Colourful tale behind Yukon rogues’ bones
200-year-old remains traced to criminals who were hanged
Even though the Yukon is in the grips of a modern-day gold rush, Susan Moorhead Mooney prefers to think of those rugged days back in the late 1800s when men risked their lives to get rich and when justice was meted out at the end of a rope.
Mooney is all too familiar with the latter, having worked on a discovery of skeletal remains of four men from the 19th and 20th centuries who were hanged for being a little too quick with their trigger fingers and a little too slow for the North West Mounted Police.
The discovery was made at the site of old Fort Herchmer in Dawson City more than two years ago, when the area was being excavated for a sewage treatment plant. In at least a couple of the cases, pieces of the hood placed over their heads and leg bindings were found.
“We had to let the bones tell their own story,” said Mooney, an osteologist. She will co-author a paper in the Alaska Journal of Anthropology this spring outlining details of the discovery. What the bones could not say, old records could.
“We could tell that three were actually put it the ground at the same time, and we know that there were 10 hangings in Dawson City and we know they took place between 1899 and 1932,” she said. The bodies were those of four males with well-preserved teeth, hair and clothing, which made identification a little easier. In those days, it was the usual practice after a hanging to bury the dead not far from the gallows, but before they were interred, quicklime was dumped on the body, and then water poured over that. The process not only quickened decomposition and cut down the smell, it deterred grave robbers from stealing body parts for souvenirs. Using historical records, the investigators identified the three hanged together — on Aug. 4, 1899 — as Edward Henderson, in his mid- to late 30s; Jim Nantuck, early 20s, and Dawson Nantuck, late teens. The Nantucks were possibly brothers. The fourth set of remains belongs to either Ned Elfors or Alexander King, both of whom were in their 50s. Both were hanged. The remains were reburied in the Dawson City cemetery last June. Mooney said records show that Henderson was known as the “Irritable American,” who was travelling with companions along the famous Chilkoot Trail and had made it to Lake Laberge when Henderson shot his tentmate after a brief tussle over spilled urine. As Mooney tells it: “The reason Mr. Henderson was so irritable was because he had a urinary infection and it required him to pee in a cup every 15 to 20 minutes . . . and the story goes he was camping in his tent with one of his travelling companions and the pee cup turned over on the other guy’s bedroll. Henderson woke up and the other guy was choking him . . . so Henderson pulled out his revolver and shot him.”
The judge didn’t buy Henderson’s version of events and sentenced him to hang.
The Nantucks went to the gallows for shooting a couple of miners travelling down the Mcclintock River over some real or imagined grievance. One of the miners was able to get help. Four Nantuck brothers were rounded up by the North West Mounted Police (which later became the RCMP). Two brothers died from tuberculosis and scurvy before execution day.
Mooney says Alexander King was known to be a stubborn “old cuss” who shot Herbert Davenport, the captain of a river scow he was working on, because King was tired of Davenport constantly getting stuck on sandbars. King said the boat captain made him angry. He was hanged in October 1900.
Elfors was found guilty of murdering a companion for money. He tried to kill a second one near Fort Selkirk in 1906.
“The North West Mounted Police get their man again,” Mooney said.