The Kanaka Corporation was incorporated on August 12, 1937, by the Guthrie-McDougall Corporation, a contractor in Portland, Oregon. The officers of the mining company were Natt McDougall, president; Albert Burch, vice-president; J.C. Vint, secretary; and Jack McDougall, treasurer and assistant secretary. These four men and R.H. Lewis were the only original stockholders. Kanaka leased gold placer claims on Kanaka Creek about three miles below Alleghany, Sierra County, California, and conducted a dredge operation there. Henry L. Day, Henry B. Kingsbury, and Max T. Smith, all of Wallace, Idaho, purchased the McDougalls' shares in November 1937, and Henry Day became president. That same month rain washed out the gravels, although a futile attempt at dredging resumed between April and July of 1938. At a special meeting on October 14, 1938, Kanaka's stockholders approved the conveyance of all of the firm's assets to the Dakins Company, a partnership of Day, Kingsbury, and Smith, in partial payment of notes owed; Kanaka's officers were authorized to dissolve the corporation.
The records of the Kanaka Corporation span the years 1937 to 1940, with the bulk of the material covering the years 1937 to 1938; the material with the later dates usually concerns insurance or tax cases which were not settled until after the company was taken over by Dakins. Included are general correspondence and other records concerning the operation of the dredging operations, tax returns, and financial records.
Related records can be found in the records of the Dakins Company.
The records of the Kanaka Corporation are divided into two series.
Series one, General Correspondence and Related Records, is organized alphabetically by correspondent or subject and includes material related to stockholders, insurance, leases, equipment rentals, minutes of the 1938 stockholders' meeting, stock certificates, shifters' reports, mining engineering reports, smelter reports, financial statements and other records.
The second series, Financial Records, includes a financial ledger, financial journal, and payroll statements.
Removal of bank statements, paid checks and vouchers did not significantly reduce the bulk of this collection.
The records of the Kanaka Corporation are part of the records of Day Mines, Inc., donated to the University of Idaho by Henry Day in 1984 and 1985.
Initial processing of this manuscript group was done by Clay Williams in September 1988.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.