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The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The river's source is in British Columbia, Canada, from which it flows through the Canadian Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is 3,190 kilometres (1,980 mi) long and empties into the Bering Sea at the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta. The average flow is 6,430 m3/s (227,000 ft3/s). The total drainage area is 832,700 km2 (321,500 mi2), of which 323,800 km2 (126,300 mi2) is in Canada. The total area is more than 25% larger than Texas or Alberta.
Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area is a census area in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 5,588. It has the largest area of any county or county-equivalent in the United States. It is part of the unorganized borough of Alaska and therefore has no borough seat. Its largest communities are the cities of Galena, in the west, and Fort Yukon, in the northeast.
Fort Yukon is a city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. The population, predominately Gwich'in Alaska Natives, was 583 at the 2010 census, down from 595 in 2000.
The Gwichʼin language belongs to the Athabaskan language family and is spoken by the Gwich'in First Nation (Canada) / Alaska Native People. It is also known in older or dialect-specific publications as Kutchin, Takudh, Tukudh, or Loucheux. Gwich'in is spoken primarily in the towns of Inuvik, Aklavik, Fort McPherson, and Tsiigehtchic, all in the Northwest Territories and Old Crow in Yukon of Canada. In Alaska of the United States, Gwichʼin is spoken in Beaver, Circle, Fort Yukon, Chalkyitsik, Birch Creek, Arctic Village, Eagle, and Venetie.
Alexander Hunter Murray was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trader and artist.
Robert Campbell was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trader and explorer. He explored a large part of the southern Yukon and northern British Columbia. He established the short-lived Dease Lake Post, and in 1838 he was the first European to reach the Stikine River overland. He established Fort Frances, Yukon on Frances Lake in the Liard River basin. In 1840 he crossed from Frances Lake to the Pelly River becoming the first European to explore the upper Yukon River Basin. He established Fort Selkirk, Yukon, at the juncture of the Yukon River and the Pelly River.
John McLeod was a Scottish-born explorer of Canada, in his capacity as a fur trader with the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company. He is remembered primarily for his explorations of several major rivers of the southwestern Northwest Territories, southern Yukon Territory, and northern British Columbia.
The North West Company is a multinational Canadian grocery and retail company which operates stores in Canada's western provinces and northern territories, as well as the US states of Alaska, Hawaii, and several other countries and US territories in Oceania and the Caribbean.
Fort Selkirk is a former trading post on the Yukon River at the confluence of the Pelly River in Canada's Yukon. For many years it was home to the Selkirk First Nation.
The Hän, Han or Hwëch'in / Han Hwech’in are a First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the United States; they are part of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. Their traditional lands centered on a heavily forested area around the Upper Yukon River, Klondike River (Tr'on'Dëk), Bonanza Creek and Sixtymile River and straddling what is now the Alaska-Yukon Territory border. In later times, the Han population became centered in Dawson City, Yukon and Eagle, Alaska.
John Fredson, was a tribal leader born near Table Mountain in the Sheenjek River watershed of the state of Alaska, United States. He is most noted for gaining federal recognition for the Venetie Indian Reserve in 1941, then the largest reservation in Alaska, and containing approximately 1.4 million acres (5,700 km²). This was before Alaska was admitted as a state.
Yukon is one of Canada's three territories in the country's extreme northwest. Its history of human habitation dates back to the Ice Age, and the original inhabitants are believed to have arrived over 20,000 years ago by migrating over the land bridge from Asia. In the 18th century, Russian explorers began trade with the First Nations people along the Alaskan coast, beginning the establishment of trade relations throughout the region. The famous Klondike Gold Rush began after gold was discovered near Dawson City in 1896. As a result of the influx of people looking for gold, it was made a separate territory in 1898, split off from the Northwest Territories. The second major event in the Yukon's history is the construction of the Alaska Highway during the Second World War, for the transportation of war supplies. Eventually Whitehorse became the largest city in the Yukon, and then the capital in 1953.
Broken Slavey was a trade language used between Native Americans and whites in the Yukon area in the 19th century.
Fort Stikine was a fur trade post and fortification in what is now the Alaska Panhandle, at the site of the present-day of Wrangell, Alaska, United States. Originally built as the Redoubt San Dionisio or Redoubt Saint Dionysius in 1834, the site was transferred to the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company as part of a lease signed in the region in 1838, and renamed Fort Stikine when turned into a Hudson's Bay Company post in 1839. The post was closed and decommissioned by 1843 but the name remained for the large village of the Stikine people which had grown around it, becoming known as Shakesville in reference to its ruling Chief Shakes by the 1860s. With the Alaska Purchase of 1867, the fortification became occupied by the US Army and was renamed Fort Wrangel, a reference to Baron von Wrangel, who had been Governor of Russian America when the fort was founded. The site today is now part of the city of Wrangell.
Fort Reliance is an abandoned trading post in the Yukon Territory of Canada. It stands on the east bank of the Yukon River, 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) downstream of the town of Dawson City. The fort was established in 1874 by François Mercier, Jack McQuesten, and Francis Barnfield for the Alaska Commercial Company to serve as a trading post.
Gwichyaa Gwichʼin are a Gwich'in people who live in the Yukon Flats area of Alaska, USA. This includes the Fort Yukon area on both banks of the Yukon River from Birch Creek to Porcupine River;" the Senati 65.266°N 151.183°W area of the middle Yukon River, the namesake of Sahneuti, Gwich'in chief and fur trader; and Venetie.
Robert McDonald was an Anglican missionary among First Nation peoples in Canada, particularly in the northwest Arctic.
Arthur Harper (1835–1897) was an Irish-born Yukon River prospector, trader, and explorer, recognized as the first man to enter the Yukon country seeking gold. He mined in California in the 1850s, and British Columbia through the 1860s, before taking off for the Yukon in 1871. He reached Fort Yukon in 1873, and ran a store with Jack McQuesten at the Fortymile River. Harper formed a trading partnership with McQuesten and Captain Al Mayo; their company founded Fort Reliance in 1874 and other posts in the Yukon. Harper was known as the best prospector of the trio, and while he did not achieve major success in his pursuit of gold, he sometimes pointed others to finds. He traded and prospected in Alaska until just before his death.
Athabaskan fiddle is the old-time fiddle style that the Alaskan Athabaskans of the Interior Alaska have developed to play the fiddle (violin), solo and in folk ensembles. Fiddles were introduced in this area by Scottish, Irish, French Canadian, and Métis fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company in the mid-19th century. Athabaskan fiddling is a variant of fiddling of the American southlands. Athabaskan fiddle music is most popular genre in Alaska and northwest Canada and featuring Gwich'in Bill Stevens and Trimble Gilbert.
References
- 1 2 Bright, William (2004). Native American placenames of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 431. ISBN 0-8061-3598-0.
