Alaska Highway

Km 1243.8 - Teslin Lake

Before the construction of the Alaska Highway, Yukon first nations lived a very traditional life and were successful hunters and trappers. One of the most prominent families in this area was the Johnstons, who were descended from the original Taku River chief Kowakha.

George Johnston, a son of Kowakha, earned enough money one winter to buy a car and have it transported by barge to Teslin. This was 1928, nearly 15 years before the Alaska Highway was built. Johnston cut his own road 6 kilometres (4 miles) along the lakeshore to Fox Creek, complete with culverts and short-span pole bridges. He ran a "taxi " service along this road in the summer and used the Chevrolet sedan - after painting it white - to hunt wolves on the lake ice in winter. Johnston also ran a successful general store in Teslin and is known for his photographs of the community from 1910 - 1940.

Engineers surveying the route for the Alaska Highway in 1941 followed Johnston's road. In the spring of 1942, a large construction camp was established at Brook's Brook (Historic Mile 830/km 1328). A number of Teslin Tlingit found casual work as guides, packers and/or labourers and there was a ready market for handicrafts. For the first time, people stayed in a community over the winter instead of going out on their traplines. Epidemics of measles, whooping cough, meningitis and mumps swept through the village one after another, killing seven, most of them children.

After the highway was completed, the Teslin people spent less and less time on their traplines. Changes in trapping regulations, low fur prices and new government schools kept families in town most of the year.

Many Teslin people still hunt and trap today. The Teslin Tlingit Council is the first in the Yukon to return to a traditional clan system of government. Teslin is also home to the first Indian speaker of a Canadian legislature: Sam Johnston, another descendent of Chief Kowakha.

Teslin

Teslin Lake is one of the largest lakes in the territory, at 125 kilometres (78 miles) long and 3 kilometres (2 miles) wide. Its name and the name of the small settlement Teslin, five km (3 miles) to the south, came from the Tlingit Tes-lin-too meaning long narrow lake.

The community of Teslin (mile 804 / km 1295) sits at 2,329 feet (672 metres) above sea level. The three peaks you see to the south rise to 6,500 feet (1981 metres). These mountains, called the Dawson Peaks, actually lie in British Columbia, as does the southern third of Teslin Lake. Most of the landmarks in the area have traditional Tlingit Indian names.

The Inland Tlingit people have fished and hunted in the region for countless years. Long before the Alaska Highway was built in 1942, Teslin Lake was an important stop for both overland and water travellers. People journeyed overland by trails that led to the Taku and Stikine rivers on the coast of Alaska as well as to Atlin Lake and Carcross. During the Klondike Gold Rush, paddle-wheel steamers plied Teslin Lake and the Yukon River transporting goods and people between Whitehorse and Teslin. The steamers were pulled out of the water in the 1940's when the highway replaced river traffic.

Native Traditions

Long before the first outsiders appeared, the Indian people of this area were trading with the coastal Tlingit Indians for Russian and European trade goods. The coastal Tlingit travelled inland from the Taku River area near Juneau, Alaska, with guns, axes, tobacco, blankets, calico and matches.

They also brought wooden boxes, baskets, seaweed and eulachon oil, which they traded for inland furs. Sometimes they stayed through the winter to trap.

Eventually a group of Tlingit permanently moved inland. They spent most of the year trapping and hunting around Teslin Lake and travelled to the coast only to trade. These "Inland Tlingit", like their Athapaskan neighbours to the north, followed the seasonal migration of whatever fish or game was available. In spring they trapped beaver and hunted waterfowl around the Nisutlin River delta. In summer they would travel up the Nisutlin River to trap salmon. In late August, families went into the mountains to hunt caribou, sheep, moose and gophers. Winter was the trapping season. By February families were moving again, looking for good ice-fishing lakes and fresh meat. The Teslin people trapped and hunted from Wolf Lake east to the headwaters of the Liard, north to the central Yukon, halfway down the Teslin River and south to Johnston Town.

The Naming of Fox Point - Naagas ei Xaayi. As related by a Teslin elder.

Many years ago some women wanted to come up to their salmon cache at Crowknife up the Nisutlin River. They camped along the lakeshore at the mouth of Teslin River. There was a woman Indian doctor living there also and she had a vision that something bad would happen if they went to this cache and she told them that they shouldn't but they went. So she went along with them and her grandchild was with her. She told them they would see three signs and that these were bad luck. The first sign they saw was a wolverine coming across the lake and it was dancing. They kept on going then they saw lynx coming across and it was also dancing. They still kept on going and the last sign they saw was a fox dancing across the lake and she told them this last sign was really bad and that they should turn back but they wouldn't listen. So she told her grandchild no matter what happens you hang onto my belt and never let go.

That night they camped under the cache and she told them to be ready all the time and to dry out their clothes good. In the morning someone went to pack water and they saw a war party coming and she hollered to warn the rest of the women but they were not ready and the woman took her grandchild and went around the people. She came onto their trail and followed it. She could hear the people fighting. She came to below present village and she hollered twice and a big northwind came up and covered their tracks. The war party followed her tracks to where the northwind came up but couldn't follow her from there.

She went back and told the people what happened and they got ready to fight back. They started back up this way The war party was camped where the present graveyard is. They surrounded them right there and killed them all off. That's where Fox Point got its name from.

Early History

The traditional Tlingit trading trails from the Alaskan coast to Teslin Lake were considered good alternative routes to the Klondike gold fields because they avoided U.S. customs. In 1897 railway engineers surveyed the route from Glenora, at the headwaters of the Stikine River, to Teslin Lake, and a year later they began to build. A political change of heart halted construction after only 20 miles of grade had been completed, but hundreds of gold seekers and a Canadian army contingent, the Yukon Field Force, still used the route.

The Field Force was a 200-man contingent of troops sent north to assist the North-west Mounted Police and assert Canadian sovereignty in a largely American gold rush. The most difficult part of their journey was the trail from Glenora to the north end of Teslin Lake - 150 miles through rough terrain alternating from heavy brush to melting muskeg. It took one month for the force, its packhorses and 100 tons of supplies to cover the same distance that Indian packers traditionally travelled in less than a week.

The Hudson's Bay Company (H.B.Co) had established a trading post on Teslin Lake in 1898 and a small settlement called Galbraith (or Galbraith's Post) grew up around it. The Canadian Development Company (CDC) ran a sawmill and shipyard nearby. The CDC completed a small steamer called the Anglian in July 1898 in time to carry part of the Field Force to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River. The rest of the force sailed homemade scows and boats down Teslin Lake and down the Teslin and Yukon rivers to Fort Selkirk.

The H.B.Co post closed after the brief gold rush boom but a second trading post was build in 1903 near Nisutlin Bay at the present site of the town of Teslin. The Inland Tlingit continued to trap and hunt, ranging over a large area of land, but the new settlement of Teslin became their summer headquarters.

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