Cataline...
The King of Packers

*
By
L. G. TEMPLE

*

Packing with horses or mules today is mostly a
business for transporting sportsmen to isolated hunt-

ing for fishing grounds. But Cataline operated his
pack trains in the wild old days of the Cartboo when
men were gold hunters and women wete a curiosity.

T was said of the old time mule

packers that if they had enough

rope they could pack a piano on
mule back. Cataline, British Co-
lumbia’s most famous packer, went
them one better. He did it, and it was
a grand piano, at that!

He was the first, and most re-
nowned, packer on the old Cariboo
Road, taking his mule trains from
Yale to Barkerville until the C.P.R.
came through. Then Ashcroft became
his jumping off point. As the diggings
at Barkerville gave out and that town
became almost depopulated, he ex-
tended his route to Hazelton. In the
later years his best customers were
the Hudson’s Bay Company and the
Yukon Telegraph people, his mule
trains packing supplies to the main-
tenance men in cabins along the
line. He made his final trip in 1913,
and then retired to a cabin in Hazel-
ton, where he died in 1922. Almost a
legend before his death, in the years
since he has come to typify the color-
ful days of the Cariboo gold rush.

His real name was Jean Caux, and
he was born on the Spanish side of
the French frontier, probably of
French parentage. Getting into some
trouble with the government of the
third Napoleon, he arrived in B.C.
in 1858, and within a few years had
become the biggest packer in the
country. Although not particularly
tall, he was heavy set, with very power-
ful shoulders and arms, and a barrel-
like chest. Immensely strong, he
could handle the most recalcitrant
mule with ease. His dress was very
noticeable. With blue jeans tucked

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into fine calf boots, stiff-bosomed
white shirt covered with a black
frock coat to his knees, a scarlet sash
around his waist, and the whole
topped off with a broad-brimmed
toreador hat on his shoulder length
black hair, he made a picturesque
figure.
Men Were Cosmopolitan

He spoke a hard to understand
jargon composed of English, French,
Spanish, Chinese and Shuswap (In-
dian), and his men were as cosmo-
politan as his speech. Although he
employed all nationalities, he pre-
ferred the husky north Chinese. He
used to say the white men kept quit-
ting to dig gold, the Indians left as
soon as they got paid, but the Chinese
were hard workers and reliable.

Although almost illiterate and able
to sign his name only with difficulty,
he kept perfect track of all his busi-
ness transactions in his head, and did
involved calculations of the amounts
due each man in his head. When
paying a man off, he would state all
the payments in goods and advances
in cash the employee had received
over a period of several months, and
then state the amount due after these
had been deducted. Once he was
handed a bill for supplies; as soon as
he was told the total he announced
it was wrong and stated what it
should be. When the clerk checked
his figures he found Cataline was
right.

A titled European once took him
for the governor, probably on account

PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES PHOTO

Cataline’s pack train at H.B.C. post, Hazelton, B.C.

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