Ernest J. Chapman
Ernest Chapman started into the Yukon in 1884 in a group of eleven people that were going the same way at the same time. They followed Frederick Schwatka’s route over the Dyea pass. The Indigenous packers charged them a carrying fee equal to the value of the goods they carried. The group prospected at the mouth of the Big Salmon River and then they broke up, most of them going to the Stewart River and some staying on the Big Salmon where every bar had sufficient pay to cover expenses.1)
These river gravel bars had been worked the year before by other groups of prospectors. Chapman spent his first summer on the Big Salmon and went to the mouth of the Stewart for the winter. He worked the second summer on the Stewart River. Those digging at the mouth were making seven to nine dollars a day, but it was hard to recover the fine flour-like gold. Chapman had some success trying a new [unspecified] method. Boswell and Fraser found a place at the headwaters that paid $150. About seventy-five others spent the winter at Fort Nelson, at the mouth of the Stewart, where there was a post and some miner’s houses. Chapman did not do well getting only $1,284 after expenses for two season’s work, while some others were clearing $6,000 in less time.2) Two of those were Boswell and Fraser who prospected up the Stewart 90 miles to Chapman’s Bar where they used a rocker box to recover one hundred dollars a day and reported a $6,000 total for the season. Seven miles above Chapman’s Bar, Richard Poplin, Pete Wyborg, Francis Morphat, and Jeremiah Bertrand worked on Steamboat Bat and mined $35,000 worth of gold that summer.3)
Chapman planned to return for the next season [1886] with more equipment. He travelled 125 miles up the Stewart River and only partially prospected the ground. He had to come out of the country by himself and was a little short of supplies, but he made it all right.4) Chapman arrived at Sitka with the second group of prospectors to arrive back in town. Some of them had worked at Cassiar Bar on the Yukon River, and some of them were on the Stewart River.5)