Joseph Aron “Edgar” Sidney, Néltayin
Edgar Sidney was born in the Auk village near Juneau. He belonged to the coastal Gaanax.ádi clan. His father died when Edgar was ten days old and Edgar lived first in the household of his mother’s brother, and then in his maternal grandmother’s house. He received his most honorific Tlingit name—Néltayin (“inside it looks”) from his paternal grandfather ‘Analahac, the senior Gaanax.ádi man of the Tlingit families living at Auk. Edgar’s name commemorated the turning inward of one of the house posts of his grandfather’s house, when it was rebuilt in Juneau early in the century. Edgar’s original English name was Joseph Aron, but when he went to school in Sitka, the teachers named him Edgar Sidney. As a young boy he spoke only Tlingit and the Chinook trade language.1)
Edgar worked for a while doing chores in a hotel run by Billy Biggers. When Edgar wanted to go to school, Billy outfitted him and sent him to Sitka in 1895. He stayed there for five years, learning the shoemakers’ trade. He was one of the packers over the Chilkoot Pass during the gold rush and became a shoemaker in Atlin during that gold rush.2)
For a time, Edgar was a court interpreter in Juneau. He also worked on the Taylor and Drury boats and scows as deckhand and fireman. He travelled up the Stewart and Ross rivers and traded on his own with the upstream people. From 1921 to 1929 he was “straw boss” of a railroad crew working from Carcross.3)
Edgar eventually married a Yanyeidi woman at Teslin and they had three children. When he settled in Teslin, he was an interpreter for the Roman Catholic Oblates. When the Hudson Bay Company manager at Teslin, George Adsit, was detained in Telegraph Creek, Edgar kept the books for Adsit. In 1947, when Edgar met Catherine McClellan he was working as a bull cook for a party of ten.4)