-Shyler Umphenour, KUAC
This is your Alaska Black History Note. Today, we are digging into the first Black soldiers in Alaska’s Gold Rush Era…In 1896, word spread that George Carmack and “Skookum” Jim struck gold. Tens of thousands of young men and women rushed to the last frontier… Lured North by hopes of striking it rich.Traffic picked up in Seattle and San Francisco as people lined up for the journey north. Small towns, like Skagway, were overrun. In settlements lacking law enforcement, violence surged... The federal government responded, sending out troops to the most brutal towns. The first soldiers to arrive were Black men…
Many of these soldiers were veterans of American Indian battles waged through the 1870s and ’80s. They came to be known as Buffalo Soldiers…
Over a hundred of these Blacks staffed Company L of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry. In the year 1900, Captain Henry Walter Hovey and his men had a huge impeach upon arrival in Skagway, changing the environment, according to Historian Ian C. Hartman…
“They come in and they're really tasked with stabilizing the town, and if not for Company L, one wonders what would have been the fate of Skagway. I mean, it was a rough and tumble frontier town and it's making this transition to more of a stable settlement community. There are tensions between white settlers and the indigenous Chilkat Tlingit, and it's Company L's task to make sure that some of those tensions don't boil over.”
When Company L officially left Alaska in 1902, many Buffalo soldiers stayed behind, embracing life in Alaska’s vast lands…
Join me tomorrow to hear another Gold Rush story from the Golden Heart city…