Kate Carmack, or Shaaw Tlaa, was the sister of Skookum Jim Mason and wife of George-Carmack. Born to a Tagish family in the southern Yukon, Kate first married a Tlingit man from the coast. When he died in the late 1880s, she returned to Tagish and married George Carmack whose wife, one of Kate's sisters, had also just died. George gave her the English name Kate.
They lived first around Tagish and Dyea, then went north to Fortymile and later to the Fort Selkirk area. In Fort Selkirk in 1893, Kate bore her only child to George Carmack -- Graphie Gracie. In 1896, they were joined by Skookum Jim and Kate's two nephews, Dawson Charlie
