Tukudh Mission

Catholic missionary Father Pierre-Henri Grollier established a mission house at Fort McPherson in 1860. Concerned by the spread of Catholicism in the north west, Anglican missionary William West Kirkby persuaded newly arrived Rev. Robert McDonald to establish a mission house at Fort Yukon in what is now Alaska.

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McDonald visited First Nation camps up and down the Yukon River, east along the Porcupine River, and over the mountains to Fort McPherson. This area became the core of the Tukudh (Gwich’in) Mission. 

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The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) posts in the Mission supported the Anglicans and, for many years, gave them accommodation and free passage along the HBC outfit and trade routes. 

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Following the Church Missionary Society’s Native Church Policy, Rev. McDonald trained Indigenous leaders in all parts of the Mission to become Anglican catechists and clergy.  Using McDonald’s translated Gwich'in Bible, Prayer Book and Hymnal, McDonald and his First Nation students extended the Takudh Mission north and south of the core region. 

The Tukudh Mission was never able to fully support itself through subscriptions, but it did become a stronghold of Anglican Christianity.