Shawshe ~ Neskatahin

Along the Haines Road, midway between Haines Junction, Yukon and Haines, Alaska, a smaller road leaves the main one and takes you to an area oral histories recount as being used since time immemorial by the indigenous peoples of the region ~ the Tlingit and the Southern Tutchone. The Southern Tutchone have two names for this site on the shore of the Tatshenshini River: Shawshe and T'at Chua; the Tlingit call it Neskatahin. T'at Chua and Neskatahin; the Elders say, translate loosely into English as "water goes under rocks". The meaning of Shawshe has been lost to time although its been told by my late father, who spent his childhood there, that it could mean "shaded from the sun" or if pronounced slightly different "among the sockeye". The community is no longer lived in full time but it is still important to the descendants of the original families of Shawshe and others for salmon harvesting and hunting.

Remnants of log structures - two clan houses, the Wolf Clan Butterfly House and the Crow Clan Drum Sound House as well as homes can still be found in the "old" village area.

There, alliances were formed or strengthened and marriages were arranged as the people hosted feasts and celebrations for their trading partners from the Alaskan communities of Klukwan, Haines, and Yakutat.

Disintegrating buildings nestle among the trees or line the edges of an adjoining meadow. A single rubber ankle boot sits decaying by the front door of one cabin.

Cabins were built in the 1890's, in what's known as the "newer part of Shawshe", by Jack Dalton to be used in stop-overs on the commercial Dalton Trail that he operated between Haines, Alaska and the Yukon River.

The Northwest Mounted Police, the predecessor force to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) based the Dalton Post detachment there during the Gold Rush.

Shawshe women who married non-aboriginal men used the buildings as homes in which they raised their families after Dalton and the police left the area.

Enforcement of non-aboriginal government hunting and trapping regulations in 1906 began to adversely impact the lifestyle and livelihood of the people. Families began to hunt further to the north. In 1923, the wife of Big Jim, my ancestor, along with one of his daughters, as well as a daughter-in-law were accidently poisoned by food they had prepared and eaten. The deaths of these three women is referenced by Elders when they describe why people stopped living in the "old" village site.

photo credit: j.w. hays

When I visited there on August 1st, 2010, I thought of my small connection to the history of Shawshe and left a symbol of continuity, created with stones washed from the river, on the bank of the Tatshenshini to honour my ancestors who lived there in the generations before me.