This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the Klondike Gold Rush. In July, 1897, a ship returning from Alaska arrived in Seattle with a ton of gold on board, setting off a frenzy as thousands of white men headed into the Yukon looking to get rich quick. The Klondike Goldrush Centennial Committee of Washington State, a nonprofit corporation formed in 1994 with the "encouragement" of Secretary of State Ralph Munro, has been planning various commemorative activities--most notably, a re-enactment of the arrival of the gold, set for July 19.

Although the area was remote and hard to reach, the gold rush was not the first penetration of the region by whites. Russian, Spanish, British, and U.S. explorers and traders had been making inroads for decades. The Native peoples (Tlingit on the coast, Athabascan inland) were not totally decimated by this incursion, as in so many other contacts between Europeans and Native Americans, but it did undermine the local economies and disrupt the intricate trading relationships among the various tribes.

Particularly galling to white traders and explorers was the Chilkat monopoly on trade via the passes from the coast inland, which made them indispensable partners in the fur trade. Over time this monopoly was chipped away by the growing number of whites in the area, often in collaboration with the military. Military commanders were not above manufacturing an Indian "threat" as an excuse to carry out surveying expeditions which would assist white traders and gold-seekers in evading Native control of the trade. The process was a familiar one: in the early days, the Native peoples possessed both a superior force and superior knowledge of the land; over time, the European invaders exploited their relations with Native peoples to gain advantage and appropriate land and other resources.

The Klondike gold rush was the culmination of this process, resulting in the "devastation" of the Tlingit economy in the words of one author. In one year some 20,000 would-be prospectors set up tent cities on the shores of Lakes Bennett and Lindemann in northwest Canada, waiting for the thaw to head north to the Klondike. Tlingit workers were routinely paid less than whites and given the worst jobs. A contemporary observer called them "beasts of burden," and noted that they were cheaper than mules. Wage labor supplanted traditional employments and degraded Native societies' political independence. "Miner's law" was the rule, a euphemism that legitimized trampling on aboriginal property rights. Sexual exploitation of Native women by miners and other whites was common, as the invaders took advantage of Native customs of hospitality.

The Tlingit, with a strong trading economy, did have resources with which to resist the devastation. Canoes carrying freight commanded very high rates, and the culture's emphasis on economic competition did help people adapt somewhat to the market ethos of the Europeans. But the fact remains that contact with whites, as everywhere else on the continent, was largely a disaster. The conflicts that began in the 1800s are still alive today, as Tlingit and other Native peoples struggle to assert their rights in land, to religious practice and subsistence hunting, and for the sovereignty allegedly guaranteed by agreement with the Canadian government.

You won't learn any of this history from the Klondike Goldrush Centennial Committee, though. As far as they're concerned, the gold rush was a wonderful thing, because it brought business to Seattle. A search of their website, with its brief history of the gold rush, a calendar of events, and a monthly newsletter, reveals not a single occurrence of the words Native, Indian, indigenous, aboriginal, or Tlingit. Nor is there any mention of the secondary effects all that economic "growth" had on the indigenous people of Puget Sound. A University of Washington library exhibit, in the basement of Allen library outside the Pacific Northwest collection, makes one mention of Native peoples: it tells us they were used as porters, to carry the white folks' supplies.

You might think that in 1997 people would have the common sense, if not the decency, to realize that there's more to the story of "gold fever" (or "sickness," to use a term with more appropriate connotations) than the glorious enrichment of some scruffy white guys. But you'd be wrong. As far as the good citizens of the Centennial Committee are concerned, Native American perspectives, Native American history--Native American people themselves--simply do not exist. This is conceptual genocide, precursor to the physical kind.

It's not too late to intervene in this racist nonsense. The Centennial Committee writes, "We encourage all to participate. Our general meetings are held the 4th Wednesday of every month at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park at 117 South Main Street in Seattle, Washington." The next one is July 23. Go on down and let them know that "gold fever" was a criminal invasion of other people's land, not to mention the manifestation of a disease that still afflicts Euro-American culture. Their mailing address is Klondike Gold Rush Centennial Committee of Washington State, 1301 5th Ave., Suite 2400, Seattle, WA 98101-2603; the phone is 206-389-7240. Or just crash the party on July 19, at Pier 57, with visible displays of your displeasure and some historically accurate information. And, this week, the Seattle Times will be running a front-page series on the centennial; it'll be interesting to see whether it occurs to the Times that anyone was already living here.

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