Kate Carmack
Shaaw Tláa, also known as Kate Carmack ( – 29 March 1920), was a Tagish First Nation woman who was one of the party that first found gold in the Klondike River in 1896, and is sometimes credited with being the person who made the actual discovery. Early years Born near Bennett Lake, she lived near Carcross, Yukon with her parents and seven siblings. Her father, Kaachgaawáa, was the head of the Tlingit crow clan, while her mother, Gus’dutéen, was a member of the Tagish wolf clan. Her name in Tlingit means "gumboot mother". As a young woman, she married her first cousin, Kult’ús. In the early 1880s, Shaaw Tláa's husband and their infant daughter died of influenza in Alaska, at which time she returned to her village. It was here, in 1887, that her brother Keish (Skookum Jim Mason) and nephew Dawson Charlie (K̲áa Goox̱) started a packing, hunting, and prospecting partnership with George Washington Carmack, an American. She became Carmack's common-law wife within the year and took the name Kate Carmack. For six years starting in 1889, the couple lived in the Forty Mile region. Carmack prospected, trapped, and traded, while Shaaw Tláa made winter clothing that she