In the summer of 1897, two groups of men arrived at Fort Yukon, which was located at the confluence of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. They had followed a route long used by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) to transport trade goods to this post at the most extreme western limits of the HBC empire. After 1867, when the United States purchased the right to claim this territory from Russia, Fort Yukon was no longer in HBC hands.
In one party was an Irishman named Arthur Harper. In the second group were two others named Jack McQuesten and Al Mayo. They came in search of gold which was rumoured to be found in this region of the Yukon watershed. For them, the elusive yellow metal would shape their future, but it would not define them. Instead, they had to make a living in the fur trade.
For the next two and a half decades, they would foster the search for gold by others. The most influential of them all was Jack McQuesten. McQuesten was said to have been born in Litchfield, N.H., in 1836. He was drawn west with his family by the California gold rush, and eventually went to British Columbia. He prospected and mined on the Fraser River in 1863, and then joined a stampede to the placer field of the Finlay River. Over the next decade, he was involved in the fur trade, part of this time being in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
McQuesten was the more dedicated trader, and from the beginning, his wanderings in search of gold were much less frequent or intense than those of Harper. Harper unsuccessfully tested the gravels of most of the creeks that later produced gold for others. Consequently, he became known as “Hard Luck Harper.” McQuesten was to be known by a different moniker. Both men, however, can be credited in large part for opening the Yukon for exploration by other gold-seekers.
For the first decade, they traded for furs, but after the Chilkoot Pass was opened to white men, a growing stream of prospectors entered the Yukon. They spread out along the bars of the Yukon River and its many tributaries. By 1884, Harper and McQuesten decided to shift their commerce to the prospectors, and brought in 50 tons of miner’s supplies to their trading post at Fort Reliance, located six miles downstream from present-day Dawson City.
In 1886, Harper and McQuesten shifted their trading operation to the mouth of the Stewart River, which, at the time, was drawing considerable attention from the prospectors. But that did not last for long. In the same year, the first course gold was found along the Fortymile River (so named because its mouth was that distance below Fort Reliance).
In 1887, Harper and McQuesten quickly shifted their trading operation to the mouth of the Fortymile River, where the log cabin town of Forty Mile grew up. McQuesten became well-known for extending liberal credit to the prospectors, reasoning that he would be rewarded when they found rich deposits, like those found in California, Barkerville, and other placers along the spine of the Rocky Mountains.
The grubstake credit system of the early traders made sense. Only when gold was found would it be possible for the traders to make any kind of profit. It was to their benefit, therefore, to have as many prospectors searching for gold as possible. This system increased the chances for making a big discovery. The supplies were distributed to the pool of prospectors to ensure that each had enough to allow them to continue their quest.
Jack McQuesten was a soft touch, who always gave a miner his grubstake. The story that follows reveals how tolerant McQuesten was with his business accounts. William Ogilvie once witnessed a strange exchange between McQuesten and a miner:
“A miner who had got an outfit on credit, to be paid for at the next clean-up, came in to see Jack, intending, no doubt, to do the ‘square thing;’ saw him, and after the usual ‘howdy’s’ and ‘ho’s,’ asked Jack how much he owed. Examination showed the balance to be slightly over seven hundred dollars. The information surprised the debtor into the exclamation.
“Seven hundred! Hell, Jack, I’ve only got five hundred, how’m I goin’ to pay seven hundred with five?”
“Oh, that’s all right, give us your five hundred, and we’ll credit you and let the rest stand until next clean-up.”
“But, Jack, I want more stuff. How’m I goin to get that?”
“Why, we’ll let you have it as we did before.”
“But, damn it, Jack, I haven’t had a spree yet.”
“Well, go have your little spree, come back with what is left, and we’ll credit you with it and go on as before.”
“Alas for human frailty, when he came from his spree, nothing was left, and kindly Jack let him have another outfit, increasing the indebtedness to about twelve hundred, to be paid for next clean-up, and so ad infinitum.”
McQuesten and his partners maintained control of the trade until the establishment of a competing trading post by John J. Healy and the North American Transportation and Trading Company at Forty Mile in 1893. In contrast to McQuesten, Healy supplied a wider range of goods at lower prices, but also imposed a hard-fisted policy of prompt payment for his services. Consequently, the miners hated Healy and his company.
In 1894, the first Mounted Police arrived at Forty Mile, signalling the beginning of Canadian government control into an area which had previously been borderless. This, combined with the growing prominence of the gold placers around Circle City, downstream in Alaska, prompted McQuesten to shift his base of operations there. It is said that everybody in Circle had an entry in Jack McQuesten’s ledgers. His was clearly the pre-eminent business in Circle.
It was McQuesten who became the prevailing business model for the commerce in the Yukon valley, rather than the traditional capitalist system that prevailed outside. According to Peter Trout, writing in the Nome Nugget some years after the Gold Rush, “It is well known that kindness, generosity and whole-heartedness are not usually considered to be qualities that are conducive to success in business… The amount of esteem and respect they [prospectors and miners] all had for him cannot well be expressed in words, and even now any old-timers of Circle will resent as he would, a personal insult, any insinuation against Jack.”
Trout went further and said this: “We often hear much said about the worth of a good example, but I do not know where we can go to find the worth of a good example better illustrated than in the career of Jack McQuesten. He trusted the miners with the result that the miners trusted one another. He had faith in the miners and I believe that on this account the miners had faith in each other. And the confidence that they had in each other is most delightful to contemplate, as they seemed anxious to outdo each other in acts of kindness and generosity… I believed then and I still believe now that the good example set by Jack McQuesten contributed more to bringing about this condition than anything else. They might have been like this under any circumstances, but it is hard for me to believe that if Jack McQuesten had been such a man as J.J. Healy that the same condition would prevail; on the contrary I firmly believe they would have not.”
130 years ago, on December 1, 1894, a group of miners gathered in George Snow’s theatre in Forty Mile and formed the Yukon Order of Pioneers. The order was inspired by McQuesten’s spirit and example; its aim was “to provide for the mutual protection and benefit of its members, and to prove to the outside world that the Yukon Order of Pioneers are men of Truth, Honor and Integrity.” Its motto was brief and simple; “Do as you would be done by.” Jack McQuesten was elected the first president of the Order, and it is no small tribute that he became known as “The King of the Yukon,”, the Father of Alaska,” and “The Father of the Yukon.”
Michael Gates was the Yukon’s first Story Laureate from 2020 to 2023. His latest book, “Hollywood in the Klondike,” is now available in Whitehorse stores. You can contact him at msgates@northwestel.net