Káa Goox

Quick Facts

Significance:

One of the co-discoverers of gold that led to the Klondike Gold Rush

Date of Birth:

1866

Place of Death:

Carcross, Yukon Territory

Date of Death:

December 26, 1908

Cemetery Name:

Carcross Cemetery

Káa Goox, later known as Dawson Charlie, was born in the 1866 and like his uncle, Keish (Skookum Jim Mason) and aunt, Shaaw Tláa (Kate Carmack) his family was tightly linked to the trade between coastal Tlingit people and the inland Tagish.  He was born to a Tlingit father and a Tagish mother, when inter-tribal trade was at its height.

In Tagish and Tlingit culture people trace their ancestry through their mothers. Parents are required to be from different clans; the children are born from the father, but he has a lesser role in their rearing than does the mother’s brothers. Keish was Káa Goox’s uncle on his mother’s side and was probably the most important person in his nephew’s life because of their clan ties.

Brothers, also, would be responsible for their sisters because they were part of his clan not their fathers or their husbands. When Keish went searching for his two sisters to check on their welfare, Káa Goox went with him and what happened next made history.

In August 1896, on Rabbit (Bonanza) Creek, they discovered gold in the company of Keish’s brother-in-law, George Washington Carmack setting off the great Klondike Gold Rush.

More important than finding gold, to their Tagish descendants, was Keish and Káa Goox’s concern about their matrilineal family and that they had acted in a socially responsible manner by checking on them. An act necessary to ensure future generations of their clan.

As a result of his gold claim, Káa Goox became a wealthy man. After trips to San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington he returned to the Yukon and purchased the Caribou Hotel in Carcross. He married a woman named Sadusge and they had two children, a boy and a girl. Their marriage ended in a separation.

In 1908, just twelve years after gold was discovered at Bonanza Creek, Káa Goox died when he fell off a railway bridge and drowned. He was forty-two years old.

*The Coastal and Inland Tlingit and Tagish peoples have deep ties to the lands now encompassed by Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, the Skagway Historic District and White Pass National Historic Landmark, and the Dyea and Chilkoot Trail National Historic Landmark. Before, during, and after the Klondike Gold Rush the indigenous peoples on both sides of the international border have lived and continue to live off these lands.