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 After gold was discovered in the Klondike, the federal Department of the Interior’s main concerns for the Yukon involved maintaining Canadian sovereignty, protecting the stampeders on their journey, and collecting revenues in taxes to pay for the northern administration. Minister Clifford Sifton set up a hastily assembled group of administrators.((Linda Johnson, //At the Heart of Gold: The Yukon Commissioner’s Office 1898-2010.// Legislative Assembly of Yukon, 2012: 9-10.))
-Sifton was also concerned with trying to find a travel route from the coast that avoided American territory as much as possible. In October 1897, he landed at Skagway with his officials and found the North-West Mounted Police struggling with the mass of supplies they needed to get over the coastal mountains. One party had gone over the pass and on to Dawson and another had gone to establish a post at Tagish. Sifton travelled with Major Walsh and his party two days up to Tagish Post and then Sifton left Walsh to carry on while he, Sifton, returned to Skagway through the White Pass. Three alternate routes were being explored. A party of Mounted Police [led by Mooney] was travelling overland from Edmonton, another party was looking at a route from the Cariboo to Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River, and a party headed by engineer Charles Jennings and surveyor St. Cry was studying a route from Fort Wrangle on the coast to Telegraph Creek where a proposed road or railway would go to Teslin Lake and a water route to Dawson. Sifton liked this last route because Canada had rights to navigation at Wrangle under the treaty of 1825 between Great Britan and Russia, inherited by the United States.((John W. Defoe, //Clifford Sifton in Relation to His Times.// Books for Libraries Press, 1931, reprint 1971: 160.)) He subsequently supported a bill to charter a railway on the Stikine River route but it was defeated by the Senate in March 1898.((Rod Macleod, //Sam Steele: A Biography.// University of Alberta Press, 2018: 166.))
+Sifton was also concerned with trying to find a travel route from the coast that avoided American territory as much as possible. In October 1897, he landed at Skagway with his officials and found the North-West Mounted Police struggling with the mass of supplies they needed to get over the coastal mountains. One party had gone over the pass and on to Dawson and another had gone to establish a post at Tagish. Sifton travelled with Major Walsh and his party two days up to Tagish Post and then Sifton left Walsh to carry on while he, Sifton, returned to Skagway through the White Pass. Three alternate routes were being explored. A party of Mounted Police [led by Mooney] was travelling overland from Edmonton, another party was looking at a route from the Cariboo to Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River, and a party headed by engineer Charles Jennings and surveyor St. Cry was studying a route from Fort Wrangle on the coast to Telegraph Creek where a proposed road or railway would go to Teslin Lake and a water route to Dawson. Sifton liked this last route because Canada had rights to navigation at Wrangle under the treaty of 1825 between Great Britan and Russia, inherited by the United States.((John W. Defoe, //Clifford Sifton in Relation to His Times.// Books for Libraries Press, 1931, reprint 1971: 160.)) He subsequently supported a bill to charter the railway on the Stikine River route but it was defeated by the Senate in March 1898.((Rod Macleod, //Sam Steele: A Biography.// University of Alberta Press, 2018: 166.))
 In 1899, Sifton was responsible for approving arrangements for Treaty 8 resulting in the surrender of large tracts of the north to allow for the safe passage of Klondike prospectors. Sifton had the greatest responsibility for administering the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush, and he was involved in negotiations over disputed territory in the panhandle. In 1903 Laurier appointed him the agent preparing the British case for the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. The British had the weaker case and lost in all of the crucial decisions.((David J. Hall, “Clifford Sifton.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2018 website: www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sifton_clifford_15E.html))