Cheechakos, Sourdoughs and Soiled Doves: Men, Women, and Community in a Klondike Gold Rush Boomtown 1896-1904

• Author / Creator

  Highet, Megan J.

• The research upon which this thesis is based explores the concept of ‘doing ethnography in the archives’ as a methodology to inform a case-study approach to studying the historic population of stampeders residing in and around Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. As an example of research situated within historical anthropology—a relatively novel area of expertise within the discipline—this thesis examines the nature of community in the boomtown context through the use and analysis of archival documents, thereby also contributing to the anthropological literature regarding both the study of ‘community’ as a concept and wider concerns with community studies. Working from the perspective that boomtowns differ in fundamental ways relative to more established and enduring settlements, this research explores the influence of gender and socioeconomic stratification upon men and women in remote Dawson City as they renegotiated their roles and statuses relative to one another. This particular example is unique as the Klondike represented a tabula rasa wherein the stampeders (who constituted a population of strangers arriving in a new place) were required collectively to forge both a novel community and to establish a new settlement in an unfamiliar terrain. To this end, this thesis contributes an anthropological perspective on the topic of boomtown life that proceeds from the understanding that social life is complex and multifaceted, and that models for appreciating the intricacies of human culture in the boomtown context cannot be taken for granted based on understandings of ‘outside’ communities. Residents of these communities may find, for example, that the boomtown functions as a limbo-state wherein they exist outside of the continuity of their normal lives. This is accomplished as former markers of social status are stripped away to accommodate new models of socioeconomic stratification that emerge while a shared sense of community and feelings and sentiments related to place are reconstituted among a population of migrants in an unfamiliar landscape. Further to this, it is also observed that boomtowns can be characterized as places where normal gender roles and relationships that are characteristic of wider society do not necessarily apply. This is due both to the skewed sex ratios that typically characterize boomtown communities, as well as relaxed social controls in these often remote and isolated settlements that in turn offer a range of opportunities to both men and women that are perhaps exclusive to the boomtown context. The study of community as it existed among and between men and women in the example provided by Dawson City in this thesis therefore offers a necessary foundation to the study of all other aspects of boomtown life both within and beyond the immediate context of the Klondike Gold Rush. The insight gained here can in fact be construed as providing an essential framework for structuring subsequent analyses of modern-day boomtowns in Canada and elsewhere, mostly a phenomenon of the development of extractive industries, many of which continue to struggle with social issues similar to those experienced by their historic predecessors.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Canadian North
  • Historic Anthropology
  • Dawson City
  • Boomtown
  • Klondike Gold Rush
  • Community

• Graduation date

  Spring 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3467T

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.