Klukwan will host a commemorative celebration next weekend, part of ongoing efforts to rebuild bonds with its neighbors to the North. 

For centuries, Chilkat Tlingits were trade partners with Yukon Tlingits and the Tutchone people. 

The first documentation of that relationship came 125 years ago, when the great Tlingit leader Koh-Klux sat down with a pencil and scratched out his people’s coveted trade route to the Interior. 

A Kliukwan chief of the Kaagwaantaan clan, Koh-Klux befriended the white scientist and surveyor George Davidson during his journeys to the valley. 

Writings from the time describe the Wolf Clan leader as “nearly six feet high, (with a ) broad chest and a well-formed head that measured 23 inches in circumference. He carried a bullet hole in his cheek… and was held to be the greatest warrior and diplomat of all the tribes north and west of the Stak-heen.”

Davidson’s first trip in August 1867 was a scoping trip for a congressional committee considering purchase of Alaska; the second was timed to coincide with a solar eclipse on August 7, 1869. 

The eclipse took place as expected and the Chilkats were so impressed with Davidson’s prediction and equipment to view the eclipse they credited him with the power to make the sun sick. “I had now the reputation of  great medicine man,” Davidson wrote. 

Koh-Klux was among those impressed with Davidson, and he shared stories of how the Chilkats had taken a band of warriors to Ft. Selkirk in 1852 and burned the buildings of the Hudson Bay Company. 

The Chilkats resented interference of the foreign trading company in their well-established trade routes to the interior, so it was a surprise when Koh-Klux offered to share the closely guarded secret with Davidson. 

The chief, who had never used pencil and paper, spent three days conferring with his two wives as he worked on the map. After completion they presented it to Davbidson who wrote on it more than 1– Chilkat names for mountains, lakes, rivers, glaciers and villages in the vast area from Klukwan to Ft. Selkirk, located at the confluence of the Yukon and Pelly rivers. It is the earliest existing map of the southern Yukon area. 

Next week’s gathering commemorates the creation of the map with festivities beginning at noon in the village. There will be Indian dancing, storytelling, a cookout and exchange of gifts. 

The following weekend, a group of about 20 Klukwan residents and students will attempt to trace some of the route to Ft. Selkirk and locate landmarks from Koh-Klux’s map. 

They’ll drive to Minto, boat 12 miles on the Yukon River and camp out at Ft. Selkirk. They’ll be hosted by students from Pelly Crossing School, Tutchone and Tlingit elders, and the Selkirk First Nation chiefs. 

Yukon archivist and writer Linda Johnson contributed to this story.