SS2 
FOREST AND STREAM 
tApRiL 23, 1858: 
he Mmml 
Yukon. Notes —IV. 
The Dogs. 
For long journeys in the frozen Yukon country no 
animal of traction is so satisfactor3r as the dog. Horses, 
oxen, elk and goats are all used to a considerable ex- 
tent for drawing loads over the passes at the upper end 
of the trail, where bases of supplies at Dyea and Skag- 
way are handy, but the hay eaters are rarely seen at 
distances greater than thirty miles from the coast. Their 
food is so bulky that it docs not pay to carry it any dis- 
tance, and the country as yet affords no winter supply. 
The Canadian Government had some hay at the foot 
of Lake Lebarge, 180 miles from the coast, that had cost 
$1,100 a ton. Early in the winter circumstances made it 
imperative for the Mounted Police to bring through a 
large amount of supplies to this point, and horses and 
mules were used. These animals drew sleds loaded 
with the food, and \Vith them went hay for their needs 
in tiny bales of about 75lbs. each. This hay had been 
carried across Chilcoot Pass on the backs of men at a 
cost of 50 cents a pound. The original price paid for it 
in Dyea was 2^^ cents per pound, and the otiier 2y> 
cents was for incidental expenses. It may easily be seen 
how a horse could eat his head off with that haj'^, and 
it is not surprising that private individuals do not use 
horses more. People who know say that the United 
States Government just saved itself from making a bad 
break when it gave up its pack train relief expedition 
into Dawson Cit3\ Oitr Government has an excellent 
credit, and backed as it is it might have been able to get 
the expedition through, but the original plan must cer- 
tainly have been defeated. The expedition was not a 
charity, and no more was it a speculative venture, and 
it was proposed on reaching its destination to sell the 
supplies merely at cost price. This was to include the 
cost of getting the supplies in, and also the estimated 
expenses of the expedition' back to the coast. There 
are a good many millionaires down there, but the chances 
are if the enterprise had been carried out on a cost 
basis there would have been nobody in Dawson rich 
enough to buy the food. With the dogs the food ques- 
tion is simplified. They eat the same food that their 
master does, and the native breeds, sharpened in this di- 
rection by their training and wolfish ancestry, can some- 
times support themselves from the country. To the 
winter traveler in the Yukon they are all that the camel 
is to the Arab of the desert, or the reindeer to the Lap. 
Good sledge dogs always command high prices. Up 
in the Mackenzie counti'y broken dogs sell for about 
the same price that average horses bring in civilization, 
or from $25 to $100 apiece. Their breeding and train- 
ing are being carefully looked after, and owners of teams 
take great p^ride in their dogs and grow so fond of them 
that it is not uncommon for them to refuse to sell at 
any price. The difficulty of procuring dogs was one 
of the reasons why the Canadian Government tried, horses 
at a time when feed cost so much. 
Gov. Walsh sent a man to buy up dogs, and after a 
trip pretty well over the available Northwest the man 
returned without any, reporting that he couldn't find 
a dog that was a dog for any price within the bounds 
of reason. The Governor sent another agent with in-- 
structions not to come back till he had procured what he 
was sent for, and either because he wanted to get back, 
or else because he Avasn't such a connoisseur in dogs 
as the other fellow, this man soon reported with a big 
string of canines mostly picked up on the north shore of 
Lake Superior. His round-up was the laughing stock 
of every mounted policeman and dog driver on the 
Yukon, and the mongrel character of the lot was freely 
commented upon. It was even said that a poodle was 
included, and the youngest sergeant in the service told 
me that one of the dogs had been a pet in a barber shop 
in Prince Albert, where he had spent his time in laying 
on fat rather than learning to gee and haw with a dog 
team. 
There were some good dogs in the lot, however, and 
it is safe to say that the police will get out of each 
mother's son of them what there is in him; and what 
these dogs don't learn by the end of the season about 
the art of pulling the sledge on a trot, and keeping at 
it from sunrise to dark, won't amount to much. Though 
each member of the Mounted Police knows something 
about handling dogs, and many of them are expert 
drivers, Major Walsh has a good many professional driv^ 
ers with him. Most of these men are Indians or half 
breeds; all are men to whom the frozen land from Hud- 
son Bay to the Rockies and from the Arctic Ocean 
south is home. "Fiddler," Andrew Flett and William 
McBeth are types of these men. All three have driven 
dogs since they were big enough to handle a dog whip. 
McBeth is a white man who has an uncle running 
one of the Hudson Bay Company's posts in the far 
North. He is going up to see his uncle next year, and in- 
tends-, taking a run over into the musk-ox country, 
which is quite handy, with a couple of dog teams, and 
bringing back what robes and heads he can carry. 1-Ie 
invited me to join him on this trip, which he says will 
be very inexpensive after the jumping-off point on the 
railroad is reached, and as I shall not be able to accept 
I turn the matter over to the readers of Forest and 
Stream. If any Forest and Stream man wants to go 
I have no doubt he can make terms with McBeth. He 
must bear in mind, however, that a good year is needed 
for the trip, and that the hunt would take place in the 
depth of winter. McBeth says that the Mackenzie River 
country where he has been is a much better game coun- 
try than the Yukon. It is vastly more level in general 
character and much more thickly wooded. Having once 
known the Mackenzie, the Yukon has no charms for 
him. 
"Fiddler" is a full-blooded Indian. He is a jolly good 
fellow with a football shock of hair and a wiry, sinewy 
figure. Both he and McBeth claim to have run seventy 
miles in a day beside their dog teams, and there is no 
occasion for doubting their statements. Fiddler likes 
to make records, and nothing seems to please him so 
much as to travel all night or get up at unearthly hours 
when the moon happens to rise and plug away as long 
as he can see the shape of his leader in the dog team. 
He told me that he can't eat or sleep when he is travel- 
ing as he does at other times. He has a nervous impa- 
tience to get to the end of his journey. It took my part- 
ner and myself, pulling our own sleds, two long and 
wearisome days to make the distance from the Big Sal- 
mon to the Hootalinqua, but Fiddler, who left at 10 
in the morning and passed us on the way, reached the 
Hootalinqua at 4 in the afternoon — not bad for a trail 
that by the map measures thirty-three miles, and which 
as a matter of fact is considerably longer on account of 
its windings and detours. 
Andrew Flett is the half-breed son of a Scotchman 
hy the same name, who crossed the Rockies froin the 
Mackenzie with Robert Campbell in the summer of 
1848, and established a Hudson Bay post at Fort Sel- 
kirg, the first on the Yukon. The elder Flett is still liv- 
ing. Campbell died onlj' a year ago. For three years 
these men supported themselves with their guns and 
nets, and saw no white man's food. Flett was fresh from 
a mercantile life in the old country, and the experience 
must have been an eye-opener to him. 
Andrew Flett, Jr., was born on the Peel River, near 
the delta of the Mackenzie, where they have a hundred 
days of twenty-four hours' sunshine. As a result of 
breeding and education he has become hardened to the 
cold in a wonderful way. Flett was driving dogs for 
John Piche, Goveimment messenger, and the fact that 
Piche wore an Eskimo corset and asserted that it was in 
the interest of economy in the food supply that he did 
it, as having his boilers (figuratively speaking) protect- 
ed, he did not require so much fuel to keep his engine 
in effective working order, was a perennial source of 
amusement to the half-breed. 
"He eats more than I do," said Flett, "and I wear no 
Eskimo corset. The warmer I feel the more I like to 
eat." I asked him what he wore, and he pulled up his 
threadbare cardigan jacket and let me feel his under- 
shirt, which would have been rated as a medium fall 
weight in New York. Besides his Mackinaw coat this 
was all the clothing he wore on his upper body. In ad- 
dition he had on Mackinaw pants and light drawers, a 
single pair, of heav3^ socks, and a single pair of mocca- 
sins, though he acknowledged that at times he used a 
blanket wrapping as well for his feet. He said that 
he wore the same clothing the year round — that summer 
and winter were much the same to him. Most of his 
time was spent out of doors, in the immediate neighbor- 
hood of the Arctic Circle, and he ver}'' rarelj' slept under 
a shelter. He always had a good fur robe with him, 
however, for sleeping, and it was his custom to build 
a roaring big fire largely of green wood that would keep 
in all night. Dead wood was used, of course, to start 
the fire, and after that growing spruce trees felled on 
the fire, or long sections of green logs thi-own on — all 
laid parallel, so that the fire would burn oitt toward 
the ends, and so keep in the longer. 
Flett had a team of five dogs that in December drew 
a load of 3,ooolbs. eight miles over the glare ice 
of Lake Bennett. The sled had to be started for them, 
but after that they kept it moving. These were little 
4olb. dogs, the smallest that I saw anvAvhere. The stock 
wasn't anything in particular. They looked as much 
like large wire-haired Scotch terriers as anything. They 
bad been bred for the work, however, and Flett had them 
beautifully broken in. He talked rather contemptuouslj^ 
of the men he had met coming out from Dawson, saying 
that they had spoiled their teams so that the dogs would 
not go luiless one man ran ahead to encourage them, 
and another ran alongside with a club to pound them 
when they faltered. 
Flett never let his dogs see him on the trail. He ran 
behind where he could steady the sled in bad places, 
and handled the dogs by word of mouth. He did not 
believe in punishing the dogs if it could possibly be 
avoided. He had seen too many fine dogs ruined that 
way, he said. High-strung dogs, which make the best 
workers, most often provoke whippings, and such dogs 
lose heart and become spiritless as a result of punish- 
ment. 
His system was one of rewards, and to prove that it 
was effective he could point to his dogs, which excited 
universal admiration by their spirit and faultless work. 
They trotted along as if they enjoyed their work, in 
strong contrast to a great many teams where the dogs 
plodded along with heads and tails drooped, sore-footed, 
beaten and tired. 
The professional drivers are never cruel, but many of 
the white men coming out from Dawson were. I have 
seen a man knock one of his dogs down in the traces 
and jump on him in the most vicious kind of a way. Two 
daj^s later this dog was out of harness, and from his 
looks, no doubt, he died soon after. When following 
the track of a dog team you could see where the own- 
ers had left the trail from time to time to cut whips 
from the bushes growing along the banks of the river. 
Judging from the frequency of these side trails, the 
number of sticks that were worn out on the poor dogs 
was something alarming. With these dog team owners it 
was often a desperate race a'gainst starvation to get out 
to the coast, and all the kindlier feelings were shelved 
for the time being, and the dogs were worn to the last 
ounce of their strength. 
As high as $500 was paid for single dogs in Dawson." 
I know of $1,500 being offered and refused for a team 
of five dogs. The Indians grew rich from the sale of 
their dogs, but their money avails them nothing, for no 
food is purchasable, and they are starving at many 
places along the river. 
The native dogs, siwash, malamute, or huskj^, were 
most in demand, but all kinds of dogs were used. I 
saw a trick poodle in one team. His leader (there were 
only two dogs in this team) was a big, sullen Newfound- 
land, a picture of pessimism personified. The poodle had 
been recently cHpped and still had 4ts heavy mane and 
tasseled tail. It must have been a joker who set the fash- 
ion of transforming this most inoffensive of dogs into 
the resemblance of the king of beasts. 
The poodle was the best tempered Httle brute imagina- 
ble. Every time the team stopped, and stops were fre- 
quent, for there was a sick man along, the dog would 
caper ground in his h^rnes^ and do everything short of 
turning somersaults. He stood on his hindle'gs. and 
turned baclcwatd in the harness, and never was still for 
an, intetant. It was comical to see how bored the big 
dog looked. 
In a good team a 4oIb. dog will- draw as much as a 
20orb. man can, and keep it up; and the dog will travel 
in a day twice as far as the man. The general rule for 
men who pull sleds is to draw a load equal to their own 
weight. A 20olb. man will draw 20olbs. on his sled, and 
over good going travel about fifteen miles. The dog 
draws the same load and goes thirty miles. He is right 
down to his work, and exerts his force in the long run 
to better advantage than the man does. Most of the dogs 
weigh more than 4olbs., however, and are not given pro- 
pol'tionately heavier loads. 
The big dogs from civilization give out in itieir backs 
and hindlegs, as they have never been trained for pulling. 
Their feet also ate too tendei". for ice Work. On tile 
ice any dog soon wears down his toe nails, and not 
Uncoinmonly tliey have to be temporarily laid, up for 
this cause. 
"Husky" is a shortening of Eskimo, and indicates the 
origin of the dog. Huskies come from east of the Rock- 
ies, and have a great deal of wolf blood in them. Flett 
told me that in summer wolves came around their chip 
pile nights, and if citcumstances favor Wolf blood gets 
an admixture into the dog pack. 
The Siwash dogs are very similar in appearance and 
size to the huskies. They will Weight 60 to 8olbs., and 
have a wolfish thcugh kindly expression. These dogs 
are native to the Yukon. * 
The malamutes are said to be Eskitno dogs, and ot- 
casionally a white one is seen. They come from the 
northwestern coast of Alaska, I believe. 
The Indians on the Yukon hitch up on the average 
two dogs in a team to pull their little, narrow track to- 
boggans. In the Mackenzie country and among the 
professional drivers four or five dogs are considered the 
right number for a team. Many prefer only four. In 
Chilcoot and White passes newcomers from the outside 
world frequently worked as many as nine dogs in a 
team. A discussion of etiquette, in which every dog 
of the nine takes a mouthful, is the nearest approach 
to a circus they have in that God-forsaken country. 
The harness for teams consists of two long traces, 
reaching from the leader back to the sled, and attached 
to the collars of each dog. In the intervals between, the 
traces are supported by a band crossing the dog's with- 
ers, to keep them out of the way of his feet when slack- 
ened. 
The collars are circular in outline and oval in section, 
well padded, and of a size that will just slip over the 
dog's head. In harnessing a team the leader is put iii 
first. This dog is generally the most. intelligent of the 
lot, for on him devolves chiefly the duty of obeying 
signals and setting the pace. The other dogs are called 
in turn and their heads slipped through the collars. It 
takes only a second to put the team in, if the dogs are 
fresh and willing, but with tired teams the driver often 
gets black in the face, swearing at the dogs, before he 
can get all in place. He stands at the harness and calls 
the dog wanted to him. The poor brute may be curled 
up near by, with his nose tucked down in his fur to 
keep warm. At first the dog pays no attention. Then, 
as the exhortation becomes more lurid, he twitches his 
ears, raises his muzzle a little and peers at the man out 
of the corner of his eye — a bloodshot eye, like as not. 
The man holds "Siwash's" collar and kicks the other 
dogs from time to time to keep them on their feet, and 
fairly scorches the dog with a hot simoon of profanity, 
and at last poor, tired old "Siwash" hobbles over and 
submits his neck to the yoke. 
"You'll get limbered up soon enough, old bastard," 
the iTian says, as he kicks the dog's hindquarters around 
in line with the traces, and "Siwash" knows from sad 
experience that he speaks the truth. 
Two general types of sleds were used for dog teams, 
and individual variations were many. The first was the 
basket sleigh, which cost in Dawson eight ounces ($16 
to the ounce), and the other was the ordinary Yukon 
sled, 7ft. in length, similar to those pulled by men. This 
latter sold for $40 in Dawson. In Seattle such sleds can 
be bought for $5. 
The load is fastened on this sled by crisscrossing a tie 
rope from side to side, and it is generally managed by a 
man who runs between the dogs and the sled inside the 
traces, and handles the "gee pole," The gee pole is a 
green sapling 6ft. long and 2 or 3in. in diameter, firmly 
lashed to the front end of the sled, and projecting up- 
Avard like the boAvsprit of a boat, till its highest end is 
convenient for a man's hand. It is used to steer the sled, 
and by its adroit handling the sled is often kept from 
upsetting. The basket sleds are frequently steered froin 
behind. The back end is built up to the height of a 
man's chest, with a horizontal bar on top to hold on to. 
Basket sleds are so named from the light wooden and 
Avire framework that is built up on top to hold the load. 
This framcAvork runs completely around the sled, 
general^ flaring outward. It is a foot or so in height. 
Basket sleds are not infrequently 9 or loft. in length. 
The standard width is i6in., though a few sleds tracked 
20. Toboggans are not common among the white 
men, though the Mounted Police packers had 
some. They are not so good for an ice trail 
as the sleds, as they slue sideways on the irregular sur- 
face of the river, whereas the sharp edges of the sled 
runners hold much better. A sled too runs easier on 
ice, even when the ice is covered by snow. Some of the 
police sleds had a toboggan body, so that if the runners 
sank more than a certain number of inches in the snoAv 
it became conA^erted into a toboggan. It was an inge- 
nious adaptation, but not popular among profane dog 
drivers, Avho said it was no good either as sled or to- 
boggan. Dogs are driven by a combination of English, 
French and cuss words. "Machan," or "mash," or 
"mush," as the DaAvson cockneys had it, which is no 
doubt derived from "march chien," clipped short and 
Anglicized from the voyageur patois means "go ahead." 
The dogs are started with this word, and also en- 
couraged to increase their speed by it. They are turned 
to the right or left by "gee" and "haw," and brought to 
a stop by "Avhoa" or "whoa-back." 
A .good team, not too heaAaly loaded, keeps on the trot 
all the time; twenty-five or thirty miles is covered in 
