In 1877 a party of miners set out from Sitka under the leadership of Edmund Bean, and attempted to cross by the Chilkoot Pass, but the Indians obliged them to turn back.
In 1878 and in 1880, prospecting parties left Sitka for the head waters of the Yukon, and the latter company, through the clever diplomacy and active interest of Captain Beardslee, commanding the U. S. S. _Jamestown_, were hospitably received by the Chilkats and guided through their country, when convinced that they would not interfere with their fur trade. They found indications of gold all the way, and large gravel deposits. This party descended the Lewis River to Fort Selkirk and there divided, one set of prospectors going down to Fort Yukon, and the others up the Pelly River and thence to the head waters of the Stikine River and the Cassiar region of British Columbia.
In the spring of 1882 a party of forty-five miners, all old Arizona prospectors, left Juneau for the head waters of the Yukon. They returned in the fall, and reported discoveries of gold, silver, copper, nickel, and bituminous coal in the region between the Copper and Lewis Rivers.
In the spring of 1883 one Dugan led a party from Juneau over the divide. In September they sent back by Indians for an additional supply of provisions, intending to remain in the interior all winter. They reported placer mines yielding one hundred and fifty dollars a day to the man, but another party, that left Juneau soon after Dugan, returned in September without having found any placers that yielded more than twenty-five dollars a day.
Altogether more than two hundred prospectors crossed from Lynn Canal to the Yukon country during the first three years after the Chilkats raised their blockade. The Chilkats kept control of the travel, and charged six and ten dollars for each hundred pounds of goods that they packed across the twenty-four-mile portage intervening between the river and the chain of lakes.
In May, 1883, Lieut. Schwatka and party crossed this same divide, and made a quick journey of more than two thousand miles by raft down the Lewis River to the Yukon, and down the Yukon to St. Michael’s Island in Behring Sea, and thence to San Francisco by the revenue cutter _Corwin_.