they were tired and hungry, but exceedingly joyful.

After a supper of bear steaks and tea, the men sat around the campfire smoking their pipes. When the pipes went out, the Indians began chanting songs in Tagish. They sang of feasts and famine together, of hunting for caribou and moose, of journeys together over snow and ice. When the singing ended, they rolled themselves in their sleeping robes and went to sleep.

As the flames of the campfire flickered and went out, Carmack stared at the glowing coals and thought about all his years of wandering up and down the Yukon in search of the elusive gold. Eleven years of privation and hardship, packing over the Chilkook Pass, eating Indian food and wearing Indian clothing, panning on hundreds of barren river bars. All that was over, now that he had discovered a real bonanza. Bonanza! That’s what he would name this golden stream-Bonanza Creek. His boyhood dream of finding a great gold field was realized. He could see himself walking around the lawn of a beautiful home in California, Kate all dolled up in fancy clothes, waiting for little Pot to come home from school. Nothing but happy days ahead. He yawned contentedly and went to sleep.