Johnny Joe K'ah'ada' (~1875 - 1985)
Johnny Joe was born at Hutshi, thirty-five miles northeast of Champagne. When Johnny's father died, the Marsh Lake chief (Marsh Lake Jackie) told his mother’s family to move to Marsh Lake. This was in the 1880s when Johnny was a little boy. The family loaded up the dogs and walked there.1)
Six people at McClintock Bay on Marsh Lake died when Klondike stampeders came through during the gold rush. Joe was upriver looking for salmon and when he came back, they were all sick. Major Wood, the NWMP commander at Tagish in 1897 vaccinated people but Joe ran away into the bush. Joe Lived most of his live at McClintock Bay on Marsh Lake on the Alaska Highway. He worked as a big game guide and until 1947 was a chief guide. In 1946, the American industrialist Edwin P. Hurd hunted with Mike Nolan who owned a highway lodge at Marsh Lake. The party was guided by John Joe and Frank Slim, both men well known in the southern Yukon. In 1947, Hurd forwarded one thousand dollars to the two guides to outfit themselves for a fall 1947 hunt as a contracting partnership. On hearing about this, officers at Fish and Game wrote an amendment to the Game Ordinance preventing Frank Slim and John Joe from becoming chief guides. The amendment required that a chief guide be equipped with horse and equipment to care for six hunters at a time. John Joe did take Hurd's party hunting but only after Hurd arrived in Whitehorse and persuaded the officials to issue a license. The intention was to limit competition from First Nation independent operators.2)
John Joe used to trap muskrats along the river between the Yukon River bridge and McClintock Bay before the Lewes Dam was constructed. The bigger dam at Whitehorse stopped the king salmon from coming up the river. There used to be a salmon camp near the bridge location and people from all over came there to dry salmon for the winter. They used two long traps below the dam. Joe complained that development stopped his trapping and fishing and his ability to make a living so he became dependant on government cheques.3)
Johnny Joe's first wife was Louise Dawson, a sister of George Dawson of Whitehorse. Louise died of tuberculosis and in 1926 Joe married Julia, Marsh Lake Jackie’ s granddaughter. They had nine children who were raised at Marsh Lake.4)
The Joes and the Shortys cut wood for the sternwheelers before they stopped running in the 1950s. When the Alaska Highway was built, Joe and his sons and a group of cousins built a road connecting the family homestead on Marsh Lake with the highway. Julia made items to sell to the soldiers and the family raised mink. When times were tough, some families came to the Joes for help. Johnny Joe started calling his home Hungry Town, and he is remembered for his generosity and good humour.5)