The song originated in northern British Columbia and the Yukon, possibly during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.
[1] It was first published in the Yellowknife Prospector in 1939, which claimed that the song was written in 1919 by four men working in the Yukon.
[1] It has become the theme song for silver miners in Cobalt, Ontario and fur trappers in The Pas, Manitoba.
[1] The song describes a romance between the narrator and a "husky dusky maiden" in the Canadian Arctic.
This practice was described by, and may have even originated with, Robert Service's poem "The Ballad of the Ice-worm Cocktail".