Hanan

Robert Campbell met Northern Tutchone chiefs Hanan and Thlingit Thling at the mouth of the Pelly River in 1843. They had Hudson’s Bay Co. trade goods including Mackenzie River beads. Their knives and axes were Russian trade goods.1) Campbell described Hanan as a tall, stalwart, and a good-looking man who often came to Fort Selkirk with his band and was glad to trade for articles.2)

In August 1850, Hanan and his brother-in-law arrived at Fort Selkirk with a large number of skins to trade. Campbell commented on how ridiculous his situation was as he did not have the goods to trade with Hanan. Chief Hanan and his people traded some of their furs with the coastal Chilkat after they arrived at Fort Selkirk.3) Chief Hanan took Campbell in after the Chilkat ransacked Fort Selkirk in 1852 and supplied him with food and shelter. Campbell gave the chief his name in gratitude.4)

Chief Harnan [Hannan] was buried at Fort Selkirk.5)

1)
Clifford Wilson, Campbell of the Yukon, Toronto: Macmillan, 1970: 70-78.
2)
Catherine McClellan, “Indian Stories about the First Whites in Southwest America” in Margaret Lantis ed., Ethnohistory in Southwestern Alaska and the Southern Yukon: Method and Content. University of Kentucky Press, 1970: 108.
3)
Robert Campbell, “HBC Fort Selkirk Journal 1848-1852.”
4)
Ted Stone, Alaska & Yukon History along the Highway. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1997: 152.
5)
Veasey Wilson photograph in Esther Lyons, Glimpses of Alaska, Klondike and Goldfields. 1897.