DAWSON

Social Aspects of Dawson—Cornering the Tinned Food Market—Cheechawkos and Old-Timers in the Early Days.

AT this season of the year the inhabitants of Dawson were passing out of the chrysalis of fur caps into soiled, broad-brimmed hats resurrected from cabin-shelves; out of winter clothing generally into what remained of their last summer’s clothing. Along the thawing bog called the main street, littered and odorous from sanitary neglect, were two rows of saloons and gambling-halls, with mining-brokers’ offices and the stores of shrewd speculators in food-supplies, who always had one can of condensed milk for $2.50, one can of butter for $5, and one pound of sugar for $1.50, and assured you that they were the last in the country. To look out across the flat toward the mountains was to see scattered cabins and piles of tin cans, which at once let one into the culinary secrets of an isolated community composed largely of men. At the restaurants, bacon and beans and coffee cost $2.50.

For a time in the winter in fear of famine the well-to-do hoarded food as they hoard gold in a financial panic, and the restaurants were closed because supplies were not procurable at prices that made catering profitable. Then, a fifty-pound sack of flour sold for as high as $100; but at the approach of spring the little capitalists who had planned to sell their “corners” at great profit were glad enough to dispose of such surplus as they had beyond their own needs at a loss. To them the departure of hundreds of mouths which otherwise would have been fed out of Dawson’s granary was as great a disappointment as a report that Hungary’s wheat crop would greatly exceed expectations is to the bulls on the Chicago Exchange. All of the luxuries and many of the necessities of life were scarce; but, withal, there was quite enough of bacon, beans, and flour to have satisfied the appetites of the whole community for a month after supplies arrived. According to the philosophy of the old-timers, there is never any danger of a man’s starving as long as he will look ahead a little. So easy is it to sleep and so little does one eat when one is not working that he can live on a pound of food a day, if need be, and take the remainder of his nourishment in slumber. On the other hand, vigorous labor in winter demands at least three pounds a day, and it is upon this basis that estimates have always been made in the valley of the Yukon.

With a tiny can of cocoa, which I pounced upon in a store as if it were an Elzevir in a junk-heap, and a few staples bought at extravagant prices, we were able to prepare a superior meal in the cabin that I had leased. But this was not until we had slept gloriously for sixteen hours. There remained the problem of a bath, which was serious, as the one bath-house in Dawson was closed for repairs. I solved it legitimately, if uncomfortably, in the wooden tub which was lent to me by a neighbor.

The saloons had only a substitute for whiskey, of home manufacture. The dance-halls were not open. All the men whose dust and presence would make the camp lively were at the mines—or “up the creeks,” as the saying goes in Dawson—preparing for the “clean-up.”

In winter and in summer the trail leads up the Klondyke to the mouth of Bonanza, three miles from Dawson, and thence up Bonanza to the working-claims, about three miles farther on. In the spring, when the currents are swollen, you must go over a high mountain by a path in the soft snow. If you have a pack, this is hard work. On the way I met a blue-faced old fellow—by his look if not by his limp he had the scurvy—who promptly put me in my proper social status.

“Are ye a Cheechawko?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“Well, then, ye are, and the river must ’a’ broke. Any man’s a Cheechawko until he’s been in the country when the ice goes out. In the old days we could lick the Cheechawkos into shape; larn ’em to leave their latch-strings out fur a passin’ stranger when they was away from hum, and larn ’em to eat what they wanted and to use the best blanket in a cabin, but to lug nothin’ away. Fifty thousand of ’em, they say—clerks and farmers and dudes. They’re too many fur us. Civilization’s here, and it’s a case of locking up yer dust after this. But, young man, ye can’t be an old-timer, never! Ye can’t be an old-timer, ’less ye’ve lived in the camps in the old days when a man was a man and his neighbor’s brother.”

And without giving me time to reply to his little lecture, he hobbled on toward the hospital.

Cheechawko is the Indian word for stranger, or, more literally, tenderfoot, which has come into general use in the Klondyke; and toward the Cheechawko, bringing in the more penurious ways of the outside world, along with ignorance of mining, the old-timer feels a genuine resentment. I was glad of the opportunity to see the veterans ere the recruits had arrived.

IV