Dawson Charlie or K̲áa Goox̱ ʰáː kuːχ( – 26 December 1908) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

Tagish The Tagish or Tagish Khwáan (Tagish language, Tagish: ; tli, Taagish ḵwáan) are a First Nations in Canada, First Nations people of the Athabaskan languages, Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group that lived around Tagish Lake and Marsh ...

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

First Nation Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

person and one of the co-discoverers of gold at

Discovery Claim Discovery Claim is a mining claim at Bonanza Creek, a watercourse in the Yukon, Canada. It is the site where, in the afternoon of August 16, 1896, the first piece of gold was found in the Yukon by prospectors. The site is considered to be th ...

that led to the Klondike Gold Rush located in the

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

territory of Northwest

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. He was the nephew of

Keish Keish ( – July 11, 1916), also known as James Mason and by the nickname Skookum Jim Mason, was a member of the Tagish First Nation in what became the Yukon Territory of Canada. He was born near Bennett Lake on what is now the British Colu ...

, also known as Jim Mason, and accompanied him on his search for his aunt,

Kate Carmack Shaaw Tláa, also known as Kate Carmack ( – 29 March 1920), was a Tagish First Nation woman who was one of the party that first found gold in the Klondike River in 1896, and is sometimes credited with being the person who made the actual di ...

. He staked one of the first three claims in the Klondike, along with his uncle and

George Carmack George Washington Carmack (September 24, 1860 – June 5, 1922) was an American prospector in the Yukon. He was originally credited with registering Discovery Claim, the discovery of gold that set off the Klondike Gold Rush on August 16, 1896. ...

. Storyteller

Angela Sidney Angela Sidney, (January 4, 1902 – July 17, 1991) was a Tagish storyteller. She co-authored two narratives of traditional Tagish legends and a historical document of Tagish place names for southern Yukon. For her linguistics and ethnograph ...

was a niece. By 1901, Charlie had adopted the

legal name A legal name is the name that identifies a person for legal, administrative and other official purposes. A person's legal birth name generally is the name of the person that was given for the purpose of registration of the birth and which then ap ...

of "Charles Henderson." There is a conflict as to Charlie's year of birth, between the information that Charlie provided during the 1901 census and the information on his tombstone. The census indicates 1864 or 1865 as his year of birth. The tombstone indicates 1866 as his year of birth. (Dec. 8, 2013). He died in

Carcross Carcross, originally known as Caribou Crossing, ( tli, Nadashaa Héeni) is an unincorporated community in Yukon, Canada, on Bennett Lake and Nares Lake. It is home to the Carcross/Tagish First Nation. It is south-southeast by the Alaska Highway ...

, Yukon, when he fell off the

White Pass and Yukon Route The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railr ...

railway bridge.

References

External links

Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''
1860s births 1908 deaths 19th-century First Nations people 20th-century First Nations people Accidental deaths from falls Accidental deaths in Yukon Canadian gold prospectors People of the Klondike Gold Rush People from Carcross, Yukon Tagish people Tlingit people {{Canada-bio-stub