Tagish Charlie
Canadian (Tagish/Tlingit First Nation)
1865 – 1908
Tagish Charlie (Káa Goox, also called Dawson Charlie) was a Tagish–Tlingit First Nation prospector who co-discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in August 1896 with Skookum Jim and George Carmack, staking one of the first three claims of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Biography
Káa Goox, known to stampeders as Tagish Charlie and later as Dawson Charlie, was born around 1865 in the Tagish country of what is now the southern Yukon; records conflict, with the 1901 census suggesting 1864–65 and his tombstone giving 1866. He was a nephew of Keish (Skookum Jim Mason), and in 1896 he joined Jim's expedition down the Yukon River in search of their relative Kate Carmack and her husband George.
On August 16, 1896, Charlie was with Skookum Jim and George Carmack on Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River, when the party found the gold that launched the Klondike Gold Rush. He staked one of the first three claims on what was quickly renamed Bonanza Creek, and the ground made him a wealthy man. In 1901 he adopted the legal name Charles Henderson, and he was one of very few First Nations people of his era to be granted the full legal rights of a Canadian citizen, exempting him from the restrictions of the Indian Act.
Charlie sold his mining interests and settled in Carcross, where he owned and operated a hotel. He died on December 26, 1908, when he fell from the White Pass and Yukon Route railway bridge at Carcross. With Skookum Jim and Kate Carmack, he is remembered as one of the Indigenous co-discoverers whose find reshaped the Yukon.