Frank Barnfield
Frank Barnfield was originally from England.1) He was working for the Hudson’s Bay Company before he came north to the Yukon River Basin. He and Joe Defresne, John M’Intyre, Fred Mercier, and George Nicholson (the last two also Hudson Bay Company (HBC) men) were prospecting in the country around Fort Yukon in 1873 when Jack McQuesten, another ex-HBC man, arrived in the country.2) In 1873, Barnfield and Jack McQuesten were working for the Alaska Commercial Company with Barnfield as McQuesten’s assistant. At the request of the Klondike’s Chief Catsah (Cateah), the American company set up a fur trading post on the Yukon River downriver from the future site of Dawson. It was near a place where the Upper Tanana people regularly came to trade with the Klondike people. McQuesten and Barnfield, and perhaps a translator of mixed Russian and Athapaskan ancestry, were dropped at the site and set up a post called Fort Reliance. Catsah’s men hauled logs up to the site and helped to build the post. They supplied the traders with meat and traded for all of the goods that McQuesten had. McQuesten and Barnfield left the post in early May after the ice broke on the Yukon River. When McQuesten returned to Fort Reliance in the fall, he had formed a partnership with Arthur Harper and Al Mayo, under an agreement with the Alaska Commercial Company, and Barnfield was not part of the group.3)